The Misbegotten (24 page)

‘There is not a beast in
all
men, sir,’ Rachel protested quietly. Jonathan’s voice had risen as he spoke, and she feared to provoke him. His words frightened her; they sounded like a warning.

‘You’re wrong,’ Jonathan said abruptly. He looked down at the copper mouse, and then thrust it into her hands. ‘But keep this trifle, if it pleases you. Let it remind you of what I’ve said today.’ He strode back to his chair in the window and threw himself into it. Carefully, Rachel put the clockwork toy back on the shelf where she’d found it.

Desperately, she scanned the books for something appropriate to read, and was relieved when she finally spotted a small volume of poetry by Dryden. She took it down and returned to sit opposite Jonathan Alleyn. His head was tilted back and his eyes were shut. As Rachel began to read she wondered if he’d fallen asleep, but he interrupted her at once.

‘You choose poetry over philosophy, over science and reason? How like a woman.’

‘I am more accomplished at reading poetry than the more . . . esoteric tracts you have available.’

‘ “Yet when the soul’s disease we desperate find, Poets the old renown’d physicians are, Who for the sickly habits of the mind, Examples as the ancient cure prepare.” Is that what you hope? That my soul’s disease can be cured with poetry?’

‘Not cured perhaps. Only cheered. Who wrote that verse you spoke?’

‘Sir William Davenant.’

‘Then you must know some poetry, and take pleasure in it? Or you did, at one time?’ said Rachel.

‘I knew another, who did,’ said Jonathan. He closed his eyes wearily, so Rachel began to read again. She kept her voice low, and her tone soft, and read for half an hour without any reaction from Jonathan Alleyn, save for at one verse. When she read:

‘ “I feed a flame within, which so torments me, That it both pains my heart, and yet contents me: ’Tis such a pleasing smart, and I so love it, That I had rather die than once remove it” ’, she saw a flicker of movement, and looked up to find him watching her through barely opened eyes. Her voice faltered and she lost her place in the text, and felt herself foolish and clumsy. Then she read on, and Jonathan closed his eyes once more, and when she got up to leave she was sure he was sleeping.

Rachel shut the door behind her, and with the quiet click of the latch felt herself sag. Her head felt light and was throbbing softly, and her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten anything at breakfast, such had been her nerves over this appointment, but it was more than that that ailed her. It was him, and his torment; the shifting dark things behind his eyes, and the way he wore his rage for all to see.
To keep the world from seeing something else about him?
He seemed to leach the strength from her, with his gaze that was so full of things she did not understand that it might as well be empty, and the hard, uncompromising way he spoke. He made her manners and her poise and her decorum seem like paper cutout things, painted and unreal; and without them to cover her, she felt bare. Rachel went downstairs and knocked softly at the parlour door, but there was no reply. She tried the other receiving rooms, but they were similarly empty. She stood alone in the cavernous hallway for a moment, unsure of what to do. It seemed rude to let herself out, to leave without a word. In the end, she turned towards the back of the house, and found the servants’ stair that led down into the basement.

At the foot of the stairs was a broad, bare corridor leading left and right, lit by candle lamps in wall sconces which guttered at her arrival. From the right came the herby, smoky smell of the kitchen, along with sounds of industry. Rachel’s stomach growled again, and she turned towards it. It was a wide, vaulted chamber, dominated at one end by a massive inglenook containing the stove and bread oven, and a roasting fire in an open grate. She heard the pop and sizzle of hot fat, the creak of the jack wheel turning in the chimney. A squat woman with meaty arms was cracking eggs into a basin, humming to herself and quite unaware of Rachel. As Rachel drew breath to speak, the woman glanced up.

‘And who might you be, dithering in my kitchen?’ she asked. Rachel stepped forwards.

‘I have been visiting with Mr Alleyn, and I . . . I could not find anyone upstairs . . .’ The cook wiped her hands on her apron and curtsied inelegantly, looking flustered and annoyed.

‘Beg pardon, madam, I had not known you . . . But you should not be downstairs, as a guest . . .’

‘No – I know. My apologies. But, perhaps . . . I am not quite a guest, you see. I am in the employ of the household, for my visits.’ Rachel took a step further into the kitchen and glanced at the fire where a joint of pork was turning.

‘Well, you should no more be below stairs for all that, madam. Go on up, if it please you, and I’ll call for Falmouth to see you out . . .’

‘I was wondering if I might have a word with Starling? And perhaps . . .’ Rachel could not quite find the courage to ask the cook for something to eat; the woman was clearly irritated by the intrusion into her domain. There was a basket of pears on the table. Rachel eyed it wistfully, and was sure that the cook noticed her gaze, but she did not offer her one. Rolling her lips together so that her chin puckered, the woman went to the doorway to call along the corridor.

‘Starling! Someone wants a word with you!’ There was a pause, in which Starling did not appear, and the cook muttered a curse under her breath. ‘She’s in a world of her own of late, that one. Go back up, madam. Please. I’ll send her up to you,’ she said.

‘No, it’s quite all right. No need to fetch her, I shall go along and find her,’ said Rachel, returning to the corridor. The cook paused, and then shrugged.

‘Last door at the end, on the right.’

Rachel went along and knocked at the last door she came to; since it was open, she stepped through it. The room was split into two, and through the inner doorway she saw the red-haired girl, down on her knees, putting a bottle of ale into a jute sack. The girl jumped up when she heard Rachel come in, quickly kicked the sack underneath the bed and then turned with flaming cheeks and furious eyes. Rachel took a step back and forgot what she had been about to say.

‘This is my room,’ the girl blurted out.

‘I know. I . . . beg your pardon.’ Rachel joined her hands awkwardly, and then remembered that she was the girl’s superior. She drew herself up, several inches taller than Starling. ‘I want to ask you some questions. It won’t take long. I am sure you have . . . duties to attend to.’ Rachel glanced down to where the corner of the jute sack was still visible, poking out from beneath the bed. Starling glowered at her, but there was fear in her eyes as well. A loose tendril of ginger hair hung in front of her face, and moved in time with her breathing.

‘Questions about what? Madam,’ said the girl, curtly.

‘About Mr Alleyn – I understand you have known him the longest of all the servants. And about Miss Alice Beckwith.’

‘Alice?’ Starling faltered. Her eyes widened, and some of the anger left her. ‘You know about Alice?’

‘Precious little. Only that she treated Mr Alleyn very ill, and is partly to blame for his malaise. And that . . . I look like her. Or so I am led to believe.’

‘She never treated him ill! She never treated anyone or anything ill, not in her whole life!’

‘You knew her well?’

‘I . . . she raised me. As a sister.’

‘A
sister
?’

‘Aye, a sister! Partly. As a servant too, perhaps . . . I knew her from when I was a child.’

‘And . . . do I look very like her?’ Rachel asked, almost shyly.
Like the girl a man loved so much that losing her has ruined him.
Starling stared at her with an expression Rachel could not read.

‘That you do, Mrs Weekes. At first. You are older than she was when she disappeared, of course. And . . . your expressions are different. Your voice. It is a passing resemblance, nothing more.’

‘That’s just what Mr Alleyn said,’ Rachel murmured. At this, Starling blinked, and incredulity flooded her face.

‘He speaks to you about her? About Alice?’

‘But a little. Perhaps he will speak more in time.’

‘Then . . . you are to call again?’

‘Yes.’ Rachel drew her shoulders back, and tried to sound resolute.

‘And . . . he does not alarm you?’

‘Why should he?’ said Rachel, and then felt foolish, since it was this girl who had prevented Jonathan strangling her a little over a week ago. ‘He does not alarm
you
, that much I know.’ She remembered the hearth brush striking Jonathan across his head. How could a servant act that way, and yet not be dismissed?

‘I’ve known him a long time indeed,’ said Starling, flatly.

‘What was she like? Alice Beckwith?’

There was a long pause, and though Starling’s eyes were fixed on Rachel it seemed that they looked right through her, into the shadow behind her that flickered on the wall. For a while, Rachel thought she wasn’t going to answer, but then she took a quick, deep breath.

‘One day we went to have tea with the vicar and his wife in Bathampton . . . The place was newly built, and the vicar that proud that he showed her the whole house, even down to the servants’ floor and the kitchens. Alice was pleased enough, and saw nothing inappropriate in being below stairs. She gave herself no false airs.’ At this, Starling flicked her eyes over Rachel. ‘She didn’t see servants or lord and ladies, poor people or rich people. She only saw
people.
In the kitchens, Alice noticed the dog wheel, set up to turn the spit, with a little white dog that had to run and run to turn it, hour after hour. If it got tired the cook would put a hot coal in behind it, so it had to run or be burned. Alice wept when she saw it. She wouldn’t let it continue a second longer.’ Starling smiled, but looked sad. ‘She made such a fuss with her crying and her accusations that the dog was released at once – the vicar had little choice. She brought it back to the farmhouse and nursed it, and the vicar’s kitchen maid had to turn the meat until they had a clockwork jack installed instead. That was what Alice was like. She could not bear to see cruelty, and there was no cruelty in her. Not a jot. She was too good for this world, and people who speak ill things of her are far wrong.’ Starling broke off her story and wiped her hands unnecessarily on her apron. She took another deep breath and looked down at the floor, eyebrows drawn together.
And this girl misses her still
, Rachel thought.

‘I must get to work now, Mrs Weekes,’ Starling said at last.

‘Could we talk again, perhaps?’ said Rachel, catching the girl’s arm as she went to go past her.

‘I daresay,’ Starling muttered, and pulled her arm away; she vanished into the stairwell on quick feet. Rachel waited a moment, and then went back to the kitchen and caught the eye of the cook.

‘Get what you wanted, madam?’ the woman asked, still clearly nonplussed by her presence.

‘Yes, I suppose so. After a fashion.’ She paused, and felt her conscience prick her. ‘I thought I ought to tell you . . . when I went into the girl’s room, I am sure I saw her concealing something beneath her bed. A bottle of ale from the pantry, it seemed,’ she said.

‘Starling? I’m sure you’re mistaken, madam. Do go on up, and I shall call for Falmouth . . .’

‘No, I am not mistaken. She was stealing, I am certain of it,’ Rachel insisted. The cook gave her a steady, blank look.

‘I am sure you are mistaken, madam,’ she said tonelessly. Rachel’s cheeks flamed.

‘Well, then,’ she said, flustered. The cook said nothing more, and only watched her, so Rachel turned and went back to the stairs, fleeing the woman’s disrespect.

The rescued dog had been a small, wire-haired terrier with short legs and the tips of both its ears missing, most likely burned away. They named it Flint. It had lost patches of hair here and there, so that pink skin showed through. It stank, and shook constantly, and its breathing was laboured. When Starling held her nose and wouldn’t stroke it, Alice gave her a disappointed look that stung her.

‘Shame on you, Starling. It’s not the dog’s fault it has been brought so low. Where is your pity?’ she said, so Starling stroked the dog’s head, and it licked at her fingertips. ‘See.’ Alice smiled. ‘See, he likes you.’

‘You reeked like a ferret when we first took you in,’ Bridget pointed out. She had a soft spot for dogs. They made Flint a bed in a warm place, and for three weeks he lay in it, wheezing, rising now and then to potter around the kitchen and cock his leg against the furniture. Alice nursed him as best she could, but still he died, and when he did she wept till she wore herself out, and had to go upstairs to lie down.

‘Alice must have loved Flint very much,’ Starling said to Bridget, as they scrubbed parsnips for lunch. Bridget grunted.

‘She only needs an excuse, sometimes, to let out what’s inside her. She only needs a reason to release it, and reset the balance. Best just leave her to it.’

‘What do you mean? What’s inside her?’ said Starling. Bridget ignored her, and carried on scrubbing.

Later, Starling took up some tea and lay alongside Alice for a while, drawing patterns on the backs of her hands, which Alice found soothing. Starling thought about what Bridget had said, but couldn’t fathom her meaning.

‘Flint’s gone to heaven now, hasn’t he, Alice? Do animals go to heaven?’ she said, carefully.

‘No, dearest.’ Alice’s voice was sluggish and dull.

‘Why not?’

‘Because the Bible says so. Only humans have souls which can go to heaven.’ Starling thought about this for a while.

‘That’s not fair,’ she concluded, at last, and Alice dissolved into fresh tears.

‘No, it’s not fair. It’s too unfair that he should die now, when he had found kindness and rest. It’s
too
unfair! If I had only known sooner that such cruelty was going on when I had the power to stop it . . .’ Starling tried desperately to think of a way to change the subject, to divert Alice from her misery. ‘Alice, after I came here, did anybody come to find me? Did anybody come looking for me?’ But this question, a matter of simple curiosity to her, made Alice weep anew.