"But what is thought?" asked Samuel. "Tony, your opinion. You run the house. You must have an opinion."
"I do not run the house, sir. Mistress Houghton does, I would ask her. But the story as we have gleaned it, right or wrong, is that Mistress Wimbarton was struck at by the mountebank with some kind of club, from which she later died. Both the man and Deborah then ran away, she here and he to God knows anywhere, and the magistrate has raised a hue and cry and offered a reward for him. His servants later picked up on the grapevine probably from within this house, I'd guess that she at least was here." He looked at William, expression neutral, and added drily:
"Wimbarton wanted her for her teeth, but when his wife's face rotted would have taken her for other purposes, I'm told. Maybe his wife died from her vile reaction to her tattered mouth, that is another story we are told, aided by the beating from the stick. Whichever way, the magistrate had paid for her, so she was his. If she refuses to be his concubine, he can always have her hanged. As an argument in favour of a little whoring, it is not unpowerful '
"But it is the mountebank that's dead," said William, at last. "The woman killed him, not he her. It is the mountebank that's dead."
The steward, large, implacable and calm, eyed him thoughtfully.
"That's what Deborah kept screaming," he said. "The master shouted once, just once in all the time he kept the yard. She screamed that, not for the first time or the tenth, and Sir Arthur shouted that she was a liar, else why not mention it before? She screamed the mountebank was dead, and the servants must have buried him, she'd seen Milady shoot him in the head. She screamed Wimbarton must have murdered her. That's when Sir Arthur went inside and Jeremiah dragged her across his pommel. In truth, sir, it sounded '
Mistress Houghton came along the passageway, and Tony stopped. At a sign, the steward left them, and she took them into a room they had not seen before, a sitting room with a small bright fire and a sewing box and contents scattered casually on the rug. She bade them sit, and told them Sir Arthur was in a tired state, but grateful for the things they'd found out for him, however horrible. She had heard the tail-end of the former conversation, she added, and had heard Will's name 'young Mr. Bentley's' from the maid herself, while the magistrate and master had held their confabs. She looked at Will not unkindly, but in a manner of reserve.
"She said that she had told you that the mountebank was killed," she said. "She insisted on it. But earlier she had told a different tale, so as not to ... ah, upset the master. I'm afraid I ... well, I did not believe a word of it, her latest version, I thought she would say anything to avoid Wimbarton having her. Sir, forgive me if I insult her as a friend of yours, but ... Do you believe her story could be true?"
There was only one time and circumstance in which Will and Deborah could have spoken in this intimacy, and all three of them now knew it. Impossible, of course, that it should be acknowledged. Will nodded.
"Madam," he said, "I believe it to be true. I believe, as Tony said, the magistrate's men have buried Dennett and the hue and cry is but a blind, to obviate a risk that Wimbarton be suspected for his disappearance. As to the wife, I do not know. Deb said she was in a dreadful way of health, quite putrefying; she might just have died. It is a way to frighten Deb to silence, saying the mountebank killed her, also. Deb was, in general eyes, the mountebank's accomplice."
"A way to get her as a useful pretty whore into the bargain," Sam added coarsely. "Beg pardon, Mrs. Houghton, that was not nice." He did not apologise to Will, despite his jealous sensitivity.
"Aye," said Mistress Houghton. "There was the money, too. Wimbarton said the mountebank stole money, and Deborah as well, he guessed. Another piece of stuff to shut her mouth."
"Hell, hell!" said Will, passionately. "When was the time for all this to be done!? There was a shooting, a bursting in of servants, and Deb's escape! How was she accomplice? How steal? If they escaped both, why is she now with the magistrate, and Marcus Dennett clean away!? It is blackmail, plain and simple! Play ball with him or she may hang, it is her choice. It's horrible! She saw Dennett fall, she saw him bleed and die! Is there no way that we can get her off from this? You do believe me, Mistress Houghton? You do believe her now?"
She nodded.
"I'm inclined to say I do, young man, I do. But sadly my belief is an irrelevance. The magistrate has witnesses who will swear to every detail of his case, and in any way he is a magistrate. Who would believe her story contra his? Or ours, or yours? So Deborah must be..." She sighed. "Perhaps he'll be a kindly master to her," she added. "Stranger things have happened, when all's said."
"And Sir A?" asked Sam. "If you told him this? Or Will did? If he believed it?"
Mistress Houghton shook her head.
"I cannot tell him at the present moment. He could not stand it, I promise you. But when I do, when the opportunity is right ... then, what? The fact remains, sirs. She is the magistrate's, he probably owns her even if she would deny it. And how could she deny it? She would hang, you know that's true. Mr. Bentley. Sir. There is nothing to be done."
"But you will tell him?" Sam said. What else was there to say?
"I will tell him," she responded. "When the time is right. But sirs, you know the news that he has suffered, because you brought it. Have pity on his age, have pity." She stood, and came to touch Will on the arm.
"We all need pity, sir," she said.
Although they ate, and slept for some few hours, William and Samuel left Langham Lodge both miserable and exhausted. The thought of detouring to pass by Wimbarton's estate occurred to them, but neither expressed it. They set out at an almost gentle pace, to conserve their dwindled energy and because the prospect of arrival was not a happy one. William in particular felt lost and powerless, not only for himself. Deborah, not far from where he rode, was a prisoner, facing legal rape and worse. Short of storming Wimbarton's house and dying, probably, in the attempt, there was nothing he could do. His death, in such a case, would be legal, equally. They had not any rights.
"You are right," he said to Samuel later, as they moved through heavy rain. "They send us here, they send us there, we are not free in any sense at all. The world rules us and tosses us about, there is nothing but constraints for us. And here we go again to face that fat hog Kaye and battle with his whim, to try and persuade him to let us go and do something with honour in it. Sam, I must aid Deb! And cannot. Oh, it is intolerable."
Sam could not reply to that, for he feared a difference of opinion inherent in the thought of honour might put a wedge between them. Sir Arthur's reading of the thing had shaken him, but he could not get it from his mind. Most men in Customs battles died in the heat, most Customs men did not work in deepest secrecy, but Yorke and Warren had disappeared without a trace, with not a word of any kind of something going on. There was something up, Sir A thought, something afoot, and Sam feared Celine or Sally was the key, and Jesse Broad's widow and her crew were not the bystanders almost innocent that his friend took them to be. Sam saw Will's pain because of Deborah as doubly unfortunate in this because it made his thinking cloudy on the other issue. Sam thought that Kaye would let them go he thought he'd have to, if Lord Wodderley would act on the express but he feared what they might uncover on a return to Hampshire would make things for William seem ten times worse.