Goldsmith's Row (19 page)

"Well, it was a nine days' wonder to us both, and Frank's death was a great sorrow, but as for her child, I can't say I was much occupied in thinking of him. Boys don't care for infants in their cradles. Tom and I believed that my uncle would provide for him, but we knew better than to raise the subject with our families, and as time went on I practically forgot his existence.

"Until I came home this spring, and you presented Grace to me as Frank's long-lost daughter."

"And you took me for an impudent adventuress," said Philadelphia sweetly. "I'm beginning to see why."

Laurence flushed. "I was so astonished that I misjudged your place in the scheme of things—but only for a very short time. I thought, you see, that Grace must have been introduced into the house by someone so ignorant of our family history that they didn't even know the one fact that should have been beyond question—the sex of my cousin's child.

"I was even more astonished to learn that it was Mrs. Tabor herself who had set on foot the search for her supposed grand-daughter. She told me she had certain knowledge of the girl's existence from a letter Bess had written her the day Frank died."

"Did she show you the letter?"

"Not then. If she had, I should have acted differently. As it was, I decided that either Tom had been mistaken, or that my own memory had played me false. What would you believe in such a case? The written testimony of an eye-witness, or a whisper of forbidden gossip passed between two boys of fourteen?"

"You should have known better than to trust this eyewitness," said Bess Iredale ruefully.

"I should have known better than to trust my poor aunt," he retorted. "However, I accepted the news that my illegitimate cousin was a girl, not a boy, though I never accepted Grace as the rightful claimant. There was something —I don't know how to describe it—when I first rejected her, simply because she wasn't a boy, she seemed at once too much afraid and too little surprised. And I was certain Joel was in league with that woman at the Charity Hospital, they were both far too glib. So I went on arguing with my aunt, and eventually she showed me Bess's famous letter."

"So you discovered you'd been right all along."

"No, I didn't. That's the crux of the whole matter. I discovered that it was equal chances, boy or girl, we had no proof either way."

"Surely the church register at Enfield…"

"There was no entry. Remember that Bess baptized the child the day it was born. And the midwife is now an old woman who has delivered so many babies that she can't remember any of them clearly. I myself had now decided that what Tom had told me was true, but do you think my aunt would have accepted that scrap of hearsay evidence, after all those years of convincing herself that somewhere in the world she had a beautiful, fair-haired granddaughter, the image of Frank?"

"No," said Philadelphia, "I see your dilemma.
You
had to have something more solid to go on. So you decided to find Mrs. Iredale?"

"You must understand," he said, "that I thought it would be easy, that I simply had to discover through the assay-master where Tom was working now; he would tell me where to look for Bess, and we should get the thing decided with hardly any delay. That was why I continued to hold my tongue."

The assay-master, thought Philadelphia. Of course, Tom Angell was a goldsmith too, so he was probably practicing his craft somewhere in the provinces. Because of the need to ensure that precious metals were sold at their proper weight and value, the Goldsmiths' Company of London had a certain authority over all the goldsmiths and silversmiths in the kingdom, and their assay-master went on tours of inspection at regular intervals. A man of Laurence's standing should have had no trouble in locating his friend. Yet something must have gone wrong. Perhaps Tom Angell was dead? She looked enquiringly at his sister.

"My brother went to Bristol," she said, "after my father was sold up. He married the daughter of a merchant captain, and found a sea-faring life suited him better than the anvil or the shop. A strange choice, but it's brought him prosperity. And I married his partner. I'm afraid we have been a sad trial to Laurence."

He had almost given up hope of tracing them, and then, while he was down here at Thurley, it came out by chance that one of the neighboring squires had a sister who still kept in touch with some of the Angell family. In due course Laurence was able to get news of Bess. He had gone tearing down to Bristol to enlist her help. She was delighted to see him but rather surprised by his
mission.
Of course she had told Mrs. Tabor that the child was a boy. Laurence had quoted her own letter to her (he now knew it by heart) and Bess was appalled. She offered to come and put things right, and they had ridden straight to Thurley.

So much was now made plain, especially Laurence's flat refusal to accept Grace as his cousin, right from the start, before he had made the faintest attempt to examine the evidence. It was this high-handed attitude which had led Philadelphia to condemn him for being unjust, avaricious and heartless. Now, of course, she recognized the fact that had been literally staring him in the face. No wonder he had been so definite. And in the end he had been proved right. Was that entirely a cause for satisfaction? He had destroyed an illusion that was making his aunt happy without doing her any particular harm. Couldn't he have left well alone? No, Philadelphia decided after a moment's reflection, he could not allow that foolish and vulnerable old woman to be deceived. He had to speak out, any man of integrity would have felt the same.

"There's one thing I don't understand," she said thoughtfully.

"Only one?"

"One will do to start with. How was it, when
Joel
went
to
look for the missing grandchild down in Kent, that he didn't discover it was a boy?"

"I don't suppose Joel went any further than Southwark. I suspect he made straight for the Charity Hospital and chose a pretty, docile girl who would do exactly as she was bid. I dare say he meant to marry her, once her inheritance seemed secure."

"Oh. I had not considered—do you think Mr. Zachary Downes is in the plot?"

"I'm certain he is not."

"Yet you are determined to believe the worst of Joel?"

"Far from it," he said with unexpected vehemence. "You don't know how awkwardly I am placed."

Philadelphia was wondering what to make of this cryptic statement, when Bess turned her head slightly and said, "Listen!"

There were distant sounds and cries coming from the garden. They all looked out of the window on to a map-like view of desiccated flower beds, overgrown hedges and cropped grass spreading down to the lake. There were seven or eight people moving about and waving their arms at the water's edge; the autumn evening had thrown up a layer of mist, and it was hard to tell what they were doing.

"Isn't that your steward?" asked Bess. "I can't see why-look, they've got something in the water."

"It's a woman," said Laurence. "My God, it's Grace!" He wasted no more time. He was across the gallery and half-way down the stairs before Philadelphia had properly taken in what was happening. She and Bess ran after him, as fast as they could in their heavy skirts, out of the front door and into the forecourt; he had already vanished when they rounded the side of the house. At last they emerged on to the grass. Laurence was still running, about twenty yards ahead of them, and some sort of fight had started beside the lake. They could no longer see Grace, she was hidden from them by the level of the bank, but they could hear her crying out for help, and Philadelphia, gasping for breath, could still see in her mind's eye, the horrifying vision of a white-faced doll bobbing in the water, with her hair streaming around her.

A sudden bulk loomed out of the mist: a horse, wearily grazing, with a saddle on its back and reins dragging on the ground. She did not stop to wonder what it was doing there.

Laurence had now reached the party on the bank. The fight was unevenly matched, there were four men against one, and they had got him down on the ground and were kicking and hitting him with sticks, cheered on by an older man and several women. There was a babel of noise, but the screams from the lake had stopped.

Laurence sailed straight into the melee, seized Simeon Wacey by his black coat, swung him round and gave him a cracking blow on the jaw. Wacey went down like a stone. Laurence planted himself in front of the injured man and sent another of his assailants flying. The two remaining warriors ran away. A fat woman in an apron went chasing after one of them with little cries of concern. Philadelphia recognized Temperance, the chambermaid, and her imbecile son. She also recognized, with a kind of unrelated astonishment, that the man on the grass was Joel.

She could think of nothing but Grace and that ominous silence after the screaming. As the edge of the lake became visible, her heart gave a plunge of relief, for there were two other figures down there with Grace, supporting her between them: a young urchin who worked in the stables, and a fair-haired boy whom she had never seen before. They were standing waist-deep in water, their hands green with slime, as they tried to lift Grace clear of the reeds, and the stranger was comforting her as though he had known her all her life.

25

One of the most extraordinary facts of that extraordinary evening was that Mrs. Tabor slept through everything. Going up for the third time to make sure that she was comfortable, Philadelphia was thankful to find that she had not moved an inch. She reckoned it was a dispensation of Providence.

There had been so much to do when they got back to the house. Grace had to be revived and comforted and helped into dry clothes—she would not go to bed because she was afraid of being left alone: she clung to the strange boy who had arrived so mysteriously with Joel and rescued her from the lake. As soon as Philadelphia heard her calling him Coney one half of the mystery was solved. The other half, the question of what they were doing at Thurley, would have to wait. Philadelphia had found clothes for Coney too, and for the small stable-boy who had bravely taken Grace's part, and who had now been sent home to his family with much praise and commendation.

Joel, unlike the other three, had not been in the lake, but he needed the most attention. He had managed to hold back Wacey and his minions while Coney jumped into the water to rescue Grace, and in doing so he had been severely beaten, his body was covered with gashes and bruises, especially his arms, legs and ribs; he had a black eye and a cut mouth. Philadelphia and Bess had dressed his wounds, while the depleted household servants brought in a makeshift supper and prepared a bedchamber for the unexpected guests.

As she crossed the dark hall, Philadelphia could see through the open doorway into the parlor, the people inside held within its frame, like actors on a stage. Grace was sitting on a tuffet, drying her long hair in front of the wood fire. She was as pale as wax, and could not stop trembling; even so, she had survived her horrifying ordeal better than they had dared to hope. Coney sat cross-legged on the floor beside her, a tough, resilient, watchful boy, who undoubtedly saw himself as her only protector.

Laurence was still sitting at the end of the supper-table, only slightly ruffled by his part in the fight. Beside him, Bess Iredale, in her red dress, was cutting up a plate of meat for Joel. And there was Joel himself, propped in a chair full of cushions, battered and wretched.

The lurid marks on his face made him look like a clown, and his right arm was in a sling. He had hardly spoken since they helped him back into the house. There had been too much to contend with: his own injuries, the shock of what those brutes had done to Grace, the threat of ruin now that their conspiracy had been uncovered. And finally the news that he had gone to so much trouble merely to stage the impersonation of an heiress who had never existed. That was the last straw.

Laurence heard Philadelphia's footsteps. He got up and came out into the hall to meet her.

Seeing him at close quarters, she realized that he was a good deal shaken, under his habitual composure, and she had a sudden feeling of compunction for the way she had frequently misjudged him in the past. Perhaps if she had been more conciliating, he might have told her his real reason for refusing to accept Grace as his cousin. But she'd been so set on championing Grace at the start—only to abandon the poor little wretch in the end, when she most needed help. I left her alone, she thought, and those brutes nearly murdered her.

"You must be worn out," said Laurence. "I'm afraid I've let you bear the brunt of all this troublesome business; I don't know what we should have done without you."

"Oh, it's nothing," she disclaimed. 'In fact, I was Just thinking I'd left undone all the things I ought to have done. If I'd been charitable enough to go and look for Grace, after she was shown up as an impostor, those devils would never have got hold of her…"

"If that makes you feel guilty, what do you suppose I'm feeling? I set off the charge which led to all this devastation."

"You could hardly ignore the fact that your aunt was being deceived."

"Oh yes, I can justify my actions," he said. "I've been a model of self-righteous zeal; Hannah Beck couldn't have managed better. Which reminds me, how is my aunt?"

"Fast asleep."

"We must be thankful for small mercies. There is another matter I wanted to discuss with you, but not in there, in front of that poor child. Mrs. Whitethorn, why did they accuse her of witchcraft?"

"I think it was on account of the rhyme your father wrote for Frances."

"My father?" he repeated.

She told him the history of the rhyme itself, and the sensation that Grace had produced when she quoted it, quite casually, to the children; all the delighted acclamation which the servants must have overheard. And surely he remembered, that afternoon in the gallery, Grace insisting, against all the evidence, that she must be the Tabor grandchild "because she knew the rhyme."

"She learnt it from Joel."