A Death at Fountains Abbey Read Free Page A

Thomas Hawkins, you fucking idiot . You may count upon it.’
    ‘Mrs Hawkins was called home on urgent business.’
    ‘Sorry to hear that, sir. You’re travelling alone, then?’
    Not quite. A dark figure slipped out from behind a rag-filled wagon. He was dressed in an ancient pair of mud-brown woollen breeches and a black coat, cuffs covering his knuckles. My black coat, in fact, which was several inches too big for him. His black curls were tied in a ribbon beneath a battered three-cornered hat.
    ‘And who’s this?’ Pugh asked, bending towards Sam as if he were a child. I had made the same mistake, the first time I’d met him. A boy of St Giles, raised in the shadows, smaller than he should be.
    Sam’s eyes – black and fathomless – fixed upon mine.
    ‘This is Master Samuel Fleet.’ Son of a gang captain, nephew of an assassin. And at fourteen years of age, on his way to becoming more deadly than either. ‘I’m his guardian.’
    Well. Someone had to keep a watch on him.
     
    The town square was packed with stalls for the Thursday market, the air laced with the warm tang of wool and sheepskin. Traders and townsfolk recognised our coach and hurried to clear the way for us: Mr Aislabie’s standing was far greater here in his own county. He had been mayor of Ripon, many years ago, and his son was now the town’s representative in parliament. Such things command a degree of respect, if not love.
    We were soon through the town and riding along a country lane banked with thick hedgerows. Our carriage was a fine, open chaise, pulled by four of the best horses I had ever seen. The sun gleamed upon their bay coats as they raced towards Mr Aislabie’s estate of Studley Royal, along a road they knew well and seemed to enjoy. Pugh gave us their names, and the names of their forefathers, and would have continued on if I had not distracted him with a query about the weather. He was the head groom at Studley, and most likely knew the horses’ ancestry better than his own. He was a garrulous fellow, and I learned swiftly that a response was neither required nor particularly welcome. He spoke in the way some men whistle, and it was best to leave him to it.
    I settled back, enjoying the sunshine. Insects buzzed in the grass, sparrows pecked at the ground with short beaks, a blackbird sang out from the branches above our heads. All about us, left, right and onwards, the fields rose and dipped, seamed with dry-stone walls and hedges. A pleasant, spring green world, spreading out to the horizon.
    Sam perched upon the opposite bench, watching it all with a mistrustful eye, as if the land might rise up and swallow him. I had grown up on the Suffolk coast with its quiet villages and endless skies. Sam was born and raised in London, happy in the stink and bustle of its worst slums. He knew every thieves’ alley, every poisonous gin shop, every abandoned cellar transformed into a makeshift brothel. He was street vermin, street filth, and proud of it.
    A fat bumblebee buzzed between us. Sam froze – a boy who would face down a blade without blinking. ‘It won’t harm you,’ I murmured, so as not to embarrass him in front of Pugh. Sam lifted one shoulder, as if he couldn’t care less if it stung him repeatedly in the face, but he looked relieved when it drifted on its way.
    Each morning of our journey north, Sam had clambered ahead of me into the carriage and taken the bench closest to the horses, facing backwards. This suited us both well enough: if we had sat side by side we would have rolled into one another at every sharp corner. But it was such a deliberate action that I had begun to suspect a deeper motive; Sam did not do such things upon a whim.
    On the day of my hanging, I had been bound in chains and paraded through the streets on an open cart. Condemned prisoners ride backwards to the gallows. The journey had been terrifying: the crowds lining the streets, the mud flung at the cart, the hatred pulsing through the air.