She felt a guilty pleasure at entering the doctor’s comfortable home, unhappily recalling Nat’s icy cell. There was a warm fire in the grate where she settled to her work, and a good supply of oil to light the lamps as soon as daylight failed. It grieved her that the doctor did not always rise from his bed. He was sick almost to death; it needed no physician to diagnose that.
To her surprise, Judith the cook knocked at the door with a slice of seed cake, and two more pieces wrapped in paper for Bess and Jennet.
‘Master don’t eat nearly nothing nowadays,’ she grumbled. ‘Best it goes to you young’uns.’ The doctor, she said, was out visiting in Chester with his manservant, Florian. At once, Tabitha’s heart leapt, for Judith would also be out marketing that morning. That would give her free rein to search the house.
Certain she would be uninterrupted, she began her study of those of the doctor’s books that were written in the English tongue. The Pharmacopeia Extemporanea contained vast lists of ailments and remedies in English. She read avidly – of lack of speech, weak limbs and falling fits, nervous diseases and palsies. But, blinking her strained eyes an hour later, she had to admit that none of it gave her a clearer understanding of the De Vallory brothers’ maladies.
She heard Judith close the door behind her and watched her stump off down the drive; then, at once, she began to explore the hall, parlour, dining room, library and servants’ chambers. Sir John had stripped Bold Hall of what he called its morbid ancient follies; but not so the doctor. Most doors were open, and she moved along the creaking oak boards on stockinged feet, admiring fragments of pillars, patterned tiles and stones with peculiar lettering. By the light of windows set with jewel-like glass she admired large paintings, rich fabrics and Turkish carpets. To the rear was Judith’s domain, an old-fashioned kitchen and scullery. Only two rooms were fastened tight: the wine cellar housing the prize casks of Florentine wine rumoured to be the doctor’s great indulgence, and the strongroom that held his money. She remembered glimpsing the inside of the strongroom once, when passing on her way to the kitchen; a windowless room, in which padlocked chests were lined up along shelves. She made a rapid search for the keys but could find none.
Upstairs, there were ranged a series of bedchambers and closets. The doctor’s small chamber she found a lonely room, furnished lavishly, but lacking the blessing of love or companionship. Now that she had observed him more closely, she understood he was not entirely a saint; wryly, she had noted a vaunting pride in his own great learning, and scorn for other country physicians. And why ever not? He had clearly won the brains in the battle with his brother. No one doubted that the doctor could have run the estate more profitably and astutely, either. If he had a fault, it was his stubbornness. He could be so clever, and yet so blind. She had urged him to look more carefully to his own safety but had met only with scorn.
By his bedside was a table of the sort that she, as searcher, often found beside a sickbed, stacked with tonics and elixirs, measuring spoons and an apothecary’s weighing scale. Most interesting of all was a distillation of gold, labelled aurum potabile, that he had said was a wondrous cure-all. Poor fellow; for all his knowledge, this physician could not cure himself. As her fingers idly lifted and inspected what was spread upon the table – a jar of ointment, two large needles, a razor-sharp scarifying instrument to pierce the skin – Tabitha comprehended that she would never find a poison to match both Sir John’s and the doctor’s symptoms, for their ailments were entirely different.
The doctor, she mused, had gradually become breathless, fatigued, and was losing the strength in his limbs. Doubtless some disease was attacking his animal spirits. Sir John, on the other hand, had been suddenly struck down; all reports said that he could neither speak nor rise from his bed.
The ticking of a distant clock goaded her to use her time well. With the neat, precise movements of a housebreaker, she searched the rest of the doctor’s chamber. Running her fingertips into the dusty bowl of a classical urn, she felt a familiar object; carefully, she shook it out on to the bed, and a ring of ancient keys rattled on to the blue velvet coverlet.
As she inspected them, a new sound reached her from the front of the house, distant, low and rhythmically steady. It was the passing bell at Netherlea church, tolling the news of a death. Dropping the keys back where she had found them, she satisfied herself that everything was just as it had been; then, silently returning downstairs, she pulled on her cloak and hurried away to the church. She must now collect her searcher’s bag and learn the name of whichever of Netherlea’s inhabitants had just passed away from this life.
According to her daughter Alice, Nanny Seagoes had left this world just an hour ago. Alice was a sensible woman, who kept a small herd of cows and sold butter at the market. Stocky and broad-faced, she greeted Tabitha with grave cordiality. ‘The pity is she had a nasty sort of fit at her end time. We was all hoping for an easy passing – but the Lord din’t choose to give it her.’
‘You were with her, then? Was anyone else here?’
‘No. Just meself. Though I’m right thankful Mister Dilks come this morning and spoke the proper words over her.’
Tabitha caught her breath. ‘She could drink the wine, then?’
‘Now, that I cannot say. I were out milking, and then I passed him on the lane; he said she were in God’s good hands and whatever was needful was done.’
Oh, was it, indeed? Tabitha halted abruptly at her first sight of the old lady, lying on her box bed; her eyes were still open, colourless and rheumy, in a face of livid pink.
‘She has a most high colour, Alice.’
‘Aye, she does. That were the fit brought all the blood to her face.’
Sir John’s face had also, by all reports, been scarlet from the apoplexy. Tabitha approached the dead woman and began unbinding the white plait of hair that hung over her shoulder. Pink patches also blotched Nanny’s throat and chest. Tabitha held her tongue; she had never seen such livid marks upon a corpse.
Alice brought her a bowl of fresh water, and Tabitha began gently to wash the old lady’s hands. Her fingers were as tight as knotted twigs of oak; she could not unbend them.
‘Could your mother speak at the end?’
‘No, she weren’t up to talking, poor thing. She were proper badly. I come here and she’s vomited all down her shift.’
‘So you cleaned her up?’
‘Aye, I used the best of her rosewater to make her nice and spruce again. I want people to see her as she always were, neat as a pin.’
Tabitha touched the woman’s arm. ‘I’ll get started, if you like. You put some tea on, and rest your feet.’
Once alone, she went straight to the communion tray. The wafers remained on a little dish of pewter, but the wine bottle was unstoppered and empty. She sniffed it – the heady scent she had smelled last time was barely a ghost in the newly cleaned glass. Damn the parson. She had been hoping for a sample to steal away, for the doctor to make trial of.
‘That’s an odd thing,’ she said in an even voice to Alice, when she joined her. ‘The church wine bottle is cleaned out. It looks as if it’s all been drunk. Or did you wash it out yourself?’
Alice had been staring into the fireplace and raised a pair of eyes that were tired and dull.
‘I wouldn’t know about that. It’s all just as it were when I first come here.’
‘I’ll drop the parson’s things off later,’ Tabitha said.
‘Save your feet; he’ll be back later, he told me. ’Tis too bad, eh? Both of us losing our mothers this year.’
‘It is a trial we never expect to face. Would you like me to tell anyone, Alice? Has anyone else come around to call yet?’
Alice took a long draught of hot tea. ‘Well, Mrs Hay next door come round for a gawp once the bell started up. But no one else. Only the constable come round earlier on.’
‘Whatever for? I thought Joshua had plenty on his plate, what with Sir John ailing and this trial coming up in Janu
ary.’
‘He brought a letter, all the way from Chester Castle. Seems some lawyer were going to ask Ma to be a witness to the character of that murderer fellow. Starling, is it? Well, he shall have to go to the gallows without my mother’s word.’
A knock on the door interrupted them, and Tabitha rose to let in a gaggle of neighbours. Then she sidled back into the room where Nanny lay, her soul snuffed out before her time was due, and stroked the old woman’s carnation-pink cheek. Coldly and secretly, someone had administered poison to this defenceless woman, she was sure of it.
‘I am sorry I failed you,’ Tabitha murmured.
FORTY
A Riddle
Come gentlemen you, I address myself to,
For the name of this flattering rogue;
You love it no doubt, so you’ll soon find it out:
For amongst you it’s greatly in vogue.
It smiles in your face, when the slave you embrace,
My words you will find to be true;
But it leaves a damned curse, like for better or worse,
Which your cunning can never undo.
But he that denies it, and with ease can despise it,
And makes it his servant, not master;
Will find it his friend, and on him it will tend,
And comfort him when in disaster.
The 21st day of December 1752
St Thomas’s Day (New Calendar)
Luminary: The shortest day – 7 hours and 34 minutes long.
Observation: The Sun enters Capricorn 56 minutes after 11.
Prognostication: A loose stitch unravels the greatest works.
Nat had now been moved to a new cell on a higher floor of the gaol. He was dismayed to find himself sharing it with another inmate, an apothecary named Reuben Pearce, a cadaverous fellow with watchful eyes that followed him about the room. He wore a balding wig and a patched black gown, like the wreck of a once-fine fellow. It was not cheering to Nat, either, that Pearce had already been condemned to the gallows. He looked around the small stone-hewn room, at the iron rings in the wall and the large, though securely barred, window and wondered if he was now in the notorious Dead Men’s Cell.
When Tabitha visited on St Thomas’s Day, Pearce watched her keenly, not even shifting himself to the far end of the cell. Her news was not good. Nanny Seagoes had been hastened to an early death and so Nat’s trial was going to prove a vastly speedy performance with not even a single friend to stand up and commend his character. She pulled some handwritten papers from her pocket.
‘For what it’s worth, Nat, I’ve written out the words on the De Vallory memorial.’
He pushed the papers inside the front of his coat that looked none too clean now. Then, leaning towards Tabitha, he said, ‘We must speak softly. Our companion is listening.’
Tabitha raised her mouth close to his ear. ‘I am full of apprehensions, Nat. You must consider escape.’
He started back. ‘I would rather choose justice.’
‘I would rather choose a living bridegroom.’ She raised a hopeful smile.
‘But how?’ He spoke as quietly as he could.
‘Jansen the guard is in need of a large sum to reach Virginia. He has an uncle there who needs his help to run a profitable farm. I think it better odds than discovering the identity of De Angelo.’
He nodded, cautioning her to speak even more softly.
‘On the journey over here I talked with Joshua. Sir John’s business brings him back and forth in his cart to Chester often. On Christmas Eve he’ll carry me here again when there’s to be a Goldsmith’s Fair. There will be many strangers about, and I’ll pass myself off as a genteel widow. It is my best chance to sell the timepiece and raise the money.’
‘It is too dangerous. Consider, Tabitha, the object is known to be stolen – you could also risk the gallows. Sell the ring I gave you, instead.’
She pulled out the ring from where it hung on a ribbon inside her bodice. The gem sparkled like a tiny star, even in the gloom of the cell. ‘I cannot. I have never possessed anything so precious,’ she whispered, and he felt a lump grow in his throat.
‘Very well. Then you must sell Jupiter, and any possessions of mine you can find of worth at Eglantine Hall.’
He reached out and pulled her to him. Her face was cold, but her mouth was warm and yielding; when they drew apart, she was half-smiling at him, a little hope restored.
When Tabitha had left him, Nat slumped back against the slippery stonework and unstoppered the bottle of brandy. Later that evening he would settle down to Latin translation, and then consign himself to blessed oblivion.
‘You like to drink, Mr Starling.’ The apothecary had an insinuating, wheezing voice that Nat found excessively provoking.
‘What is it to you?’ he answered sharply. ‘I see you are lusting after my brandy, sir. Do you intend to spoil my enjoyment entirely?’
‘Pray be kind, sir. If I might taste only a drop – at two o’clock this afternoon I will dance on the air, as they say. It would be my very last comfort on this earth.’
With ill grace, Nat carried it over to the apothecary, who snatched it from him and applied it speedily to his lips.
‘That was a very fine woman,’ Pearce said. ‘Worth living for.’
The castle bell rang out the hour of one o’clock, and Nat shuddered to hear it; this man had less than an hour remaining until he was strung up at the Gallows Hill.
‘I heard you talking of De Angelo as if he still lived,’ Pearce said, taking a further slug of brandy. ‘He’s dead and gone, sir.’
Nat took a sharp breath. ‘Dead? You knew him? The same fellow who wrote the almanack?’
‘Indeed, sir. I was apprenticed to him years back. Plaguey old quack, God bless his bones.’
‘Where was that?’
‘Lamb Row here in Chester, it was. He had his so-called consulting rooms upon the top landing. Called himself an astrologer, blood-letter, magus, star-gazer, and any other esoteric art that he could get his aged tongue to pronounce. A prize charlatan, I’d call him. But he did have one great art, and that was his almanack. It is still printed, they say.’
Nat seized the man’s arm. ‘Who prints it now?’
Pearce shook his head. ‘I wish I knew, sir. All the printing blocks were lost; I went to fetch them myself when I heard he’d snuffed it, but they had been stolen by then. The almanacks are a canny business – no need to change much, excepting the dates and a few novel predictions. Every year he had orders for two thousand copies. Sixpence a head; that made more money than even cakes and ale.’
Nat grasped both of Pearce’s shoulders, shaking his bony frame. ‘Think, man. Who could have taken them?’
Now a new sound drifted in through the barred grate; it was the rhythmic tramp of soldiers marching into the courtyard.
‘Tell me. Who took them?’
Pearce’s eyes were circular with fear as a hammering knock sounded on the door below them. When he spoke, Nat could scarcely hear what he said through his chattering teeth.
‘If I knew … I’d have chased that poxed thief. And stolen them back.’ He cowered away from Nat and drank deep from the bottle. Nat could not find the cruelty necessary to wrestle the brandy away.
‘Did you ever know a ruffian of the name Darius?’
‘No.’ Pearce was shaking now like a hound in a rainstorm.
‘How did this De Angelo die?’
‘That’s not his real name,’ wheezed the apothecary. ‘He was old Don Eagle – Don always loved an anagram.’
‘And? How did he die?’
‘It was a dropsy; he swelled up like a fish bladder.’
Now they both hearkened to the sound of voices in the yard, and Nat’s own stomach clutched with sympathetic fear as heavy footsteps approached from the stairway. Pearce hugged the bottle to his heart. ‘Thank you, my friend. Bless you and good luck.’ He lifted off his balding wig and, after poking around inside it, pulled a large black table
t from out of the horsehair. ‘Dutch courage,’ he explained. ‘The best of my physic I’ve saved till last.’
He threw it into his mouth and swigged it back with the last few gulps of brandy.
‘My wits will be jigging with the fairies by the time they carry me up to the scaffold. I always was a coward …’
‘Have you a spare one for me, friend?’
Pearce shook out his wig by its pigtail and made a bleak face. ‘All gone. A plucky fellow like you will have no need for it.’
Hell’s teeth! ‘Listen, Pearce – did De Angelo ever talk of Netherlea?’
The door opened. At the first sight of the guards, Pearce tried to flatten himself against the wall, his eyes as round as pebbles.
‘Tell me! You owe me for the brandy,’ Nat said fiercely, as the soldiers seized Pearce by the arms and dragged him across the floor.
‘Netherlea?’ he said stupidly, as he crossed the threshold to the stairs. ‘Aye. That’s where De Vallory lived.’
Nat stood at the barred window, drawn to witness Pearce’s final journey as a wasp is drawn to the honey trap he will drown in. The apothecary tottered across the frosty yard to where the city boundary was marked by the ancient white Gloverstone. There the sheriff’s men waited with a cart, ready to draw him to the crowd at Gallows Hill. Pearce could no longer stand up straight, and was leaning unsteadily against a guard. At least he would have a painless end when the time came.
Nat squinted. As though to ape the dimming of the limelights at the Playhouse, the sky had muted to the colour of dark lead. Was a storm approaching? As he watched, a few large and feathery snowflakes danced gracefully down to the earth and, in the distance, he heard the orders for the cart to set off towards the gallows.
The sky was growing darker every moment, a low, charcoal smudge. Would Tabitha be able to find out more about the real De Angelo? He had a little money still to spare, but had quill, pen and paper to hand. Quickly, he wrote her a few lines, giving Pearce’s story in brief and the address at Lamb Row. De Vallory, he recalled bitterly. Which De Vallory would have dealings with a charlatan astrologer? Calling out to the guard, he gave him sixpence and hoped that, with luck, the post boy might overtake Tabitha on the road.
The Almanack Page 26