The soldier whose musket she held grinned through broken teeth. ‘No need to wave that piece about, sweetheart. We know this glib chancer well enough, don’t we, Donoghue? Couldn’t wait to be clear of the castle before you got up to your old game?’
When she’d handed him back his musket, he turned to his fellow. ‘Put Donoghue back in the lock-up until he’s repented his ways.’ The Irishman was led away, spitting a string of curses in her direction, and she thanked the soldier warmly; he seemed a decent fellow, though he ribbed her for taking his gun. His name was Jansen, and though she declined a glass of spirits in his guardhouse, she stored away a morsel of his bragging talk; he was weary of the soldier’s life and was saving his every penny to join an uncle in Virginia.
Ten useful minutes later she made her rendezvous with the Netherlea carter. Now, at last, she could think of Nat again and of how he might be freed from gaol. Two facts of bright significance jangled in her mind: that a learned man was willing to lay out a very large sum for the skull timepiece that she kept safely hidden back at the cottage; and secondly, that a soldier with access to a set of keys was in great want of coin to buy a fare to America.
THIRTY-SEVEN
A Riddle
I thrill when excited,
I boil when ignited,
By some I am said to be blue;
I am hot, I am cold,
Your heart I enfold,
Without me life bids you adieu.
The 11th day of November 1752
Martinmas (New Calendar)
Luminary: Sun sets 26 minutes after 4.
Observation: Venus sets a quarter hour after 5 in the evening.
Prognostication: Treacherous dealings of insinuating and pretended friends.
Martinmas had always been the herald of winter at Netherlea; and it was therefore only with the greatest reluctance that the feast was celebrated eleven days early, on the eleventh of November. There was much grumbling from folk who felt it was too damned soon to kill their fattening creatures. Nevertheless, on strict orders from the Bold Hall estate, knives were sharpened on grinding wheels and the earth drank greedily of the blood of slaughtered cattle, sheep and pigs on Saint Martin’s day. Neighbour worked with neighbour, gutting and skinning and singeing bristles, jointing and salting the carcasses.
Joshua brought a bowl of offal to the cottage, along with a pig’s haunch to smoke in the chimney. He set the goods down with satisfaction: he was proud of his skill in slaying his own stock. ‘Hog’s pudding, do you say?’
Tabitha agreed, though she felt privately frustrated that the dish would turn bad before her next visit to Nat. Soon they had settled to their work; Jennet mixing herbs and oats, while Tabitha greased and floured the pudding cloths.
‘Is Sir John any better?’ Tabitha asked, enjoying an inward thrill to know she spoke of Nat’s natural father.
‘Much the same.’ Joshua was peculiarly unmoved by Sir John’s plight, she thought. ‘He was able to sit up in bed and take communion with Parson Dilks yesterday, though he still cannot utter a word.’
‘And if he does not recover?’
Joshua sat easily in her mother’s chair, carving spills with his penknife. ‘Not for me to say. No doubt the lawyers will profit from it.’
‘I hear he’s standing down in the election. Does it never trouble you, all these misfortunes heaped on your master’s family?’
Joshua sighed impatiently. ‘I’ve seen those comical speculations on Starling’s wall. Has he infected you with his over-heated fancy?’ He leaned forward, pointing his stubby finger towards her, and she saw his nails had crusted brown rims. ‘Starling is the man behind the murders. I have half a dozen witnesses to his bad character, and his accomplice, Darius, is dead. Starling will be tried in January and, mark my words, that’ll be the end of him.’
The squelching of spongy entrails beneath her fingers suddenly disgusted her.
‘I heard you visited him.’ He was watching her from the corner of his eye, making long strokes with his penknife.
‘And why should I not?’
‘That rogue has confounded you. We were all astonished you fell for his tricks. And he misled the whole village, too, turning Sir John’s tragedy to his own profit.’
‘Have some sense, Joshua. If he carried out these barbarities, why would he publicly parade them in writing?’
‘You know little of these felons,’ he replied with irritating certainty. ‘They are forever boasting to the newspapers, taunting the public with their escapades.’
It was true that from Jack Shepherd to Jonathan Wild, it had become a low-bred fashion for villains to post vainglorious notices in the newspapers; but Tabitha knew that Nat would never have done the same.
‘So what are you doing, Tabitha, come the year end? There’s always room for you with me and Jennet.’
‘I’ll be back off to London,’ she replied firmly.
‘And Bess? She needs a family, not some bawdy house to be raised in.’
‘I’ll see she is cared for. In any case, what will happen to you, if Sir John dies?’
‘I’m promised a new position in Chester. Money, a house.’ He stood and came close to her, so close that she could almost taste the intensity of his feelings.
‘Goodness. You have generous friends.’
The odour of blood on his hands filled her nostrils, making the bile rise in her throat. He slid his hands around hers and pressed them a little too hard.
‘Is it a fine house?’ she asked.
His slow grin told her he believed her nature to be entirely grasping.
‘In the castle. Grand enough for you?’
‘Somebody must like you, then. Someone powerful.’
He cocked his head. ‘You could say so.’
He ran his hands up her sleeves and gripped her forearms. She assessed his build; he was as brawny as a young bull. She made a resolution not to be alone with him again. Jennet must be her chaperone at all times.
‘Is it the same man who ordered Starling’s arrest?’
Joshua stepped back, irritated. ‘What are you after? I told you – there was an open debate about Starling. The whole of the Manor Court agree he is guilty. You’ve behaved badly, Tabitha, falsifying the parish records and lying about Bess. But I can still forgive you, if you don’t provoke me. And remember, you won’t find a better home for Bess.’
‘So would you take Bess on her own? At least until I decide?’
‘No, I will not. Why should I take Bess so you can rattle off back to London without even a by-your-leave? No. And I will not allow Jennet to be your nursemaid.’
‘I am glad that is settled then! But mark me, Joshua; you will not stop me visiting Nat.’
He stalked away and picked up his hat. ‘Go. Visit him,’ he said sharply. ‘After all, he will be out of my way in eight short weeks.’
THIRTY-EIGHT
A Riddle
In vain you struggle to regain me,
When lost, you never can obtain me;
And yet, what’s odd, you sigh and fret,
Deplore my loss and have me yet.
And often using me quite ill,
And seeking ways your slave to kill –
Then promise that in future you
Will give to me the homage due.
Thus we go on from year to year –
My name, dear reader, let me hear.
The 3rd day of December 1752
First Sunday of Advent (New Calendar)
Luminary: Day decreases 8 hours and 32 minutes.
Observation: Eclipse of the Sun at 1 in the morning.
Prognostication: Diverse and unexpected changes at hand.
The cold, mathematical region of Nat’s brain would not refrain from calculating his remaining life span. A gaoler had told him that the Chester assizes were to meet when the Christmas recess ended on the eighth of January. It was unlikely that his trial would exceed one day, and he would probably hang the next morning. That being so, h
e had a mere thirty-seven days left upon this earth; a round figure of 888 hours. As the numbers steadily diminished, he found his propensity for mathematics became a self-inflicted torture.
Every moment time was slipping through his mind like water through splayed hands. He pictured little drops of now falling floorwards in that ceaseless flood we call the past. Only the future was open and pliable, carving new channels into history. And so he returned in a circle back to the damnable truth. By thinking such thoughts he had wasted another hour, for he now had only 887 hours of existence left. Manacled and shivering, he was becoming a shadow of his former self. His only beacon of hope was Tabitha. Whenever she could, she visited him, bringing candles, paper, ink, food and, best of all, bottles of strong drink.
During one of her visits, Tabitha told him of the skull watch she had stolen. Though she dared not carry it upon her person, she had described the object minutely, and he had a dim memory of a legend in which the Scottish Queen handed one of her maids of honour just such a grim vanitas, upon the scaffold. On her next visit, she gave him her crudely drawn versions of its designs, and the classical axioms that graced it.
They had been sitting hand in hand in the midst of wet stones and stinking straw. Tabitha was paler than he ever remembered. She had lost her red cheeks; her vivacity seemed to have blown away with the autumn winds.
‘Though the workmanship is extraordinary, it is a true horror. And, as the Irishman warned me, it has a vicious bite.’ She described how the watch was opened, by lifting the underjaw on the hinge. ‘The teeth are so devilish sharp that nine times out of ten it springs open and bites my fingers.’
‘Is the mechanism working?’
‘No, not at present. Yet it does work, for Donoghue had it running. Its weight in silver alone must make it worth a small fortune. If I sell it, what do you think I could ask for it?’
He blew out a long breath. ‘My own watch cost forty shillings, but a fine gold watch commands as much as five guineas. You won’t get a fair price for it, selling it on the sly, yet it is a great curiosity. I’ll think on it.’
She had told him briskly of the Irishman’s assault, just fifty paces from where they now sat.
‘I will kill him if I see him here,’ he muttered.
‘Spare yourself; the law will see to that. He is to be hanged before Christmas.’ Her face paled as the import of her words sank in.
He squeezed her hand. ‘Be easy, my love. It won’t come to that extremity for me. You will unmask De Angelo.’
Her lovely face emptied of hope as she attempted a smile.
‘I only pray so. But I feel I’m on the wrong road, love. However much I try, I am forever chasing my tail.’
He grasped her hand, that felt so clean and soft. ‘Every enquiry you make is a boon to me, sweetheart. What of the constable? Could he have brought these charges against me?’
She looked up at him and sighed. ‘It was the manor court who charged you. But Joshua did tell me he’ll soon have a new position, here in Chester – money, and a new house, too. That sounds suspiciously like a reward to me, though from whom, I cannot say.’
The precious visiting hour was passing. He braced himself to tell her his bad news. ‘I have my trial date – the eighth of January.’ He balled his fists angrily, unable to say more.
‘When I saw Joshua, he said he was gathering statements against you. Can we not counter that? Nanny Seagoes would sign a deposition in your favour …’ She was clutching his hand as if it were a rope that might haul her to safety.
‘I am sorry, Tabitha, but that will not save me.’ Seeing her crestfallen, he added, ‘But, if you would see to it, perhaps it would help. God help me, I am a man who has foolishly mislaid his friends. Lord Robbins has died, and now Sir John is mortally ill.’
The bell rang out for her to leave. He could not help himself; he clung to her warmth, knotting the fabric of her dress in his fingers like a child. The truth was, he could speak little sense to her. All he craved was her embrace, the sureness of her presence; the warmth of another human soul.
That evening, he found blessed distraction in the schoolboy task of translating the Latin dictums she had left, a fresh candle shining bright in the wall sconce. The first picture she had copied from the skull watch was the Holy Family in the stable, gathered about the infant Jesus. It took no great skill to construe: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to all men of goodwill.
Only three Sundays remained until Christmas. It pierced him to be reminded of happier days with his parents, and Lord Robbins, who had been a generous host every Christmas season. The next phrase he chose from Tabitha’s drawing also jolted a distant memory: the master at his grammar school had been especially fond of the poet Ovid. He recalled the famous lines from the Metamorphoses and undertook to make the finest translation: Oh Time, great devourer, and thou, envious Age, together you destroy all things; and, slowly gnawing with your teeth, you finally consume all things in lingering death.
Good God. These were hardly cheering words for a condemned man. It sobered him to think that the Scottish Queen must have read these same words in her own extremity. Secretly, he had always been more inclined to admire the Papist Temptress than the Virgin Queen. He pictured her as a pale French beauty in black velvet, a crucifix hanging on her lily-white breast.
He was too young to die, having found his beloved Tabitha – they had shared only the tiniest fraction of their lives so far. There was so much he still longed to do. He needed to gain his father’s forgiveness, to climb his tree of favour, to pick his ambition’s harvest and live free.
He pictured the glories of his unlived life: waking each morning with Tabitha at his side; sharing Christmas revels; the books on which his name stood gold-tooled on the cover; his mother’s kindly smile; and Sir John’s blessing, too. There were smaller pleasures, too: a long-anticipated view of the sun’s eclipse, two years hence; a hard gallop with Jupiter over the Cheshire plain; reading the Gentleman’s Magazine with a fine brandy at his side; and each night holding Tabitha, in time-defying bliss.
Eight chimes rang out from the castle tower, and he emerged from his reverie in such pain that the bell’s clapper might have swung physically against his own frail skull. The dark night had unpeeled to reveal a rotten, watery day, as the computational region of his brain restarted its calculations. Thirty-six days remained, 876 hours; a mere 52,560 seconds. And, in the instant of his thinking it, the total had inexorably shrunk. Time, his great absolute, was unstoppably moving ever closer with his razor-edged scythe.
THIRTY-NINE
A Riddle
I oft through lane, and street, and alley,
Officious in my duty, sally:
Yet was I born for nobler ends;
O’er prostrate crowds my voice descends.
The bridal joy and gay parade
Were cold and dim, without my aid.
Oh, would these cares were all the Fates
Had destined mine! – But yet awaits
Another and more sad employ;
I mourn the wreck of human joy,
When empty graves await us all,
And bid the tear-drops faster fall.
The 13th day of December 1752
St Lucy’s Day (New Calendar)
Luminary: Sun rises 9 minutes after 8 in the morning.
Observation: Mercury sets half an hour after 4 in the afternoon.
Prognostication: Light will be shed on unexpected places.
Tabitha woke before sunrise, bedevilled by forebodings about Nat. She felt fingers probing her closed eyelids, and then poke her nose and mouth. For a moment she was back in the featherbed at Eglantine Hall, waking sleepily to her lover’s caresses. Then a high-pitched chuckle told her she was back at the cottage with Bess. It was still dark, but some inner mechanism told Tabitha it was time to rise and go to the doctor’s house.
Bess giggled again, feeling the flutter of her sister’s eyelashes.
Tabitha pulled her
into the bed and hugged her, stroking her hair. While apprehensions about Nat plagued her every waking minute, Bess was at least an occasional distraction. Tabitha untangled her fair hair with her fingers, soft as the strands of a dandelion clock. Bess was growing into a remarkably pretty maid, her cheeks as plump as peaches and her eyes a pair of lively dark-ringed sapphires. Not that she was an angel; she could be huffy and petulant when the mischief took her, though the next moment she would caper into Tabitha’s arms.
It was a pity she would have to leave Bess soon. Whatever happened at Nat’s trial, she could not stay here past the first day of the new year, for Mister Dilks had taken great pleasure in announcing Nell Dainty would then move into the cottage as the new searcher. And Joshua was right, for once; London was no place for a child. Recently, she had caught herself wondering if London was the best place even for herself. ‘A great city, a great solitude,’ she told herself. If only she could get a glimpse of what the future would bring.
She pulled on her warmest clothes. Jack Frost, as children say, had called in the night, and left the window a swathe of icy ferns. Bess had fallen asleep again, wound into a snail-like curl. She pulled the blanket gently up to her chin. It was time to leave – Jennet must make the child’s breakfast.
The almanack reminded her that it was Saint Lucy’s day, a favourite saint of her mother’s, famed to bring light to aged eyes. She pulled her mother’s threadbare red cloak tight around her arms as she hurried up the drive to the doctor’s house. Soon would come the darkest point of the year, for the sun was growing paler and weaker, each successive day. Around her, the doctor’s garden was as unkempt as she had ever known it. Starved of the sun’s rays, fruits and leaves had shrivelled and dropped, and now were turning into slime. Only the glossy green leaves of the holly tree, the laurel hedge, and the climbing ivy had survived. Most of nature had burrowed underground, bracing itself against a season of hoar frosts and northern blasts.
The Almanack Page 25