Gradually, air returns to her lungs, and she breathes more easily, and her head clears and sound comes back into vibrant clarity. She gets to her feet, and glances to her right. The vicar is looking for a new target. The police have made off with Keith Berringer, who seems keener to go with them than stay and be preached to.
‘The path to righteousness is one of purity and chastity, one of cleanliness and honesty …’ the vicar announces to fleeing figures left and right, waving the cross at them as though he can cure them with one glimpse of it. Run, now, Cat tells herself. But it is too late. She has risen into his eye line, and he turns upon her, pounces. ‘You! Young woman! You have no place here! Women are created mild, the meek vessels of subservience to Godly rule …’ His voice tails off to silence. Their eyes meet. For a second, she thinks he will not recognise her. Many are the men who would not know their own servants outside their uniforms, outside the house, least of all in the dark and muddied. But he frowns, struggles to place her, and in the second before she flees, Cat sees that he does. His eyes widen with shock.
10
Hester wakes briefly in the night and stretches out her hand to find Albert’s side of the bed empty. Thinking it must be near morning, she sleeps again, with a shroud of ill-defined hopelessness weighing her down. She feels listless, as if there is little point in her waking up at all. But when the morning comes, and brash sunshine lances between the curtains to wake her again, she sees that Albert’s pillow is smooth and plump, and the sheet on his side of the bed is still pulled taut. He had been sitting up with Robin Durrant, deep in discussion, when she came up to bed the night before. Now it seems that wherever he’s slept, it has not been in his own bed. Hester dresses herself as neatly as she can without calling for Cat to help her. She feels strangely uneasy, after seeing Cat and Robin Durrant talking in the courtyard. He had seemed agitated, pacing up and down. The way he’d stood so close to her, the way he’d gesticulated, all seemed far too familiar. As though they knew each other well, as though they had a relationship of some kind that she knew nothing about. Amelia had called Robin beautiful; perhaps Cat found him so as well.
She pins up her hair, smoothes her cheeks with a little powder and goes downstairs in her morning dress, only to find Albert sitting in the parlour, hands on his knees, staring straight ahead. The hems of his trousers are caked with dust and grime, his shoes encrusted with it. Of Robin Durrant, there is no sign.
‘Albert! Are you all right? Where have you been?’ she asks, standing close to him, taking one of his limp hands in hers. He looks up at her slowly, like an old, old man, and blinks once or twice before seeming to recognise her.
‘Hetty! I was waiting for you. Forgive me. I was too troubled to come up to bed. I thought it best not to disturb you until now …’ he murmurs.
‘Disturb me? Why? What on earth is going on?’ Hester holds his hand tightly. She does not like the way his gaze seems to come from a great distance, the way his voice is soggy with fatigue and bewilderment.
‘I fear there is a pariah in our very midst … a spot of rot and blight to blemish the purity of our home,’ Albert says, grimacing as though his own words taste ill.
‘A spot of rot? Albert, please, you’re not making sense!’
‘The servant girl. The dark-haired one. We must be rid of her at once,’ he says, more decisively.
‘Cat? Why must we? What has happened to her?’ Hester asks anxiously. A spot of rot. She thinks of what Amelia had caught her husband doing, and of the familiarity she had witnessed between Cat and Robin. Her throat goes dry. ‘Is it Mr Durrant?’
‘What? What do you mean? This has nothing to do with Robin! Is he back? Is he back from the meadows?’ Albert half rises from his chair only to slump back again, wearily.
‘I don’t know … Albert, where did you sleep?’
‘No, no. I couldn’t sleep. I can’t sleep. There is too much to think about … The girl must be gone from here … as soon as possible. No wonder! No wonder I have not managed it! Tainted! With debauchery … it taints everything it touches …’ Albert throws up his hands abruptly, face falling into despair.
‘Debauchery? What debauchery?’ Hester struggles to keep up, crouching beside him and trying to read his face. It is closed to her, thoughts she cannot read churning behind his glassy gaze. Without warning, tears spring into her eyes, hot and stinging. ‘Bertie, please. Explain this to me,’ she begs. Albert looks down at her and smiles; a small, sad-looking smile.
‘Of course you don’t understand. You, who are everything a wife should be,’ he says. Hester smiles too, glad at least that the argument following her unwanted caress seems forgotten. ‘I went with the police last night, to a notorious gambling den in Thatcham. I went to try to convince the men to change their ways, to give up such ungodly pastimes … I tried to explain the damage that they do to themselves, to all of us … to the whole of mankind!’