The Christmas Wassail by Kate Sedley

stared after his retreating form, leaning against the wall of one of the houses, waiting for the beating of my heart to steady and trying to make sense of what had happened. My overriding impression was that George Marvell had been badly frightened, not simply by the murderous attack on his person, but also by my remark concerning the slavers’ code of honour and the retribution exacted for its flouting. The name Briant of Dungarvon had meant something to him – that was obvious. He was acquainted with the man, but their association was to remain a secret and so he had threatened to make me look a fool if I should make the incident public.
    But something else occurred to me as I stood there in the darkness of the bridge; an explanation of the little drama which I had witnessed between Lady Marvell and the Irishman played out the previous morning. She had solicited his services for some purpose of her own and he had been perfectly willing to comply until … Until what? Until he learned her name, of course. Until he realized that she was the wife of a man he had marked down as his enemy and whom he intended to kill. Perhaps he had not previously known that Sir George moved from Clifton Manor and was now living in the heart of the city, so close to ‘Little Ireland’.
    I heaved myself away from the wall and continued my journey home, suddenly confident that my reading of the situation was the right one. All that remained now was to try to discover, if I could, what the connection between the knight and the slave trader might have been.
    â€˜I don’t believe it!’ my wife exclaimed in exasperation when I had offered my explanation of why I had again been delayed returning home. ‘Why are you always present at the exact moment when these things happen? Why do they never occur when other people are nearby?’
    I gave a sheepish grin. ‘Luck?’ I suggested.
    Or God’s will? It had always been my contention, although not one I shared very often with other people, that the Almighty nudged me into these affairs where my natural powers of deduction were used by Him to bring evil to justice. Perhaps it was arrogance on my part to believe so, but all too frequently I seemed to be involved through no volition of my own. As had happened last night and again this afternoon, I was on the spot when events unfolded more often than seemed warranted by simple coincidence.
    Adela snorted. ‘Ill fortune, more like,’ she retorted. ‘Now come and eat your supper. And remember! The children are expecting that game of Snapdragon with you that you failed to give them yesterday.’
    The game of Snapdragon in our house, with three excitable children and a cautious mother, was played not as it was by the gentry, with pieces of exotic fruit floating around in a pool of flaming brandy, but with slices of apple and a handful of raisins swimming in ice-cold water and having to be bobbed for with the teeth. There were screams of merriment as Nicholas, Elizabeth and Adam bent over Adela’s largest bowl and attempted to catch the fruit in their mouths. The trophies were not immediately eaten, but lined up in front of each child, to be counted when the bowl was empty to see who had managed to catch the most.
    It was almost a foregone conclusion that the winner would be Adam. It was an equally foregone conclusion, of course, that he would cheat, butting with his head and jogging with his elbows to ensure that he had an unfair advantage. But as he shared his ‘snapdragons’ with Luke, who had been frantic to join in, but been forcibly restrained by Adela, his older siblings and I let him get away with it for once. The three older children and I now being extremely wet and cold, we towelled one another dry, then played a vigorous game of Hoodman Blind to warm ourselves up. This was followed by Oranges and Lemons, although with only five of us able to participate (Luke was carried round with