C.J. Sansom - Heartstone

'All right. But part of you is still glad, isn't it?'

'Here is a chance to solve both matters.'

'You forget there may be a battle eight miles south of here any day now. And, if we lose, French troops may be marching up that road and in here. It's a fine property for soldiers to loot.'

'That risk we are stuck with. But—' I looked at him—'I will go to Rolfswood alone tomorrow.'

'Oh, I'm coming,' Barak replied in definite tones. 'I'm not staying by myself in this madhouse.'

I KNOCKED ON the door of Hobbey's study. He said quietly, 'Come in.' He was sitting at his desk, watching the sand run through the hourglass. I realized it was the first time I had ever been alone with him. I felt a stab of sympathy. Within two days the secret of his son's illness had been exposed and his wife murdered. He looked bereft.

'Well, Master Shardlake,' he asked with a sigh, 'did you and Master Priddis ride the woods?'

'We did.'

He waved a hand. 'Perhaps you could discuss it with Vincent. I cannot concentrate just now.'

'I understand. Sir, may I express my condolences for your poor wife's death? God rest her soul.'

He lowered his eyes, then said, in a voice suddenly full of emotion, 'Everyone disliked poor Abigail. I know they did. But you should have seen her when I married her, she was so pretty, so light-hearted. If she had not married me—' His voice trailed away.

'How are the boys?' I asked. I thought, in a normal family Hugh and David would have been with Hobbey, they would all have been comforting each other.

'David is in great distress. Fulstowe is with him. And Hugh—' He sighed. 'Hugh is about the house somewhere. Sir Luke is organizing a search of the woodlands, by the way. People from the village are helping, they are much disturbed at the prospect of some madman roaming the woods. Sir Luke suggests none of us leave the house and gardens for now.'

'Has Ettis been taken in for questioning?'

'Yes. He hated this family.' Hobbey frowned. 'Vincent says that if there is no trace of a stranger in the woods, he must be a suspect. Surely that must be right.' He frowned. I thought, Dyrick will be running things here now, Dyrick and Fulstowe between them.

'Well,' I answered quietly, 'it will be up to the coroner when he arrives. The reason I came, Master Hobbey, is to tell you a messenger has brought a letter from the Sussex village where I have another matter in hand. I plan to go there tomorrow, then return the following day to see the coroner. I know he will need to speak to me and Barak as first finders.'

'Very well,' he replied without interest.

I hesitated, aware that what I had to say next should really be said with Dyrick present. But it was eating away at me. 'Last week, sir, I accidentally overheard you and your wife talking in her room. She said she did not want to have the hunt, she indicated she did not think it was safe.'

Hobbey was silent a moment. Then he spoke, without raising his head, but slowly and clearly. 'My wife had become afraid of everyone and everything, Master Shardlake. I told you before, she was not well. She had come to feel that nothing and no one was safe.' He picked up the hourglass, stared at the falling sand, then up at me, a strange expression on his thin face. 'All my life,' he said slowly, 'everything I have striven to build, those I have loved, everything is running out, like the sand in this glass. Do you believe in fate, Master Shardlake, in nemesis?'

'No, sir. I do not understand how God orders the world, but I do not think it is like that.'

'It all began with you coming here.' His voice was still quiet, his tone strange, one of mild curiosity. 'This wretched case. I doubt David would have had his fit without it. You encourage my tenants to rebel; do not deny it, I have my informants in the village. And now my wife is dead. I wonder if perhaps you are my nemesis.'

'I wish to be no one's nemesis, Master Hobbey.'

'Do you not? I wonder.' Still he spoke quietly, but now he looked at me, his eyes suddenly as sharp and questing as they had ever been. 'Well, perhaps I am wrong, perhaps it started with Michael Calfhill, with—' A spasm of pain crossed his face, and he seemed to come back to himself. 'We should not really be discussing such things without Vincent here,' he said, his tone formal again. 'I will see you in two days, Master Shardlake.' And he nodded dismissively.

BARAK AND I left for Rolfswood early the next morning. I could have done without another ride; my bandaged arm was sore and my back ached after the hunt. The weather was close again, the sky grey.

I said little as we rode; Hobbey's words the previous day had unsettled me. I had told myself I had only encouraged Ettis against a bullying landlord, that David could have had a seizure at any time, and above all that nobody knew who had killed Abigail, or why. But I could understand why Hobbey might see me as his nemesis.

The evening before I had written to Warner, telling him what had happened. I told him too about Dyrick's offer on costs. Then I wrote to Guy, saying we were not coming home just yet. Afterwards I walked round to the stables to fetch the letter Barak had written to Tamasin; we would leave them at Cosham for the post rider to collect. On my way out I passed David's room, and heard deep, wrenching sobs, Fulstowe's voice talking in low, reassuring tones.

On my way back to the house with the letters I saw Hugh in the distance, sitting on the half-tumbled wall of the old nuns' cemetery. I went up to him. His long face was sad, his mouth pulled down. He looked up at me, a dreadful weariness in his eyes.

'My condolences,' I said quietly.

He bowed his head slightly. In the fading light his scars could not be clearly seen, he looked boyishly handsome but somehow all the more vulnerable. 'Thank you,' he said, 'but you should know I felt nothing for Mistress Hobbey. I thought I might, now, but I do not.'

'You put a flower in her lap this morning.'

'Yes. I felt sorry for her then.'

I said quietly, 'You were saying something when we came on you with the body.' I looked him in the eye. 'It sounded like, "You deserved this." '

He was silent a moment, then said, 'God preserve me, I may have done.' He stared ahead.

'Why?'

He spoke very quietly. 'When we first knew her, I think in her way she did want to mother me, and especially my sister. But for both her and Master Hobbey, that came second to—' his voice caught for a moment—'to money. They wanted the use of our lands, and they tried to make Emma marry David, as I told you. When I saw her I felt sorry for her but angry too. So, yes, I did say that.'

'Have you ever seen a dead person before?'

'Yes. My mother and father. They would not let me see my sister—her face was ravaged by smallpox. I wish they had.' He looked at me. 'Will you tell the coroner of my words?'

'I think you should tell him yourself, Hugh. Tell him how you felt about Abigail.'

He looked at me hard. I wondered whether, like Hobbey, he was thinking of all the trouble that had come here since I arrived.

I asked him, 'Who do you think murdered Mistress Hobbey?'

'I have no idea.' He frowned. 'Do you believe it was me?'

I shook my head. 'Like you, Hugh, I have no idea.' I looked across at the graveyard. Ursula had left some flowers at the nun's grave again.

'But you heard my words, and thought it might be me?' Hugh's face flushed with anger, highlighting his scars.

'I only wondered, Hugh, what you meant.'

'You said you would be my friend.' He stood then, clenching his fists. I was aware that he was as tall as me, and stronger.

'I accuse no one, Hugh. But from the beginning I have sensed this entire family has been hiding something. As well as David's condition.'