A Deadly Betrothal

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  We couldn’t have got to the door anyway, because the fight had already begun. Brockley withdrew to the door and there he and Adam stood, side by side, while other people peered from behind them, shocked and agog. The only sounds in the room now were the clash of blades, the shuffle and stamp of the contestants’ feet and their snatched breaths as they circled and struck, feinted and struck again.

  De Lacey, I thought, was still hoping to get hold of the poker, but Robert knew it and was blocking his way. Leaning forward, I whispered to Gladys: ‘Get that poker if you can and put it where de Lacey can’t reach it.’

  It was a long poker and its handle was always cool enough to touch. Gladys scrambled forward and grabbed it. She handed it back to me. De Lacey swore – in Spanish – but had to attend to his swordplay, for Robert was pressing him hard. He fought back, however, with vigour and skill. He was highly skilled, I could see it, as good at swordsmanship as he was at conjuring tricks. It was an even match. I found myself desperately praying for Robert, even though Robert himself … what in God’s name was the murderer of Thomas and Eric doing here in my parlour, avenging my honour, and where had he come from, all of a sudden, and how?

  There was a noise, almost a snarl, from Robert. De Lacey’s sword had cut him; blood had flowered on his left upper arm. He shook the arm as though he were trying to shake the pain away, and blood flew, splashing onto the floor. A moment later, he skidded on it, bouncing off the wall behind him.

  ‘Aha!’ De Lacey emitted a sound of triumph and his next onslaught drove Robert back to bounce off the wall again. He recovered and lunged forward but he was off balance and lurched sideways. I heard myself whisper: ‘Oh, no!’ and Gladys muttered something in Welsh that sounded like a curse, and with that, left her seat, hobbled swiftly to the corner where the rugs and the discarded doublets lay, dragged out one of the doublets and threw it at de Lacey’s ankles. It entangled his feet and he stumbled, lurching sideways. ‘Get him!’ Gladys shouted at Robert.

  Robert stepped back, lifting his blade aside and waited for his opponent to recover. Helpfully, he kicked the doublet out of the way.

  Gladys emitted – or rather, shrieked – a veritable torrent of outrage, mostly in her native Welsh, but the last few words came out in English. ‘You fool, you could have had him then!’

  Robert, however, merely gave her a quick smile, and then returned to the attack as de Lacey regained his feet. But the incident had disturbed de Lacey’s concentration. I was no expert in such matters but I could see that he was fighting now with less assurance, and Robert, who had no doubt used the brief hiatus to draw breath and steady himself, was in the ascendant. I found myself crossing my fingers in the ancient gesture of well-wishing. I was strongly inclined to sympathize with Gladys. I understood the laws of chivalry which had made Robert forgo his advantage, but after the thing that de Lacey had done to me, I didn’t feel he was entitled to such consideration. Besides, many years ago, I had myself fixed the outcome of a duel and if I had ever felt any guilt about it, it wasn’t for long.

  Not that any of this mattered now. De Lacey was tiring. He was losing his nerve. Then came a final slash from Robert’s blade and blood was spouting from de Lacey’s side, and he was falling, dropping to his knees on the floor and tilting sideways. He drew his knees up towards his chest as though to protect his stomach or to seek comfort from his own warmth. He made a sound like a groan, which rose into a howl, perhaps of pain, but I heard fear and despair in it too, and then it died away and it was all over.

  Robert knelt beside him to feel his neck for a pulse and his chest for a heartbeat, and then rose, shaking his head. ‘He’s gone.’ He looked reprovingly at Gladys. ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ he said.

  ‘Done what?’ demanded Gladys belligerently.

  ‘Thrown something at his feet. You distracted him, disturbed his mind and gave me an unfair advantage. That wasn’t in accordance with the laws of duelling.’

  ‘Laws of duelling my arse!’ said Gladys. ‘He’d raped Mistress Stannard, and he was one of they murdering Spanish that want to drag old England back to the days of Bloody Mary and burn everyone that don’t agree with them. Men!’

  Adam said something to Brockley and the two of them stepped forward and heaved de Lacey’s body up. ‘Best put him in the attic room,’ Brockley said. ‘We’ll have to report this and keep him here till then.’

  ‘I suppose,’ I agreed.

  I watched them go. Robert was cleaning his sword on the fallen doublet. It was de Lacey’s. He looked up from the task and met my eyes. ‘You are wondering how I come to be here and why I should come so eagerly to your defence as though I were a hero instead of a monster who murdered a young boy and then a young husband, so as to get my hands on a tin mine?’

  ‘Ma’am,’ said Dale anxiously, ‘you’re hurt. Let us take you to your room.’

  ‘Not yet, Dale. I want to hear what Master Harrison has to say.’ I was still badly shaken but because, in fear of the poker, I hadn’t struggled, I was not seriously bruised. What had happened to me was not very different from what happened, all too often, to innocent, unprepared young brides at the hands of clumsy and inexperienced young bridegrooms. Mentally, emotionally, the circumstances were not the same – dear God, no! – but the physical results were. It struck me suddenly, that when Harry reached the right age, I would have to find an older man – Brockley, perhaps – to instruct him, perhaps to arrange some kind of initiation for him. I jerked my mind back to Robert and noticed that his arm was still bleeding.

  ‘Gladys, see to Master Harrison’s arm!’

  My senior maid, Phoebe, who was among the crowd in the doorway, said: ‘I’ll get warm water,’ and vanished towards the kitchen, followed by Gladys. They were back within moments, Phoebe with a steaming basin, Gladys with a jar of ointment. Robert let them attend to him, putting his sword aside and helpfully rolling up his shirtsleeve. While Gladys mopped the cut, which wasn’t deep, I said: ‘Why were you not seized the moment you stepped ashore in England? There’s a warrant out for your arrest!’

  ‘I didn’t land where I usually do,’ he said. Gladys patted his wound dry, and applied ointment. ‘I usually come in to Dover or Southampton. Only this time, I had the chance of a passage on a ship bound from Normandy to Cardiff, and intending to call at the port of Dunster, on the Somerset coast. I took the opportunity. I wanted to get back so as to keep my word and marry my cousin Jane. It was the least I could do for her. When I landed at Dunster, I hired a horse and reached Firtrees in two days. When I got there, I heard all about the warrant, from Mistress Lisa …’

  ‘She was willing to see you?’

  ‘Yes. Mother was there at Firtrees. Mistress Lisa and Jane weren’t alarmed to see me because she had told them the truth. There were proclamations about the warrant in several places, including Guildford here in Surrey, but not in the West Country, because no one expected me to appear there. That’s how I got through unrecognized. But anyway, my father had heard of the Guildford proclamation and he’s given himself up and confessed. My mother brought the news to Firtrees. Before Father left,’ said Robert, ‘he made over Rosmorwen to me, a kind of payment for the trouble he had caused me. Mother had the deeds with her and gave them to me. And before I left Firtrees …’

  Gladys, having bandaged his arm and pulled his sleeve down, turned her attention to me. ‘Maybe Dale’s right, you did ought to let us take you upstairs …’

  ‘Gladys, be quiet! Phoebe, take that stained water away.’

  ‘Before I left Firtrees,’ Robert said doggedly, ‘I in turn made Rosmorwen over to Jane. It will make a fine dowry for her; she will be able to pick and choose among prospective husbands. Poor little Jane. She made me a prim, serious speech of thanks, and formal regrets that she could not now proceed with our marriage. In fact, I think she’s relieved! After all, she’s very young. I’m over twenty years older than she is, as well as actually being her cousin!’

  ‘Your father has confe
ssed?’ I said stupidly. Gladys, grumbling, had gone after Phoebe but Dale was still hovering and muttering. I shook my head at her. ‘Please explain,’ I said. ‘Because the warrant was … is … for you as well as for your father and … I don’t understand.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The Haunted Wood

  ‘Mistress Stannard,’ said Robert Harrison, ‘I did not murder Jane’s brother Thomas, nor did I kill my Uncle Eric. My father did both, and saying that hurts me, more than I can say. At the time when Thomas vanished, my father and I were at the Leatherhead house. After we met when you took shelter there, I had been absent briefly, visiting a couple of customers, but I had returned. The day that Thomas vanished, and for two days before it, Father went out each morning early and returned in the afternoon without telling me where he’d been. Well, why should he? He has his own life and his own purposes; I don’t interfere.’

  He emitted a short bark of laughter, with a disconcerting flash of those feral molars. ‘His own purposes! On the day Thomas went missing, Father was back for dinner and towards evening, a messenger arrived from Aunt Lisa, begging us to come to Firtrees, explaining what had happened. Father and I rushed off at once. Mother was too tired to go riding off anywhere, so she stayed behind, but told us to send news as soon as we could. Father and I helped with the first search and stayed at Firtrees that night. We shared a room. In the night, my father woke me and told me … told me …’

  His voice faltered. I said nothing. I had been injured by one killer and was having to be grateful to – was even being invited to commiserate with – a man who if not a killer had certainly been a killer’s assistant. I waited.

  ‘He said,’ said Robert, ‘that he had killed Thomas. He’d been planning it for days. For three mornings running, he’d been hiding himself and his horse in the fir wood, waiting for a chance to catch Thomas alone. When he saw him come out into the forecourt of the house, he called to him. When Thomas came out into the lane, my father stepped behind him and used his dagger. After that, he carried Thomas’ body into the wood as far as he could, but it was heavy work for a man getting on in life … Those were his words; that’s the way he put it, almost making a joke!’

  He paused and swallowed before going on again. ‘He put the body down somewhere and found a fallen branch and put that over it. He said he had an instinct to hide it. But he knew it would be found. The wood hadn’t been searched immediately as there hadn’t been time before nightfall. Everyone had been running about, questioning the villagers and cottagers and the Badgers people and looking in outhouses and so on. But the wood was to be searched next morning. Well, Father said he’d been thinking, and it would be best if Thomas wasn’t found at all; if people at least thought it possible that he’d run away. It would be safer for him, he said. But he couldn’t think how to get rid of the body and he wanted me to help him. What could I do?’

  I knew the anguish in his voice was real. It was still there as he said: ‘When he first told me, I thought I would have a seizure! I was appalled! I … it loosened my bowels; I had to relieve myself in a hurry, before anything else. But all the time, I was thinking, he’s my father! I can’t let Father hang! He will now, of course – oh, dear God, yes, he will hang! But at least not because I’ve let him down. I came back to him and sat just staring at him, in the light of a candle. He stared back at me, pleading with me, with his eyes. Then he begged me again to help him. And I remembered the shed where Thomas sometimes hid from his schoolbooks. Ladders were kept there. And when I was stabling my horse, I’d seen a pile of sacks in the grain store. All that gave me an idea. You know what it was. You found the body. Aunt Lisa told me.’

  ‘Yes. You thought of hiding Thomas among high branches,’ I said soberly.

  ‘We crept out of the house,’ said Robert. ‘We took lanterns. Aunt Lisa keeps some on a shelf near the back door. We went to the shed for the ladder. We found a coil of good long rope there and some balls of twine. We took the rope and some of the twine. Then we collected some sacks and went into the wood.’

  ‘But wouldn’t some of those these things be missed?’ I interrupted. ‘And then people would start thinking …’

  ‘We took the ladder and the rope back afterwards,’ said Robert impatiently, ‘and who is going to notice if a ball of twine is missing from a shelf of half a dozen? As for the sacks, does anyone ever count how many sacks there are in a pile?’

  ‘That makes sense,’ I admitted.

  ‘Well, we plodded into the wood, carrying it all. God’s teeth, what a business that was. I had the sacks and the rope slung across my shoulders and Father had the ball of twine pushed inside his shirt and we carried the ladder between us, him leading the way and me following. That bloody ladder! It was as though it was alive, and wanted to make trouble. It was so heavy and it kept on banging into trees; twice, in the dark, we got confused, tried to pass a tree on different sides and it crashed into the trunk and brought us up short!’

  He paused for breath, shaking his head at his memories.

  ‘That wood!’ he said. ‘I’m not a timid man. In France, I have seen … a thing or two. I was in Paris when the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve happened. I was supposed to be negotiating a deal with a wealthy customer there, who wanted to arrange regular deliveries of wine. That deal was never made. The customer was a Huguenot. He didn’t survive. I saw horrors then that I shall never forget. But after dark, that wood …’

  Sybil and Dale again interrupted, begging me to come with them and once more, I silenced them. I think that Robert hardly heard them.

  ‘That wood,’ he said, ‘at night, was terrifying. It felt … it felt haunted! There was a full moon, and there were occasional glints of moonlight and it felt as if … one of the glints might suddenly turn into Thomas’ wraith and advance on us, dripping blood. We wanted to avoid lighting our lanterns but in the end we had to, only they didn’t give much light so we still couldn’t properly see where we were going. But we did find Thomas’s body. We got it into a sack and then into another sack and another and then a fourth.

  ‘If you want to hide a body,’ said Robert, with a sudden outburst of grim humour, ‘a flock of hungry squawking crows might ruin all your efforts! We just hoped that the four layers of sacking and the clothes the corpse was wearing would be enough to protect it from crows and pine martens and the like. We tied the whole thing round with twine and then fixed the rope round it, leaving one long end; then we put up the ladder, and I took the long end of the rope up the tree and threw it over a high branch and then dragged on it … it was just barely long enough. Somehow I hauled the … the load up there. I’m strong. It kept banging on branches and knocking bits off them. We cleared the fallen twigs and cones afterwards, as best we could, by lantern light.’

  He stopped, looking at me earnestly, seeking signs of comprehension. I said: ‘You didn’t clear them all. We found some still there.’

  ‘I daresay. As far as I knew, the tree wasn’t one likely to be cut down; it was the kind that’s tapped for resin. I got the bundle fixed and I got the rope off, and climbed down and eventually we came back and put the ladder and rope back in the shed where we found them. That’s when Father admitted to me that he was planning to get rid of Uncle Eric too! You see, he had told me that what he was trying to do was to get hold of the Cornish tin mine and after we got back from … from the wood … I said to him, what was the point, when it’s been left to my uncle! Then he explained. I couldn’t believe my ears! I said he mustn’t, he just mustn’t, Uncle Eric was his brother, for the love of God, and anyway, hadn’t he frightened himself enough already? And he said that I was now very closely involved with Thomas’s death and surely I wouldn’t dare to change my mind and betray him!

  ‘You’re planning all this just for a tin mine? I said to him. How did all this start? Well, he answered that. It grew from small beginnings. He knew about the tin mine before he saw Uncle Edmund’s papers – Uncle Edmund told him when they met at the Leatherhead house
. And that, of course, is when he met Aunt Lisa. You were there, weren’t you? That’s when he realized about her affair in Cornwall and first got the idea of discrediting her and the twins, in the hope that Edmund would disinherit them. He meant to encourage that! Then everything would come to him eventually, tin mine and all. Only then Edmund died and Rosmorwen was left to Uncle Eric, and there was talk of going to law to get the twins reinstated, and that’s when my father really began to plan.’

  ‘To plan murder,’ I said flatly.

  ‘Yes. He defended himself to me. He said that with Thomas gone, there would be no chance of getting Jane reinstated as heiress; Thomas was the one who so resembled Edmund. Anyway, I could marry Jane and make her property mine if need be. Marrying Jane was his idea. And he said I had no idea what poverty meant, but he knew and he’d bitterly resented it; the world owed him recompense. I have always known that he felt like that. He has let things out to me at times – how angry it made him, that other men could make money when he could not, no matter how he tried. The tin mine would make Rosmorwen really valuable, it could be sold for a very good price, but as things stood, though it would eventually revert to us, Uncle Eric was young; he’d outlive my father, and probably me as well.’

  ‘Your father is obsessed!’ I said blankly.

  ‘Yes. He’s not normal,’ said Robert, and his voice now was full of misery. ‘You should have heard him, talking about that tin mine and how much Rosmorwen could be sold for. He was excited, waving his arms. He’d never be a poor man again, he said, never, but he wanted, he needed, he must lay hands on Rosmorwen; Eric couldn’t have it, he mustn’t, he’d never known what poverty was. Fate owes me something! That’s what he said. He was … he was almost … no, not almost, he was hysterical! He’d prospered fairly well in Sheffield but all the time it was Mistress Devine’s money that was helping him. By the time she died, he’d run right through it and age was telling on him, and his tendency to chest colds; he couldn’t work as hard as he used to do and he could see poverty closing in on him again. He said he felt that he’d crawled out of a swamp, only to have Fate put a foot in his face and shove him back. It seemed that those early years of poverty had eaten into him, eaten into his mind, destroyed every vestige of common sense, of … of proportion …’ He stopped, breathless.