Sword and Song (26 page)

Someone was calling my name. Hugh was racing across the bridge, in shirtsleeves, pistol in hand.

“Where the devil have you been!”

Hugh gasped for breath. “Heron told me not to come! He said the plan was off.”

“Why the hell should he tell you that?” I dragged at my cravat – something had to be done to staunch the flow of blood. It was sodden. Hugh wrenched off his own dry cravat.

“He left me a note, I tell you! Pushed it under my door. I found it when I went back to my room tonight.”

I wadded up the cloth, pressed it to Heron’s head, tried to tie it on. Heron groaned. “Have you ever seen his handwriting?”

“No, but – ” Hugh swore. “The villain got wind of the plan, didn’t he? Took steps to reduce the odds against himself. And I fell for it – in heaven’s
name!”

“Themselves,” I said. “There were two men, Hugh.”

“You got a good look at them?”

“Not a chance. All wrapped up in greatcoats with scarves about their faces.” I dragged myself upright and tried to squeeze some of the water out of my coat. “We’ve got to
get Heron back to the house.”

He was a dead weight. We heaved his arms over our shoulders and half-carried, half-dragged him across the bridge, staggering under the burden, then up the formal gardens. My sodden clothes were
becoming unpleasantly clammy.

“Front door or back?” Hugh asked.

“Whichever’s quickest.”

“Dining room window’s open.”

We manhandled Heron up the steps to the terrace. The wad about his wound had slipped. Blood was blossoming across Hugh’s shirt sleeve.

Alyson stared at us from the terrace. He looked befuddled, clearly drunk; his hands hesitated at his breeches as if he’d come out here to piss. Then he seemed to come to his senses; he ran
back into the dining room, yelling for servants. We stumbled in, brushing past him without ceremony. I left grimy marks on the curtain that fell against my arm, and footprints on the expensive
rugs.

In the dining room, two gentlemen were fast asleep with their heads down on the table; a third was being sick in the chamberpot that was kept in the sideboard. Alyson yelled again for Crompton.
The butler hurried in from the hall, stopped dead when he saw Heron hanging between our arms.

“Send for the sawbones, man!” Alyson yelled. “Quick!”

Crompton hesitated, then swung back for the servants’ door. We struggled out into the hall. A clatter of footsteps. A great shout, and Fowler came racing down the main staircase. He thrust
me aside, grabbed Heron’s arm, hauled it over his shoulder. “I’ll sort him.”

“You’ll need help – ” Hugh began.

Fowler shouted him down. “I said I’d do it! Get out of my way!”

And he dragged Heron up the stairs, yelling down all the curses of hell upon us.

We stood at the foot of the stairs looking up. “Now I remember why I don’t employ a servant,” Hugh said.

“Heron’ll be safe,” I said. “Which is more than can be said for the rest of us, when the murderer discovers that book is not the one he wanted.”

Damn the conventions; I scratched on Esther’s bedroom door. She had to be warned she was in danger. But it was Catherine who slipped out.

“She’s asleep,” she whispered.

“Then lock the door and put a chair behind it,” I said, “and make sure the pistols are loaded. And she’s not to go out of the house tomorrow. Understand?”

She nodded silently.

“And if anyone tries to get in,” I said, “shout the place down!”

There was a furore among the ladies at the breakfast table. I helped myself to eggs and ham and bread and listened to their tales. Heron had apparently been ambushed by six men
while he was engaged in an amorous encounter with a chambermaid from the local inn. Fowler had evidently been procuring the lady’s services – Heron was of course too well-bred to
approach the maid himself – and had fought off the villains with Heron’s sword, Heron being incapacitated by a blow from a duelling pistol.

All this was of course couched in delicate language. The chambermaid was ‘a certain person’, Fowler was ‘Heron’s man’, Heron’s supposed purpose was
‘dalliance’. As the only man in the room – apart from the servants, of course – I was applied to for my supposedly greater knowledge of the affair. I sat down opposite
Esther, saw her lips set in a thin line of anger.

“And why should Mr Patterson have knowledge of the affair?” she asked in a voice so tight I hardly recognised it.

“Oh, my dear Mrs Jerdoun,” an elderly lady said in girlish reproach. “Gentlemen are told the truth of these matters – the ladies are always protected from the worst of
it.” She cast a significant glance across the table at Lizzie Ord, who was nervously biting into a piece of toast as quietly as she could. “And quite rightly, too.”

Esther looked contemptuous. Lizzie hesitated then said, “But how are we ever to develop strength of mind if we are to be forever protected from anything unpleasant?”

A horrified silence reigned. I waited for Esther to say something in Lizzie’s support but she merely looked, if possible, even more severe.

A lady tittered. “You will be suggesting next that we play our part in such things!”

I glanced at Esther, who had played her part more than once in a desperate situation.

“Oh no,” Lizzie said with serious earnestness. “Quite apart from anything else, men are so much stronger than we are. But I do not think we should ignore such things and
pretend they do not exist. And things like politics too – ”

Several ladies started talking at once, disclaiming all interest in such boring topics.

“I don’t think it’s boring,” Lizzie said. “I think Mr Walpole – ”

I intervened hurriedly. Whether Lizzie approved of Mr Walpole or not, she was certain to offend someone. “As a matter of fact,” I said, “I was there.”

There was uproar. All the ladies exclaimed at once. Lizzie said anxiously, “You were not hurt?”

I laughed. “No, just very wet!”

Amid more exclamations, I spun them the tale I’d carefully fabricated overnight. I’d been unable to sleep, I said; I’d gone for a walk in the gardens and met Heron who was
pursuing an interest in astronomy. The ladies nodded sagely; this clearly seemed the idiotic sort of hobby a gentleman like Heron would have. We’d strolled down to the canal, I went on, and
had been ambushed there by two villains apparently intent on robbery. I’d been pushed into the canal; Heron had gone at them with his sword, and Hugh had run out to help, having seen
everything from his bedroom window.

At the end of my tale, the ladies took it into their own possession. Someone remembered the attack on me on the first night of my stay, someone else mentioned poachers. A third had heard of a
highwayman. Five minutes later, a new arrival was told I’d been held up by a giant who’d tried to drown me by holding me underwater and who’d been run through by Heron.
Lizzie’s faint protests went unheard.

Esther remained silent, breaking up toast with tiny angry snaps and drinking coffee as if she could hardly bear to swallow. Under cover of the ladies’ chatterings, I said softly:
“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” she said. She signalled to a servant who poured her more coffee.

“I thought – ”

“It is none of my business,” she said cuttingly. “Men’s business.”

“Indeed, indeed,” said her next neighbour approvingly. “But – ” in a sudden change of mood, “Seeing it was Heron, my dear – ”

Esther and I both looked at her blankly. She said coyly, “Oh, my dear, you cannot deceive me. I know how you feel about the gentleman. Indeed, when you went off to Newcastle together, I
was quite convinced you would come back married.”

“There is nothing between Heron and myself,” Esther said with such vehemence that the lady tittered. Her neighbour on the other side immediately wanted to know what was going on;
watching the two ladies put their heads together, I suspected that by the time the tale reached the other side of the table, Esther and Heron would have been married six months.

I went upstairs to enquire after Heron’s health. I scratched on his bedroom door; after a long wait, it was pulled open with some force. Fowler glared at me.

“Oh, it’s you.” He looked as if he was about to deny me entry, then grimaced. “You’d better come in.”

The heavy shutters had been closed over the windows and the room was almost completely in darkness, except for one candle on a table by the unlit fire. A glass of wine and a newspaper also stood
on the table; a chair beside it had been pulled back – presumably that was where Fowler had spent the night. The bed curtains were closed and there was no sound from within.

“Has the doctor seen him?”

“I won’t have him,” Fowler snapped. “What will a doctor do but bleed him, and he’s bled enough. He’ll be well enough if he has rest and quiet. No thanks to
you.”

“It was his idea!” I said indignantly.

He bared his teeth at me. “And you didn’t try and talk him out of it?”

“How the devil could I do that?”

He brooded in silence. “You might at least have brought back his sword.”

“His sword?” I echoed, startled. “Damn! I never gave it a moment’s thought.”

“It’ll be halfway to London by now,” Fowler said. “It’s Spanish – worth a fortune.”

I saw again the attacker, a greatcoat buttoned over his clothes, a cloth about his face, a hat rammed down over his hair. Sword lifted, ready to run Heron through with his own weapon. (I was not
going to tell Fowler that!) And the moment our eyes met, it was as if he had said,
Not this time. Not now
. But later?

And the sword had gone arcing into the undergrowth.

Was all this – a challenge? A contest to see which of us would be the victor?

“Well?” Fowler said sourly. “You going to look for it, then?”

The man really was obnoxious. His familiarity grated, his insolence irritated me beyond measure. The only thing I couldn’t object to was his loyalty to Heron. “Did you find out
anything in the village.”

“And that’s another thing,” he said. “Sending me off when Heron needed me.” He bit down hard on his anger; his lean face looked harsh. “I asked. But
you’ll not like the answer.”

“No strangers?”

“Not for months. Not for years. Not in the village or round about it.” Some of the tension went out of him. “This place would drive me crazy. Most excitement they’ve had
this year is when Mrs A snapped at the schoolteacher on Sunday. Swore like a man, they said. Oh, and the London coachman and all the footmen are light-fingered. Which wouldn’t surprise me in
the least. Now get out of here and get me that sword!”

“
Please
would be welcome,” I said.

“That’s supposing I wanted to be polite,” he said. “And I don’t. I’ve known nothing but trouble ever since I met you.”

“Funny,” I said. “I was thinking the same of you.”

He grinned though there was sourness in the twist of his mouth. He was venting his fury and helplessness on me – and why not, if it made him feel better?

“Look after Heron,” I said.

“What the devil do you think I’m going to do?”

As I went downstairs to retrieve the sword, I knew I was missing something. The look the attacker had given me... It had been so oddly intimate. As if the fellow knew me. Indeed, why should he
challenge me otherwise? But did that suggest it was someone I’d offended? Or who had a grudge against me? Had Nell and the chapman had been killed as a part of that challenge? Surely not.
Nell’s death had been the catalyst for this affair; any ‘duel’ with me was the result of her death, not a cause of it.

Conversation drifted out of the breakfast room. William Ridley was again expounding on the woodland dispute, his grumbles this time aimed at the iniquities of the English legal system which
demanded facts, facts and more facts “when everyone
knows
what happened!” Fischer was doing his best to divert Ridley with tales of Philadelphia, but failing. I heard another man
mutter; Philip Ord said sharply, “My wife, sir, is a very sensible woman.” High praise, I thought.

I went into the dining room, intending to make my way out into the gardens. I expected to see the room still in uproar after the revelries of the previous night but the glasses and the cards and
the used chamberpots had been removed, and vast quantities of fresh flowers brought in, probably to disguise the smell of piss and drink. One maid still lingered, on her hands and knees, rubbing
furiously at the Turkish rug. A line of muddy footprints.

She looked me up and down and snapped, “Mind out the way.” She brushed damp hair out of her eyes. “I don’t want you messing up what I’ve already done.” She
went back to her work, the hair falling across her face again.

I studied the muddy footprints. From their outline – clearer in some places than in others – I could see they started at the window and came across to the door where I stood.

I was the one who’d made those footprints. Sodden and dishevelled, I’d traipsed in all the mud and water from the canal. There were fainter traces of other prints, perhaps made by
Hugh or Heron.

“Well,” the maid said. “Are you coming through or not?”

“I’ll go round the other side of the chairs,” I said. “To keep out of your way.”

“Yes. Well,” she said, sitting back again. “If you find the gent that did this, you can tell him from me, I don’t take kindly to him. They don’t pay me enough to do
this sort of thing.”

The table had been pushed back to give her better access to the rug. I edged round it – and came to a sudden halt, just as I was about to push between two close-set chairs.

There were more footprints, fragmentary – just an outline here and there but still unmistakable. A lump of mud had been deposited by an occasional table, with a fragment of dark moist leaf
still attached.

“There are more footprints round here,” I said.