‘Do you trust Sir John?’
‘Me? Not at all,’ she replied smartly.
‘But you like him? He certainly has a regard for you.’ His voice whined jealously in his own ears.
‘Nat, am I on trial? From what I overheard, you are his great friend, not I.’
That stung him. ‘Forgive me.’
Her returning smile might have melted stone. He watched her, unable to take his eyes from her features.
Dear gods, he was indeed a captive of Venus. His attempts at self-discipline had lately collapsed; after visiting the kennels, he had stumbled to the tavern in search of oblivion. Almost at once, Zusanna had slunk down beside him, her creamy flesh pressing hot against his thigh and elbow.
‘La, Mr Starling, tell me you are not still moping after that doxy Tabitha Hart,’ she cooed. ‘We all seen you together – but she’s dallying with the constable, you know.’
He did not answer her, but she continued, sinking her mouth to his ear to confide.
‘And I’ll tell you what no one else will. That by-blow of hers could be anyone’s – aye, and I mean anyone’s – but she’s not Joshua’s child. It’s common knowledge all round here, he never did have the pleasure. That’s why he is always hanging on her petticoat strings, hoping to unlace them.’
The news that the pretty little maid was not the constable’s daughter had at first brought Nat relief. Yet, after Zusanna had reluctantly left the inn, a young fellow from Bold Hall had called over to him. ‘You’s talking about that Tabitha Hart? I am forever calling at that cottage on Sir John’s business, but she’ll not take his letters. Still, I know Sir John. He won’t take no for an answer.’
Since that day, he had known it was only a matter of time before Tabitha became Sir John’s. He did have one small compensation. This last week, it had come suddenly to him that this affair of the De Angelo almanack might be his salvation. For was he not a writer, and was this not a story? It was a blood-curdling tale of a great house under attack, of gruesome secrets, puzzles and poisons. True, it might not be quite honourable to wring information from Tabitha, but he could not ignore the extraordinary luck of his being here, at the very heart of it all. He had sent a letter off with the idea of it to Quare of Chandos Lane, and a reply had arrived almost by return. Nat was in luck, the print-seller had said – he was in need of a colourful story. With it came a contract, promising an advance payment of ten whole guineas. In return, Nat must present himself at Quare’s office at the soonest opportunity – though first, of course, he must see Darius indicted.
Nat was in a secret ecstasy; he even told himself he might advance his courtship, once he was a celebrated man of letters. But to proceed with the story he had to know everything about the whole affair. The key was Tabitha – the searcher of the dead and, in his opinion, the only intelligent witness.
Through the fine oriel windows the sun sent copper-gold rays spilling across his wall of papers. Nat turned to Tabitha; it was time to fish for facts. ‘Tell me, are there any other persons you suspect of being De Angelo?’ He recalled she had said the doctor seemed more a potential victim than malefactor.
‘I am most uneasy about Dilks,’ Tabitha said.
‘I made inquiries and he was in Chester that night your mother died.’
‘Yes, but as you told me yourself, Darius was near her cottage and is no doubt his instrument, attacking my mother on his instruction.’
‘A worthy point,’ he conceded.
‘Remember, Darius told me he would never stand trial; he said it was written in the stars. He is one of those swindlers who takes money for reading cards and fortunes. He is our strongest link to De Angelo.’
‘And if Darius provided the muscular strength to perform these attacks, then anyone, weak, womanly or both, could be driving him to it.’
Tabitha lifted her hand to her head and winced. ‘True. What of Lady De Vallory herself? She attacked me; some say she has lost her mind. She is educated, too – the daughter of a Doctor of Divinity. And, I have heard folk say, she is some relation to Dilks.’
He inked his quill and wrote down what she said beside Lady Daphne’s name. ‘And what of me?’ he teased. ‘For I believe you said that I must join the list.’
She turned to him, steadfast and grave. ‘In that case, why would you help me?’
With a qualm, he remembered his contract with Mr Quare. ‘A rake’s game,’ he quipped. ‘To draw you in closer and possess you.’
She smiled and drew away.
‘I am ravenous,’ she said brightly and, sitting at his table, she did full justice to a pork pie, cheese and apples. Having little appetite himself, he fetched candles to the table; their amber glow seemed to pull the two of them closer, into an island of light. For an instant he fancied he caught her looking over his shoulder towards his bed. But when he looked back again she was smiling modestly at the open pages of the almanack.
‘Have you seen the prophecy for September?’ she asked.
‘Yes. It seems largely to be about the calendar change.’
Tabitha opened her mother’s copy, and read out loud from the Prognostications:
‘“I predict that what some do call this Grave-Robbery of Time will bring mighty Confusion and Loss, so mark well the Days in your Almanack. Crafty Wrongdoers will escape Justice, thanks to the blindness of the Fools who stalk them. And may the Fools be condemned while the Crafty triumph.” Do you understand that as a challenge?’ Tabitha asked.
She was as sharp as a razor, he decided. ‘That we are the blind fools? His arrogance is remarkable.’
‘It is a warning to be careful, Nat,’ she said. ‘Some in this village need only see those papers on your wall to be convinced that you are De Angelo.’
He glanced over to the wall; in the flickering candlelight, he saw it with the constable’s eyes. It did indeed look like the creation of a madman, and a guilty one at that.
At the end of the evening she consented to his accompanying her home; he felt himself walking a good foot taller as they picked their way down the broken-flagged driveway. Wednesday the third of September, he mused, would be an historic night, famed over eons, in which human time would take a great leap forward. True, the universe would not alter; but England’s puny inhabitants would at last follow time in line with the sun. Just before the ruined arch that marked the boundary of Eglantine Hall, he stopped, and they looked up at the heavens.
‘How far away is the moon, Nat?’ she asked.
‘A mere two hundred and thirty thousand miles from the earth.’
‘Could it be lived upon?’
‘Well it certainly has valleys, mountains and other signs of natural geography. But sadly, a journey to the moon is not possible. Think, even at the rate of twenty miles a day, it would take more than thirty years to reach it. And there are no inns upon the way, nor much entertainment on arrival.’
He saw the gleam of her smile in the dark.
‘D’you see that tiny red star?’ he asked. ‘That is Mars, pulsing like a beacon. Now, look to your left. If you watch carefully, we might see the shooting stars of St Lawrence.’
A tingling cold was rising from the ground. Tabitha pulled her shawl tight, and he slipped his own arm tentatively around her waist.
‘Look past that bright star,’ he murmured. ‘Vega is its name.’
If the meteor shower appears now, he told himself, she would be his. He dropped his head close to her, closing his eyes as he smelled her hair and skin and moving his fingers minutely over the taut fabric around her waist.
‘Ah,’ she cried. He looked up and caught a glimpse of a long tail of silver flying eastwards through the night sky.
‘I missed it.’
‘It was beautiful,’ she said, pressing closer to him as they moved on towards the wood. A lucky sign, he told himself. But maybe it was lucky only if he had seen it himself. Devil take him, was he also being lured by predictions now?
They came into the shelter of the trees. It was
velvety dark; they had only each other to hold on to. In time they reached the shining breadth of the river, the banks crowded with swaying black foliage. Nat offered her a hand to lead her across the stepping stones.
‘All the farmer’s men swear they will not follow the new style,’ she said.
‘And thus seek to add eleven days to their span of life? As the great Newton says, it matters not which clocks and stars we use to measure it; true time flows equably onwards, just as this river does.’
For a moment they paused, balancing on the flat rocks at the centre of the star-glancing water. Then he helped her up to the firm earth of the bank but did not let go of her hand.
‘Yet it’s a pretty conceit, is it not, to add eleven days to a life? Eleven days, two hundred and sixty-four hours, or – wait a moment – fifteen thousand eight hundred and forty minutes. If I could add those minutes to my life, what would I do with them? If I knew they were a gift, a supernumerary bonus, unsullied by habit and routine …’ He pulled her close to him, closing his eyes again.
‘A new you?’ she asked, with a hint of mockery.
‘A new me. Clean of habits and pure of heart.’
‘You sound dull already …’
He opened his eyes. Both their eyes gleamed in the darkness.
‘Tabitha, I could be so much more than I am now. I could write stuff that would set my name in the Book of Fame. If I was worthy, I would rise with the lark, write poetry to rival the nightingale’s sweetness. In eleven days, I might find my better self.’
‘You can do that anyhow, whatever the date. Begin tomorrow.’
‘Ah, I have an excuse. I have another commission at present, and I need to earn my bread. After that, perhaps. And you? If you were given a benefice of eleven days, in which any wonderful, magical event might occur – what would that be?’
A troubled expression moved across her face; for some time, she did not speak. Finally she said, ‘Everything I wanted before seems so paltry now. I’ll think on it awhile.’
At her gate they both hesitated; then she reached up and brushed his cheek with her rose-soft lips. In a trice, the darkness had taken her, as she disappeared up the path and into the cottage.
TWENTY-ONE
A Riddle
I am an enchanter and soon can create,
A magical spell from invisible air,
I give to the prodigal son an estate,
And to those who are childless a strong lusty heir.
For pining maidens I abate their woe
And make faithless lovers woo their charms,
And on trembling cowards I bestow,
Victory’s glory in glittering arms.
To the sick I promise health and ease
And to the grieving I grant a passing spell,
That the dead do walk and talk again
And unspoken wishes finally tell.
To the beggar I a bounty give
And to the lawyer monstrous fees
I grant the criminal hope to live
When on the gallows I bring reprieve.
To conjure up time is my transient power,
Yet my whole duration lasts not half an hour.
The 2nd to the 13th day of September 1752
Annihilated from the Calendar
According to the Act of Parliament the Old Style of Calendar ceases here, and the New Style takes place; and consequently the next Day, which in the Old Account would have been the 3rd, is now to be called the 14th so that all the intermediate nominal Days from the 2nd to the 14th are omitted, or rather annihilated from this Year and this Month contains no more than 19 Days.
Nat is careering along a highway in a carriage of the most modern style, with well-sprung wheels and a lining of nail-punched leather. At last he has a great prize at his fingers’ ends. Awaiting him in London is the printing press in which his scribbled words are at this very moment being transformed; inked, printed, folded, bundled, cried up by hawkers, and sold for cash. His story, complete with shocking illustrations, will soon pierce the minds of thousands of citizens, like a hail of inebriating darts.
As the left-hand wheels of the carriage jerk violently upwards, he fumbles for the strap; but the vehicle rights itself without slowing its momentum one whit. In his mind, scenes of absurd satisfaction unfold. He walks among a fashionable crowd at the Playhouse, and overhears, ‘There – that is him. The man of the day.’ He is invited to private clubs, admitted to esoteric societies; there are countless toasts raised to his name. And best of all, there is the marvel of the fresh-inked paper itself – in coffee houses, on breakfast tables and in servants’ halls and low taverns – upon which his own name is writ in black on white. He knows that he stands on the cusp, and the intoxication of it is more dizzying than any liquor.
Another great crack sounds from the axle below him, and the carriage tilts giddily before it rights itself once more. Who the devil is driving the horses so hard? Raising the window blind, he finds a grey confusion; fog, or perhaps smoke, covers an arid land. The road, as far as he can descry it, is rocky, lonely, deserted. He cannot recall ever seeing this highway before. Impatient, and not a little anxious, he bangs his cane on the ceiling. There is no alteration in the speed of the vehicle. He thumps harder; then he pulls down the window glass and thrusts his head outside into the smoky air.
‘Driver!’ he shouts, eyeing the team of plunging ebony horses. He can just see the fellow’s flank and back, muffled in a tattered costume. He is a bulky and peculiarly forbidding figure. ‘Driver, stop!’
Is the fellow deaf? Without slacking pace, the carriage crests the hill, and he sees with a throat-clutch of horror that the road plunges steeply at a near vertical drop, down and down. They will all certainly plummet – the carriage, horses, himself and his precious, febrile hopes – to their deaths.
‘Stop!’
At the same instant, he knows, in the portentous manner of nightmares, that this is his own entire mistake; that the driver he trusted to steer his way has tricked him. For now he knows that he is at the reins; his invisible enemy, the secret prognosticator, his own lurking shadow: De Angelo himself.
The agony of the knowledge forces him awake, choking for air, his heart thumping like the echo of hooves. Alone at Eglantine Hall, he remembers that he has signed the agreement to send Quare the story of the Netherlea Murders. And now, having taken the leap of eleven days in one harrowing night, he has the first inkling that this might have been remarkably unwise.
Meanwhile, Tabitha goes to bed, her mind revolving around Nat’s notion of eleven days’ addition to her life. She flits rapidly through insubstantial scenes in which she is admired: in a large box at the theatre, taking the floor at a glittering ball, ending the night at a coffee house as dawn pinks across the piazza. Enough of that. She surrenders to the power of those tortoiseshell eyes, Nat’s mouth; his strong fingers rake the hair at the nape of her neck. Lips parted, she sinks into sleep.
The bedroom is very still and quiet, the dawn weak and grey. On the wooden chair in the corner sits a woman dressed in faded blue. Tabitha fights off the entanglements of sleep, sits upright and peers at the woman.
‘Mother.’ She cannot believe her eyes.
It is her mother, rising now to sit on the edge of the bed. Tabitha’s surprise is a lump in her breast, a blazing heartache, wonder and pain. True, her mother has changed – she is bone-thin, and frail as a feather. Yet her spirit quivers with life, like the light of a candle flaring behind a muslin drape.
‘I am so happy you are home,’ her mother says.
The pain in Tabitha’s breast overflows and blooms into happiness, as if these were the words she has waited all her life to hear. Her mother’s eyes are familiar shining blue. Her expression bestows on her child such sweet concern that Tabitha’s spirit repeats, ‘I am home. All will be well.’ Silently, her mother raises a mottled finger to her lips, and Tabitha watches as those lips pucker and age, growing toothless and ruined. There is not much time. Her mother
is leaving.
There is no need to ask why she has returned. It is to remind her that she made a promise, here, in this same room, on a night of fury and tears. A blood oath of silence that must never be broken.
TWENTY-TWO
A Riddle
My first is laid upon the plate
Of each delighted guest,
My second in a thirsty state,
Will suit your parched throat best:
But both together form a word
Which, when glad hours are passed,
We grieve to find, howe’er deferred,
Must be pronounced at last.
The 29th day of September 1752
Michaelmas Fair and Assizes (New Calendar)
Luminary: Sun apparently rises and sets at 6 allowing for refraction.
Observation: Opposition of Saturn and Mercury.
Prognostication: Matters go Backwards in Custom and Law.
Waxen-skinned, blinking in the sunlight, Darius steadied himself, appraising the gathered company with contempt. Turning, he spat over his shoulder at the door of the gaol; then he lifted his chained wrists like a pugilist, taunting his audience in a hoarse, but carrying voice. ‘Take a long look, you hypocrites. I am innocent!’
Joshua strode forward, his musket trained upon the prisoner. ‘Silence!’ He motioned with the barrel towards the prisoner’s carriage.
Darius moved with an arrogant, rolling gait, the iron cuffs clanking. Before he climbed inside, he looked at them all in turn, his obsidian eyes raking across each of the spectators. Tabitha, chilled, was convinced his glance lingered longest upon her.
‘Darius,’ Jennet mouthed hopelessly, and Tabitha held the girl’s arm tightly as the prisoner disappeared into the black carriage. Turning swollen eyes upon her, Jennet whimpered, ‘How can you let this happen?’
Mr Dilks, who stood beside them, snorted, ‘It is the right function of the law, girl, to rid us of such vermin.’
The Almanack Page 14