A Taste for Nightshade (11 page)

Another chorus of approval rose from the chimney corner.

‘Don't take no notice of them, sir,' the landlord remonstrated.

‘Damned insolence. Thinking to challenge me on questions of trade. They will work for me soon enough. Especially when we sell our yarn over their heads.'

Peter glanced up from his tankard; I saw a smirk on his face and detested him for it.

When the ostler announced that the horses were ready, I rose to join Michael. As I crossed the room, I felt the occupants of the inn subject us all to scrutiny; and when I looked up, I saw a gaggle of men whose eyes looked very white against their dirty faces, watching us like a negro servant I had once seen, attending his mistress with ill-disguised contempt.

It was dusk when we arrived at Earlby village. For the last hour Michael had been asleep. In my sketchbook I drew Michael's portrait, capturing his boyish repose. Then the light failed, and in a kind of anguish I recalled my anxious but hopeful state only that morning. In a single afternoon I felt myself grown old and weary. As Michael finally stirred, I stifled a wish that he might sleep on for ever, like a bewitched captive, then scolded myself for my disloyalty. I tidied my appearance, pulling my bonnet over my flattened curls. The day had been a great strain to both of us, I was sure that was the cause. With luck all would be well on the morrow.

I could see little of Earlby save a paltry few rows of stone dwellings. At the George Inn Peter came to the window and took his leave, disappearing beneath the hostelry arch. From its broad windows, lamplight cast golden pools onto the cobbles, and the sound of revelry reached our ears. Then we two were alone, nearing our journey's end.

There was no view of the house as we plunged into a gap between high stone walls. Instead, a great mass of trees surrounded us, scratching the roof and tapping at the windows with scraping fingers. I heard the coachman curse as he coaxed the horses forward, the carriage lamp throwing light onto a tangle of twisted branches. In time the wheels left the leaf-muffled drive and bumped across noisy cobbles. A looming darkness rose above the carriage: a cliff of blackness, as startling as the plateau of Stone Edge.

Only as I alighted did I finally get a view of the Hall. In the small glow of the carriage lamp, I was startled to see that its walls were moving; rippling as if alive, like a membrane steadily breathing in and out. Slowly I connected the movement with the sound of sighing exhalation that surrounded us, and taking a few unsteady steps towards the house, I reached out and felt a mass of dry, spiky leaves. When the breeze again lifted, the mass of creeper hissed mournfully again. It will be like living in the heart of a great wood, I told myself. Then a servant with a lamp came forward, and the walls moved again, as if in whispered greeting.

Carefully, I stepped inside a narrow wicket cut into the massive entrance doorway. It had been chilly in the carriage, but inside the building the cold of ancient stones rose up from uneven paving flags.

‘Come along inside, mistress, master. I've a fire lit in the Great Hall.' Michael followed the woman's bent shape, yawning. What little I could comprehend of the entrance recalled an ancient chapel suddenly opened after centuries of neglect; being both airless and sourly damp. The servant's candle led to what I later knew as Delafosse's famed Jacobean staircase, a glory of carved oak peacocks, angels, and other strange devices. Naturally I saw nothing of that on my arrival, only heard beams groan like a galleon's timbers at sea, and felt the stair treads dangerously warped beneath my feet. The vast space of the stairwell above me was invisible then, but I had a sensation of dust and cobwebs and tiny unseen beings. To my dismay we emerged from a first-floor landing into a second hall as vast as a church and also acrid with decay. At the far end, a fireplace taller than a man held a blazing fire that sent shadows chasing around walls hung with indistinct paintings and tapestries. The firelight hinted at the hammer-beam roof far above us, as black-ribbed as a decayed leviathan.

‘Fetch Mrs Harper at once,' Michael demanded.

The servant halted, her back bent, in the red glow of the fire.

‘She's gone, master. Up and gone last week with never a word.'

‘Gone? Damn the woman. Have any other servants been recruited?'

The servant turned a frail face towards us, her eyes shining like beads in the firelight.

‘No one else never come to work here, master. There be only me.'

Michael swiftly established that Mrs Harper had left since his last visit, and had taken her guinea advance of salary with her.

‘What is your name?' I asked.

‘Nan Homefray, mistress. I was took on by her ladyship a long age past.'

Michael drew a chair up to the fire and rubbed his eyes. I dragged my own chair into the circle of light to join him. ‘Nan, I am sure we can arrange matters in the morning. Meanwhile, is there any supper to be had?'

‘Only what I 'as,' the woman said. ‘Nowt good enough for you, mistress.'

‘I am sure it is. Please fetch hot food and drink at once.'

Supper, when it arrived, did indeed look paltry: a pottage of nettles, potatoes and onions.

‘I cannot eat this beggarly stuff.' Michael slammed his dish down and drew closer to the fire, applying a poker to a jug of ale. But I ate my supper gratefully, for it was good plain food, deliciously fragrant with herbs.

‘A man just come with these for you, master,' Nan announced, shuffling back in for our dishes. She passed Michael two letters that he impatiently held up to a candle. ‘This one is for you,' he said.

I took the letter and saw it bore Anne's handwriting. Opening the seal, I found the usual good wishes one might send a newly married woman. ‘I trust you are enjoying every measure of the nuptial bliss you so keenly anticipated …' It was impossible to contemplate a suitable reply. Perhaps tomorrow I could make an answer, omitting all but the bare fact of the wedding?

Puzzling over my letter, I failed at first to notice Michael's curious behaviour. He had carried a candle over to the far wall, and was peering fixedly at the second letter.

‘Good news, I hope?'

He looked at me. ‘It is of no consequence,' he said, pushing it into his pocket.

I continued to watch him as he stood beside the candle in a sort of dream. Even in the poor light, I noticed a blank rigidity to his manner.

‘Come here, and drink your ale while it is hot. I suppose we must explore by candlelight. I wonder if Nan has lit a fire upstairs?'

He started back towards me; then halted, pacing back to the candle he had left by the wall. Opening the letter, he read it once again.

‘It's from Peter. A matter requires my urgent attention.'

‘Now? Surely not. Will tomorrow not do?'

Sweeping back to the fireside, he picked up his boots and began to dress for a journey. ‘I may not be back tonight. Do not wait up for me.'

‘Michael!' If I had been disappointed earlier in the day, it was nothing to the plunging sensation I now felt in my chest. ‘No. Please don't leave me here alone.' I was upset, yes, not only at the strangeness of the place but also at the unthinkable insult to me, his bride.

He continued to dress with exaggerated precision, then turned to me, his jaw tight. ‘I must make one thing very clear. I will do as I will.' His manner was so remote towards me that he seemed quite another person.

I found myself standing up, my breath shallow. The stone flags beneath my wedding shoes felt unsteady, but I stood firm.

‘Don't leave me here. Take me with you.' Before I could see the effect of this remark, my husband turned and marched out of the chamber. A few moments later the great door slammed, and I crouched on a stool before the fire, hating the letter that had arrived with such ill-timing, hating Peter for summoning him – but most of all hating the sickening sensation I was left with, of bitter disenchantment and curdled love.

 

 

I listened for Michael all through that wretched night, but he did not come home. In my fancy, such a vast and antique residence as Delafosse Hall sprang to life at night, its timbers creaking like old bones as they bent and twisted in restless dreams. In my darkest hours I was convinced I heard Michael's step on the stair, but each time I roused myself and coaxed the fire back to life, I found I was mistaken. The wind rose, whistling through the canopy of dry leaves; shaking and tormenting them so that a hundred leaf-points tapped insistently against the window panes. Only in the lull before dawn did I at last fall into deep sleep, curled on a lumpy sofa.

I woke with my neck cricked and my limbs as cold as marble. The great fire had died down to ashes, and the dirty windows leaked pallid grey into the room. I paced about, trying to warm myself, eyeing blackened portraits of dead strangers. I was an interloper, a misfit in that dreary place.

Then a sudden sense of opportunity struck me; that while Michael was away, I might act as I wished. Pulling my shawl tightly about me, I set off to look around my new home.

There was a breathless hush inside Delafosse Hall, a quality of silence that cautioned me to tiptoe from room to room. I winced as my shoes pattered on bare flags, and lifted groaning latches. How many years had the Hall lain empty, I wondered, the stones settling ever deeper into the earth and the shadows gathering undisturbed? Retracing my way to the top of the flamboyant staircase I found a suite of grand rooms fronting the Hall, scattered with ponderous furniture draped in sheets furred with dust. Tapestries sagged on the walls, riddled by ragged moth holes. I was dismayed by the gloom, but soon noticed its source was the mass of foliage obscuring a good part of the sunlight. With the windows cleared and cleaned, and a great deal of soap and hot water, I believed these rooms might one day be made comfortable again. I pictured them with new furnishings and a gathering of happy company around the fire. Then weariness struck me, to think of all these great tasks I must undertake alone.

Turning a corner I found myself in a jewel of a room, a long gallery of beautiful proportions. It was perhaps one hundred feet in length, lined in carved pale oak now warped and swollen. The light fell inside through a series of cracked and undulating diamond panes, quite lovely to behold. I half-closed my eyes, feeling I ought to see the ghosts of another age, promenading in ruffs and doublets. No one appeared, but I did feel a disturbance in the motes of dust that glittered in the pearly light.

I wandered to the pink marble fireplace; listening to tiny feet scurrying behind the oak wainscot. In the hearth lay a dead young rook with a beady yellow eye and broken wings. I caught sight of myself in a tarnished mirror; frowning and pale, my gown creased from sleep, my curls an unpinned mess. Again I felt myself an intruder, a harbinger of change in a realm that did not want me.

A door led on from the gallery, carved with creatures of myth, the largest being the Blair head of an angel. I passed inside and groped at the curtains to raise some light. It was a room of curiosities, dominated by glass cabinets displaying armour, peculiar stones, and relics. The pre-eminent display was an ornamented sword laid on faded crimson silk. Studying the medals and citations hung about the walls I understood it was a sort of shrine to a young man whose portrait hung above the fireplace in oils. He was an assured character, his arm draped over the back of his chair, his dark eyes challenging the spectator from beneath heavy brows. Although he was a fine figure in his red military coat, he was not to my taste as a gentleman. Lieutenant Ashe Moncrieff had won honours against the French near Quebec. His name meant nothing to me, but when I calculated the date of his death at only twenty-eight years old, I sympathised with this forgotten tribute.

Closing the door gently, I climbed a further flight of stairs. There I found smaller, more intimate quarters. I claimed a parlour for myself containing an ornate white fireplace that needed only the clearing of birds' nests and chimney plaster. A dry chamber with good oak shelves was perfect for Michael's study, and beyond that lay a turret room with a few ancient leather-bound books to begin a library. I wandered on, up and down odd sets of steps and into corridors that sometimes ended in heaps of plaster. As the house unfolded, possibilities presented themselves; images of new life flickered unsteadily in my mind. Great strength of will would be needed, I knew that, but when I interrogated my doubts, the answer came back again and again – I will do it. I will rouse this house and return it to life.

Auspiciously, I next found a charming bedchamber, dominated by a carved four-poster bed on which fresh linen had recently been laid. Why, I wondered, had Nan not told us about these preparations for our arrival? I fingered the crewel-work coverlet, a garden of chain-stitched tulips; though faded by time, it felt warm. Framed seascapes hung on the walls, sun-bleached curtains cascaded from grand pelmets, a brass clock ticked on the mantelpiece. It was the perfect backdrop to the married love I was still hopeful of kindling.

I stood very still, puzzling over the room's quality of recent occupation: the bedclothes were not quite straight, and the layer of dust on the dresser bore signs of objects having been moved upon it.

I resolved to ask Nan about it, and moved on, up the final flight of stairs to the attics. Above my head glimmered a vast dome draped with years of matted cobwebs. Here was a warren of dormitories and storerooms, some running with water from breaches in the roof. Yet at the front of the house I found a room that completely entranced me, high in the eaves, so the windows were clear of smothering leaves. Sparse and square, there were signs it had once been a sewing room, and if cleaned, the windows would be flooded with light. At its centre was a stained table and decayed chairs. My own studio, I murmured, picturing my paints and brushes laid out neatly, and myself undisturbed at my work. Here was hope, I thought. Here was the promise of pleasure and painting. Somehow, within this half-ruined edifice, I would make a new life.

I found Nan down on the ground floor, in a kitchen bristling with spits and roasting irons. She had made her own tiny quarters there: a few modest feet around a time-polished armchair. I stretched my hands before the flames, and then looked quickly away from the still-surprising band of gold on my finger.

‘You hear her, then?' Nan asked, setting out a breakfast of oatcakes and potted hare. ‘Old Dorcas? Some say she paces the house in her bare feet.'

‘You mean Lady Blair? I thought she was dead.' I helped myself to spoonfuls of velvety red rosehip jelly.

‘Aye, she may be dead, but she cannot settle, that one.'

‘Have you heard her, Nan?'

‘Not me mistress. But then me lugholes in't the best. It's the young 'uns as allus say they hear her, pacing back and for'ard on them creaking boards.'

I had an unpleasant memory of what I had thought were Michael's footsteps in the night, but dismissed it as nonsense.

‘I think they must be teasing you, Nan.'

‘P'raps so. Owt to take a rest from their labours.'

She took my plate but I felt disinclined to leave the cheery fire.

‘So was she an unhappy woman?'

‘She was that. Toward the end she'd wander in her shift, her white hair hanging to her waist, searching high and low for Mr Ashe.'

‘The lieutenant in the painting? I saw that extraordinary room.'

‘Aye, well. She sent him packing, and next thing she hears, he's gone and got himself killed in some foreign battle.'

‘A tragedy.'

‘It were that, mistress. She never rightly recovered her senses.'

‘And what about you, Nan? Why were you left alone here?'

‘Well, when her ladyship went and died and they all gone away, I got no place to go to but here, see. So I shifted for meself, took what Mother Nature provides: mushrooms and berries and simples, and what eggs the chickens lay. Come Christmas and Harvest some church folk brings me a bag of oats or sugar, and I stumbles on the odd creature what goes in the pot. Only been me and the spiders here, all these years. Watching and waiting and shifting for ourselves.'

‘But surely someone else has been living here? One of the back bedchambers has signs of occupation.'

‘Oh, that were Mrs Harper.'

‘In a family room? Are there not housekeeper's quarters?'

An indignant expression twisted the old woman's mouth. ‘I'm not telling tales if I tell you she were always complaining, that one. Said the housekeeper's room didn't suit, so she just up and shifted herself to the best chamber. Then that were no good neither: said she heard noises in the night. And I'll tell you now, I smelled spirits on her. Then she took her guinea piece and off she scarpered.'

‘Well, I'm glad she has gone. But now I need to replace her. I'll find help for you, Nan, be assured of it.'

‘Thank 'ee, mistress.' She did not look entirely persuaded as she nodded her grubby cap, the twin lappets dangling past her chin. ‘And the master, will he be wanting his breakfast?'

I brushed the crumbs from my gown into the fire. ‘There is no need to concern yourself about the master,' I said shortly. ‘He wants nothing yet. Now does this door lead outside?'

I continued my explorations in a cobbled yard overlooked by broken doors and cracked windows. Pushing open a swollen door into a storeroom, I found a stream running across paving stones and a carpet of slippery green moss. My explorations took me beneath a gateway surmounted by a clock face, standing with hands fixed permanently at eleven o'clock. Beyond stood derelict stables; then the park opened up in an undulating vista, reaching all the way to a swathe of deep forest on the horizon. In the distance was the twinkle of the river that I realised must border my own land at Whitelow. The grass was knee-high and speckled with late buttercups, but I was transported by that first sight of the Delafosse estate. In its situation alone, the Croxons had chosen our new home well. I dreamed for a moment of myself and Michael making a great fortune, and no longer renting Delafosse Hall but owning every inch of it, my inheritance spinning gold from cotton. Turning back to view the Hall I took a sharp breath; it was as massive and ancient as a child's dream of a castle, the bulk of its walls carpeted in greenery, the diamond-leaded windows sparkling in picturesque stone mullions. True, the barley-twist chimneys leaned askew, and the roofs sagged beneath the weight of years, but the shell of it was magnificent. It cast a strange possessive mood upon me. I remembered Michael's irritation at the house the previous night, and his eagerness to leave. Somehow I had to entice Michael into this shared dream of a happy life here, beside me.

Determined to explore the park, I followed the nearest path. After walking through a deep wood for a good while I emerged into the sunlight by a round hill surmounted by a two-storey tower. A hunting lodge, Mrs Croxon had called it, but I thought it more a folly. It had a fantastical quality, with four miniature turrets, each topped with a verdigris-tarnished dome. Above the doorway stood a sundial drawn upon a disc representing a blazing sun. It was embellished with a script I thought might be Latin:
FERREA VIRGA EST, UMBRATILIS MOTUS
. I wondered whether Michael might know the meaning, or Anne's husband perhaps. As for the sundial's accuracy, the morning light was too weak to cast a line of shadow.

The tower door swung open at my touch. Inside, it was as neglected as the other outbuildings, the cobwebs studded with flies like beaded veils. There was little to inspect on the ground floor, so I climbed the narrow corkscrew stair. It was an unsettling experience, like entering the spiral chamber of a shell, and it took longer than I anticipated to reach the light above. The upper storey was better lit by four broad oriel windows. A grotesque chandelier, made of branching deer antlers, hung from the ceiling, and a few scabrous fox and deer heads decorated the walls. Here was some decayed furniture: a few chairs, a couch, a broken card table. Disliking hunting and its celebration of slaughter, I determined to look at the rooftop and then leave. A second spiral plunged me into darkness as I groped my way upward with hands outstretched. Finally, I emerged outdoors. The wind had started to bluster, and when I peered over the low balustrade I was surprised at how high I stood above the ground, and how low the balustrade lay at my feet.