A Christmas Visitor (4 page)

“Not until I have cleared my brother’s name,” Benjamin said bluntly.

“Oh!” Colgrave let out his breath. “Yes. Fearful business.” His face tightened in distaste. “Gower is
a complete outsider, quite appalling. The man is a fraud, a cheat, and now slanders the name of a good man. Pity we can’t set the dogs on him.” He gave a slight shrug of his heavy shoulders.

“If it were as simple as that, I should not need your help,” Benjamin retorted. “You saw the original deeds that he is saying were genuine.”

Colgrave raised his eyebrows.

“Of course. They were so badly forged I don’t know how anyone believed them for a moment, except that I suppose many of us are not familiar with such papers, and we are not in the habit of suspecting our neighbors of such a stupid crime.”

“But you would swear that they were forged?” Benjamin pressed.

“My dear fellow, I did! In court. Not that it rested on my testimony alone, of course. There was an expert from Kendal, came and also swore they were complete forgeries from beginning to end. We all knew that.” He waved his hand. “This will blow over, you know. No one with any sense at all believes Gower. The only ones who ever listen to him are newcomers.
There are half a dozen families, one or two with money, I admit, who weren’t here at the time, so they don’t understand.”

“Who are they?” Benjamin asked.

“Leave it alone for a while,” Colgrave said soothingly. “I’ll speak to them on your behalf, and tell them the truth of the thing. Go now, in hot blood, and you’ll only make enemies of them. No one likes to be shown up for a fool, you know?”

“A fool?” Benjamin asked.

“Certainly, a fool. Who but a fool would believe a convicted forger like Ashton Gower? They’ll learn the truth of him soon enough. Wait until he loses that foul temper of his with them! Or borrows a horse and brings it home lame, as he did with poor Bennion, or tries to borrow money we all know he’ll never return. Then they’ll wish they’d had more sense than to give him a moment’s credence. As angry as you are, quite rightly, of course, you’ll make enemies of them now.”

Henry disliked having to agree with Colgrave, but honesty gave him no choice. They excused themselves
and left, but as soon as they were outside Benjamin turned around.

“Before we get the horses, I want to go to the churchyard.” He took a deep breath, his face bleak and half turned away. “I must see Judah’s grave.”

“Of course,” Henry agreed. “So must I. Or would you rather be alone?”

Benjamin hesitated.

“I’ll wait,” Henry said quickly. “I can go later. I’ll fetch the horses, then we don’t have to go back.”

Benjamin nodded, unwilling to commit himself to speech, but his gratitude was in his eyes.

Henry stood still for a moment or two, watching him walk slowly, crunching through the snow, until he reached the stone wall of the churchyard, and then was lost behind the yew branches.

He went back to the stable yard, and by the time he returned, Benjamin was waiting for him.

“I want to see Leighton, if he’s still the doctor here,” he said, taking his horse from Henry and mounting. “If not him, then whoever is. I don’t know how Judah could have been stupid enough to slip
on the stepping stones. He’s lived here all his life. Where was he going, anyway? What was he doing crossing the stream alone at that time of night? Why did he go out at all?”

“I don’t know,” Henry admitted, keeping the horses in step, side by side as they rode toward the village. “Are you sure it matters now?”

Benjamin looked at him sharply. “Of course it matters! It doesn’t make any sense. There’s something wrong, and I intend to get to the truth. Ashton Gower has to be silenced, and permanently. We can’t let Antonia live in fear that he’ll start up again.” He was angry with Henry for not understanding; it was clear in his face and the tone of his voice.

Grief and confusion were wounding him and Henry understood that. Still the response stung, and it was an effort to control his own reaction. He had liked Benjamin all the years he had known him, as much as he had liked Judah, and the sense of loss incurred was no stranger to him. It was many years since his wife had died, but the memory was still there.

It was still snowing very lightly but the wind had dropped. Fifteen minutes later they were at the doctor’s house and the horses by the gate. It was another quarter of an hour before he was free to see them.

“Terribly sorry,” Leighton said to Benjamin. “Dreadful thing to happen. Good of you to come up, Rathbone. What can I do for you?” He was a thin man, full of nervous energy but with a grave voice, nearer Henry’s age than Benjamin’s.

Benjamin’s face was slightly flushed, as much from helpless anger as the sharp edge of the cold outside. “There’s a lot about Judah’s death that makes no sense,” he replied. “I wanted to find the truth of what happened.” He stood in the middle of the room, lean, broad-shouldered, skin burned brown by the sun of the Holy Land, his face hard.

Leighton had been a country doctor for twenty years. He understood grief and the anger that prompted men to fight it. He leaned against the bookcase and regarded Benjamin seriously. “The facts are simple. Judah went out for a walk at about half past ten in the evening. There was a half moon,
but it was still extremely dark. He took a lantern, which was found washed up on the banks of the stream a few yards from where he was. When he did not return home, some little while after midnight, Antonia became sufficiently alarmed to send out the male servants to search for him. They found his body caught in the rocks of the fall a short distance below the stepping stones.”

“I know all that!” Benjamin said impatiently. “Henry told me. What was he doing there? Why did he go out at all? Why did he try crossing icy stepping stones at night? Where was he going? How does a strong man drown in two feet of water? The stream isn’t running fast enough to sweep anyone off their feet, even at this time of the year. I’ve fallen off those stepping stones a dozen times, and got no worse than wet clothes!”

“You can fall off a horse a hundred times and get no worse than bruises, or a broken collarbone,” Leighton said reasonably. “But the hundred and first fall can kill you. Benjamin, don’t look for reasons where there are none. He slipped in the dark and
fell badly. He struck his head on the stones and it knocked him senseless. If it hadn’t, no doubt he’d have climbed out and walked home again. Tragically, it did.”

“How do you know he struck his head when he fell?” Benjamin challenged. “How do you know no one struck him?”

Leighton’s face darkened. “Don’t start thinking like that, Benjamin,” he warned. “There’s no evidence to suggest anything of the sort. Judah slipped. It was a tragic accident. He drowned. The stream carried him down to the fall, and …”

“You examined him?” Benjamin interrupted.

“Of course I did.”

“What did you find, exactly?”

Leighton sighed. “That the cause of death was drowning. There were several abrasions on his head and shoulders, one where a smooth stone had struck him, which would be when he fell, several others rougher, where the current carried him down onto the fall.”

“Are you sure it was those stones?” Benjamin persisted.

“Yes. The wounds had little bits of riverweed in them, and his hands were scraped by the gravel at the bottom.” His face was sad and patient. “Benjamin, there’s nothing more to it than I’ve told you. Don’t look for reasons or fairness in it. There aren’t any. It is an unjust tragedy, the death of a good man who should have lived a long and happy life. These things happen, probably more often than you know, because it doesn’t hit you like this unless it was someone you loved. People die on the mountains, there are boating accidents on the lakes, falls in the hunting field. I’m sorry.”

“But why was he out crossing the stream in the middle of the night?” Benjamin could not let it go.

Leighton frowned. “Nobody knows that. I don’t suppose we ever will. Look to what matters now. Help Antonia to come to terms with it. Be a support to her, and do what you can for young Joshua. They need your strength now, not a lot of questions to
which we’ll find no answers. And even if we found them all, they would make no difference to what happened. Make the best of what is left.”

Benjamin looked bewildered. “And Ashton Gower?” he demanded angrily. “Who is going to silence him? I swear by God, if he goes on blackening Judah’s name, I will! And if he had anything to do with Judah’s death, anything at all, I’ll prove it and I’ll see him hang!”

Leighton’s face was grim. He straightened up, frowning. “You can be forgiven a certain amount for the shock of your loss, Benjamin, but if you suggest, outside this room, that Gower had anything to do with your brother’s death, you will be even more guilty of slander than he is. There is nothing whatever to indicate that he met Judah or had any intention of harming him, then or at any time. Please don’t bring any more grief on your family than it already has. It would be utterly irresponsible.”

Benjamin stood without moving for a long moment, then turned and strode out, leaving the door swinging behind him.

“I’m sorry,” Henry apologized for him. “Judah’s death has hit him very hard, and Ashton Gower’s charges are vicious and profoundly wrong. Judah was one of the most honest men I ever knew. To blacken his name now is an evil thing to do. I agree with Benjamin completely, and regardless of what he does, I will do all I can to protect Judah’s widow and son from such calumny.”

“Everyone in the village will,” Leighton said gravely. “Gower is a deeply unpopular man. We all remember what he did over the forged deeds. He’s arrogant and abrupt. But if Benjamin accuses him over Judah’s death, he will make it a great deal more difficult than it has to be, because some are then going to see injury on both sides, and it will become a feud, and split the village. That kind of thing can take years to heal, sometimes generations, because people get so entrenched, other grievances are added, and they can’t turn back.”

“I’ll speak to him,” Henry promised. Then he excused himself and went outside into the snow to catch up with Benjamin.

Benjamin was standing holding both the horses. He looked at Henry defiantly, his blue eyes burning. “I know,” he said before Henry could speak. “I just hate being told by that satisfied, self-righteous …” He stopped. “It’s thirsty work walking in this. Let’s go to the Fleece and take a pint of Cumberland ale. It’s a long time since I’ve tasted a jar of Snecklifter. It’s too early for lunch, or I’d have had a good crust of bread and a piece of Whillimoor Wang. There’s a plain, lean cheese for you to let you know you’re home. I’d like to hear a tale or two of good men and dogs, or even a fanciful yarn of demons and fairies, such as they like around here. They used to write that in as cause of death sometimes, you know? Taken by fairies!”

Henry smiled. “That must have covered a multitude of things!”

Benjamin laughed harshly. “Try explaining that to the constable.”

An hour later, warmed and refreshed, entertained by taller and taller stories in broad Cumberland dialect, they emerged into the street again to find the
weather brighter, and the sun breaking through wide rifts in the clouds, dazzling on the snow and reflecting on the lake in long blue and silver shards.

They had ridden barely a hundred yards, past small shops, the smithy, the cooper’s yard, and were just level with the clog shop where the clog maker was hollowing out the wooden soles with his long, hinged stock knife when they almost ran into a broad-shouldered man with densely black hair.

The man was on foot and Benjamin looked down at him with an expression of cold fury. The man’s eyes were narrowed, hard with loathing as he stared back. Henry did not need to be told that this was Ashton Gower.

“So you’ve returned from following the footsteps of God!” Gower said sarcastically. “Much good it’ll do you. I’ll give you a decency of mourning, for the widow’s sake, though those that profit from sin are as guilty of it as them that do it. But I suppose a woman’s got to stay by her man, she’s little choice. It’ll make no difference in the end.”

“None at all,” Benjamin agreed harshly. “Speak
another word against my brother, and I’ll sue you for slander and see you back in prison, which is where you belong. They should never have let you out.”

“Slander’s a civil suit, Mr. Dreghorn,” Gower replied, glaring up at him. “And you’d have to win before you could do anything to anyone. I’ve no money to pay you damages. You and your kin have already taken everything that was mine. You can’t rob me twice, even if you could prove I was lying, which you can’t, because every word I say is the truth.”

Henry tensed, afraid Benjamin might lunge at him, even mounted as he was.

But Benjamin did not attempt to strike Gower. He sat quite still in the icy air. “The pity is that I cannot slander you, Gower,” he replied. “Nothing I could say about you is untrue. You are proven a liar, a forger, and a would-be thief. You only failed at it because you were so clumsy, so damned bad at forgery that they could see at a glance that the deeds were rotten. You didn’t even do it well!”

Gower’s face flushed dull red, his eyes like black holes in his head. Now it was he who looked for a moment
as if he would find it impossible to control his physical desire to lash out, even grasp at Benjamin and pull him off his horse. He moved, his arm out, then stopped.

“Is that what happened to Judah?” Benjamin asked, his voice grating between his teeth. “He called you a failed thief, and you lost your temper?”

Slowly Gower relaxed and a slow smile spread across his face. “I’m not sorry he’s dead, Dreghorn. I’m glad. He was a corrupt man, an abuser of power and office, and there’s not much worse than a judge who uses his position to steal from the men who come before him believing they’ll receive justice. If the judge himself is rotten at the heart, what hope is there for the people? That is a high sin, Dreghorn. It stinks to heaven.”

He stepped back, lifting his head. “But I did not kill him. He wronged me bitterly. He sent me to prison for a crime I did not commit, and he stole my inheritance from me, as well as eleven years of my life. I spoke against him, and I shall do so as long as I have breath, but I never raised my hand, or told any
other man to. As far as I know, it was a just God who finally punished him. And if I wait my time, and plead my cause before the people, perhaps He’ll give me back what’s mine as well.”