Page 13 of All of Us Murderers

“That is an extremely Zeb-like response,” Gideon said, and there was a smile in his voice that Zeb hadn’t heard in a very long time. “I find it remarkably off-putting, myself. I’m not even sure what your grandfather was trying to keep out. Bad reviews?”

“Well, they can be hurtful,” Zeb said. “And he was more or less thrown out of good society for The Monastery, which served him right. But I would imagine his other profession had more to do with it.”

“What do you mean? What else did he do?”

“He was a slaver.”

Gideon was silent for a second. “I don’t think I knew that. Did you tell me, before?”

“I didn’t know before. I never troubled to ask where Father’s money came from.

But yes, Walter Wyckham, my grandfather, was a slave owner and trader.

An active one, not just an investor: he owned four ships and two plantations, and he ran them.

He visited his properties several times and came up with ideas to increase revenues.

He wrote books about cruel evildoers receiving their just punishment while he was travelling back and forth across the oceans to wring more profit out of the people he kept in hell.

That’s the money that built this house. The wages of sin, in the most literal manner imaginable. ”

Gideon was staring at him. Zeb shrugged irritably.

“If you’re going to tell me how many great houses were built or rebuilt or filled with wonderful art on the profits of slavery, I already know.

Bram and Hawley don’t agree on much, but they would both tell you that Art justifies suffering.

The existence of a beautiful building filled with beautiful things is worth any number of nameless, unimportant lives lost on a plantation or down a mine.

Our wealth might have come from regrettable origins, but that’s all in the past and there’s no point making a fuss. ”

“You don’t agree?”

“If people want to achieve greatness through suffering, it should be their own damn suffering,” Zeb said.

“And even if I did believe art justifies inflicting pain and misery on people, which I do not, Lackaday House is trite, cliched, and horrible. I’m not suggesting it would be all right if the house was beautiful,” he added.

“Just that this ludicrous Gothic rubbish is whatever the opposite of icing on the cake is. The shit on the shoe.”

“Right,” Gideon said. “I see. How did you learn this?”

“A chap—gentleman of colour, from abroad—paid a call on me a few months back, asking if I could give him any access to family papers since Wynn and Bram had both refused him. He was trying to make a full account of what had been done in the Wyckham plantations, for posterity, because he says the British prefer to remember the part where we abolished slavery, rather than all the enslaving we did first. I couldn’t help, but I asked him to stay for tea and he told me all about it.

About my family history, which was his own too, because his family, grandparents and great-grandparents, had been enslaved in Walter Wyckham’s plantations. ”

“Oh my God.”

“Quite. We talked for a long time. Or, rather, he talked; I didn’t have much to say.

There is something really quite awkward about sitting there with a teacup as a man tells you how your grandfather enslaved and tortured and murdered his relatives.

Our relatives, actually, because of course Walter inflicted himself on various women while he was there and left a number of children.

Jerome—that’s his name—is actually my first cousin.

His mother was Walter’s daughter. As cousins go, he’s infinitely preferable to Hawley. ”

“I expect so. Dear God.”

“He was astonishingly decent about it,” Zeb said. “I’d have punched me in the face as proxy for Walter, but he just wanted to tell a Wyckham what we did. To look one of us in the eye and say, That was wrong.”

“And you heard him out.”

“It was the least I could do. Literally: I sat there like a pudding while he laid out why my grandfather should have been hanged from the nearest lamppost and buried with a stake through his heart. He didn’t say that last part. That was a conclusion I reached myself.”

“Right.”

“Anyway,” Zeb said on an exhalation. “Were we talking about that for any reason?”

“The big wall,” Gideon said, because he always remembered these things. “Why Walter built it.”

“Ugh. Yes. I sometimes wonder if all those English country gentlemen who built themselves big houses with long sightlines and high walls did it because they were afraid of people coming across the seas for vengeance. I hope they were terrified. I hope that fear haunted Walter’s dreams every night of his rotten, stinking life.

Oh, that will be the Wyckham curse, of course. ”

“Sorry?”

“Supposedly an old woman who ‘worked’ for Walter cursed him to die at fifty, and he fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I bet that was a slave of his. At least she made him sweat.”

“And now you don’t want the inheritance,” Gideon said slowly. “Is this why?”

“Of course it is. I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole.”

Gideon grabbed his arm, stopping as he did so, so that he pulled Zeb round. They faced each other under the lowering sky. “Do you mean that? Truly?”

“Were you not listening?”

“But you came here for the inheritance!”

“I came here because Wynn invited me for a relaxing fortnight in the country,” Zeb said.

“I thought I was going to get to know a family member who was less awful than the rest. Hah. It serves me right, agreeing to live and eat off Wyckham money. I should have turned down the invitation on that basis, and then I wouldn’t be in the worst house party since that one where they hosted the guests in an underground room and secretly bricked them in. ”

Gideon was searching Zeb’s face, his light eyes intense. Zeb shifted under the scrutiny. “What is it?”

“Wynn told me you knew he intended to disinherit Bram and were expecting to be confirmed in his place. He said you and he had been corresponding, that you needed the money urgently. And after your conversation yesterday, he said he expected you to propose to Jessamine within the week.”

“But he can’t possibly have thought that,” Zeb said blankly.

“I specifically told him I wouldn’t marry her.

As for the inheritance, I had no idea it was up for grabs until dinner the first night.

I did tell him that it would be convenient for me to visit because I had lost my job and a friend could take my room—”

“You can’t afford your room?”

“Of course I can, but I’ve a pal coming down from Scotland for a couple of weeks, so we thought he could save on the cost of a hotel, and I could have my rent covered while I’m away.

I dare say Wynn misunderstood that, and I will freely admit I told him I’ve been short of cash; I used that as an excuse not to come earlier.

Maybe he got things confused. But he’s simply wrong about Jessamine. ”

They started walking again, trudging along through rank, damp grass. Zeb didn’t care. He was walking with Gideon, and Gideon was actually listening to him, and he didn’t intend to stop for a little discomfort. He’d walk through a lake if he had to.

Gideon had a small frown on his face and his hands behind his back. He had used to pace like that at Cubitt’s when he was deep in thought. “Hawley is blackmailing you because he thinks you want Jessamine and the money. Have you explained to him why you don’t?”

“I have not, and I’m not going to.”

“Why not?”

“Because Hawley stains everything he touches,” Zeb said. “That conversation with Jerome was important. It meant something to me, and I am not going to repeat it to someone who would tell me I’m a fool for thinking it matters. I refuse to do that.”

“No,” Gideon said, his voice low. “No, you would not. I… God damn it, Zeb. I think I have been extremely unfair to you.”

It was a cold day. The Dartmoor wind had been cutting through Zeb’s coat for a while.

His shoes were soaked through, his stockings wet, the bottoms of his trousers were slapping damply against his ankles, and now his entire body was suffused with a warm glow that went some way to counteracting the misery. “Well, yes, maybe. A bit.”

“I had entirely the wrong idea. And that’s because Wynn was mistaken, or deluded, in what he told me, but also…” He hesitated. “I think it was because of us. Because it was easier if I could think the worst of you. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

“It’s truly not. Thank you for talking to me, Zeb. I don’t know if I’d have bothered in your shoes.”

“Of course you would. In my shoes, I mean, not that you’d actually want to be in my shoes, they’re drenched. Thank you for listening. Might we do a bit better, then? Because the prospect of a fortnight here with you hating me is pretty awful, honestly.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“It feels like you hated me.”

“I—” Gideon began, and then stopped. There was a long, painful silence.

“I mean, you can,” Zeb said, when he could no longer stop himself filling it. “Hate me, that is. I quite see why you would. I just wish you didn’t.”

“I don’t,” Gideon said again. “I—God damn it. I have spent the last month hearing about your willingness to marry a stranger for a fortune, and yes, by the end of that I think I was coming to hate you, but that’s hardly your fault if it wasn’t true.

Still, it raised a lot of other issues—memories, whatever you want to call it, and…

Zeb, I need time to think about this. Could we leave it for now? Please?”

Zeb raised his hands and clamped his lips, biting them fiercely shut on the inside against the near-compulsion to speak, and the dozen things he wanted to say. He dug the sharp edges of the crucifix into his thumb as a distraction. They walked on.

After a few moments, Gideon let out a long breath.

“Look. I truly don’t hate you. But I also don’t want to spend a fortnight with you, any more than I expect you want that with me.

Not to mention you’re being blackmailed over an inheritance and marriage you don’t even want.

It would be a great deal easier all round if you left. ”

“I can’t.”

“Why not? What is there to gain by staying?”

Zeb wished he knew the answer to that. Or rather, he did know; he just wished it wasn’t a wispy impossibility. “Wynn asked me to stay.”

“What does that matter? Why should you indulge his absurd plans at our expense?”

“At—?”

“Zeb, it hurts,” Gideon said, low. “I was happy a year ago, with you. Having you here makes me very aware I am not happy now. I don’t blame you for that—I’m well aware what happened was my fault too—but here we are, and it’s making us both miserable.

I would go if I could, but I can’t. So I wish you would. ”

“But I promised.” Zeb’s lips and tongue felt oddly stiff, unwieldy. “I promised Wynn I’d stay and I don’t want to break a promise. Not if I can help it.”

“You won’t break a promise to him,” Gideon said. “Fine. You wouldn’t even make one to me, but you won’t—Whatever you choose. It’s up to you. Fine.”

Zeb wanted to cry out, I have to! Wynn is dying!, but he’d given his word to keep that to himself, and he couldn’t think of any way to explain without it. He stared at Gideon, silenced. Gideon looked as though he was going to say something else, then he simply turned and walked away.