By the Sword (32 page)

Jonathan stabled his horse at an inn just outside the city wall and strolled unchallenged through the gates. Outwardly Oxford had become once more the pleasant, dreamy city of Jonathan's dissolute youth. Students in gowns, their heads bent against the cold, wet weather, mingled in the streets with the townspeople, just as they had done for hundreds of years.

The Woolnoughs’ house stood in Turl Street, unaltered in the six years since he had last seen it. He almost expected to see Mary's face at the parlour window, watching the street for his arrival, but the lower windows were shuttered and the house looked cold and impenetrable.

The rain that had fallen persistently since he had left Seven Ways continued to fall on Oxford. The cold, autumnal drizzle penetrated through his heavy cloak and ensured that the streets of the town were largely deserted. He gave the house one last look but dared not loiter. Instead he slipped gratefully into a small hostelry from which he could just see the house, bought himself ale and waited.

The afternoon slipped by, and he had all but abandoned his watch when he heard a familiar voice.

"Now then, do ‘ee stop thy complaining! We're nearly home, see?"

Bet, Mary's loyal and devoted maidservant, had stopped just outside the door. She held a child by the hand. The child, too heavily bundled in a cloak for Jonathan to even see what sex it was, complained in a high, fretful voice. Jonathan's heart lurched. He picked up his hat and stepped outside the door just as Bet, pulling her unwilling charge by the hand, had started off towards the Woolnough house.

"Bet!"

At the sound of his voice, the woman froze then swung around sharply on her heel, her face breaking into wreaths of smiles as she recognized him. He put his finger to his lips warningly, to stall her from declaring his name in her loud voice.

The child, a girl Jonathan could see now, looked up at him with disinterested eyes. She seemed about the right age. Could it be possible that Prescott had told him the truth and that this was his daughter?

"Bet, I must talk to you,” he said. “Can we meet?"

Bet considered a moment. “I must get madam here home and in some dry clothes and see to Dame Elizabeth. I could meet you in an hour, perhaps,” she said. “Where?"

He hesitated. They needed privacy and somewhere dry.

"The church of St. Michael, Bet. In an hour."

Bet's eyes shone. She thrived on subterfuge. She had willingly aided and abetted her mistress in the first flowering of youthful love. Later, in the more deadly game of adultery, Bet had carried their notes and arranged their trysts.

"An hour,” she agreed. “Come on, madam.” She addressed the child who was poking an already damp foot at the puddles. “We've been shopping and Madam would stop to feed the ducks,” Bet explained.

Jonathan smiled and nodded, still hardly daring to look at the child who skipped off up the street without a backward glance.

The church of St. Michael stood open and quiet. A few godly souls occupied the front pews, too intent on their prayers to notice the tall man who slipped quietly into a darkened pew to the rear of the church. Jonathan removed his hat and knelt, grateful for the peace and the chance to make some amends with God.

It had long gone past the hour before Bet slipped in beside him with muttered apologies for her tardiness.

"You've not changed, Bet,” he said.

"Oh you always did have a silver tongue!” She blushed and self-consciously patted her brown curls. “I can't say the same for you. I scarce recognized you in the street."

"Well I don't encourage people to recognize me,” remarked Jonathan grimly. “It generally means trouble."

It was not the time for idle gossip, so he came straight to the point.

"I've come about the child,” he said, adding in an uncertain tone, “...my child."

Bet paled and sat back against the pew. “How did ‘ee hear about her?” she said. “Master and Dame Elizabeth were dead set about you never knowing."

"That was the child with you this afternoon, Bet?"

Bet nodded. Hundreds of questions suddenly flooded into Jonathan's mind. He caught his breath and finally asked the one question that had haunted him for the last six years.

"Why didn't Mary tell me she was with child?"

Bet's cheerful face clouded over. “Oh, Sir Jonathan, at the time you went, she wasn't sure and she didn't want to trap you into taking her with you."

Agonised, Jonathan twisted his hat in his hand. “I would never have left her to Prescott and that old harridan if I had known, or even suspected."

Bet touched his arm sympathetically. “It wouldn't have changed anything. Like as not she'd still have died. She were too small for child bearing."

"Maybe,” Jonathan agreed. “But the child, Bet. What's her name?"

"Tabitha, Mistress Mary called her."

"Tabitha!” He tried the name out. “What sort of life has she led?"

Bet sighed. “She's led a lonely life, poor, motherless thing."

"Can I see her, Bet?"

"Not while the old lady lives and breathes. She would call the soldiers as soon as she laid eyes on you."

"And your master?"

"Dead these two springs. It's just me and the old lady and the little lass now. I tell you the old lady is not long for the world, although she's going to her Lord kicking and screaming!” Bet sighed.

"I can imagine,” Jonathan remarked grimly, remembering his last interview with the old woman.

Bet paused. “I tell you what, though. Come tonight. When you see the light go out upstairs, knock twice on the kitchen door and I'll let you in."

Jonathan smiled. Bet the schemer had not changed.

They parted at the church door. Jonathan took his evening meal then returned to the street to wait for Bet's signal. When the tiny light in the upstairs window went out, he gathered his courage and crossed the road. Through the kitchen window he could see Bet setting the dough to rise for tomorrow's bread. He knocked quietly on the kitchen door.

Brushing the flour from her hands she opened the door to him. “Come in and warm yourself,” she said.

Although the rain had abated, it had been a long, cold wait and he accepted the offer of the fire gratefully.

"Is she here?” he asked, his voice tight with anticipation.

"Aye, upstairs in her bed asleep. Do you want me to wake her?"

Jonathan nodded.

He caught Bet's arm as she stood to go. “You'll not wake the old lady?"

"Bless you, no. I've given her a sleeping draught that would fell an ox!” Bet smiled mischievously.

Jonathan stood by the fire, every nerve in his body strung to breaking point. Even before battle he had never felt so ill. He had a daughter called Tabitha; the name spun around in his mind as it had done since he had spoken to Bet that afternoon. He tried to imagine what he would say to her.

It seemed an age before Bet returned, leading the child by her hand. Tabitha's long, dark hair cascaded out from beneath her nightcap and she clutched a ragged dirty doll of sorts. She yawned, blinked sleepily in the light of the kitchen and looked up curiously at the tall, strange man by the fireplace. Jonathan searched her face, taking in every detail. She had Mary's heart-shaped face but the hazel eyes and dark hair were his legacy.

Bet knelt down beside the child and said in a serious voice, “Mistress Tabitha, this is your father, Sir Jonathan Thornton."

The child looked at her disbelievingly, then up at Jonathan. The sleep had gone from her eyes and they were bright as she scanned his face.

"Is he really my father?” she asked Bet.

Jonathan, normally so much at ease with children, suddenly felt totally inadequate. He crouched down to the level of the child and said softly, “I am your father, Tabitha."

Her reaction was not what he had visualized in the long wait to meet her. The small face contorted with anger and she flew at him, her fists flailing helplessly against his chest.

"I hate you, I hate you!” she screamed.

Not wanting to wake Dame Elizabeth, Jonathan gently disengaged the small virago and held her at arm's length. She glared at him, her chest heaving and tears of rage and frustration splashing on the flags of the kitchen floor.

"Hush, child!” Bet scolded. “You'll wake your Grandam and there'll be hell to pay for both of us."

At that the child's sobs ceased and she stared, still gulping, into her father's eyes.

"Tabitha,” he said quietly, making sure his eyes held hers, “why do you hate me?"

She hiccupped, and the rage in her face subsided to be replaced with fear. “You're the devil. You killed my mother!"

"Ah! Is that what Dame Elizabeth told you?” he asked.

She nodded.

Still holding her eye he asked, “Do I look like the devil?"

Slowly she shook her head, and he continued, “Tabitha, I'm just an ordinary man and I loved your mother very much."

"I don't believe you.” She quivered with rage.

Bet interrupted. “'Tis true, Mistress Tabitha, he did, and your mother loved him too."

"Then why did you go away?” Tabitha challenged.

Jonathan tried to keep his voice even but he could hear the emotion at the edge of his words. “I was a soldier, Tabitha. I had to go away to war and your mother never told me about you. I promise you I knew nothing about you until a week ago and then I came as soon as I could."

She looked from one to the other. Her face crumpled, and all the years of hurt and loneliness spilled out of her. Clutching her doll she ran out of the room. Jonathan made to follow her, but Bet's hand restrained him. He looked down at her, agonised and rendered helpless by the child's pain.

Bet shook her head. “You must give her time, Sir Jonathan,” she said. “Dame Elizabeth's filled her ‘ead with all sorts of stories about you. None of ‘em good."

"Devil take that woman!” said Jonathan with feeling, subsiding onto one of the kitchen stools. He flexed the fingers of his right hand, trying to imagine them circling Dame Elizabeth's scrawny neck

"Bet, what will become of her when Dame Elizabeth dies?” he asked.

Bet looked up, surprised. “I don't know,” she said then added thoughtfully, “Dame Elizabeth is the last of the family, save for a cousin who will inherit the house. He won't want her, a motherless bastard child.” She shook her head sadly. “There is none that would want her save perhaps as a serving maid."

Jonathan ran his hand through his hair in despair and frustration. For now, cold and unloving as it might be, she did at least have a home, but without the protection of her grandmother what hope was there for an illegitimate child nobody wanted? He stood up and walked slowly over to the kitchen door.

"What will you do, Sir Jonathan?” Bet's voice came from behind him.

He turned and looked at her. “I don't know, Bet,” he said wearily. “I need some time to think."

He stumbled back to his lodgings through the dark, familiar streets of Oxford. His feet suddenly seemed to have turned to lead, and utter despair hung over him. Giles had been right; it had been madness to come here. He would have been better off never knowing about the child.

He flung himself on to the bed and stared up at the ceiling beams. The urge to run again pulled at him but he knew that this time he could not escape. He could never live with himself if he abandoned his child again to her very uncertain future. He owed Mary and her daughter some atonement for the past.

The thought of his own parlous situation overwhelmed him, and for one of the few times in his twenty-eight years, alone in the concealing darkness of his inn room, tears gathered in the corners of his eyes and slid unchecked onto the none too clean bed covers.

The effects of a largely sleepless night were written on Jonathan's face as he stood outside the neat house in Turl Street. He had faced the worst any foe in battle could throw at him and he had known real fear, but nothing in this world could fully prepare him for an interview with that fearsome termagant from his past, Dame Elizabeth Woolnough.

Several times he had made to knock on the door but his courage had failed him. He paced the street restlessly, heedless to the curious stares of the passersby. Suddenly above the noise of the day, a child's scream pierced the air. The sound cut Jonathan to his heart. It had come from the Woolnough house. Without any more hesitation he beat on the door.

Bet opened it, her face pale and strained. “Oh, Sir Jonathan.” She grasped his hands. “Miss Tabitha told her about your coming here. I've never seen her so angry. She'll kill the lass and then she'll start on me."

Jonathan did not wait to hear more. He could hear Tabitha's voice, choked with sobs, coming from the parlour, interspersed with the shrill, strident tones of her great-grandmother. He threw open the door of the parlour. Dame Elizabeth looked up, her cane raised to strike the child who cowered at her feet. Jonathan's hand instinctively went to the hilt of his sword.

"So it's true. You've come back.” The old woman looked at him defiantly and without surprise. Her eyes rested on his sword. “Would you seek to run me through, you whoreson?"

With difficulty Jonathan restrained himself from that temptation. “I've never yet taken my sword to a woman. Now leave the child be,” he said in a low, quiet voice.

He took a step towards the woman and she brought the cane down on the table with a resounding thwack that made him flinch. For all Bet's assurance that the old lady was not long for the world, she certainly did not seem to have lost any of her vigour.

She faced him across the table, her face full of hate and spite. “Why have you come? Who sent you?"

"Stephen Prescott,” Jonathan replied.

She looked up sharply at the name. “Prescott was a good man. You did him a grave wrong when you debauched his wife. May you rot in hell for the adulterer you are."

Jonathan glowered at her. He was no longer a stripling boy in the flush of his first love and he had no wish to relive the confrontations of his past.

"Stephen Prescott is dead,” he said curtly.

The old woman's mouth curled up in a cruel parody of a smile. “So you can add murder to your sins, Jonathan Thornton? Well may your soul burn forever in the torments of hell."