The Misbegotten (16 page)

‘You’re a devilish good piece. I’d like to see if you’ve the ginger hackles down below, as well as up top,’ he said.

‘My thanks for the offer, sir.’ Starling rose from the bench. ‘But I’d rather couple the old horse in the stable than have you touch me.’ She walked away with her head up high, so that Dick wouldn’t see the knife he’d stuck into her, wedged between her ribs. She felt the wound of it go deep; it made her breathless.

‘Aye, wench, but only take a look and you’ll find I’m hung just like that horse that’s caught your eye!’ Peter Hawkes called after her, and the men dissolved into laughter.

She chose a soldier, little more than a boy, already drunk and half slumped in a bench with his comrades. The brass buttons on his jacket were brightly polished, but his breeches were stained here and there with spilt wine. He had soft blond hair, like a baby’s, and gentle brown eyes all befuddled from drink. His voice wavered between a boyish squeak and a man’s tenor. She drank with him and his friends, and draped herself over him, ever closer, until in the end she was sitting in his lap. She let his tentative, uncertain hands quest upwards from her hips to the narrow span of her waist, and then even further. When she judged him quite far gone enough she whispered in his ear, and helped him to stand. As she led him towards the back door she looked over at Dick and saw him watching her, scowling, his eyes dark and angry. Just as she’d hoped. She shot him a spiteful smile as she lifted the lad’s arm and placed it around her shoulders.

In the yard Starling kissed the boy quickly, all over his face, turning him this way and that until he pulled away suddenly, his eyes sliding out of focus. She stepped neatly to one side as he threw up into the gutter; a watery stream of curdled wine. As he was doubled over, coughing and spitting, she dipped her fingers into each of his pockets and relieved him of the last of his coins. The stink of his vomit made her recoil, and she swayed, suddenly weak right through her body.

‘Let this be a lesson to you, sweet boy,’ she told him, not unkindly. ‘Come tomorrow you will have lost your money, your dignity and your good health, and yet will have kept the maidenhead you’re so keen to lose. You will not awake a successful man. Never drink more than you can hold.’ He groaned piteously, and she patted him on the shoulder, quite sure he had no idea who she was, or where he was, or why. ‘There, there. Your friends will soon come out to find you.’ With that she left him and slipped out of the yard into the dark streets of Bath, with tears she hadn’t been aware of shedding cold on her cheeks.

For a long time after she ran from Lansdown Crescent, Rachel couldn’t keep still. Her hands shook, and her legs trembled, and she felt the ridiculous urge to burst into tears even though the threat of danger was long gone. She warmed herself some spiced wine but could not drink it, and made a cold supper that she could not eat. She wanted Richard to come home so that she could be comforted, but darkness gathered in the narrow street outside until she could no longer see to watch for him. When it was late and he was still not home, she took a candle up the narrow stairs and fetched the twist of her mother’s hair from her trinket box. She pressed the cold, slippery lock to her lips and breathed in, trying to find some scent of Anne Crofton still on it. There was none, but it comforted her nonetheless, and the shuddering inside her that threatened to become sobs eased off.
Soft hair, soft hands. Everything soft and gentle about her, even when she scolded
, the voice whispered, in memory. Rachel lay down on the bed to wait. Her neck was sore, the muscles stiffening from the strain of trying to break away from Jonathan Alleyn. When she shut her eyes she saw his face, the flood of misery and hope that had filled it, followed by that gleam of fury, so terrible, like nothing she had seen in a person’s eyes before today.

She was drifting, her eyes still wide and stinging dry, when the door finally banged below, and she heard Richard’s footsteps on the stairs. She sat up, her head aching, and attempted to pat her hair into better shape. The candle had burned down to a nub. Richard was scowling when he came in, and his steps were heavy, clumsy; boots scuffing on the floor, catching on the corners of the furniture.

‘Richard! I’m so glad you’re come home. The most . . . unsettling thing happened to me today—’

‘You went to see Mrs Alleyn again.’ Richard cut her off, standing over the bed with his face half lit, half hidden in darkness.

‘Yes . . . how did you know?’

‘Not from you, that’s clear enough. Not from my wife, who ought not to keep things from me!’ His voice rose, and Rachel blinked. Sweat shone on his top lip and brow, and she could smell the stink of the inn on him.

‘I . . . I was going to. But it was so late when you got home last night, and you seemed so distracted, I didn’t want to . . . bother you with it.’

‘And this morning, before I went out?’ he said. Rachel hesitated.

‘I thought it of little consequence,’ she said quietly. In truth she couldn’t say for sure why she’d kept the invitation from him, only that there had remained a nagging doubt over his reaction to the news.

‘You thought it of little consequence,’ Richard echoed, sarcastically.

‘I meant to tell you, of course I did. And I am trying to tell you now. Oh, Richard – it was terrible! Mrs Alleyn did insist upon me meeting her son, even to the extent that I had to go up to his rooms, for he would not come down to us. And then . . . and then . . . he flew at me! I don’t know the reason why, for certain – only that he seemed to mistake me for somebody else . . . He flew at me and half killed me, Richard! I was so afraid . . . I think he’s quite mad!’

She stopped to catch her breath, and steady herself. She waited for him to reach out for her, and soothe her, but instead he sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, and kept his back turned.

‘Richard? Didn’t you hear me?’ said Rachel, putting a hand on his shoulder. He jumped as if he’d forgotten she was there.

‘What nonsense is this?’ he muttered. ‘Of course he’s not mad, only . . . troubled. Of course he didn’t attack you.’

‘But . . . he did! I swear it!’ Rachel cried. ‘Look! Look here at my neck, if you doubt me. See the marks his fingers left!’ She pulled her shawl aside and turned her neck to the light, where deep red fingerprints still marked the skin. ‘Look!’ Reluctantly, Richard glanced briefly at her neck, and his frown grew even deeper. He stayed silent. ‘But . . . have you no words of comfort for me? Doesn’t it move you, that I was attacked?’ she said, bewildered.

‘Of course it does. Of course . . . I am sure he did not intend to harm you. He is a gentleman. His mother is—’

‘His mother left me alone in his rooms! She left me alone for him to do as he pleased! And what kind of gentleman would deal out violence to a . . . a blameless person who had come to call? I tell you, they are gentlefolk neither one of them!’ Rachel began to sob, as much from exhaustion and disappointment as from her former fear.

‘I will not hear you speak ill of the Alleyns. Were it not for Mrs Alleyn’s kindness, and her patronage, I would be nowhere. I would be a lowlife, serving others for a living, instead of a business man of good repute, rising all the while . . .’

‘I don’t understand you, Richard. Are . . . are we to be so grateful to her for your advancement that her son may strangle me and go unreproached?’

‘I say only that . . . allowances must be made. Jonathan Alleyn is not a well man . . . it is unfortunate that he . . . reacted badly to you. But you should not have been in his rooms!’

‘Unfortunate? And if that serving girl hadn’t been there to make him stop, and he had killed me, would that be unfortunate too? Or would that be merely regrettable?’

‘What serving girl?’

‘The red-headed one. The one I told you about before, that I thought I saw—’

‘Enough about this now. You’re home, safe and well. No harm has been done . . .’ Richard turned to her now, and put out a hand to take one of hers. Rachel stared at him in astonishment. ‘It was a fine thing that Mrs Alleyn asked you to see her again. Perhaps next time it will be a card party, or tea? Let us hope so, for she truly must be taking a shine to you, hmm?’ He squeezed her hand and smiled, but his eyes stayed troubled, almost afraid.

‘Next time? Richard . . . I can’t go back there. I won’t! You don’t understand what it was like . . .’

‘Enough, now. You’ve had a fright, and you’re not talking sense. Of course you will go back, if you are invited. We must hope that you are.’ His grip on her hand had grown tighter, and almost hurt.

‘Richard, I—’

‘You will go back.’ He said each word slowly, clearly, and in his hand hers was a small, weak thing that could not free itself.

Rachel said nothing. She did not understand Richard’s loyalty to the Alleyns, so profound that her own well-being could be brushed so easily aside. She did not understand his insistence that she go back, even if she didn’t want to. She did not understand why he offered her no gentle embrace, but only began to unbutton his breeches as he laid her back on the bed. She did not understand why, when she told him she was too tired and upset to make love, he carried on and did it anyway.

Jonathan and Alice wrote to each other constantly, each letter begun as soon as the one before had been received and devoured, so that missives passed between them like a lungful of air, breathed in and then out, tirelessly. Whenever the letter carrier called with something, Alice rushed to be the first person whose fingers touched the envelope; as if some vital essence of Jonathan might linger on it, and pass to her through her skin. Then she stole away to find some private place in which to read – in her room, or tucked into the window seat in the back parlour, or in the barn – with perfect concentration on her face, and a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, ebbing and flowing according to the contents of the letter. Each letter was read twice, three times, even four. Then Alice would place it carefully in a polished rosewood box, and sit down with paper and pen to begin her reply.

More than once, Starling opened the rosewood box and tried to read one of the letters. She knew she shouldn’t, but that didn’t make the temptation any easier to resist. Her reading was coming along, under Alice’s tuition, but still she could only make out one or two words of Jonathan’s impossible writing, with its curls and flourishes and slanting loops. It was as though he’d designed it deliberately so that none but Alice could read it. And of course she never saw what Alice wrote to him in response. When she asked, Alice would say something like:
I’m telling him about how well you are doing in your lessons, and how much of a help you are to Bridget. And about the owls nesting in the old tree, and to ask when he and his grandfather will next visit us.
Then she’d give a nod and a smile, as if to say
there, be satisfied.
Starling chafed to know what else she wrote. The scant words she could pick from Jonathan’s script were usually dull things like
clement, mother, city
and
season
; only occasionally did she see more exciting things, like
cherish, captive
, and
adore.

Starling always knew when Alice was keeping secrets – it wasn’t difficult to tell, because Alice wasn’t very good at keeping them. Not that she divulged them, unless they were silly and minor, and hers to divulge: a cake they were to have for tea, or some small present she’d bought for Starling, which was meant to be saved for the day they’d chosen as her birthday but would always be handed over sooner. When she had a secret that was not hers, or was important, she kept it, but the strain of doing so wrote itself all over her face. A tiny line appeared between her brows, and a distracted look in her eyes, as though what she could not tell ran constantly before them. Her lower lip stayed open, away from the upper; ever ready to speak. So she was for five days after one letter from Jonathan came, and Starling ached to know what she knew. Then, on a cool and breezy day, Alice wandered into the kitchen with studied calm, carrying a cloth-bound book of poems and her shawl. She went to stand by the window, and Starling, who was helping Bridget rub salt into a joint of bacon, noticed how high and tense her shoulders were. Eventually, Alice turned to them with an air of tremendous nonchalance.

‘I think I might take Starling on a walk into Bathampton today. The weather seems set fair,’ she said.

Bridget looked out at the skirling clouds and wind-bent trees, and pursed her lips doubtfully.

‘If it’s fresh air you want, you could go and see if there are any goosegogs ready for picking yet,’ she said.

‘Oh, there aren’t. I checked them earlier,’ Alice replied hurriedly. ‘You’d like a trip into the village, wouldn’t you, Starling?’ She was slightly breathless, her voice a little high.

‘Oh, yes. Can I, Bridget?’

‘What about this bacon, then?’

‘It’s almost done . . . leave it and I’ll be sure to finish it later. Please?’

‘Go on then, the pair of you. Never mind leaving me with all the work,’ said Bridget. Starling jumped down from the stool she was standing on, and untied her apron.

‘Run and get your hat, my chuck.’ Alice’s smile was irrepressible.

The farmhouse sat on the wide strip of land that lay between the river and the newly made canal that linked the River Kennet in the east to the River Avon at Bath. The Avon, wide and fast-flowing, passed to the north of the house; and to the south, a path led to a hump-backed bridge across the canal and then straight on to the high street. But that day, Alice stepped onto the gravelled towpath beside the canal instead.

‘Let’s go this way today,’ she said brightly. Turning west would have taken them the two miles into Bath; turning east led them along the southern edge of Bathampton. The wind bowled along the canal’s flat surface, pulling and puckering it; it made their skirts and the ribbons on their hats flutter. As they dodged piles of dung left by the barge horses, Starling was still fascinated to see water in the canal. For a long time it had been a muddied trench where teams of navvies had hacked and worked to shore up the earth, reinforcing the scar they cut so that it would not heal again in their wake. Now boats and barges were free to travel along it, moving cargos with far greater ease and economy than by road. The water had been glassy and clear for a month after the canal was filled. Now it was as green and cloudy as watercress soup, and it had a dank, clammy smell, like rain and rotting leaves.