Nicholas nodded, and began to turn the horse. He looked back once. “Then let these respectable and respecting friends come back to collect you,” he said, “otherwise the Watch will find you. That, or in the morning the dairymaids and swineherds will discover your remains dead from the cold. So best get yourself down to the docks and find a carvel heading southeast.” He paused, holding the horse still. “Can you walk?”
Adrian looked away. “Why should you care?”
“Self pity again, Adrian?” Nicholas nodded to David to walk on, saying only, half to himself, “It is so often those who cannot summon pity for others who wallow in pity for themselves.”
The horse walked slowly, keeping to David’s careful pace. Emeline, with a lot to say and questions bubbling in her head, said nothing. It was not the moment. She sat sideways, one arm around her husband’s back, the other tucked into his belt. He slumped a little, half supporting her, half allowing the horse its own choices. It was David who led.
They were some distance away when they heard the noises. The night had grown quiet and a slant of moonlight reflected in the puddles, lighting the wet cobbled silver. Stars peeped between the clouds. The storm had passed entirely. But clear in the new washed air were the sudden shouts, then the rattled gurgle of pain.
For a moment Nicholas frowned. Then he yelled, “Get back,” and wheeled the horse back the way they had come.
Adrian lay where he had been before, but now, instead of being propped again the little garden wall, he sprawled flat upon the wet earth. The seeping mud squelched into his ears. His hat had fallen off and his hair was thick with filth. His eyes were closed. Nicholas tumbled from the saddle, half collapsing. One knee bent, standing only on one leg, he leaned down towards his cousin. Adrian’s throat was sliced across so deeply that above the stiffened laces of his shirt, the gullet, sinews, flesh and blood oozed clear. A butcher’s chop, impatient to kill and be gone. Nicholas whispered, “Adrian?” But Adrian was already dead. There was no longer any sign of the killer. “Finished, then,” murmured Nicholas, “by those friends of honour and respect. By those he thought cared.” He looked up at David. “We must arrange the funeral. But nothing can put right what has been done.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
With her shift a dazzling bleached white and the skirts over it a flutter of embroidered primrose, Avice sat, studiously draped in taffeta glory upon the settle. There was sunlight from the long mullioned window slanting across her russet ringlets, her little toes were well shod in pale blue kid, and the long curls of ribbons lacing her neckline, waist and cuffs were pretty pink satin. Her smile echoed the brilliance of her new clothes. She had rarely been more content.
“I am,” she said, “not sorry in the least.”
“I think Nicholas is,” decided Emeline. “He shouldn’t be. But he truly is.”
“Of course he shouldn’t be sorry. He should be jumping happily up and down just like me. After all, the horrid man sent a dozen armed traitors to get rid of him. Adrian killed his brother Peter, not to mention Papa, and then tried to murder Nicholas himself.”
“Well,” pondered Emeline, “we feel that way of course. But Nicholas knew Adrian from birth. He was his cousin, for goodness’ sake. And after all, Peter was a vile creature who deserved to be slaughtered. As for Papa – well, I’d prefer not to think about it.”
“Someone should kill Nicholas’s own father; mean nasty man he is.”
“It’s a bit later for that now. And neither of us need see much more of the earl, even though he’s my father-in-law so I suppose I ought not to say it. Meanwhile Nicholas is taking me back to Chatwyn Castle.” Emeline regarded her sister with a widening smile. “And you have three new gowns and practically a dozen new shoes and shifts and bedrobes and enough ribbons to strangle yourself. What more can you ask for?”
“A husband. Maman says she’ll start to arrange it after we get back to Wrotham, and she says Nicholas will help find me someone rich and handsome. After all, I’m an heiress. Not as much as you are, though second best is still quite cosy. But,” Avice screwed up her nose, “I want someone nice who will like me. To think I once thought myself in love with Adrian. Ugh.”
“And that silly secretary Edmund Harris, and the goose boy before that.” Emeline smiled into her sister’s scowl. “Don’t worry. None of that is as bad as me, thinking myself in love with Peter. I should thank Adrian for having killed the wretch, otherwise I’d now be married to him.”
There was a moment’s pause. “Which is what made me wonder – you know,” Avice switched to a sudden whisper, “if it wasn’t Adrian after all. If perhaps it was Maman. Or Nurse Martha. Or both of them together. There’s no one else had more cause to get rid of Papa and Peter too. And they’re both so – well, determined. Capable!”
Emeline stood quickly, pushing back her stool. “We’ve discussed all these possibilities before and I’m not ever going to think about it again. It was all Adrian. Talking about Maman like that, Avice, is mean.”
“It isn’t mean. It’s admiration.” Avice smoothed the creases in her skirts. They turned to gold in the sunlight. “Martha and Maman together, just think of it. To protect you from Peter when Papa wouldn’t listen to any suggestion about calling off the marriage negotiations. And then the fury when they realised Papa was living with his mistress, and spending his money on her when he wouldn’t even let Maman have more than one candle in her bedchamber. All that hypocritical preaching about holy morality and being chaste and no new dresses. And there he was romping in piles of cash with naked women.”
“Maman didn’t know about the other woman.” Emeline shivered in spite of the sunbeams on her back.
“What if she did? We wouldn’t have known. She could have seen Papa and followed him one day. And both Maman and Martha would march into battle just as bravely as the king, I know they would. And just like in battle, it wouldn’t have been murder. It would have been a righteous war.”
Jerrid Chatwyn reclined in bored lethargy for a week in one of the spare bedchambers at the family house on the Strand, then ordered a litter followed by a cartload of bedding, medicines and wine barrels, and transferred himself back to his own rooms at Westminster Palace. His body, fit and honed during past years of joust and jest, healed quickly. But he was still in bed under doctor’s orders when his elder brother, also keen to return to court, trundled in to visit.
“You’re a fool, Jerrid,” the earl informed him. “You could have been killed. All this absurd playing at gallantry and trying to make me look like a sluggard in comparison. I’m not impressed, not at all.”
“I didn’t do it to impress you, Symond,” his brother informed him. “And my opinion of you never changes, whatever you might get up to. Nor do I expect to change yours of me. But you could pass the jug. My cup’s empty.”
The earl glowered, repositioned himself on the stool beside the bed, and topped up his brother’s wine cup from the brimming jug of best Malmsey. “Damned fool of a brother. Damned fool of a son.” He had topped up his own cup too, and now drained it for the third time. “The Chatwyn name’s already been held up to gossip and slander. Now brawling in the streets, and young Adrian getting himself killed.”
Jerrid raised an eyebrow. “Still thinking it was Nicholas who slaughtered Peter, are you, Symond? Or you’ve finally accepted it was Adrian?”