He estimated that their first day on the road would take them into the Chilterns. Beaconsfield was probably too close a destination and Stokenchurch too far, so they would find some intermediate spot to spend the night. That was when he would strike. He carried dagger, rapier and club, but it was the knotted cord in his capcase that elected itself as the murder weapon. Putting his foot in the stirrup, he hauled himself up into the saddle and patted the leather bag, which held the cord. It would lie quietly in there like a snake in its lair until it was allowed out to strike with its deadly fangs. Nicholas Bracewell was evidently a strong and alert man who would need to be taken unawares. He was a far worthier target than the innocent girl whose life he had so casually snuffed out. She had been no match for him but Nicholas was a quarry he could be proud to hunt.
He would enjoy killing him.
Chapter Four
Morning brought no relief from a night of suffering. Anne Hendrik awoke from a troubled sleep to find that Nicholas Bracewell had left. His bed had not been used and his room had been stripped of all his possessions. As she stood alone in the small, bare, forlorn chamber, she was hit by an onrush of guilt that made her sway and reach out for support. She had been too quick to condemn him, too slow to give him the benefit of the doubt. Years of trust and understanding had been vitiated in one burst of anger, and he had been forced to sneak away from her house in the middle of the night like an outcast. It was a severe punishment for a crime that might not even exist.
What had Nicholas actually done? Twenty-four hours earlier she had thought him the best of men and could call up a thousand examples of his goodness and reliability. Then a young traveller staggered into the house in search of her lodger and all was lost. Evidently, the messenger was bringing a call for help, and it had sent Nicholas off to Devon, albeit by a winding route in the company of Westfield’s Men. Anne Hendrik’s first thought was that a woman was certainly involved. Shorn of her male attire and laid out on a stone slab, the girl had the look of a maidservant whose short hair and thickset features allowed her to conceal her sex. Her borrowed clothing had quality and her horse good breeding, so she had clearly worked in a prosperous household. No man would dispatch such an unprotected creature on such a difficult errand. Anne therefore assumed that she was sent by her mistress to summon the aid of Nicholas Bracewell, who was possibly her former lover, even her husband. But was this necessarily the case?
Nicholas did not deny the existence of a silent woman in his past but there did not have to be any romantic implications. Could the woman not just as easily be his mother, or sister, or a relation? And was there not — now that she paused to reflect upon it — another reason for his refusal to offer her a full explanation? Nicholas was shielding Anne. The message that the girl brought had already cost one life. He did not wish to put hers in jeopardy as well. As long as Anne Hendrik was kept in ignorance, she was safe. That was why he could not take her completely into his confidence. He had begged for her trust and she had held it back. Anne’s blind jealousy had clouded her judgement and blunted her finer feelings. She had lost him for ever.
Yet even as she swung once more towards him, there were considerations that drew her back into pained disapproval. Nicholas Bracewell had rejected her appeal. Given a stark choice between staying with her and going to Barnstaple, he selected the latter. Anne was hit by the realisation that, even if Devon had not been an option, he would still have left with Westfield’s Men. They were the true centre of his life. She was merely a pleasant appendage to a real existence that took place elsewhere. It was a doomed relationship. Margery Firethorn had once told her that to marry an actor was to hurl oneself head first into a whirlpool of uncertainty. Sharing her bed with a man of the theatre had left Anne Hendrik in the same helpless predicament. The most sensible thing she could do was to put him from her mind and concentrate on her work.
‘You do not need to do this, mistress.’
‘What is that, Preben?’
‘I have been making hats for over thirty years and I am too old to learn new ways. Please do not stand over me like that.’ The Dutchman smiled respectfully up at her. ‘You are in my light.’
‘I am in your way,’ she said with a shrug, ‘but you are too kind to put it like that.’ Anne glanced around the room where her four employees and the apprentice were bent over the respective hats that they were working on. ‘Are there no more deliveries to be made this morning?’
‘None.’
‘What of our accounts?’
‘They are all in order and up to date.’
‘There must be something I can do, Preben.’
‘No, mistress.’
‘Perhaps I could help to-’
‘Let hatmakers make their hats,’ he suggested quietly. ‘That is why you pay us. If you seek employment, go out and find new orders to keep our trade healthy.’
‘That is good advice.’
‘When Jacob was alive, he led by example and we toiled to keep up with his nimble fingers. His memory lives on to guide us. We will not skimp or slack because we are left alone in our workplace. Jacob Hendrik watches over us.’
Anne sighed and accepted the wisdom of his comments.
Preben van Loew was a tall, spare, wizened man in his fifties with skills that had been chased out of his native Holland and that had settled in London. Dressed severely in black, he was modest and unassuming and always wore a dark skullcap on his domelike head. Anne owed him a tremendous amount because he had kept the business going when Jacob Hendrik, his closest friend, had died, and he had instructed her in all the subtleties of his craft when she decided to take over the reins herself. Her talents lay in managing the others, finding commissions, dealing with their many customers and helping to design new styles of headgear. Until that morning, she also knew when to leave her staff alone to get on with their work. Now she was simply using them to occupy her mind, and her presence was disruptive.
With a gesture of apology, she moved to the door. Preben van Loew spoke without looking up from his task of snipping through some material with his scissors.
‘I had hoped to see Master Bracewell this morning.’
‘Nicholas?’
‘He is leaving with Westfield’s Men.’
‘I know.’
‘He usually calls,’ said Preben with mild censure. ‘Whenever he has to go away for any length of time, he usually calls in here to bid us farewell.’
‘Nicholas was in a hurry,’ she explained.
‘He has always had time for friends in the past.’
Anne Hendrik needed a moment to control her features.
‘Times have changed,’ she said, then went sadly out.
Buckinghamshire was painted in its most vivid colours at this time of year and its variegated richness was refreshing to those whose palates had been jaded by city life and whose nostrils had been clogged by its prevailing stench. Westfield’s Men spent the first stage of their journey marvelling at the beauties of nature and inhaling clean country air. It helped them to forget their sorrows. The county was split in half by the Chilterns, which ran across it from east to west to lend a rolling charm. In earlier centuries, the hills had been entirely covered with magnificent beech trees, but they had been thinned out at the order of successive abbots of St Albans, who had owned much of the Chilterns, in order to help the Welsh drovers who were bringing their animals to sell in London. The beechwoods were ideal cover for thieves who stole cattle, sheep, pigs and geese with relative impunity until their places of ambush and refuge were felled by the axe.