Wheel of Fate (7 page)

‘Fuck you!' Jack shouted at them as, with great difficulty, he managed to edge his cart past the obstruction, nearly colliding as he did so with another cart being driven in the opposite direction. ‘Fuck the lot of you!'

Hercules, clearly recognizing his bounden duty, leapt from Elizabeth's lap and tried to bite the invitingly plump buttocks of one of the men manhandling the bed; in which purpose he would probably have succeeded had I not flung myself off the cart and grabbed hold of him before he could carry out his fell intent.

‘That's it!' exclaimed Jack, pulling on the reins and bringing the horse to a standstill. ‘That is it! You can walk from here, Roger. Anyway, the gate ain't very far now. Walk up past St Helen's Convent on yer right and it's straight ahead.'

I thanked him fulsomely for all his patience and trouble, helped my daughter down from her perch, shouldered my sack of belongings and tied the dog's rope collar firmly around his neck Then I took my cudgel in one hand and Hercules's lead in the other, bade Elizabeth stay close in front of me and set off up the street.

Jack, possibly ashamed of his spurt of bad temper, shouted after us, ‘Remember! If you want me in the next day or so, I'm at the Boar's Head in East Cheap.'

I raised my cudgel in valediction, but did not turn round. I was beginning to realize what, I suppose, women know by instinct; that where young children are concerned you need all your wits about you all of the time and eyes in the back of your head.

We reached the Bishop's Gate to find it and its neighbouring stretches of wall veiled in scaffolding, undergoing repairs. This was such an unusual sight in the capital, many of London's gates and much of her walls being ruinously neglected, that it took me a moment or two to recollect what I had once been told; that the maintenance of this particular gate was the responsibility of the Hanseatic merchants of the Steelyard. And it seemed that the Easterlings, with Teutonic thoroughness, took their responsibilities very seriously.

The gatekeeper let us through with no questions asked – indeed we must have looked a thoroughly harmless little band – and within seconds we were out in the pleasant open countryside that surrounds the city. I freed Hercules from the constraint of his lead, pushing the length of rope into my sack, but my free hand was immediately claimed by Elizabeth, frightened by the wild screams and weird noises coming from the building to our left. This was the St Mary of Bethlehem's Hospital, known to every Londoner as the Bedlam, where the half-mad or totally insane – or even those merely embarrassingly eccentric – were left by their unloving kinfolk until they either recovered or were conveniently forgotten by an uncaring world.

Some few hundred yards further along the track, to our right this time, was the New Hospital of St Mary Without the Bishop's Gate, generally called – and again because of our slovenly English habit of never saying a whole word if half a one would do – St Mary Spital, in its beautiful setting of spreading green fields. In between these two buildings, on either side of the road, was a scattering of cottages and almshouses, a church dedicated to St Botolph, a tavern, a small graveyard and, most convenient for my immediate and most pressing need, a public latrine.

Both Elizabeth and I made use of this latter edifice, my daughter having a rooted objection not only to exposing herself in public, but to my doing so, as well. It puzzled me where she got these ladylike notions from. It certainly wasn't from me, so I could only assume it was from Adela.

Adela! That familiar cold hand suddenly clutched at my entrails once again. I had been carefully putting off thinking about my wife's reception of me. It had, of course, crossed my mind from time to time, but I had dismissed the thought as quickly as possible on the principal that sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof. But now, as we rounded a bend in the track to see a large, sprawling, half-stone, half-timbered house set in an acre or so of badly maintained garden, I could no longer postpone the dreaded moment of truth. This surely had to be the Arbour as there appeared to be no other dwelling of comparable size in the immediate vicinity.

I took a deep breath and braced my shoulders.

I had noted, almost without being aware of it, a little knot of people standing outside the gates; but it was not until Elizabeth let go of my hand and ran forward screaming excitedly, ‘Nicholas! Nicholas!' that I realized that I knew them. My breath became suspended in my throat.

At the sound of my daughter's voice, heads turned sharply, and then, after a brief silence of pure disbelief, my stepson detached himself from the group and came tearing towards us with answering, and equally excited, shouts of ‘Bess! Bess!' A moment later, the pair were hugging and kissing and dancing for sheer joy, with Hercules prancing around them, barking madly.

My gaze was fixed on the younger woman who still seemed rooted to the spot, staring at me as though she were unable to trust the evidence of her eyes. My heart began pounding uncomfortably fast. Then she, too, was running in our direction . . .

‘Oh, Roger,' gasped my wife, flinging herself into my arms, her own entwined about my neck, ‘how glad I am to see you!'

Whatever sort of greeting I had imagined, it certainly hadn't been this. Icy disdain, reproaches, angry questioning, I had been prepared for them all. But never in my wildest dreams had I anticipated a welcome of any warmth. And yet this one was positively ecstatic.

‘Adela,' I said hurriedly, patting her back and dropping a kiss on her upturned face, ‘that woman, Juliette Gerrish, was lying. I can explain what happened to me last year and how I couldn't possibly have been in Gloucester to father that child of hers. It's true I did meet her once, two years ago, but—'

Adela laid her fingers against my lips.

‘Hush,' she said. ‘Explanations can wait. Besides, I've had plenty of time to think and I've realized how wrong I was not to trust you.'

Oh, dear God! If she had planned for a year how to get her revenge, she could have thought of no better way than to announce her wholehearted (but misplaced) faith in me. She put an arm about my waist and urged me forward. ‘Come and let me introduce you to my cousin, Clemency Godslove. Oh, Roger, such terrible things have been happening. We are in urgent need of your services.'

For the moment, her words failed to register properly: I was too relieved to have been let off the hook so easily to be aware of anything beyond my own sense of euphoria. And, in addition, Adam, who would be five years old in just over two months' time, was embracing me around the hips, impeding my progress.

‘Hello, bad man,' he said. But as this was his customary, irreverent form of address – just to let me know, I suppose, that whoever else was fooled, he at least had my measure – I merely scooped him up in my arms and gave him a resounding kiss on one of his fat little cheeks.

‘Ugh!' he said, but for once did not wipe it off, beaming at me instead. (It was beginning to dawn on me, greatly to my astonishment, that perhaps my family really did miss me when I was absent, although being torn apart by wild horses would never let them admit it.)

As we neared the gate, the woman who had been waiting so patiently beside it, looking slightly bemused, stepped forward a pace or two to greet us.

‘Clemency,' Adela said, ‘this is my husband, Roger. Isn't it wonderful? He's come to find us.'

‘And to take you all home again,' I added firmly. ‘You've trespassed on your cousin's time quite long enough.'

My wife turned a dismayed face towards me. ‘Roger, no! I can't leave now. I told you, we need your help.'

‘My help?' Now I came to think of it, I did recall Adela saying something like ‘terrible things have been happening'.

My heart sank. I had been hoping to take up Jack Nym's offer and get us all back to Bristol as soon as possible. We could have been his return freight. I had sufficient money to be able to pay him.

But it was plainly not to be. Clemency Godslove was inviting us indoors and, most ominously, she and my wife were discussing where Elizabeth and I should sleep and deciding that Hercules would be happy in one of the outhouses with the family dogs.

‘I'll be sleeping with Adela,' I interrupted in a voice my nearest and dearest knew well and which meant that I would brook no argument (not that that ever stopped them). ‘And Hercules will sleep in our chamber. He gets upset in strange houses if he doesn't know where I am, and barks all night.'

‘As you please.' Clemency Godslove shrugged and I noticed for the first time that she was dressed from head to toe in unrelieved black. She was plainly in mourning. I glanced at Adela and noted that she, too, was wearing dark colours.

I switched my attention back to my hostess as she led us towards the house, and saw an elderly woman – I learned later that she was in her fifty-sixth year – short but with an upright carriage that made her appear taller than she really was. I doubted that she had ever been beautiful in the conventional sense of the word, but with her high cheekbones, aquiline nose and determined jaw she must always have been striking. Even now, with the lines of age seaming her cheeks and forehead, she would stand out in a crowd. Her best feature was her eyes, a dark blue, set beneath heavy black brows, now turning grey.

Adela, meanwhile, was demanding details of my journey, but seemed happy enough with the bare bones of my reply. Her mind was patently elsewhere, although she gripped my arm hard and every now and then squeezed it as if to reassure herself that I really was there. Nicholas and Elizabeth had raced ahead of us, the dog at their heels, the former intent on showing his playmate all the hidden corners and secret places of the overgrown garden, while, for once, Adam walked sedately at my side, plotting future mischief. (I recognized that particular expression of his and it boded no good for anyone.)

Clemency Godslove led us indoors, into a high-ceilinged hall which was obviously used as the principal room of the house. A large dining table stood in the centre of the stone-flagged floor with a number of chairs and stools surrounding it. To the right was a huge fireplace, with a carved stone overmantel, in which a whole ox could have been roasted, but which boasted only a very small fire of logs, some of which were too green to burn properly, a fact which doubtless contributed to the general chill of the place. At the far end of the hall, a wide staircase led to the upper rooms, while on either side, a couple of heavy oaken doors opened, presumably, into other groundfloor chambers. The rest of the furnishings consisted of a pair of settles, pulled up close to the hearth, two chests made of Spanish leather, several piles of cushions, some of them rubbed and worn, a display cabinet showing items of silver and pewter, various candlesticks and, finally, a candelabra of latten tin suspended from the middle of the ceiling. My first impression was of a family stretched to its financial limit, but I was to learn later that there was no shortage of money at the Arbour. The Godsloves were just naturally parsimonious.

‘Come to the fire and sit down,' Adela urged me, guiding me towards one of the settles, at the same time relieving me of my cudgel and canvas sack ‘Are these yours and Elizabeth's clothes?' She turned to her cousin. ‘Clemency, my dear, do you think one of the maids could see them taken up to my bedchamber? I'll sort them out later. And perhaps some ale for Roger?' She patted my shoulder comfortingly. ‘It's almost dinnertime. I expect you're hungry.'

I suddenly realized that I was. Breakfast at the stall in Westminster seemed a long time ago.

Before I could reply, however, or Clemency could summon one of the maids to give her orders, a third female voice demanded querulously, ‘What are you talking about? What's going on? Who's this?'

I looked towards the stairs where, halfway down, a woman in a long linen nightshift was supporting herself by clinging to one of the handrails. Her feet were bare and her once dark, but now greying hair tumbled loosely about her shoulders. Her extreme pallor suggested that she had just risen from her sick bed.

Clemency and Adela both started towards her.

‘Sybilla, go back to your room at once,' the former ordered, mounting the stairs to take the other woman's arm. ‘You're not fit to get up yet. You know Dr Jeavons told you that you must rest.'

‘Oh Roderick fusses too much,' was the petulant answer. The newcomer shook off Clemency's restraining hand and descended the rest of the stairs.

At close quarters it was easy to see that she and Clemency were sisters; the same blue eyes, the same high cheekbones and imposing noses. But as well as being slightly younger and less wrinkled, Sybilla's features were less clearly defined. It was as though an artist had drawn a portrait of the older woman and then gently smudged the outline.

The outside door opened once more and a man came in, wearing a lawyer's robes and a flat black velvet cap devoid of any ornament. Again, it was not difficult to trace a resemblance to the two women except that the newcomer was much younger. I judged him to be in his early forties and there was, as yet, very little grey in his dark hair; but his eyes were the same blue beneath the same thick black eyebrows and he had the beak-like nose of his sisters. He was perhaps an inch or so taller with the older woman's upright bearing; and, as with Clemency, this made his height seem greater than it actually was.

‘There is a girl in the garden,' he said in a high complaining tone, ‘running around and shouting and encouraging Nicholas to do the same.' He turned to Adela. ‘Cousin, I told you that I had no objection to your remaining here as long as the children were quiet and well-behaved. Who is this hoyden and where has she come from?'

Seeing from my expression that I was about to come to Elizabeth's defence in no uncertain terms, Adela interposed hurriedly, ‘I'm sorry, cousin. It's my stepdaughter. She has just arrived and she and Nick are so pleased to see one another that I'm afraid they have let their high spirits get the better of them. I'll go and speak to them.'