‘I’ve forgotten that old tale,’ said Tabitha.
‘Something about Sir John being born in the house of the Sun,’ Jane supplied. ‘He was the golden boy, predicted to be a great, shining man. And the doctor was born under some lesser influence – wise but solitary. Or so the fellow told his father.’
‘If you was to ask me,’ said Nell, ‘it is a shame Sir John be the elder brother. The doctor wouldn’t charge these scandalous rents just to buy himself votes. And the Good Lord only knows what will happen when Master Francis takes his place.’
‘When I was a girl here, Master Francis was known for his singularity,’ Tabitha mused with feigned innocence. ‘They said every single one of his tutors was dismissed. Has he grown any wiser, now he is a man?’
She remembered Francis as a pallid boy, too delicate to play with the village children – Joshua had once walloped him in a bout of boyish mischief. The lad had screamed and fallen to the ground in a shaking fit, and Joshua had run away, only to receive a whipping from his own father.
Nell could not resist the bait. ‘It in’t like me to speak ill of the family, but that boy don’t have a shred of sense. Parson Dilks was engaged to tutor him in Latin and that, but when he couldn’t grasp book-learning, he thrashed him to within an inch of his life. Master Francis wouldn’t have nothing more to do with learning after that. There’s bad blood between them two, Master Francis and Parson Dilks. Did you hear that last sermon?’ Nell scoffed. ‘He good as called the lad womanly. I’ll eat my own bedstraw if that one ever sires an heir.’
Tabitha struggled to keep from laughing. She’d known plenty of molly boys, many of them married lords with wives in the country. In town, they had their own bathhouses and taverns, where they wore paint and wigs and frills and no one gave a fig.
‘That doesn’t mean he can’t father a child.’ Lord, she had heard of some wives forced to go to bed in breeches for the sake of an heir.
Nell pulled a long face. ‘I wouldn’t know about such matters, thank you very much. An abomination, I call it. And the parson is watching him like a hawk.’
‘And what does Sir John say of it?’
Nell shuddered theatrically as she shook her head. ‘It’s not for me to speak of the quarrels that go on in this house,’ she muttered. ‘So I’ll say nothing at all.’
Tabitha grew used to the work and the company. At dinnertime, they stopped work to eat broken food and shared a cake that had cracked in the oven.
‘Look,’ Jane called, peering through the window as Tabitha sat with eyes half-closed, savouring fine Bohea tea with a whole lump of sugar stirred into it. ‘Outside in the yard. It’s that fellow from Eglantine Hall.’
‘Who’s that?’ Tabitha remembered the smoke rising from the twisted chimneys.
‘Mr Starling.’
She looked through the window and felt herself stop still in her tracks. A man stood outside, chatting to the stable boy beside a glossy black horse. He might have flown to Netherlea straight from King’s Coffee Shop at Covent Garden. He wore his hair long and untidy, and was clad in a coat of shagreen, with a loose neckcloth and riding boots. She knew his rig-out was intended to give a devil-may-care appearance, no doubt mightily studied in advance before a mirror. In short, it was a London rake’s notion of how to dress in the country.
She peered closely at his face. Did she perhaps know him? Or was he simply one of the type she and Poll knew too well – a Peep-o’-Day Boy who frequented the same inns and theatres as they did? She measured him at medium height, lithe and very pale; she could see good bones and a touch of puckish humour to his features. Without turning in her direction, he strode rapidly away and in through a side door. She turned back to face the room, hiding her disappointment.
‘Who is he?’
‘Mr Starling. Don’t you know him? He’s from London too.’
‘There are thousands of folk in London, Jane. I don’t know them all.’
‘Well, he come here a few months ago. Sir John give him the old hall for a peppercorn rent. We’ve seen lights burning through the night up there. They say he’s writing his poems. I never heard of such a thing.’
Good God, not a poet! Again, Tabitha wanted to laugh. He would be all verse and no purse.
‘Zusanna said his name this morning. Why does she think I have ought to do with him?’
‘Well, everyone thought you knowed him – for he asked about you at the bonfire.’
‘I don’t know this fellow from Adam. You are sure of it? He asked after me?’
‘Aye. He wanted to know if you was Widow Hart’s daughter.’
‘Did he now?’ The malicious verse she had found in her mother’s box sprang uneasily into her mind.
‘And then him and Constable Saxton nearly come to blows.’
‘No. Not Joshua? What did he say?’
‘The constable warned him off,’ Jane replied, with an annoying smile, as a murmur of agreement rose from Nell. ‘Some of us has already wagered you and he will marry before the year is out.’
Lord save her from such witterers. ‘That’s the biggest heap of claptrap I ever heard!’
A curl of mischief lifted Jane’s lips. ‘So – are you not going later to the constable’s, to have him show you round his grand new house?’
Oh, fiddlesticks. If she even hinted at a private matter, it would spread through the village like wildfire.
‘Constable Saxton’s bought a nice leg o’ mutton,’ Nell said innocently. ‘He asked the farmer’s wife to roast it this afternoon.’
‘There is nothing between us, I assure you.’
Neither Nell nor Jane replied. Both turned aside, hiding mocking little smiles.
NINE
A Riddle
A riddle of riddles – it dances and skips;
It is read in the eye, though it cheats in the lips;
If it meets with its match, it easily caught;
But if cunning will buy it, ’tis not worth a groat.
The 3rd day of August 1752
Lammastide
Luminary: Sun sets 15 minutes after 7.
Observation: The Moon is in the Ascendant approaching Mars.
Prognostication: Sullen and froward tempers will excite men to action.
Tabitha set out for Joshua’s house and entered the wood, her footsteps a rhythmic pattering on the dry earth. She was vexed that her encounter with Joshua provided entertainment for the village gossips. Mr Starling, though, was a different matter; an image to turn over and inspect with pleasure.
Near the heart of the wood, she found the glade where her father had once burned charcoal; it was hushed save for rustling leaves, punctuated by the alarmed pink-pink of a bird. Her mother was proud to have married her sweetheart, choosing hard life and happiness over the ease and rank she had been born to. But time had struck her husband down swiftly with a wasting sickness, taking him to God before he was even thirty years of age. Tabitha had no memory of him, save from the words her mother had used to conjure him: a strong and solitary man, rooted deep in his modest plot of woodland. His work kept him at long nightly vigils over his fire, reading the moon for weather lore, sitting so still and quiet that deer and badgers were his regular visitors. What a waste of a life. And here was she, lacking even the funds to have her mother and father buried side-by-side in the churchyard. The poor have no memorials, she thought bitterly: her father’s last charcoal stack was a mere heap of tarry earth, overrun by dandelions.
‘I am sorry, Father,’ she muttered. When she returned to London she would try to send money to erect a pair of graves.
Still standing in reverie, she heard footsteps approaching – heavy steps, men’s steps. Joshua appeared, dressed in a silver-buttoned coat more fitting for a party than a country stroll. ‘I came to walk with you.’ He looked into the distance, where the trees tangled thickly. ‘A man has been seen here, skulking in the woods towards dark.’
He took her arm and she walked beside him, laughing off his concerns.
Yet, as they walked, a recollection of being watched haunted her for a moment. Yes, on the night she sat vigil over her mother, someone had stood as still as shadow, watching from outside, in the darkness.
The Grange was a monastic house and grain store, owned long ago by the Canons of Chester. It had once, too, been the source of the village children’s wilder fancies and games of ‘dare’. Picking her way over the cracked flagstones, Tabitha found that it was only a squat building with a lichen-blotched roof, slits for windows and a grim, nail-studded entrance. She forced some enthusiasm in reply to Joshua’s pride. The interior was even less impressive: a disused great hall standing empty, with birds’ nests in the beams, while the smaller rooms housed soot-black fireplaces and farmhouse benches. She tried not to look at Mary’s spinning wheel, gathering dust in a corner. It would be harrowingly cold here, come winter – but by then she would be indulging herself in the lamp-lit shops of the Strand, on her way to a warming glass of something strong.
However, the mutton, served with onion sauce, was excellent – and she was glad of it, for Joshua’s sake. He was striving to impress her. Damn Netherlea, in any other village, the prettiest girl should have been overjoyed to live with Joshua and make a home even of this chilly house. She watched his broad and resolute face. Time and responsible work had dulled her old friend; she could barely glimpse the handsome rapscallion boy. And he was a widower, poor man, so seemed old before his years.
After supper, they took their ale out to a bench in the walled garden, where Joshua had scraped out a few rows for vegetables. Outdoors, the evening retained the warmth of the day, darkening to a bluebell tint. They watched a flock of swallows whip back and forth, feeding on invisible insects.
‘So, Tabitha, what is it you must tell me?’
She told Joshua briefly of her worries: the blow to her mother’s head, the notes in the almanack about a visitor named ‘D’. Could it be the parson? The constable listened, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. When she’d finished, he fetched an oil lamp and studied the cramped pages of the almanack.
‘Your mother always was prone to odd notions. Look how closely she studied this humbug. The calendar has its uses, but the rest of the almanack is old women’s nonsense – all dreams and fortunes and fates.’
‘It wasn’t a dream that she found herself at the bottom of the river.’
‘You weren’t here, Tabitha, to see the change in her. There were times I found her fast asleep in the daytime. She had a short temper, too.’
‘Maybe that came about from caring for a child? She was no longer young.’
‘There is not sufficient matter here to make charges. As for suspecting Mr Dilks – it is a monstrous accusation.’
She sighed, disappointed. ‘Would you tell me what happened that night? To put my mind at rest?’
His was the mirror of Jennet’s account. It had been agreed that Jennet should take Bess home with her, to afford her mother some peace, but at ten past nine in the evening, according to Joshua’s pocket-watch, her mother was not in her cottage.
‘The door was open and I called out, but the place was deserted. It was late, I needed to rise early; so, to speak plain, I wasn’t overjoyed to carry Bess all the way back here again.’ He paused and sighed.
‘The door bolt is broken. Did you notice it that night?’
His face clouded. ‘I … pushed the door. It was ajar. And I left it so, thinking she might be back any moment. But the next morning, I was worried. I wondered if she’d tripped and fallen in the wood, and I went searching. Yes, I believe the door was still ajar at the cottage. I set out to the woods. Then I saw a white cap in the water. When I pulled it out, I knew it was hers, the very worst news. I went to the village and rounded up some men to carry her, and call for the parson and the doctor.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Be easy. It was quick and merciful.’
‘How can you know that?’ she flashed back at him. ‘Jennet spoke of a fellow named Darius who did small repairs for Mother. He is another “D” who called on her.’
‘Darius,’ he said. ‘That makes better sense. I’ve a notion that young rogue is running a racket, telling honest folk they need unnecessary repairs. Once inside, he pilfers whatever they won’t miss.’
‘He’s been accused before?’
‘I have not yet had the proof to charge him. Was any of your mother’s property missing?’
‘No. But Jennet is keen I ask Darius to repair the door.’
‘No, I will do it. And look into the matter.’
Beneath the darkening dusk, she felt the unease of their situation and scarcely knew what to say next. Maybe it was the carefree habits of her new life that made her make a bad decision; she found Joshua’s large, calloused hand and stroked it with the soft ends of her fingertips.
‘Please,’ she said softly. ‘Question Mr Dilks. Put my mind at rest.’
His hand tensed like a bowstring.
‘You know I can’t deny you, Tabitha. I’ll call on him, then. Confront him.’
‘Please – no. Go gently. Be a little …’
She wanted to say guileful, but she doubted Joshua would approve.
‘Could we go together? I’ll make a pretext of enquiring about my parents’ grave.’
He was moving closer to her now, his leg and shoulder growing warm against hers.
The lamp cast a golden glow, in which Joshua’s face appeared suddenly lively.
‘Do you want my opinion? I believe the culprit is this Starling fellow.’
‘Why? What did he have to do with my mother?’ she asked, with a curious sense of annoyance.
‘I don’t know yet, but Jennet met him in your mother’s garden once. Has he bothered you?’
She could answer that, at least, with complete honesty. ‘I have never met the man.’
‘Well, if he tries to approach you, tell me. I am watching him, and I have intercepted his papers. Disgraceful stuff; tawdry tales of prophecy, and worse. They put even this to shame.’ He lifted the almanack.
Tabitha pulled back from him, thinking hard. There was certainly something odd in Mr Starling’s interest in prophetic lore. And he had also visited her mother. ‘Are you going to arrest him?’
‘He’s purportedly a gentleman, though he behaves like a ruffian. I have not enough proof yet to go to Sir John. But if I give him enough rope, I have faith he’ll deliver himself to the gallows. In the meantime, look to your safety – the man in the woods is dark and tall, too, like Starling. And, now …’
He grasped her waist and drew her firmly to him. Here’s the reckoning, she told herself, as Joshua’s lips met hers. It was not entirely unpleasant; she liked him better than many of the unamiable fellows she had known in London – and to get her way, she would, as Poll used to say, happily entertain the whole kingdom. Yet, in the more virtuous chambers of her heart, she knew that it was wrong to lead him on like this. After a spell of kissing and some fumbling caresses, she pulled away, and asked him to walk home with her to fetch Jennet.
TEN
A Riddle
A word that’s composed of three letters alone,
And is backward and forward the same;
Without speaking a word makes its sentiments known,
And to beauty lays principal claim.
The 3rd day of August 1752
Lammastide
Luminary: Twilight ends 2 hours and 8 minutes after sunset.
Observation: Mars with the Sun shows an excess of heat.
Prognostication: Beware fires, robberies and voluptuous temptations.
Nat threw his book against the wall, his anger so great he fancied his whole body was blazing from the core. Again and again the day’s miseries were re-enacted inside his head. First, there had been a hellish interview with Sir John. After he had told him his business, the old man had shrunk from him, recoiling and suspicious. ‘Why should I believe you? Don’t you dare to breathe a word of this to anyone.’ He had made Nat swear an oath o
n the Bible. Then he had dismissed him, like a tawdry beggar.
Later, riding the highway to Chester, that clod Saxton had stopped him at the turnpike. At first, he fancied it must only be a paltry local matter. When the constable pulled out the package of papers from his saddlebag, however, he knew otherwise. To his rage and dismay, seven days’ worth of neatly finished scribing was summarily torn open and inspected by that straw-headed buffoon.
‘You are stealing my private correspondence,’ he had said, sounding like a child.
‘Merely confiscating your papers, Mr Starling. The magistrate may return them if he sees fit.’ The dunderhead was evidently enjoying himself, paying him back for his words at the bonfire.
‘The magistrate – would that be Sir John?’
The magistrate in charge was indeed Sir John. The notion of his reading this Grub Street nonsense was so insupportable that Nat felt like throwing himself off a cliff.
He had rushed home, but his choleric humour soon drove him outside again; not knowing what he wanted, he had galloped across the common, driving Jupiter on in the heat until the poor animal’s coat was slick. On an impulse, he plunged into the ford, surging through the spray like a cannonball. Then, for his horse’s sake, he halted on the far bank. For a long time, he sat motionless in the saddle as Jupiter dripped and panted. Nat’s own skin was also slick with cold sweat but the eddies of his mind settled back into calmer channels. Perhaps he should turn homewards, after all.
The moon was a crescent fingernail of silver now, casting the sparsest light. Nat could just see the river’s streamlets, plaiting and unplaiting like rippling hair. The tides of time. The great genius Newton had said that time flows independent even of the stars, of the universe itself; that rustic fellow at the bonfire had confused calendar time with Newton’s unstoppable current. Yet what a strange allegory it was, the river of time. If he was standing here in the now, then to the left, downriver, the past was disappearing away into the night. Time past could never be changed: what was done was done. If only the past did not stay fixed like dead flies in amber. If only he could live his life again.
The Almanack Page 6