CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Henry stares. Dismay and dread spindle down his spine like cold fingertips on his vertebrae.

‘I don’t understand.’

Rowena smiles but there is no warmth in it. The woman who stands before him now is a creature filled with malice – it exudes from her like a miasma, her face no longer beautiful but as hard and cruel as Julian’s had ever been.

‘I don’t understand,’ he says again.

‘No,’ she replies, ‘I dare say you don’t. But you will.’

Realisation dawns.

‘You were one of them.’

‘Yes.’

‘You used me.’

‘And you made it so easy,’ Rowena says softly. ‘I knew the minute you looked at me you wouldn’t be able to resist. Few men can. All I had to do was smile prettily and act the innocent, and you fell over yourself to become my protector.’

He did fall over himself, acted like a lovesick fool whenever she was near, all clarity of thought swept away by a pair of exceptional amber eyes.

‘But how?’ His voice cracks. ‘How could you be involved with them?’

‘Easily,’ Rowena says, as if she were proud of it. ‘Julian, you see, made me an irresistible offer.’

Henry swallows, a coil of jealousy tightening in his gut.

‘What were you to him?’

‘A pawn. Just as he was mine.’

Her voice is hard as granite, and as she stares coldly at him something else clicks into place.

‘You destroyed the gatehouse.’

‘I did.’

‘You made the tincture that killed the viscount and Dr Evans.’

‘Right again.’

‘And it was you who drugged Gwen.’

‘Your mother. Yes.’ Again, she presses the knife. Linette gasps as a bead of blood appears at her throat. ‘Not to begin with, of course. For years Julian used Dr Beddoe’s weaker concoctions – ill-made tinctures that Gwen’s body had started to reject. That’s what comes from using a quack, I suppose. No wonder he lost his fancy practice in London. He was found out, eventually, as all his type are in the end, and fled to Criccieth under Sir John’s protection. But three years ago, Julian found me.’

Henry says nothing. Cannot.

‘It was quite by chance, really,’ she continues. ‘Julian had been visiting a local landowner who was to pay a handsome fee for a large shipment of slate. He lived in a manor house on the outskirts of the town I lived in at the time. The man’s wife had fallen ill with a fever and the local physician was held up elsewhere so Julian – to ingratiate himself, I suppose – asked for someone who might help. He was directed to my door. I accompanied him back to the house, sat up all night with the lady, and the next day he escorted me home. But Julian took a fancy to me just as you did, and the money he promised was more than I’d ever see in one year. So for the month he stayed at the manor, I became his mistress.’

All the while Rowena has been speaking Henry has tried to distance himself from the pain he felt at that initial blow, forced himself to focus on the dagger pressed against Linette’s neck. Linette is taller than Rowena by some inches, and though Rowena is holding her at an awkward angle she wields the knife with confidence; there is no way at all Linette could make a move without falling victim to it. But at Rowena’s last words Henry’s concentration is lost, and he looks into her hard face in the growing light.

‘Mistress?’

‘I had no qualms about it, either. By then it was a way of life for me. I’d learnt to suffer the touch of a man since I was a little girl.’

Henry swallows, sick at the thought of it.

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Are you?’ She shrugs. ‘Well, perhaps you are. But what you feel does not matter to me. It never has.’

It is a hurtful boast. Henry stamps it down.

‘How came you to be here?’

Rowena’s eyes narrow. ‘He’s an arrogant man, Julian Tresilian. After he’d had his fill, he liked to tell me of his excursions abroad, his illicit little club. I didn’t listen at first. To me he was just another man eager to hear the sound of his own voice. But then he said a name, a name I had grown to hate with everything in me since the very day I was born.’

‘What name?’

‘Emyr Cadwalladr.’

Linette stiffens in Rowena’s grasp. ‘My grandfather? I don’t understand.’

‘Then let me make it clear.’

The tenor of Rowena’s voice has lowered into something dangerous. She twists the knife. The blood that has blossomed at Linette’s throat runs down her neck in a crimson trail that starts to soak into the collar of her nightgown.

‘My mother was one of the women Cadwalladr’s Hellfire club seduced. He promised her a great deal of money to play a willing part. But he lied, and Emyr wanted rid of her after the Order had their fun. Ours, you see, was one of the families that lived on Plas Helyg’s lands.’ Rowena looks at him across the blade. ‘You remember, don’t you, the ruins we saw that day in the valley?’

Henry pictures them, the roofless dilapidated cottages, their crumbling walls.

‘I remember.’

‘There,’ she says. ‘We lived there. I was not born then, but my father never let us forget our history. My parents, together with my brothers and sisters, were forced out into penury. No provision was made for us – your grandfather simply sold the land to pay his debts and didn’t give a damn what happened to those left homeless.’ Her grip slackens on the knife before it tightens once more. ‘They had nowhere to go. My siblings died one by one either from cold or starvation or from the beatings – and my father, being such a hot-blooded man, made sure to replace them. He used my mother like a breeding mare, and she – who I remember as such a weak pathetic woman – had no spirit to stop him.

‘Eventually my parents found their way to the marches and to charity, such as it was. A hovel in a town which cared little who we were or what we’d been, only whether we could pay the board. And each year there was another child and each year one died, and each year my father beat my mother until her will simply gave out. She hanged herself from the rafters in their bedroom while my father was out drinking. It was me who found her.’

Something clouds in Rowena’s face before it clears again.

‘On my mother’s death it was up to me to find work; I became an apothecary’s apprentice, learnt my poisons young. But it did not matter, it made no difference, for nothing really changed and every day – every single day – my father would speak of wicked Emyr Cadwalladr who robbed him of his livelihood and used his wife like a whore. How it was Cadwalladr’s fault he beat his children, how it was Cadwalladr’s fault he raped his wife. That it was Cadwalladr’s fault he did the same to me.’

Henry watches her, the pity in his chest ripe and painful. He wants to cry for her. But Rowena … Rowena sheds no tears. Her eyes are dry as bone.

‘It was also Cadwalladr’s fault I was driven to poison my father. I’d learnt my trade well, knew exactly what to give dear old Pa that would not arouse suspicion. Later it was said he drank himself to death for he always did like his liquor, liked it enough to favour it above the rent.’ She pauses, lost it seems in memory. ‘And for a while I was free of him. For a while I managed to get along. But then I met Julian. Can you understand what it was I felt when he told me who he was? Can you?’

‘I’m so sorry, Rowena. I am sorry for it all.’

‘Sorry means nothing,’ she spits. ‘It changes nothing .’

‘I know,’ Henry says. ‘But I’m sorry all the same.’

There is a space of silence between them. Henry can see Linette’s pulse pounding in her neck. The blade is pressed against her jugular vein, he realises.

If only he could reach the knife!

‘What happened then?’

Rowena regards him a moment. ‘I knew Julian was a man of ambition, he made no secret of that. I knew he had a scheme of some sort. So I took a risk. I told him about myself: where I was from, how I’d lived, what I had been forced to do. I told him I wanted revenge. I wanted the Cadwalladrs dead, every single one of them.’

Again she twists the knife.

‘This pleased him. It excited him. He asked me about my knowledge of herbs. I said I knew every plant and what each was capable of, good and bad. He asked me to concoct something that would turn the sanest woman mad without killing her. A test, he said. So I did what he asked, tried it out on the landowner’s wife, to spectacular effect.’

Henry risks a step closer. ‘And then?’

‘He told me what he planned. How one day the heir of Plas Helyg would be found and that he and his sister would die. He’d make it look as though their mother – in her madness – had done it. After that, Gwen too could die at the hands of the decrepit housekeeper. An extra dose of deadly nightshade to tip her over the edge.’ Rowena sneers. ‘The old lady had been drugging her mistress for years, after all, no one could deny it. She’d find herself at the gallows before the month was out.’

A cry of anger rips from Linette’s throat, and she squirms in Rowena’s unforgiving hold.

‘Linette, don’t!’ Henry warns, and Rowena twists the arm she holds behind Linette’s back, presses the point of the dagger into her neck until she stills. Linette looks at Henry, eyes large and pleading.

‘Rowena,’ he tries, ‘stop. Please. You don’t have to do this.’

A warm breeze cuts through the clearing, making her red curls dance. Was it really only a few hours ago he had buried his fingers in them?

‘After their deaths,’ Rowena says, as if she had never been interrupted, ‘Plas Helyg would be Julian’s in its entirety. The last of the Cadwalladrs, gone. And I said I would give him everything he wanted, I would do everything he asked of me just as long as I could be witness to it when the time came. So he brought me back here.’

‘What of the Order?’

She shrugs. ‘A means to an end. They thought they owed their wealth to their silly little club.’ She scoffs. ‘I never believed in Berith, but I had no way of gaining access to you if I did not participate. I played my part. And then, Henry, when you finally arrived, all I had to do was make you trust me. Make you both trust me. When you came to me that day in the cottage, you put me on the spot; I had no choice but to tell you the truth. But when I told Julian what you were about he thought it was funny. There you both were, believing you were solving crimes together, while we simply bided our time until the solstice. We knew you could never find any real proof. All I had to do was lead you to the temple when the time came.’ Rowena’s face darkens. ‘But everything went wrong, didn’t it? The wrong people are dead. And my revenge is not yet complete.’

Again, Linette strains against the blade.

‘We’ve done nothing to you,’ she hisses. ‘Nothing. We don’t deserve this!’

‘Nor did I deserve any of what I suffered, but here we are.’ Rowena turns her head to Linette’s cheek. ‘It is enough you are a Cadwalladr, enough you lived on Plas Helyg’s lands while I endured the cruelties of poverty and abuse.’

There is a rustle in the trees. A stick cracks in the undergrowth and Rowena scans the woodland over Henry’s shoulder. He watches her, dare not turn to see for himself – his focus is entirely on Linette and the dagger. One small movement and it could all be over …

‘I am not ignorant,’ Rowena says now, looking at Henry again, ‘that both of you have been mistreated. But neither of you can begin to compare your childhood with mine and you know it. You have never had to go cold or hungry. You’ve never slept in hedgerows, or travelled miles on foot in all weathers. You have never been beaten until your skin bruised black. You have never suffered the roughness of a man’s touch against a dirt floor. You have never—’

All of a sudden a dark shape bounds from the trees at breakneck speed, ears pressed low against its skull. It runs straight across the clearing, long legs traversing the space in seconds; its teeth are bared with intent, and it is aiming right for them.

‘Merlin!’ Henry shouts. ‘ Paid! Don’t!’

It happens all too fast; he has no means to stop it. With a snarl Merlin flings himself at Rowena.

‘No! No! ’

But it is too late. The dagger leaves Linette’s neck and finds the dog, and with a yelp Merlin falls to the forest floor with a hard and sickening thud.