The Misbegotten (55 page)

She quit the house on Lansdown Crescent, and knew it would be for the last time. She would visit no more; see Jonathan no more.
Who is he, in truth? The man I thought I knew, or the man Starling knows?
She hurried down the steps and turned west along the crescent, away from the city centre. She wanted to quit Bath too, she realised then. She wanted to quit Richard, and her home, and everything she had found out since her arrival.
I want none of it. I am alone; so let me be alone.
Rachel began to cry again; the ache in her chest was agonising, and made it hard to breathe. There was a shout behind her.

‘Wait!’ She turned to see Jonathan following her, shrugging on a black coat. He was a monochrome creature: pale skin, dark hair, dark clothes, as though life and pain had robbed him of colour. He limped more than ever in his haste; hunching his shoulders and turning his face away from passers-by.

‘Leave me be!’ Rachel called back to him. She turned and carried on walking, past all the mournful buildings with their streaked stone and watchful, empty windows. She was at the gate to the high common when Jonathan came up behind her.

He caught her arm as she unlatched the gate.

‘Wait, Rachel. Where are you going?’

‘Away from here! Away from—’ Rachel coughed and sniffed; her face was wet, chilled.

‘Away from me?’ he said darkly. ‘Do you think . . . do you honestly think I killed her?’

‘Didn’t you?’ she cried. ‘Wouldn’t you have killed me, twice over, if Starling hadn’t stopped you one time, and I hadn’t dodged you the other?’ She twisted her arm and he let it go. Rapid thoughts shifted behind his eyes.

‘But I loved her,’ he murmured, brokenly. ‘I loved her. How, then, could I have harmed her?’ Rachel’s pulse was racing, it made her head feel bruised.

‘Because of what she told you! Because of what she alludes to in that letter, and what she then told you when you saw her – when you came back to Bathampton all mad and undone!’ she said. ‘Can you claim to remember differently?’

‘I . . . I . . .’ He shook his head. Rachel felt the last pieces of hope crumbling down around her feet, till there was nothing left.

‘I told Starling that she must have loved another, that that would be the only reason you might have to harm her, but I was wrong, wasn’t I? She was innocent all along. She was innocent.’ Jonathan said nothing, but he nodded. ‘You said to me once that you had killed innocents,’ Rachel said softly, full of dread. ‘You said you had done things that would send me screaming from the room. You said you’d tried to make it right, but nothing would.’ Still Jonathan only stared, and stayed silent. Rachel could hardly find the breath to speak; there seemed no air to breathe. ‘You’ve killed innocents,’ she said again.

‘Yes!’ he said.

‘Do not flinch from the memory of it – what right have you to do that? Look at it, and tell me what you see!’

‘I can’t.’

‘You
must
! It’s there, in the . . . in the dark spaces in your thoughts – I know it. Did you kill her?’ Rachel shouted. Jonathan would not look at her. His eyes were fixed on the shifting fog, searching.
‘Did you kill her?
’ Rachel said again. Gradually, a change came over Jonathan. His eyes grew wider and lost their focus, so flooded with guilt and horror it looked like it would drown him. He took a slow, shuddering breath. ‘Did you?’ Rachel demanded.
‘Did you murder her?
’ The words rang between them.

‘Yes,’ he breathed then, the word like a poison, killing all it touched. A sob punched through Rachel’s chest and made her wail.

‘Oh, God, how could you? I did not believe it! I believed she lived! I believed I . . . I
defended
you! When all this time Starling has denounced you, I argued against it, but she was
right
! It was all black lies, and you are the blackest of all!
How could you?
’ She slapped his face; a feeble blow, puny compared to the pain she was feeling, but it seemed to rouse him. He grasped at her hands, and she fought him off.

‘Wait, Rachel, I—’

‘No! Let me go!’ She wrenched herself free and fled through the gate, up onto the waiting white expanse of the common.

She slipped and struggled up the hill, wanting nothing but to be away from him, away from all of them and everything she knew. The grass was as icy and white as the air, sliding beneath her feet. Her breath came in uneven gulps, and she was half blinded by tears.
So I have nothing, only a husband who grows to hate me, as I hate him.
The grief she felt was like losing her father and mother again; like losing Christopher. She remembered the cool, unnatural feel of her little brother’s cheek on her lips, as she’d kissed him in his casket. It was excruciating.
Abigail!
She reached out for the echo in her mind and it was there, weaker, fainter, but there.
Her shade then, only ever her shade. A memory, nothing more; or just my own mind seeking to comfort itself.
When she had no more breath to run she halted, bending forwards, body heaving.

‘Rachel, wait!’ She heard his shout, not far away, and it sent a jolt right through her.
He is coming after me.
She twisted around, unable to tell which direction his voice had come from. Nothing was visible in the mist but the uneven ground, and to her left, a stand of black, tangled hawthorn trees at the bottom of a steep dell in the hillside. Fighting for breath, Rachel gathered up her skirts and continued to climb the hill. Her head was throbbing.
There is indeed no fairness; no kindnesses. He did not lie about that.
‘Rachel, come back!’ His voice sounded closer yet, as if he was hard on her heels, and Rachel sobbed in panic as she toiled onwards.

She had reached a point where the land seemed to flatten when she could go on no further. She sat down on the frosty grass, laid her head on her knees, and let her lungs fill and empty like bellows. Within minutes she felt the sweat on the back of her neck and along her spine begin to cool, and then chill; she felt damp creeping in through her skirts. For a long while, she felt nothing else. She thought she heard another shout, perhaps from Jonathan. But it was wordless, and seemed a long way away, so she paid it no mind.
What matter if he comes and kills me this time, anyway?
The only person who might care was Duncan Weekes.
Perhaps Starling would care? Perhaps not. She will never see Alice’s letter, not now I have given it to Jonathan. And she’s searched for it for so long.
Rachel shut her eyes and tried to think of nothing. Into the empty space came a memory of the By Brook, bright and glorious in summer light. Abi’s small body bumping against hers, fighting for space at the carriage window; pale, pale hair, finer than spun silk; a lavender-blue dress; her mother’s face, full of happiness for the last time. After that day there would always be a shadow behind Anne Crofton’s eyes, all the deeper once Christopher also died. Rachel heard the frightened shout, saw the flash of distant blue in the lively water, rushing away, so quickly. She stopped herself, frowning. She pushed the thoughts back, concentrated hard on the memory of that small body next to hers; the blue dress, the pale hair.
Abi. How can I do without you, dearest?

She drifted for a while, beset by sparkling glimpses of memory, and stinging shards of pain. When she opened her eyes it was because shivers were wracking her body, her every muscle cramping with cold. The light was failing, the grey all around deepening by the minute; she could see nothing around her, not even her own shadow, and a new fear gripped her.
What madness was on me, to run out here, away from help?
She stood up and spun in a circle, desperately searching for something familiar, some landmark or path to lead her back towards Bath. All she had were her own footprints, crushed into the frost; not easily visible but there for the following. She’d taken two steps with her eyes fixed upon them when she realised that Jonathan might also be following them, coming up behind her; slower on his lame leg, but still coming.
How long did I rest? Does he still follow?
On legs weak with fatigue, she turned to traverse the hill, the ground sloping treacherously under her feet. She meant to make her way down on a route parallel to that she’d previously taken, just in case Jonathan was still behind her. The darkness deepened with every second that passed; her eyes blurred with the strain of seeing. At one point her ankle crumpled sideways, twisting painfully and making her cry out.
I must get back to the city.
The thought of being lost on the common at night was terrifying.
He cannot see me, at least.
She felt a deeper chill at this thought.
And neither can anybody else.

A pair of partridge erupted up from near her feet and she yelped in fright, pulling up short and holding her breath to listen. There was no other sound. The silence seemed to crowd in around her, amplifying the racket of her blood as it sang in her ears. Pointlessly, she turned about, gazing blindly into the gathering dark.
Downwards. It is the only option, the only way back to safety. The safety of my home
, she thought, bitterly. Then, with a jolt of relief, she saw the deep dell she’d skirted on the way up – that steep, rounded bowl in the earth with stunted, straggling trees knotted at the bottom. She was hurrying past it when something caught her eye. A colour, when all else was white or grey or black. Cautiously, she went closer to the edge, straining her eyes to see. And then she did see. A crumpled black shape, at the bottom by the hawthorn trees; twisted and lying at odd angles.
Jonathan.
He had fallen down the slope and lay with bright red droplets scattered around his head like the spent petals of some macabre flower; as still and silent as ice. Rachel fell to her knees; skeins of suffocating dread rose up and wrapped around her.

‘What are you doing here?’ said Starling, made stupid and slow by amazement. Her breath plumed in front of her face; there was a stink of unwashed skin and alcohol.

‘What am I doing here? This is my place.’ Dick Weekes swayed drunkenly as he took a messy swig from a bottle of brandy. Starling edged back until she felt the leathery touch of willow branches on her shoulders.

‘Your place?’ She shook her head. ‘This is Alice’s place; Alice’s and Jonathan’s.’ She glanced at their initials on the tree and saw that the carving had been obliterated; gouged out by a mass of angry knife marks.

‘I come here sometimes. Lately, a great deal. I come to visit her ghost, and see if she forgives me yet.’ Dick smiled blearily, but there was no mirth in his eyes, only misery.

‘Whose ghost? What are you
doing
here?’ Starling couldn’t make sense of the scene: Dick Weekes in Alice’s secret place.

‘Alice’s of course, you bloody halfwit!’ he snapped, sitting back down on the root. He sank his head into his hands, elbows on his knees, and Starling stared at him.

‘You knew Alice? But you . . . you didn’t know her! How could you know her? All this time I’ve known you, you’ve never said . . .’

‘All this time.’ He chuckled then, a nasty sound; looked up at her with savage eyes. ‘All those times you straddled me, and slid yourself down my shaft to the baubles, you were doing the goat’s jig with the man who killed your precious Alice Beckwith. Is that not a neat folly?’ He waved the brandy bottle aloft as if to make a toast. Starling stared; mute, stunned. ‘And she was meant to make it better. That other one, the one I married,’ he mumbled. ‘She was meant to love me and forgive me, and make it better.’

‘It was you Bridget saw on the bridge, talking to Alice that time. It was you she went out to meet; who wrote her a note and left it here at the tree . . .’

‘We were seen? I tried to avoid that. But by God, she was a stubborn wench! She would not love me.’

‘What did . . . why . . .’ Starling shook her head. She clasped at her stomach, suddenly feeling like she would vomit.

‘I was to woo her. I was to lure her away. I was to tempt her into loving me, and disgracing herself. I was to make Jonathan Alleyn discard her.’

‘By who? By who were you sent to do these things?’

‘By his lady mother, of course. By Josephine Alleyn, another one who did not love me.’ He took another swig, his voice heavy with self-pity, slurring from his drink-thickened tongue. ‘With my glorious face, she said, I could not fail. With my
glorious face
.’

With a bump, Starling sat down in the mud. Her muscles were unresponsive; she struggled to take in what Dick was saying.

‘After Alice went to Box, after she went to Lord Faukes . . . When she recovered . . . she was quiet and secretive. She was sad . . . she wrote letters, but no letters came back.’

‘Her letters were not sent. Not a one. All were intercepted and carried back to his lordship. I was to make her ruin herself and abandon Mr Alleyn before he returned from overseas. She was to tell him nothing, and do nothing to hasten his return.’

‘One letter was sent,’ Starling said woodenly.

It went on a February day not long before Alice’s death, when the sky was a threatening mass of cloud, and there were tiny flecks of rain on the breeze. In those days Alice still went out alone, and at strange times, but rarely with Starling or Bridget. She was keeping a secret, Starling knew – possibly more than one; the kind of secret that gradually, inexorably, wore a person away. Her eyes looked bruised all the time, and she never smiled. Even at Christmas, which Alice loved, she’d been sombre and sad, picking at the roast goose on her plate and offering no opinion on the decorations.

‘Won’t you tell me, Alice? Won’t you tell me why you can’t marry Jonathan?’ Starling whispered, lying nose to nose in bed one night. She pulled the blankets up over their heads, so that Alice would feel safe and Bridget would not hear.

‘I cannot.’

‘Then promise not to leave me!’

‘I have already . . .’

‘Promise it again!’

‘I promise—’ Alice broke off, and hesitated. ‘I promise not to leave you, Starling,’ she finished. But somehow this promise, extracted in darkness, did nothing to reassure Starling. She knew that change was coming, she just could not tell the shape of it.