Stolen Lives (The Alice Chronicles #3)

7

M aster Goldwoode, you say? Are you sure?’ In her little parlour, pleasantly cool this early in the day, Ursula sits absorbing Alice’s information. ‘He that was here yesterday?’

‘Goldwoode was his name,’ Alice confirms. ‘I felt it best to leave. Nick says if you have any instructions for him to please let him know. He has sent for Constable Nutley. Margery was going up to break the news to Mistress Goldwoode when I left.’

Ursula stares. ‘ Mistress Goldwoode?’

‘They were all staying at the inn,’ Alice explains.

‘All? Who?’

‘He, his wife and the baby. Sam and I were in the next—’

‘God a’mercy!’ For Ursula this is exclamation indeed. ‘I’ve known the name Goldwoode for years but this is the first I’ve heard of a wife. My husband used to laugh about him for a sad, lonely old bachelor – Rupert was not a kind man, of course. You say Nutley is on his way? Oh dear. Then I must go down there and collect her and the baby straightway.’ Both Ursula and Alice have experienced the methods employed by parish constable Abel Nutley, the compass of whose mind is in inverse proportion to the extent of his girth. He is known for his contempt towards those he considers inferior, women featuring high on his list.

‘That man,’ Ursula says, an uneasy gleam in her eye. ‘I hope Nick has the sense to plant him on a jobbing nag and send him for the coroner. That’ll keep him out of the way for a good long time.’ She sighs and gives a wry smile. ‘I’m sorry, Alice, this is not the welcome I intended for you.’

‘It’s no fault of yours.’

‘Poor Master Goldwoode,’ Ursula says. ‘At least he had those two joys, a union, and issue from it. I shall go and fetch her now,’ she says, rising. ‘And I had such plans to give you the peace and quiet you need.’

But in her heart, Alice senses it is not peace and quiet she needs, rather a change from the sights and doings of every day at High Stoke. And what could be more different than life at the Cazanove mansion? It is unreal, the leisured ease enjoyed by so very few, and she recognises her good fortune in the friendship that sprang up between herself and the widow of Rupert Cazanove.

And yet it were better, Alice reflects, to be absent when Ursula returns with Mistress Goldwoode. The poor lady is likely to be in great distress and will not wish to exchange courtesies with strangers, least of all one who provoked that bafflingly hostile look last night. Alice removes to the chambers prepared for her and Sam. This is a quiet part of the house, far from the bustling kitchen court. It looks out over a neatly cultivated garden of walks bordered by low box hedges.

Alice unlatches the casement and the scent of roses wafts on the breeze. She leans on the sill, feeling its warmth on her hands, and glances down. The carved ring glows a delicate blue, its translucence lending depth to the figure so intricately worked on its surface. Dear Frederick.

Above her, the roof tiles creak in the sun’s warmth and swifts scream as they circle and dive high in the air. In a chamber not far off, something tumbles with a muffled thump, momentarily breaking the tranquillity. Almost, Alice turns to go and find out what fell, but stops herself. Olivia was right, she tells herself, I need to banish that sense of responsibility for everything. She turns her gaze back to the gardens, breathing in the summer air. A very grateful patient it must have been, to reward Frederick with this jewel, and he ensured it came to herself. To have loved and been loved so much…

Something else falls, this time with the sound of breaking earthenware. A maidservant garnishing too hastily? This is not my house, not my concern. Whatever might have been broken matters not. I am free for the time being from all such agitation. She leans out of the window again.

The heavy smack of wood against wall and her hands on the sill feel the resonance. That was no accidental fall. Alice draws in her head and stands listening. Something was deliberately hurled in a nearby chamber. She begins to wonder if after all she should seek the cause. But her intentions could so easily be taken for an outsider’s prying. Ursula, as Alice knows, is an intensely private woman who would be mortified to discover that a guest has witnessed disorder in her house.

The splintering crash slices through indecision and spurs Alice out into the passage. Several doors lead off. One large door at the end stands slightly ajar, and as Alice approaches, a stifled cry of torment decides her. She pushes against the wood, stands rooted.

Such chaos she has never witnessed.

Crushed bands of starched ruff lie strewn, their band boxes cast on the floor, a leather gauntlet flung in the hearth. Shards that were once a pottery bowl glitter on the boards. Hat feathers bent and scattered suggest an exotic bird rent asunder, tufts of fur the slaughter of small creatures. A doublet has been shredded to ribbons, front, back and sleeves; its lining gapes. And tumbled all around, boxes, brushes, candle sticks, pots, a wig, the wink and gleam of rings. Drawers have been yanked out and cast across the chamber, a coffer upended, books lie limply open, pages crushed. The deep red bed hangings have been yanked from their rings, a lacerated coverlet spews stuffing where it lies cast in the corner, and a snowstorm of feathers betrays the destruction of pillows and mattress. Ursula showed her this chamber last winter, her late husband’s, the bed where he died, said she could not bear to enter it ever again, told her it would be closed up and left. Where Rupert Cazanove would have lain, the sheet has been stabbed and hacked to shreds.

And slumped on the floor against the bed, a knife by his side, a pool of spreading red. ‘Wat! Oh, dear Lord!’ Wat’s quivering breaths chase one after another without pause. His face is flushed, the veins stand out on his neck, his chest heaves, too fast.

Heart jolting, Please God, not again . A chest injury, blood pumping, Henry dying in her arms…

Then the red on the floor becomes a silk kerchief, the knife is innocent of blood, and Alice is lightheaded with relief.

He runs a hand across his face and frowns at the wet shine on his palm. For a few moments he hauls in shuddering breaths. A tremor shivers his body. He looks up, as though only now seeing her. Desperation stares from his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

‘I thought…’ She cannot voice what she was too ready to see. The wash of reaction has set her trembling, and for her own sake as much as his she drops to her knees by his side. Wat’s past is here, she realises, very much in the present, here in the midst of Cazanove’s ruined chamber. ‘So many hated him. You must have borne the brunt of his humours as his body servant.’

‘I should have put the rope round my own neck and kept it there.’

‘Dear Wat, never say that.’ What rope?

‘The treachery,’ he says, staring at some haunting memory. ‘They were all at it. I never thought… Now I see it. It was all connected.’ He leans his head back against the bed and sighs out a long quivering breath.

Treachery. They.

Alice can only say, ‘I know things… about Master Cazanove. What he did. People he hurt.’

‘He started it. The rest followed. In my head I killed him ten, fifty, a hundred times over. He’s still making me pay.’

‘He is gone, Wat. This half year and more. He cannot harm you now.’

‘You don’t know. I’ll be paying till they put me in the ground.’

‘What don’t I know?’

He stares ahead but he is looking inwards. From his set jaw and the muscle working in his cheek she knows he is still fighting to plug this outflow of passion. A tear follows another down his face and it occurs to Alice that he will not wipe it away because that would be an admission that he is weeping.

‘Wat, why will he not let go of you?’

‘ That’s what you did. It is written . That’s what he said. Never to be erased .’

‘What’s written? I cannot believe you would do anything so bad it cannot be forgiven. Not you, Wat.’

‘That’s what you did, Meredith. ’ His face is screwed up, finger jabbing, and she can see Rupert Cazanove in the gesture. ‘He said he’d discovered it in this house, that it’s there for those who have eyes to see .’

‘What does that mean?’

He shrugs. ‘I’ve looked and looked. When they find it, I’m a dead man.’

‘Then let me help you look.’

He sighs again. ‘Not just that. The things I have done. I was so sure I could steer a path…’ He gives a bitter laugh. ‘So much for that.’

‘I hate to see you in trouble, Wat. You deserve so much better than this. Tell me how I can help, please?’

He shakes his head. ‘Can’t. It’s too shameful.’

‘Just because something’s written doesn’t mean it’s true, Wat.’

‘Doesn’t matter. One day it’ll be found.’

‘What does it say you did?’

‘Commit … commit …’

He so nearly says it. A worm of disquiet burrows into the void. So bad that he cannot say it? ‘Wat,’ she says, ‘is this something you can confide to someone? A person you know and trust?’

‘Who is trustworthy when it comes to their own desires?’

‘Mistress Cazanove will listen.’ Even as she speaks he is shaking his head but she ploughs on. ‘She knows what her husband was.’

‘No.’

‘She has a great deal of understanding, more than you know—’

‘No. I would not burden her with the shame.’ He takes a deep breath and sits up, brushing a hand over his face as though clearing a fog. ‘I’m sorry, I forgot you were in this part of the house. I had no right to drag you into this.’

‘I chose to come in.’

But he gets to his knees, rises, straightens his jerkin and pulls at his cuffs. ‘Forget what I’ve said.’ He leans to hand her to her feet.

‘Talk to me, Wat. Please.’

‘It was unguarded,’ he says. ‘The work of a moment.’

‘All this?’ She indicates the ruin that was Rupert Cazanove’s chamber.

‘I shall be glad if you will say nothing of it,’ he says. His face is composed but mottled with emotion, his eyes are steady but red-rimmed.

‘I shall not, of course,’ she promises, ‘but you have helped me, and I would return the favour.’ That short exchange in the last shreds of day at Bishops Caundle that shone a chink of light into her own darkness. ‘I would be your friend, Wat.’

He steps to the door, his wary formality back in place. ‘My mistress will be wondering what I am doing. She will require my attendance.’

Short of remaining against his will, there is nothing Alice can do but leave. As she passes him, she turns and says, ‘Your friend, Wat. At any time.’

He nods but does not answer. Part of his reticence, she realises, is that he has a habit of looking away or down, of not looking directly.

She walks back along the passage. Behind her the door quietly closes. It is unnatural, the violence of that devastation. Something he has done. Something criminal? That’s what you did. The murder of Goldwoode? Impossible. Alice cannot imagine the Wat she knows committing the cold-bloodied act of garrotting a helpless old man. And in any event, the writing Wat talked of referred to something Cazanove accused him of last year.

But the state of that chamber, the heart-banging sight of the knife, the red pool, the horror of Wat’s old ghosts rising, threatening – all of these conspired to rob their exchange of lucidity, to cloak meaning in misconception. The cold fact is that this storm of suppressed hate has exploded within hours of Goldwoode’s death. Are the two events connected? If not, what else, she wonders, could have happened to fire such agonised destruction? Glimpsing the depths of his fears at last, she marvels at Wat’s ability to live an apparently normal existence, with only a thin screen of conduct holding the lid on the undead corpses of his past.