Bevis Frampton had had little time or opportunity lately to arrange any further attempts on Martin Chancellor’s life. M’lord Essex had fallen ill, seriously this time—he had pleaded ill-health every time he had been ordered to appear before various meetings designed to make him give evidence as to his behaviour, not only when he had been in Ireland, but also when he had been placed under house arrest.
It was announced that he was suffering yet another attack of unidentified malaise. Some weeks later, when it was identified as an ailment known as the Irish flux, many Londoners assembled in the streets to demonstrate their displeasure at his persecution by the Queen. In this they differed from many around the court who knew only too well of his lack of common sense and of the maladministration and poor generalship which had led to his failure in Ireland.
Many, like Sir Francis Bacon and Walter Raleigh, who had been his fervent supporters, had been alienated by his behaviour after he had arrived back in England. On the other hand, a large number of disaffected, poverty-stricken noblemen and gentry had flocked to join him, hoping that if he were successful they would gain power and wealth. The most prominent among them were the Lords Rutland and Southampton.
Bevis, like them, believed that the common people had the right of it and, more to the point, that if Essex were to succeed in mounting a successful rebellion against the Queen, using their support, he would be one of those who would finally achieve the public office which he thought that his talents deserved.
To ensure by his daily encouragement that Essex persisted in trying to bring about such a coup was taking up much of the time which he needed to bring about Hadleigh’s downfall. Nevertheless, once Essex’s sickroom was forbidden to him and to Essex’s other supporters, he was able to seek out and order several bully boys to keep watch on Hadleigh, who daily went into central London, and to try to find an occasion to dispatch him—preferably in the capital’s crowded streets where his attackers might easily evade capture.
Martin, who had noted that the efforts to assassinate him seemed to have ceased, was, like his wife and Bevis, also having a busy day—and not only in that part of London where the merchants congregated. He had arrived at his Counting House to discover that there was a letter waiting for him from none other than Sir Robert Cecil, that devious son of a devious father, the late Lord Burghley. On Sir Francis Walsingham’s death he had succeeded him as the Queen’s Secretary of State.
The letter was brusque and to the point. It asked Lord Hadleigh to report to him at once at Greenwich Palace, where he was at present in attendance on the Queen in order to discuss a matter of some urgency. No explanation was given as to what the ‘matter of some urgency’ might be, but Martin could only conclude that Cecil was aware that he had been visiting Lord Essex. He had never met Sir Robert, but he knew of his reputation as a cold and merciless man, even harder than his father, and he did not particularly relish this sudden summons.
He left matters in the charge of Webster, before calling on Jacko and Rafe to accompany him. The court was at Greenwich, which would involve him in a journey down river on a bitterly cold day in early November, since Cecil, like all the Queen’s senior advisers, had no office of his own, other than some rooms in Whitehall. He often travelled with Her Grace as she moved from palace to palace.
‘It’s Essex, isn’t it?’ Rafe exclaimed suddenly. ‘That’s why he has sent for you. To find out if you’re committed to him.’
Martin said, ‘Perhaps. Nothing is ever certain where these great people are concerned.’
He wondered if Raleigh had reported to Cecil of Essex’s wish to enlist him as an ally—particularly since many of the Earl’s old friends had recently deserted him. More than that, the latest news about the fallen favourite was that he had been taken ill, although how seriously, no one quite knew. Martin had no intention of joining Essex, a man who could rely on such poor creatures as Bevis Frampton, but he might have some difficulty in convincing Cecil of that.
The palace, when he reached it, seemed to be in a state of great excitement—something on which he later commented to Raleigh, who told him with a grin that it did not signify. Palaces were always in a state of great excitement. Even so, Martin discovered, they were not places of great urgency. He was kept waiting in an antechamber by a harassed-looking young man who told him that Sir Robert would see him shortly.
Shortly turned into over two hours, and just as Martin was on the verge of consigning Sir Robert and all his works to the devil by leaving the palace without further ado, the young man returned and told him that Sir Robert would see him now.
He left Rafe and Jacko behind, staring at the wall, and was led to a small room where Sir Robert sat writing at a desk. A black-robed clerk stood before another, tall one, at some distance from his master. He was copying something into a ledger. Sir Robert was not quite what Martin had expected. Unlike his father, who was reported to have possessed an imposing presence, Sir Robert was a white-faced cripple with no presence at all who might have passed for one of his own clerks. Except that, as Martin soon discovered, he had a mind like a knife, and a sharp manner to match.
‘You may leave us, Skelton,’ he ordered, without looking at Martin, even though he had been announced by the young man with a great deal of formality. Skelton turned out to be the man already in the room—he departed through a door behind Sir Robert’s desk. The young man left the room by the one through which he had entered, without needing orders to do so.
Fortunately, after a chilly river journey and the equally draughty and cold ante-chamber, Sir Robert’s office was warmed by a great fire in an ornate hearth.
There was a spare chair and a bench in the room but Sir Robert went on writing without informing Martin that he might sit. He was just about to commit a form of lèse-majesté by walking out when Sir Robert looked up at him and said, ‘Lord Hadleigh, I believe.’
‘You believe rightly, unless, of course, your lackey made a mistake.’
If he had thought to rile Sir Robert by this riposte, he was the one who was mistaken.
Sir Robert inclined his head and said, ‘I met your father once. You do not greatly resemble him.’
Now how should he answer that? To say nothing might be best.
Sir Robert ignored his silence too, and drove on, to the point, Martin hoped.
‘I have been informed that you recently visited m’lord of Essex. I should be interested to know what the purpose of your visit was.’
‘A simple one, sir. I had a letter from him—as I did from you—asking me to call on him at Essex House. As a matter of courtesy I did as I was bid, but only to inform him that I had no interest in becoming part of the group who have gathered around him in order to support him in his differences with Her Grace.’
‘And that was all?’
Martin restrained himself from saying, ‘Quite enough, I should think,’ and came out instead, with, ‘Yes, apart from m’lord asking me to think again and change my mind.’
‘And your reply was?’
‘That I had considered the matter carefully, and my mind was quite made up. I had no intention of supporting him.’
‘Was m’lord alone?’
‘No, Lord Southampton was present with a number of other gentlemen, none of whom I knew—other than Master Bevis Frampton.’
‘Oh, Frampton,’ said Sir Robert dismissively, tossing his quill pen down. ‘And that was all,’ he repeated.
‘Yes. Lord Essex dismissed me after that. He was not best pleased with me.’
‘I know the feeling, m’lord. I suspect you have caused it in more than one of those whom you have met in your encounters with the great of this world.’
His grin when he said this, while picking up his pen and pointing it at Martin, made him seem almost human.
‘I always try to speak to the point, Sir Robert.’
‘You are adamant, then, that you will not change your mind about supporting him?’
‘I am.’
‘Excellent—and very wise of you, I am sure.’
Sir Robert sat silent for a moment before picking up a small bell which stood on the desk before him and ringing it sharply, whereupon Skelton reappeared.
‘Skelton, please note that I am about to take Lord Hadleigh to be introduced to Her Grace, who has expressed a wish to meet him, but before we leave, I trust that Lord Hadleigh will grant me the favour of drinking some rather good sack with me after taking the chair which stands across from my desk.’
‘If that is your wish, Sir Robert, I will comply with it.’
‘To adopt your own mode of speech, Lord Hadleigh, if it were not my wish, I would not have made the offer. Quick march, Skelton, we must not keep Her Grace waiting too long.’
Martin sat down. He was to meet the Queen, the monarch who had confiscated most of the treasure which he and the other sea-captains had captured during their raids on the Spanish galleon run.
‘You were married recently, I believe, Lord Hadleigh—to Clifton’s niece,’ was Sir Robert’s opening gambit when they began to drink their wine.
‘Yes.’
‘Correct me if I am wrong, but was she not pledged to your brother John shortly before he died?’
‘That is true, Sir Robert.’
Sir Robert nodded thoughtfully. ‘I must inform you, Lord Hadleigh, that you are quite different from the man I expected you to be. From your career as a captain who attacked the Spanish galleon run I would have thought you reckless. The man I have just interviewed is far from that. By the by,’ he added, apparently as an afterthought, ‘you said that when you visited Lord Essex you met Master Bevis Frampton. I would be interested in your opinion of him.’
What to say? On the face of it this was almost an idle question. But did Sir Robert Cecil ever ask an idle question? Martin very much doubted it. He must go as warily as he could for, who knew, it was just possible that Frampton might be one of Cecil’s spies.
‘My talk with him was of the briefest. He did not seem to be other than one of m’lord’s hangers-on.’
Sir Robert smiled. ‘Of whom he has many,’ he finally said. He looked across to check that Martin had drunk his sack. ‘Now we must go to have audience with Her Grace. We must not keep her waiting. When she was told that Captain Andrew Martin, who had refused a knighthood, was Bretford’s long-lost son, she was most intrigued.’
‘I gather, from all that I have heard, that she was not the only one.’
Sir Robert laughed out loud this time. ‘She will be even more so when she finally meets you.’
He rang the bell again, twice. This time the first young man reappeared.
He bowed. ‘I am at your service, Sir Robert.’
‘You will escort and announce us to Her Grace, who is waiting to grant us an audience in the Long Gallery.’
The young man said nothing, merely bowed his head again and led them along two corridors to a huge room at the far end of which the Queen sat on a dais. A few gentlemen stood around her, and an even larger number filled the floor of the Gallery.
Upon their being announced after they had followed him to the steps which led up to the dais, the Queen, who had been leaning sideways and talking to a portly gentleman, looked in their direction and motioned them up on to the dais.
‘Sir Robert, you are welcome, and you, too, m’lord Hadleigh—or should I call you Captain Martin?’
‘Whichever most pleases you, Your Grace,’ Martin said smoothly, after taking off his hat and bowing to her.
She laughed. ‘I see that you have a diplomatic way with you, sir. Is not that true, Sir Robert?’
‘Up to a point, Your Grace,’ returned Sir Robert, as smooth as Martin, and equally adept at two-edged conversation.
Now that he was near to her, Martin could see what the ravages of great age had done to his monarch. All the paintings of her, even recent ones, showed her to be a red-haired beauty with a porcelain complexion and fine blue eyes. Alas, her wrinkled face was so powdered and painted, and her blue eyes were so faded and rheumy, that only the caricature of what had once been a pretty young woman was left.
Oh, her clothes and her jewels were as beautiful as ever, but their very elegance merely served to emphasise the change from what she had been to what she had become. Her manner and her voice were still queenly, and as she spoke to them it was plain that her intellect had not been impaired. Martin could only wish that he had met her when she was in the pride of her youth and he could understand a little the resentment which some of her courtiers, particularly Essex, felt at being the servant of a fading old maid.
Not that he condoned it, for she still remained the woman who had defeated the pride of Spain and turned Britain from a country despised by the great European rulers into one which they now feared.
She began to question him shrewdly about his past. ‘They tell me that you ran away from home, m’lord. Why was that?’
‘I was unhappy, Your Grace. I wished to live my own life.’
‘What was the cause of your unhappiness?’
He could not answer her truthfully, but his evasion must be carefully made so that she might not interrogate him further on the matter.
‘That of many young men, Your Grace. I wanted my freedom.’
She laughed a little at that. ‘But I understand that you began your new life as a common seaman. There must have been very little freedom for you on board ship.’
‘But it was my choice, Your Grace, no one else’s.’
‘And you were present at the action in which the Armada was defeated?’
‘Which I survived, to my great good luck—and to my future fortune.’
Beside him he heard Sir Robert give a dry cough. Doubtless he was appreciating the manner in which Martin verbally fenced with his Queen as he had earlier fenced with him.
The Queen now turned her attention to Sir Robert. ‘I understand that my lord of Essex was foolish enough to try to persuade Lord Hadleigh to join him as one of his supporters. I cannot believe that the man whom I have just met would have had so little judgement as to agree to any such thing.’
‘He has assured me that he gave m’lord short shrift in the matter, Your Grace.’
‘Which, having met him, does not surprise me.’
Sir Robert nodded his head at this, at which the Queen resumed her questioning of Martin. ‘I understand that you have just married Lord Clifton’s niece. I wish you joy of her, and will add that if at any time you expressed a wish to enter my service in any capacity I would be most pleased to employ you.’
Again, Martin did not know quite what to say. This time he simply bowed his head and said, ‘I appreciate the honour you have just done me, Your Grace, and if my duties as a merchant would be of use to the Crown then I shall remember what you have just said.’
The Queen laughed, Sir Robert smiled.
‘Go to, young man, your wit equals Sir Robert’s best. Has my Secretary of State been tutoring you?’
Sir Robert intervened with, ‘He needs no tutoring, Your Grace, I do assure you. I, too, will bear Lord Hadleigh in mind should I need the kind of assistance he might be able to give me in future.’
‘Well said,’ pronounced the Queen, and then waved her hand to dismiss them. The audience was over. They might leave or stay in the Gallery, but were not to converse with her further.
Martin breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever else she was, his Queen was also uncommonly shrewd. She and Sir Robert were a good pair—as she and his father, Lord Burghley, had been. Lord Essex was a child beside them.
Sir Robert obviously thought that Lord Hadleigh was no child. ‘You are exactly the kind of new man, if you will allow me to say so,’ he told Martin when they had returned to his office, ‘who ought to be serving the Queen—and, when she is called to her last rest, her successor.’
Martin shook his head. ‘I was not formed to be a courtier, and I believe that all who serve her at court in any capacity, must inevitably, after a short time, become a courtier. My talents, such as they are, lie elsewhere.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Sir Robert, ‘should you change your mind, you know where I may be found. Oh, and as a last piece of advice, I think that you would be wise to have as little to do with Master Frampton as possible.’
Martin knew that that was the paraph which ended his interview with Sir Robert Cecil. Now he must leave. He found that the effort of being cautious, of not saying what he truly thought, had made him sweat, something which physical danger had never managed to achieve. Not only that, he wondered why Sir Robert, who was reputed to know everything about everyone of importance in London, should warn him against Frampton.
Not of course that he needed warning—but was Sir Robert aware of that, too?
He was strangely quiet on the way home. So quiet that when they were on their way upriver Rafe asked anxiously, ‘What did you tell Sir Robert?’
‘As little as possible,’ was Martin’s dry reply. ‘Which was also the nature of my answers to Her Grace.’
Rafe looked baffled at this, but that sharp cove, Jacko, began to laugh. ‘Aye, that’s the way to avoid the headsman. There’s many a talkative fool who’s underground because he couldn’t keep his gob shut.’
Rafe said, ‘Her Grace? Never say that you had an audience with the Queen?’
‘Yes, and she offered me a post at court—which I refused as politely as I could. Sir Robert assures me that the offer remains permanently open.’
‘You refused?’ gasped Rafe. ‘Most men would have fallen over their feet to accept it.’
‘I am not most men, and, as Jacko has just hinted, I have a mind to keep my head upon my shoulders.’
‘What did you say to her which caused her to make you such an offer?’
‘As I told you, very little—which I think pleased her.’
Jacko began to laugh. ‘I know your very little, Master, as I know your quite a lot.’
Rafe was bewildered. ‘Ever since I have known you, you have striven for advancement. Now the greatest offer of all has been made to you, and you have refused it.’
Martin sighed. ‘I value my freedom. I am a merchant, as I was once a sea captain, with no one above me to tell me how to think and what I ought to do. To bow and scrape and lie for others, not myself—for that is what being one of Sir Robert’s agents would make me—is not my understanding of what my future ought to be. If my country were in direct danger, I would fight for it, but this underhand plotting and scheming is not for me. One day I would forget myself, speak the truth and likely end up on Tower Hill, as Jacko has suggested. Now let the matter lie. I would prefer that you say nothing of this to Webster until I have had a chance to speak to him.
‘And that is an order. Now let us be quiet.’
He so rarely gave a brusque command to any of those who served him that the effect was always the same: complete obedience. The rest of their journey passed in silence.
Kate had begun to worry, although she gave no sign to Aunt Jocasta that she thought something might be wrong. Night was starting to fall and Martin had not yet come home. Always before he had returned by mid-afternoon, and she found this departure from his usual custom more than a little disturbing.
She ordered dinner to be delayed, but when more time passed she rang for Webster, who was also a little worried that Martin and his attendants were so very late, particularly in view of the attempts on his life.
‘Did m’lord say that he might delayed at the Royal Exchange today?’ she asked him anxiously.
‘On the contrary, he told me that he expected to be back early, but it is possible that some problem arose which demanded his immediate attention.’
Kate thought for a moment. ‘Have you eaten since breakfast?’ she asked him, knowing that he usually dined with her, Martin and Rafe.
As she had expected his answer was No.
‘That being so, I think that, bearing in mind that Mistress Saville has not enjoyed a meal since she broke her fast early this morning, it would be hove me to order supper to be served for the three of us straightway. M’lord and the others could then, when they arrive, determine what they might wish to eat.’
Webster bowed his head. ‘I think that might be wise.’ He did not say kind, but he thought it, having experienced the callousness of other great ladies where their servants and dependants were concerned.
‘Very well. I shall ring for the butler to prepare a meal with all haste.’
It turned out that her decision was a wise one. Martin did not return until several hours after they had eaten their fill. Aunt Jocasta had already gone to her room to retire for the night, after explaining that the day had been a long one for her. He was looking tired, Kate thought, which was a new expression for him to wear. His first words, though, were of concern for her.
‘I hope that you have broken your fast, my dear. I did not mean to be so late, but first I was required to attend Sir Robert Cecil at Greenwich Palace, which also entailed me in taking part in an audience with the Queen. After that when I returned to the Counting House I discovered that one of my clerks had made a mistake which might have cost us dearly. To correct his folly took longer than I might have deemed possible beforehand.’
‘You are not to excuse yourself,’ Kate said swiftly, ‘only tell me whether you have eaten recently as I have done. If not, I will ring for something for you and Rafe and Jacko to eat.’
‘Rafe and Jacko have gone to the kitchen for a meal, so you may look after me at your leisure.’ He sank into the nearest armchair. ‘If it is possible I should like to eat here informally, rather than in the Hall with a great deal of ceremony.’
‘And so you shall,’ Kate told him before ringing the bell again and making all the necessary arrangements, ‘and while we wait, I will tell you of my day. My uncle arrived here, bringing Aunt Jocasta with him, as we had previously arranged.’
Martin looked around him before saying, ‘So you were not alone for too long—but where is the good woman?’
‘Retired to her room. She said that she was weary and needed to rest, but I think that she was exercising a great deal of tact by leaving me to look after you on my own when you arrived.’
Martin extended his stockinged legs towards the fire, Jacko having helped him to pull off his boots before he joined Kate. ‘It was kind of your uncle to accompany her here. Did he have aught of sense to say?’
‘Only that he was pleased by our marriage, whereas before he had been worried about it and he also asked me to pay his respects to you. He was sorry to learn that you were absent today.’
Martin laughed. ‘Oh, bravo—that I have made someone happy, I mean. You will be interested to learn that both the Queen and Sir Robert wished to make me part of her retinue. I am not sure how pleased they were with me when I refused.’
‘They did? Of what like was the Queen when you met her?’
Martin was brief. ‘Very old, but exceedingly clever.’
Kate was silent before saying slowly, ‘I am glad that you refused their offers. Had you accepted them, then we should have had to part, since the wives of her courtiers are not allowed to attend court with them—which would mean that we would be separated very soon after marriage.’
‘I am not formed to be a courtier, but fortunately I am prepared to eat the good meal which I can hear coming. You will drink a bumper with me, I trust.’
‘Indeed.’ And then Kate could not help saying, quite simply, ‘I not only missed you when you did not arrive home at your usual hour, but I was also worried that some harm might have befallen you.’
Martin looked at her over the bread which he was buttering. ‘You were really and truly worried for me?’
‘Yes.’
He popped the bread into his mouth and chewed vigorously before saying, ‘However tired I am I shall reward you for that when we retire this night. No one has ever worried about me before.’ And that was true, for it was he who had worried about Mary and not the other way round.
‘Not Rafe and Jacko?’
‘That’s different.’ Martin picked up his tankard. ‘I wish to drink to my wife who does me the honour of caring for me.’
He did not say love, for the word seemed to be anathema to him, but it was perhaps a sign that he was not only on the way to accepting her love, but was also nearing the time when he might be able to admit his for her. Not that she would talk to him of that tonight. He was tired after a long and difficult day, and it was her duty to see that he was not further troubled.
She watched him eat his supper with relish and they drank together at the end of it, before retiring upstairs where, tired though he might be, he did his husbandly duties with all his usual enthusiasm.
Martin had not lied to his father when he said that he had a business to run, and even though, in Thomas Webster, he had acquired a most useful secretary, he enjoyed the business of being a merchant so much that he had no wish to surrender it to another.
Besides, he was of the opinion that Webster was that most valuable of men, an excellent lieutenant, who would carry out his orders to the letter when he thought them good and sufficient, but would not hesitate to query them if he thought that they weren’t. In his experience such men were rare, and the pair of them were working successfully together in the city after the same fashion which he and Rafe had employed on his ship.
He also thought, correctly, that Webster had no mind to supersede him. What he did not know was that Webster had come to admire his new master greatly. So much so that what puzzled him the most was the mystery surrounding Martin’s abandonment of his life as Lord Bretford’s son. M’lord had spoken of him as having been unregenerate, wild and wicked, but nothing in Martin’s career, first as a humble seaman, then as a successful sea-captain, and now as Lord Hadleigh, Bretford’s heir, lent credence to such a description. On the contrary, in a deceitful world full of liars and tricksters, careless of other people’s feelings, he stood out as a man of honour, considerate in his dealings with those who were thought to be his inferiors, unlike many great men who trampled on all those around them.
So what had he done, all those years ago, to merit such a vile reputation that it had earned him, according to those who had known him in early youth, the most savage of punishments? The last of which had been so severe that as soon as he had recovered from it, he had run away from home.
What was even more puzzling was that Lord Bretford had worshipped his elder son, John, whom he had considered to be a paragon, but when Webster had, apparently casually, enquired about the dead man, his hearers had shrugged their shoulders, and one had even gone so far as to say, ‘I could tell you some odd tales but one must not speak ill of the dead.’
Webster decided that it was useless to waste his time worrying about a problem which appeared to be insoluble, and would concentrate instead on reducing the backlog of work which had accumulated while Martin had tried to deal with everything on his own before appointing him as his secretary.
As a consequence, early one morning he wandered into the office at Saxon Hall which opened off the library to discover his master there, busy at his desk. He needed to work with the inventory of Martin’s property in order to bring it up to date, but he had not been able to find it.
He gave a small cough to attract m’lord’s attention.
Martin looked up at him. ‘Yes, Webster, what is it?’
‘The inventory, m’lord. you asked me to add to it the details of all those new goods and chattels which were acquired when you took possession of Saxon Hall, but I cannot find it.’
Martin was silent for a moment before saying, ‘I thought that it was strung on the file with the rest of my business documents.’
Webster shook his head. ‘No, m’lord, I have looked through them all and it is not there.’
He was so scrupulous and careful in all his doings that Martin believed him. Suddenly he exclaimed, ‘I am the world’s clodpole. After we moved here last year I put it in a chest which contained my most personal papers of all so that it might not be mislaid. I have probably forgotten to return it to its proper home. It is in one of the three which are stored in my room. One moment and I will find the key.’
He pulled a brass-bound box towards him, opened it with a small key from a chain around his neck, and took three larger ones from it. He stared at them before saying to Webster. ‘I believe that one of these is the correct one. You will, perhaps, have to try them in the locks of all three chests: one contains clothes, another valuables and the third my personal papers: the inventory ought to be in the last one.’
Webster took them. ‘I will return them to you later, m’lord.’
Martin sighed. ‘Could you bring yourself to forget that I am m’lord?’
Webster smiled. ‘I’m afraid not. And if, as you say, you believe in a man’s freedom to speak as he wishes, you will allow me my little foibles—such as addressing you by your proper title.’
Martin made a noise between a groan and a laugh. ‘Go to, you rogue, to bait me with my own beliefs! Call me what you will—and be damned for it!’
All the way upstairs to Martin’s bedroom, Webster laughed to himself. As m’lord had said, there were three chests there: two of them were of plain wood, the third was a highly decorated Italian cassone. Logic said that the papers would most likely be in one of the wooden ones, so he tried them first, only to find that the inventory must be stored in the cassone.
The key slid sweetly into the lock. He threw back the lid to discover that inside was a medley of things valuable, and things which were only kept because they were dear to their owner’s heart. Webster took them out one by one, to find halfway down something which looked as though it might be the misplaced inventory.
It was a book bound in vellum.
Webster lifted it out and opened it. What was immediately plain was that it could not be the inventory, for written on the title-page in faded ink were the words John Chancellor, his book. He was about to replace it when his curiosity overcame his usual reticence.
Why was it there, carefully stored away and hidden from the world? He began to turn the pages, first quickly and then more slowly. He was a rapid reader, because he did not say aloud the words on the page before him, but sounded them in his head instead—a trick which few men had mastered. He would have bet good money from what he had seen of him at work that Martin Chancellor was one of them.
What he found there was the answer to everything which had puzzled him about his master—only for a further puzzle to be presented to him. M’lord Hadleigh had only to give this to his father to read and nearly every word would prove that his supposed wickedness had been the product of his brother’s envy and jealousy. What sort of man could John Chancellor have been, who had so resented his younger brother, a man who had nothing while he, being the heir, had everything, that he felt the necessity to destroy his life?
There was no reasonable explanation which he could think of for such dreadful behaviour, and now that John Chancellor was dead it was unlikely that there ever would be. Was that why Martin had said nothing to his father once he had found the book—preferring to leave a dying man with his illusions? That was another question which could not be answered either.
He carefully put the book back exactly where he had found it, after also noting that John must have been in the toils of someone who was able to control him by eyes and voice together. It was something of which Webster had heard before and had sworn that if the trick were tried on him he would try to resist it most strongly. He thought no more of that, for it was the other revelations which shocked him the most.
All that he had read made him respect the man for whom he now worked, even more than he already did. It was wrong that he was so misunderstood, but so long as he refused to disclose his brother’s villainy, the whispers about him and his integrity would never cease.
It was no use repining, and he still had to find the inventory, which was the very last thing which he pulled out of the cassone. Now what was he to do? There was only one answer to that. He would lock the cassone again, return the keys and the inventory to Martin, and tell him which one had opened the chest with the inventory in it.
Which was exactly what happened next. Martin put the keys down, saying ruefully, ‘It was very careless of me not to label them—I hope that it was not too much trouble for you to unearth it.’
‘No trouble at all,’ Webster said, shading the truth a little.
‘Good. I will be more careful in future. In fact, you may have them when I have finished checking them—your records are a model of excellence.’
Later, alone in his room, Webster made a resolution which he was determined to keep. M’lord must never know what his secretary had found, nor that that same secretary was determined that by some means or another he would ensure that Lord Bretford would learn of the gross injustice which his younger son had suffered at his hands.