Those names, already written down in Archie’s ledger, were the product of his sins, and I could feel the ghosts of some of them around me now within this shadowed space.
But I was thinking more of Maggie, yet untouched by him. Unbroken. And of Lily. Mostly Lily.
I told Archie, “She will be beyond your reach.”
“And who will keep her safe?” he taunted. “You?” He looked me up and down, and with a snort dismissed the notion. “Henry? Henry could not keep himself safe, when it counted.”
I had learnt to let an insult pass when it was aimed at me, but I did rise to that one, being it was aimed at one not there to make his own defense. “I would not mock his accident.” I gave the warning evenly, but Archie did not pay it heed.
“His accident?” His thin face crinkled in a smile. “Is that what he did call it? I gave the lad a leathering, that’s what. He let them go. He was supposed to be their keeper, and he let them go.”
Ever since I’d come into the transept, I’d been second-guessing my decision, reevaluating every angle of my plan. There’d been a moment, while I’d stood and waited here for Archie, when I’d studied that brass plaque upon the tomb and looked at Justice with her broken sword, and thought perhaps she did not need my intervention after all. Perhaps she would pick up her sword and see the matter to its end.
But each man has his breaking point, I’m told.
Henry was mine.
Henry, who everyone agreed had been the easiest to love of all the foundling boys within that house in Riddell’s Close. Who’d been quick to laugh and quick to love and so good-natured everyone remarked upon it. Who had wanted nothing more from life than a real family.
Who had lied to me, and said, “I was a carter, Sergeant Williamson,” to hide the truth that he had never worked outside the front room of that house, as Archie’s clerk. That it was Archie’s beating, not a horse and cart, that broke his bones so badly that the doctor had once thought he’d never walk again.
“He needed to be taught a lesson,” Archie told me, although as he spoke the words I think he caught his error. He was looking at my face.
I felt the rising rush of blood, and then the heightened sense of calm, and welcomed both. I was prepared when Archie took the pistol from his belt.
Coldly I struck it from his hand, and heard it clatter on the stone floor.
My voice was cold, too, without violence. “You should not have told me. Or at least you should have lied, as Henry did, and let me think it was an accident.” The time had come to finish things. He tried to back away from me. I took a step toward him. “Because then I might have found it in my heart to let you live.”
Chapter 39
Friday, 17 October, 1707
With my friend Lieutenant Turnbull back, a change had come to Caldow’s Land. More than a week had passed since he’d come home. Our lives had settled into a predictable and regimented order, and although it would have killed my soul to live confined by rules forever, I’ll admit I found it soothing, in the short term, after what had come before.
Turnbull had been grateful for the service I had done by taking his part in the inquiry. “I’d not have had the patience for it,” he confessed, but he’d gained the reward. Not only had Lord Grange sent formal thanks, but yesterday had brought an invitation to attend a private dinner with Lord Grange and several friends, a prospect that had Helen so excited she could barely eat her breakfast.
“And of course it would be when I am too large to fit into my best gown,” she complained.
“You will look lovely in your blue one,” Turnbull told her.
“I do thank you for your confidence. Except my blue one always makes me look too pale, I think. A little like a corpse. Which does remind me”—Helen danced with lightness from one topic to another—“you recall that man they found dead at the Regent Murray’s tomb on Tuesday morning last past?”
Turnbull said he was not likely to forget. “You’ve talked about him daily since I have come home.”
Ignoring his remark, she said, “A friend of mine has overheard there was a warrant out for his arrest, and that he sought to take his life by his own hand as an escape from a more painful execution.”
“For what crime?” asked Turnbull.
“I believe he was a forger,” Helen said.
“Well then, your friend is wrong,” was Turnbull’s answer, “for I’ve never known the courts to hang a man for forgery.”
“Perhaps he had intended to escape his guilty conscience, then,” said Helen, “for they found a pistol near him, but the final judgment seems to be that he did lose his footing and fall back and strike his head against the monument.”