‘Yes. No… Matthew, believe me, I have done nothing to harm you.’
The silence in the room was palpable as Matthew's eyes moved from his clerk's features to his wife's and back to Cobham again. Henrietta felt a welling black despair enfolding her. All their new-found love was being poisoned by the clerk's suspicions.
'I know of this already. You tell me nothing new, Cobham.’ Matthew's calm pronouncement was so unexpected that both Henrietta and Cobham gasped. ‘You are overwrought by worry for me. For that reason, and that reason only, I forgive your wild accusations about my wife. When you are calmer you must apologise to your mistress yourself. Now go to your chamber and compose yourself.’
Stunned into silence, Cobham shuffled from the room, a shabby, diminished figure in rusty black. ‘Matthew, I thank you for your trust,’ Henrietta began, stumbling over the words. ‘But he was telling only the truth. There was a man, I was trying to tell you.’
‘And I told you, wife, that I do not ask you to break your secret, but it is best I do not know.’ He lay back against the pillows, his face suddenly grey with fatigue.
‘We will talk of it later.’ Henrietta was too concerned for his health to persist. ‘Cobham must go. I will not have him carrying on so, he sets the entire household on its heels. He was threatening to bring the witch finder in to search the whole village. I wonder you tolerate him.’
‘He was not always so, but there has been much tragedy in his life. His family were all killed in a fire and his sorrow only served to increase a narrowness which was always part of his character and beliefs. But he had been a loyal servant to both my father and myself. Could you bring yourself to disown Alice if she too became difficult with age?’
‘No, of course I could not. Sleep now, my love, and I will sit by you.’
‘You too are fatigued. Go to your own chamber and rest, Henrietta. There is the child to think of and you are too precious to me to risk your health.’
*
When Henrietta woke the house was quiet and the shadows were long in her room despite the brilliant white of snow outside. The realisation of her happiness sent her almost running down the corridor in her haste to return to Matthew, to be in his arms again, to share more confidences, more words of love.
The bed was empty, his clothes gone from the press, his boots from beside the chair. Henrietta stared, horrified. Where had he gone, why had he gone? Had he had second thoughts in the hours they had been apart? Had Cobham come back and filled his mind with poison? Henrietta ran down the stairs calling for Letty, for her aunt.
John emerged from the kitchen corridor, a mug of ale in one hand. ‘Mistress, what is wrong?’
‘John. Have you seen your master? He is gone from his room.’ She was too distraught to beat about the bush.
‘Why, yes, Mistress. He asked for a horse to be saddled a good hour since.’
‘You let him go out in this cold? John, it could be the death of him.’
‘He seemed well enough, Mistress, and he was dressed for riding.’ The groom's normally civil tone held a touch of indignation.
‘I'm sorry, John, of course you could not have stopped him. But where has he gone?’
‘North, up the green lane. The short cut to the Oxford road by Home Farm, I supposed.’
Henrietta dragged her cloak from the chest, thrusting her slippered feet into wooden pattens. ‘I must find him, he is too weak to ride far.’ She almost pushed past John in her hurry and ran across the slush of the yard towards the bridge.
The hoofmarks were clear in the untrodden snow beyond the moat. After a few yards Henrietta had to stop to knock th
e packed snow from her pattens and as she straightened again she heard the muffled, plodding step of an approaching horse.
He must have fallen and the horse was returning without him. Her heart knotted with fear that Matthew he could be lying in a snowdrift, the life's heat seeping from his body. Henrietta broke into an unsteady run as the grey horse rounded the corner of the lane. Even in the gathering gloom she could see the figure in the saddle.
‘Matthew!’ At her cry he looked up and straightened. 'What are you about?' She snatched the reins above the bit and tugged the horse towards the house.
He tried to speak but managed only a painful cough. At that moment John reached them and swung up into the saddle behind his master, kicking the horse into trot.
By the time Henrietta had reached the hall Matthew was wrapped in blankets in the big chair before the fire, recovered enough to wave away offers of broth and hot bricks.
She sent the servants out and knelt in front of him. ‘Matthew, why were you leaving me?’
‘Leaving you?’ He was taken aback by the question ‘I was not leaving you.’
‘But you were on the road to Oxford.’
‘I was at Home Farm, speaking with Robert and Alice. They sent me a message.’