The Twisted Root

reckoned it was."
    "Is that what she told you?"
    "She was rambling. She hardly made any sense. In and out of her wits, she was. She got a terrible fever, and we weren’t sure we could even save her. Often enough women die of fever after giving birth, especially if they’ve had a bad time of it. And she was too young—far too young, poor little thing."
    Rathbone was taking a wild guess now. So far this was all tragic, but it had nothing to do with the deaths of either Treadwell or Verona Stourbridge. Unless, of course, Treadwell had blackmailed Miriam over the child. But would Lucius care? Would such a tragedy be enough to stop him from wanting to marry her? Or his family from allowing it?
    Rathbone had done her no service yet. He had nothing to lose by pressing the story as far as it could go.
    "You must have asked her what happened," he said grimly. "What did she say? If nothing else, the law would require some explanation. What about her own family? What did they do, Mrs. Anderson, with this injured and hysterical child whose story made no sense to you?"
    Cleo’s face tightened, and she looked at Rathbone more defiantly.
    "I didn’t tell the police. What was there to tell them? I asked her her name, of course, and if she had family who’d be looking for her. She said there was no one, and who was I to argue with that? She was one of eight, and her family’d placed her in service in a good house."
    "And the child?" Rathbone had to ask. "What manner of man gets a twelve-year-old girl with child? She would have been twelve when it was conceived. Did he abandon her?"
    Cleo’s face was ashen. Rathbone did not dare look at Miriam. He could not even imagine what she must be enduring, having to sit in the dock and listen to this, and see the faces of the court and the jury. He wondered if she would look at Harry or Lucius Stourbridge, or Aiden Camp - bell, who were sitting together in the front of the body of the court. Perhaps this was worse than anything she had yet endured. But if she were to survive, if Cleo were to survive, it was necessary.
    "Mrs. Anderson?"
    "He never cared for her," Cleo said quietly. "She said he raped her, several times. That was how she got with child."
    One of the jurors gasped. Another clenched his fist and banged it short and hard on the rail in front of him. It must have hurt, but he was too outraged even to be conscious of it.
    Lucius started to his feet and then subsided again, helpless to know what to do.
    "But the child was stillborn," Rathbone said in the silence.
    "I reckoned so," Cleo agreed.
    "And what was Miriam doing alone on the Heath in such a state?"
    Cleo shook her head as if to deny the truth, drive it away.
    Tobias was staring at her.
    As if aware of him, she looked again at Rathbone imploringly. But it was for Miriam, not for herself. He was absolutely sure of that.
    "What did she say?" he asked.
    Cleo looked down. When she spoke, her voice was barely audible.
    "That she had fled from the house with a woman, and that the woman had tried to protect her, and the woman had been murdered... out there on the Heath."
    Rathbone was stunned. His imagination had conjured many possibilities, but not this. It took him a moment to collect his wits. He did not mean to look at Miriam, but in spite of himself he did.
    She was sitting white-faced with her eyes shut. She must have been aware that every man and woman in the room was staring at her, and felt that her only hiding place was within herself. He saw in her face pain almost beyond her power to bear—but no surprise. She had known what Cleo was going to say. That, more than anything else, made him believe it absolutely. Whether it had happened or not, whether there was any woman, whether it was the illusion of a tormented and hysterical girl in the delirium of fever, Miriam believed it to be the truth.
    Rathbone looked at Hester and saw her wide-eyed amazement also. She had known there was something—but not this.
    He asked the question the whole court was waiting to hear answered.
    "And was this woman’s body found, Mrs. Anderson?"
    "No..."
    "You did look?"
    "Of course, we did. We all looked. Every man in the street."
    "But you never found it?"
    "No."
    "And Miriam couldn’t take you to it? Again—I presume you asked her? It is hardly a matter you could let slip."
    She looked at him angrily. "Of course, we didn’t let it slip! She said it was by an oak tree, but the Heath is full of oaks. When we couldn’t find