Antonia Hodgson - A Death at Fountains Abbey

In contrast, the next two made no demands, reasoned or otherwise. They were short, and cruel. Reading them again, I felt the hairs rise upon my skin.

Aislabie – your Crimes must be punnished. You have Ruined Good and Honest Familys with your Damn’d Greed. Our mallis is too great to bear we are resolved to burn down your House. We will watch as your flesh and bones burn and melt and your Ashes scatter in the Wind. Nothing will Remain. You have ’scaped Justice too long damn you.

Aislabie you Damned Traitor. This is but the beginning of Sorrows.We will burn you and your daughter in your beds. You are not alone by night or day. We will seek Revenge.

These were not threats, but judgements handed down to the accused. Aislabie was a Damned Traitor. And the punishment for treason was death by fire.

The scrape of a latch in the far corner of the room made me glance up from my reading. The door was set flush to the mahogany panels – I had noticed it upon entering and dismissed it as a closet space. In fact it opened on to a connecting room for a gentleman’s valet. Sam had taken it as his own, occupying it in absolute silence until he had deemed it the proper time to present himself. He stood barefoot in the doorway, his black curls loose about his face.

‘There you are,’ I said, because I knew it would infuriate him. Any statement of the obvious made him seethe with annoyance.

He stepped aside so that I might enter his domain. It was not much more than a closet after all – smaller than my cell at Newgate – with a narrow bed and two dingy portraits on the wall. It would suit Sam – he preferred cramped spaces. His home in St Giles was filled with noise and people at all times of the day and night, and he had become expert at tucking himself away in forgotten corners.

The room was almost bare: he had brought nothing with him from London save for a handful of coins and two vicious blades, the latter of which I had confiscated from him. To compensate for his loss, and to help him pass the time on our journey, I had given him a pencil and a sheaf of paper – he was an excellent draughtsman – and a copy of Gulliver’s Travels . This latter – upon learning it was a fictional voyage – he pronounced ‘a worthless con’, it being ‘made of lies’. But he had placed it neatly on a chair with his sketches, his shoes and stockings tucked under the bed.

‘What do you make of these?’ I handed him the notes.

He read them quickly, unruffled by the content. Then he divided them in half, waving the latest two in his fist. ‘Dangerous.’

I took the papers back. ‘Aislabie believes that Mrs Fairwood is his daughter-’

‘-maid told me.’

‘Whoever wrote this latest note knows about Elizabeth Fairwood’s claim, and the fire on Red Lion Square.’

Sam shrugged. Sometimes I wondered if he were already five steps ahead of me. He was so close-tongued, how could one know for certain?

I flicked the papers. ‘The first two notes were written on old bits of scrap, but this is very fine. I’ll wager the second two match Mr Aislabie’s best paper.’

‘Could’ve been stolen. It’s Aiselby ,’ he added.

‘No – the servants call him that. He pronounces it Aizlabee…’ I paused, then sifted back through the notes. The first two had spelled his name Aiselby, capturing the Yorkshire pronunciation. The second two had spelled it Aislabie .

Jack Sneaton was from the south, and had corrected my pronunciation to Aizlabee. Aislabie also trusted him to hire all the servants at Studley Hall. That gave him power, and opportunities…

Could Sneaton have written the second two notes? He wasn’t pleased by Mrs Fairwood’s presence – that much was quite evident. Did he want to frighten her from the estate? It would have been easy enough for him to steal the linen and the fine paper. He knew the movements of the household, and when it would be safe to move through the grounds. With his broken body, he could not have killed the deer himself or dragged it to the front steps, but he might have an accomplice. We will seek Revenge , the note had promised.

I handed the notes to Sam. ‘See if you can find an example of Sneaton’s lettering. He must write with his left hand, I suppose. Could you compare it with the second two letters? Even if the hand is disguised?’

Sam looked offended, as if I’d asked him whether he knew his alphabet. He had been counterfeiting papers for his father for years. He’d been doing all sorts of terrible things for his father for years. The first time we’d met, he’d led me down a darkened alleyway so I might be robbed at knifepoint. I was still waiting for an apology.

I poured myself a glass of sherry from a decanter on the dressing table. ‘Why did you change our quarters?’

Sam grinned. Opened the window, put his foot on the casement frame-

– and jumped.

I swore, more in surprise than concern. I’d grown used to his acrobatics. I kneeled on the window seat and peered out. He’d jumped into the oak tree and was now sitting on a sturdy branch, bare legs dangling. I peered down at the ground three floors below. There was a path for the carriages, which must lead to the current stables at the back of the house. Beyond the path, a dense cluster of trees. The rain pattered through the leaves.

‘An excellent escape route,’ I said, raising my glass of sherry in approval. ‘If one happens to be a monkey.’ Could I leap the distance? Probably, if the need were pressing. If the house were on fire.

Sam crawled along the branch, swung himself on to the window ledge and back into the room. It looked distinctly perilous and much harder than leaping out. ‘Family’s in the west wing. Won’t hear us. Servants,’ he added, hoicking a thumb upstairs. Turned his thumb upside down, indicating the three floors below. ‘Metcalfe, library, kitchens.’ He crossed the room to the connecting door, toe then heel like a dancer, missing every creaking floorboard. ‘View,’ he called over his shoulder.

The window in his cupboard room looked out on to the servants’ courtyard. An older woman hurried from the laundry with a stack of folded sheets up to her chin, shooing chickens away with her boot. I watched for a minute or two as maids and grooms and footmen ran through the yard, and no one looked up at the window. Sam had found us the ideal quarters; quiet, tucked far away from the Aislabies’ rooms, and offering an excellent vantage point from which to spy on the servants.

Mr Pugh, our carriage driver, sat on a mounting block, smoking a pipe and talking with an older fellow.

‘William Hallow,’ Sam said. ‘Game keeper. Thinks you’re an angel.’

I coughed on my sherry.

‘Hanged. Resurrected.’ Sam watched me from the corner of his black eyes. ‘Touched by God.’

The room fell silent – as it must with Sam standing in it. He never spoke if he could avoid it, kept his words deep in his chest like a miser clutching his coins. And what poor, counterfeit coins they were when he did spend them – a grunt for yes, a strangled sigh for no. In the slums of St Giles, a careless word was as dangerous as a sharpened blade. All his life, he had been taught how to hide in the shadows, to watch and listen and remain invisible. But silence was in his nature too. Sam’s father might be the most powerful gang captain in the city, but one could still talk with him over a bowl of punch.

A few months ago I had agreed to take Sam into my household and teach him the manners of a gentleman. To say that I had failed hardly begins to describe the catastrophe that followed. A violent tangle of events had led to murder and my trip to the gallows. Sam had helped save my life. But he had also killed someone in the process.