The Misbegotten (21 page)

Yours most faithfully
,

Jonathan Alleyn

Post script, January 13th. The ships are coming, Alice. This letter will travel the first leg of its journey to you with me. I will send it on when I land; we are bound for Brighton, I believe. We will be two weeks at sea, all being well. I will see you soon. To write those words makes my spirits soar.

The paper of the letter was as creased and stained as a blacksmith’s hands; one small sheet, the writing cramped and filling the margins, Jonathan’s lettering as hard as ever to read. There was a smudged thumbprint in the bottom right-hand corner, in some reddish brown substance Starling didn’t like to touch. Soon it would have to go back. That very evening, in fact, when she took up his supper tray. If he happened to notice it gone, or guess that she had taken it, he could dismiss her, long association or no, and then she would have nothing, and be nowhere. But the date of the letter made her hands shake, and made the back of her throat ache.

We will be two weeks at sea
, he had written, on the thirteenth day of January. Alice had vanished on the eighth of February, 1809. That was the last day Starling had been happy, out of all the long days that came after it. The last day everything had been as it was supposed to be; and everything after was humiliation and fear, and a chaos of grief and anger. February the eighth, 1809. And the day after that, Jonathan came to the farmhouse door, all desperate and grim, like some part of him had died. The deranged ghost of himself, eyes wild with something like fury, something like despair, something like guilt.
A fine alibi, to demand to see the person you have murdered.
On the eighth day of February, Alice had gone out alone first thing in the morning. She went to meet Jonathan, Starling knew. She knew it like she knew the sky was above her head and the earth was beneath her feet. Alice went to meet Jonathan, and could not forgive his blackened soul, or these things he wrote of, that shamed him so. And so he killed her. Starling shut her eyes, feeling such bitter rage and disappointment welling up inside her it was almost unbearable. By itself, this letter told her nothing new, and could not prove his guilt. She ground her teeth together as she jammed it back into her pocket.

Suleiman.
The word whispered in her memory; she remembered learning it for the first time – rolling it around her mouth until she had committed it to memory. Few other words had such a clear provenance in her personal lexicon. Suleiman was Jonathan’s horse, and she first saw him, and learned his name, on a late summer’s day in 1807, the year before Jonathan set sail to Portugal to fight the French. She remembered sitting in the meadow grasses by the river with Alice, counting bumblebees and damsel flies with bodies like blue enamel darning needles. Then they heard the cattle stir, disturbed from their grazing as Jonathan cantered nearer. He grinned down at them as he reined to a halt, and the horse blew out hard through flared nostrils. Starling scrambled to her feet and backed away, and the horse reared up on its hind legs, startled. Alice’s face lit up in admiration; she went fearlessly to lay a calming hand on the horse’s shoulder. Its neck was an arch of muscle and blood vessels beneath a coat that shone like polished wood.

‘Easy, boy. ’Tis only Starling and she’ll not hurt you,’ Alice murmured. ‘Oh, Jonathan! He’s
magnificent
! What’s his name?’

‘His name is Suleiman,’ Jonathan told her, and they both laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’ Starling demanded, cross that she had been afraid of the horse.

‘Suleiman the Magnificent,’ said Alice, as if that explained everything. Starling scowled.

Jonathan dismounted and began to relate the horse’s pedigree to Alice, and Starling stopped listening. She walked as close to the animal as she dared. It wasn’t like the farm horse or the barge horses that went plodding by every day, or even like the grey mare Jonathan usually rode. Suleiman was bright bay, his coat a rich gingery brown but for his legs and nose, which were glossy black. His mane and tail were black too – what was left of his tail, anyway. Like the barge horses’, it had been docked to six inches. Suleiman flicked this inadequate stump at the flies that settled on his flanks, and the fact that he could not reach them made him more restless still. Starling put out tentative fingers and touched his nose, which felt like the finest suede leather. The horse blew damp air onto her hand, and Starling looked right into his eyes, and was smitten.

‘Can I ride him?’ she asked, interrupting Jonathan.

‘Well . . . I’m not sure that would be wise, Starling. He is very sensitive, and strong,’ said Jonathan. He showed Starling his hands – there were blisters and shreds of pulled skin between his fingers from battling with the reins.

‘Oh, please! Please let me! Just here in the meadow. I’ll only walk him . . . I promise not to fall off.’ Jonathan still argued that she might get hurt, but Alice persuaded him, blushing when Starling hitched up her skirt and petticoat, showing them both her long drawers as Jonathan boosted her into the saddle.

‘You are too grown up for that, now, Starling,’ Alice said. ‘If you ride again it must be with the side saddle.’

Jonathan kept careful hold of one rein, and Suleiman rattled his teeth against the bit and pulled for his freedom. He seemed perplexed by such a small jockey, and danced from side to side, casting looks over his shoulder as if to ask after the meaning of it. With her pulse racing, Starling knotted her fingers through the coarse black hair of his mane, and hung on. The scent of crushed grass rose up around them, ground beneath Suleiman’s hooves. His slightest movement made her wobble in the saddle, and fight for balance, but for a few heavenly moments she rode the magnificent horse, and she loved it, and she loved Jonathan for letting her. In the end, Suleiman lost patience with walking in small circles, and danced into a canter. Starling gave a small yelp and slithered off to one side, landing with a thud in the long grass. Alice rushed over to her, but Starling was laughing, delighted.

‘Will you teach me to ride, Mr Alleyn?’ she said breathlessly. ‘Oh, will you? Please, please?’ Jonathan glanced at Alice, who smiled.

‘I see no reason why not,’ he said, and Starling loved him even more. ‘But not today. Today, we picnic.’ He reached into the saddlebag, and drew out a large pork pie wrapped in a handkerchief, and a bottle of beer.

After they’d eaten, they lay side by side in the grass. The sunlight was strong, dazzling; it cast a brilliant halo around everything, so that their faces were too bright to make out, and expressions had to be guessed from laughter and words, from the silhouette of a smile. They were at a place where the river curled in a long, lazy arc through the meadow, and a shallow shelving beach of muddy pebbles had formed, the water eddying gently past. Starling lay on her back and blew dandelion clocks, watching the weightless seeds drift away into the blue. Alice and Jonathan were taking it in turns to read sonnets, back and forth. Their voices were hushed and private, carrying messages only they could unravel; the rhythm of the words lulled Starling quiet for a time. When silence fell she rolled her head to one side and watched Jonathan. He was staring away into the distance, lost in thought. A trickle of sweat wound through the hairline at her temple, and she rubbed at the tickle.

‘Can I paddle, Alice? I’m boiling. Please?’ she said, sitting up and squinting at her.

‘If you’re careful, and don’t go out into the current.’ Starling grinned as she wriggled out of her dress and boots. ‘What were you thinking about, just then?’ Alice asked Jonathan. He shrugged.

‘Nothing. Everything,’ he said, and then smiled. ‘Sometimes my thoughts run away with me, and I get caught in the twists and turns of them.’ He cocked his head at the river. ‘How about it?’

‘You can’t mean . . .’

‘I’m roasting as well, and you must be too.’ He grinned.

‘I haven’t been into the river since I was thirteen! It’s not . . . suitable,’ Alice protested, smiling.

‘There’s nobody around to see. I know how modest you are, Alice Beckwith. A swim won’t alter that.’

‘Hurray!’ Starling cheered, as they both got to their feet and began to shed their shoes and stockings. Alice lowered her face as she unlaced her dress, looking up at Jonathan through her eyelashes. The air between them seemed to thrum. As the girls waded into the water their white petticoats billowed up around them, swelling with air. ‘We look like dandelion seeds,’ said Starling.

The river’s cold stole their breath. Alice took the longest time to submerge herself. She stayed in the shallows, smiling uncertainly and exclaiming at the feel of mud between her toes. Shadows marked the ribs at the top of her chest, and the thin ridges of her collarbones. Wisps of pale hair hung around her neck, and water droplets sat like jewels on her skin. Starling took all this in, admiringly, and when she looked at Jonathan he was staring too, with an expression of complete surrender.

‘I bet I can swim to the other side and back,’ he said, paddling his arms beneath the surface.

‘No! You mustn’t!’ Alice’s voice was wrought with alarm at once. ‘You mustn’t try! The current is very strong, even in the summer. Jonathan, don’t!’ she cried, when he cast a speculative look across the water. She sounded close to panic.

‘All right, I won’t,’ he said, calmly enough. He waded closer to the bank, then pulled up a handful of green weeds and came after Starling with them, grinning like a fiend; she squealed and tried to flee through the dragging water. Alice laughed, and the moment of her fear was forgotten.

Before long a small wooden boat came along, carrying two men; a younger one pulling the oars and an older one tending to their nets and lines and eel traps.

‘Do you know them?’ Jonathan asked, as the boat approached. Alice looked anxious for a second, then relaxed and shook her head.

‘No. I never saw them before. Did you, Starling?’ Starling shook her head.

‘Then we should play the simple country hobnails, and say that we know no better,’ Jonathan declared. ‘Well, Starling, can you manage it? Can you talk like a hobnail from the village?’ He smiled at her.

‘Aye, sir,’ Starling replied, in her best Bathampton accent. Alice grimaced. Soon the dip of the oars brought the boat alongside them, and they halloed the fishermen quite cheerfully. The younger man grinned bashfully at Alice, and waved to them, but the older man tutted and darkened his face.

‘Have you no shame, young ’uns?’ he muttered. ‘’Taint decent, baring yourselves for all to see.’

‘We b’ain’t bare naked, sir,’ Starling replied. ‘Why, these ’un drawers o’ mine reach fairly down past the knee bone, see.’ She lay back in the water and waved her feet at the river men, and Jonathan dissolved into laughter. He had a low, pleasing laugh; it bounced along, like a ball dropped onto a hard surface.

‘Hoggish wench,’ the older fisherman muttered, and resolutely turned his face away as the boat passed them by.

Starling was giggling when she felt Alice’s hands grasp her around her ribs.

‘These ’un drawers o’ mine?’ Alice echoed. ‘Where on earth did you learn to talk like that?’ The question hung for a moment in the summer air, and both were reminded of the first lost seven years of Starling’s life, before she’d found Alice.

‘You were quite brilliant, Starling,’ Jonathan declared, still laughing. ‘The finest hoggish wench I ever heard.’ They stood close together, the water up to their waists and the reflections of it dancing in their eyes and under their chins. Starling glowed with Jonathan’s praise, and had a feeling inside as though her heart was swelling up to bursting. They stayed that way for a moment, and when Starling looked down she saw that Jonathan was holding Alice’s hand with fierce resolve beneath the water’s surface; their fingers woven together tighter than the reeds on the riverbank. They gave each other a long look, and Starling noticed how fast the rise and fall of Alice’s chest had become. Embarrassed, pleasantly scandalised, she flung herself backwards into the water again, sending up a huge plume of water to soak them.

When Alice and Starling returned to the farmhouse later that afternoon, hand in hand, Bridget took one look at their bedraggled hair and the wet patches on their clothes, and widened her eyes in outrage.

‘You’ve never been in the river, Alice!’ she gasped. Alice chuckled.

‘But it was the perfect day for it, Bridget. You should come with us, next time.’

‘You’ll not catch me submerging myself like that – it’s not wise, miss, not wise at all. What if you’ve taken a chill? And look at the grubshite you’ve made of your clothes!’

‘Bridget!’

‘Pardon my language, miss, but,
really
!’ Bridget’s admonishments followed them into the house, and continued as she filled the washtub to rinse the river from them; but the invectives soon lost their heat, met with the girls’ indefatigable good cheer. Starling was careful not to wash too well because she liked the mineral smell of the river on her skin, and in bed she cupped her hands to her face to breathe it in, feeling a wonderful echo of that swelling feeling she’d had, lulling her to sleep.

The short time Starling had spent astride Suleiman that day turned out to be her first and last riding lesson. After that, Jonathan was away with the army, training and preparing, assembling his kit, then away to Portugal, in the summer of 1808. The times that he did come to the farmhouse without his grandfather he wanted to spend with Alice, not teaching Starling to ride. She had never paused to think about what happened to Suleiman, not when Alice had vanished and everything got turned upside down and destroyed.
I cannot bear to relate to you the manner of his death.
Starling swallowed, and every time she read or thought of the words Jonathan had written she felt a tug of deep sorrow, of angry outrage, that the world had turned out to be so ugly, and so cruel, when Alice had taught her to think it was fair and lovely. It was a cold and heavy feeling.

Was this the letter that had convinced Alice to separate herself from Jonathan? Had it caused some crisis in her? She had been harder to read, full of fear and nerves and sudden storms of weeping after Jonathan set sail, and worst of all in the last three months before she vanished, following her fateful decision to visit Lord Faukes in Box. The last three months before Jonathan came home again, all black inside, half mad with grief and violence; a stranger wearing a familiar face.
No wonder she loved him no more, no wonder he killed her for it.
Starling played this scenario over and over, until it started to feel like fact. Perhaps letters like this one had been what killed Alice’s love for him to begin with –
I have done things . . . things I can never tell you. There is such a stain ofshame upon my heart . . . I am worthy of you no longer
– and then when she saw him again, it was confirmed. Something had happened to Alice, in those last three months. Some spark inside her had died, and though she was clearly full of secrets, they no longer lit her up and made her flit about like a firefly. They were heavy on her shoulders, and exhausted her; and when Starling asked her, late at night, what the matter was, Alice only shut her eyes and said
I can’t bear to tell you.
Starling had been left to wonder what could possibly have been so bad. Being kept in ignorance had been torture then, and it was torture still.