Elinor handed Holdsworth the keys. He unlocked the upper lock and crouched to insert the key in the lower. She looked down at the back of his neck and the thick, lightly powdered hair. She wondered what it would be like to touch it, whether it would feel like a dog’s hair, say, or more like a cat’s.
The second key turned in the lock. Holdsworth twisted the handle, a heavy iron ring. The door opened inwards. A current of cold and slightly musty air flowed out into the hall. The Treasury was a small, windowless room, perhaps twelve feet square, with a flagged floor like the hall and a barrel-vaulted ceiling. The walls were lined with shelves and cupboards.
Holdsworth looked about him, pursing his lips. ‘What do they keep here?’
‘The Founder’s Cup and the best of the plate. Some of it is very valuable, I believe. There will be the deeds for college properties and probably the leases. I think rents are kept here, too, and other sums of ready money.’
She made a circuit of the room, treading lightly like a thief and with her ears alert for any sounds in the house. She had not expected there to be so much in here. But she fought back the temptation to hurry for she would not give Mr Holdsworth the satisfaction of believing her to be a poor, weak representative of her sex, easily driven to hysteria. There was enough light from the doorway for her to read most of the labels attached to the boxes. It occurred to her that she might be the first woman ever to be in this room, the first woman ever to read these labels.
She came at last to the cupboards. They were not locked. The first of them contained more boxes, but the second, to her great delight, held row upon row of hooks, and from each of these hung a bunch of keys. They were neatly labelled, too, and divided alphabetically into staircases and then numerically into rooms.
She looked back at Mr Holdsworth. ‘Where are Mr Whichcote’s rooms?’
‘G4,’ he said.
She ran her finger along the rows until she found the staircase G. She unhooked the keys for number 4. She closed the door and turned round.
Holdsworth was nearer than she expected, no more than a yard away, and staring intently at her. Automatically she held out the keys and he took them, his hand touching hers as it had at the garden gate. Despite the coolness of the air, she was suddenly far too warm.
‘Madam…’ he said.
He stopped, still staring at her, and leaving whatever he had been about to say hanging in the air, unformed, full of promise and fear. Slowly his head moved nearer hers. Inch by inch, his face drew closer. Plain-featured? Oh no, she thought, quite the reverse.
There was a knock at the hall door.
They sprang apart from one another. She reached the safety of the hall. ‘Quick,’ she hissed. ‘Close the door. Ben will be here directly.’
For a big man, he moved quickly. He was out in a moment and had the door closed. She snatched the keys from him. She would lock up after he had gone. She glanced at her hands and apron, fearing to find tell-tale dirt or dust there. They were clean enough. What about her face, though? Was there some mark there, some clue to the treacherous desires of her heart?
Ben’s footsteps were approaching in the passage.
‘You called to see how the Master was,’ she murmured to Holdsworth. ‘And now you are leaving and I am come down with you to see you to the door.’
Ben arrived in the hall, hesitated when he saw his mistress with Holdsworth, and then, at a nod from her, opened the door.
Mr Richardson was on the threshold. His eyes flicked past the servant to Elinor, and then to Holdsworth standing behind her. He uncovered and bowed.
‘Mrs Carbury, your servant, ma’am. And Mr Holdsworth too. This is indeed convenient – I find I kill two birds with one stone.’
43
There had been rain in the night and the river bank was muddy. Thirty yards ahead, Tom Turdman slouched steadily along the footpath, moving with unexpected speed. He was still wearing his working clothes and a whiff of the man lingered behind him like a bad dream.
Harry Archdale plodded after him. Tom had been waiting at the end of Mill Lane. As soon as he had seen Harry, he had moved off. Harry had followed because he did not know what else to do. Now his shoes and stockings were spattered with mud and he had made the unwelcome discovery that one of the shoes leaked. His clothes were too heavy and too smart: he had dressed with pavements in mind, not country rambles. Worst of all was the sensation that he was making himself ridiculous. But he could not turn back without making himself even more ridiculous.
He paused to take out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his face. When he looked up, Tom Turdman was no longer to be seen. Harry swore and set off down the path again, walking more quickly than before. Everything looked unfamiliar. He was used to seeing this stretch of country from the water, not the land.
The path came to a stile set in a thick hedge. He climbed up and peered into the field beyond. Half a dozen cows were further along the path, at a point where the land shelved down to the water. Two of them were drinking from the river. The others, however, were lumbering in his direction.
Harry was no expert on the habits and temperaments of the bovine species. But it seemed to him that there was something particularly menacing about the way these cows were approaching, picking up speed as they did so and quite clearly taking a personal interest in him. It was also possible that one or more of them were not in fact cows but young bulls that would see him as a dangerous intruder and therefore try to trample him to death.
Prudence was undoubtedly the better part of valour. Harry was about to jump down from the stile and return the way he had come when he heard somebody say his name. Startled, he imagined for a nightmarish instant that one of the putative bulls was so ferociously intelligent that it was endowed with human speech. But then he saw Soresby standing not five yards away, down by the water in the shelter of the spreading branches of a large willow tree, with the night-soil man beside him. Lying in the water behind them was a rowing boat.
‘Soresby! What the devil do you mean by this charade?’
He heard a familiar crack as the sizar tugged at his fingers. ‘So kind, Mr Archdale,’ Soresby said in a rapid mumble. ‘So truly condescending. Would you be so good as to step this way, sir, and into the boat?’
It was an unexpectedly attractive offer. In front of Harry were the approaching cattle. Behind him lay a sea of mud and the certainty that if he walked back he would get even hotter and filthier than he already was. He pointed at Tom Turdman with his stick. ‘What about him?’ Even the mud and the heat were preferable to sitting in a small boat with the night-soil man.
‘My uncle’s leaving us now, Mr Archdale.’
Tom Turdman nodded and bowed, making a curious twisting motion that seemed to spread from his hands to his arms and then up to his shoulders. The gesture said, as clearly as if he had spoken the words aloud, that he would be delighted beyond all measure to have the honour of drinking Mr Archdale’s health.
Harry dropped a sixpence into the waiting palm. He scrambled down to the water. Soresby crouched, an ungainly spider. With one hand he held the boat close to the bank, while he offered Harry the other. The boat rocked alarmingly as Harry clambered aboard and settled in the stern. Soresby followed him and pushed off with an oar. The cattle had stopped moving and were now eating grass.
The oars dipped and rose. Harry listened to the creaking of the rowlocks and watched the green river slipping past them. Soresby was taking them towards Grantchester. The boat transformed him: the clumsiness and the diffidence dropped away. He rowed as Mulgrave opened a bottle of wine or – and here Harry blushed – as Chloe fucked, with the unassuming assurance of someone who knows exactly what he is about.