The Silent Woman (32 page)

Open space gave Nicholas more options and his own dagger was now out. The two men circled each other warily. Nicholas was bleeding profusely but he did not dare to look down at the flesh wound on his hand. Livermore could not be underestimated. Though he paid others to kill for him, he was more than capable of doing his own work. The merchant feinted then lunged but Nicholas evaded him. A second attack forced the book holder back and he fell over some coiled rope that lay on the deck. Livermore pounced and his weight took the breath out of his adversary. Nicholas had a grip on the man’s wrist but his own weapon had been knocked away.

They grappled, they rolled, they punched and gouged. Livermore even tried to bite him. With sudden power, Nicholas threw him off and got to his feet, but Livermore was after him at once. The advantage had swung back to the merchant now and he was taunting his prey, forcing him back towards the gunwale. Nicholas ran out of space. He was cornered.

‘Give me the will,’ demanded Livermore.

‘The
Mary
will never be yours.’

‘Give me the will!’

Nicholas patted his jerkin. ‘Come and take it.’

The merchant needed no more invitation. Aiming the point of his blade at Nicholas’s face, he charged forward. The book holder was too fast for him. He ducked, grabbed then heaved upwards with all his might, and the body of Gideon Livermore went over the side and into the river. The
people on the bridge were so impressed that they gave a cheer. Other boats were now being rowed out from the quay.

Nicholas leant over the side of the gunwale as the merchant surfaced. The man coughed and spluttered. Though he had learnt to swim in the river, he had never done so in heavy clothing when he was exhausted from a fight. Livermore began to flail wildly and call out for help. He was drowning. Nicholas peeled off his jerkin and kicked off his shoes before diving over the side of the ship. He hit the water cleanly and explored its murky depths for a few seconds before coming up again. He was just in time to see Livermore starting to sink. Grabbing the man from behind, he lay on his back and swam towards the ship with Livermore’s head supported above the water.

The sailor on watch was waiting to help them aboard, and the other rowing boats were closing in. Spectators on the bridge and quay were applauding Nicholas’s heroism in saving the drowning man. But Gideon Livermore himself had second thoughts. He would never inherit the estate and marry the woman he coveted. He would never own the
Mary
. All that awaited him was a humiliating trial and a long rope. He would never submit to that.

When Nicholas finally pulled him to the side of the ship, Livermore waited for his moment and then broke clear to plunge headfirst again into the dark water. Nicholas went after him and a few other men from the boats jumped in to assist, but they could not find the merchant anywhere. It was several minutes before the River Taw yielded up its sacrificial victim. When Gideon Livermore bobbed to the surface with his face still submerged, he was way beyond any processes of law.

In one transaction, many debts had been paid off.

It was a windy afternoon, but that did not deter him. He took a long, meandering, valedictory walk through the town to reacquaint himself with a youth that now seemed a century away. He went down streets where he had once played and across a field where he and his brother had first learnt to ride a horse. He left flowers on his mother’s grave at the nearby churchyard then walked slowly back towards his old family house in Boutport Street. It looked much as it had done when his parents raised their children in the dwelling. Compared to the cottage where his father now lived, it was a small mansion. A deep sorrow made him turn away.

Nicholas Bracewell went through the gate and left the town, feeling an immediate sense of release. Barnstaple had once been his entire world but it now had the whiff of a prison about it. The pleasure of seeing familiar places was offset by the pain of old memories. He walked briskly on in the stiff breeze until he came to a walled garden. Nicholas halted in alarm. His feet had taken him insensibly to the one house in the area which he had vowed he would never visit again. When he tried to turn back, his legs betrayed him again and impelled him forward to the gate. One look up at the half-timbered dwelling brought it all back.

The home of the Hurrell family had once been filled with noise and laughter, but it now seemed curiously empty. The garden was overgrown and there were no signs of life in the house itself. He pushed the gate back on a grinding hinge and went in. Swept by the wind, the thatched roof was parting with a few of its reeds and somewhere in the property a window was banging. Nicholas followed the sound as it led him to the rear of the house. A rectangular lawn was fringed with flowerbeds that were badly neglected. The grass was
ankle high. It was in this same garden that Nicholas had been obliged to court Katherine Hurrell. He shuddered as he recalled how he had allowed himself to become betrothed to her to please their respective families.

The noise took his eye upwards. It was a long, low house with eaves that jutted right down over the top of the walls. The open window was in a bedchamber that he identified at once, and the rhythmical banging was a hammer that nailed a spike into his skull. Nicholas was mesmerised. This house and that window had altered the whole course of his life. Many people had suffered as a result, and there were some things for which he could never forgive himself. Katherine Hurrell had recovered from the shock of his departure to marry another man and to leave the area. Mary Parr had not been so fortunate, nor had her daughter.

Nicholas stared up at the window as it flapped away like the wing of a trapped butterfly. He had no wish to see inside that room again. It was a tomb for so many of his hopes and ambitions. The house was sad and uncared for, but it still held its old menace for him. As Nicholas stood there and looked up, the whole building seemed to tense up in readiness, as if it was about to hurl itself at him. He could bear it no more. The Hurrell house had already struck him down once. Before it could assault him again, he took to his heels and ran all the way back to Crock Street.

It was time to liberate himself from Barnstaple.

‘When will you leave?’ asked Mary Whetcombe.

‘Tomorrow at dawn.’

‘So soon?’

‘The company is waiting for me to join them.’

‘Can nothing detain you here?’

‘No, Mary. I fear not.’

They were in the hall of the house, which she had now rightfully inherited from her husband. Lucy was playing with her dolls at the table. Nicholas had done all that he had come to do. Susan Deakin’s death had been avenged and Mary Whetcombe had been rescued from her plight. Gideon Livermore was dead and Barnard Sweete – along with other accomplices – was under lock and key. The spy in the Whetcombe household had been revealed and dismissed. A question still hovered over Arthur Calmady, and his sermons were now tentative and apologetic. His visits to Crock Street had been abruptly terminated. Nicholas wore heavy bandaging on his wounded hand, but it would not prevent him from taking ship to Bristol.

Mary Whetcombe was hampering his departure. Reluctant to see him at first, she now wished to keep him in Barnstaple, and Lucy added a smile to hold him there. When the three of them were alone together, there was happiness in the house for the first time. Nicholas was only briefly tempted. Some memories had been obliterated but others were overpowering. Robert Bracewell still stalked the streets of Barnstaple.

‘At least I will know why this time,’ said Mary.

‘I could not reach you before I left.’

‘You did not wish to, Nick.’

‘I was too ashamed.’

‘But I loved you.’

‘It was not enough. I could not saddle you with that burden. It would have been unfair to you. I had to get away from him. You must understand that.’

‘What did your father
do
?’

It was a question she had a right to ask and he could not hold out on her any longer. Mary Whetcombe had suffered the consequences of a secret he dared not tell her, and she deserved to know the truth. At the same time, he wanted confirmation that Lucy was his daughter. Mary threw a glance at the girl and looked back at him. In the household of a merchant, his widow was offering a bargain before a mute witness. If Nicholas told her about the last night they had spent together, she would confide in him.

‘I wanted you, Mary,’ he said. ‘I wanted you more than anything in the world, but my father chose Katherine Hurrell for me. It was all arranged with her family. The dowry was large and my father needed a share of it to steady his own business. You were my choice but your dowry was smaller and your father was set on a marriage into the Whetcombe family. It was an impossible situation.’

‘There was only one way to break out of it.’

‘I tried hard to persuade my father.’

‘I know,’ she recalled. ‘You went home that night to make a final plea to him. If it failed, we were to run away sooner than be parted. But you never came back for me.’ Her eyes accused him. ‘What happened when you went home?’

‘I did not go home, Mary.’

‘Then where did you go?’

‘To Katherine Hurrell’s house.’

‘But why?’ she said, indignantly. ‘You had no cause.’

‘We were betrothed. She had a right to be told. I loved you but I could not walk away from Katherine without at least a word of explanation.’

‘You gave
me
no word of explanation.’

‘There was no time.’

‘You found time enough for Katherine Hurrell!’

‘Mary, please – listen!’ Nicholas tried to remain calm. ‘This is difficult enough for me. Be patient.’

‘All right. So you went to her …’

‘Yes.’

‘And stayed the night there, is that what I am to hear?’

‘No.’

‘Tell me the truth,’ said Mary, trembling with a jealousy that had had many years to build. ‘Tell me, Nick!’

‘Katherine was not at the house,’ he said. ‘Nor was her father. The place was almost empty.’ Nicholas shivered as he relived the memory. ‘I picked my way around to the garden at the rear. The window of Katherine’s bedchamber was at the end. I hoped to attract her attention and draw her out so that we could speak in private. There was no answer to my whistle. I did not wish to throw stones up at her window in case the noise woke anyone else who might be in the house.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I climbed up the ivy to look into her room.’

‘And?’

‘She was not there.’

‘Well?’ pressed Mary. ‘What, then?’

‘I saw them in bed together.’

‘Who?’

‘Katherine’s mother and …’

‘Go on.’

‘My father,’ said Nicholas. ‘Robert Bracewell. He was making love to Margaret Hurrell.’ Nicholas looked up at her with his bitterness refreshed. ‘That was why I was to marry Katherine – to enable my father the more easily to carry on his adultery with her mother. I was not a son being sent off
happily to the altar. I was just a factor in a corrupt bargain. It destroyed me.’ He winced visibly. ‘My mother knew, Mary. That’s what killed her. She knew all the time but had no power to stop him. My mother knew but said nothing. She simply curled up in horror and died.’

‘What did you do when you saw them together?’

‘I ran away,’ he said, simply. ‘All I could think about was getting away from that place and those two people. I looked up to my father. He was a difficult man to love but I had always admired the way he overcame his setbacks. But that night I lost all respect for him and for his values. I wanted nothing to do with Barnstaple and its merchants. My one urge was to take to my heels.’

‘Did you not spare a thought for me?’

‘Of course, Mary. I did not want to drag you into it. After what I had seen, I felt tainted and did not wish to pass on that taint to you. I believed that if I ran away, I might be able to save you.’

‘Save me!’ she said with irony. ‘From what?’

‘From taking on the name of Bracewell. From suffering the same sense of shame. From enduring our disgrace.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘I was young, Mary. I felt such things deeply. I could not ask you to come into such a family.’

‘So what did you think would happen to me?’

‘That you would find someone else and forget me.’

‘Oh, I found somebody else,’ she said. ‘And I was lucky to do so in the circumstances. But I did not forget you. How could I? We were lovers.’

Nicholas glanced down at Lucy then back at Mary.

‘Is she my daughter?’ he asked.

‘No, Nick.’

‘My father said that she was.’

‘He could not have done so.’

‘But he did, Mary. In so many words.’

‘What exactly did he say?’

‘I asked him why he visited your house so often.’

‘And he told you it was to visit his granddaughter.’

‘Yes – Lucy.’

‘No,’ said Mary. ‘Susan Deakin.’

‘The servant girl?’

‘She was our daughter, Nick.’

He was completely dumbfounded. The plain girl with the features that enabled her to pass for a boy had been his daughter. He could not believe it at first and yet he now saw, in his heart, that he must have had a faint glimmer of recognition. Susan Deakin had prompted such a compelling sense of revenge in him, a personal commitment such as a man could never feel for a stranger from a distant household. That was what had driven him on. It was not just the desire to get to Barnstaple to help the woman he thought had sent for him. Nicholas had also been seeking atonement for the murder of his own daughter.

He looked across to Mary for enlightenment.

‘The last night we met,’ she explained, ‘I had been carrying your child for some months.’

‘Why did you not
tell
me?’

‘I tried, Nick, but I could not find the words. I hoped that your father would relent and that we could marry with his blessing. All would be well then. But you left and I was stranded.’ She bristled like a hunted animal. ‘I had nowhere to go and no chance of hiding my condition for long. What life would I have as an unmarried mother with a bastard
child? You had one kind of shame, I would have carried another.’ She shook her head in despair. ‘I did the only thing that was left to me. I turned to Matthew Whetcombe.’