Falling , livre ebook

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130 pages

English

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Another enthralling, fast-paced whodunnit in the series of Lady Tremayne's diaries. The year is 1655. In the seventeenth century many people still believed that those suffering from the falling sickness (what is today called epilepsy) were possessed by the devil. When Lady Jane's uncle is found murdered, her former wet nurse's daughter, who suffers from the falling sickness, is accused of the crime. Jane is convinced of her innocence but when she is put on trial and convicted, Jane is faced with a race against time to ind sufficient evidence to prevent her execution and in so doing discover the identity of her uncle's actual murderer.

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Historical fiction

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Publié par	Distributed by eBookpartnership
Date de parution	01 octobre 2022
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781839785351
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

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Extrait

A seventeenth-century whodunnit
Falling
the third diary
of
Lady Jane Tremayne
James Walker

Falling
Published by The Conrad Press Ltd. in the United Kingdom 2022
Tel: +44(0)1227 472 874
www.theconradpress.com
info@theconradpress.com
ISBN 978-1-839785-35-1
Copyright © James Walker, 2022
All rights reserved.
Typesetting and Cover Design by: Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk
Created with inspiration from The rest on the flight to Egypt: lightly etched, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1645 at the Rijks Museum.
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.

To my wife, Jo, as ever, for her love and understanding

1
Fetford Hall
East Devon, 29th June 1655
I looked out of the latticed window of my bedroom at Fetford Hall and sighed. The lush countryside spread out before me in the morning sunshine was as green and fertile as ever, the many oak and beech trees I could see, at their summer best, the rose garden coming into bloom. However, this delightful view gave me little comfort.
I had now lived at Fetford Hall for more than six months and doing so had given me a large measure of solace, but it was now clear to me that I would have to seek refuge elsewhere. Only a week previously I had been personally served with a court judgement for payment in full of a debt, which had risen with interest to such a level that it was totally beyond my means to even begin to be able to satisfy it.
What irked me more than anything was the sheer injustice of my situation. My late husband, Sir Paul Tremayne, had been a loyal supporter of the monarchy and knighted for his services by the cruelly martyred King Charles. He had then rallied to the cause of his son, Charles, Prince of Wales, only to die, I had no doubt, given his character, with all due bravery, at the battle of Worcester, nearly four years previously.
I had been left not just a widow but also childless, my daughter having succumbed to a fever in the same year as the King’s martyrdom, and, as if this was not bad enough, I had also had to meet a heavy fine just to prevent my home, Altringham Manor, from being sequestered. This had been imposed because Sir Paul had been regarded by Parliament as a renegade and I had had to resort to borrowing money from a goldsmith in Exeter at a heavy rate of interest in order to meet it.
To further complicate my life, I had been unwise enough to fall madly in love with a certain Thomas Sumner, in full knowledge of the fact that he was as notorious a renegade as my late husband had ever been. After we had then married in secret, and even as I was about to give birth to our son, Lucas, he then became embroiled in a plot to assassinate the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. The consequence had been his arrest on a charge of high treason and subsequent deportation to the West Indies as well as the seizure of my home, thus depriving me of the means to repay the debt.
To my utter dismay, the goldsmith from whom I had borrowed had chosen to pursue me through the courts and obtained a judgement against me, which he was now seeking to enforce against me personally even though he could not have failed to be aware that I no longer had any means with which to meet it. Worse, as he’d ascertained my whereabouts, I now faced the very real prospect of being sent to prison. James Courtney, the brother of my closest friend, Olivia Courtney, who’d given me refuge at Fetford Hall, had gone so far as to make the goldsmith an offer to repay the debt on my behalf by modest monthly instalments, but this had still been rejected.
I thought this decision, which seemed to make no financial sense at all, might be motivated either by a dislike of my royalist sympathies, or even some element of personal spite. My suspicion as to the latter possibility was also heightened by my lawyer, Gilbert Overbury, informing me that he believed the goldsmith to have been a personal friend of the late Hugh Graveney, whose downfall I had helped to bring about only the previous year. In any event, wherever the truth lay, I had decided to leave Fetford Hall as soon as possible. Accordingly, I’d made a request to my brother, Francis, who had inherited my family’s estate, Cappledecombe Hall, near Barnstable, some fifty-five miles away, to allow me to stay with him and his family.
Some six years my junior, and only twelve years of age when I had married Sir Paul, we had seen little of each other since, and maintained only an infrequent correspondence. When he was only fifteen, so thus still too young to become involved in the civil war, he had suffered a serious riding accident, which had left him with a severe limp. This incapacity had ended his ambition to fight for the King and instead, at the age of twenty-one, he had found himself in sole possession of the family estate upon the death of our mother, our father having predeceased her by some five years. Since then all his energy had been committed to its management, although he’d found time to court Alice, a vicar’s daughter, and they’d now been man and wife for some three years, in which time she’d safely given birth to a daughter, whom they had named Cecily.
I had written to Francis within a day of receiving the court judgement asking that he afford me a refuge and my former steward at Altringham Manor, Harry Parsons, had agreed to personally deliver it for me in the hope of being able to return promptly within three days with a favourable response. It was now, however, all but four days since he’d departed and I was growing increasingly anxious that he had not yet appeared.
A further concern was my infant son, Lucas, who ever since his birth at the beginning of May, the previous year, had been in the care of Harry’s wife, Melissa, in her capacity as the child’s wet nurse. It was one thing to have him living barely more than two miles away where I could visit him on a daily basis by horse, if I so chose, without difficulty; quite another to have him living all of fifty-five miles away. Nonetheless, for the sake of his health, I had come to the reluctant conclusion that he was still too young to be taken away from Melissa for another few months at least. In my letter to Francis I had also felt obliged to be completely honest about my circumstances and inevitably I worried that he would balk at the prospect of helping me evade justice.
I was left in a state of high tension, desperately wanting to receive his reply with the minimum of delay yet at the same time dreading the possibility that he would decline my request. Meanwhile, I was conscious that time was running out on me as the judgement had given me a mere fourteen days to pay the debt in full or face the prospect of imprisonment. Quite what I would do if my brother’s reply was an unfavourable one or he simply failed to respond at all, I really did not know, but short of trying to flee abroad, I was minded not to take no for an answer and as needs must make a personal appeal to him even if it meant arriving at Cappledecombe uninvited.
It was now well into the afternoon and what had begun as a pleasant enough day had now turned increasingly showery. Once again I peered into the distance and this time, through the gentle rain, I was sure I could make out a figure riding in my direction. The closer he came the more certain I was that I recognised Harry, which encouraged me to head for the front door of the house in order to be able to greet him as soon as he arrived.
‘Do you bring me good news, Harry?’ I called out to him even before he had been able to dismount.
Harry’s ready smile gave me the answer I had been hoping for. ‘I do, m’lady. I’ve a letter for you from Master Francis and he told me that it assures you of his willingness to offer you shelter under his roof for as long as you require it.’
Harry eased himself out of the saddle, grimacing a little as he did so, for he had just ridden thirty miles at a canter and was surely somewhat saddle sore as a consequence. He then took the letter in question from his saddle bag before handing it to me.
‘Thank you, Harry, I’m exceedingly grateful to you. By all means go to the kitchen if you’re in need of anything to eat or drink. I’m sure the cook will be able to provide for you.’
‘Begging your pardon, m’lady, I’m more concerned for the needs of my horse. I’ve ridden him hard today.’
‘Quite so, Harry . By all means, take him immediately to the stables...’
At that moment, the freckled faced Olivia, her red hair falling in ringlets to her shoulders, appeared by my side, and our eyes met in a look of mutual affection.
‘It’s the news you were hoping for then?’ Olivia asked.
‘Why yes, Francis has agreed to let me stay with him for as long as I need to.’
Olivia smiled but I sensed that it was tinged with sadness and I could well understand why. Having been close friends for many years, for the last eight months we had lived under the same roof together, which had only served to strengthen our relationship rather than create divisions. Now we faced the imminent prospect of being more than fifty miles apart and for much of the time only able to communicate by letter.
‘When will you be leaving then?’
‘Within the next two or three days. I need to be as far away from here as I can before there’s any risk of anyone coming to arrest me.’
As I spoke I noticed that my personal maid, Mary Moffat, had also appeared. Aged nineteen, she had always been a pretty girl, with a pert nose, fair skin and dark, naturally curly hair, and had now matured into a young woman who could easily turn any man’s head.
We had been through a lot together, especially in the previous year when we had both been kidnapped at the instigation of Hugh Graveney and taken abroad. Thankfully, after the ship we were travelling in ran aground in a storm, we had been rescued