The Lady Tree. Christie Dickason

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СКАЧАТЬ is the truth, as it stands, on this earth. The Malises are murderers. No law, Divine or temporal, gave them the right to play executioner.’

      ‘I killed Francis Malise.’

      ‘But with more right. And I still say it was an accident. And I have support on both counts. That’s why you must not come to trial! Morally, your guilt is still a little slippery. All those official words and papers will set events rock solid. The logical sentence will be required. I must do something before then.’

      ‘I did kill him.’

      Beester leaned forward. ‘Swear to me again that you saw Edward Malise beside my sister’s coach!’

      ‘I swear,’ said John. ‘By anything you like.’

      His uncle studied the boy’s eyes. Then he grunted. ‘All right. There’s no more to say. They won’t have you as well.’ He stood and rearranged the layers of his clothing for leavetaking. Beester saw no point yet in telling the boy that all four Nightingale estates, including Tarleton Court, had been confiscated by Crown agents to be held pending the verdict.

      ‘If those two were guilty,’ said Beester, ‘then it may yet be proved. And what a shame, then, if you were already dead.’

      He crossed to the unlocked door. ‘Do you still keep handy that knife I gave you?’

      John nodded.

      ‘If rumour gets out that I’m trying to delay your trial, Malise or a helpful crony might just see fit to play God’s role again. There aren’t enough guards here. Take care.’

      The heavy wooden door of the cell scraped across the floor. John woke. He listened. Heard the tiny barking of a far-away dog. Inside the cell, cloth rasped on cloth. The darkness was tight with the silence of held breath. John felt rather than saw the change in the darkness where the door would be. Someone had opened his door. He slid his right hand under the cotton bolster onto the handle of his uncle’s dagger.

      He waited, straining to hear over the clamour of his body.

      Cloth scratched across cloth again, in the darkness near the door. Agile as an adder, John slid sideways off the bed. On the ice-cold floor, he listened again. Over the thumping of his heart, he heard a roughly drawn breath, and another. The intruder needed air badly and could keep quiet no longer.

      How many were there?

      Silently, John coiled himself near the foot of the bed. If he attacked now, he would have the brief advantage of surprise. He shifted his grip on the handle of the knife. The sound of breathing had not moved away from the door.

      ‘John?’ His name felt its way through the darkness on an urgent breath. ‘Nephew John, it’s Mistress Beester.’

      Now he imagined a thicker darkness near the door.

      ‘Your aunt…Uncle George’s wife.’

      His hand clamped even tighter onto the knife.

      ‘John, are you there?’

      The thicker darkness stirred. It seemed to retreat a step.

      ‘Aunt Jane?’

      ‘It was the right door! Thank God! Come at once!’ The whisper was impatient and frightened. ‘Come quickly. Your uncle is waiting in the street…Come!’

      John stood with a surge of joy. He took a step and bumped into the table. He hesitated in the darkness. What if she weren’t really there? It would be too terrible if she were a demon testing his soul’s strength. She would vanish, and he would have to rebuild his courage again from scratch.

      ‘Sweet Heaven, come now!’ Fabric rustled. A cold but solid hand brushed his wrist, fumbled, gripped on.

      John dived through the darkness after the hand.

      ‘Close the door!’ she whispered.

      They cut diagonally across a short corridor to a second smaller wooden door. His aunt opened it and ducked into the shaft of a narrow stone staircase with John behind her. Steps spun down, down, down around a pole of stone into a well of darkness. John followed the hissing of his aunt’s hems down the stone treads, his knees jerking in the rhythm of his descent. Slap, slap, shouted his feet. He tried to step more lightly as he followed his aunt’s rustling shadow down into the well. Tap, tap. Tap, tap. The truth began to shake his numbness. Tap, tap. He kept one hand on the spiralling wall to steady himself. The pitted stone bit at his fingertips. The cold damp air had the rotting leather smell of bats. He was escaping. Alive.

      A vestibule. A heavy door, slightly ajar. A porch. A passageway. John smelled the stench of offal and sewage as they crossed a bridge over the prison moat and passed through another gate. Then, a street. An unlit coach, and his uncle.

      ‘In! In!’

      Horses’ hooves scraped on stone. Running water sluiced in a shadowed trench. Inside the coach, with the door slammed shut, John threw his arms around his uncle.

      ‘You’re not clear yet,’ said Beester, patting the broad young shoulders. ‘We must get you out of London tonight.’

      ‘How did you do it?’ demanded John. ‘How did you unlock the doors and remove the gaolers?’

      ‘Ahh,’ said George Beester with satisfaction. ‘It’s a venal age.’ He hesitated. He was pleased by his own foresight; he had extracted as much money as possible from the boy’s estates in the twenty-four hours after Francis Malise’s death, before the mill of the Star Chamber began to grind. John had bought his own freedom, at no cost to his uncle. It had been an elegant transaction. However, Beester was not sure that the boy would appreciate this elegance or understand his new estate in life.

      ‘Are you aware, nephew, that the Star Chamber now holds the deeds to all your estates and assets? Your escape will make them doubly forfeit to the Crown. Your present freedom is the sole residue of your inheritance.’

      ‘It’s more than enough!’ said John with passion. ‘Thank you! And thank you, aunt!’

      ‘I’m afraid it’s far from enough,’ replied Beester. ‘As you will learn.’ He studied the shadowy rectangles of darkened windows passing outside the coach. ‘Now I must hide you in a safe burrow somewhere.’

      His uncle took him upriver by boat from a dock near London Bridge. John perched in the prow. He watched the sleeping city slide past, then the great dark houses of the Strand, then the jumbled buildings that made up Whitehall. Later, Chelsea village, and much later, the palace at Richmond. Because he was only fourteen, he couldn’t help thinking – now that he had escaped – that he was having the most amazing adventure.

      ‘This is what life feels like,’ he told himself, as the far, dark banks slid past and distant dogs barked. ‘I am being tested.’ Doubt still slept in his deserted prison cell. In John’s euphoria at leaving behind the terror of the rope and block, he now knew that his clear sight would return. His tale would end as it should, after battles, voyages, and vindications, in his own reclaimed kingdom at the side of a blue-eyed princess.

      He leaned against the Lady Tree, too tired to move. He listened for a few moments to the rustle of her mermaid tail above his head. Then he noticed the hedgehog crackling СКАЧАТЬ