He said: “I was so worried about that shot. I have to find out where it came from. The boy was so insistent. I don’t think he could be lying. He’s a brave little fellow. Not afraid to own up when he’s done wrong. He was so insistent. He was there alone. He is a good shot and I had given my permission for them to shoot the pigeons. He was doing nothing wrong. He said he wasn’t shooting in your direction at all. There weren’t any pigeons there. They were fluttering down from the roof. He said the shot went right over his head, to you, and it occurred to me that someone might have been hiding there in the bushes at the side of the house.”

“Someone hiding to shoot me. Why?”

“That’s what I wanted to find out. That’s what bothers me. I had an idea, and I went to see Young Jethro.”

“You think that he …?”

“It was an idea, and if it was possible to get to the bottom of this I’d made up my mind to. I went to the old barn where his father used to live and I said, ‘I want a word with you, Young Jethro.’ He was a little puzzled and I said, ‘Your father shot my cousin. Now my wife has been shot in the arm—but that may have been a lucky chance—and I wondered whether your family made a habit of shooting at mine.’”

“Carleton! Do you really think …?”

“Not now. He swore to God that he had done no such thing and I am sure a man with his beliefs would never swear to God unless he was telling the truth. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I’ve never killed none. If I was to, I’d be unworthy to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. ’Tis wrong to kill. It says so in the Bible. “Thou shalt not kill.” Should I kill another soul I could suffer torment for it.’ Then he fell down on his knees and swore to me that he had not been near the house that day. That he knew nothing of the accident. He had no gun. I could search the barn. He never killed … not even pigeons. He didn’t think it was right and fitting to kill God’s creatures … And so he went on and on … and I was convinced that he was telling me the truth.”

“Perhaps it was Leigh, after all.”

“It seems likely. He was there. He had the gun. He was shooting pigeons. Yes, it seems very likely. And yet … He was so insistent. He cried and cried. Sally couldn’t comfort him. He kept saying he didn’t do it. The shot had come right over his head … which points to the bushes behind the house. Never mind. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he didn’t realize which way he was shooting. He’s not usually an untruthful boy.”

“If he did, it was an accident.”

“But of course. As if Leigh would want to hurt you. He adores you. But I’m going to find out … if I can.”

“Who else could it be? If it be? If it wasn’t Leigh or Young Jethro …”

“It could have been one of the servants who is afraid to own up.”

“Perhaps we should forget it.”

“You’re getting too excited. Yes, perhaps we should forget it.”

But I knew he went on thinking of it, and I lay back in bed feeling cherished and greatly comforted.

But not for long. As my arm began to heal and first it came out of its bandages and then out of its sling and I saw that there was only the faintest scar to remind me of it, I began to sense a tension in the house, a lurking fear, the awareness that all was not as it outwardly seemed.

“You’ve had a proper shock,” Sally Nullens told me, and Ellen confirmed this. “First that miss,” went on Sally, “then this. It’s too much for one body to stand. It begins to have its effect on the nerves, that’s what.”

Ellen said: “It’s funny how shocks come … never one at a time. It’s often in twos and threes.”

“Am I to look out for number three?” I asked.

Sally said: “It’s always well to be on the lookout. But just at first we’ve got to get you well. I’ve got a very special cordial and it takes a lot of beating, don’t it, Ellen?”

“Are you talking of your buttermilk one?”

“That’s the one,” said Sally. “You shall drink it every night, Mistress Arabella. You’ll drop into a nice peaceful sleep and we all know there’s nothing like that for putting you to rights.”

So they talked to me, but although I drank Sally’s buttermilk cordial, I did not sleep well. My anxieties, it seemed, went too deep to be lightly thrust aside.

My suspicions had returned. Did Carleton really love me? Did he really want me now that I had failed to give him a son? What a magnificent delusion he had created with the Roundheads when he had pretended he was one of them. He was as good an actor as Harriet was.

And Harriet? There was something about her. She was sleekly happy, although she was no longer so much with her son, and I did not believe this contentment came from motherhood. I remembered when she had come to England with Edwin and me. Was it the same satisfaction I had glimpsed on her face then?

What did it mean?

When I walked out in the gardens, my footsteps invariably took me towards the arbour. It was beginning to exert a fascination over me. Now that the trees were losing their leaves I could see it from my bedroom window and I made a habit of looking at it.

Once when I found my footsteps leading me that way, I heard my name being called and turning saw Chastity running after me.

“Don’t go there, mistress,” she said. “Don’t go nowhere near that place. ’Tis haunted.”

“Oh, nonsense, Chastity,” I said. “There’s no such thing as hauntings. Come with me and we’ll go together.”

She hesitated. She had always been particularly fond of me since the day when I had given her a pretty button.

“Come on. We’ll go and look. I’ll prove to you that there’s nothing to fear. It’s just four walls overgrown by shrubs because no one has cut them back for a long time.”

She put her hand in mine, but I was aware that she was trying to drag me back as we went along.

I opened the door and stepped inside. The place smelt a little musty. The dampness of the wet wood and the smell of leaves permeated it.

They were together here … Harriet and Edwin … My eyes went to the window where the fanatical eyes of Old Jethro had looked in. I could almost hear the shattering of the glass, the firing of the fatal shot … at closer range than the one which had been fired at me. I could picture Harriet, stunned, and yet collecting her wits quickly enough to run to tell Carleton what had happened.

Chastity was looking up at me, her eyes round with horror.

“Mistress, it is haunted. Come away … now. …”

Yes, I thought. It is haunted … haunted by memories. I never want to come here again.

Chastity was tugging on my hands and we went outside.

“Well, you see,” I said, “there was nothing to fear.”

She looked at me curiously and said nothing. I noticed how hard she gripped my hand until we were well away from the arbour.

That night looking from my bedroom window I saw a light flickering close to the arbour. I stared, fascinated, watching it moving among the bushes like a will-o’-the-wisp.

Now the light had disappeared. A lantern, I guessed, and I wondered who carried it and whether he—or she—bad gone inside and for what purpose?

I watched for a long time, but I did not see the lantern again. I began to think that I had imagined it.

I was still feeling weak.

Sally said: “Women can take a year or two to recover from a miss. Some says it’s worse than a birth. It’s unnatural, like, you see. And then of course that other affair …”

She seemed to be right. I was not like the Arabella I had been. Sometimes I thought I would like to go to Far Flamstead and try to tell my mother something about the doubts and suspicions which seemed constantly to be chasing themselves round and round in my mind.

And yet I wanted to stay here. I felt there was something going on in the house, something which deeply concerned me. I wished I could shake off this uneasiness, this feeling of foreboding.

Was it really that someone had shot at me, had hoped to kill me? It had been said that I was lucky. The pellets had hit my arm. Had they gone into my head or some other vital part of my body, they could have been fatal.

If Leigh had not accidentally shot me, who had? Was it someone aiming at a pigeon … or at me?

Carleton had been summoned once more to Whitehall. He looked a little sad sometimes, as though he wondered what was going wrong with our marriage, for after that display of tenderness when I had had my accident, we seemed to be on edge, both of us. I was unable to express what I felt for him; indeed I was not sure. I wanted him to love me, to be with me, to act as a husband. It seemed sometimes that I was trying to make him a different person from what he was. I was suspicious, uncertain of him, asking myself whether it was possible for a man who had lived as he had to reform and become a faithful husband. I could not forget Edwin and the manner in which he deceived me; and I could see—while I was unable to prevent it—that I was allowing this to colour my life.

I continued to be fascinated by the arbour. One afternoon when the household was quiet, I went out into the garden and almost involuntarily my footsteps led me there.

It was November now—a dankness everywhere; almost all the leaves had fallen and only the conifers gleamed a shiny green. Cobwebs were draped over them, for it was the season of spiders.

And as I came near to the arbour I heard a voice which seemed to be singing a mournful dirge. I went closer and to my amazement there against the wall of the arbour knelt a man. I recognized him at once as Young Jethro.

I approached and studied him. He was on his knees and his hands were clasped together as in prayer. Then I realized that he was praying.

He stopped suddenly. He must have been aware of my presence. He turned sharply and looked at me out of those wild eyes which were almost hidden by the unkempt eyebrows.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Praying,” he said. “Praying to God. There have been murder done here. ’Tis an unhallowed place. I’m praying to God for the soul of my father.”

“I understand,” I said.

“Oh, God, save his soul from eternal torment,” he said. “What he done, he done for the glory of God but the Book says, ‘Thou shalt not kill’ and that means even in His name. My father killed a man here. He were Satan’s own, caught in Satan’s work … but, the Lord says, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”

I said gently: “It was all long ago, Young Jethro. It is best to forget.”

“He burns in hell. A good life and one false step and for it … he burns in hell.”

I kept seeing it again. Should I ever forget it? That scene in the arbour and the madman with the gun. The lovers … caught there. Illicit love and Edwin dying instantly, and Harriet running into the house and the self-righteous man of God going back to his barn, the task he had set himself to do, done. And afterwards? Had he suffered remorse? He was a murderer no matter in which cause he had murdered. And he had disobeyed the law of God.

I felt stirred with pity for this strange, near-mad man. I wanted to comfort him. To tell him that I who had suffered the loss of my husband through his father’s action forgave. And he must forget.

But there would be no reasoning with him. I could see that reason and Young Jethro were strangers. There was only the law of God as he saw it, and he believed that his father, in spite of all his piety, had committed a mortal sin.

I turned, and as I walked away I heard him muttering his prayers.

There was one thing I was sure of now. Young Jethro had not been the one who fired the shot at me, and Carleton’s theory that the Jethros harboured enmity towards our family because we were Royalist and Young Jethro thought we were responsible for the licentious state of the country had no foundation in truth.

Then it was someone else.

It was Leigh, I told myself. It must be so. Poor child, he had fired in the wrong direction and then was so terrified of what he had done that he had convinced himself that he hadn’t done it.

I was all right now. All I had to do was regain my inner health, to muster my spirits, to throw off my misgivings and feel life was good again.

Carleton was still away. I was in the nursery with Sally and she was going through the children’s clothes and trying to decide what was needed. Later we should go to London and buy what was required.

Both Benjie and Priscilla were having that afternoon nap which Sally insisted they have, and the boys were out riding.