Chapter XIII
XIII
The stairs hurt his old bones; his boots thudded heavily on the floorboards.
He made his way down the corridor with Jep panting beside him.
Old John took out his blade, but it felt strange in his hand.
As they approached the room at the end of the corridor, Old John heard a muffled scream.
‘What the devil?’ he muttered under his breath.
It sounded for all the world like someone was doing his job for him.
As he stood outside the door, he heard his wife, Maggie, speaking to someone in hushed tones.
‘Tell me, woman,’ Old John called out. ‘Where’s she hiding?’
The voices stopped suddenly. John pushed open the door. In the candlelight he made out his estranged wife. Startled at his entrance, Maggie raised her hands – they were dripping with blood.
‘You,’ she hissed. ‘What you doing here?’
She was standing in front of the bed. But when she moved forward to shoo him away, he saw that she was not alone. A figure groaned in the bed. He saw wild, black hair and a pretty face damp with sweat.
It was Lady Bess. The woman he’d come to kill.
She screamed into a pillow; her legs were raised and the bed underneath her was sodden with blood and gore that was dripping down into a puddle on the floor.
Old John had a strong stomach for the drink, but not, he realised, for this.
His gorge rose at the sight and smell. And Jep, damn him, hobbled over and sniffed at the red puddle and lapped at it with his tongue.
‘Get away, you cur!’ Old John gave the little dog a swift kick. ‘Show some damn respect.’
‘Is that what you’re doing, you blaggard?’ Maggie gazed disdainfully at the blade in his hand. ‘Now, stop your nonsense and help me. I need to turn the babe.’
Old John’s mouth gaped open; he was too shaken to argue with his missus. He brought over a basin of hot water and a stack of clean towels, his old heart pounding as the lady screamed and cursed, the dog yapped, and Maggie did her bloody work and eventually shouted, ‘Push, maid, now!’
The lady let out an almighty cry, and suddenly, his hands were filled with something wet and warm.
‘It’s a girl!’ Maggie cried as the baby let out a thin wail. She glared at John. ‘Don’t you dare drop her.’
‘No, ma’am, I won’t.’ John puffed out his chest, feeling almost like the proud father he’d once been – three times, if memory served.
At Maggie’s direction, John rubbed the babe with a cloth and used his blade to cut the cord.
His wife tended to the mother, delivering the afterbirth and stitching her up with a needle to stop the bleeding.
‘My baby,’ Bess cried out. ‘Is she…?’
‘She’s fine, love,’ Maggie said. ‘Right as rain.’
John brought the little mite round and placed her in the mother’s arms. The lady cried, and laughed, and her pretty blue eyes sparkled with happiness and love as she held her baby to her chest.
‘What you gonna call her, maid?’ he asked.
‘Hope,’ Bess said. ‘Her name is Hope. For that is what’s kept me alive all these months.
Until her father returns.’ The lady glanced out of the window with longing in her eyes.
The storm clouds had shifted enough to reveal a pale moon at the otherwise empty horizon.
But hearing her words, Old John suddenly he remembered what he’d been asked to do – and by whom.
So, it seemed, had Maggie, who turned on him.
‘Now, you old lout,’ she said, low and harsh, ‘you want to tell me what the devil you’re doing here?
The mistress was scared you was coming to do away with her.
’ She put her blood-soaked hands on her hips.
‘And here you are. But I ain’t saved her life and delivered this babe for you to stick a blade in her.
No matter how much her devil of a husband gave you to do it. ’
‘Thirty pieces of silver,’ John said. ‘Enough for us to make a real go of this place. And a new dress for you, and maybe a fancy ring for your finger.’
Maggie laughed, but her face went a little pink. ‘You think I want to wear a murderer’s ring?’
‘You were happy enough to wed and bed me when I was just a drunk.’
She snorted. ‘Well, my standards are raised now that we’ve got little Hope, here. And you may ’a given me three strapping sons, but Bess here is like a daughter to me. So you’d better not harm a hair on her head—’
A noise came from outside. Maggie stopped talking; Jep let out an agitated yap and skittered to the door. Old John followed the cur out the door and went over to the corridor window that faced the inn’s cobbled yard.
The darkness lay heavy outside and he could see his own candlelit reflection in the glass. And the lamps of a carriage pulled by four black horses.
‘Maggie, m’love,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid we’ve got a problem.’