The Misbegotten (41 page)

‘Well, I think we’ve earned something hot to drink, and perhaps something sweet to eat, to warm us, hmm?’ said Captain Sutton, sweeping his daughter into his arms and touching the tip of his long nose to hers. ‘Cassie! Your nose is like an icicle!’

‘There’s nothing so warming as having one’s family around one, I think,’ Harriet remarked to Rachel and Richard, who had linked arms without speaking to one another.

‘Quite so,’ said Rachel, but Richard spoke at the same time, and more loudly.

‘I have found little warmth in my own, lately,’ he said, then closed his mouth tightly, letting his eyes slide angrily over Rachel’s face before looking away into the mist. Rachel was mortified and didn’t know where to look. There she stood, arm in arm with her husband, their faces turned away and a wall of unspoken hard feeling between them.

Late in the evening, Rachel found herself wondering about Richard, and his habitual long absences at night. At first she had assumed he was with clients at inns or private houses, or with traders; that his frequent drunkenness was the result of toasting and sampling and the sealing of deals, or somehow otherwise linked to his business. But after his comment to the Suttons, she was no longer sure. Duncan Weekes had counselled her to be glad his son had not broken his wedding vows to her, and to forget about any prior indiscretion.
But what if he does break them?
She didn’t dwell on the question, since the answer was
what if
indeed – she could do nothing to stop him, except to expose him and try to shame him into behaving better. But even that, she found, did not interest her. She was not interested in improving him. The realisation came as a shock, and if it was true then she should also be uninterested what he got up to when he was not at home. He would say it was not her business, and he would possibly be right.
But I would still know
, she decided.
I would know the full story of what I have wed.

Rachel wrapped up against a light rain, only heavy enough to glaze the cobbled pavement. She went from place to place with her brows furrowed and her hood drawn forward to hide her face from passers-by. She could not bring herself to enter an inn alone, but she peered in through windows, and through doors when they were thrown open by people coming and going. A cloud of talk and laughter and warmth and stink wafted out from within each time, and caused her a curious mix of revulsion and loneliness. She saw ruddy faces, and smiling eyes; she saw arguments and tears, and lovers dipping their heads together in secretive corners that the candlelight barely reached; she saw men drinking alone, staring at nothing, swallowing down mouthfuls of spirits like food. But she did not see Richard Weekes in any place she visited, and after two hours of searching she gave up, cold and oddly disappointed.
Do I want him to be a reprobate, then? To excuse myself for not loving him?
On the pavement she almost stepped on a man, sitting with his feet in the gutter.

‘Beg pardon, sir,’ she muttered, as the toe of her shoe got caught in his coat tails. The man swayed but made no reply, and Rachel paused. ‘Mr Weekes? Is that you?’ She bent down to see his face. There was a cut above Duncan Weekes’s right eye, which had dribbled a crusted line of blood down to his jaw; he sat with his eyes shut and his mouth slack, stinking of brandy and piss. ‘Mr Weekes – are you well? Can you hear me?’ said Rachel, more urgently. She shook his arm and his head came up, slowly, eyes opening a fraction to see what trouble he was in.

‘Rachel! How charming to see you, my dear girl. Do come in, come in. Sit by the fire and warm yourself.’ His voice was a slur, hard to understand. Rachel bit her lip anxiously.

‘We are not at home, sir. We are on the street by the Unicorn. What happened to your eye? Were you attacked?’

‘My eye?’ the old man mumbled. ‘My eye?’

‘Come, sir – you must rise. It’s far too cold a night to be sitting out like this, and we wouldn’t want you apprehended for doing so. Come, I cannot lift you, you will have to help me.’ Rachel grasped him under his arm and urged him to rise; his coat sleeve was wet through, and filthy. For a while Duncan didn’t move, and Rachel was left to tug at him futilely, but then a pair of passing young men saw her plight; they hefted Duncan to his feet with ease, grinned and tipped their hats to Rachel when she thanked them. Slowly, she coaxed Duncan Weekes to walk. ‘Let’s away to somewhere warmer, somewhere kinder,’ she murmured, as they stumbled along.

‘Forgive me, child. Forgive a foolish old drunk,’ Duncan said thickly, and then coughed; his chest sounded clotted and unwholesome. Rachel found her throat too tight to reply.

They were not too far from his lodgings, and when they reached the door Rachel patted his pockets until she found the key. His room was wholly black, and little warmer than outside. She manoeuvred Duncan onto his bed and then tried to light the fire, but found no coal or wood to do so.

‘Didn’t you buy coal, Mr Weekes? Didn’t you buy some fuel with the money I gave you?’ He only stared at her in abject apology, and Rachel understood what her money had been spent on. ‘Well, then,’ she said, helplessly. ‘Well. Blankets, then.’ She lit some candles, which gave the illusion of warmth with their yellow light; piled as many blankets as she could find on top of the old man, and fetched water and a cloth from the washstand to clean the cut on his face.

‘I lost a hand of pontoon, when I’d bet a shilling. I did not have the shilling,’ he confessed, trying to smile. ‘Lucky he only gave me this small cut and not a sounder hooping, eh?’ A bruise was spreading out from the wound, and he winced when she dabbed at it. ‘It will make my head thump all the worse, come morning.’

‘Oh, why do it? Why ruin yourself with drink, sir?’ Rachel exclaimed suddenly. Duncan Weekes’s face sank down.

‘It’s like a command you have to answer, though you know the master for a base villain,’ he said softly.

‘You, and my husband, and Jonathan Alleyn . . . the stuff makes fools and firebrands of all of you!’ She squeezed out the cloth in the bowl. The water was icy.

‘Miserable fools, yes. It makes us lose the things we love most.’ Duncan Weekes’s rheumy eyes shone. The candle flames were caught in them like little sparks of life. Rachel stared into them.

‘What happened to your wife, Mr Weekes?’

The old man sighed; shut his eyes for a moment before answering her.

‘She’d been away one Christmas, to visit her nephew. I was meant to go to Marlborough, where her nephew would leave her, and accompany her on the last leg of the journey by stage. But I . . . I drank away my fare, and fell into a stupor. So she came back alone, and being last to board, since she had waited as long as possible for my arrival, she had no choice but to ride on the roof. We suffered a spell of bitter winter weather, at the time. Bitter. By the time the stage reached Chippenham, they found her . . . they found her succumbed to the cold.’

‘Oh, Mr Weekes,’ Rachel breathed.

‘Grog is the devil itself. It was grog and my own weakness for it that killed her, sure enough. So you see, I can’t blame my boy for hating me,’ said Duncan, bitterly. ‘But then, perhaps the devil is in us to begin with, and the grog only gives him free rein. Aye, perhaps ’tis so! It is in the Alleyn family. I have seen it. I have seen their devil for myself!’ The old man’s eyes widened, and he grasped her hand where she tended him. ‘Oh, be careful, my dear! It worries me deeply that you have taken that man into your circle, into your life.’

‘I have come to know Jonathan Alleyn better. I do not fear him as once I did.’

‘Jonathan Alleyn . . . perhaps not, perhaps not. But the others . . .’

‘But, there is only he and his mother remaining,’ she said, confused. Duncan shook his head.

‘They all have his blood. And she is her father’s daughter, right enough,’ he said, in a voice gone small and frightened. ‘Richard will tell you . . . he will tell you I was dismissed from them for my drunkenness. That’s what he will tell you. But it wasn’t so. It wasn’t so!’

‘Why then, Mr Weekes?’ Rachel whispered, squeezing his hand tightly.

‘Because I
saw
! I saw them! And what I saw could not be mistaken. And they both knew it . . . they both knew what I’d seen . . . And I told her. I told her.’

‘Told who what? What did you see?’

‘I understood then . . . I understood them, then, and I was happy to go, after that. I knew how much my boy wanted to stay on, but I was happy to go after what I saw . . .’ Oblivion was tugging at him, closing his eyes, making his words lose shape and sense.

‘But what was it, Mr Weekes?’ Rachel shook him slightly, desperate to know. His eyes opened again, struggling to focus on her face.

‘Oh! Poor girl, I fear you have fallen into dark hands . . . dark hands. That family has evil secrets, and their hearts are black . . . I
saw
!’ He sank back again, and his breath came rattling through his teeth, wheezing and rank. The smell of it made Rachel recoil; it carried the stink of infection. She felt her heart thudding. She held Duncan’s hand and tried to warm it, but in the end hers only grew colder, and the old man slumbered on, restless but dogged, so she left him.

All-Hallows’ Eve was a bright, crystalline day; the low sun thawed an early frost to leave everything glittering with water. From a thousand chimneys, a thousand ribbons of smoke rose straight up into the still blue sky. Rachel spent the short daylight hours writing a letter to the Trevelyans, stitching an old tippet into a better semblance of fashion, and trying to make pastry that was neither tough and leathery, nor too fragile to lift. All the while, she could hear Richard down in the cellar. A steady stream of callers came and went; she heard laughter and hushed discussions; the rumble of rolled casks, the creak of the barrow wheel as stock and supplies were brought to the store or taken away.
Today of all days
, Rachel fretted. She thought up half a dozen excuses she could give Richard for going out of the house so close to nightfall, and even wondered about sneaking out without seeing him at all, and she was so nervous about it as five o’clock approached that she ended up pacing the kitchen-cum-parlour from one window to the other, gazing out in search of answers.

She sighed quietly in relief when, at half past four, Richard came up to announce he was going out.

‘Where will you go?’ Rachel asked, in spite of herself. Richard looked impatient for a moment, and then unhappy. He crossed to her and kissed her cheek, raising a hand to stroke her hair.

‘I have some business to attend to,’ he said, and Rachel stifled the retort that she did not believe it. It would be to an inn, or a gaming table somewhere. She remembered what Richard had once said about his father – that he wouldn’t be half so poor if he didn’t drink his wages away.
Hypocrite. And you seem to increase such expenditure all the time.
With a pang she wondered if she was to blame for Richard seeking his entertainment elsewhere, but she wanted him to go out, after all, so she said nothing more.

‘Will you be late?’

‘I’ll be as late as I need to be, Rachel,’ he said, irritated. ‘Don’t wait for me, but eat, if you’re hungry.’

‘Very well.’
I just hope your business keeps you out later than mine will keep me.
Richard pulled on his gloves and left without another word. Rachel counted to a hundred once the door had slammed shut, then hurried into her own coat and gloves and headed for the river.

On the far side of the bridge she looked left and right, trying to pick out Starling’s small figure from the crowd of river men and traders, urchins and apprentices. In the failing light the torches dazzled her eyes and made it hard to see. Behind her, the city bells began to strike five and she felt a flutter of panic, until a hand grasped her arm and she looked down into Starling’s heart-shaped face.

‘I thought you’d changed your mind,’ she said, steering Rachel through the crowd by her elbow.

‘No, I—’

‘Hurry – he won’t wait. Did you bring food?’

‘What?’

‘You said you’d bring some food.’ Starling paused, and glanced at Rachel accusingly.

‘I . . . I’m sorry. Richard was in the house until the very last moment . . . I couldn’t. I was worried about getting away without him knowing.’

‘Never mind.’ Starling resumed her march through the muck and garbage of the riverside. They reached the same barge Rachel had seen Starling take before, and the girl went on board in one smooth jump. Rachel peered at the gap of inky water between the boat and the wooden jetty. ‘Come on, then,’ said Starling, seating herself on the sacks of coal. Rachel glanced at Dan Smithers, who gave her a lopsided grin that showed teeth gone brown; the upper and lower canines had worn away on one side into a perfect round slot for his pipe shaft.

‘Make the jump, ma’am, if you would have a ride,’ he said, still grinning. Squaring her shoulders, Rachel gathered her skirts and crossed the gap with a single long stride. She lost her balance, unprepared for the way the barge would move, and staggered forwards onto the coal sacks. Dan Smithers chuckled.

‘A gentleman would have offered me his hand to board,’ Rachel pointed out, coolly, but the bargeman only laughed.

‘Aye, ma’am. No doubt a gentleman would ’ave.’

Starling smiled at her indignity, though not unkindly. When she was like this – unguarded, in her element, she had a kind of buoyant confidence that Rachel admired, and envied. There was something resilient and indefatigable about her. Soon they were sliding beneath the ornate iron bridges of Sydney Gardens, between steep stone walls. The voices of walkers and hawkers and sweethearts echoed down to them; disembodied words drifting like ghosts along the water. Rachel shivered and pulled her coat tighter around her. Then they were out of the city and in darkness, save for the lamps on the prow and stern of the barge – two single flickering flames to hold back the night. There was no sound but the soft slapping of water on the hull, and the muffled clop of the horse’s feet. Rachel saw the first stars of the evening coming out, and excitement filled her; she felt as though she were escaping, somehow.
But you will only have to go back again
.