What Remains Of Heaven Part 26

"So you stabbed him."

She nodded, her voice an anguished whisper. "Only he didn't let go. He just opened his mouth and roared and squeezed harder. So I stabbed him again. And again. And then he let me go."

"What did you do?"

"I ran to the vicarage. I was covered in blood. Most of it was my husband's, but not all of it. Francis-Sir Nigel's brother-was the priest in residence at the time. He was a very different sort of man from his brother. While Sir Nigel was away, he and I had become . . . close."

She stared off down the hill again. Sebastian waited, and after a moment she continued. "They still burn women who kill their husbands. Did you know? It's considered a form of treason."

"You killed him in self-defense."

The ghost of a smile touched her lips. "And what jury of men do you think would have believed that? I stabbed him in the back. In a crypt."

"Francis Prescott believed you?"

"Francis knew his brother."

Sebastian said, "It was Francis Prescott's idea to seal off the crypt?"

She nodded. "He'd been planning to do it anyway. Between the two of us, we managed to drag Nigel farther back into the shadows. Then Francis locked the gate to the crypt, and took the mare and turned it loose on the heath. By dusk of the next day both entrances to the crypt had been bricked up."

She drew in a deep breath that lifted the bodice of her black riding habit. Sebastian looked at the gently fading fair hair that curled against her neck, the soft blue eyes that were so much like her son's, and knew she wasn't telling him everything.

He said, "Did Sir Nigel know you were carrying his brother's child?"

He watched her lips part, her jaw go slack. But she recovered quickly, her chin lifting. "I don't know what you're talking a-"

"Don't," said Sebastian. "Please don't try to play me for a fool, Lady Prescott."

She looked away, her eyes blinking rapidly.

He said, "Did Sir Nigel know?"

She shook her head, her voice a whisper. "I didn't even know at the time. It was . . . It was wrong of us. We knew that. But Francis . . . He was such a good, gentle man. Everything his brother was not. And I was so very lonely."

Sebastian watched a puff of white clouds near the horizon take on a golden hue, and thought about what kind of good, gentle priest comforted his brother's sad, lonely wife with the heat of his own body.

A very human one, he supposed.

"It is forbidden for a man to marry his brother's widow. Besides . . ." She paused, and had to swallow before continuing. "After what happened to Nigel, there was no question of our continuing to see each other. Francis married a young woman several years later, although as Peter's uncle, he was able to play an important role in the boy's life."

Sebastian nodded. What was it the Chaplain had said? Sir Peter was like a son to him. Aloud, he said, "How did Jack Slade come to know the truth about Sir Peter?"

He saw the flare of fury and fear in her eyes. "That beastly man. He kept following Francis. Watching us. He heard us talking one day, after Peter was born. It was right before he killed his wife. Francis went to visit him at Newgate, to pray with him, and Slade said if Francis didn't pet.i.tion the court to have his sentence commuted to transportation, he'd tell everyone my son was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"He might not have been believed."

The coloring in her cheeks darkened. "There were already whispers in the village. Not about Francis and me, but about Peter. No one knew Sir Nigel had been in America, but they knew he'd been traveling until the middle of July. I'd given out that the child was due to be born in April, but . . . Well, he didn't look like a seven-months child."

"Did you know the Bishop gave Slade money, after he came back from Botany Bay?"

The light filtering down through the canopy of oaks cast dappled shadows across the planes of her face. She said, "I knew. He did it for Peter. But it troubled him. I think he told Slade he wasn't going to pay anymore, and threatened Slade that if he tried to do anything about it, he'd have him prosecuted for blackmail. That's why Jack Slade killed him."

"I'm not so sure," said Sebastian.

She lifted her blue eyes to his face, and he saw there a mother's deepening fear. "Then who did?"

Rather than answer her, Sebastian said, "Did Francis Prescott know about your father's letters?"

"I told him about them that night. But he never saw them."

"So what happened to them?"

"I don't know. I've always a.s.sumed Sir Nigel had them on him when he died."

"You didn't look for them?"

"No. I was . . . I was in such a state. And with the crypt bricked up, what did it matter?"

The mare raised its head, eyes blinking as it swung to nuzzle its mistress. Lady Prescott stroked the horse's velvet nose. "After Sir Nigel's death, I went to my father and told him I knew what he'd been doing, and that if he didn't leave London I would take the Alcibiades letters to the King. He didn't know I no longer had them. He left for Derbys.h.i.+re the next day. We have never spoken to each other since."

"He's still alive?"

"Yes."

Along the millstream, a mist had begun to form. Sebastian could feel a new chill in the air, smell the tang of wood smoke on the breeze. Lady Prescott gathered her horse's reins and prepared to mount.

"The funeral is the day after tomorrow," she said. "The Church wanted Francis interred at St. Paul's, but Peter thought it only right that he be buried here, in the crypt. He and Sir Nigel both. And then it will be sealed again. Forever, this time."

Sebastian gave her a leg up, watched her settle the velvet train of her riding habit about her.

"Why did you tell me this?" he said.

"I think you know why," she said, and set her heel to her horse's side.

He watched her clatter away, her body bending low over the horse's withers as she wove beneath the oaks, the short veil of her shakolike hat fluttering in the breeze.

Then he turned toward the Dog and Duck.

Chapter 41.

"Do you believe her?" asked Gibson.

Sebastian sat sprawled in one of the cracked old leather armchairs in Gibson's parlor. He had a brandy cradled in his one usable hand and was watching Gibson stuff a haversack with notebooks, pencils, measuring tapes, and all manner of other paraphernalia.

"I'm not certain," said Sebastian, taking a long drink of his brandy.

"It fits with the wounds on Sir Nigel's body. Two shallow stab wounds, badly placed. And a third that slid home."

"True," said Sebastian. "But she could actually have crept up behind him in the crypt and stabbed him in the back."

"From all that we've heard, I'm not sure I'd blame her if she did." Gibson glanced over at him. "Are you going to tell the authorities?"

Sebastian took another swallow of brandy. "No." He watched Gibson add candles to his rucksack and said, "What the devil are you preparing for?"

Gibson reached for a tinderbox. "Sir Henry tells me they'll be sealing up the crypt of St. Margaret's again after the funeral. I mentioned I'd be interested in taking a wee look around, and he said he'd square it with the proper authorities. I'll be heading out there first thing in the morning. I hear some of those bodies date back to before the Conquest, and I'll not be having much time to study them all."

"To study them for what?"

"Comparative purposes."

Sebastian set his teeth against a new wave of pain rolling up from his arm and took another drink.

Watching him, Gibson said, "Hurting, is it? Aren't you glad you let Tom drive out to Tanfield Hill today? If you had any sense, you'd be in bed."

Sebastian grunted and took another sip of brandy.

Gibson said, "She didn't need to tell you anything. Why tell you a lie?"

It was a moment before Sebastian realized Gibson was still talking about Lady Prescott. He said, "She may think she's protecting her son."

"She thinks Sir Peter killed the Bishop? But . . . why? Granted, he may have been a wee bit annoyed with the man for lying to him for the past thirty years. But you don't kill a man for just that."

"Actually, Sir Peter had the same reason to kill Francis Prescott as his mother had to kill Sir Nigel."

Gibson cinched the top of his haversack and looked over at Sebastian with a frown. "He did? What reason?"

"His grandfather's letters."

"But...surely Sir Peter would have no reason to fear the Bishop might betray him now? At this late date?"

"I don't know. From what we've heard, the Bishop's pa.s.sions ran pretty strong when it came to the American Revolution. And if they quarreled?" Sebastian drained his gla.s.s in one long pull and pushed to his feet. "Who's to say what might have happened?"

That night, Sebastian dreamt of bloodstained winding sheets, of ancient, splintered coffins and gleaming skulls. The voices of men long dead whispered to him, their hushed words mingling with the moan of the wind that thrashed the naked branches of dark trees silhouetted against a starless sky.

A row of coffins stood in a misty glen. His throat tight, his footsteps echoing in the stillness, Sebastian approached the open caskets.

In the first lay Sebastian's tiger, Tom, his eyes closed, the sprinkling of freckles across his nose standing out stark against his pallid skin. With dawning horror, Sebastian realized the next casket held Paul Gibson, his hands folded over a rosary at his chest. Beyond him lay a woman, her face hidden by the lace frill of the coffin's satin lining. As Sebastian took a step toward her, he heard the crack of a rifle and awoke with a start, heart pounding, mouth dry.

It was a long time before he slept again.

THURSDAY, 16 JULY 1812.

Early the next morning, Hero Jarvis climbed the stairs to the old nursery at the top of the house, where she and her brother, David, had pa.s.sed so many happy hours of their childhood.

The low, narrow beds were draped in Holland covers, the hobbyhorses, tin soldiers, and drums battered and coated in dust. She ran her fingertips across the well-worn surface of the old schoolroom table and found the place where she and David had once carved their names when their governess wasn't looking. She smiled at the memory. Then the smile faded, leaving an ache of want.

She went to stand beside the grimy, cobweb-draped window overlooking the square. As a little girl, she had whiled away many a rainy afternoon curled up here on the window seat, lost between the pages of a book. Her favorites were always tales of adventure and travel. In her imagination, she had followed the Silk Road with Marco Polo, sailed the South Seas with Captain Cook, crossed the desert highlands of Anatolia with Xenophan. Someday, she used to tell herself. Someday, when I am grown, I will hear the warm winds of Arabia whispering in the date palms, watch the rising sun glisten on the snow-covered slopes of the Hindu Kush.

It had never happened. Lately she'd been thinking that once the child was born, she would have to go away. She could not imagine giving up her child and then simply going on with her life as before, as if none of it had ever happened. And then it occurred to her: Why not go away now? Why not bear the child in some distant land and keep it?

She knew a pounding rush of excitement. She could return to England in a few years and simply present the child as an orphan she'd adopted in the course of her travels.

Why not?

That morning, Sebastian revolted his tiger by once again summoning a hackney carriage.

"Ye don't like the way I 'andled the chestnuts on the way to Tanfield 'Ill?" said the boy, his street urchin's face pinched tight with suppressed emotion.

"It's not that," said Sebastian. "It's-" He broke off, unwilling to vocalize the faint wisps of unease left by the previous night's dreams. He slipped his dagger into its sheath in his Hessians and said simply, "I know how much yesterday's drive hurt my arm, and I know it must have pained you as well. I want you to rest another day. That's all."

The boy's face cleared a little, but he still looked mulish. "My shoulder's fine."

"It'll be even better after another day's rest. Now go find me a hackney."

Sir Peter kept his opera dancer in Camden Town, in a small house just off Brompton Road. It was a respectable if unfas.h.i.+onable street of tidy houses with s.h.i.+ny, freshly painted doors and window boxes spilling pelargoniums and heartsease against carefully pointed redbrick walls.

Sebastian's knock was answered by a flat-chested, sharp chinned la.s.s of perhaps thirteen who wore a starched white cap and a startled expression. This was obviously a household that received few visitors. "Gor," she whispered, expelling her breath in wonder.

"Amy," called a woman's voice from inside the house. "Is that the-Oh."

Sir Peter's opera dancer appeared behind her young maid, one tiny hand flying up to her lips in consternation when she saw Sebastian. She had thick, dark ringlets and twinkling eyes and a Devons.h.i.+re-cream complexion that must have made her the darling of the opera once. Now, from the looks of the bulge beneath the high waist of her simple sprigged muslin gown, she was at least six months heavy with child.

"I beg your pardon for the intrusion, madam," said Sebastian, removing his hat. "I was looking for Sir Peter."

"He's taken Francis down to Whitehall, to watch the Changing of the Guard."

"Francis?"

"Our son." She smoothed her left hand over her swelling stomach in a self-conscious gesture, and Sebastian saw the morning sun glimmer on the gold of the simple band on her third finger.

"She's not my mistress," said Sir Peter. "She's my wife. She has been for nearly four years now, since before Francis was born."

They stood together at the edge of the Horse Guards parade, where a flaxen-haired lad of about three clambered over the barrel of a Turkish cannon captured a decade earlier in Egypt. "She's lovely," said Sebastian.

A soft smile lit the other man's features as he watched his son. It faded slowly. "Her lineage is respectable. Her father was a physician. But when he died, the family was left penniless. She came to London looking for work." He paused. "You know how that goes."

Sebastian stared off across the parade, toward the Hyde Park Barracks. A warm sun bathed the park in a golden light, but he could see the threat of dark clouds building again on the horizon.

"Of course," Sir Peter was saying, "her birth makes no difference now. Not after she's trod the boards. What kind of a man marries his mistress?"

"The kind of man with the courage to follow his heart," suggested Sebastian.