She looked up at him. “You call this an adventure?”
He said, “I would not have, my dear, had I known the nature of the news. But it will be,” and turning, nodded to the two sheriffs who followed him from the hall.
Emeline waited until all the footsteps had faded, and a strange expectant silence leaked in where the sounds had been. Into the wandering shadows and the wilful hush, she drew out her kerchief, and came to kneel beside her mother’s chair. “Maman,” she murmured, “you will be safe, I promise. I shall always look after you. Please don’t cry.”
Red eyed and white faced, the baroness stared glumly at her daughter. “I am not crying,” she said, her tears glowing gold in the slanting sunlight. “And I am not distraught. Nor do I need looking after. But I am deeply shocked. From what I understand, James deserved everything – I mean everything that came to him. For he was right in one thing. God brings justice, and justice is what your father received.”
Emeline did not understand. She tried to take her mother’s hand and was immediately pushed away. So she stood, and crossed to the staircase. “He’s at peace now, Maman. You don’t need to grieve for him.” Then turned once, looking back, “I’m going up to Avice. I shall be back in just a moment.”
But it was later when the situation was more fully explained. The baroness had ordered a fire lit large, hippocras heavily spiced and steaming for herself and her daughters, and had then joined her son-in-law in earnest discussion with the sheriffs. Emeline and Avice sat, cups in hand before the blaze.
“Grieve?” Avice said, glaring. “I hate him and I’m glad he’s dead. I hated Papa when I thought he was sincere, and God loving, and stuffy, and mean minded. Now I know he was a pig and a hypocrite, I hate him even more.”
“You don’t mean it. Maman said the same. She doesn’t mean it either.”
“We do and so would you, if you stopped thinking you have to be loyal. Papa won’t be sitting all smug with the angels. He’ll be suffering hellfire and burning all over again. Now go away. I want to be alone. For ever and ever. I will never marry.”
Emeline winced. “Not still dreaming of the gallant Sir Adrian?” Then she saw her sister’s face, and swallowed hard, whispering, “I know, Avice darling. He was still our father.”
“We were only ever happy when he went away somewhere,” Avice mumbled. “And now we know what he was up to when he went away, so I never, ever want to think about him again. Or any man. They are all beasts.”
It was Nicholas alone who travelled to Gloucester and stood witness to the identity of the burned and oozing corpse which had been discovered in the arms of his naked mistress. Sometime after the fire had been extinguished, it had been the signature on the property’s bill of sale which alerted the local authority to the possible and awful truth, for it was Baron Wrotham who had bought the small backstreet house two years previously, and had immediately installed the young woman known to her neighbours as Bessie the whore.
The baron’s face remained in part, although it seemed to snarl, with the jaw gaping and the teeth springing from the bone like little crooked mile stones. The gums had been all burned away and the tongue was a blackened stump protruding from the gaping throat. One startled eye stared out, the other a burned and hollow socket, but flesh hung, tattered and sticky, in sufficient determination to prove the man he had once been. His son-in-law knew him, but did not pity him.
The woman now lay stretched out close by. Nicholas shook his head. He said, “I will not know her.”
The assistant constable bowed, hands behind his back. “My lord, we don’t expect it. ’Tis the woman’s little lad will come to claim her.”
“You’ll show a child his mother in that condition?” The naked woman had one remaining breast, one thigh, one leg and one arm. Her face, hair only ashes clinging to a scarlet scalp, was almost gone. Her nose had burned to a twisted lump of gristle, her eye sockets both empty and her mouth a fleshless scream. “Get someone else,” Nicholas said. “Get the local priest.”
The constable frowned. “The boy’s fair twelve year, my lord, and being a whore’s son, will know life’s neither easy nor meant to be for those of his sort.”
Nicholas untied his purse. “I’ll stand witness myself,” he said softly, “and will swear this is the woman you say she is. Here’s money for her funeral. Show the boy a closed coffin, and tell him she’s already been identified.”
“You know her then, my lord?” The constable’s frown deepened.
“If I say so, I imagine you’ll not dare to doubt my word?”
Nicholas then sat an hour with the sheriff, discussing the slaying, how it was done, how afterwards it was disguised by flame and finally how it had been discovered. Still alone, he had then visited a small hovel in the back lanes of Gloucester. He did not return to the sheriff’s chambers until mid-afternoon, and it was nearly twilight before he left the city.
Baron Wrotham’s coffin, draped in black velvet, trundled the old lanes and the primrosed paths, through the last sinking glow of sunshine and through the strengthening shadow. Beneath the breezes, the fluttering leaf, and the valley’s gentle perfumes, the cart followed the roads north east from Gloucester to Wrotham under Wychwood, bouncing through ruts and ditches as the coffin rattled and groaned. The horses snorted, flicking flies with their tails, and passers-by stopped as men took off their hats and bowed their heads. May blossoms sprigged the hedgerows, and the cattle were clustered beneath the trees’ shelter, or waded, rump deep, in the cool green streams. The warblers were back from Africa, nesting in the high tree tops and singing for their mates, and across the empty and darkening sky a group of blackbirds, swirling arrows pitching and plunging, mobbed a sparrow hawk, each a dancing black shadow against the cloud. The hawk flew lower, disappearing then into foliage for the night. The blackbirds chittered, looking for a final territorial argument.
With his faithful squire at his back, Nicholas rode slowly behind the cart, controlling his liard hunter, its dappled flanks further dappled by the last of the pale sun. He rode so slowly that finally the sun sank behind the little hills and the sky billowed suddenly pink, dandelion yellow and cerise in their faces. It was gone midnight when he arrived back at Wrotham House, and immediately arranged for the baron’s closed coffin to be laid before the altar in his own private chapel.
Father Godwin lit candles and knelt, muttering his prayers, but Nicholas hurried straight to his wife’s bedchamber.
Emeline was neither asleep, nor undressed. She sat on the bed, playing with a cup of hippocras, twisting the small bowl between her palms as the warmth tingled through her fingers. She lowered her eyes as her husband entered the chamber. Nicholas threw his belt and boots to the empty hearth, and came beside her.
She had sat alone for most of the day. Now, since Nicholas remained silent, she said, “You didn’t like him, and sometimes nor did I. But perhaps it’s all a mistake.”
“Your father’s mistake.”
She slumped, forlorn. “How do we even know it’s him? Did they show you – did you recognise – even after the fire? This – this murdered fornicator can’t be him.”
“I saw him, little one, and knew him. I made the necessary arrangements. The coffin is now in the chapel downstairs with your priest, but will remain closed. You must take my word that your father died as we were told. Now your mother will arrange for his interment in the local churchyard.”
Emeline whispered, “So it’s really all true? He was found with a – prostitute?”