I heard a scuffle and a thump and then the door was yanked back open from the inside, all the way this time, and I could see the thing that had been blocking it was not a dog at all. It was the body of a man stretched out face down across the flagstone floor, his black hair wetly matted where a dark red trickle had begun to stain his collar. It was Fergal.

Shocked, I raised my gaze to find a pistol levelled steady at my chest.

I couldn’t focus on the man who held it, because I’d already looked beyond him to the hard eyes of another man who stood close by the fireplace.

‘Mistress O’Cleary,’ the constable said, ‘do come in.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

I couldn’t move, at first.

Not that I wanted to, really. The last thing I wanted to do was step over the threshold into that unwelcoming room. But the man with the pistol had lowered it and now reached forwards to take a rough grip on my arm with his other hand, hauling me in.

‘Shut the door,’ said the constable. For all his calmness, he sounded displeased. ‘Mr Hewitt?’

Someone else moved in the shadows behind him. ‘Yes?’

God, I thought, how many of them were there? Trying to shake myself out of my nightmare paralysis, I took a wild look round the room and counted two more faces, making five of them in total. Small wonder Fergal hadn’t stood a chance.

He lay now almost at my feet, and with relief I saw his ribs move slightly.

‘Did you not,’ the constable was saying, ‘tell me you had searched the house?’

‘I did,’ the man named Hewitt protested. ‘I swear I saw no one. She must have been hiding.’

The constable acknowledged this. ‘’Tis why they call it “searching”. Would you be so kind as to go try again? With Mr Leach’s help.’

The man who’d been holding my arm turned his head, gave a nod, and let go of me, slipping from the kitchen in the wake of the disgruntled Hewitt. Left there standing by the door, I tried to show the bravest face I could, my shoulders straightening a little as the constable regarded me with shuttered eyes that took no notice of the injured man who lay between us.

Almost casually, he asked me, ‘Were you hiding?’

I remembered not to talk in time, and shook my head. My hands had started trembling and I curled them into fists so they would not betray my weakness.

But he seemed to see it, anyway. His mouth curved into something that could not be called a smile. ‘In bed, then.’ Spoken with a certainty supported by the way his gaze raked over my appearance, and I realised for the first time that the summer frock I’d worn all day, a loosely fitting peasant-styled frock of plain cream cotton, would to him and all the other men look like a chemise. Dressed as I was with my hair loose, I could understand why he had assumed I’d been in bed.

His sneer was more apparent when he asked, ‘Were you alone?’

For an answer I lifted my chin a half-inch to imply such a question was not worth my answering.

One of the men near the window-wall said, ‘Mr Creed,’ and the constable’s stare sliced the dark air between them.

‘Yes, Mr Pascoe? You’ve something to say?’

An older man moved to the edge of the firelight, his features familiar. ‘I’ll ask you to mind how you speak, sir. The girl’s done naught to warrant such insult.’

I recognised him then. I’d seen that same mix of defiance and shame on his face when he’d ridden as one of the constable’s deputies on the day Jack was arrested at St Non’s, and the same unvoiced apology in his quick glance the next day when he’d stopped off in the stable yard to bring the conger eel for Fergal. Fergal hadn’t called him Mr Pascoe, though. He’d called him Peter. That implied the two of them were friends, of sorts, and meant I might have one man in this group who would defend me.

The constable had brushed aside the protest. ‘It can be no insult, surely, to request the facts.’ He followed my quick downward glance towards Fergal. ‘You fear for your brother? A touching display, but I’ll warrant he’ll live long enough for his hanging.’

I wasn’t so sure. He appeared to be breathing more shallowly now, and defying the constable’s presence I knelt on the flagstones and stroked Fergal’s hair lightly, trying to find where the injury was.

When the man Peter took a step forwards, the constable stopped him. ‘No, leave her,’ he warned. ‘Keep your watch.’

My fingers touched the broad gash at the base of Fergal’s skull and I put pressure on it, hoping that would help to slow the bleeding. They had hit him from behind, a ruthless blow with something sharp enough to leave a cut and with the weight to bring him down – a jug, it looked like, from the jagged shards of earthenware that seemed to have been kicked into the corner by the door behind me.

One shard the size of my hand pricked my knee as I shifted position to check Fergal’s pulse at his throat. It was there, faint but steady.

The constable’s men, Leach and Hewitt, had finished their search of the upper floors. Coming back into the kitchen, Leach said, ‘No one.’

‘Then we wait.’ The constable relaxed in his position by the fireplace. ‘I have waited long enough for this already, I can wait a little longer.’

It was the note of satisfaction in his voice that made me look in his direction, and he said, ‘Ah, but perhaps you have not heard, Mistress O’Cleary, that the House of Lords has passed a law suspending those protections that did lately shield your lover. And as keeper of that law here in Polgelly I now have the right to enter any premises I choose, arrest whomever I suspect of plotting treason to the king, and see them sent to London where, I promise you, they will find no reprieve.’