He yelled at his valet, though the man was less than fifteen feet away: “Hobson! Dost thou stand there a doltish idler? Get these accursed boots off me, man!”
The valet, a short and meek individual, hurried to his master's feet, knelt, and started to tug at a boot.
“Well, Jankyn? Answer me! Am I to be free at last, or wouldst the filthy harridan dally?”
Physician Jankyn, tall, bony, and gloomy in aspect, wrung his large hands nervously, his mouth twitching.
“The Lady Mabella be sore stricken, my lord,” he announced. “Yet she may bide awhile.”
Hobson, gripping de Tichborne's left calf, looked up and said: “My Lady doth wish to see thee anon, sire.”
De Tichborne pulled back his right leg and, with a vicious grunt, sent his heel thudding into his valet's face. Hobson yelped and tumbled backward onto the floor, blood spurting from his nose.
“Pardieux! That's the case, is it?” de Tichborne snarled. “Get thee upstairs, thou whimpering dog, and tell the harpy that I'll see her at my own convenience and not at hers, the hell-spawned witch! Get out of my sight!”
The valet clambered to his feet and staggered away across the opulent parlour, knocked into the corner of a table, almost fell, and stumbled out of the room.
“So thinkest thou she'll tarry, hey?” de Tichborne enquired of the medical man. He bent and started to yank at his boots. “For how long, pray? Hours? Days? Weeks, may God preserve me?”
“Weeks? Nay, my lord. Not a week-nary a day. I have it that she'll live but the night through and will be taken by sunup.”
Finally liberating his right leg, de Tichborne flung the riding boot across the room. It hit a wall and dropped to the floor.
“Praise be! Fetch me a draught, wouldst thou, Master Physician? And take one for thyself.”
Jankyn nodded and moved from the fireplace to a bureau upon which decanters of wine stood. He filled two goblets and took one over to de Tichborne, placing it on an occasional table beside his host's chair.
The squire's second boot came free and followed the first through the air. It crashed into a vase atop a cabinet, shattered the ornament, and fell to the floor amid the fragments.
“Fortune grant me a single boon: to be free of that damnable nag by the morn!” the aristocrat muttered.
He took the wine and downed it in a single gulp, then jumped to his stockinged feet, pushed past the doctor, and crossed to the bureau to pour himself another.
“Prithee, repair to the library awhile, Physician. I shall take me up to see the whore.”
“But my lord!” Jankyn protested. “The Lady Mabella is in no fit condition to receive!”
“She'll receive her damned husband, and if the effort should kill her, thou canst aid me in quaffing by way of celebration!”
Jankyn moistened his lips, hesitated, nodded unhappily, and, with goblet in hand, shuffled out of the parlour through the door that led to the library.
Casting a sneer at the elderly physician's back, de Tichborne turned and also left the room. He paced to the reception hall, retrieved his shoes, buckled them on, and stamped up the broad, sweeping staircase to the gallery above. Here he stopped and emptied his goblet. He tossed it over the balustrade and wiped his mouth as the tin vessel clattered on the tiled floor below. He proceeded along a corridor to his wife's bedchamber.
One of her nurses, sitting outside the room, stood as he approached the door. She curtseyed and moved aside.
He ran his eyes appreciatively over the girl then pushed open the portal and entered the dimly lit room without announcement.
“Art thou living, wife?”
There came movement from the large four-poster bed, and a tremulous voice, directed at the two nurses who sat beside it, said: “Leave us.”
“Yes, ma'am,” they chorused, and bobbing at the squire as they passed him, they hurried out to join their colleague in the hallway.
De Tichborne closed the door after them.
“Come thou here,” the Lady Mabella whispered.
He paced over to her and looked down in disgust at her wrinkled face, sunken cheeks, and long white hair.
The eyes that looked back at him were of the blackest jet.
“I have but a short time,” she said.
“Hallelujah!” he responded.
“Drunken sot!” she exclaimed. “Hast thou no mercy in thy soul? Art thou in truth so barren of feeling? There were times-distant, aye-when thou held me close to thy bosom!”
“Ancient history, old woman.”
“’Tis so. I shall be well rid of thee, Roger, when I pass, for thou art a brute and a whoremonger!”
“Say what thou wilt. I care not. So long as thou go to judgement by morn!”
The woman struggled to push herself into a sitting position. De Tichborne watched coldly, not raising a finger to help. Finally, she managed to drag herself up a little and rested back on her pillow.
“The final judgement troubles me little, husband, for have I not given to the poor of this parish through every sad year that I abided here? It is my final wish that thou shalt do the same.”
“Ha! I'll be damned!”
“Of that I am certain. Nevertheless, I would have the de Tichbornes donate, during the Feast of the Annunciation every year, produce of the fields to the people.”
“The blazes they will!”
“Payest thou this dole, husband, or I avow, with my very last breath I shall curse thee and thy offspring forevermore!”
Sir Roger blanched. “Have I not suffered thy evil eye sufficiently?” he muttered uneasily.
“For all thou hast inflicted upon me? Nay, there can be naught sufficient for that!” the old woman croaked. “Wilt thou concede?”
The squire looked down at his dying wife. His mouth was twisted with hatred and his eyes glinted horribly in the faint candlelight.
“I shall do as thou command me,” he growled, after a long pause. “But with one provision: it shall be thou who sets the levy!”
The old woman regarded her husband, blinking in puzzlement.
“What is this?” she exclaimed. “Thou biddest me to choose the amount of the annual donation?”
“In a manner! I bid thee traverse the borders of the fields from which the wheat must be taken. I shall dedicate to the poor of the parish the produce of whatever land thou encircles. Thou hast the time it takes for a torch to burn its full length to thus mark the extent of the charity.”
Lady Mabella gasped in horror. “What sayest thou? Surely to God thou cannot expect me to walk?”
“Then crawl,” de Tichborne snarled. “Crawl!”
He strode to the door, yanked it open, and bellowed: “Nurses! Take thy mistress from the bed and dress her! At once!”
The three young women, waiting outside the bedroom, looked at each other in confusion.
“My lord?” stuttered one. “What-what-?”
“Question me not, wench! Have her clothed and on the steps of the house good and prompt, or by God's teeth you'll suffer!”
He shoved them aside and stamped away, calling for Hobson, who met him at the bottom of the stairs. The valet had a twisted and bloodied handkerchief hanging from his left nostril.
“Bringest thou two bottles of Bordeaux up from the cellar, and be brisk about it!” de Tichborne ordered. “I shall be outside, at the front of the house!”
He then paced down the hall, joined Physician Jankyn in the library, and cried: “Here, Jankyn! Follow! We are to be right entertained!”
He led the mystified physician out, and to the lobby.
“Assist me. I would take this bench outside.”
He indicated an oak bench beside the wall near the entrance. Together, they lifted it and took it through the big double doors, across the portico, down the steps, and over the carriageway to the border of the wheat fields.