He said it so kindly. That was the worst of it. He said it as if he were doing her a great favour, as if he had thought hard about how to keep everyone safe and had found the answer, and was only waiting for her to thank him.
"And if I go up the hill," said Marian, "and tell Mr. Trevisa what I know?"
"Then Trevisa, who dined with Calloway on Tuesday and thinks him the finest fellow in the county, will commit your deaf ostler for theft anyway, because a watch was found in his bed and that is evidence and what the boy says he saw on a man's lips is not. And he'll write to the Collector at Exeter about you. And the brig will very likely sail regardless before anyone gets round to searching her, because that's how these things go. And you'll have ruined yourself for nothing, and him with you." He stood up and straightened his cuffs. "Think about it on the walk. It's a steep hill."
He went to the door, and paused there.
"You know what Clyst is built on, Marian," he said, quite gently. "You've known for a year. You haven't given it back. I don't see why this should be any different."
When he had gone she stood quite still in the middle of the room for a long moment. Then she went to the window and looked out at the brig.
He was right about Clyst. That was the thing she could not get past. She had read those journals a year ago and locked them in a cupboard and gone on eating off her husband's plate and sleeping in her husband's bed and wearing the silks he had bought her, and she had told herself that the dead were dead, that the trade was ended, that what was done could not be undone. It had been a comfortable thing to tell herself. It had let her keep everything.
And now here it was again, not in the past at all but out there in the pool with its riding light still burning in the morning grey, and Crispin offering her the same bargain she had already accepted once. *Say nothing, and keep everything. Say nothing, and the boy goes free.*
That was the clever part. The boy. If it had only been her own neck, she thought, she might have been brave. It is easy to be brave with nothing but yourself to lose. But he had tied Jory Brannock to the other end of the rope, so that whichever way she pulled, someone else was hurt.
Wilmot came out of the bedchamber with her gloves and stood holding them, saying nothing, with a face like a closed door.
"Wilmot," said Marian. "Do you know how far it is from here to the Custom House?"
"No, my lady."