"It were near ten. Thick as this. Kit came running up to my room over the coach-house in his shirt. Said Mr. Wren had shaken him awake and told him to fetch me, his lordship had gone out on Absalom in this muck and Mr. Wren was going after him. By the time I'd my boots on, your father had saddled Tansy and gone. I stood in the arch with a lantern and I couldn't see the length of my arm. I sent Kit for the house. Nobody there knew owt; the butler said his lordship had gone up to bed. I waited." He rubbed his face. "I waited all night. I'm sixty-one and I've done a deal of foolish things, but that's the one I'd have back. I should have gone out after him. I didn't. I told myself one man lost in the fog was enough."
"And in the morning?"
"In the morning it lifted a bit, and I took two lads and went up the Wold road. Absalom were in the turnip field by the crossroads, saddle round under his belly and the reins snapped. Tansy were standing at the edge of the lime pit, cropping the grass at the lip, quiet as you like, with her reins trailing. And your father were at the bottom." He stopped. He was quiet for some time. "Neck broke. He'd not have known owt about it, I'll say that. She must have gone in at the edge in the dark, and he came off over her shoulder, and she scrambled out and he didn't."
Harriet found that she was holding the can so hard the tin had bent.
"The flask," she said.
"In his coat. Inside pocket, buttoned in. I knew it the moment I saw it; I'd filled it for his lordship that very afternoon, when he come down to the yard with that letter in his hand looking like death. And here's the thing, lass. Here's the thing I've carried." He turned at last and looked at her. "It were full. Near enough. Stopper screwed down tight. If your father had been drinking from that flask, there'd have been nowt left in it. I bent down to him and I smelled his mouth. I'm not ashamed to tell you. I smelled his mouth and it were peppermint. Same as always."
She made a sound. She did not know what it was.
"Then I went on down the road and found his lordship at the home-farm gate, with his head bleeding and no notion of his own name. And I put two and two together, same as anybody would. Your father caught him up. Took the flask off him. Sent him walking home and went after the horse, because that horse were worth four hundred guineas and loose on the coach road in the dark he'd have killed himself or some poor carter. That's what Sam would've done. That's what Sam did." Thorne's voice dropped. "And I took that flask to Sir Roland, because I were frightened. Frightened for the young master and frightened for my place. And Sir Roland sat me down and said it were kindest to everybody if I told the jury I'd smelled spirits on poor Wren. And I did. God forgive me. I stood up in the back room of the Bell at Driffield and I said it."
The box was very quiet. The lantern flame stood up straight and still.
"You let them call him a drunkard," Harriet said. "You knew him four years and you let them."
"I did."
"He'd have stood up for you."
"He would. He did, once, when the old Earl wanted me turned off for a lame hunter that weren't my fault." Thorne did not look away. "I've no excuse to give you. I'll not insult you with one."