A Death at Fountains Abbey Read Free

said, though that was not the only reason for the delay.
    Pugh grunted in sympathy. ‘I’ve drove Mr Aislabie up and down to London a fair few times. That stretch from Leicester to Nottingham could kill a man, it’s so poor. No better in spring than winter.’
    ‘Yes. Very poor.’ It is the nature of long, tedious journeys that – on arrival – they must be lived again, in long, tedious conversation. A simple: ‘I travelled. It was dreadful. Here I am,’ will not do, apparently.
    Pugh tied a box to the back of the chaise. Books, tobacco, playing cards and dice. A brace of pistols. I had worn them at my belt on the road, in case of attack. I hoped I would not need to take them out again.
    ‘A young gentleman fell hard on the Nottingham road a few weeks ago,’ Pugh trundled on. ‘Broke his arm and his wrist, poor lad. I trust you didn’t take a fall along the way, sir?’
    ‘Thank you, no.’
    He slotted the last of my boxes into place. ‘Glad to hear that, Mr Hawkins. You’ve suffered enough injury these past weeks, I’d say.’
    I raised my hand to my throat on instinct, then dropped it swiftly. A few months ago my neighbour had been stabbed to death in his bed – the day after I had threatened to kill him. At my trial, the jury had judged me not upon the evidence, but upon my character and reputation. I was found guilty, and sentenced to hang. Against all odds I had survived – but only after I had spent ten long, agonising minutes dangling from a rope, suffocating slowly as a hundred thousand spectators cheered me on. Ever since then I had suffered from nightmares: the white hood thrust over my head, the cart pulling away beneath my feet, the rope tightening around my neck. These terrors filled my dreams, and in the day left me with a dull ache in my chest – a feeling of dread that I could not shake.
    I was grateful beyond reason to be alive. There were times when the mere fact of my existence could lift me to ecstasy – as if I had knocked back three bowls of punch in one. But I had met with Death that day at the scaffold. I had crossed the border into his kingdom, if only for a few moments. I feared the experience had changed me for ever. I feared, in truth, that Death still kept a hand upon my shoulder.
    My hope had been that my story would not have travelled as far as the Yorkshire Dales. In the retelling of that story, I had been transmuted from an idle rogue to a golden hero – a martyr, even. That was what they had been calling me in the London newspapers, when they believed me dead. I didn’t want to be a hero. Heroes were sent on secret missions by the Queen of England, when they would much rather sit in a coffeehouse getting drunk and singing ballads.
    My dreams of remaining anonymous had been dashed at breakfast, when a serving maid had asked to touch my throat for luck. I’d shooed her from the room, but it had been a gloomy experience.
    If she’d asked to touch your cock, you wouldn’t feel so gloomy. Kitty, in my head.
    ‘We’re ready to leave?’
    ‘We are, sir,’ Pugh replied, nodding towards the inn. ‘If you would call your wife.’
    My wife . By which he meant Kitty, who was neither my wife, nor within calling distance. For the sake of Kitty’s good name, and to ensure a civil reception at Studley Hall, I had written in advance to Mr Aislabie, explaining that I would be accompanied on my visit by my wife, Mrs Catherine Hawkins. How wondrously respectable that sounded. Unfortunately I had not had the time nor the heart to write again further along the road to explain that my wife and I had quarrelled fearsomely at Newport Pagnell, resulting in Mrs Hawkins’ swift return to London.
    ‘Fuck off then, Tom,’ she had shouted, in the middle of the inn. ‘Fuck off to Yorkshire, and don’t blame me if you die in some horrific way, stabbed and burned and throttled and mangled. I shall not grieve for you, not for one second. I will jump on your grave and sing I told you so,