Stolen Lives (The Alice Chronicles #3)

37

A lice is confused, wakeful, her thoughts treadmilling without end, without resolution. After all that has taken place, the secrets unravelled, the lies exposed, after all that, a wall of denial has reared up. And for what?

She turns on her back, careful not to wake Sam beside her. Sleep is the very thing she needs, and sleep eludes her. Her mind ranges over the day, the desperate dash for Portland, the betrayal by Keeper Sparrow, the hammering in the silence of the Castle, the poor corpse that was, and then was not, Wat Meredith, and the ride home in the sweet quiet knowledge of having snatched him from the edge. Then the attempt on his life and the mad experiment. In the starlit dark she gasps afresh at the recollection. No surgeon she has ever heard of has cut a man’s throat to save his life. And so far the experiment has held good.

The apothecary, tracked down and brought to the chamber where Wat lay, expressed barely concealed condemnation of Alice’s ‘foreign’ book with its ‘papist’ methods. But he has left the pipes in place, applied a cleansing salve and bandaged around. He talked much of hot humours, but he approved the nettle juice Esther used, perhaps in perplexity as to what else could have caused such extensive injury, and perhaps because the swellings, they told him, were diminishing.

By night-time when Alice was admitted to Wat’s chamber, his face no longer had the look of a football and the line of his mouth was clearly definable from the adjacent flesh. A grim-faced Jay was with him. Having gone straight in to see Robin on their return, he had then dropped into a deep sleep on the truckle bed next to his brother, oblivious of events at the dye houses. Now he, Robin, Esther and Ursula share the vigil by Wat.

All of this has been a relief and a comfort for Alice. What confuses her is Luella’s absolute refusal to visit Wat or send any message. Luella was on her way back to the dye houses when their paths crossed. Her pack clanked metallically as she pulled her mount to a halt, dismay in her face. ‘Am I too late? Please don’t say I am too late?’

Alice told her of Robin’s father and the life-saving flint, adding, ‘Wat will be glad to know it was you who found the solution and forced us into action.’

‘I don’t want him to know,’ Luella said, turning her horse to return to the mansion. ‘You have saved his life, not me. Do not utter my name to him.’

‘They’re bringing him to the house very soon,’ Alice told her. ‘When he regains his wits he will surely be glad of your presence.’

‘I am content that he is recovering. He doesn’t need me,’ Luella said, face closed, pulling round the horse’s head and spurring forward.

This is what keeps Alice sleepless now. Wat of course cannot speak, even if he were full in his senses. And perhaps the apothecary gave him some potion as well as that cleansing bandage, if he was able to get him to swallow. Either way, Wat looked hazily up at Alice and then beyond her as though searching for someone else, before his face fell and he closed his eyes again.

Alice punches and turns her pillow. Why does Luella, who clearly loves Wat, suddenly cut herself off? The story of his not wanting her from the moment he was first taken to gaol simply seems thin. After all, she rejected him around the same time and found safety in marriage to another, but has come full circle back to loving him. Can she be jealous that Wat’s life was saved in her absence? At a moment when surely his best cure will be to see the woman he sought in that hazy look, and the child they made together, can Luella still suffer doubt? Wat and Ursula? Wat and Alice? I made her tell Wat about his daughter. Would I do that if I wanted Wat for myself?

Back at the mansion, Luella slid off her horse and disappeared into the house, leaving Alice to find a stable boy and return the collection of knives to a wondering Margaret.

They have all forgotten about Martyn and Helena. The pair have been spending their days in the solar, disconnected from household matters, and perhaps by common tacit consent no one has mentioned events at the dye houses to them. But by this morning Martyn has picked up some hint of an injured man. Happening to be in the hall when he and Helena come down for breakfast, Alice becomes the target of his curiosity. He greets her with, ‘What’s this I hear? A man stung all over by nettles?’

‘Good morning, Martyn.’

‘Come on then, tell all.’ Martyn smiling is uncharacteristic; Martyn’s smile is unpleasant.

‘It was an accident,’ Alice tells him. The sickness returned this morning and she is in no mood to be accommodating to his slyness.

‘Sounds more like a new form of flagellation,’ he jokes, ‘Eh?’ and nudges Helena, who does not respond.

Alice is spared having to answer by Ursula’s appearance, followed by a serving man carrying a sealed letter. ‘Do you know if Mistress Goldwoode is risen yet?’ she asks Alice, and indicates the letter. ‘This has just arrived from Bristol.’

Martyn holds out his hand. ‘I’ll take that.’

‘I shall put it into Mistress Goldwoode’s hands as it is addressed to her,’ she says. ‘Ah, Mistress Goldwoode.’ The serving man proffers the letter to Luella who has just appeared at the door. Ursula says, ‘From Bristol. If you would prefer to read it in private, my parlour is at your disposal.’

Luella answers by breaking the seal and unfolding the Will. Even Martyn is silent, leaning against Helena, chewing his thumb, all his former blustering confidence subdued as he awaits his fate. Luella reads, and reads again, her face expressionless. She looks up and takes the document across to Martyn. Supporting him against herself, Helena scans the document alongside him. Martyn shouts, ‘I knew it!’ His triumphant jerk knocks Helena off balance. Unsupported he falls to the ground, even as he shouts, ‘It’s all mine, the whole lot!’ Helena stoops to help him, murmuring ‘Hush, Martyn, hush!’ He turns on her. ‘Get me up, sister! ‘Don’t leave me lying here! How could you cast me down at such a moment?’

Alice feels cringing embarrassment for Helena, disappointment for Luella. Whatever Ursula feels is overlaid by the look of utter disgust on her face as she regards Martyn haranguing his sister. The serving man has already stepped forward, and between him and Helena they restore Martyn to the upright. Red-faced from mortification or triumph or both, Martyn pulls straight his doublet, scowling at the serving man, denouncing Helena for his fall.

‘You took me by surprise, Martyn.’

‘That’s right, blame me.’

‘We should think of Cousin Luella,’ she reminds him. ‘Your good fortune will be a blow, she had reason to expect otherwise.’

‘I told her it was always the male line.’

‘You need have no concerns, Cousin Helena,’ Luella says from the doorway. ‘I heartily wish your brother joy of his inheritance.’ She walks from the hall and they hear her footsteps mounting the stairs.

‘The whole lot, Luella?’

‘The whole lot.’

‘A pension for you?’

‘At Martyn’s discretion. To see us housed and fed as he deems fit.’

Given Martyn’s antagonism, his covetousness, Alice sees little hope of anything more than a degrading pittance.

Alice did not mean to disturb Luella, but hearing Sam playing with baby Eleanor under young Ruth Harker’s supervision, she went in, and saw Luella sitting on the window seat in the next chamber staring out at nothing.

‘What will you do?’ Alice asks her.

‘My choice is twofold,’ she says. A new maturity seems to have emerged from this cosseted child. ‘I must throw myself on my father’s mercy or seek work to support Eleanor and myself.’

‘Do you know why your husband promised to make her his heir and then forswore? Without telling you?’

‘In the Will he talks of “my wife and the child”. Not “my wife and child”. He must have discovered he had not fathered a child at all. The date of the Will is not December when Eleanor was born and he was so delighted, but April this year. I suppose that was why he wanted to meet Martyn at the inn, to assure him of his inheritance after all.’

‘But how could he have found out?’

Luella shrugs. ‘We live in Bristol. Lived. My husband had one friend at least who never liked me, thought me a gold-digger. It would take only the slightest observation about Eleanor’s features to arouse my husband’s suspicions.’

‘But would your husband have told Martyn that little Eleanor was not his child?’

‘I don’t believe he’d have gone that far. The shame of admitting he had been cuckolded would have kept him silent.’

‘So instead he made that fresh Will. Without telling you.’

‘And he was insistent that I accompany him here. I think he planned to reaffirm to Martyn in front of me that Martyn would inherit the entire estate. In that way he could humiliate me without actually speaking of Eleanor.’

A disquieting thought comes to Alice. ‘Luella, have you ever wondered if your husband was in the plot to entrap Wat?’

‘Why do you say that?’

Alice has told Luella of her journey to Bristol. ‘The confessions we obtained both gave the name Goldwoode as instigator. Now, we know it was Cazanove parading as Goldwoode, probably to avoid exposure later, but why choose that name? Why not a simple Smith or Williams? Was there some agreement between them to remove Wat? It conveniently paved the way for Master Goldwoode.’

The thought is clearly new to Luella. And a step too far. ‘Oh, I can’t believe my husband would have done such a terrible thing.’

Best leave it there. Alice is not yet clear in her own mind. Cazanove doing a favour for a mere business acquaintance? Cazanove only ever did favours for himself. ‘Might your father have agreed to a marriage between you and Wat, if Wat had not been charged with theft?’ Alice asks.

‘Never! We both knew that. So I had already agreed to run away with him. One night, shortly before he was taken, Wat came to me. Just that once, and within weeks I knew…’

‘Your mother also knew, I think.’ Alice says gently.

‘Her letter you brought, it hints that she guessed, and knew it was Wat, which means my father knows also. My mother has no secrets from him. It explains why neither of them queried my sudden decision to accept Master Goldwoode, indeed why they urged me towards it. I was desperate when Wat ignored my smuggled letters to him in prison.’

‘Your father must surely be reconciled with you in time,’ Alice says, thinking of her own situation as only child, if she had erred.

‘I am so afraid, Alice!’ Luella bursts out suddenly.

‘Of your father?’

‘He might take me back but confine me to the house for very shame. Worse, he will take my Eleanor away and I shall never see her again!’

The possibility of this, Alice realises, is strong, given his cold references to “Mistress Goldwoode”. Master Norrys’s rod-of-iron description was apt. ‘Then why not marry Wat, which must be what you both want?’

‘No!’

‘I don’t understand, Luella. When you told him about Eleanor, his heart was bursting. You saw how he struggled with his breathing.’

‘Who knows the real reason for that? I can’t marry him, Alice.’

‘Why not?’

‘I would be a burden to him, when he wants someone else.’

‘You cannot believe there is another woman?’

‘Or a man.’

‘That message was spite. He is no Ganymede.’

‘How do you know?’

‘You may take it from me.’

‘May I, indeed?’

Now I’ve set up Luella’s suspicions . ‘I mean, I can’t tell you how I know, but I do.’ I’m just making this worse .

Luella is not going to let this go. ‘Well, someone wrote on the glass.’

‘A woman scorned, that’s what Martyn thought. If so, whoever she was, it means Wat rejected that woman. He didn’t desire her, Luella.’

‘I wonder. I have heard a rumour about a lady not far from us right now.’

‘No.’ Emphatically, Alice shakes her head. Ursula. The rumour revived by Sir Thomas in that after-supper exchange. “ Why is he being kept on? ” ‘It’s not true, don’t even give it a moment’s thought.’

‘Interesting, the things you know about Wat.’ Luella eyes Alice.

‘It’s the lady I know. It’s not my place to advise you, but –,’

‘No, it’s not!’

‘— but I think you will only discover the truth of Wat’s feelings if you talk to him.’

‘I can’t see Wat again. He is an honourable man, and because of Eleanor he would feel compelled to marry me if I stay here. But I can’t allow him to shackle himself when he clearly didn’t want me after they took him to gaol. I’ve lived through one dutiful marriage and I see it for the lie it was. I will not be a fool twice. No, I must either go back to my father on condition I keep Eleanor, or I must find work as a maidservant.’

Alice admires Luella’s brave effort at self-reliance but suspects her sheltered upbringing has given her a rose-coloured idea of the life a maidservant lives. ‘Martyn might be more generous than you think, under Helena’s persuasions,’ Alice suggests. ‘He might give you a comfortable settlement.’

‘Do you think I would take my husband’s money, now I have discovered he died knowing Eleanor was not his?’ She halts a moment in thought. Then, hesitantly, ‘When my husband told me he was leaving Eleanor her inheritance, it was the first I had thought about the future. On reflection, I felt it was fair return for a marriage which brought him so much satisfaction and which I would have to endure for years. And if he loved Eleanor as his own, why shouldn’t she inherit? But he found me out. No, Alice, I brought this on myself and I must bear the consequences.’