The Misbegotten (53 page)

‘She told me . . .’ Rachel swallowed. ‘Mrs Alleyn said to me that those two years she was wed, and away from Box, were the happiest two years of her life entire.’

‘Well might they have been, poor accursed lady.’

‘But why would she return to her father, then, when she was widowed?’

‘What he wanted, he took,’ Duncan said softly. ‘She was always in his power. Always.’

Just then, a voice behind her shocked Rachel even more than the story she was learning. It was loud, and incredulous.

‘What the bloody hell is
this
?’

‘Mr Weekes, I—’ Rachel gasped. She struggled to her feet; the chair legs and her skirt and the table seemed to catch at her.

‘You what?’ Richard’s eyes were flinty with anger.

‘Now, my boy, you must not chastise . . .’ Duncan Weekes began. He tried to rise but couldn’t. Richard caught Rachel’s arm in an iron grip and towed her towards the door.

‘Let go!’ said Rachel.

‘Richard, you mustn’t be sharp with her!’ Duncan called after them, weakly. Richard swung back to point a trembling finger at his father.

‘I’ll deal with you later,’ he said, and Duncan fell into fearful silence.

They burst from the inn onto the cold, grey street. There was no more sleet, but the fog that had barely lifted all day was like a wet, frigid blanket.

‘What have you been doing?’ Richard took both of Rachel’s upper arms and hauled her close to him. ‘I
forbade
you to know that man, and yet here I find you, fast friends!’

‘He is my father now, too, Mr Weekes. And he is poor, and sick, and I am fond of him! We need to send a doctor to him, and soon. He is not a bad man,’ said Rachel, indignation making her brave. She could feel Richard’s grip bruising her arms, crushing the flesh down to the bone.

‘What do you mean by that?’ He gave her a shake, his lips curled back, snarling like a dog.

‘He drinks, but then so do all men in Bath, it seems. But he does not go whoring, or lie, or beat his women!’

‘
What?
’ For a second, Richard seemed dumbstruck, and Rachel felt fear building, coming to smother her defiance.

‘I know about Starling; about you and her. And I’m sure there have been others,’ she said. Richard’s eyes grew huge.

‘By God, I’ll kill that little slut!’

‘It was your violence to her that led me to the truth about you!’ Richard released her and ran his hands through his hair. Then he stood half turned from her, with one hand over his mouth, watching her askance. ‘I know all about you. I know you loved another as well – Josephine Alleyn! No wonder she has been so helpful to you. Were you lovers, too? Tell me!’ Richard raised his hand to slap her, and Rachel shut her eyes. The fog swirled around them. ‘Do it then, sir. Why keep these things behind closed doors? Why not thrash me in the street, where all can see you do it?’

For a moment Richard stayed in that pose, arm pulled back to unleash a blow, his whole body harder than stone. Then he let the arm drop and turned to face her again, still angry but somehow defeated.

‘Rachel. You were supposed to love me,’ he said. ‘You were supposed to make things better.’

‘You give me nothing to love,’ she said.

‘Truly, no woman has ever loved me,’ he said flatly. ‘What strange fate is that – to be given this handsome face, and then let no woman love me?’

‘I believe Starling did, at one time.’

‘Starling?’ Richard shook his head. ‘She loves only Alice bloody Beckwith. And Jonathan Alleyn.’

‘Jonathan? She
hates
Jonathan.’

‘Hate, love. Aren’t they oft-times the same thing?’ He stared at her, and she could no longer read what was in his eyes. ‘Perhaps in time I shall come to hate you, too.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Rachel, shaking so badly that she couldn’t keep her voice steady.

‘We’ve a long time together, Mrs Weekes. Our whole lives. If there’s no love now then there’s plenty of room for that other to grow.’ His gaze was cold and unyielding, and Rachel felt his words weigh heavy on her; a burden of truth she had no choice but to carry. ‘Go home and wait for me,’ he said. The freezing mist chilled Rachel through her clothes. She shook her head. ‘You
will
do as I tell you.’

‘Where will you go?’ she said.

‘That’s none of your concern.’

‘You’ll go inside and upbraid your poor father. Won’t you?’

‘That old cuff?’ Richard shook his head. ‘I have more important things to do. My father will die soon enough, by the looks of him. I shan’t waste any effort on him.’ Richard took a step closer to Rachel and smiled cruelly. ‘I shall save that for you, dear wife.’ He turned and walked away. The words were like a blow to the stomach, and Rachel felt her strength ebbing away.
He can, and he will. I am his.
She swayed, and felt despair stealing over her like a shadow.

Starling dreamt of horses with bullet wounds, their eyes bulging in agony as blood streamed from the black wounds in their skins. She woke clammy with sweat, weak and shaking. Jonathan’s description of the war in Spain wouldn’t leave her mind, though she told herself resolutely that it changed nothing. She couldn’t help but think that to have lived through such horrors would make anybody numb to violence, and more prone to it, and that should – and did – make her more convinced than ever that Jonathan had killed Alice. But at the same time, inexplicably, she found some of her hatred of him leaching away.
It does not excuse what he did. It can’t be forgiven.
She seemed to have the ghost of his stink in her nostrils. The metal and rot smell he’d had when he turned up in Bathampton in the ruins of his uniform, fresh from Corunna. She knew now that it was the smell of a person who has walked long miles with death riding on their shoulder like some malevolent imp, all needle teeth and poisoned claws. She blew her nose a dozen times, and sniffed deeply at pungent ingredients in the kitchen – cinnamon, cloves, pickled beets and peppermint oil.

‘What are you, kitchen maid or truffle hog?’ said Sol Bradbury, perplexed, but Starling only shrugged.
If he did it, and I finally know it for true, then what should I do?
She was swirling coffee beans in a skillet over the fire, waiting for them to roast, when she realised.
It makes no difference at all.
She froze, and stayed that way until the acrid smoke of the burning beans brought Sol over, cursing and flapping a cloth at the pan.
It makes no difference at all.

Towards the middle of the afternoon she took to the streets, wrapping up against the fog with the vague but pervading urge to go home. She went down to the wharf but there was no sign of Dan Smithers, and no other boat moored up that planned to leave eastwards inside the next hour, so Starling set off along the towpath on foot. It was the longer route out of town but she didn’t want to wait. She was at a dead end, after years of struggling through a maze of doubt and enquiry and conviction. Suddenly, she had no more energy; her anger had burnt itself out like the stub of a candle.
What’s the point? It is as Mrs Weekes said – none of it will bring her back to me. None of it will change things for me.
When she reached the edge of Bathampton, with numb cheeks and clumsy feet, she paused. Her route had automatically been taking her to Bridget’s cottage but now she stopped, and turned north, towards the house that was the first home she remembered.

Starling walked up to the yard gate and stood there, staring at the exact spot on the muddy ground where she’d first set eyes on Alice.
My saviour. My sister.
The trees had grown taller, naked but for a few ragged leaves remaining. Rooks had come to roost rather than starlings; they cawed and clattered down at her, their voices echoing peculiarly. Hunched in the fog, the house looked like the ghost of the place she knew. There was a yellow light glowing in the kitchen window, just as there had been then; and smoke rising silently from the chimney, a darker grey than the murk. Chickens still pecked and scratched the ground; there was the stink of pigs from the sty; a haystack in the open barn; a brown horse’s head, drowsy-eyed, leaning over the stable door. Starling studied it all and made believe that she could walk right up and push open the front door, and that Bridget would be standing at the stove, ruddy-faced from the heat, and Alice would be by the fire with her feet tucked up underneath her, reading poems or a novel or one of Jonathan’s letters. The thought put a lump in her throat that ached like a twisted joint, and she teetered, on the verge of stepping forwards as if it all was true.
I am no different now, after all of it, than I was that first time. I still have nothing. I still am nothing.

She walked on past the George Inn, and then turned towards the toll bridge. She passed a few farmers and villagers along the way, none of whom she recognised, or who showed any interest in her. The mist and cold made people hunker into themselves; keeping their eyes low, their voices mute. Starling stopped on the bridge and leaned over, staring down at the smooth, grey water. She couldn’t smell its dank perfume – the sodden air and the tang of wood smoke on it were pervasive. The stone of the parapet leached the last warmth from her flesh, but she let it. She could see the lovers’ tree; a skeletal, drooping mass at the river’s edge, almost obscured by the gloom, looking like a hunch-shouldered figure. There was frost on the broken meadow grasses; frost on the scarlet rosehips and hawthorn berries in the tangled hedges along the lane. In the slow eddies near the riverbank, a thin crust of ice rode the lapping water. Starling stared at the lovers’ tree until her eyes ached and watered from it. And then she saw movement in the shadows underneath it.

Not daring to blink she waited to see it again, thinking she must have dreamed it. But there was movement again a moment later, and she was not mistaken. There was a figure standing beneath the branches. Starling gulped in a huge breath, and felt a desperate kind of hope.
If she did run away, if she lives . . . she would come back here. She would.
Without hesitation, Starling pushed a path through the hedge, scratching her arms and legs on blackthorn, and clambered down to the meadow. She hurried through the long grass with her skirts bunched up in her fists, breathing hard and sniffing at the drip on the end of her nose.

‘Alice!’ she called, as she drew near. The fog swallowed her voice. Behind the cascade of willow whips she could see the dark shape of a person. It made no response to her call; it made no move at all. Starling jumped down onto the hard mud at the water’s edge, slipped and fought to keep her balance. ‘Alice, is it you?’ She hurried forwards again, but was suddenly uneasy. The prickle of a warning, at the back of her skull; just like she’d had many times before.

The shadowed shape was too big to be Alice. Too big to be a woman at all. Starling slowed to a halt just beyond the tree’s embrace. ‘Who’s there?’ she said, trying to keep her voice even, strong.
It will be hard to run on this ice. But I am smaller, lighter
. But whoever was waiting still ignored her. Starling took a deep breath; blood was pounding in her ears. She parted the branches with her hands and stepped into the deeper shadow. And finally the figure stood up from its seat on the protruding root; stood up and turned to face her, and Starling cried out in alarm. ‘
You!
’ she said, as the air rushed from her lungs in astonishment.

Rachel paused by the front door of number one, Lansdown Crescent, her hand halfway to the bell pull. Dorcas would answer it, or the manservant Falmouth, and they would take her to Mrs Alleyn.
That’s not who I wish to see.
She retraced her steps and went down the servants’ stair instead, letting herself into the corridor outside the kitchen. She slipped past the kitchen door, checking in the still room and pantry before she reached Starling’s room; all were empty. In the kitchen, Sol Bradbury was nodding in a wooden chair near the inglenook; a huge, half-peeled apple was going brown in her lap, cradled like a pet. There was no sign of Starling, and Rachel cursed silently, anxiously.
For months she’s shadowed me around this house, now when I need her, when I have this letter to show her, she vanishes
.

‘Mrs Weekes. How odd to find you here. Did you lose your way?’ Rachel spun around to find Mrs Alleyn at the foot of the stairs, her hands linked calmly in front of her, her face a stony mask. At the sound of her voice, Sol Bradbury was wide awake and peeling industriously, blinking away her somnolence.

‘I . . . I—’ Rachel stammered.

‘I saw you coming along the street and wondered where you’d got to. I wasn’t aware that you had an appointment with my son today.’

‘Indeed, I do not, madam. I only . . .’

‘You only what?’ said Josephine, in that level way of hers. Rachel’s mind went blank, the silence rang. ‘Perhaps you wanted to see me about something? I can’t imagine there’s anything you might need to discuss with my servants.’

‘Yes, Mrs Alleyn. That is so,’ said Rachel, still frantically trying to think what to say.

‘Come, then. This is no fit place for a conversation, and I too have something I desire to tell you.’ The older woman turned with an elegant sweep of her dress, and went back up the stairs. With dread stealing over her, Rachel followed.

Mrs Alleyn led her into the front parlour, and settled herself on the couch. ‘Now, tell me what brought you here today?’

‘I wanted to . . .’ Rachel paused, and looked at Josephine’s lovely face.
Whatever happened to Alice, you know all about it, don’t you?
She summoned all her courage. ‘I’ve been speaking a great deal of late to my father-in-law, about his time in your service.’

‘Mr Duncan Weekes?’ Josephine blinked, seeming to readjust herself minutely. ‘He was a good coachman. He had a marvellous way with the horses. Such a shame his . . . affliction meant we had to let him go. My father was rather fond of him, in truth.’

‘Yes. I have heard a great deal of your father’s affection for his staff,’ said Rachel. Josephine Alleyn’s lips thinned into the smallest of smiles; her eyes glittered. ‘He has also told me about the time Alice Beckwith came to visit Lord Faukes at Box.’