The Lady Tree. Christie Dickason

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СКАЧАТЬ one I must woo. The one in the Queen’s eye. The one I really wanted all this for!’ His voice was plaintive as a disappointed child’s.

      John counted another five serving men as the last invading coach rolled into the forecourt. Four more coach horses and two mounts.

      ‘I must alert the stable boys,’ he said, ‘or we’ll have a shambles in the yard.’

      Harry clutched John’s sleeve. ‘Don’t leave me now, cousin!’

      The footman leaped down and opened the door. The circular top of a feathered hat appeared, followed by the shoulders of a red coat. The man straightened and stepped to the ground.

      ‘I hope, Sir Harry, that your cellar and kitchen can make up for that appalling journey.’ Edward Malise removed his hat and ran his fingers through his heavy straight black hair. The falcon-nosed face was sulky and tired. ‘I’m bruised from nape to heel and dusty as a church.’

      Harry’s hand pushed on John’s elbow. John did not move. As he stared at the newcomer, the hair lifted on the back of his neck and on his arms under the sleeves of his new shirt.

      ‘It will be a pleasure to try to console you, Edward,’ said Harry uncertainly. He glanced at his cousin in covert bewilderment. What on earth was wrong with him?

      John’s lips tightened across his teeth. His breath shortened, and his muscles coiled themselves like springs on his bones. His fingers became knives.

      ‘My dear Edward, this is the cousin we discussed.’ Harry’s distant voice was nearly drowned by the pounding in John’s ears. ‘John Graffham…Master Edward Malise.’

      John braced himself for Malise’s gasp of recognition. His hands felt themselves already closing around Malise’s throat.

      But the dark eyes passed over him. ‘Delighted,’ Malise said wearily. ‘Our botanist. Sir Harry has sung your praises, sir. We shall talk more later when I have recovered.’

      Confused and unbelieving, John licked dry lips. He bowed curtly, sucked in a deep breath. Made the thick dry lump of his tongue shape words. Malise seemed not to know him, but he would never forget Edward Malise.

      Seven-year-old John flew through the ring of fiery tongues, out of the coach window, like Icarus falling away from the dreadful heat of the sun. He trailed flames like a comet, wrapped in his own screams and the smell of burning wool and hair.

      His face smashed into the dirt and stones. He felt hands drag him away from the coach and beat out the flames on his hair and clothes. He clawed back toward the burning coach and his parents trapped inside. His mother was a shadow dressed in flames, a burning goddess with fiery hair. She screamed and screamed. Hands pulled at his coat, dragged him away into the darkness.

      He saw men’s legs on the far side of the coach, and logs braced against the door, to hold it closed. The four coach horses shrieked and reared in their harness. The offside bay twisted and bucked, its foreleg tangled in the logs of the roadblock. A man darted and dodged through the black smoke, trying to cut the horses free. Others, stippled by flames then blurred by smoke, jammed the far-side coach door closed with logs.

      ‘Mother!’ His scream was lost in the furore of terrified horses, shouting, and flames.

      The hands hauled at John’s jacket.

      ‘Please, Master John!’ begged the voice in his ear. ‘Before they take notice of us …!’

      The silk-padded upholstery, heavy dried-wood frame and pitch-covered roof of the coach burned fast. The screams stopped. In this new silence, the flames cracked loudly. Sparks drifted up into an orange-lit canopy of blackening leaves. The men around the coach dropped back. Now on his feet, John followed the Nightingale groom through the brush towards the road beyond the coach.

      ‘There’s justice done,’ grated a smoky voice from the group beside the coach. ‘A just death to thieves and plunderers, and the courts and King be damned!’

      The Nightingales’ coachman lay dead on the ground, his cut throat spreading a black pool across the orange-lit ground.

      ‘Ralph! It’s Cookson …’ John started to say.

      The groom clapped an urgent hand over the boy’s mouth. ‘He’s past help, Master John. Let’s get you away while they’re still busy!’

      The coach lurched sideways and settled unevenly like a dying stag still trying to stand. Three of the horses, loose at last, darted and whinnied, dragging the men who clung to their leathers. The bay had fallen out of sight and was still.

      In the confusion of logs and bodies, a face suddenly stood out brightly in a shudder of firelight. The head was turned to the side. The brow, cheekbone and chin of Edward Malise glowed hot orange. His single visible eye was alight with a terrible glee. Then he turned suddenly, the eye caught by movement in the brush. He seemed to look straight at John.

      ‘Run, Master John!’ whispered Ralph. He shoved the boy deeper into a thicket and drew his dagger.

      ‘We missed a brace of them,’ said the smoky voice. ‘Over there!’

      Three of the men beside the coach drew their swords and turned to black silhouettes against the flames as they moved towards the groom.

      ‘Run! To London. To your uncle. For the love of God, run!’

      It was told for months, until a new excitement made fresher telling, how a singed, dazed and smoky boy wearing ashy tatters of silken clothes had staggered into a cottage on an estate six miles from the ambush, announced that he was Master John Nightingale of Tarleton Court and demanded to be taken to his uncle George Beester in London to tell him that the Devil had killed his father and mother. He had then sat down in a large, carved chair-of-grace and fallen soundly asleep as suddenly as if struck by a magic spell.

      ‘My dear Edward,’ said Harry, ‘let me begin to make it up to you at once. Food and drink are waiting for you inside.’ He shot John a disappointed, reproving glance. No help there. His cousin John needed a good shaking up and brushing off before he could be trusted in elevated company. Harry felt the chill of imminent disaster. His joy when Malise had agreed to visit Hawkridge House had drowned his common sense.

      I should have come down here first, to make certain the place does me credit! Please God, at least let supper be worthy!

      John stood like a man who had just been clubbed. Upright but unbalanced, a sawn tree just before it falls.

      ‘Shall I take the coach round?’

      John looked up blankly at a strange face above yellow livery.

      Harry had betrayed him to Malise.

      ‘Sir?’

      ‘What do you want?’

      ‘The coach…where, sir?’

      John frowned in confusion. The coach had burned so fast. Pitch-covered roof and dried wood frame. He had begged the screams to stop. And then the meaning of the silence had shrivelled him into a tight, cold ball of ice.

      ‘Sir?’

      John looked up again. A London СКАЧАТЬ