Heartstone

'Everything is as it should be with my daughter,' Tamasin said. 'My little Johanna.'

'My little John,' Barak countered.

'But you are right heavy with the child, Tamasin,' Guy said warningly. 'You must take things easily.'

'Yes, Dr Malton,' she answered humbly.

Barak took her hand. 'You'll listen to Dr Malton, but not to your husband and master, eh?'

Tamasin smiled. 'Perhaps my good master will see me home. If you can spare him, sir.'

As they left the house, bickering amiably, Guy smiled. 'Tamasin says Jack is over-anxious.'

'Well, I have some new work that will keep him occupied.' I put my hand on his shoulder. 'That is what you need too, Guy, to get back to work.'

'Not yet, Matthew. I am too—weary. And now I should wash my hands again. Unlike some of my colleagues I believe it is important, to get rid of any bad humours.'

He went back upstairs. I felt a sudden weight of sadness, for Guy, for Ellen, for the unknown lad Hugh Curteys, for poor Michael Calfhill. I decided to walk round my garden to order my thoughts a little.

As I came round the side of the house I saw Coldiron chopping a pile of wood with an axe. His red face was slick with sweat; it dripped down past his eyepatch, onto his nose. Josephine was beside him, twisting her hands anxiously. She seemed on the point of tears. 'Hunchbacks,' her father was saying. 'Swart-coloured men, pregnant hussies falling and displaying their great bellies on the stairs.' He jumped and looked round at the sound of my approach. Josephine's eyes widened and her mouth dropped open.

I stared at him. 'Think yourself lucky Barak was not with me,' I said coldly. 'If he heard you talking of his wife like that you might find yourself on the wrong end of that axe.' I walked round him and away. I would have dismissed him on the spot, but the look of utter fear in Josephine's eyes had stopped me.

Chapter Five

AN HOUR LATER Guy and I sat down to supper. Coldiron was at least a good cook, and we dined on fresh river eels with butter sauce. His manner was obsequiously respectful and he kept his eye downcast as he served us.

When he had left the room, I told Guy about my meeting with the Queen and the Curteys case. I also said that if I were to go to Hampshire, it would be a way of investigating Ellen's past.

He fixed me with his keen brown eyes, hesitated a moment, then said, 'You ought to tell her you know how she feels about you and that there is no hope.'

I shook my head vigorously. 'I fear the effect on her. And if I stopped going to see her, she would be alone.'

Guy did not reply, only went on looking at me. I threw down my knife and sat back.

'If only love could always be mutual,' I said quietly. 'I loved Dorothy Elliard, but she could not return my love. While for Ellen I feel only—liking, yes. Pity.'

'Guilt? Because of what you cannot feel for her?'

I hesitated. 'Yes.'

He said quietly, 'It would take courage for you to tell her. To face her reaction.'

I frowned angrily. 'I am not thinking of myself!'

'Not at all? Are you sure?'

'The best way to help her is to find out the truth about her past!' I snapped. 'Then—'

'Then the problem may be handed over to someone else?'

'It does not belong with me. And finding out the truth can only help her, surely.'

He did not reply.

* * *

AFTERWARDS I went upstairs to look at my commonplace books, notes on cases and aspects of the law going back to my student days. I needed to refresh my mind on the rules and procedures of the Court of Wards. First, though, I thought about Coldiron. I half-wished I had dismissed him in the garden, but it occurred to me that if I did and then had to go to Hampshire, there would be nobody left in charge of the house and the two boys except Guy, and it would be unfair to leave that responsibility with him. Better to set enquiries about possible stewards in motion round Lincoln's Inn tomorrow, and make sure I had someone to take his place before dismissing him. Yet Josephine worried me; I did not want to cast her out into the world with nobody but Coldiron. I cursed the day I had taken him on.

I spent the rest of the evening making notes, calling down to Coldiron to bring a candle as the light faded. I heard Josephine's footsteps pattering up the stairs: she brought in a candle, set it on my desk, and left with a quick curtsey. Her steps descended again, pitter, pitter, pitter.

At length I stopped writing and sat back to think. Master Hobbey had begun by purchasing a portion of this tract of woodland plus the monastic buildings, which he had converted into a house, then he had bought the children's wardship. The capital outlay for all these transactions would have been large, even for a prosperous merchant. It would be interesting to find out the sums involved. Emma, Bess Calfhill said, had not liked young David Hobbey; but my reading had made clear that only in the most exceptional circumstances would the court consider an appeal by a ward against a proposed marriage. The marriage partner would have to be far below her in social class, or a criminal, or diseased or deformed—I noted wryly that a hunchback counted—for the Court of Wards to disallow the marriage on the basis of 'disparagement'.

But Emma had died, and if that was Hobbey's plan it had come to naught. Her inheritance would have passed to Hugh and though by one of the law's oddities a girl, if unmarried, could apply to have her wardship ended at fourteen, a boy could not 'sue out his livery' until the age of twenty-one. According to Bess, seven years ago Hugh had been eleven; he would be eighteen now—three years till he could come into his lands.

I got up and paced the floor. Until Hugh was twenty-one Hobbey would be entitled only to the normal income his lands brought in, and if it was woodland there would be no income from rents. Yet, as I had told Barak, the owners of wardships were notorious for 'wasting' the lands of their wards, selling and profiting from assets like woodland and mining rights.

A book on my shelf caught my eye: Roderick Mors's Lamentation of a Christian Against the City of London, a diatribe against the city's social evils that had belonged to my friend Roger. I opened it, remembering there was a passage about wardship: 'God confound that wicked custom; for it is too abominable, and stinks from the earth to heaven, it is so vile.'

I closed the book and looked out over my garden. It was nearly dark; the window was open and the scent of lavender came up to me. I heard the bark of a fox, a flutter of wings somewhere. I thought, I could almost be in the countryside, back on the farm where I grew up. At that moment it was hard to believe the country was embroiled in crisis; armed men marching, armies forming, ships gathering in the Channel.

* * *

NEXT MORNING I walked down Chancery Lane to catch a boat to Westminster Stairs. Crossing Fleet Street, I saw someone had placed handwritten posters all over the Temple Bar, calling on the mayor to beware 'priests and strangers' that would set fire to London. The weather was even stickier this morning; the sky had taken on a yellow, sulphurous look. I turned into Middle Temple Lane and followed the narrow passageway downhill between the narrow buildings. Along a side lane the old Templar church was visible. Vincent Dyrick practised in the Temple. I thought, only four days now until the hearing. I walked on past Temple Gardens, where the recent storms had laid great wreaths of petals under the rose bushes, and down to Temple Stairs.

The river was still crowded with supply boats heading east. I saw one barge laden with arquebuses, five-foot iron barrels glinting in the sun. The boatman told me all the King's ships had sailed out from Deptford now, bound for Portsmouth. 'We'll sink those French bastards,' he said.

At Westminster Stairs two barges were tied up, each with a dozen men leaning on the oars. I climbed up into New Palace Yard, under the huge shadow of Westminster Hall. A company of a hundred soldiers was drawn up beside the great fountain, resplendent in the red and white of the London Trained Bands. They made a magnificent display, as they were meant to. Their weapons were a stark contrast to their bright uniforms: dark, heavy wooden maces with heads full of spikes and studs in elaborate, brutal designs.