Stolen Lives (The Alice Chronicles #3)

35

A ll the way to Bristol?’

‘All the way to Bristol,’ Jay confirms. ‘Bullied us, she did, until we agreed to go,’

‘How did you know to go there?’

‘It’s a long story, Wat,’ Alice says. ‘I heard of your trial; I knew the answer had to be in Bristol if anywhere.’

They are sitting on the crest of Chesil Beach, buffeted by the wind and looking out at the broken sea, grey in the growing light, fretted with surf, oily with long rollers. The beach shelves twice before it meets the sea and there at the foot is the perpetual, crashing heave and suck of waves they earlier heard only as a dull thundering.

Wat led them up here as soon as the castle wicket closed on them. Like a driven man, he strode ahead of both, up the mounting dunes of stone until he stood on the crown shadowed against the sky, shirt and hair flapping in the stiff breeze at the top. Having hitched their horses to one of the blasted trees by the curtain wall, Jay followed Alice, laboriously climbing the slopes of sliding spoon-sized pebbles. At the top she could barely stand in the gusting force. Legs aching from the climb she plumped down, to take in her first close sight of the sea as it rolled and spent itself on the shore. The wonder of waves surging in, curling over, breaking into surf and melting into the stones distracts her from her wet, chilled state.

Wat stands nearby, chest rising and falling, as though too long starved of fresh, clean air. He turns as Jay joins them, and both men sit. More collected now, but gaunt and dishevelled, Wat still looks at the end of his tether, as between them, Jay and Alice tell of their discoveries in Bristol.

‘I knew it had to be something like that,’ Wat says. ‘I thought Norrys was in it along with the rest but I’m glad to know he wasn’t. I always took him for a decent man.’

‘He was a godsend,’ Alice agrees. ‘Securing Turner’s signature on an official document gave us the authority we lacked.’

He shakes his head in incredulity. ‘I don’t know what to say. Why did you do all that for me?’

‘Can’t think,’ Jay says. ‘How about, because we’re your friends?’

‘Jay, Robin and me,’ Alice adds. ‘Friends look out for each other.’

Wat says nothing; it is clear his thoughts will not go into words, and for a few minutes they are all silent, gazing down the beach, three figures alone on a pebble ocean.

And then Wat begins to talk.

They told him he had five minutes to prepare himself. As if he had not been preparing himself all through a sleepless night. Alice has tried to imagine what last night must have been like for Wat, innocent of any crime and for the second time in his life waiting to die. He knew that this time there would be no intervention. Did he even wish for it, considering the misery that Cazanove’s reprieve heaped upon him? Cazanove’s death must have brought him some peace, a hope that the threat had receded. Then Goldwoode’s death resurrected the menace. And the constables came for him.

Alone, unsupported, and not even a practised hangman to do the job. One of the gunners volunteered, apparently. Said he knew about knots.

The man hanging in the frame of the gallows was executed yesterday, Wat tells them. No hanging has taken place here since it was used on the enemy in the last century, so considering the coroner’s decree regarding a private dawn execution, they needed to check if the structure would hold. To this end the escort from Sherborne was ordered to stop at Dorchester and demand a condemned man. Keeper Sparrow was vexed, Wat said, that he had to give one of his prisoners to Portland, muttered about those with friends in high places who could command their own bellwether to precede them. The escort chose the prisoner nearest to Wat’s build. He was only a poacher, Sparrow told them as he grudgingly handed the man over, adding that luckily it still left him another to hang at Dorchester. He would put him on half-rations. The lighter the weight, the longer it takes them to die, he said. It would compensate the crowds for the disappointment of having only one hanging to watch.

To prove the gallows, the Portland garrison hanged the poacher on arrival at the castle. The cart that brought them had already left to catch the tide for the return crossing, so they brought out a table from the Captain’s lodging for the poacher to stand on. They told him to remove his boots before he climbed onto the table. They didn’t want it marked and muddied, did they? Keeper Sparrow had taken away his jerkin and stockings before handing him over to the escort from Sherborne. Sparrow had said boots as well, but backed down when the other prisoners threatened. A man should be allowed to die in his boots, they insisted, but in the end he was not even allowed that. He stood on the table in his bare feet, and they put the rope round his neck. When the gunner who said he knew about knots was ready, they pulled away the table. On the second attempt the knot held, though by then the poor shaking man standing on the table for the second time had peed with fright or humiliation or both and his bowels had turned to water. Thus Wat witnessed his own death twelve hours beforehand. There were no coffins. Wat’s arrest and removal here was so rapid, there was no time to make them. So until coffins were delivered, they decided to leave the corpse where it was.

Jay punctures the swelling silence. ‘I don’t know about you two but I’m parched. Is there any decent beer on the island?’

The ferryman is furious. He stands on the landward beach, near dancing with rage as the three, with the two horses, prepare to make their way back across from the isle. Wat says he will swim alongside the boat. ‘I can keep the horses calm if I’m in the water with them,’ he tells the other two.

‘The horses were fine on the way over, Wat,’ Alice says. ‘Weren’t they, Jay?’ Back me up. Wat does not exactly look frail, but at present he is not robust.

‘We didn’t ride through the night to rescue you from the noose, only to lose you to the current, my friend.’ Jay’s tone is friendly but firm.

‘I need to wash off the stink of prison,’ Wat insists. ‘I’ll hold the rope with one hand.’

Jay is nothing if not direct. ‘The only thing you’re going to hold is this oar,’ Jay tells him, thrusting it into his hand. ‘Now get in the boat!’

The crossing is shorter on the way back, the tide having ebbed further, but the water is not yet low enough for them to walk across, and the current is still strong. Hand over hand they pull themselves along the rope across the neck of water. Within minutes they beach, and while Jay and Wat haul the boat up the shingle, Alice calms the ferryman with a mixture of compliments on the quality of his boat and, more pertinently, the sweetener of a coin equating to something like three times the value of their return crossing. Wat goes to cleanse himself by rolling in the shallows at the water’s edge, while Jay unhitches the horses and the ferryman continues to grumble. All three mount up, accompanied by his growing catalogue of wrongs, the dozens of people he could have ferried, the money he has lost, the damage to his reputation, their uninvited use of his stanchions, rope wear, boat scratches, horse mess…. The affronted bluster blows itself out as they retreat from the beach.

The sea breeze that was so welcome after days of close weather diminishes as they advance inland, and the weather turns still and stuffy once more. For a while they are all three glad of it, their sea-soaked clothes keeping them cool. Jay finds an inn in Wyke where they ask for drinks, but it is clear their bedraggled state engenders suspicion. No ale is forthcoming, and there is muttering about ‘foreigners landing’ which urges them to re-mount and move swiftly on.

As they slowly dry out, the sea salt stiffens their hair and powders their clothes and shoes. They are none of them talkative, and the journey, apart from the periodic change of mount to share the burden between the horses, is undertaken in companionable silence. At the Broadwey inn where Sparrow would have halted on the way down, they stop for refreshment. The alewife serves them readily enough, but clearly finds their appearance singular. She calls her husband to come and share the sight, and within minutes the news has spread and half a dozen locals come to peer. Much joking about mermaids and landed catches takes place, which the three smile at for friendliness’s sake. It is when the talk becomes whispered behind hands, and the locals boldly look her up and down, that Alice realises her appearance is against her. With no cap, her hair damp and disordered, her chemise still clinging at her breast and her skirts moulded to her thighs, the mention of threesomes starts a round of nudging sniggers.

The three exchange glances. Time to go. They drain their mugs and rise, and amidst parting jests about “the one that got away”, Wat and Jay follow Alice out, and the three remount andleave.

They skirt Dorchester to the west; none of them wants to go through the town at present. Instead, just beyond the old Wolfeton House they turn and head uphill. Wat is keen to gain higher ground, he needs to breathe, he tells them, and they follow a route up onto the ridges and over the hilly peaks of undulating country until finally mid-morning they drop down towards the Cazanove mansion and dismount in the kitchen court. Wat’s face is drawn in deep clefts, he looks completely drained, as well he might, Alice thinks, regarding him. Jay gives a long sigh of relief as he slides out of the saddle. Alice suddenly realises he and she have been awake since yesterday morning when they left Somerton.

Jay is concerned to find out how Robin has fared overnight, and what the apothecary has been able to do to ease his discomfort. Wat is about to go straight back to the dye works, but Esther emerging from the kitchens welcomes him with the news that she has been set by her mistress to watch for his return and conduct him straight to her private parlour.

All Alice wants to do is to see Sam and fall into bed, in that order, and at that moment Sam himself careers round the corner through the archway and races towards her. ‘Alice! Alice!’ As ever, he cannons into her and joyously she wraps her arms round him. ‘Oh, Sam, how glad I am to see you!’

‘Come and see, Alice,’ he says pointing. ‘I can write words.’ He leads her out of the court and round a corner. There in the dust behind the stable block he has been scratching with a stick. He squats down and painstakingly proceeds to shape the last in a line of wobbly letters. They are of varying sizes, and lean here and there as though fretted by a playful breeze, and quite a few are the wrong way round, but there are words here for sure. She waits for him to finish his labour of love, and uses the time trying to decipher what it says. He stands back with a pleased smile.

‘Sam, that’s wonderful!’ she says. ‘Did Aunt Cazanove teach you?’

He jumps with excitement, eyes bright with the thrill of the secret he is revealing. ‘She’s been showing me when you weren’t here,’ he says.

‘Well done!’ she exclaims, still trying to untangle. ‘What fine words!’

‘Go on, read them,’ he says.

She looks down at the groups of letters.

laIDy Breb a b0G

‘That says a “lady bred a dog” ,’ she says. ‘Well done, Sam! Did she want a dog for hunting game?’

‘No, that’s not right!’ he scolds. ‘You didn’t read it right, Alice.’

‘Didn’t I?’ she says, now quite lost. ‘You had better tell me, Sam, so that I can understand it.’

‘It says,’ he explains, pointing, ‘Our DAILY brEAD comes from GOD. That’s what Aunt Cazanove showed me.’

‘Of course. I can see it now,’ she says. She might have guessed that Ursula would choose a subject of a sober and instructive nature, not some chance tale of a lady and her dog. But it will be useful to remember that his letters will for a while take random form, challenging her more in the reading than him in the writing. A wave of affection draws another embrace from her. ‘How very clever of you, Sam. You’ve done excellent well!’

‘Mistress Jerrard! Wake up, Mistress Jerrard!’ A timid hand prods her shoulder. Leave me alone. I am good for nothing, just let me sleep .

Now the hand shakes her. ‘Alice! Wake up, please!’ The voice, high and urgent, is Luella Goldwoode’s, which Alice knows it cannot be. This is her own chamber, her own bed. She burrows into the bedclothes. Go away .

Then Sam’s voice. ‘Alice, wake up!’ She feels him jump on the bed, shake the pillow, push back the coverlet. ‘You’ve got to wake up!’ His little hands take hold of her face and at that she opens her eyes. ‘Sam?’

Behind her, Luella says, ‘It’s Wat, he’s going to die! I don’t know what to do.’

Alice pushes herself up on one elbow, twists round. ‘He’s safe, Luella. We brought him back today, alive and unharmed.’

‘No, you don’t understand!’ Luella’s eyes are huge in a face furrowed with alarm. ‘They’ve just brought a message. He’s dying!’

‘What?’

‘I didn’t know who else to come to. They’ve all gone up there, but they don’t know I –… they didn’t ask me to go with them. They say he’s dying, Alice!’

Alice sits up and swings her legs out of bed in one movement. ‘Where? What’s happened?’

‘The dyeworks. They’re saying he cannot breathe properly. Please come!’

Alice is already slipping her feet into her shoes, gathering her wayward thoughts. Has Wat contracted some dread disease in his short incarceration? ‘I don’t understand. He was hale when we brought him back.’ He looked exhausted, but not ill.

‘Esther told me you have knowledge of herbs,’ Luella says. ‘She’s been summoned to help but I thought you might know…’ she trails off.

‘I am not experienced Luella, and Esther knows more of herblore than I do.’

‘Please! I don’t know what to do.’ Tears course. Luella stands there, utterly helpless, a young woman nurtured to be so, brought up surrounded by servants who knew what to do, now stranded in the chasm between love and ignorance.

‘Give me a moment to lace up and I’ll be with you.’ While she pulls at the loosened ties, Sam goes over to the pack she brought back from Bristol, roughly emptied out over the coffer. He picks up the book Frederick left her in his Will. ‘Look Alice, it’s your book of cures,’ he says bringing it to her. ‘This will make him better.’

It is a surgeon’s or physician’s book, nothing to do with herbs, but how can she refuse his attempt to help? ‘A good idea Sam, I’ll take it with me.’

Out in the kitchen court is one of the two stable boys. It is the work of a moment for him to saddle two mares, and assist Luella to mount.

‘Sam,’ Alice leans down to him. ‘I’ll not be long.’

‘I want to come, Alice.’

She takes his outstretched hand. ‘I know you do, sweeting, but if there is illness, I do not want you to catch it. Stay with Margaret until I get back.’

‘Margaret went out to the village,’ he says.

Pricked by guilt she thinks, I should have made better provision for him. ‘Come on then, climb up behind me, but you must be very good and do as I say.’

Sam whoops with delight, and with a leg up from the stable boy wraps his arms round Alice’s waist. The two women spur forward under the wide archway of the kitchen court, heading up the rise for the dye houses a short canter away. Within minutes, the buildings come into view, the madder house, the black house, the rinsing sheds. It is the little knot of people by the woad drying area that tells its own story. That, and two horses being held by one of the children nearby. Sam is quick to jump down and Alice following is just able to grab him as he runs towards the group. Luella has already slid down of her own accord and has gone to hover at the edge.

Alice collects Luella’s mount. ‘Stay with this boy, Sam, and hold my horse and Mistress Goldwoode’s, will you? We may need them again at any moment, so your job is vital.’ As she hoped, Sam’s love of horses combined with an important task has the desired effect.

She makes her way through a dozen or more dye workers. Esther is there, in close discussion with one of the women. Ursula kneels in the dust by the prone form of Wat Meredith. He lies on his back in the clothes he wore home, his shirt has been loosened down the front, the white traces of salt are still in his hair. He moves feebly, his hands pull at his throat and his breathing is loud, shallow and laboured. But most shocking is the knobbly, swollen redness of face, neck, chest and hands, like massive weals. His eyes are slits, his lips so puffed up, they are almost indistinguishable from the engorged surrounding flesh. Ursula is trying to prevent him pulling at his neck but he struggles against her, gasping in hard, short breaths, his eyes wild and unfocussed. He is trying to speak but no words come out.

Alice looks across at Esther. ‘This is no disease I know. Do you know what it is?’

Esther shakes her head. ‘Hornets can sting and cause great inflammation, but I have never seen such a sting in my life, it is all over him!’

Behind her, the porter Messer from the nettle house shakes his head. ‘Accidents. You just never know when they’re going to happen.’

‘Shut up!’ Alice snaps, ‘We don’t need your feeble philosophising.’ She turns back to Esther. ‘A swarm of bees?’

‘I’ve seen not a single bee.’ Esther looks up at the surrounding faces. Heads shake; no bees.

‘Did anyone see this happen?’ Alice asks the huddled group. More headshaking. One of the men says, ‘We just saw him collapse here.’

‘Where was he coming from, do you know?’ Alice asks.

‘Out there,’ the man says, pointing across the fields beyond the dye houses. ‘From the copse.’ Alice is baffled. The copse is edged with nettles, Wat told her, but a fall amongst nettles could not sting so comprehensively. ‘Nettles?’ she asks Esther. ‘Or a poison?’

‘Only an apothecary could answer that,’ Esther replies. ‘It is nothing I recognise.’

‘I have sent for the apothecary,’ Ursula says, ‘but after he attended Robin this morning we do not know where he was bound.’

‘Has Wat eaten anything?’ Alice asks around the group. Again the general shaking of heads, and Ursula adds, ‘I had a small refreshment brought to my parlour when he returned, but we both partook.’

‘What is it? What are you saying?’ Luella’s tremulous voice behind her makes Alice turn. ‘Can you help him?’ Luella has pushed through the group and stands behind her, staring down at Wat. It causes some enquiring looks, and from Ursula, surprise and not a little displeasure, but Luella seems oblivious to all but the man lying before her.

Alice stands up. ‘We don’t know what caused it, Luella, but we may be able to make him more comfortable while we wait for the apothecary. Mistress Cazanove,’ she says, turning to Ursula, ‘Some wet cloths might help take the heat away from the skin.’

Ursula nods. ‘We should get him into the shade as well.’

As several of the group take up Wat and move him into the shade of the woad house, Alice turns once more to Esther.

‘Perhaps we should think about cures for nettle until the apothecary comes.’

‘Nettles are their own cure,’ Esther tells her. ‘We’ll make nettle juice.’ She turns to one of the women. ‘Get them to pound nettles until the juice runs. Add a spoon of fair water to start the run. Bring it back here as soon as you have some and we will apply it. Keep them at it!’ she calls as the woman runs for the nettle house.

And yet for Alice, still it does not ring true. She turns to the man who first spoke to her. ‘Tell me,’ she says, ‘who untied the neck of his shirt?’

The man shrugs. ‘The ties were already undone when he collapsed here.’

There is nothing useful she can do around Wat. She returns to Sam holding her horse.

‘Will he get better, Alice?’ Sam asks her.

‘We’re doing our best for him, Sam.’ It is the breathing she worries about. If they can just ease that, the inflammation might subside in a few hours, the apothecary will surely know what to do. But if the swelling is still on the increase, worse, if it closes his throat… Oh, for Frederick, Apothecary Marchant, she thinks, and as quickly banishes the thought. You cannot summon a dead man.

Or can you? She moves to reach into the saddle pack where she put her book from Frederick. What would surgeon Brassavola suggest? Cupping? Something of that sort? For something, anything to do while they all wait, Alice flicks through the pages and pages of Latin, occasionally interspersed with drawings not unlike that of the patient with the dislocated shoulder. But there is no plant lore here, no mention of inflammation of the flesh on this scale. Pondering, she closes the book. From the nettle house comes a multiple pounding as they frantically prepare a juice.

‘Can I read it, Alice?’ Sam asks her.

‘Be careful of it,’ she tells him. ‘That was given to me by a dear friend.’ She takes the reins of the two horses who are becoming restive in the thundery air, and loosely ties them to a post supporting the wattle fence round the drying area. Sam sits down with the book on the edge of a rinsing sink and Alice returns to the group around Wat.

She is shocked by the deterioration in his breathing. He is now fighting hard for breath, it is terrible to see his body arching, his mouth gaping wide, a horrible loud rasping as he hauls in totally inadequate breaths, his chest working up and down like a bellows. Someone brings the first cupful of nettle juice, which Esther takes, dribbling it on his throat and around his mouth, dabbing it with her fingers to spread it over the skin. Even this, Wat fights with feeble hands, the slightest touch an agony in his battle to drag air into his starving lungs.

Esther rips his shirt to the waist to lay open his heaving chest. She proceeds to dribble the juice from side to side. Alice sees and gasps. She looks up at Luella standing behind her. ‘Does he know, Luella?’

Luella looks back in bewilderment. ‘Know what?’

‘Didn’t you tell him?’

Alice feels the eyes of the group on her, hears Ursula’s enquiring, ‘Alice?’ Sees Esther’s brief glance of puzzlement.

‘He doesn’t know, does he?’

Luella catches her lip in her teeth but says nothing. Alice gets up, grasps Luella’s shoulders, pushes her away from the huddle around Wat. ‘The beauty spot,’ she whispers. ‘It’s the same. I’m right, aren’t I?’

Silence.

‘Doesn’t he know?’

‘It wouldn’t be fair.’

‘Luella, you came to ask me to help. Do you love him or don’t you?’

Luella prevaricates. ‘I couldn’t watch him suffer and do nothing.’

‘Then tell him.’

‘No.’

‘He has a right to know!’

‘I … I can’t!’

‘For the Lord’s sake!’ Alice mouths at her, ‘Give him this much to comfort him!’

For whole seconds, the conflict of conscience dances this way and that in Luella’s face. ‘I would be loading a burden on him…’

‘Or you could be easing his heart in extremity.’

‘It could kill him!’

‘Luella, he’s dying!’

Alice watches the truth settle on Luella’s mind. Despite her stated fears, it is only now that Luella is facing the reality of Wat’s losing battle for life. She puts Alice aside and turns back. Recognising a bond they do not yet understand, the men and women around Wat part for her. She kneels down by him. ‘Wat?’ He is barely conscious, his eyes closed, mouth open, dragging in too little air, feebly plucking at his throat. She gently takes one inflamed hand in both of hers; he does not fight her touch as he fought Esher’s. She bows her head and kisses his fingers. He continues to pant for air. Luella leans close to his ear and whispers, and a sound like a groan escapes him. His gasps increase alarmingly, rasping like a rusty saw. Luella was right, Alice fears, at this rate he could have a seizure. No one says anything. Esther continues to dribble nettle juice on his skin.

Two large tears squeeze from under Wat’s closed eyelids. He is grasping Luella’s hand, his knuckles white, and they all watch his fight to subdue his rate of breathing. He has wits enough for that, at least, Alice thinks. There is no way to tell if the nettle juice is having any effect. If it is not, and if the apothecary does not arrive very soon, she reckons Wat’s chances in minutes.

‘His mouth is all swollen inside,’ Luella says to Esther. ‘His tongue, everything! Give him some of the nettle juice in his mouth.’

Esther looks with pity in her eyes. ‘I dare not, mistress. He cannot swallow in this state. It might go in his lungs.’

Wat’s grasp on Luella’s hand slackens. His chest still heaves desperately, but his wits are deserting him in that last effort to control his bursting emotion at what Luella told him, that their daughter carries his birthmark.

His arm drops loosely to his side. Luella throws herself across Wat’s body and a flood of weeping engulfs her. Alice goes to pull her back and the rest lean to help, drawing her up and away. ‘He’s not dead, Luella,’ Alice tells her. ‘He’s not conscious, but we must allow him every method to draw in air. That’s the best chance of life if the nettle juice will work.’

‘It’s not working,’ Luella sobs. ‘You can see it’s not. Do something!’ she orders Alice. ‘Do something!’

‘Esther is doing the best she can, Luella.’

‘He can’t breathe and he’s strangling to death!’ Luella shouts. ‘Do something!’ Alice tries to lead her to sit on the edge of a rinsing sink, but Luella will not sit. ‘Where’s that book of yours that has all the answers? Why aren’t you consulting that? Do you want him to die?’

‘Luella, don’t,’ Alice pleads.

‘There it is! You give it to your child as a toy while Wat suffers!’ Luella is shouting anything that comes into her head. Alice cannot now start explaining her efforts over the past week to save Wat’s life. To what end? This terrible slow strangling is taking even longer than it would have done on the gallows at Portland.

Luella has snatched the book from Sam and is riffling through its pages. Unless she has Latin it will be useless to her. Alice goes to comfort an outraged Sam who is reaching to retrieve the book.

‘Stay. What’s this?’ Luella leafs back a page. ‘This. Look,’ she says, holding the book out for Alice’s attention. Latin Luella may not have, but a picture is a picture and this series of drawings tells its own story. Not that it helps.

‘It’s surgery, Luella.’ Not something an apothecary could take on, even if he arrived this minute.

‘So? Why not do that? You can see it is for breathing.’

Alice looks closer. ‘It needs a surgeon’s implements, an understanding of anatomy. We don’t have a surgeon here.’

‘Send for one.’ To Luella, child of the city, everything is on hand.

‘The nearest surgeon will be at Dorchester or Sherborne,’ Alice explains. ‘It would take hours.’ She does not need to add that long before then, Wat will be dead.

‘Then you do it,’ Luella says.

‘Me?’ Alice stares at her aghast. ‘This is surgery we are talking of, Luella.’

‘It tells you how to do it,’ Luella declares, indicating the pictures.

‘It takes years of apprenticing to learn such skills.’

‘Then why have you got this book when you’ve no intention of using it?’ Luella demands. ‘Wat is dying and you talk of apprentices!’

‘I can’t just do surgery, Luella,’ Alice protests.

‘Why not? It’s all there in the pictures.’

‘I could kill him!’

‘He’s dying anyway! You said so yourself! Are you just going to stand there and do nothing?’ From timid onlooker, Luella has rapidly transformed into avenging fury.

‘I can’t do this !’ Alice bats the page.

‘A minute ago you told me I had to do something I couldn’t do. Now it’s your turn! Are you going to help or is it all just talk with you?’

She thrusts the book at Alice, open at the page of drawings. A patient, head and shoulders, with a small slit in the base of his neck; a hollow tube with a bend in it; an implement with a blade like a candle’s flame. Two instruments like two-tined forks with the ends bent over. The last drawing shows the tube sticking out of the slit in the man’s neck. Scanning the Latin, Alice can understand the point of incision, the need for a very sharp knife, the reason for a firm tube that will not flatten under pressure. She plumps down on the edge of the sink where Sam joins her, craning to see the pictures.

This is preposterous, is all she can think. I’m not about to cut into living flesh. And anyway, what sort of tube exists small enough to slide into the neck? And only a surgeon’s knife can make a cut as precise and clean as that.

The altercation between Alice and Luella has drawn a small crowd of dye workers. Alice recognises a few faces, amongst them Robin and Jay’s father, a couple of gloved women from the nettle house.

Sam points to one of the pictures. ‘That looks like the end of Daniel’s pipe when he broke it, Alice.’

One of the men leaning over Alice’s shoulder says, ‘The lad’s right, looks just like the stem of a pipe, that do. Don’t that look just like the stem of a pipe?’ he asks the man next to him.

‘It surely do,’ the other agrees. ‘Tis the stem of a pipe, for certain.’

Ursula has risen from Wat’s side and approaches, addressing the man. ‘Can you find a pipe? A new one, if you will, we shall use the best we can lay our hands on.’

We ? Ursula seems to have leap-frogged the issue of carrying out unauthorised surgery. Her sense of order is taking over, demanding the use of a new tool for the job. And there should be plenty of new pipes around, they are that brittle they are forever breaking. The man has already left the group in haste to do her bidding and Ursula perches on the sink next to Alice.

‘This is not something we can even contemplate,’ Alice whispers to her. ‘We are leading these people to think we can perform surgery.’

‘Don’t worry about that, Alice. I will manage my people’s expectations.’

Alice points to a line of the Latin. ‘It says here it is only to be used as a last resort. We haven’t even tried the apothecary yet.’

Her friend looks at her.

‘But Ursula, this is illegal!’

‘I do not oblige you to do this, Alice, but if you are willing, I shall give you the full force of my protection.’

When it goes wrong and Wat dies, Alice thinks. But Wat is going to die very soon if nothing is done. No, if I do nothing. She says, ‘I would need a very sharp blade, the keenest there is.’

‘A table knife?’ Ursula asks.

Alice shakes her head. ‘The point is sharp, but the sides are generally quite blunt. This cannot be a jagged cut, Ursula.’ And at that point, Alice realises she has crossed the line and is contemplating the workings of this procedure which the book calls laryngotomy. ‘I have to get it in the exact position or I might as well slit his throat.’

‘If it don’t kill ’em going in, twill surely kill ’em coming out!’ Robin’s father says, and someone shushes him.

Ursula regards the men and women surrounding her. ‘I need you to turn out every blade you use here.’

‘Twenty an hour,’ Robin’s father says. ‘That’s how to deal with these Spanishes.’ One of the women takes his arm, trying to lead him away. ‘All right, Master Harker, it’s all right,’ while he continues to protest, ‘Twenty an hour!’

Riding the interruption, Ursula repeats, ‘Sharp knives, any tool you have for cutting twine or cloth.’ Several immediately volunteer small blades they carry but the metal is so pitted and tarnished they are as good as useless. It is Luella whose voice carries. ‘I will go to your house and demand every blade your kitchen holds. My horse is here and this is one small thing I can do for him.’

Ursula nods. ‘Every type of knife. Do it in my name, and tell them, as fast as they can.’

‘I shall tell them the truth,’ Luella answers. ‘That it is life or death.’

The group around them drifts back to Wat, and Luella is twenty paces off at a canter when Ursula turns to Alice. ‘What’s going on? Last week she could not accuse him enough. Now she is desperate to save his life. What does she know that is so important he had to be told?’

‘She needed to tell Wat that he is father to a daughter. That’s why she had to marry Goldwoode.’

Ursula is dumbstruck, absorbing this, when one of the men comes from the direction of the dye workers’ cottages and hastens towards her.

‘Mistress, we have these three. Whichever you will.’ In his hands are three new white clay pipes. ‘Never a leaf of tobacco in any.’

‘Mistress Jerrard will choose.’ Ursula rises to speak with one of the women who has approached, while Alice inspects the pipes of white clay, their stems tapering slightly from bowl to mouthpiece. One of them seems to have a small foot projecting from the base of the bowl, presumably to rest on a table, and she rejects this one in favour of the other two, which have a flat based bowl. She looks up to show it to Ursula and sees her friend’s face tight with concern, in converse with the woman. With a sense of her insides falling away, Alice gets up. ‘What is it?’

‘Come,’ Ursula says and leads the way back to where Wat lies, the horrible scraping sound still coming from his throat, though his chest is hardly moving. His hands are no longer pulling at his throat but lie unmoving by his side.

‘Oh, dear life, he’s stopped fighting,’ Alice says. ‘And Luella not here.’ Esther sits to one side of Wat and on the other Robin’s father, muttering over and over, ‘Twenty an hour, I tell you, man. Twenty an hour. Rain or shine.’

‘He’s slipping away.’ Esther is close to tears. ‘Poor Wat, he was such a good man, he so cared for people. You’ll have to try one of the dye worker’s blades.’

‘They’re too blunt.’

‘A good fellow,’ Robin’s father says.

And suddenly Alice has it. ‘Master Harker!’ she says. ‘Do something for me? Can you strike me one of those arrowheads, sir?’ She can feel Ursula and Esther staring at her as though she has run mad.

‘Just one?’ he says. He too looks at her as if she is deranged.

‘The sharpest you ever made. This shape,’ she says. He remembers the skill down to the last detail , Robin told her. ‘Look.’ With her fingertip she draws in the dust by her side. ‘Can you make me one like that, this long?’ He bends down to look as she indicates the length of her finger.

‘I surely can, my lady Queen.’ He straightens and bows low.

‘With the sharpest bits here, and here,’ she says, pointing, ‘leading up to that sharp tip.’

‘In a trice, my lady Queen,’ he says, and glances up at the sky, holding up a palm. ‘Rain or shine.’

‘In fact, make two if you will, so that we have a spare. Go to it, sir, as fast as you can.’ She can feel it too, see the spots on her skirt, in the dust. A crack of thunder directly overhead makes them all jump.

‘The Spanishes are at the door!’ the old man declares.

‘Death is at the door,’ Alice murmurs.

Alice takes the flint scalpel the old man has knapped. He is even faster than his claim, and is now working on the spare. She strains to hear the clatter of hooves heralding the apothecary, but all is silence bar the first hushed patter of raindrops. There is nothing for it but to start. She has studied the Latin in her book while she waited. She knows how to count to the correct incision point in the neck. But amongst all that swelling, will she be able to locate the place?

She kneels down next to Wat, lays open the book beside her, weights the page with a pebble. Her hand shakes. She breathes out to steady herself, to concentrate. She has asked Esther to assist. ‘Support his neck underneath,’ she says. ‘Let his chin fall back, so that we can keep his windpipe as straight as possible.’

Esther says to her, ‘I think he has stopped breathing.’

Alice looks. Wat’s face is turning blue, the grating sound is absent and she cannot see any chest movement at all. The rain patters all around, spotting Esther’s cap. Alice remembers advice Frederick the apothecary gave her about the echo of the heart in the neck. She feels the side of Wat’s neck. Under all that swelling there seems to be the slightest heartbeat, or perhaps she feels what she wishes to feel.

‘Then let’s do this. He has nothing to lose now.’

‘God be with us,’ Esther breathes.

Alice probes the inflamed skin of Wat’s neck, gently at first, then pressing harder, pushing and searching for the cartilage under the swollen flesh. No point in being gentle; he can’t feel it, and she has to find it rapidly if he is to have any chance.

Now she has it, the hard bony shape like a ring. Once she has located the first point, she keeps one finger there and counts down with the other hand. The squashy skin slides around, confusing her count, and she tries several times before she is sure. There. She makes a tiny nick with the flint to mark the spot. Raindrops turn the bead of blood into a thin rivulet that slips away down his neck. Alice counts down again. Yes, for sure, this is the right place. She takes a deep breath, angles the flint, pushes it in, feels the initial resistance, recoils as the blood wells and flows over the blade, over her fingers, spreads and smears on his neck. Then the rain comes in earnest, washing it pink. The blood continues to flow, to mix with the falling rain, but it does not spurt, that was her terror. She takes another deep breath. Her hair is soaked, and the raindrops run into her eyes. The downpour is cold on her back. Blinking, she continues to cut. The flint, made by a master of his craft, slices a neat slit with ease, and suddenly there is the distinct sound of indrawn air. More blood flows and the rain washes through it, slithering red over the reddened flesh. She grasps a handful of underskirt to staunch but Ursula reaches over, ‘I’ll do that,’ and with a lace-edged kerchief dabs at the blood.

Alice rubs a hand over her face, pushes back her sopping hair. ‘The pipe?’ she says. She has forgotten where she put it. Someone offers her the two, there is nothing to choose between them, and she takes the nearest. The hole that runs through its stem is tiny, but it is too late to worry about that now. Gently pressing the edges of the incision apart, she inserts the pipe’s thin round end into the slit. It surprises her how readily she is able to work the stem down into the windpipe. She halts when she feels it will stay put. A short length of it, with the bowl at the top, protrudes from the slit, the flat underside resting against Wat’s throat.

That’s it.

She kneels up, waits. The only sound is the rain drumming on the slate roof of the rinsing shed. It throws up little splashes, and the run-off drips and trickles all along the edge.

Nothing happens. Come on, Wat, she wills him.

‘He’s not breathing,’ someone says unnecessarily.

‘Fire don’t burn without a bellows,’ someone else says.

A bellows. Of course! Alice leans forward and blows softly into the bowl of the pipe. Just breathe, Wat. For Luella. Her hand laid lightly on his chest feels no movement at all. She leans forward again, blowing harder into the pipe. Wat’s chest seems to rise very slightly and then fall. She waits. His chest does not rise again.

‘Still not breathing,’ the informant needlessly informs everyone.

‘Where’s that other pipe?’

‘I have it here.’ Esther hands it to her.

She places it alongside the first and pushes downwards, but where the first slipped into place easily, the second will not make its way. She tries to work it down, twisting it this way and that. She dares not put pressure on the skin she has cut, but the roughness of clay against clay, the restricted airway, foil her efforts to slip the second into place beside the first.

Stop. Take a breath. Try again.

She re-angles the second pipe, but the flesh resting around the first will not give way. Her hair has fallen forward with the rain and is getting in her eyes again. She tries to push it clear with the back of her hand but it sticks and she rubs desperately at it, cursing softly.

‘Stop a moment,’ Ursula’s voice calmly says. ‘Face me.’ She loops away the dripping curls and wipes Alice’s forehead and eyes with the lace-edged kerchief. ‘There. Try again.’

Now she can understand what those bent fork implements were for. They are designed hold back the opening, but it is too late to think about that now. The second pipe continues to resist, and any pressure she applies simply stretches the skin at the cut.

‘It’s not enough!’ she wails. ‘He can’t breathe through just one.’

‘Can you extend the cut?’ Esther asks.

‘I daren’t! If the blood pumps, I shall have killed him!’ Voice cracking, she sits back. ‘I can’t do this, Ursula. I should never have started it! What was I thinking?’

‘You can, Alice. Have faith.’

Her fingers are trembling now, useless for such delicate work. All that happens is that the second pipe rattles against the first, and the rain adds to the tears running down her face. ‘Ooh, God forgive me!’

‘Alice. Look at me.’ Ursula’s voice is calm, unhurried. ‘Look at me.’ Her steady gaze holds Alice’s. ‘You can do this. You have already done half. Take a deep breath. Everyone here knows you can do this.’

Alice is aware of nodding heads behind Ursula. They all think I can find some miracle answer. Can’t they see I’m floundering? She turns back to the prone form, the burden crushing her ragged concentration. You can do this .

And then, it is so simple, she wonders why she could not see it. She draws out the first pipe until only its narrow tip remains inserted, places the second pipe alongside, and pushes both together into the windpipe.

There is no immediate response. Covering one of the bowls with her hand, Alice leans down close and releases her breath into the other. Please Wat, she thinks. Please. ‘For your daughter,’ she whispers. And feels Wat’s chest rise slightly. And fall. It sends a spatter of blood across her chemise. His chest rises again. They all hear the rasp as his lungs draw in air through the narrow little pipe stems. In, out, in, out. The blue at last starts to fade from his face. That terrible stillness has given way to small but even breaths. Alice gently turns the pipe bowls away from the rain now sheeting down. She puts her hands to her face and realises her mouth is twisting and wobbling, half sob, half howl.

She feels her hand taken and squeezed hard, a sure sign of overweening emotion in the undemonstrative Ursula. Alice looks round. Esther is laughing through her tears, and men and women all around them seem to be heaving a collective sigh of relief.

Over Ursula’s shoulder, Alice sees Sam standing alone by the rinsing sinks, heedless of the downpour. Gently she puts off Ursula, and holding her soaked skirts clear, gets up and goes slipping and sliding to him. The rain has not bothered him any more than anyone else, the air is already the fresher for it, but his face is troubled. ‘Is he going to die, Alice?’ he asks her.

She puts her arms round him, holding him close. ‘He’s strong, sweeting, I think Wat has a good chance of life.’ Hopefully with all those people around, Sam was unable to see much.

‘Why did they want to kill him?’

‘Shhh, sweeting.’ The crowd of dye workers is still close by. ‘It was an accident, Sam. Sometimes accidents happen.’ She holds him off. ‘Now, look at us, we’re soaked. Let’s go home. Would you like to sit up on my horse and I’ll walk alongside you on the way? Like real riding.’

Sam nods, no shout of delight this time, his heart is too full of phantoms and fears. She picks him up, tosses him onto the horse. He accepts the side-saddle without qualms, too young as yet to reject a woman’s style of riding. ‘Wait just a moment,’ she tells him. The boy overseeing the other two horses is happy to hold the bridle for her.

The dye workers make way as she splashes back to Ursula still kneeling by Wat. Like everyone else here, Ursula’s flattened hair clings to face and neck, her cap, gown and shift are wet through, and mud kicked up by the downpour spatters her skirts. Unheeding, Ursula wrings out her dainty kerchief and dabs again at the blood seeping around the incision. Wat lies quietly, eyes still closed, his breathing shallow but even. His colour has retreated from imminent death. Alice squats down to pick up her soaked book and for a few seconds blots the pages with her underskirt as she murmurs in Ursula’s ear, ‘Get him on a litter and back to the house. Treat it as an accident.’

‘What?’

‘I’ll explain later. Do not leave him unguarded for a moment.’