‘There is no need for us all to go,’ Sir Edward said, testily. ‘We are not going a’maying. The party will consist of myself, the accused – Mistress Stannard and her manservant Brockley – Julius Stagg and Giles Frost, the woman Gladys Morgan, of course, Dr Joynings and Master Taverner. That is all.’
‘I am coming as well,’ said Johns. ‘I got here in the Hawkswood coach and if there’s no room for me this time, then I’m sure the Knoll House stables can provide me with transport. A plain farm cart will do. And Eleanor comes with me.’
‘So do I,’ declared Christopher. ‘I am a witness to what Mistress Stannard told me before she came here. In fact, I advised her not to get involved. My wife was once her ward and I also have the status of a Queen’s Messenger. I came here on horseback and intend to go back to Hawkswood the same way, with or without an invitation. Anyway, Master Johns will need me to push his chair.’
So, in the end, it was a sizeable party that set out for Hawkswood that morning, though there was no need for any farm carts. Johns travelled in the coach, which turned out to be driven by my groom Eddie. Gladys and Eleanor also journeyed in the coach and, on Heron’s orders, so did Brockley and I. With five of us squeezed in along with Daniel’s chair we were very much wedged together and far from comfortable. The chair bumped my shins all the way. Heron and his men rode around the coach, encircling it and forming a guard. ‘We’re virtually under arrest,’ Brockley said to me as the party set off.
‘I know,’ I said grimly.
Dale and Sybil, who had both been left behind, knew it too. Our last sight of them had been two forlorn women with white faces standing outside the house to watch the coach depart. I glimpsed the twins trying to join them and caught sight of Mrs Hamble and Dr Lambert trying to draw them back. The twins must be frightened, too, I thought. Their father had not been officially accused of anything, but I had myself brought him under suspicion.
The rest of the party were all mounted and rode behind. We formed quite a cavalcade as we covered the nine miles to Hawkswood. We did not go to Hawkswood House, but straight to the village and the church, where the riders dismounted and tethered their horses.
Brockley and I got out of the coach, and Eddie, descending from the driving seat, chivalrously helped Eleanor out. Brockley and I hadn’t felt inclined to do so. Christopher then lent Eddie a hand in getting the wheeled chair out, guiding Daniel Johns down into it, and fetching a rug out of the coach to place across his knees. When everyone was finally assembled, Heron took the lead as we filed through the gate, then along the short path to the church and into the cool interior of St Mary’s.
‘Well,’ said Heron, swinging round to look at his clustered audience. ‘Here we are. What is it that we have been brought here to see?’
Gladys hobbled forward and used her stick to point to the last window on the south side. ‘That’s it. You look close at that one. That’s the Last Judgement, that is, and there’re the demons taking the damned to hell. You take a good hard look at those. Can’t see it from down here; those windows are too high. You’ll want ladders.’
‘I left a ladder in readiness,’ said Joynings. ‘There it is, propped in the corner beyond the font. Master Heron, perhaps your men could …’
Pug and Saint were already doing it. They brought the ladder out of its corner and set it carefully beneath the window Gladys had pointed to. ‘I’ve been up there,’ said Joynings. ‘I’ve seen what Gladys Morgan means and …’
‘And how did Gladys get up there?’ enquired Heron. ‘She can’t climb ladders!’
‘There’s silly talk,’ said Gladys in her rude way. ‘I was here when the window was brought inside the church and I saw it then, close to. After the mistress had gone, I stopped on. Wanted to see the window go into its place, I did. Only I were in that little chapel, looking at the flowers in there and Master Stagg didn’t know I were still there. But I was, and I was at that there chapel door, about to come out, when, just as the men were putting ladders ready to help them get the new window into place, Master Stagg strolls up to it, says: “Ah yes, one final touch!” – and with that, quick as lightning, he knocks out one pane, just one, puts another in its place, gets it fixed, and then tells everyone to wait, it’s got to settle. “We’ll break for a meal,” he says. “It’s all ready at the inn. Got to wait a bit now before we move the window.”’
‘That’s true enough,’ Stagg interrupted. ‘It had all been a rush, getting ready to deliver the window and I forgot to see to a pane that I thought should be replaced. The colours weren’t right in the one already there, didn’t perfectly match colours in other panes they ought to have matched. I’d got the new one ready myself, working late for two nights. And then, would you believe it …’
‘No,’ muttered Brockley.
‘… I was so tired that I overslept, and in all the to-do of getting the window wrapped and on to its cart I almost forgot the new pane! I remembered at the last moment, and I like a job to be perfect. So I picked up the new one and brought it with me. I didn’t want to mention any of this to the customer, though! I knew Dr Joynings would want to see the window before it went into place, so I waited for him to come. Then Mistress Stannard came too. Well, good. I let them both see all they wanted to see and when they’d gone, I saw to replacing the unsatisfactory pane. What’s all this fuss about?’
‘I waited till they’d all gone,’ said Gladys, unimpressed. ‘But afore I left, I took a look. And that new pane, it worried me. Couldn’t think what were amiss with it, I couldn’t, but summat was. Even dreamt about it at night. And then, night afore last, it were, as I woke up, I realized! Plain as the sun in the sky! Them goats have people’s faces, but there was one face that was different in that new pane and all of a sudden I knew why. But I didn’t know what to do about it, not till Master Taverner got here with his wild talk about Mistress Stannard there being arrested, and that’s when I saw. That man Stagg, I thought, he’s at the bottom of this, and I got Master Taverner to take me to Vicar Joynings here and I told him what I’d seen and he got out his ladder and took a look and, well, everyone as can ought to take a look, too!’
Heron was, as I have said, a fair man. He might not approve of me but he was not going to refuse to look at evidence on that account. Without another word, he gripped the sides of the ladder and began to climb. Pug and Saint took hold of it to keep it steady.
‘It’s bottom left,’ Gladys called after him.
‘I’m there,’ Heron shouted down to her as his head topped the lower edge of the window. ‘What am I supposed to look at?’
‘The damned!’ shouted Gladys. ‘Look at their faces!’
‘They’re goats!’ Heron shouted.
‘They got humans’ faces. And one of ’em’s a face you ought to know! You look!’
There was a silence, while Heron peered. Then, slowly, he backed down the ladder. His expression was grave. He looked at me, for once with no sign of dislike, but with something more akin to sympathy. ‘Mistress Stannard, can you climb that ladder?’
‘I think so,’ I said. In fact, I was determined to climb it. If anyone had a right to know what had so obviously shaken Heron, I had.
I did not find it easy, even though I was physically quite strong, having always ridden regularly and been often busy about the house and garden. I had climbed ladders in the past but not for a long time now, and in the intervening years I had grown older. I knew that Heron’s men were holding the ladder, but still it quivered under me and made me nervous.
But I had to know. My breath was coming short when I reached the window, but I had managed it. I turned a little and looked where Gladys had said, at the bottom left-hand corner, where the demons were dragging the damned to their eternal torment.
I stared in amazement. I had seen and approved the design in Master Stagg’s workshop and I had seen the window close to when it was delivered, but I had not seen this. On the contrary, I had been pleased to see that the design was restrained. The entrance to hell was a black cavern mouth, but nothing worse, and the damned were shown as goats with sad human faces. Although they were being escorted by two black horned demons with pitchforks, only one of them was actually prodding a goat.
The change was in the goat that was being prodded. It had a new face, and it was the face of a woman bound for hell. Her mouth was distorted, a taut, gaping rectangle of pain and fear. She was surely screaming. Tears flowed from her distended eyes. The second demon was in the next pane but for his clawed hands and they now clutched her throat.
That face of terror and anguish was my face. The hair was dark, the eyes, very cleverly done, were a mingling of brown with bits of glittering green: hazel eyes, my eyes, deeper in colour than the hazel eyes of the twins. I recognized the way they were set, the shape of the dark eyebrows above them; I recognized too the cream and tawny of the goat’s coat, the exact shade of my favourite cream-and-tawny colours which I had been wearing, as it happened, every time I met Stagg. And I recognized the topaz pendant round the goat’s neck.
Stagg was good at portraiture, I thought. The human face of that goat was certainly mine, depicted as only someone could who hated me with every fibre of his being, body and soul.
He had been careful to make sure that if I or Joynings inspected the window before it was put in place, as indeed we did, we would only see the original pane. He had made the change at the very last moment, after we had come and gone. He knew that once the window was in place, it would be hard to see that agonized face.
The window was high and the faces of the goats were small. The details of their expressions wouldn’t be obvious. Wouldn’t, indeed, be obvious at all except to people who knew my face well and perhaps not very plain even to them.
A stained-glass picture of a goat with a human face, and the features of a living person were so very different. Glass and paint for the one, flesh and blood for the other; the one static in a church window, the other walking and talking. Even Gladys, who knew my face well, had not recognized it at first.
It would be Stagg’s nasty little joke, though he would have to keep it to himself. His emotions had been so strong that he hadn’t been able to keep them out of his work. He hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to record me, for all time, as damned. I might never realize – indeed, I was not intended to realize – that it was there, but he, Stagg, would know, and rejoice in secret.
I shuddered. It was a frightening thing to find oneself the target of a hatred as intense as that.
I backed down the ladder, not minding it now for I was far too shocked by what I had seen to care. I stepped off and turned at once to Heron.
‘If you please, Sir Edward, I would wish everyone to see that window who can climb up to it.’
I glanced at Stagg. His face had gone leaden, bloodless.
‘Perhaps Master Stagg himself should look,’ said Sir Edward. ‘We will see what he thinks of it now.’
Stagg made an effort. He licked his lips and said he didn’t understand.
‘Go up!’
We watched him climb. I looked at the long, sensitive fingers gripping the sides of the ladder. Simeon Wilmot’s fingers. Why had I been so slow to recognize them? Even the lines of Stagg’s back looked familiar now. They too were the same as Wilmot’s.
He reached the top of the ladder and then called down: ‘But what am I to look at?’
‘The damned, as well you know, look you!’ screeched Gladys.
More temperately, Heron called: ‘Left-hand corner.’
Stagg looked. Then he came down the ladder. His face was now as pale as a white linen sheet. He did not speak. Christopher said: ‘I have seen it already.’ But he went up all the same to view it for a second time, and came down with such anger in his brown eyes that I felt alarmed, even though the anger was not directed at me.
Taverner, who had also seen the window already, declined to take a second look. ‘I was horrified enough the first time. It’s despicable.’
Dr Joynings too had seen the window, but Heron signed to Brockley and he in turn tackled the climb. He descended with his lips pressed together and a disquieting glitter in his blue-grey eyes. It boded ill for someone.
‘I can’t get up there,’ said Daniel Johns. ‘But the window has been described to me and you all look thoroughly appalled by it. It is evidently most objectionable. Well, Master Stagg has had time now to consider his position. Has he not, Sir Edward?’
‘I don’t understand,’ Stagg said again. ‘I didn’t mean … I never intended … I suppose Mistress Stannard’s face was in my mind. She has a most pleasing countenance …’
While Johns was speaking, Frost had climbed up to the window. He now descended, scowling, and said roundly: ‘Julius, I think you must have let your brains go begging.’
‘I want to see!’ Eleanor suddenly interrupted. Without waiting for permission, she went swiftly up the ladder. Young and lithe, she climbed like a monkey. She looked, gasped, and came down even more rapidly than she had gone up. ‘Uncle Julius, how could you?’
‘Hatred,’ said Brockley sternly. ‘Only someone who hated Mistress Stannard could perpetrate such a thing.’
‘I don’t hate Mistress Stannard, that is nonsense!’ Stagg now burst out in self-defence. ‘It was just that her most pleasing features were in my mind, and the colours in the first pane were wrong. I suddenly thought that one face at least should express the true feelings of a damned soul. I find Mistress Stannard’s features most striking and memorable, and …’
‘You did that to them? To features that pleased you?’ Brockley strode over to stand face to face with Stagg. ‘What I saw there, my friend, was hatred. It may seem odd that Julius Stagg, maker of stained glass, should hate Mistress Stannard, but it wouldn’t be at all odd if Anthony Hunt, the half-brother of Simeon Wilmot, did! Would it, Master Hunt?’
‘My name isn’t Hunt. I don’t know who this Wilmot is and …’
‘You have his fingers,’ I said. ‘And his back.’
‘His fingers? His back? What in the name of heaven are you talking about, madam?’ Stagg was blustering.
‘I have said it before.’ Brockley’s voice was grating again – grating, I thought, with rage. ‘Someone murdered my son Philip. I think that you and Frost did it. If not, who did? And why? Well? It was you, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?’
‘Don’t be …’
Once again, as at the side gate in the pre-dawn garden, Brockley sprang. His target this time was Stagg. They rolled on the ground, shouting, Stagg bellowing ‘Get off me!’ and a stream of swear words, Brockley exploding into vicious epithets and using his fists. Heron and Taverner leapt forward to try to separate them. Eleanor shrieked. Heron’s men ran forward as well, but hesitated as they saw that their master was himself entangled in the conflict.
The struggling heap of angry men crashed into one of the new benches, thrusting it sideways and nearly knocking Dr Joynings off his feet. Joynings had so far been watching the whole business in silence, but now he came to outraged life and began to shout. He waved his arms wildly and kicked vainly at the combatants, cutting a figure both comical and impressive at one and the same time.
‘This must stop! Stop it at once! I will not have such violence in my church. This is holy ground, consecrated to a loving God. This is an indecency, I will not tolerate this …!’
I can still see and hear it all, inside my mind: the battling heap on the floor; the open mouths and horrified eyes of the onlookers as they sidestepped and backed out of the way; the disordered benches, several of which had now been hit and two completely overturned; Dr Joynings’ scarlet face and flying cassock; Christopher standing back with arms stolidly folded; and then, absurdly, in a moment when Joynings had paused to draw breath and only snarls and grunts were coming from the struggling heap, and even Eleanor had briefly stopped screaming, the sound, beyond the open south door, of sparrows twittering.
Finally, Sir Edward Heron broke out of the mêlée and raised his voice in command. His men rushed in and the fighting trio were yanked apart, jerked to their feet, shaken into silence. Brockley’s nose was bleeding and Martin Taverner had a cut lip. Stagg looked as though he would have a black eye by the next day.
‘I want to hear more,’ thundered Sir Edward, ‘about the murder of Philip Sandley. And about Anthony Hunt.’
Stagg and Frost both began to shout at once. Johns caught his stepdaughter’s eye and beckoned her imperiously to come to him. When she did so, he seized her arm and rattled off some angry questions. Because Stagg and Frost were making such a noise, I couldn’t hear what he said and nor, I think, could anyone else except Eleanor.
Who lost her head.
Breaking away from Johns, she screamed: ‘What’s all this about murder? No one ever said anything to me about murder! I know nothing about it, nothing … It was just to pay the Stannard woman back for the death of my poor uncle Simeon. She deserved it, but there was no talk of murder.’ She rushed at Stagg and grabbed him by the elbows. ‘It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair! You never said anything to me about murder!’
Heron said something and the cherubic Saint marched over to Eleanor and pulled her away. She was weeping wildly. Taverner went to her, and Saint let him take her. In a rough and ready way, Taverner pressed her face against him to muffle the tears, and after a moment she quietened. He then detached her, except for continuing to hold her by one elbow. Joynings, who had witnessed the scene with obvious distaste, looked as if he would very much like to dig a hole in the flagstoned floor and bury himself in it.
Stagg and Frost stopped shouting. They stared at Eleanor. So did Heron. ‘I think, Mistress Liversedge,’ said Sir Edward, ‘that you have things to tell us.’
‘I think so too,’ said Daniel. ‘And by God, young lady, I order you to tell them!’
Eleanor gulped, sobbed anew for a minute or two, was shaken by Taverner, not violently but reprovingly, and was again told by Daniel Johns to speak up and no more nonsense. Joynings echoed him. And, at last, the truth was told.
Sullenly, Eleanor said: ‘I was fond of my Uncle Simeon. He was hanged and that Stannard woman was responsible – and it was all because he was in a plot to help England and protect the queen. To protect Her Majesty! What was so wrong about that? He and some friends …’
‘Including Master Frost?’ snapped Sir Edward.
‘No, no. Other friends. They made a plan to make the Stannard woman …’
‘Mistress Stannard, if you please, young woman!’ barked Brockley.
‘All right, Mistress Stannard … She has a certain reputation for … for undertaking things. They wanted to make her kill that Scottish queen who’s so dangerous to the realm, but she wouldn’t do it. Instead, she got them arrested and my poor uncle was hanged. Uncle Anthony was angry. He loved his brother, and why shouldn’t he? He moved his stained-glass business from Somerset to Guildford and changed his name. And he told me why. He said if I would help him, I could have a costly dowry from him and all he meant to do was avenge his brother by discrediting Mistress Stannard. I only had to pretend that the chest had been stolen and beg Mistress Stannard to get it back, then he would see she was caught trying to steal it and accused of theft. Serious theft … Even if she wasn’t hanged for it, she would be ruined and serve her right!’ bawled Eleanor, ending her account in a howl of protest against the unfairness of her relatives and the law.
Silence fell after that. Then Daniel, oddly authoritative despite his wheeled chair and the fur rug over his knees, said: ‘It seems to me that my stepdaughter has been a very foolish wench but nothing worse. I cannot criticize her for feeling affection towards an uncle, though I certainly criticize her for lending herself to an ugly and remarkably inefficient scheme of vengeance against those who brought him to justice. I know nothing of this murder which is said to have taken place, but I believe her when she says she knew nothing about it either …’
‘Nor did I, until it was too late!’ Frost’s face had once again turned leaden and he was sweating. Stagg glowered at him. ‘Well, I didn’t!’ protested Frost. In a shaking voice, he added: ‘You have lost. We have lost. It’s all over.’
Stagg seemed to pull himself together. ‘I must say this. I am not prepared to see my niece tried for helping in a murder. It is true that Eleanor knew nothing of Sandley’s death, and indeed it was never intended. Sandley was part of the original plot against Mary of Scotland, of which my brother Simeon was never ashamed. We believed that Sandley was true to us and asked him to play a part in our new undertaking. I believed him to be estranged from his father and the plan was for him to claim he had overheard a conversation between Brockley and Mistress Stannard, scheming to get their hands on the dowry chest. But instead, he said he was going to betray us, the silly innocent! I told my workmen I was ill and was going to stay in bed, but really I was out keeping watch on him. And when the very next day he set out and took the track for Hawkswood … well, I knew where he was going and went to intercept him. I wanted to argue with him, to persuade him to turn back. But he wouldn’t listen, and even drew his dagger and …’
‘You shot him from cover, with a bloody crossbow!’ shouted Brockley. ‘Then, I suppose, you played the part he should have played!’
‘It was self-defence!’ Stagg bellowed.
‘You’re a liar! He never carried a dagger!’ Brockley thundered. ‘Were the stakes, to your mind, so high you needed to kill him?’
Stagg gobbled, but didn’t reply. His temples were streaming with sweat and he was looking about him like a hunted beast at bay. Then I said: ‘Anthony Hunt had made threats against me. Sir Francis Walsingham told me that. He will confirm it.’
‘I can confirm that, too,’ said Christopher. ‘I knew of it from Walsingham, as Mistress Stannard did.’
Heron turned to his men. ‘Place Master Stagg – or should I say Hunt? – and Master Frost under arrest. As for this girl, Eleanor …’
‘She has been foolish and dishonourable,’ said Daniel forcefully. ‘She is not of my blood but I am responsible for her, and I have affection for her and a desire for her well-being. She has not deserved the horror of a fetid prison, though she should pay somehow for what she has done. What does it amount to, after all? In exchange for a dowry chest, she implored Mistress Stannard, weeping – she’s good at that – to retrieve the chest from Knoll House. She knew the plan was meant to ruin the lady’s reputation, but she fancied that that was justified because she had loved her Uncle Simeon and thought him unjustly condemned. If you will leave her to me, I will see that she pays a suitable price for her behaviour, but in private. She is only a silly young maid, not a criminal.’
Eleanor, who had been listening to him with a look of hope, now let out a squeal of fright and he gave her a sharp glance. ‘Don’t burst into tears again, girl! Not now. Save them for when we get home – if you are allowed to go home. My legs may be useless but my right arm is not, and the birch will use up all the tears you can spare. Sir Edward? What do you say?’
Sir Edward ruminated. At last, he said: ‘I agree that she is a silly young girl, little more than a child. Take her home and deal with her as a father should. Hand her to her stepfather, Taverner.’
For once, I thought, Sir Edward Heron’s poor opinion of the female sex had worked to female advantage.
Brockley had come beside me and was speaking into my ear. ‘There’s something I still don’t understand, madam.’
‘What’s that, Brockley?’
‘I think Frost told the truth when he said he didn’t know about Philip’s death. I think he must have been at court when my son … died. On the day of the inquest, which was the twenty-first of August, didn’t he say he’d been at court since early August and had only just returned? Philip died on the thirteenth. Which means Frost can’t have murdered Philip, and it’s probably true that he knew nothing about it until it was too late. Stagg must have acted on his own. I think Frost really is innocent of murder.’
‘What I can’t understand,’ I said, ‘is how did Stagg – Hunt – and Frost ever come to be fellow conspirators. Frost is a Catholic and was passing information to the Spanish, whereas Hunt was the brother of Simeon Wilmot, who wanted to protect England from the Spanish by getting rid of Mary Stuart. Whatever brought those two together?’