Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [544]
“It would have been through concern for you if she had,” he replied.
“Doctor,” there was a trace of anger in his voice now. “There is nothing about which you need concern yourself, and nothing to fear.”
What more could he have done?
The house before which Doctor Barnikel stood was a handsome brick and stone fronted building on the northern side of the close.
The house belonged to Canon Porteus, who lived there with his wife Frances. He was not afraid of either of them. He was certainly not afraid of the young man. No, he hesitated because she would also be there.
He stood by the gate for a full minute.
It was while he did so that, from the tradesmen’s entrance at the rear, the small figure of Peter Wilson emerged and walked away. Barnikel smiled. He had only to look at the scruffy young fellow to guess that he had been with the housekeeper delivering contraband.
“After all,” he murmured, “even the clergy must have their brandy, too.”
It seemed to break the spell. He went in.
It was ten years since Doctor Thaddeus Barnikel had come to Sarum from a village north of Oxford.
He was thirty-five, an excellent and respected doctor and he had soon built a solid reputation in the city. He lived in a pleasant, modest, white-fronted house in St Ann Street.
He was a kindly man. No one in Sarum had ever seen him say a cruel word, or lose his temper: indeed, the last time he had done that was twenty years ago, and even then, it had been because he saw a man in Oxford whipping his dog so viciously he thought it would be maimed. At that moment, to his own surprise, he had been suddenly transformed into a state of towering rage. A minute later, when the dog’s master picked himself up off the ground, he found that his dog was no longer in his possession but being carried away in the arms of a slightly chubby, red faced but determined fifteen-year-old. And the boy’s attack had been so sudden and so devastating that the fellow had not cared to argue but had slunk away.
Thaddeus kept the dog, named Spot, which had lived on for ten years.
He was now a well-built, broad-chested man, just over average height, with thinning hair and, despite the fact that he was a respected doctor, a tendency to blush sometimes in the company of women. Surprisingly he was still unmarried.
“A strange name, Barnikel,” old Bishop Douglas once remarked to him. “What’s its origin?”
“Danish, I believe,” he replied. He had heard of the legend of the Danish warrior who cried. ‘Bairn-ni-kel’; but he smiled at this as no more than a charming myth.
She was there.
She was sitting quietly beside Frances Porteus in the drawing-room, working on a piece of embroidery, and she looked up as he came in.
“I fear my husband has not yet returned, Doctor Barnikel,” Frances Porteus said politely. “But we expect him presently. Pray sit with us until then.”
Barnikel bowed.
He tried to keep his attention on the older woman.
There had been a time, not so long ago, when Frances Shockley had been a gay young woman. Many in Salisbury could remember it. But that was before she had married Mr Porteus.
“You must marry, I’ve no doubt,” her father had told her. “But you’ll never change him – make no mistake about that. I only pray he may not change you too much.”
By the time Barnikel arrived at Sarum she had already been married four years; and whenever he met her it had seemed to him that there was an unhappiness in her eyes, as though her natural gaiety had been trapped. Ten years later, that look, too, had completely vanished and he did not know whether to be sorry or glad. For Frances Porteus, though she had no children, was now a most staid and proper matron.
“I trust Porteus is not harsh to you,” old Jonathan Shockley said, just before he died.
“Oh no,” she answered. “Never. But,” she had allowed herself to sigh, “he is very correct and – he is sombre.”
She sat on her chair now, bolt upright, stitching.
But it was to her companion that Barnikel’s eyes kept straying. He could not help it.
Agnes Bracewell was not beautiful. She was a quiet,