William Monk 03 - Defend and Betray

pieces, you picked up the halberd and finished him off.” He watched her face and saw her eyes widen and her mouth wince, but she did not look away from him. “Or elseyou planned it beforehand and led him to the stairs deliberately, intending to push him over. Perhaps you hoped he would break his neck in the fall, and you went down after him to make sure he had. Then when you found he was relatively unhurt, you used the halberd to do what the fall had failed to.”
    “You are wrong,” she said flatly. “I didn’t think of it until we were standing at the top of the stairs—oh, I wanted to find a way. I meant to kill him some time, I just hadn’t thought of the stairs until then. And when he stood there at the top, with his back to the banister and that drop behind him, and I knew he would never …” She stopped and the flicker of light which had been in her blue eyes died. She looked away from him.
    “I pushed him,” she went on. “And when he went over and hit the armor I thought he was dead. I went down quite slowly. I thought it was the end, all finished. I expected people to come, because of the noise of the armor going over. I was going to say he fell—overbalanced.” Her face showed a momentary surprise. “But no one came. Not even any of the servants, so I suppose no one heard after all. When I looked at him, he was senseless, but he was still alive. His breathing was quite normal.” She sighed and the muscles of her jaw tightened. “So I picked up the halberd and ended it. I knew I would never have a better chance. But you are wrong if you think I planned it. I didn’t—not then or in that way.”
    He believed her. He had no doubt that what she said was the truth.
    “But why?” he said again. “It wasn’t over Louisa Furnival, or any other woman, was it?”
    She stood up and turned her back to him, staring at the tiny single window, high in the wall and barred against the sky.
    “It doesn’t matter.”
    “Have you ever seen anyone hanged, Mrs. Carlyon?” It was brutal, but if he could not reason her into telling him, then there was little left but fear. He hated doing it. He saw her body tighten and the hands by her sides clench. Had he done this before? It brought no memory. Everything in hismind was Alexandra, the present, the death of Thaddeus Carlyon and no one else, no other time or place. “It’s an ugly thing. They don’t always die immediately. They take you from the cell to the yard where the noose is …” He swallowed hard. Execution repelled him more than any other act he knew of, because it was sanctioned by law. People would contemplate it, commit it, watch it and feel justified. They would gather together in groups and congratulate each other on its completion and say that they upheld civilization.
    She stood without moving, thin and slight, her body painfully rigid.
    “They lay the rope ’round your neck, after they have put a hood over your head, so you can’t see it—that’s what they say it is for. Actually I think it is so they cannot see you. Perhaps if they could look at your face, your eyes, they couldn’t do it themselves.”
    “Stop it!” she said between her teeth. “I know I will hang. Do you have to tell me every step to the gallows rope so I do it more than once in my mind?”
    He wanted to shake her, to reach out and take her by the arms, force her to turn around and face him, look at him. But it would only be an assault, pointless and stupid, perhaps closing the last door through which he might yet find something to help her.
    “Did you try to stab him once before?” he asked suddenly.
    She looked startled. “No! Whatever makes you think that?”
    “The knife wound in his thigh.”
    “Oh that. No—he did that himself, showing off for Valentine Furnival.”
    “I see.”
    She said nothing.
    “Is it blackmail?” he said quietly, “Is there someone who holds some threat over you?”
    “No.”
    “Tell me! Perhaps we can stop them. At least let me try.”
    “There is no one. What more could anyone do to me than the law will already do?”
    “Nothing to you—but to someone you love? Sabella?”
    “No.” There was a lift in her voice, almost like a bitter laugh, had she the strength left for it.
    He did not believe her. Was this it at last? She was prepared to die to protect Sabella, in some way they had not yet imagined.
    He looked at her stiff back and knew she would not tell him. He would still have to find out, if he could.