The Misbegotten (45 page)

Nine days after Alice had last been seen, Lord Faukes came to the house in Bathampton and Starling found out just how completely her world had ended. The atmosphere inside the house was unbearable, like a breath held so long that it threatened to burst. Bridget was silent and as grim as the grave; already in mourning, already shut off from the world – from Starling, who was still waiting in mounting terror and confusion for Alice to walk back through the door. For she had to, surely; she had to. When they heard the sound of a horse approaching, both knew it would be news. Starling ran into the yard, so overwrought with relief she thought she might scream. She thought it was Alice returned, and when she saw that it was Lord Faukes she thought he must have brought word of her; news of when she would be coming back. Bridget stayed seated at the kitchen table, only lifting up her face to show the new, deep lines criss-crossing her skin, as though grief was a whip that lashed at her.

Before their master was even off his horse Starling was at his side, closer than she would normally stand, made careless by need. But she didn’t take his hand to implore, or even touch his sleeve. The rot beneath the rind; she could still smell it, however distracted she might be.

‘You have word of Alice?’ she said, and did not curtsy or bid him good day, or wait for him to speak first. Lord Faukes glared at her, long and steady, as he handed the reins of his horse to the yardman. He walked on towards the door, and she trotted alongside.

‘She did not manage to make you any less brazen-faced, then, eh?’ he muttered, distractedly. Once indoors, he handed Starling his hat and gloves and went through to the parlour to sit down. ‘Bring me brandy, girl. Bridget, I would speak to you.’ His voice was grave, but even. The women, old and young, glanced at one another. They could read nothing from his words, so they did as they were bid. When Starling took in the brandy, Bridget was already standing in front of him with her hands laced together, quite still and resigned. Starling wanted to stay but Lord Faukes said brusquely: ‘Be gone with you, little wench.’

For ten minutes Starling waited alone in the kitchen, and just like the first time she’d waited for news from the parlour, time grew sticky and slow, stretching itself out near to breaking point, like a string of tar. They seemed unbearably long, those last few moments in her life in which Starling had hope; the possibility of joy. When Bridget came out her face was grim and still, giving nothing away. Starling rushed to meet her.

‘Bridget, tell me. What news is there? Where’s Alice?’

‘I don’t know where she is, child.’ Bridget pressed her lips together briefly, clamping off the words. ‘But she’s gone, and I think . . . we must be ready not to see her again.’

‘What? What do you mean? There is news, then? Tell me it!’ Starling gripped the older woman’s hands, felt how cold and dry they were. Like there was no blood beneath the skin at all.

‘Come in here, Starling, and stop clamouring so. I will tell you what you need to know,’ Lord Faukes called from his chair, the same parlour chair he always chose, though his hips wedged into it tightly, his flesh moulding into the wood and fabric. Half reluctant now, Starling went to stand in front of him. ‘Bridget. I have a yen to eat veal for supper. Go into the village and see if there is any to be had.’

‘Sir, I doubt that at this late hour there will be any—’

‘Go on and look for some, I say!’ His sudden bark burst the bubble of decorum that had perched, fragile, over the household. Starling felt a warning again, scratching away at the back of her mind as though it wanted out. But she
had
to know what he would tell her about Alice. She was caught, like a fish on a hook. Bridget glanced from her master to Starling and back again, her clenched knuckles even whiter, spots of crimson in her cheeks and her eyes full of some desperate want that she could do nothing to fulfil. With wooden steps she made her way to the door and went out of the house, not even pausing for her coat or hat, or for coins to pay the butcher.

Only once they were alone did Lord Faukes look up at Starling, and clear his throat.

‘Alice has disgraced herself beyond redemption. She will never be welcome here again; I shall have no more to do with her.’ He spoke without anger, but also without doubt.

‘What disgrace? What do you mean? Where is Alice?’ Starling pleaded.

‘You will not see her again.’ His words landed like blows, each one shaking her more than the last.

‘What?’

‘She has run away with a man; a lover. Feckless, ungrateful girl. She has eloped to be wed, since she knew I would not allow it. There. It is as painful to me as it is to you, I hope you realise. She has deceived us all as to her true nature. Or perhaps she was corrupted by the wild influence of another. Or others.’ At this he gave her a steady look, hard and considering. ‘Tell me truthfully. Did you know of this liaison? Of her plans to behave to so ruinously?’

‘I don’t understand.’ Starling shook her head. ‘She has run away with Jonathan? But . . . he was here after she went missing; he came looking for her . . .’

‘What nonsense is this, with Jonathan? Of course not with my grandson! He would not act so wrongly! I don’t know the name of the man she has gone with. If I knew it, believe me I would find them all the faster. Jonathan is at Box even at this moment, deeply upset by it all. I do not deny that I knew of some . . . attachment between them. A cousinly affection. But the idea that the two of them would collude in such a way is . . . preposterous.’

‘But they planned to marry! They have written to each other and spoken and thought of little else since I have known them!’

‘Written, you say?’ said Faukes, eyeing her severely.

‘And . . . and she has taken nothing with her – no clothes, none of her possessions . . . all are still here!’

‘Of course she’s taken nothing – you shared a room, did you not? She could hardly pack a trunk without you knowing it, could she? Whoever she has left with, she must think he has the means to clothe her anew.’

‘But Jonathan . . . Alice . . .’ Starling struggled to set her thoughts in order. She put her hands to head to keep them all in. ‘Alice loved Jonathan! She would never run away with anybody else!’

‘Do not contradict me, wench!’ Faukes shouted, his face mottling with blood. ‘It’s more than you deserve that I take the time to explain the situation to you!’ He thumped the arms of the chair with his hands, making the frame of it shake. He was as solid and strong as the wood itself, Starling thought. She rolled onto the balls of her feet, ready.
None of this is true.
She was as certain of it as she was of her own heartbeat.

‘Forgive me, sir. But I . . . I . . .’

‘You do not want to believe it, any more than Bridget did, or Jonathan or I. But it does no good to deny facts when they are put plainly in front of you. The girl has made a mockery of all she has been given, and she will have nothing more from me or my family. This house will be let. I will see you and Bridget put into positions elsewhere, if you will accept my help with due gratitude, and be good and obedient, the pair of you. And you will speak no more of Alice Beckwith. The girl is dead to me; I will not hear her name.’

‘How do you know, sir?’ Starling whispered, her throat too tight for speech. ‘How do you know of this elopement?’

‘She wrote a letter, delivered to my house in Box.’

‘May I see the letter?’

‘So, she taught you to read? No, you may not. I flung it into the fire, it angered me so. There. Take this bitter news and be reconciled to it, for it cannot be changed. Perhaps I might find room for you in my own household. Eh? What do you say to that?’ Lord Faukes levered himself out of his chair as he spoke and stood over her, head and shoulders taller. Starling took a step backwards. ‘I shouldn’t mind seeing such pretty, flaming curls every day.’ He reached out a hand as if to catch a lock of her hair, and Starling stepped back again.

‘No!’ she managed to cry.

Her backward step made her catch her heel on the corner of the couch. As she fought for balance he dealt her a backhanded blow to the side of her head that made her ears ring, and she twisted as she fell, landing hard on her stomach across the arm of the couch, which drove all the air out of her in one rushing exhalation. Before she could think or try to rise she felt the weight of him bearing down on her. His hand was on the back of her neck, gripping hard, pushing her face into the seat so that she could hardly breathe, let alone fight him. She reached over her shoulder, nails scrabbling at his sleeve, seeking skin. She couldn’t reach any, could not make her arms bend behind her to find his cheek or eyes or mouth; any soft part she might have been able to injure. She had nothing to bite but the dusty fabric in front of her face. Her own breath was hot and suffocating, clamped over her nose and mouth like a swaddling cloth.

‘I’ve tamed wilder things than you, girl,’ said Lord Faukes, his voice tight with lust and amusement. ‘But fight on, if it please you. The harder won victory is always the sweeter.’ Starling felt air touch the backs of her legs as her skirt was lifted; felt her skin bruised as her drawers were torn away; felt that bone-deep warning, that knowledge she should not have had of what was coming. Knowing it made it hurt no less, and made it no less shaming. Her vulnerability, her failure to prevent what was happening filled her with a terrible rage, as incandescent as it was futile. She shrieked it out into the muffling cushions – every curse and threat and insult she knew, and then wordless cries when his thrusting began, tearing into her. It was not over quickly. Lord Faukes was not a young man; he took his time to take his pleasure.

Sometime afterwards, Bridget rushed in, eyes and mouth wide open, to find Starling still leaning over the arm of the sofa, staring at nothing, her jaw knotted tight at the hinges as she ground her teeth together.

‘I knew it . . . I knew it as soon as I saw him ride past me, all red in the face and loose in his limbs! The foul old
bastard
! May he rot!’ Bridget cried; the first and only time Starling heard her curse somebody. ‘May he rot! Are you injured? Can you rise?’

‘Don’t touch me,’ Starling ground out, and she felt Bridget hesitate, startled at her tone. There was a pause, a measured beat in which Bridget changed tack, subtly and effectively.

‘Well, you can’t stay there all day, bung upwards and bleeding on the carpet. Come up and let’s get you clean.’

‘I won’t ever be clean. And let the carpet go to bloody hell. Let the next lot worry about the stains on it, for we won’t be here much longer, he says.’

‘No more we will. But clean you shall be, Starling. The traces they leave can always be rinsed away.’

‘Not always. That was not the first time.’

‘I guessed as much.’ Slowly, Starling peeled herself up from the sofa, standing gingerly. Blood and seed ran down her leg and she shivered in revulsion. She met Bridget’s gaze, saw that the older woman was near as aggrieved as her by what had happened.

‘Only Alice stopped him until now,’ she said, and Bridget nodded.

‘Forgive me. You couldn’t know the danger. I’m sorry I went out.’

‘I knew it. And you had no choice but to go.’

‘I had a choice, but I was too much the coward to take it.’ Bridget’s breath suddenly hitched in her chest; she thumped a fist into her ribs and groaned. ‘But no more!
No more!
I will call him master no more!’ she cried out, then made a sound like a sob but dry, hollow.

‘Don’t cry, Bridget. Help me to wash instead. You’re right – I can’t stand the stink of him on me.’

‘How much older than your years you sound, Starling.’ Bridget scrubbed her face with her hands, then let them fall to her sides. ‘You always did. Come then. I’ll put water on to heat, and fetch the tub.’

Starling sat in the tub with her body stinging, the hot water too harsh on the lesions and bruises; she felt calm, almost dead.

‘How will it be without her, Bridget?’ she murmured.

‘We have no choice but to find out, my dear,’ said Bridget; a term that had always been reserved for Alice, until then. ‘You’re not bleeding each month yet, are you? At least there should be no child, then. And you are not a child any longer, Starling. You must choose where you would go, what you would do. This will not be the only time – that much I can assure you. If you continue to accept the wages of that man, this will not be the only time.’

‘You will go your own way, then, Bridget?’

‘I will. And take you with me, if you’ll go.’

‘What about Alice? How will she know where to find us?’

‘Alice is gone, girl. One way or another. Though it breaks my heart to say it.’

‘She will come back, I know she will. She wouldn’t just go and leave us. And what about Jonathan? She’d
never
leave him for another! You know it as well as I do!’ At this she saw Bridget pause, and choose not to tell her something. She had no will to demand to hear it. But she decided there and then that she would stay in Lord Faukes’s service. That she would stay near Jonathan, in a place that Alice would return to. Bridget seemed to know it too.

‘I would have kept you with me. Kept you safe and found you work. Remember that, in the times that are coming,’ said the older woman, gravely.

‘You can’t keep me safe. Only Alice could do that.’ She didn’t mean to be cruel but she saw the remark hit home. Bridget’s face pinched, and she said nothing more, fetching more hot water and clean towels in silence. Starling sat and she thought and she waited. She waited to find out how life would be from then on.

I must find her last letter.
Starling carried on up the stairs without thinking, to the second floor of the house on Lansdown Crescent. She didn’t pause to check where Mrs Alleyn was, or Mrs Hatton, or Dorcas. A smell of cinders and baked fish lingered in the stairwell. Never once had she believed that Alice had written a letter to Lord Faukes, to tell him of her elopement; she knew a bare-faced lie when she heard one. Her thoughts were troubled, turning this way and that, trying to fix on something clear.
Damn Mrs Weekes and her theories.
Could she be Alice’s sister? When Mrs Weekes had described the way her infant sister died, Starling had remembered Alice’s sudden fear on the day they’d swum in the river at Bathampton. Remembered how close she’d come to panic when Jonathan suggested swimming out into the current. Could that have been a distant memory, resurfacing? A nameless warning, like those that Starling’s early years had left her with? Starling shook her head, muttering refutations beneath her breath.
Alice was
my
sister. Rachel Weekes muddies the water, nothing more. She is a fantasist!
The reason why Jonathan killed Alice was in Alice’s last letter to him, sent to Brighton, and it was not that she had fallen in love with another. It had to be something else, something which had brought him hurrying back to Bathampton; something which had turned him wild and mad.