‘You didn’t need to skulk around in the shadows after me, you know,’ I said gently, as she ripped into another hunk of bread. ‘You could have just knocked on my door.’
‘On the door of the French embassy? You think they would have received me? Invited me to dinner, perhaps?’ She swallowed her mouthful and fixed her eyes on the table. ‘In any case, I didn’t know if you would want to see me. After everything that happened.’ She did not look at me, and her words were barely audible, the scorn melted away. ‘I told you, I never had any letters from you. I wanted to find out about your situation before I made myself known. I – I was afraid you might not want to know me.’
‘Sophia –’ It took a supreme effort of self-control not to reach across the table and take her hand in mine. The ferocity of her warning look confirmed that this would not have been welcome. I was finding it difficult to remember that she was supposed to be a boy. ‘Sorry – Kit. Of course I would not have turned you away. Whatever help you need – if it is in my power to give –’
‘You might feel differently when you know the truth,’ she mumbled, picking at a splinter of wood on the tabletop.
I leaned closer.
‘And what is the truth?’
She looked up and met my eye with a flash of her old defiance.
‘I am wanted for murder.’
A long silence followed, filled by the clatter and hubbub of the tap-room and the farmyard noises and shouts from beyond the window. Motes of dust rose and fell in the sunlight that slanted across our end of the table. I continued to stare at Sophia and she did not look away; indeed, I could swear there was a hint of a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She seemed pleased with the effect of her announcement.
‘Who did you murder?’ I asked, when I could bear the silence no longer.
‘My husband,’ she replied, without hesitation.
‘Your husband?’
She smiled briefly. It did not touch her eyes.
‘Yes. You did not know I’d got myself a husband, did you?’
I could only go on staring in amazement.
‘You are thinking that I don’t waste any time, eh? Barely finished pushing out one man’s child before I’ve married another?’
‘I thought no such thing,’ I said, uncomfortably, because the idea had fleetingly crossed my mind.
‘My aunt sold me like a piece of livestock.’ She gestured towards the window. ‘Like one of those poor bleating beggars in the pens.’
‘So you murdered him?’ In my efforts to keep my voice down, it came out as a strangled squeak.
Sophia rolled her eyes.
‘No, Bruno. I did not. But someone did.’
‘Then who?’
This time she could not disguise the impatience in her voice.
‘I don’t know, do I? That’s what I want to find out.’
I shook my head, as if to clear it. ‘Perhaps you had better tell me this story from the beginning.’
She nodded, then drained her tankard and pushed it towards me. The ale was not strong, but drinking it fast had brought a flush of colour to her hollow cheeks.
‘I’ll need another drink first.’
‘There is no use in dwelling on all that happened before you left Oxford,’ she began, when a fresh jug of ale had been brought and she had finished a second piece of bread. I muttered agreement, avoiding her eye. I wondered if she remembered the night I had kissed her, or if that memory was buried in all that had happened after. I remembered it still, as sharply as if it had been a moment ago.
‘My father sent me away to my aunt in Kent, as you know. My mother cried when I left and promised it was only for a season, until my disgrace, as she put it, was past, but I could see by my father’s face that she was fooling herself. The stain to his reputation and his standing in the town was more than his pride could bear. I truly believe he would rather I had died than brought him a bastard grandchild.’
‘He as good as said so to me,’ I recalled.
‘Well, then. I was under no illusion when I set out to Kent in the company of one of my father’s servants. I had been cast off by my family for good and I had no idea what my future was to hold. It was several days hard riding and I was near four months with the child by then. I was ill the whole way and I feared …’ She looked down at the table, suddenly bashful. ‘I knew so little of such matters, I feared the rough journey would dislodge it before its time. Stupid.’ She shook her head, embarrassed.
‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘It would be an unnatural woman who did not worry about the safety of her unborn child.’
‘It turns out they are tougher than you think, these creatures,’ she said, allowing herself a soft smile. ‘In any event, I was safely delivered to my aunt – my father’s elder sister, so you may imagine she took the insult to his honour very much to heart. She was widowed, with modestly comfortable means, and she made sure that I was adequately fed and housed for the duration of my confinement. But it came at a price. The state of my immortal soul was her real project.’ She grimaced, and paused to take another gulp of ale. ‘I was allowed no books except the Bible and a book of prayer. Naturally, I was not permitted to step outside the house – she had told her neighbours that I was sickly and likely to die and that she was nursing me through my last months. Whether they believed her, I have no idea, but I was shut in my room whenever she had visitors.’
‘You were not moved to any religious feeling, despite your aunt’s efforts?’
She snorted and tossed her head in a way that reminded of how she was before, when she still had long hair to toss.
‘I told you, Bruno – I am done with religion, of any stripe. If there is a God, I am sure He must look with despair on His representatives, endlessly bickering over trifles. For myself, I would rather live without it.’
‘That makes you a heretic,’ I said, suppressing a smile.
She shrugged.
‘If you say so. It does not seem to have done you any harm.’
‘Oh, Sophia. Sorry – Kit. How can you say that? Do not take me as your model. I can never return to my home because I am called a heretic, you know this.’
‘Neither can I,’ she said, pointedly. ‘We are in the same boat, you and I, Bruno. We both live in exile now.’
I was tempted to detail for her all the ways in which our situations could not be compared, but I wanted to hear the rest of her story.
‘So your aunt was determined to make you repent …?’
‘I never knew how much my father had told her of the circumstances that brought me to her house. She was certainly of the belief that I had been wilful and disobedient and had made my long-suffering family pay the price for my dishonour. And she made it very clear that I would have no choice about the life I lived from then on, if I expected to be given food and shelter.’ She stopped abruptly, looked away to the window and swallowed hard. I sensed we were nearing the heart of her story; she had kept up the careless bravado convincingly so far, but I noticed she had