Page 45 of Linenfold (The Alice Chronicles #4)

B lood runs warm on her hand and Pearce is no longer there and all around her are voices, exclamations, questioning faces, people running, arms supporting and they are moving across the kitchen court and then she is in the house and faintness flops her against a supporting chest. Someone is carrying her and she can see the ceiling of the screens passage float past, the hall sail by, and then they are in the winter parlour and there are people milling around and talking always talking and she is lying on cushions and the fire is warm as is the liquid spilling from her and she wants only to curl up in a ball against the cramping pain and cling to Henry or is it Jack, and the pains come in great surging waves and Juliana is there comforting and much later Betsy is there and shooing them out as only Betsy can shoo and she wants to laugh except she is crying, crying, great sobs that she cannot control and Betsy is telling her to push, push, but that is the last thing she wants to do, and hours pass and then there is sconce-lit night and the bed and can that be Juliana still holding her hand, and she just wants to rest and Betsy will not let her and then dawn brings more pain that keeps shooting through her and she cries out again and again and nothing was ever like this and she feels the life draining from her as the day drains slowly from the sky and again that searing, tearing agony and candle shadows and Betsy saying she is doing well, just push, just push, the never-ending just push …

She wakes to Betsy stealing away with an armful of red-blotched sheets and she lies there bled dry of questions she is too frightened to ask and all is quiet, too quiet, and she closes her eyes against the terror of knowing and her dreams are of mud- spattered gasping faces and blood running down and a man with such a surprised look and his glazed eyes drift away and Olivia is leaning over her and saying, ‘She’s exhausted.

Let her sleep now. We’ll tell her when she wakes,’ and she wants to ask what they are going to tell her, except she knows what it is and she does not want to wake up, ever again.

The two passengers rise as the ferryboat bumps against the York Stairs. Coins pass and one after the other they tread lightly onto the steps. At the top they approach the watchman who swings the gate wide and nods to each.

‘My Lord – Sir – you are expected. Do you follow me.’ He locks the gate behind them and leads them up a short, covered way to a wide, studded door with a high peephole, which a porter opens to the squeal of leather hinges.

The stink of the Thames recedes as they pass through and into the hands of a waiting, liveried page.

At his bidding they follow along a stone-floored passage past openings right and left, past plain four-planked doors and the distant clash of pans and fire irons, the calls and commands of a substantial serving force, the air drifting with scents of roasting meat, buttery sauces, warm bread.

The two men exchange wry looks. It has been a long time since breakfast, but each knows he is unlikely to be offered refreshment of any sort, let alone a meal.

Past limed-oak doors with reinforcing ribs top to bottom and iron hinge plates narrowing to a leaf-shaped head, the offices of His Grace’s Steward of this, His Grace’s Steward of that, the passage walls here wainscoted to the ceiling, also in limed oak.

Up a narrow flight of stairs they climb and through another doorway to find themselves in a wood-floored passage, flanked by gleaming jointed and pegged panelling, pewter sconces lighting their way towards high double doors at the end.

The page knocks discreetly, and as discreetly one door opens a crack and the page announces the guests.

He stands back as both doors are swung wide and they enter a large saloon floored in pale, lustrous oak and lined in intricately carved panelling up to the ceiling, where complex, decorated plaster strapwork is picked out in reds and blues and glossy gold leaf.

The sconces here are many and silver, though the fire in the wide-arched hearth renders the wax candlelight redundant.

A long table stands in the middle, surrounded by high-backed chairs, though the two are not invited to sit, merely left alone by the two wardens who step outside and close the doors.

It is a few minutes later that the doors re-open and a third man enters the room. Both visitors bow low.

‘Give you good day, Hardcastle,’ the duke says. ‘And you are Egerton?’

‘At Your Grace’s service,’ Jack Egerton says.

‘Are you related to the erstwhile Lord High Treasurer to His late Majesty?’

‘A cadet branch of that family, sir.’

The duke considers him for a moment, then turns. ‘Well, what can I do for you, Hardcastle? I didn’t expect to see you again quite so soon.’

‘No indeed, My Lord. I thank you for your gracious agreement to give us audience. Master Egerton is a neighbour of High Stoke and he and I are come to advise you that events there have taken a serious turn. We believe you should be informed at the earliest opportunity.’

‘Well, sit down and tell me. What events?’ His Grace takes his seat at the top of the table.

‘We have just come from Somerset House,’ Jack says, ‘where Her Majesty was pleased to grant His Lordship audience.’

‘Her Majesty? What interest has Her Majesty in this?’

‘A set of fruit trenchers that we had reason to believe are Her Majesty’s. They were found in one of My Lord’s boxes.’

Philip continues, ‘Of course, they cannot have been there for long, as Your Grace’s men searched very thoroughly, and would undoubtedly have drawn your equerry’s attention to them, bearing the Medici crest as they do.’

A moment passes in silence as the duke allows the suggestio falsi to pass. ‘And Her Majesty confirmed they were hers?’

‘Not only Her Majesty. Her Grace of Buckingham was present and declared her pleasure at seeing at last the trenchers she had persuaded Her Majesty to send for.’

‘Did she indeed?’ the duke says, tight-lipped.

‘It appears Her Majesty sent her page, one Lewis Cargill, to Paris recently,’ Jack explains.

‘He was ideally placed to collect her trenchers through the good offices of her close friend the Comtesse de Tillières. Having fluent French, and placed as the Queen’s page some months ago, he was known to the Comtesse when she was part of Her Majesty’s French entourage. ’

‘So where is this … Cargill fellow now?’ the duke asks. ‘Why didn’t he deliver them?’

‘Sadly, Lewis Cargill is dead,’ Jack says. ‘Or perhaps not so sadly after all.’

Something flickers in the duke’s eyes. Not quite a blink. ‘Out with it, Egerton.’

‘It appears Lewis Cargill was an agent for King Louis, sir. He was seeking the same valuables Your Grace sought.’

‘ I sought?’

‘Forgive me, sir, valuables which might have been in iss Lordship;s boxes and which wold therefore require special security measHis Lordship’s coffers and therefore in need of safe custody.’

The duke accepts the clarification. ‘So you are accusing Her Majesty of treason, are you? For sending this Cargill to sniff out a treasure and take it to the French King? Be wary how you tread, Egerton.’

‘Indeed, sir, there is no question of Her Majesty’s involvement.

She was merely acting on the innocent suggestion of Her Grace of Buckingham.

’ Jack allows a moment for this to sink in, then continues, ‘To send for some pretty fruit trenchers as a gift for His Majesty. Cargill took cynical advantage of this task to spend time looking for treasure which he believed the late Lord Hardcastle to be carrying but which it appears was not the case.’

‘And now he is dead, you say? At High Stoke, I suppose. By whose hand?’

‘By the hand of one John Pearce, my coachman,’ Philip explains, ‘who had been corrupted into helping Cargill. We assume his task was to cause the coach accident that halted us at High Stoke. We believe Pearce had found out that Cargill had been searching for valuables. Your Grace will be dismayed to hear that Lewis Cargill paraded as Louise de Kergyle, a fleeing Protestant woman from La Rochelle. Cargill went on the run, realising he was about to be exposed. But he must have hung secretly around High Stoke, still hoping to lay his hands on this imagined treasure. He and Pearce got into a fight and Pearce killed Cargill. Mistress Jerrard had the wit to distract Pearce with sight of a jewel her late husband had given her. Pearce tried to grab the jewel but the effort caused him to collapse and he died of a fatal injury he had sustained in the fight with Cargill.’

‘A resourceful woman, Mistress Jerrard,’ comments His Grace.

‘Indeed, sir,’ Jack confirms. ‘Further, it was her deduction that Cargill was an agent of the French. It was he no doubt who secreted the trenchers in Lord Hardcastle’s box.

That, of course, would have been after Your Grace’s visit to High Stoke.

He was very convincing as a shy young woman hiding her face.

For several days all were infamously taken in, as was Your Grace, I understand. ’

‘Cargill was a French agent, you say? What of the other, the sister. Is she also an agent?’

‘We believe so, Your Grace, though we cannot prove it.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘She escaped in the confusion.’

‘Convenient.’

‘They seek her at present.’

‘I’ll see the southern ports are alerted,’ His Grace says. ‘We are saying, then, that the late Lord Hardcastle did not die a natural death, that the three of them contrived it.’

‘The evidence would suggest so, sir.’

‘Then the Coroner failed correctly to carry out his task of determining the true cause of Lord Hardcastle’s death?’

‘I would hesitate to contest a coroner’s verdict,’ Jack says cautiously, ‘but having seen the body, I would incline towards possible foul play.’

‘The man is an incompetent! He took me in through sheer negligence!’ the duke says, whipping himself into a fury.

‘I felt from the start it was murder and yet he insisted that there was nothing to suggest so, and misadventure was the only possible conclusion. He has thus denied justice for the late Lord Hardcastle whom I greatly revered. If he had advised me correctly, we could have arrested those two so-called Frenchwomen. I’d have had the truth out of them! ’

‘That is where I should be glad of Your Grace’s intervention,’ Jack says.

‘Oh? To do what?’

‘Coroner Sir Malcolm carries an entirely wrong-headed prejudice against Mistress Jerrard. He has previously attempted to wrongly accuse her and is likely to seize upon her proximity to Pearce when he died as a reason to accuse her again. But it is thanks to Mistress Jerrard that we realised that Pearce’s knowledge of this apparent treasure meant he must also be an agent, perhaps of the French, or for all we know, of some other seeker after riches. ’

This time the duke does not blink, but one finger taps rhythmically on the table.

Jack continues, ‘Her exposure of Louise de Kergyle as Lewis Cargill has proven her value in saving Her Majesty from the danger of having such a traitorous fellow for a page. If he had not been exposed, he would doubtless have retrieved the trenchers and returned to Somerset House, taking up his duties as page once more. It does not bear thinking of. And Your Grace’s wife, mother and daughter, in close attendance on Her Majesty also. ’

A long pause follows Jack’s words.

‘So what do you want from me?’ the duke asks at last.

She jerks upright in the bed because she must rise soon and make the dough ready to prove overnight but Betsy is gently, firmly pressing her back on her pillow and embracing her like a mother and she relaxes into the softness that is Betsy except that there is another softness, a warm, moving softness, that Betsy is placing in her arms and she says, ‘Oh, but I thought … I thought …’ and she feels comforted for the first time in so long and she clings to the warm creature that fills her eyes, washes into her mind, her heart, feeling the heartbeat chiming to her own, and she lies there in complete contentment …