I gave a little bow. 'You have been more than gracious, Master Herepath, and I thank you for bearing so patiently with my questions. With your permission, I shall now take my leave.'
He rose to his feet once more, good humour restored at the prospect of my departure. And who could blame him? My probing must have awakened many painful memories which he was trying to forget.
'Both Mistress Ford and I hope that we have been of some service to you. Have you any idea, as yet, what could possibly have happened to William Woodward?'
I shook my head. 'I confess to being as much in the dark as ever, but I shall certainly seek out this Miles Huckbody and question him. Mistress Ford, your humble servant. And yours, sir. Thank you, and God be with you. If it is not too presumptuous, I shall keep you both in my prayers.'
Chapter Nine
Cicely Ford rose immediately from her place by the window and accompanied me to the door. I noted the slight frown of disapproval on Edward Herepath's face and guessed that her willingness to serve others irritated him. He wanted to revere her, isolate her from the common herd, set her apart from the mundane rigours of everyday life, but that was plainly not her way. Without displaying any trace of humility, Cicely Ford was happy to be of use, and refused to leave everything to servants in a house where, I suspected, young as she was, she had been virtual mistress since the death of her guardian's wife some three years previously.
As the door to the parlour shut behind us, she laid a detaining hand on my arm, urging me closer to the fire burning on the hall hearth, and out of the draught whistling in from the buttery, which lifted the rushes on the floor. 'Warm yourself properly before you go out again,' she said. 'The streets today are bitter.'
Nothing loath, for every delay was an added moment in her company, I held out my hands to the blaze. After a minute or two, presuming on her natural friendliness and summoning up my courage, I asked gently, 'Would you indeed have married Robert Herepath, had he lived?' The blue eyes opened wide, once again full of tears, and I glimpsed such anguish in their swimming depths that it was like a descent into hell. I averted my own gaze swiftly, uncomfortably aware that I had trespassed on private ground; seen what I should not have seen. Before I could apologize, however, she whispered, 'Yes.' A log crackled, sending up a shower of sparks. 'Forgive me…' I was beginning, but she did not hear me, wrapped as she was in her overwhelming grief. Then, suddenly, she spoke, the words bursting forth in a torrent from her overcharged heart. 'Do you know what it is like to fail the one person you love more than life itself in his hour of need? To believe him capable of the heinous crime of murder? To allow yourself to feel a revulsion so great that you turn from him in horror? Do you?' She twisted her hands together so tightly that it seemed the delicate fingers must crack, but she was unconscious of the pain. 'No, of course you don't! And I pray to God in His mercy that you never will!' She drew in her breath sharply, rearing her head on its slender neck. 'I loved Robert Herepath from the moment I first became aware of him, when I was still a child, long before my father died and left me in Edward's care. I knew that whatever he appeared to be, however spoiled and reckless and ungrateful, he was not really like that underneath. He was a man who had never grown up. He needed gentleness and affection and understanding. Oh, Edward loved him as much as I did in his own way. But he was always busy and had too little time to spare for a younger brother left in his care.' She lifted sad eyes to mine. 'Please don't think I'm blaming Edward. He was not much more than twenty when Giles Herepath died and he found himself father and mother both to a boy of barely two.' A shy smile curled her lips. 'That was the year I was born, but my own father often spoke to me of the burden Edward had so willingly shouldered, and how much he admired him for it.'
I thought that her unreasoning love for Robert Herepath had blinded her to a character ruined by an over-indulgent brother, and vitiated even further by a naturally vicious streak. I kept my views to myself, but ventured to ask, 'Why then were you as certain as everyone else that Robert had murdered William Woodward? Especially as no body was found, only William's hat which had been flung into the Frome.'
Cicely Ford shivered, in spite of the heat from the fire, and clasped her arms about her body as though she would never be warm again. 'I don't know! I don't know. Looking back now, it all seems like an evil dream.' She furrowed her brow, as though trying to make sense of the nightmare. 'Perhaps… Perhaps it was because Edward was so sure his brother had done it. Edward is not a man to be easily deceived, yet he told me himself that he was convinced of Robert's guilt as soon as he was in possession of the facts. He blamed himself bitterly for having put temptation in Robert's path, but the absence of William Woodward's body in no way disposed him to believe his brother's protestations of innocence. His conviction somehow influenced me and blinded me to the truth.'
'Robert admitted to stealing the money?' I asked, seeking confirmation of Mistress Walker's story.
'Oh, yes. He was always truthful, about his vices as well as his virtues.' Again, the fingers writhed together in anguish. 'I knew it, and that fact alone should have assured me of his innocence of the greater crime. Yet still I let myself be persuaded of his guilt.'
There was a splutter among the logs, and a small, blue flame spurted up the chimney. 'You were willing to forgive him so much,' I suggested tentatively. 'Could you not forgive him murder as well?'
The cornflower-blue eyes raised to mine were filled with abhorrence. 'The taking of human life for gain? No, that I could never condone.' Her voice fell almost to a whisper. 'That men must be killed, in war, by the law: that I accept; but otherwise, the right is God's and God's alone!'
I might have pressed the matter further, arguing that in this case the law had obviously been mistaken, but at that moment there was a knock on the street door, and a woman appeared on the half-landing of the staircase which ascended from the hall to the upper storeys of the house. 'That will surely be Master Robin,' she said in a tone of deep satisfaction.
She descended the remaining stairs, an upright, sprightly woman of some forty summers, dressed all in black except for a snow-white wimple and cap, just visible beneath her hood. She had shrewd, determined grey eyes which missed nothing, and which belied the softness of expression conveyed by her round cheeks, tip-tilted nose and generous mouth. 'I'll let him in.'
Cicely Ford managed to looked vexed, resigned and indulgent all at once. 'Dame Freda, it won't do him any harm to cool his heels a while until one of the servants is free to answer his knock.'
This, then, was the duenna employed by Edward Herepath as his ward's companion. I could not make up my mind in those first few minutes whether I liked her or not. I decided I should need to know her better before coming to any conclusion. Dame Freda gave me a slanting glance in passing and, ignoring her mistress's remonstrance, went at once to the street door and lifted the latch.
The young man who entered in a flurry of cold wind was typical of the dandies of his generation, and reminded me forcibly of Alderman Weaver's son-in-law as I had seen him three years previously. Once the sable-lined cloak had been discarded with an impressively negligent gesture, Master Robin, whoever he might be, revealed himself in all the glory of a parti-coloured doublet so short as to barely reach below his hips, thus displaying a padded cod-piece of impossible proportions, decorated with gold and silver tassels. His slender waist was circled with a belt of finest scarlet leather, which had a buckle studded with garnets and pieces of jade, and matching scarlet boots whose toes were at least two inches long — not, of course, as long as many shoe pikes, but certainly too long for general walking or riding. Both boots and belt hissed defiantly at the young man's shock of red hair, cut in a fringe across his forehead and curling to his shoulders. The eyes were hazel, set in a cherubic face of the extremely florid hue often found in people of his colouring. His whole bearing, reflected in his confident smile, gave me the impression of a man supremely sure of himself and of his welcome, totally impervious to the chilliness of Cicely Ford's manner towards him.