Celia had been quite correct in assuming that neither Clemency nor Sybilla would be willing to admit to selling the Maynards to the Irish slavers. Oswald had been a different matter. He was all for revenge, for raising the hue and cry to lay the fugitives by the heels, and was almost struck dumb with rage at their escape. I thought at one moment that I should have to defend both Celia and myself from physical violence. But his sisters restrained him, pointing out with some asperity that, being only a boy at the time, he could easily be exonerated from the charge of slave-dealing; a charge which, even if it could not be satisfactorily proved, would be mud which stuck.
They were all three in a state of shock after learning the true identity of Arbella and ‘Father Berowne’, but to Oswald it was as nothing to the shock of Celia’s scorn and her decision to marry Roderick Jeavons. Indeed, had I not personally escorted her and her baggage to Old Dean’s Lane that very afternoon, where she awaited the doctor’s return, I truly believe that Oswald would have found some way to keep her prisoner at the Arbour. As for me, he could not bear to have me in his sight, and it was only Clemency’s insistence that I be allowed to rest for a day before setting out on my homeward journey, that enabled me to remain for that night and the next.
I took the opportunity of the day’s grace thus granted me to write a letter to Timothy Plummer concerning what I had seen and heard at the house next to Roderick Jeavons’s. This I entrusted to Clemency, extracting her promise that its delivery to Crosby’s Place would be delayed until the following Monday, by which time, God willing, I should be well on my way home, using those hidden paths and byways known only to foot-travellers, out of the reach of mounted men — if, that was, Timothy should decide to send after me.
And so, in the pale sunshine of a warm spring morning, a bundle of those clothes which Adela had not taken home with her slung across one shoulder, my cudgel in my hand and sufficient money for my needs in the pouch at my waist, I strode, whistling tunelessly, along the track towards Reading. The little king was safely on his throne, the Woodville plot against the duke had been foiled, the plotters in prison, I had solved the Godsloves’ mystery for them, however unsatisfactory the outcome, God was in His heaven and all was right with my world. .
But Fortune, that fickle jade, was about to spin her wheel in a totally unforeseen direction, affecting king and commoner alike. Nothing would ever be the same again.