Grove inclined his head. “Good enough,” he said. “But you must take it further, for you maintained that without the accusation, the first part, your land would not have been lost, the second part. Is that not the case?”

“Yes.”

“Now, was this an indirect, or a direct causation?”

“I don’t know that I understand.”

“You posit a minor accident; that the second was an indirect consequence of the first, without examining the possibility that perhaps the link was the inverse. You cannot argue, of course, that the loss of your land caused your father’s disgrace, for that would be temporally impossible and thus absurd. But you might perhaps argue that the prospect of losing the land led to the accusation, and that in turn led to the actual loss; the idea of alienation generated the reality through the medium of accusation.”

I stared at him in bewilderment as the words hit home, for he had spoken the suspicion that had nagged at me ever since that night I spent in my uncle’s office. Could this possibly be the case? Could the accusation that destroyed my father have been prompted by nothing more than greed?

“Are you saying… ?”

“I am not saying anything at all,” Dr. Grove said. “Except to suggest that you think through your arguments with greater care.”

“You are deceiving me,” I said. “Because you know something of this matter which I do not. You would not direct me to think in this direction if you had not good reason to do so. I know you well, doctor. And your way of argument would also suggest that I must consider the other obvious form of accident.”

“Which is?”

“Which is that the link connecting the two states of accusation and alienation is the fact that my father was indeed guilty.”

Grove beamed. “Excellent, young man. I am pleased with you indeed; you are thinking with the detachment of the true logician. Mow, can you see any other? We may, I think, leave out random misfortune, which is the argument of the atheist.”

I thought long and hard, as I was pleased that I had pleased, and wished to win more praise; I had rarely done so in lessons and I found it a strange and warming experience.

“No,” I said eventually. “Those are the two main categories which must be considered. Everything else must be a sub-class of the two alternative propositions.” I paused for a moment. “I do not wish to diminish this conversation, but even the best of arguments requires some matter of fact to give it ballast. And I have no doubt that at some stage you will indicate that in crucial areas this is lacking.”

“You are beginning to talk like a lawyer, sir,” Grove said. “Not like a philosopher.”

“This is surely a question where law is applicable. Logic can only advance you so far. There must be some way of distinguishing between the two propositions, which are either that my father is guilty or that he is not. And that cannot be accomplished by metaphysics alone. So tell me. You know something of the circumstances.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “There I must disabuse you entirely. I only met your father the once, and while I found him a handsome, robust man I can hardly offer any judgment or even assessment of him. And I heard of his disgrace only incidentally when I overheard—quite by chance—Sir William telling his wife that he felt obliged to tell what he knew.”

“What?” I said, lurching forward in my seat with such violence that I believe I frightened the man. “You heard what?”

Grove queried me with an air of genuine bafflement. “But you must know this, surely?” he said. “That Sir William was the person who made public the accusations? You were in the house at the time. Surely you heard something of what was happening?”

“Not a word. When was this?”

He shook his head. “Early in 1660, I believe. I cannot really remember with any exactness.”

“What happened?”

“I was in the library, searching out a volume, for Sir William gave me free run of his books for as long as I was there. It is not the best of libraries, but it was a small oasis in the desert for me, and I drank there frequently. You remember the room, no doubt; it faces east for the most part, but turns a corner toward the end, and off there is the office in which Sir William conducted all the domestic business of the estate. I never disturbed him in it, because he always got into a fearsome temper when he had anything to do with money; it brought home his reduced state too painfully. Everyone knew to steer clear of him for many hours afterward.

“On this occasion his wife did not, and that is why I know to tell you this. I saw little, and did not hear all, but through a crack in the door as it stood ajar, I saw that good lady on her knees before her husband, imploring him to think carefully about what he was to do.

“My mind is decided,” he said, not unkindly, even though he was unused to having his actions queried. “My trust has been betrayed, and my life sold. That a man could act in such a way is difficult to imagine, that a friend could do so intolerable. It cannot go unpunished.”

“But are you sure?” my lady asked him. “To level such an accusation against a man like Sir James, who has been your friend twenty years, and whose son you have brought up almost as your own, cannot be done in error. And you must bear in mind that he will—he must—challenge you. And such a contest you would lose.”

“I will not fight him,” Sir William replied, more kindly this time, for he could see that his wife was concerned. “I acknowledge my inferiority in arms. Nor do I have the least doubt that my accusations are the absolute truth. Sir John Russell’s warning leaves no doubt of that at all. The letters, the documents, the notes of the meetings he had from Mor-land; I can confirm many of them from my own knowledge. I know his handwriting and I know his cipher.”

“Then the door shut, and I heard no more; but my lady spent the next few days in great distress, and Sir William was more than usually preoccupied. He left for London at the end of the week, in a most secret departure, and I imagined there communicated his suspicions and evidence to others in the king’s circle.”

I almost laughed as I heard this tale, for I remembered those times well. Sir William Compton had indeed left the house and galloped away one morning. The household had been somber indeed the previous few days, as though the body was taking a sickness from the head which rules it, and I remember again Sir William talking to me before he left and telling me that I must soon leave. It was time he said, to return to my own people, as I was old enough to attend to my duties. My childhood was now over.

Three days later, the day after Sir William rode away at dawn, I was put on a cart with all my belongings and sent to my uncle. I had not known anything of the storm that had been brewing under my very nose.

But the way I left Compton Wynyates is far from my story, and I must tell more of my meeting with Dr. Grove. On the matter I had called on him for, he refused to help. He would not perform an exorcism, for Blundy had reached into his soul ahead of me, and made his selfishness such that he was afraid to open himself to criticism at this most delicate moment of his career. Try as I might, I could not persuade him; all he would say was that, if I could provide him with better demonstration of the enchantment, then he would reconsider the matter. Until then, he would only offer that we might pray together. I did not wish to offend him, but I demurred at the prospect of spending an evening on my knees; besides, the news he had given me had galvanized my senses, and I was willing, for a while, to put all superlunary matters aside.

The important thing was that I now had a further connection in my chain of deceit, and I questioned the doctor closely on the matter. Documents he had off Morland via Sir John Russell. Which meant that Sir John had merely forwarded these materials from someone else. He was happy to spread the rumor, it seemed, but had not initiated it. Was that a fair inference? Dr. Grove said it sounded so, although he was sure that Russell had acted in good faith. But he could not help me further about the source. It was infuriating; one word from Russell would have saved me much trouble but I knew, from the way he had behaved in Tunbridge, that I would never hear that word from his lips. As I left Grove’s room in New College, I decided it was time to visit Mr. Wood.