The Lady Tree. Christie Dickason

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СКАЧАТЬ turned his head and met John’s eyes.

      Silence pressed down upon the evening air.

      The waiting had ended. Now would come Malise’s denunciation, his call for armed men, his summons to Sir Henry Bedgebury, the local magistrate. But Malise’s teeth stayed clamped tight against his tongue.

      Hazelton shifted on his bench. He had suddenly ceased to exist, and he did not like it any more than he liked to be refused. He had had three surprises today, which was unsettling for a man who understood how both God and the world ticked. This cousin had been a pleasant surprise. An educated villain suited their purpose perfectly.

      But then came the villain’s impertinent refusal. And now, it seemed, there was bad feeling between Edward Malise and a man he had pretended not to know. The non-existent Hazelton looked from one pair of eyes to the other. Worse than mere bad feeling. Graffham and Malise would clearly be happy to slit each other’s throats. Hazelton had stubbed his toe on two mysteries. In business, mysteries were usually expensive.

      At last, Hazelton broke the silence. ‘We have no time for niceties,’ he said. ‘Mr Graffham, tell me what stops you so absolute before you even know what we want.’

      ‘I am truly sorry …’

      ‘Hear me out or say why not! I would have expected more manners from you!’

      ‘I hope that you are gentleman enough not to insist on pressing an impossible case.’

      ‘Leave it, Samuel!’ said Malise sharply.

      Hazelton stood up. His face turned puce. Twenty years of money-making, silk nightgowns, a large town-house in London, and a deciding voice in the Court of Committees of a royally chartered trading company had not yet hardened him to an insolent command from a man who fancied himself a social better.

      ‘There you are!’ cried Harry from the archway into the Knot Garden, before Hazelton could think how to reply. ‘Sir Richard’s safely off, and I’ve ordered pipes laid out in the parlour. Just before I left London, I managed to buy some of the new Virginia tobacco …’

      ‘Please excuse me,’ said John. He bowed and slipped out through a small gate in the side wall.

      Harry watched him go in astonishment. ‘What’s wrong with my cousin?’

      Hazelton’s rage spilled onto Harry. ‘You mistook him, Sir Harry. Wasted my time and Master Malise’s with this junket down here.’

      ‘What has he done?’ cried Harry. ‘How do you mean, “wasted”?’

      ‘He won’t even to listen to our proposal!’

      ‘He must!” Harry looked ready to burst into tears. ‘It’s so perfect!’

      ‘Nothing is, in this world,’ said Hazelton with fury. ‘But I had hoped for something better than this! I’m going back to the house. With luck, I can stop the unpacking in time to save restuffing it all. I’ll set off back to London first thing in the morning. Malise can do as he likes.’

      ‘But we’re to dine with Sir Richard tomorrow! And there’s the hunting…Your time won’t be wasted. I’ve planned so much …!’

      Hazelton turned brusquely to Malise. ‘If that idiot Graffham won’t do it, we’re almost out of time to find someone else!’

      ‘Let me try,’ begged Harry. ‘I’m sure I can talk him round!’

      ‘You were sure of him before,’ said Hazelton.

      ‘I think,’ said Malise carefully, ‘that perhaps I should speak with him.’

      ‘John?’ Harry laid his ear against his cousin’s door. ‘John? Are you there?’ He opened the door onto a dark, empty room. ‘He’s not here,’ he said over his shoulder to Edward Malise.

      ‘Clearly not. Where does he keep his sword?’

      ‘I don’t know.’ It seemed an odd question. After a second, Harry shuffled cautiously into the shadows of John’s room. ‘It’s here. On a peg, with his belt.’

      ‘Then he hasn’t left the estate,’ said Malise. ‘I’ll try him again in the morning.’ He leaned through the door and peered around the darkened room.

      ‘Shall I send a man to look for him in the barns?’ asked Harry. ‘Maybe he’s not back yet from whatever he does at night.’

      ‘I’ll find him in the morning. He can’t hide for ever.’

      ‘You must forgive his bad manners,’ said Harry in anguished apology. ‘Cut off from decent society for so many years. But he has a good heart and a good brain. You’ll respect him once you get to know him, Edward, I promise you.’ Harry began to feel angry now. He shouldn’t need to apologize for something which was really nothing to do with him. Some things really were going to have to change and his cousin had better get used to the idea! Starting with the right way to treat guests!

Three

      John stripped off his blue silk suit, climbed naked into the enclosing shadows of his fourposter bed and drew the curtains against the world. He lay stiffly against his pillows, listening to his man Arthur settle the bedchamber for the night. Suddenly, he leaned over and threw the bed curtain open again.

      ‘Arthur. My leather jerkin and the woollen breeches.’

      He climbed anyhow into his clothes, thrust on his heavy boots. When Arthur had gone back to his pallet on the antechamber floor, John let himself through a small wooden door into the narrow passage within the wall. The passage, barely wide enough for his shoulders, led down a thread of staircase into the basse-court at the corner of the Hall Place below the dining chamber. John did not want to meet anyone at all.

      From the basse-court, he saw a flickering light move through the dining chamber toward Dr Bowler’s tiny apartments behind the chapel. His aunt’s windows on the first floor glowed.

      The hens are still restless, John thought. In spite of their amiable-seeming fox.

      He unbolted the gate at the back of the dog yard and flung himself out into the night.

      Through the taste of blood in his mouth from his broken nose, John smelled the burning wood and tar of the coach. An orange-lit circle blackened and spread on the leaves overhead. He choked on the vile smell of charred meat.

      He found himself panting on the crest of Hawk Ridge. As he looked down at the house, Aunt Margaret’s window went dark. Dr Bowler’s bedroom window was hidden by the chapel. The house was so changed that he hardly knew what he was looking at. Behind the dark windows of the east tower lay the face he had seen lit by the flames of the burning coach.

      When he finally woke, a day and a half after the startled farmer had delivered him to his uncle, his mind had been washed clean as a pebble in a stream.

      ‘The Devil stole your memory,’ his Uncle George later told him. ‘There was a smell of sulphur on you when that farmer brought СКАЧАТЬ