Antonia Hodgson - A Death at Fountains Abbey

Mr Aislabie’s coachman was a cheerful, robust fellow named Pugh, his cheeks scarred from an ancient attack of smallpox. He must have been near fifty, but he picked up my large portmanteau as if it were empty, and swung it on to the carriage. ‘Expected you yesterday, sir.’

I rolled my shoulders, frowning as my spine cracked. My journey had lasted five lamentable days, bumping and jolting along in a series of worn-out coaches until every bone had been thoroughly rattled in its socket. I felt as if I were recovering from a rheumatic fit, I ached so much. ‘Bad roads,’ I said, though that was not the only reason for the delay.

Pugh grunted in sympathy. ‘I’ve drove Mr Aislabie up and down to London a fair few times. That stretch from Leicester to Nottingham could kill a man, it’s so poor. No better in spring than winter.’

‘Yes. Very poor.’ It is the nature of long, tedious journeys that – on arrival – they must be lived again, in long, tedious conversation. A simple: ‘I travelled. It was dreadful. Here I am,’ will not do, apparently.

Pugh tied a box to the back of the chaise. Books, tobacco, playing cards and dice. A brace of pistols. I had worn them at my belt on the road, in case of attack. I hoped I would not need to take them out again.

‘A young gentleman fell hard on the Nottingham road a few weeks ago,’ Pugh trundled on. ‘Broke his arm and his wrist, poor lad. I trust you didn’t take a fall along the way, sir?’

‘Thank you, no.’

He slotted the last of my boxes into place. ‘Glad to hear that, Mr Hawkins. You’ve suffered enough injury these past weeks, I’d say.’

I raised my hand to my throat on instinct, then dropped it swiftly. A few months ago my neighbour had been stabbed to death in his bed – the day after I had threatened to kill him. At my trial, the jury had judged me not upon the evidence, but upon my character and reputation. I was found guilty, and sentenced to hang. Against all odds I had survived – but only after I had spent ten long, agonising minutes dangling from a rope, suffocating slowly as a hundred thousand spectators cheered me on. Ever since then I had suffered from nightmares: the white hood thrust over my head, the cart pulling away beneath my feet, the rope tightening around my neck. These terrors filled my dreams, and in the day left me with a dull ache in my chest – a feeling of dread that I could not shake.

I was grateful beyond reason to be alive. There were times when the mere fact of my existence could lift me to ecstasy – as if I had knocked back three bowls of punch in one. But I had met with Death that day at the scaffold. I had crossed the border into his kingdom, if only for a few moments. I feared the experience had changed me for ever. I feared, in truth, that Death still kept a hand upon my shoulder.

My hope had been that my story would not have travelled as far as the Yorkshire Dales. In the retelling of that story, I had been transmuted from an idle rogue to a golden hero – a martyr, even. That was what they had been calling me in the London newspapers, when they believed me dead. I didn’t want to be a hero. Heroes were sent on secret missions by the Queen of England, when they would much rather sit in a coffeehouse getting drunk and singing ballads.

My dreams of remaining anonymous had been dashed at breakfast, when a serving maid had asked to touch my throat for luck. I’d shooed her from the room, but it had been a gloomy experience.

If she’d asked to touch your cock, you wouldn’t feel so gloomy. Kitty, in my head.

‘We’re ready to leave?’

‘We are, sir,’ Pugh replied, nodding towards the inn. ‘If you would call your wife.’

My wife . By which he meant Kitty, who was neither my wife, nor within calling distance. For the sake of Kitty’s good name, and to ensure a civil reception at Studley Hall, I had written in advance to Mr Aislabie, explaining that I would be accompanied on my visit by my wife, Mrs Catherine Hawkins. How wondrously respectable that sounded. Unfortunately I had not had the time nor the heart to write again further along the road to explain that my wife and I had quarrelled fearsomely at Newport Pagnell, resulting in Mrs Hawkins’ swift return to London.

‘Fuck off then, Tom,’ she had shouted, in the middle of the inn. ‘Fuck off to Yorkshire, and don’t blame me if you die in some horrific way, stabbed and burned and throttled and mangled. I shall not grieve for you, not for one second. I will jump on your grave and sing I told you so, Thomas Hawkins, you fucking idiot . You may count upon it.’

‘Mrs Hawkins was called home on urgent business.’

‘Sorry to hear that, sir. You’re travelling alone, then?’

Not quite. A dark figure slipped out from behind a rag-filled wagon. He was dressed in an ancient pair of mud-brown woollen breeches and a black coat, cuffs covering his knuckles. My black coat, in fact, which was several inches too big for him. His black curls were tied in a ribbon beneath a battered three-cornered hat.

‘And who’s this?’ Pugh asked, bending towards Sam as if he were a child. I had made the same mistake, the first time I’d met him. A boy of St Giles, raised in the shadows, smaller than he should be.

Sam’s eyes – black and fathomless – fixed upon mine.

‘This is Master Samuel Fleet.’ Son of a gang captain, nephew of an assassin. And at fourteen years of age, on his way to becoming more deadly than either. ‘I’m his guardian.’

Well. Someone had to keep a watch on him.

The town square was packed with stalls for the Thursday market, the air laced with the warm tang of wool and sheepskin. Traders and townsfolk recognised our coach and hurried to clear the way for us: Mr Aislabie’s standing was far greater here in his own county. He had been mayor of Ripon, many years ago, and his son was now the town’s representative in parliament. Such things command a degree of respect, if not love.

We were soon through the town and riding along a country lane banked with thick hedgerows. Our carriage was a fine, open chaise, pulled by four of the best horses I had ever seen. The sun gleamed upon their bay coats as they raced towards Mr Aislabie’s estate of Studley Royal, along a road they knew well and seemed to enjoy. Pugh gave us their names, and the names of their forefathers, and would have continued on if I had not distracted him with a query about the weather. He was the head groom at Studley, and most likely knew the horses’ ancestry better than his own. He was a garrulous fellow, and I learned swiftly that a response was neither required nor particularly welcome. He spoke in the way some men whistle, and it was best to leave him to it.

I settled back, enjoying the sunshine. Insects buzzed in the grass, sparrows pecked at the ground with short beaks, a blackbird sang out from the branches above our heads. All about us, left, right and onwards, the fields rose and dipped, seamed with dry-stone walls and hedges. A pleasant, spring green world, spreading out to the horizon.

Sam perched upon the opposite bench, watching it all with a mistrustful eye, as if the land might rise up and swallow him. I had grown up on the Suffolk coast with its quiet villages and endless skies. Sam was born and raised in London, happy in the stink and bustle of its worst slums. He knew every thieves’ alley, every poisonous gin shop, every abandoned cellar transformed into a makeshift brothel. He was street vermin, street filth, and proud of it.

A fat bumblebee buzzed between us. Sam froze – a boy who would face down a blade without blinking. ‘It won’t harm you,’ I murmured, so as not to embarrass him in front of Pugh. Sam lifted one shoulder, as if he couldn’t care less if it stung him repeatedly in the face, but he looked relieved when it drifted on its way.