His daughter prayed, too. She had known, she did not know how, that her father had lied. She prayed that night and the next that she would be spared the horror of marrying Samuel Scammell. She prayed, as she had ever done, for happiness and for the love God promised.

On the eve of her wedding it seemed that God might be listening.

It was a fine, sunny day, a day of high summer, and, in the early afternoon, her father died.

Four

“Apoplexy,” Dr. Fenderlyn said.

“Sir?”

“Apoplexy, Dorcas.” Fenderlyn stood beside his horse at the entrance to Werlatton Hall. “Too much blood, child, that’s all. I could have bled him last week, if I’d known, but he wouldn’t come to me. Power of prayer!” He said the last scornfully as he slowly climbed the mounting block. “Urine, child, urine! Send your physician urine regularly and you might have a chance, you might…” He shrugged, drawing in a hiss of breath that suggested everything was doomed anyway. “You’re not looking well, child. Too much yellow bile in you. I can give you an emetic, it’s better than prayer.”

“No, thank you, sir.” Campion had been given one of Fenderlyn’s emetics in the past, dark brown and slimy, and she could still remember the desperate breath-stealing vomit that had erupted to the doctor’s grave approval.

He gathered the reins of his horse, swung his leg across the saddle and settled himself. “You heard the news, Dorcas?”

“News, sir?”

“The King’s taken Bristol. I suppose the Royalists will win now.” He grunted approvingly. “Still, I suppose you’ve got other things on your mind. You were to be married tomorrow?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not now, child, not now.” Fenderlyn said it gloomily, but the words were like an angelic message in her head. The doctor pulled his hat straight. “It’ll be a funeral not a wedding. Fine weather, Dorcas! Bury him soon. I suppose he’ll want to rest beside your mother?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll make sure Hervey opens up the grave. Heigh ho. Another one gone.” He looked up at the eaves of the Hall where the house martins had their nests. “It comes to us all, child, comes to us all. Apoplexy, the stone, strangury, the gout, epilepsy, leprosy, botches, plague, fistula, cankerworm, dropsy, gut-twisting, rupture, goitre, fever, the pox, tetterworm, the sweat, gripes.” He shook his head, relishing the list. “It’s only the young who think they’ll live forever.” Dr. Fenderlyn was seventy-eight years old and had never had a day’s illness in his life. It had made him a cheerless man, expecting the worst. “What will you do, Dorcas?”

“Do, sir?”

“I suppose you’ll marry Mr. Scammell and breed me more patients?”

“I don’t know, sir.” There was a joy in Campion, a leaping joy because she did not know what the future held. She knew only that the marriage had been postponed and she felt as a condemned prisoner must when the jailer announces a reprieve.

“I’ll bid you good day, Dorcas.” Fenderlyn touched his whip to the brim of his hat. “Tell that brother of yours to send me some urine. Never thought he’d survive weaning, but here he is. Life’s full of surprises. Be of good cheer!” He said the last miserably.