Once Upon a River - Diane Setterfield Page 0,165

moments, then returned his attention to Armstrong. ‘If he’s not here yet, he soon will be. Give me the money and let me go.’

‘What about the child from the Swan? The one you neither claimed nor relinquished. That charade at the summer fair. Tell me about that.’

‘The same thing as always! Don’t you know me by now? The same thing that is hanging from your belt in the leather pouch.’

‘You expected to make money out of her?’

‘From the Vaughans. It was plain from the minute I walked into the Swan that night that Vaughan knew the girl wasn’t his. She couldn’t have been. I knew it, and he knew it. I knew there was money to be made if I only had the time to think it through – I fainted, or they thought I did, and worked it all out there and then, flat out on the floorboards. They wanted the girl and had money. I wanted money and could claim the girl.’

‘You meant to pretend a claim and then sell it?’

‘Vaughan was on the brink of paying up, but once Mother had sent the girl back, he had no need. I was in debt, thanks to her.’

‘Do not speak ill of your mother. She taught you right from wrong. If you had listened better to her you might be a better man today.’

‘But she did not do right, did she? She only talked of doing so! I’d have been a better man if she’d been a better woman. I place the responsibility at her door.’

‘Watch what you say, Robin.’

‘Look at the three of us! She so white and you so black! And look at me! I know you are not my father. I have known from a child that I was not your son.’

Armstrong took a moment to find his words.

‘I have loved you as a father loves his child.’

‘She tricked you, didn’t she? She was with child by another man and desperate for someone to marry her, but who’d want a lame and boss-eyed woman for a wife? Not the baby’s father, that’s for sure. But then you came along. The black farmer. And she set her cap at you, didn’t she? What a trade that was. A white bride for a black farmer – and me, eight months later.’

‘You are wrong.’

‘You are not my father! I have always known it. And I know who my true father is.’

Armstrong flinched. ‘You know?’

‘You remember when I forced the bureau drawer and stole that money?’

‘I would prefer to forget it.’

‘That is when I saw the letter.’

Armstrong was puzzled, and then his confusion cleared. ‘The letter from Lord Embury?’

‘The letter from my father. That says what is to come to his natural son. Money that you and my mother have kept from me and that I have taken from you by stealth.’

‘Your father …?’

‘That’s right. I know Lord Embury is my father. I have known it since I was eight.’

Armstrong shook his head. ‘He is not your father.’

‘I have read the letter.’

Armstrong shook his head again. ‘He is not your father.’

‘I have got the letter!’

Armstrong shook his head a third time and opened his mouth to repeat himself again. The words sounded in the wet air – ‘He is not your father!’ – but it was not his own voice that spoke them.

The voice struck Robert Armstrong as being distantly familiar.

Robin’s face twisted in despair.

‘He’s here!’ he moaned under his breath.

Armstrong turned and looked all around, but his eyes could not penetrate the darkness. Every tree trunk and every shrub might conceal a figure, and a throng of phantoms hovered mistily in the black dampness. At last, by dint of staring, his eyes made out a shape. Half-water, half-night, it waded towards them, a stunted form whose wide garment trailed in the water and whose hat sat low and concealed its features.

Splash by splash it came closer to Robin.

The young man took a step back. He could not draw his fearful eyes from the approaching figure, but at the same time he shrank from it.

When the man – for man it was – came to a spot five feet from Robin, he stopped and the moonlight suddenly illuminated his face.

‘I am your father.’

Robin shook his head.

‘Do you not know me, son?’

‘I know you.’ Robin’s voice shook. ‘I know you are a low-born villain, a base man who lives by the knife and by crime. I know you are a charlatan and a thief and a liar, and worse besides.’

The man’s

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