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‘We always have a choice,’ she interrupted him. ‘At some point . . .’
‘We don’t have one here,’ he contradicted her, but quietly. It was an admission, not a victory. ‘Only in how we do it. We have to know if this woman is Ebony, or not. We know the dead woman is not her. You proved that.’
She winced so slightly that he barely saw it, but it cut him because he saw the pain behind it, and he knew he was not meant to. For the first time, she looked away from him.
‘Science is safe,’ she said very quietly. ‘Perhaps not to the intellect. It can force you to look at all sorts of things you might not wish to. That can destroy your grandiose ideas of who mankind is. It can confuse us as much as enlighten, sometimes. But it does not touch the heart . . . That’s a silly expression – you don’t feel with your heart! What do you feel with? Your imagination? Where are your emotions? Everywhere! You see someone’s pain, and it doesn’t leave any part of you untouched.’
‘I know. The law is safe, when it stays on paper. It seems elegant and quite refined. When actually it is about as delicate as a sledgehammer at times. And as soon as you fix one part, you break another. But we still can’t let Graves hang if Ebony is alive. If I could think of a way to untangle this legally, and not leave Sarah with the weight of guilt for it, believe me, I would!’
She met his eyes again, but it was a second or two before she spoke. ‘You would . . . wouldn’t you!’ She said it with surprise.
‘It’s academic. You can’t unknow anything.’
‘What if it isn’t provable whether it is Ebony or not?’ she asked.
He smiled. ‘It’s provable,’ he said with certainty. ‘Her children will look like her, not overtly, but in little ways, gestures, tone of voice, an understanding before the sentence is finished. Arthur’s colouring, the way Sarah holds her head. But quite apart from that, she will not be able to hide her feelings for them.’
A shadow passed over Miriam’s face, almost too slight to see, and yet it left its mark in her eyes. ‘You are close to your mother?’
He was surprised. ‘Yes. If you saw us together, you would know. I am built like my father, but my colouring is hers, and . . . I don’t know exactly, but little things. My sister, Jemima, is more like her. The way she walks, certain gestures, things that make her laugh . . .’ He stopped because he saw that the pleasure, the longing he felt when he spoke of the likenesses in his family was not echoed in Miriam’s face. He knew that the subject had touched a wound.
‘I hardly remember my mother,’ Miriam said. ‘She died when I was very young. And we don’t have any pictures of her. I don’t look much like my father, so I suppose I must look like her. The only things I know about her are that she had red hair, and that my father loved her very much. He couldn’t bear the idea of marrying again, even to provide me with a mother. And that’s a miserable thing to do to a woman – marry her without loving her, in order for her to look after your child!’
There were so many things Daniel knew about his mother, he could not think of them all at once. There had never been a day in his life from which she had been completely absent, within memory, or effect, something learned from her, something she had given him, a joke shared, even a quality to rebel against! What could he say large enough to be of any meaning?
Miriam must have seen his difficulty. She smiled. ‘Then you will recognise Ebony, even if I don’t. Everything hangs on that. Can we persuade her to give herself up? If I had been treated as she had, I might be very afraid to come back. If we save Graves – and we have to – can we save her, too?’ Her face shadowed. ‘And there is the question of the book as well. What can we promise her, honestly?’
His mind leaped ahead. ‘I’m not sure. Even if Graves hanged, that wouldn’t stop it being published. We have to discredit him. At least show his stories are not true. There’s too much to do . . .’
She gave a tight little smile. ‘Then we had better hurry and get this part of it over with. Really, we have no choice in this.’ She stopped. She closed her eyes for a moment in intense concentration. ‘If this is really Ebony we’re going to meet, then we have to save Graves.’ She shook her head slowly, as if denying something to herself. ‘What if Sarah is wrong, and Ebony did kill Winifred on purpose? How do we protect her and not betray Sarah’s trust? And she does trust u
s, or she wouldn’t take us to Ebony—’
‘We left her no choice,’ Daniel interrupted her.
She stared at him. ‘That’s not enough. She could simply have refused. If she has to choose between her father hanging or her mother, she’ll choose her father. She hates him, and she’s afraid of him, not only for herself, but for Arthur, too – and, if it comes to that, for Falthorne, who’s been loyal to her ever since she was born. We have to be careful, Daniel – and very clever.’
‘I know,’ he acknowledged. ‘I hate it! But we have to save him, or at any rate, save Sarah from the horror of deliberately having let him hang for a crime we all know he did not commit. There will be no coming back from that.’
Miriam frowned. ‘There’s always a way back, I think. But it might be a very hard one.’
‘I want to put Graves somewhere where there is no way back!’ he said, the anger burning hot inside him. ‘And there’s no time to wait.’
She held out her hand. ‘I know . . . I know.’ As she started towards the door, they heard footsteps in the hallway outside.
He went forward and together they found Sarah was waiting for them, already dressed in her outdoor clothes.
‘I am ready,’ she said a little uncertainly.
‘Have we far to walk?’ Miriam asked.
‘Perhaps a mile, or a little more,’ Sarah replied, glancing at Miriam’s feet to see if her boots were up to such use. She apparently decided that they were. ‘Please will you follow me?’
They went out of the front door and walked in the bright May noon down the street and through the main shopping area of the large village. London was expanding rapidly until it was almost seamless. Nevertheless, there was a distinct centre with shops, churches, and a few very handsome residences, and offices of various sorts. Sarah nodded to several people, but did not stop to speak. Her situation was almost uniquely uncomfortable.
At the far side of the village, the streets led to open land, farm buildings, a few pigs and goats in fields, and here and there, cows. Sarah walked more slowly; she seemed uncertain. Had she lost her way, or was she about to change her mind about leading them to Ebony?
Miriam shot a quick glance at Daniel, and then moved forward to catch up with Sarah and linked her arm with hers. It looked loosely held, but Daniel had a feeling it was tighter than it appeared.
