He was sorry. He was the one who said he was sorry. I sent him out of that house and he spent his last breath apologizing to me for going. Yes, said Anna. He did.
I cannot bear it. You will bear it, she said. She lifted the lantern so that she could see his face with the rain running off the hood of her cloak. Because it is the best news you have ever had. You wanted to know whether he forgave you.
He did better than forgive you. He asked you to forgive him. And a man who does not speak a word of English carried it here for you in his mouth across the whole of Europe so that you could hear it in your brother's own language. Do not waste it, Lawrence. Do not stand out here in the rain and turn it into another thing to be ashamed of.
It was the first time she had called him by his name. She heard it go out into the dark between them. She saw him hear it. He looked at her for a long time. Then he put his arms around her, cloak and lantern and all, and held her against him hard with his wet face against her hair.
She put her free arm around him and held on. They stood there together on the edge of the land in the rain, and she felt the breath go in and out of him in great slow shudders, until at last it steadied. But when they came back into the house, soaked and silent near midnight, Stepan's door was shut and his candle was out, and they did not knock. That was the mistake. Anna thought of it afterwards many times.
In the morning, Stepan was gone. His bed had not been slept in. His green coat was gone from the door, and his bundle and his clay pipe. On the library table, in the gray dawn light, lay the captain's silver watch set neatly on top of a sheet of paper. On the paper he had drawn with a burnt stick from the fire, a small, rough picture of a ship.
The Coast Road, said the caretaker, white-faced in the hall. He'll be making for Newcastle and the ships. He asked me the way of it on Friday by signs, pointing south, and saying Newcastle, and drawing a ship in the dust with his finger. I thought nothing of it, your grace, but the rivers up past the stepping stones at the ford. There's been nobody across there since the rain began.
It's the only way south without going round by the bridge and he wouldn't know that. Nobody would have told him. The Duke was already out of the door. They took the gig because it was quickest. The Duke drove and Anna sat beside him and held on, and the caretaker's son ran behind with a coil of rope over his shoulder because the Duke had shouted for it.