Taken unawares, the gyp tried too late to step back from the blow, putting his weight on his bad leg. He missed his footing and fell to the ground. Whichcote cut him again with the whip, this time sending the tip curling around the angle between Mulgrave’s neck and shoulder.
The gyp howled and scrambled to his feet. He had lost his hat and wig. He ran back the way he had come, staggering, but moving surprisingly fast. Whichcote stalked after him, swinging the whip, his riding boots clattering and slipping on the cobbles. His anger had found a safe target. He felt almost grateful to Mulgrave.
He rounded the end of the cottage and found himself in a neglected garden.
Mulgrave was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he had taken refuge in the cottage, or even in the mill beyond. Whichcote caught sight of a figure by the water, barely visible beyond the unpruned fruit trees at the bottom of the garden.
A whipping, then a ducking. That would teach the knave a lesson.
He realized his mistake before he reached the trees. It was Frank himself down there, quite alone, and sitting with his back to the cottage. His coat and hat lay beside him on the grass. There was a rod in his hand and the line trailed limply into the water, shifting with the current. He did not turn as Whichcote drew nearer, though he must have heard the approaching footsteps.
Prudence, Whichcote told himself. He felt unusually calm now. He would play the long game.
‘Frank!’ Whichcote drew level and smiled down at him, knowing that now he must dissemble as never before. He shifted the whip to his left hand, ready to shake Frank’s hand with his right. ‘I give you good day. I am rejoiced to see you.’
Frank laid down the rod and stood up. He ignored Whichcote’s outstretched hand and bowed stiffly.
‘And looking so well,’ Whichcote went on, placing the spurned hand negligently on his hip as if that had been his intention all along. ‘Why, you are a positive advertisement for the beneficial effects of rural pursuits. I declare you tempt me to come and live in seclusion with you. We shall do nothing but fish and shoot and ride, and be happy the livelong day. Are you quite alone?’
Frank said nothing, but Whichcote fancied he nodded. It was difficult to be sure because the sun was low in the sky. It was behind Frank, obscuring his face and shining into Whichcote’s eyes. The heavy golden light caught the ends of Frank’s hair, which he was wearing loose and unpowdered for all the world as though he were a ploughboy.
‘I am sorry to say I was obliged to discipline your servant as I came in,’ Whichcote went on. ‘That man Mulgrave – damn the fellow, he’s old enough to know better. He was downright impudent. You should turn him out of your service, you really should.’
He paused but Frank said nothing.
‘Your friends are anxious for news. May I tell them you are fully restored? When will you be back among us?’
He heard sounds behind him, and turned. Mulgrave was limping down the path. The gyp stopped beside the trees, keeping a safe distance between himself and Whichcote. There was already a weal burning across his left cheek, and another cut like a red furrow around his neck, just below the jaw.
‘He took a whip to me, sir,’ Mulgrave called. ‘Ain’t right. I’m not his servant. And he owes me money, too.’
‘Hold your tongue,’ Frank snapped, his sense of propriety outraged by Mulgrave’s daring to speak so rudely of his betters.
‘You’ll chastise him yourself, I hope,’ Whichcote said. ‘Good God, what is the world coming to?’
Frank turned his eyes back to Whichcote. With sudden violence, he leaped forward and seized the older man around the waist. Whichcote, taken entirely by surprise, at first made no attempt to defend himself. Frank pulled him down the slope of the bank. Whichcote struggled, and briefly succeeded in breaking Frank’s hold. But Frank was younger, larger and stronger than him. He embraced Whichcote and squeezed, pinning the latter’s arms to his side.
‘Damn you, let me -’
Frank dragged him further down the slope. The ground near the water was soft. Whichcote’s riding boots slipped in the mud. He butted Frank’s face with his forehead as viciously as he could. Frank swore and shifted his grip. He raised the older man off his feet.
‘For God’s sake -’
Frank pivoted, lifting his victim higher. Gathering momentum with the force of the swing, he flung Whichcote away from him. For an instant Whichcote hung in the air, limbs flailing. There was a great splash as he hit the water.
‘Quack,’ Frank said, smiling. ‘Quack, quack.’
Holdsworth loped swiftly out of Cambridge, climbing the long hill from the river as though the Furies were pursuing him. As he walked, two faces constantly flashed before him in the inner theatre of his mind: one was Tobias Soresby’s, white, bony and full of fear; and the other was Elinor Carbury’s, turned up to him with those lovely eyes trained on him – those eyes, so unexpected and indeed ravishing in that stern, thin, heavy-browed face.
Why do we think only the dead haunt us, he wondered, for the living are just as good at it?
The town dropped away behind him. As the light began to fade, the clouds were coming in from the west and it grew noticeably cooler. Holdsworth slowed his pace. He remembered how, on his first night at Jerusalem, Richardson had taken him out into the gardens and had talked of the place as a fortress, enclosed and inviolate. But there was another way of looking at it, namely that the walls kept people in as much as they kept others out. The place was a trap, and animals caught in traps cannot escape one another. Once, in the days of his prosperity, Holdsworth had employed a journeyman who delighted in collecting rats and placing them together in a cage. The rats would fight until only one was left, bloody, victorious and often dying. It was such sport to watch them, the journeyman used to say, and he would take bets on who would be the winner.
A rider appeared a quarter of a mile away. His horse was moving at a walk, so the man was in no hurry. Slowly he and Holdsworth drew together. There was something strange about the figure slumped in the saddle. His head was down. His coat looked limp and bedraggled. He wore neither hat nor wig.
The distance between them decreased. The coat was more than bedraggled – it was wet, and so were the rest of the man’s clothes. When they were no more than twenty yards apart, the rider raised his head. His eyes met Holdsworth’s but slid away as the head bowed again over the horse’s neck. But there had been time enough for Holdsworth to recognize him.
‘Mr Whichcote,’ he said. ‘Good evening, sir. Have you met with an accident?’
Ignoring Holdsworth, Whichcote urged the horse into a trot and passed him. Holdsworth turned to watch his retreating figure. Once he was safely past, Whichcote allowed his horse to slow to a swaying, ambling walk.
Holdsworth went on as quickly as he could, trying to ignore a blister developing on his right foot. He passed through the little village, where the dogs barked at him and the smith, smoking his evening pipe outside the forge, watched him curiously. Holdsworth turned into the track to the mill.
Mulgrave was in the yard, also smoking. He stood up with obvious reluctance when he saw Holdsworth and made only a token effort to hide his pipe. There was a mark on his left cheek, a long, angry weal, and another on his neck partly concealed by his necktie and collar.
‘Thank God it’s you, sir,’ the gyp said, casting his eyes piously towards heaven. ‘I thought for a moment you was that devil again.’
‘Mr Whichcote?’
‘Who else, sir? The devil incarnate.’
‘I passed him on the road.’
‘He took his riding crop to me. In this very yard. I’m as free a citizen of this country as he is, sir, and maybe I’ll have the law on him for it. It’s assault and battery, that’s what it is. And there’s the money he owes me, too, the villain, he’s as good as stolen it.’