‘Do you not think it is an apt name for him?’ she laughs.
‘I think it unfair.’
‘To Gifford?’ she asks incredulously.
‘No, to the pig.’
A small bridge has been built between them and they smile at each other but, as always these days, he is the first to avert his eyes. She pretends to fuss around the pig.
‘So,’ he says after a while ‘you have a brute of dog called Vasey, a brute of a pig called Gifford, where am I?’
She pretends she has not heard.
‘I saw some large spiders in the barn, I suspect you have named each one of them Guy.’
She still doesn’t answer, has turned away from him. He can't help himself, he feels bleak, and he wants her to hurt him so that he has a reason to be angry with her. He needs something to stop himself from falling headlong into his old desire for her.
‘Or perhaps you have a pet crow hidden away, or a slug?’
‘Stop it,’ she suddenly blurts out and he can see she has tears in her eyes, ‘Stop it. Do not throw that back in my face, I was wrong; by God I know I was wrong. I have had long months to think about that, months to know how badly I had misjudged you.’
They are both taken aback by the vehemence of her words and an uneasy silence descends. She struggles to regain her composure and does so eventually.
‘If I were to think of you as any animal now, it would be one that has been injured … caught in a trap … and who is now lashing out at anything or anyone trying to help it.’
As she finishes talking she tentatively reaches out her hand to touch his arm. Unfortunately it is his injured one and, in response, he steps abruptly backwards and walks away leaving her standing there with her arm held out, feeling foolish.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * ** * * * **
Later that day they pass in the passageway; an awkward, uncomfortable meeting where they execute clumsy half steps to get around each other. His shoulder knocks against hers and she finds her heart is racing. In the narrow confines of the passage he looms broad and dark.
She swallows down her feelings and is just about to go up the stairs when he says in a low voice, ‘I was going to kill Gifford for you, do you know that? I planned to kill him as soon as you were through the gate, but Vasey arrived and then it was too late. If I had, you could be at Hindelford now. You could have destroyed the will and been living there in comfort.’
‘I did destroy the will.’ Katherine replies, ‘but I was still too afraid of Vasey to return, too sure that he would think of some reason why I should belong to him, and make me marry whomever he wished.’
‘Could you not have asked Sir John's friends for help?’
‘The same friends who were so quick to help me before?’ she asks, bitterly.
‘They did not know of your situation Katherine, not until it was too late. All your letters ended up in Nottingham.’
Her eyes widen a little at that, but then she sighs and shrugs. ‘It does not matter now. None of it matters. I did not want to return to Hindelford and that remains unchanged.’
He comes nearer to her, his brow crinkled, ‘But why not? With Foster you could have– ’
‘Foster died.’ The words are said in a flat tone but Guy can see the pain in Katherine's eyes and he himself feels a stab of sorrow.
‘A week, two weeks after they cut his fingers from him. His wound, it …it poisoned him. It was a hard death for such a good, kind man.’ Guy watches the tears well in her eyes and glide down her cheeks. ‘I sent money via Robin Hood to his family but it was poor recompense.’
Katherine pauses and wipes the tears from her face. ‘Hindelford is too full of ghosts. William, Sir John, Grace, her baby, Foster. I hope they are turning Gifford's hair white. I hope they haunt his dreams. I take comfort from the fact that he will come to a bad end, I know it will happen. I am just sorry that I will not be there to see it.’
Guy watches Katherine climb the stairs and wonders if she really means all she says about not wanting to return to Hindelford, even if the opportunity arises.
He will not let his own mind go back over all the ways in which he had helped to take Hindelford from her. He has done that so often, indeed gnawed away at all the many crimes he has upon his head that he is exhausted with it.
His self-loathing is like a shadow that follows him around and mars his clear perception of reality. So disgusted is he with himself that he cannot wait until he is well enough to take his filthy past and his filthy stump away from her.
He cannot see what Katherine really thinks about him now. Indeed, he cannot recognise that what he now sees in her eyes is neither pity nor gratitude but something quite, quite different.
Chapter 38
Start from the beginning
