19

W ell-a-day!’ Martyn declares entering the hall and leaning heavily on Helena as usual. ‘We have a mystery!’

Alice and Luella look up from the settle where they are entertaining baby Eleanor with a little wooden rattle by the hall fire. Eleanor lies in her mother’s arms, sucking at the rattle when she can grasp it, or listening to its clatter when Alice gently prises it from her fingers and gives it a shake.

This is unexpected cheerfulness on Martyn’s part. Since their difference over the Goldwoode inheritance, Luella and her cousins have been polite but distant towards each other, and neither she nor they have sought the other’s company. For brother and sister, the squabble of the other night was no more than a squall. Martyn and Helena have since been as one again, or at least, as much one as Martyn’s fickle humours allow. Helena has occupied herself with her brother’s needs, and the only converse between the two sides of the family has been the courtesies at table. Brother and sister spend their days in the solar while they all wait for the coroner to convene his court and announce his verdict, and for the Will to arrive and decide the inheritance once and for all. Ursula, Alice reckons, must be praying to have her home to herself.

‘You will never guess what I have found,’ Martyn declares, as Helena places a cushion at his back and kneels to settle the footstool for him.

Neither Luella nor Alice tries to guess what he has found.

‘I haven’t even told Helena,’ he crows.

‘Perhaps you had better tell us now, then, Martyn,’ Helena suggests.

‘It is a message!’ he declares.

‘About the Will?’ Luella asks. ‘I thought any messages would come to me.’

‘Oh, that,’ Martyn dismisses the idea. ‘No reason why that should come first to you, cousin, when I am his only male heir. No,’ he says, as Luella starts to object, ‘this is quite a different message. This one is not on paper.’

‘What are you talking about, Martyn? Is this word of mouth? A rumour?’ Helena says, an edge of irritation in her voice. ‘Why don’t you simply say?’

‘I suppose it was written with a ring, like this one,’ Martyn says, holding up his hand. ‘One with a cut stone that could scratch the letters on glass. In my chamber.’

‘Your chamber is in the guest wing?’ Alice asks.

‘As you say. On one of the windowpanes.’ He looks round at the three women and adds with relish, ‘An accusation.’

‘An accusation? That’s horrible, Martyn,’ Helena says. ‘We don’t want to hear such things. Come, let us talk of something pleasant.’

‘Oh, but you do want to hear, Helena. It is very juicy, and involves a great wrongdoing.’

‘Martyn, no—’ Helena objects.

‘W M,’ Martyn declares. ‘Who is W M, I wonder? Does anybody know who W M is?’ Icy fingers steal up Alice’s spine. Beside her, Luella, head bowed, appears to be concentrating on little Eleanor.

It is Helena who responds. ‘W M? Is that who wrote this message?’

‘W M,’ Martyn tells her, ‘is the one accused.’

A flush glows on Luella’s face.

‘Accused of what?’ Alice asks.

‘I am not sure I should tell you, all three of you being ladies of breeding. Well, Helena doesn’t match up to that description, though as my sister she might just pass muster—’

‘If you want to be offensive, Martyn,’ Helena squares up to him, ‘I shall simply go to your chamber and read this message for myself!’

‘Calm down, calm down.’ Martyn flaps his hand in her direction. ‘Truly Helena, you must learn to take a joke. I shall tell you what it says, but,’ he rolls his eyes, ‘prepare to hear something Dreadful.’ Martyn has missed a profitable vocation as a broadsheet writer, Alice thinks, he can titillate with the best of them. ‘It says, W M is a Ganymede !’ Martyn sniggers.

There is a short silence.

‘Well, don’t you get it? A Ganymede is a beautiful boy.’

‘You’re saying WM is a beautiful boy, I suppose,’ his sister says. ‘So what?’

‘Ah, but it has a prelude: His rotted pleasures,’ Martyn replies. ‘Who’s WM, I wonder?’

Luella is bending low over Eleanor, her hair fallen forward, the flush spreading down her neck.

‘I think it was written by A Woman Scorned,’ Martyn says with relish.

‘If so,’ Alice says, ‘it’s probably a former guest in that chamber. A flurry of anger after being rejected.’

‘The important thing is, this WM is a Ganymede. He indulges in rotted pleasures! Man to man, as you might say.’

Luella’s shocked face is flooded to deepest red. Martyn, unaware of the true import of his words for her, but noting her discomfiture, goads. ‘Oh, so you know about rotted pleasures, then?’ He hoots with laughter as Luella clutches Eleanor to her breast and with a choking cry runs from the hall.

‘For goodness sake, Martyn, that was cruel!’ Alice cries. ‘Luella has been gently bred, she doesn’t appreciate your ale-house jests.’

‘I did warn her. She shouldn’t listen if she’s so faint-hearted.’ Still smiling, Martyn goes on, ‘She knew what that was all about. I’ll wager my strait-laced cousin explained—’

‘So what were you thinking to do about it?’ Alice challenges.

‘She’s so easy to tease.’

‘Just let it be, Martyn.’ His persistent coarseness Alice cannot allow to pass. ‘Or would you like me to repeat to Mistress Cazanove what you have just said?’ As he shrugs, ‘I thought not. In future, find us some less sordid and more interesting news, would you?’

She gets up and walks out of the hall, followed by his derisive, ‘Ooooo!’

She comes to the foot of the stairs and takes the treads two at a time. At the top she turns away from her own chamber and makes for the guest accommodation at the other end of the house. There she halts by a pair of adjoining chambers. For a moment she listens the way she came. No one is following. She pushes open the door.

Their travelling box, and a spare shift laid over the coffer, declare Helena’s chamber. An open door leads off and she goes through into Martyn’s. At the window she scans each little square pane. At first nothing shows, the glass is untouched. It is only as she inclines her head this way and that that she finds it. At a corner pane, low down, is the message as Martyn said:

His vile rotted pleasures

W M is a Ganymede

So the answer is not the broadsheet she discovered in Cazanove’s closet. These scratchings are the words Cazanove found and taunted Wat with, words written here in the house, plain for any who had “eyes to see”. You see a view through glass, but look with a closer eye and you see the words on the glass. That’s what you did, Meredith . In his searches, Wat, like Alice, no doubt, was looking for paper. Who would ever think of windowpanes? More importantly, who wrote it? A guest, since this is a guest chamber? One who stayed here while Wat was servant to Cazanove. Growing up in Hillbury, Alice knows Cazanove used to give lavish entertainments for the peerage at whose edges he strutted. And Wat is a well-looking man. If a guest wrote it, it could be any one of numberless possibilities. If a woman, she might be unable to accuse him openly without implicating herself, and instead took her savage revenge on glass.

Is this Wat’s secret? It is all supposition, but whether written by a woman or a man, what if it is true? The one reason why he did not, could not, respond to Luella’s love? Did he unguardedly tell her he loved her but mean it in a very different way from the way she supposed? Is this why he made no attempt to contact her, either from gaol or after he escaped a hanging? Ganymede was the beautiful young man beloved of the god Zeus. These few words of accusation explain why Wat is a dead man if this is reported to the justices. There is only one punishment for a man caught lying with another man. The things I have done .

By cruel misfortune, Cazanove chanced upon this. And Cazanove was the very man to take from it that which could enhance his power. In what way is this connected to Wat’s trial? At this point, Alice’s reasoning breaks down. Is it connected at all?

The temptation to smash the pane is so strong she has to force herself to walk away. Destroying it now would only inflame and spread the story which she has done her best to reduce to a base blunder on Martyn’s part. The one silver lining is that Martyn has no idea who W M is. Alice can only hope he leaves before he finds out.