“Petronella and Hilda will come,” nodded Avice, “so it won’t be just us alone. Old Bill will come again too, if we pay him.”
Emeline sighed. “You really think all this running away will help you find murderers?”
“Nicholas runs away all the time. Running away makes sense when staying feels like being in prison.”
Avice interrupted. “Emma, you know exactly what I think and how I’ll prove it.” She looked directly at her sister. “Just as I was telling you before about who needs warning and who’s in danger. You really should come with us.”
“You mean Adrian?” Sysabel sat up straight, her face suddenly white. “You think he’s in danger? Then we have to leave right away.”
“I never thought the world could be so horrid.” Emeline turned, staring first at Sysabel and then at her sister. “Papa was, well, we know what Papa was. But he made the world feel safe. All we had to do was go to chapel and confess our sins, and then we were happy again with God looking after us.”
“I never had anything to confess,” sighed Avice. “It was so disappointing.”
“I only ever confessed that I hadn’t confessed for a whole day.”
“But now we know Papa had plenty to confess. I wonder if Father Godwin knew everything about that horrible woman all the time.” Avice took a deep breath. “So, are you coming?”
The pages came in to light the candles and put up the shutters, but once they had left, Emeline was suddenly decisive, marching immediately to the door. “I have to speak to someone and it can’t be Maman. Then I’ll make up my mind. Maybe I will come with you after all. And if Nicholas never forgives me for not behaving like a lady, then I’ll tell him I only did it to try and save his life.”
Emeline quickly closed the door and hurried along the corridor to the narrow back stairs. It was to a tiny closet chamber that she crept, snugly tucked away on the upper storey. There, amongst half unpacked clothes chests and materials spread for darning, for brushing and for stitching, Martha held her tight, both arms clasping Emeline cushioned to her breast.
“Did you,” whispered Emeline, feeling once again very young and safe, “know already? Did you really take us to that place on purpose yesterday? Why? To make Sissy admit everything? Or something else?”
“I knew indeed, my sweetling,” Martha breathed soft and cinnamon, “for that silly young lass Hilda told of it some time back when they first arrived in Wrotham. She’s no more notion of keeping her mouth shut than a magpie singing in the bushes. I took the poor child past that place, thinking I’d a duty to inform you and her ladyship, but with the secret’s not being my own, I wanted to cause neither trouble nor strife.”
“Do you,” suggested Emeline, voice smothered against her old nurse’s apron, “really feel sorry for Sissy? You don’t, do you?” She sat up a little. “Do you just think it’s all a terrible sin?”
“Now what would you have me say?” Martha frowned, patting Emeline’s shoulder. “Would you have me give the lie to the almighty Church and all those holy priests, and perhaps say there’s no sin in loving? There’s sin of course, but whose sin is it? The little girl child, who was as ignorant as the dew on the daisies? The poor midwife who does a service for those miserable girls, and saves their wretched bodies from the torment and the shame of bearing a bastard child? Or is it the seducer who bears the sin, a full grown man like as not, who knows and does it all the same, putting his girl at terrible risk without the kindness nor the offer of marriage?”
“Yes. It was Peter’s sin.” Emeline sat straight now. “How I hate him. First he used her, and then sent her off for the slaughter.”
Martha clicked her tongue. “And so someone slaughtered him.”
Emeline sniffed. “Peter told me he’d loved me from afar, told me he’d begged his father to arrange our marriage, told me he dreamed of me every night. It was such a lie. He only wanted me for my money. But I was so infatuated – just like Sissy. He told her he loved only her. But then he got her with child, and sent her off alone to kill it. I’m lucky. It could all have happened to me. Every horrible detail.”
Martha’s arms bundled her back close. “Don’t cry, my lambkin. You knew no better, and just believed the handsome young man at your door, as all of us do before we learn better.”
She peeped up at her nurse, suddenly curious, “Were you ever in love, Martha?”
“With my mother and with my father as is proper, and with you, my own poppet, you and your dearest little sister. My precious children you are both of you, and have never wanted another.”
“But you don’t like Sysabel, do you?”
“I might blame her for ignorance and a head full of fluff and nonsense, and even blame her for believing the words of a villain instead of the words of her priest. But stupidity is no sin. I believe the good Lord will forgive, since all the poor lass dreamed of was love and has surely been punished enough. But,” and Martha paused as if waiting for holy intervention before saying, “the girl is – impetuous. A little doom willing, perhaps. And seems unbalanced as a door does when its hinges are broken.”
Emeline rested her head back on Martha’s swelling apron. It smelled of bleach and starch and honey treats. “Yes, the screaming and wailing and flying into tempers. Or did the misery of it all send her insane? She thinks her greatest punishment was losing Peter.”
“That was her reward, and God’s mercy.”
“I cannot imagine what she went through. The fear and the shame and the pain afterwards. And Peter didn’t have to face any of that.”
“Perhaps the young man had his own demons to face, my lambkin. What do we know of the blackness in any man’s heart?”
“And the fire? It’s always fire, isn’t it. Did you know that the place you took us – where Sissy had been – was already gone? Burned?”
“How could I, little dearest? I had never been there and knew only the place Hilda had told me. More tragedy perhaps, more death.” Martha wrapped both arms tighter, keeping Emeline against her bosom. “I took your little sister from your mother’s body,” she murmured, “and washed and swaddled her while the midwife thought your poor Maman might die from the agony of it. But women are stronger than they think themselves. Yet having an unformed babe cut from your body – now that’s a battle wound even worse than the birthing of a living child for there’s the tragedy of loss, and it must be done in secret with no one to give comfort and not even the freedom to scream.”
It was another voice entirely which answered.
“Women die every day in childbirth,” announced the baroness from the doorway, and both the other women sat up in a hurry and stared around. The baroness walked into the centre of the little chamber and regarded her daughter with an aggravated frown. “I have no idea why you are here, Emeline, and I find it most inconvenient.”
Emeline stuck out her chin. “We all come to Martha for comfort and advice. That’s why you’re too, isn’t it, Maman?”
“Don’t be petulant, Emma,” said her mother. “Whether you need comfort or not, I presume you’ve been talking of young Sysabel. Yes, yes, I know all about her. With a maid who cannot keep her mistress’s business in silence – and the Lady Elizabeth looking for a confidante. Indeed, Mistress Frye is in need of a far stricter guardian. And since it seems we now have suspicions regarding Mister Frye –”
“Well, it makes more sense than poor Edmund Harris. But it’s Avice who thinks Adrian is the murderer. She says it was for Peter’s inheritance.”
“Nonsense,” said the baroness with a wave of her fingers, “there were far better reasons for murdering Peter than that.”
Emeline hiccupped and disengaged herself again from her nurse’s embrace. “Does everyone know things they never told me? Are you suggesting you knew what a dreadful creature Peter was, while continuing with my marriage arrangements regardless?”