There were three of them that morning, their stockings soaked to the calves as they walked through the sodden meadow. John Eagle didn’t mind; he was using the time well while his patron slept, hoping to find him in better spirits than the night before. That today was the Sabbath and the barometer low made that prospect unlikely: Sir Walter Stanhope Baronet, even in the comfort of his private pew, was not one to relish his religious duty. Do it he would, however, if only for appearances’ sake; and he expected Eagle to do the same. But for now, before the bells of St Mary’s tolled with soul-clanging certainty, the young attorney had a corpse to inspect.
‘Not far now, sir,’ said Sir Walter’s strong-backed keeper, Ely Rhodes, pointing ahead with a gloved hand that covered, Eagle had supposed, some black deformity. ‘I found him just over there,’ he added, pointing next with his good hand, the one that pulled the trigger on his sporting gun and could still fell a poacher twice his size.
The question was, what would they find when they got there? Something heinous no doubt, the unmediated thrill of horror should the keeper’s story be true. And yet despite this, all their talk was of a different horror: the news that the King of France, Louis XVI, had been beheaded – ‘By his cruel and bloodthirsty subjects,’ as Sir Walter had put it the day before when he’d wafted the paper rudely in Eagle’s face and wagged his gold lorgnette. He’d gone on, without apology, to quote Mr Fox who had called the King’s execution ‘a most revolting act of cruelty and injustice'.
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