The Keeper of Secrets Read Online Free Page B

running his horse round even as we passed through it. Throwing the farm lad messenger up before him, Dr Hansard was on his way.
    Jem had brought Titus round at a not much slower pace.
    ‘Seems he has the bell connected to his kitchen and to his stable, too, so George – that’s his groom – always knows when he has to saddle up,’ he said. ‘Do you want to follow him, Master Tobias?’
    I pondered. Once again, a deep longing to be told what todo possessed me. But I had not so much as a tutor to guide me now. ‘If it’s a “hatching” I shall only be in the way,’ I mused. ‘And I know that if mother or baby ails he will send for me.’
    Jem frowned. ‘But it might be a deathbed he’s called to. And there, I tell you straight, Master Tobias, you should be.’
    To be shamed thus by my own servant! In silence, I let him heave me into the saddle, and within a minute we were following the good doctor’s tracks. 

CHAPTER TWO
    As I stood beside the grave, I thanked the Almighty that the first deathbed I had had to attend in my new cure had been such an easy one. Old Mrs Gates’s passing had been entirely peaceful with, not so much as a backward glance. Indeed, even Dr Hansard had found it hard to pronounce the absolute moment of death, it was so gentle.
    Her family, farmers comfortably ensconced in a house the origins of which must have been at least as old as those of Moreton Priory, had surrounded her, repeating after me the appropriate prayers. Perhaps they had been surprised to see me, but their welcome, once I had introduced myself, was gratifyingly warm. Only Dr Hansard allowed a gleam of surprise, then amused approval, to flicker across his face. I had had the grace, I believe, to blush. I trusted Jem far too well to fear that the reason for my presence would ever become public knowledge.
    It seemed that in this part of the kingdom it was not considered seemly for women to attend the final obsequies, and so it was only men gathered round the graveside to hear – and, I hoped, be consoled by – the solemn grandeur of the burial service. They stood in the late summer sun, their heads bowed in a final farewell, in this world at least, but in sure hope of a reunion in the next.
    ‘Thank you, Parson Campion,’ said Farmer Gates as I signified the proceedings were over. ‘Now, let me press you and Dr Hansard here to join the mourners back at the farmhouse for a glass of sherry before the old lady’s will is read.’ He clapped me familiarly on the shoulder.
    Two years ago I should have shuddered at the touch and at such an invitation. Now I would accept them both, for two reasons. The first was to keep Jem’s good opinion, so very nearly lost the other night; the second was that I rattled round my empty house like an egg in a bucket, to use his phrase, and however I tried to fill my hours of leisure with study and prayer, I felt at times a quite desperate need for the company of my fellow men – even if they were, like Farmer Gates, huge, red-faced yeomen, clothes straining at the seams and great hams of hands dealing greasy cards for whist: people, in short, to whom my family would scarcely have bowed from their carriage.
    However, even as I smiled my acceptance, Simon Clark, the verger, scuttled across the greensward with a far from reverent haste.
    ‘Simon,’ I began to remonstrate, in a serious voice.
    ‘Begging your pardon, your honour, and yours, Dr Hansard, but the doctor’s wanted,’ he panted. ‘Real urgent, they say. Down in Marsh Bottom. Young Will says it’s bad, desperate bad he says.’
    ‘Is William waiting?’
    ‘No, Doctor. He’s run straight back, fast as if his life depended on it.’
    ‘How fortunate you left your gig at the parsonage,’ I said to Hansard. ‘Let me apologise to these good people and I will accompany you.’
    ‘To Marsh Bottom?’ Simon demanded incredulously. ‘That’s not a fit place for such as you, your honour!’
    ‘Anywhere on God’s earth is