‘How was it your fault, Mistress Abigail?’
Her tear-stained face suddenly closed and her eyes flickered away from mine. ‘I – I sent for some red cloth, it draws the bad humours out, but I had left it too late, there was none—’
I said, ‘But yesterday Fulstowe told me he managed to get some.’
Dyrick looked quickly at Abigail. ‘Perhaps you meant to say he got it too late to save Emma.’
‘Yes, that was it,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I was mistaken, it was too late.’
‘You are leading the witness, Master Dyrick,’ I said angrily. ‘Barak, make sure his intervention is entered in the record.’
‘I apologize,’ Dyrick said smoothly. Abigail took deep breaths, visibly bringing herself under control. I thought, why does she really hold herself responsible for Emma’s death?
I asked how she and Hugh got on now. She answered curtly, ‘Well enough.’ Finally I asked her about Michael Calfhill. ‘I never liked him,’ she said defiantly. ‘He tried to drive a wedge between me and the children.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Because he wanted them to cleave to him, not to my husband and me.’
‘Both Hugh and Emma?’
‘Yes,’ she answered quietly. Then she said in a rush, her voice shaking, ‘But Michael Calfhill had such a terrible, agonized death. God pardon him, God pardon him.’
‘Do you know why he was dismissed?’
She took a deep breath, bringing herself under control again. ‘Only that it was for impropriety. My husband told me the reasons were such as a woman should not know. That is all.’
‘Is there anything else, Master Shardlake?’ Dyrick asked.
‘No.’ I had plenty to digest already. ‘I may have further questions later.’
‘Master Shardlake always says that,’ Dyrick told Abigail wearily. ‘Thank you, Mistress.’
Abigail wrapped the rug round Lamkin, rose from the chair, and carried the dog out of the room, hugging it to her bosom. I thought of her fear of the servants, her endless snappish battling with her son, her husband’s impatience with her and Hugh’s cold indifference. Poor woman, I thought. That dog is all she has left to love.
Chapter Twenty
AFTER LUNCH Barak and I fetched two of the horses we had hired in Kingston, and set out to look at the woodland. I took Oddleg, the strong, placid horse that had brought me from London. The pall of grey cloud had thickened, and the air was uncomfortably heavy. We took the Portsmouth road south; Hobbey had told us that in that direction trees were being cut on both Hugh’s estate and his.
To the right one of the communal village fields sloped gently away, its strips of different crops a riot of colour. Villagers working there glanced up, some staring at us. As we rode on the woodland to our left gave way to the cleared area, stretching back a good half-mile to where the forest remained untouched, a line of unbroken green. Thin young trees were thrusting up from the undergrowth, mostly pollarded so that the trunks would divide into two trees.
We stopped. ‘This area was felled some time ago,’ Barak observed.
‘They felled everything, not just the mature trees. It will be decades before the forest returns here. That is Hugh’s land. How much the timber fetches depends on the type of tree. Prime oak, or elm or ash?’ I shook my head. ‘Fraud is so easy.’
Behind us a trumpet sounded suddenly. We pulled in to the side as a company of soldiers tramped by, raising clouds of dust. The men looked tired and weary, many footsore. A whiffler walked up and down the line, calling on laggards to raise their feet. The baggage train rumbled past and the company disappeared round a bend. I wondered how Leacon was faring in Portsmouth.
We rode on a further mile or two. To the left the cleared area gave way again to dense forest. There was woodland to the right, too, which from the plan was the village woodland Hobbey wanted. The road sloped gently upwards, and now we could see the line of a high hill in the distance; Portsdown Hill, with the sea on the other side. Then we came on an area where men were felling trees. Almost all had been cut, back to a distance of a hundred yards. One group of men was sawing up a felled oak, another stripping leaves from branches piled on the ground. Long sections of trunk were being loaded onto an ox cart.
‘Let’s talk to them,’ I said. We rode carefully past the stumps, most still gleaming raw and yellow, and halted a little distance from the work. A man came across to us, a tall stringy fellow. He removed his cap and bowed.
‘Good afternoon, gentlemen.’
‘I am Master Shardlake, lawyer to Hugh Curteys that owns this land. I am staying with Master Hobbey at Hoyland Priory.’
‘Master Fulstowe said you might be coming,’ the man answered. ‘As you see, we are working hard. I am Peter Drury, the foreman.’ He had watchful little button eyes.