The Misbegotten (63 page)

‘You can buss the blind cheeks,
sir.
We’ve paid with our blood, and now we’ll have our sport.’ Behind him, the woman’s face, which for a moment had mirrored Jonathan’s hope, crumpled into desperation again.

‘I order you to leave her be,’ said Jonathan, but the hand that held the pistol had begun to shake, and even though Captain Sutton and their few loyal men stood to either side of him, he felt the shreds of his authority evaporate. He put a bullet in the lead man, but his aim was off; the wound was in the shoulder, and did not fell him. And then the two groups fell upon each other like bitter enemies, not like the comrades they’d so recently been. Jonathan and Captain Sutton were outnumbered, but their small band fought with right on their side, and for once that seemed to count for something. Nevertheless, most of the woman’s rescuers fell to her tormentors before it was done. One of them, a lad no more than seventeen, was driven off down the aisle with his foe hard behind him, a hunting knife gripped in his hand. Moments later Captain Sutton went the same way, pursuing two others who fled before him. Jonathan was left alone to fight the lead man, the man he had shot, with his bare hands.

They fought gracelessly, grappling at one another, Jonathan’s crippled leg offset by the bullet wound in the other man, which spattered blood onto both of them. His opponent was bigger and stronger, but he was also drunk, and Jonathan’s slim frame belied the wiry hardness of his muscles. The lead man got his hands around Jonathan’s neck and would have crushed his windpipe if Jonathan hadn’t gouged a thumb into the bullet hole in his shoulder, pushing until he found where the bullet had lodged against the bone, still burning hot. The man roared and thrust him away, so violently that Jonathan staggered and went to his knees. In front of him was another man’s musket, spent, the bayonet stained with blood. As he stood, Jonathan grabbed it by the muzzle and spun about, swinging it as hard as he could. The butt caught the pock-faced man across the side of his head with a hollow knock and a splintering sound; he dropped like an empty sack, and didn’t move. The sudden silence roared in Jonathan’s ears. He felt as though his blood was simmering in his veins, poisoned. As he turned to leave, a scuffle of movement behind him jolted him into action again. Hands closed on his arm, and he wheeled around, thrusting blindly with the bayonet. He felt it meet resistance; felt that resistance part around the sharp steel. Then he looked down into the Spanish woman’s face, and knew himself a murderer.

She made a strange gulping sound, as if trying to swallow the air instead of breathing it. Jonathan knelt and tried to hold her up as she sank forwards, to stop her pushing herself further onto the blade. He didn’t dare pull it free; he’d seen that done too many times, and knew the spurt of blood and rapid death it would bring. In his horror and shame he tried desperately to think of a way to save her, a way to undo it, when he knew there was none. He turned her carefully onto her back, and knelt with his arms around her, cradling her naked body. There was blood on her breasts; bruising on her neck. Her face was long and hard-boned, but her mouth was beautiful, sensuous and full. She tried to speak, but could not. She gulped at the air some more, staring at him with such intensity that he knew she was desperate to tell him something.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured, wretchedly, over and over. ‘Lo
siento, lo siento
. . . forgive me, I beg you.’ He rocked her gently but it made her whimper in pain, so he stopped. Still she gave him that piercing look, her black eyes shining in the jewel-coloured light from the window. She raised one hand and reached it towards the wooden pews flanking the aisle; her fingers grasped at nothing. Her hands were slender, and elegant; there was blood underneath her fingernails, and the smell of her sweat and her skin was in Jonathan’s nostrils. In that moment, the only thing he was aware of, in all of existence, was the woman dying in his arms. She turned her face to her outstretched hand, murmuring in her throat, a sound too weak to be words. Then she stared back up at Jonathan for a moment, and he was looking into her eyes at the exact moment life left them. A tiny, cataclysmic shift; as simple and irreversible as the passing of time.

Her reaching arm dropped, her head lolled to the side, and Jonathan felt that he was living through the worst and blackest moment of his life. And when he followed her gaze and her gesture to the pews, and found her baby hidden there, he understood why she had bled so much, and why she had been so outraged at the thought of her own death. The child was no more than a few days old, tiny and unaware, wrapped in a grubby blanket and unharmed, untouched. Its eyes were closed, edged with black lashes; a peaceful face below a mass of dark hair. The woman had refused to accept her fate for the sake of this child but Jonathan had robbed her of everything, anyway. He lifted the baby into his arms and ran his stained finger gently down its cheek. Its skin was so soft he couldn’t tell if he was touching it or not. He knew at once that any chance of saving himself lay in saving this one tiny life, pure and miraculous amidst all the corruption.

Neither Mrs Weekes nor Jonathan Alleyn seemed to notice that Starling had returned to the room. She carried a jug of bishop – warm, watered wine in which a roasted orange bobbed – and stood quietly in the doorway between the two chambers, where she heard the latter part of Jonathan’s tale and all the anguish with which he told it. Mrs Weekes lifted his hand when he fell silent; she held it to her cheek, and the gesture struck Starling violently. Rachel Weekes looked so like Alice in that moment, with her face bowed and her pale hair shining, that it gave her a wrenching feeling inside.
It’s because she loves him. That’s what makes her look like Alice.
With this realisation came a flash of jealous fire, which lasted only an instant and was followed by a strange emptiness, like loss.

‘She would forgive you. You must see that,’ said Mrs Weekes.

‘Would she? I think not. She wanted so much to live, for her child. She was
determined
to live, and she survived the brutal treatment she was given only to die by my hand,’ said Jonathan.

‘She wanted her
child
to live. That’s what she wanted more than anything. The battle had nothing to do with her, but that woman gave birth to her baby amidst it all, and somehow keep her safe until that moment. And you did what she wanted – you kept Cassandra safe. I think she would forgive you.’ The pair of them stared at one another for a moment, and Starling saw that Jonathan hardly dared to believe it.

‘Mrs Weekes is right – what happened was an accident. You didn’t rape her, you meant to save her – and you saved the babe. This was no crime,’ said Starling, and at once felt that she’d intruded into their intimacy. She stiffened, and colour came into her cheeks. She deposited the jug of bishop on the side table to cover her discomfort.

‘Everything that happened there was a crime,’ said Jonathan.

‘But not one you are responsible for,’ Rachel Weekes insisted.

‘Then, this story does not make you despise me?’ he said. Rachel Weekes watched him steadily.

‘Nothing could,’ she said.

Starling saw how easily their hands stayed clasped; how unabashed they were. Their touch seemed at once casual and essential, to both of them, and Starling was excluded. Their feelings put up a barrier to her, just as the feelings between Alice and Jonathan had done, years before. She was powerless to do anything about it; she felt herself diminishing, becoming less substantial because of it. She could only watch, and try to find a voice with which to reach them.

‘What will you do now, Mrs Weekes?’ she said, and was surprised to hear how hard her voice sounded. Rachel Weekes looked from Jonathan to Starling and then back again, and it was her turn to show confusion.

‘I must . . . I must bury my husband, and my father-in-law. I must sell the business, or find a manager. I must . . .’ She frowned, letting go of Jonathan’s hand and smoothing the skirts in her lap. ‘I must find a situation, I suppose,’ she concluded, then looked up at Jonathan Alleyn with questions writ large on her face.
She doubts him, but she dares to hope.

‘Mrs Weekes. You have some onerous tasks ahead of you. If I may be of any assistance, during any of it, you must please tell me,’ said Jonathan. Rachel Weekes said nothing, but gave a tiny nod. ‘I plan to leave Bath,’ Jonathan went on. ‘I’ve stayed here too long. This house has been my gaol and I would be free of it. Let my mother stay here, and reflect on all that has passed. I could go . . . I could go to the house at Box. There are tenants in it, but they may be given notice . . .’ Here Jonathan paused, and glanced at Starling. ‘Then again, no. Perhaps that place has as many unhappy memories as this one,’ he murmured. ‘I may even sell it. There are plenty of other places I could go.’

‘I think a change of situation and surroundings would be most advantageous to your continued recovery, Mr Alleyn,’ said Rachel Weekes, in a constricted voice that shook slightly. He studied her for a second, perplexed.

‘But, Mrs Weekes . . . Rachel,’ he said. ‘I will go nowhere unless you will accompany me.’ For a heartbeat Rachel Weekes did not react, then her smile broke over her face like the sunrise.

Starling’s throat squeezed tight, aching, as she watched this exchange and felt herself sliding away from them, quite alone. Her eyes burned and she turned, stumbling blindly for the door and the corridor outside, where Mrs Alleyn waited – another invisible person, another unwanted remnant of the past, with no place in the now.

‘Starling, wait!’ The voice that called her back was Rachel Weekes’s. Starling pivoted clumsily on her wooden feet.

‘What will you do?’ Rachel asked.

‘I know not,’ Starling replied. ‘It matters not.’

‘You cannot mean to serve Mrs Alleyn from now on, surely?’

‘No. I shan’t serve her.’

‘Then . . . will you come with us instead?’
Us. Already they are become ‘us’.
But they were too new an entity; it was too soon, and Mrs Weekes seemed to flounder after using the word. ‘That is, will you come with me?’ she corrected herself. Starling gave her as hard a look as she could find; a glare as weighty as she could make it.

‘You’ll have need of a servant, no doubt. Perhaps I might prove too costly for you, though,’ she said. Rachel Weekes blinked, and looked hurt.

‘No, I . . . have little need of a servant, in truth,’ she said. ‘But I have great need of a friend.’ The two of them watched one another, and then Rachel Weekes smiled; a fleeting, transient expression.
She doesn’t know if I will accept her or spurn her. She gives me that power.
Starling swallowed.
You cannot replace Alice.
She’d meant to say it out loud, but couldn’t bring herself to. How could she, when this tall, pale creature had fought for Alice alongside her, as if she had known her, as if she too had loved her? Starling’s face was frozen; she was afraid that if she moved a muscle, all would fly out of her control. ‘Will you then? Come with me?’ Rachel Weekes asked again. And this time Starling managed to nod.

‘I will,’ she said.

After the fair in Corsham Jonathan dropped them off on the Batheaston side of the miller’s bridge, holding Alice’s hand as he helped her down. Then he flicked the reins and Starling and Alice watched him vanish into the gloaming; the haze of day’s end wrapping itself gently around him, and muffling the metal ring of the pony’s hooves. Alice put her arm around Starling’s shoulders and they set off towards home with the slow, tired, contented feeling of a perfect day spent. The sun’s remembered warmth was in the stones of the bridge; Starling put her hand on the parapet and felt it. The river was low and sluggish, easing sleepily between its banks and glowing faintly with borrowed light from a fat, baleful moon that had risen.

Alice was still humming the tune that the Irish girl had sung at the fair, and Starling picked it up.

‘How did it go?’ said Alice, smiling.

‘
Then she made her way homeward, with one star awake, as the swan in the evening moved over the lake
, Starling sang. ‘Only this is a river, not a lake, and I can’t see any swans.’

‘Oh, we need not be so literal, I think.’ Alice laughed.

‘No, but it would have been perfect if there had been swans on the river just now.’

‘Your singing voice is so lovely, little sister. Far lovelier than an actual starling’s.’ Starling glowed at the praise. She tipped her face up to the blue-black sky.

‘There’s more than one star out, too. I count . . . seven – no, eight,’ she said.

‘Sing some more.’

‘
She laid her hand on me and this she did say, it will not be long, love, till our wedding day . . .
’

‘I felt as though she was singing just for me, when I heard that song today,’ said Alice, dreamily. ‘I felt she was singing it just for Jonathan and me. Did you see how he blushed?’

‘Yes. But don’t say that – the girl in the song died, remember?’

‘Oh, so literal again! Well, perhaps not that part. But the first verse, and the refrain.’ Alice sighed, and then threw her arms wide, laughed again. She turned to Starling, taking both her hands and spinning her around until both were giddy and giggling. ‘He loves me well, does he not?’ she asked, breathlessly.

‘You know he does,’ said Starling, embarrassed. Alice grew calmer, her face softer, still wreathed in smiles.

‘ “If it were now to die, ’Twere now to be most happy . . .” Oh, I feel just like Othello, Starling! I’m so happy, I could die,’ she said. ‘So perhaps every word of the song
was
for me, after all.’

Starling walked on again, pulling Alice along by her hand. She couldn’t place the warning she felt just then. She looked back over her shoulder but there was no one else on the bridge; no one in the lane ahead of them.

‘Perhaps I’ll sing the song to Bridget, when she comes home,’ she said.

‘You must, dearest. You know how she loves your singing, even if she won’t say so. Only don’t forget to say you heard it from a pedlar in the village.’

‘I’ll say I heard it from Dan Smithers, the bargeman. He’s always warbling old tunes.’