‘She must have been frightened, here alone?’
‘Aye, but she were that lovelorn over Mr Ashe, she hung on his every word. Then, bless ’im, next we knew he smuggled his lass out of here to another place. Mr Ashe had found his Christian conscience see, and wouldn’t let a mother be parted from her child.’
‘Bravo for him,’ I said with feeling.
‘Aye, but when the mistress found the pretty bird had flown, there were such a how-row! But Mr Ashe stood his ground, he was young and hot-blooded, and that night he went off to be a soldier. As for her ladyship, her heart was broke in two. Within the six-month, a letter come to say poor Mr Ashe were slain, sliced through in that battle across the ocean. She got a sort of brain-fever then, pacing the house, never resting. I grew afeared of her, for she’d come up behind you and grasp your shoulder and fix on you with frantic eyes. “Where’s my baby child?” she’d ask. “I heard him crying but I lost him just now. Where have you hidden him?”
‘Poor Dorcas, we called her. Her soul-case were cracked, it were a half-life she were living. Wandering and searching for that baby she were, till the day she fell dead. Then the bailiff come and told me the Hall were to go to some sort of high court, and I could stay on to keep an eye on it. And only this summer it were put to rent.’
I tried to banish this nursemaid’s nonsense and said, ‘To think, if Mr Ashe had agreed to be her ladyship’s companion in her final years, perhaps even married her, all could have turned out well.’
Nan turned to me, gape-jawed. ‘Perhaps I din’t make meself clear, mistress. Mr Ashe were Lady Blair’s sister’s son. He were her blood nephew. The scriptures don’t allow such unnatural connections.’
I wondered how I had misunderstood so much. ‘No, Nan, I’m sorry, I had no notion.’
‘No matter, mistress. Here now, you’ll like this, I’ve kept a chest of all them old confects and devices . . .’
Just then a powerful notion of being observed made me look over my shoulder. I got up to look outside, and there stood Peg at the threshold, as if just arriving in her cloak and bonnet, with a bundle in her hand.
She bobbed at me and laughed. ‘Pardon mistress. I never expected to find you down here. It gave me a little fright, seeing you.’
‘Yes, and you surprised us, too. I was – well, helping Nan carry her garden stuffs.’ It was ridiculous, but I felt the need to explain my presence to Peg.
‘You mustn’t take notice of old Nan’s maunderings,’ she said lightly, setting her bundle down. ‘You don’t know fact from fable, do you, pet?’
The old dame nodded. Comprehending that I was preventing them from getting to work, I rose to return upstairs. As I left, Peg quickly gathered up her receipt book and hugged it to her breast. It was odd that I recalled the title a twelve-month later, when I had the chance to look at it more closely. Back then I had glanced at the flyleaf and seen Mother Eve’s Secrets written in Peg Blissett’s lady’s hand.
14
Delafosse Hall
October 1792
~ Of Red, and How to Make It ~
Boil an ounce of cochineal in half a pint of water for about five minutes; then add half an ounce of cream of tartar, and half an ounce of alum; boil on a slow fire about as long again. You will know your colour is done, by dipping a pen into it, and writing therewith on white paper; for if it writes as clear as ink and keeps its colour, it is done. Take it off the fire, add half a quarter of a pound of sugar and let it settle. Keep in a bottle well stoppered.
Charlotte Spenlove’s way of making Red, copied from a book of French Receipts
‘Did you find them?’
Nan pushed the rattling seed heads towards Peg. She peered at them and saw the queer ragged crowns to their tops.
Peg jerked her head towards the door. ‘Off you go.’
Nan scuttled past her, not even daring to look in her face. Alone, Peg beat her fingers slowly against her mouth, looking into space, cogitating. Well, the old mopsy’s patter had made mighty interesting listening from behind the door.
First of all, she found the right page in Mother Eve’s Secrets for what she wanted to make. Mrs Croxon had been touching it, idly turning the pages. Yet what did it matter? She was just a flat, who couldn’t see what stood before her, even if it jumped up and bit her nose.
It was while she was assembling her ingredients that she started to tidy away the small chest Nan had pulled out to show the mistress. ‘Confects’, was what she’d called them. Lifting the lid it looked to be only broken china, a tarnished spoon, a piece of dried up marchpane. The small parcel in the corner had a musty look, but she opened up the stiff paper to find – what in damnation was that? The cake itself was dust, but the device had survived. Carrying it in her palm to the lamp, she spent a while studying it closely. It was a figure of a swaddled baby the size of a thumb, laid inside a miniature rocking cradle. Lifting it to her lips she set the tip of her tongue against its underside. The pleasant tingle told her it was made of sugar.
Placing it back in its bundle of paper she saw the inner sheet was a letter. Laying the stiff parchment flat on the table, she read it with growing fascination. It was written by the soppy article Nan had talked of, the one with a jack-in-the-belly. It amused her that the writer had not even inquired if Nan could read:
My dear Nan,
My friend, after all your great kindness, as I promised I am sending word of how matters stand for me. Last month I was took to bed of the most beautiful fair little babe and the baptism just being performed, I am sending you a piece of the Christening cake for you to raise a toast to my bonny – and new liberated – baby. I am indeed fortunate to hold my precious infant in my arms, for the news of my darling Ashe’s loss almost took my own life from me, from the desperate shock to my body.
As for our tormentor, I hope it gave the wicked creature satisfaction to send my dear child’s father to his grave, and thereby deny me the support of the man who should one day have been my husband. Of my own wit, I have found myself another fellow to take me to the altar and sign the baptismal book, though I had to make heavy use of the purse Mr Ashe supplied me with. Needless to say, I am safe, if not content with my lot.
Thank you again, most loyal friend, may God bless you for your kindness.
As for the old witch – fie on her! May she be visited with the suffering she has wrought on me by ten thousand-fold. May she rot in hell and never know rest,
Your affectionate friend . . .
Well, the young mother certainly had a high theatrical style of letter-writing. Peg pursed her lips as she struggled to make out the unexpected name described by the tattered signature. Then, placing the letter and cradle back in the box, she wondered how she might put this extraordinary fact to the greatest use.
It was time to make a start on making the special Usquebaugh for the master. With Mother Eve’s Secrets open before her, she hummed merrily under her breath. This distillery was an unexpected boon. She was building up her hoard of pretty bottles of queer potions, alchemical powders, lozenges, elixirs, and pills no larger than pin-heads. Still, she must change the lock soon, to avoid any more unwelcome visitors. She patted the chatelaine that bounced at her waist; a plaque of steel hooked to her belt, with clips holding scissors, a pincushion, and a most useful collection of knives and hooks. It was growing heavy with keys, both those she found and those Mrs Croxon handed to her in her vague, apologetic way. Now she had keys to every part of the house.
And Nan was proving useful. Looking at the seed pods on the drying plate, she resisted the temptation to touch them. Granny had told a tale of some children eating such stuff who had then slept for four solid days, and been lucky to wake. Besides, she had other fish than eels to fry, or was that other cordials to doctor? She assembled the great glass globe of the alembic and set it on a low fire, attaching the pipe so it dripped into another bowl. Once she had seen a picture of one of those natural philosophers and their experiments. Now that was a life she might have
enjoyed if she were a man; discovering new compounds and waiting to see how those who ate them fared. Grinding up the Blistering Flies in a mortar until they were shiny crimson, she smiled to herself, for it put her in mind of the Palace.
*
Making colours had been Mary’s favourite task; squeezing green juice from spinach, or rubbing the indigo stone in water to make twilight blue. The making of cochineal red always provoked the same macabre jests. ‘A bowl of blood,’ Auntie would wheeze, overseeing the carefully stirred crimson liquid. ‘That’s what them anatomisers collect in a basin. I seen it in the Newgate Calendar. They cuts the corpse down from the gibbet and carry it off to the saw-bones’s house. A soul can never go to rest, once it is drained of every drop of blood.’ Wary of drips, she would carry the bowl of viscous red to Auntie to be tested. Dipping her pen in the crimson ink, Aunt Charlotte always recited the same words, to the gasps and hoots of the company.
‘“Who scribes in blood his heart’s desire – condemns his soul to the Devil’s fire.” Go on then, girl, ask the Devil for whatever you wishes for. ’Tis only your soul you must hand over in return.’
She had shrieked and jumped back from the dripping pen. ‘It’s not proper blood, Auntie!’ Auntie waited, quill pen in hand, to test the red on clean white paper. What would they ask for, they all wondered, if they could have their heart’s desires? Would a thousand pounds do? Hell’s teeth, it would not. They wanted palaces and treasures and gowns and gallant lovers. Occasionally the excited chatter took a sober turn. Miss Dora, mannish-faced and leather-belted, said she wanted only a few acres with chickens and a stream to walk by with a little dog. The rest scoffed at that and vied to describe the costliest diamonds and richest beaux.
‘Out damned spot! Will these hands ne’er be clean?’ mocked Miss Edwina, snatching at Mary’s fingers that were deep-reamed with scarlet. Edwina had once been an actress, and regaled them with the story of Lady Macbeth, who had murdered a man and could never again scrub her hands clean. And as she listened, she had sat on her stool with her chin in crimsoned hands, transported by spanking tales of ghosts and murders, blood and gold.
Every day as Peg served Mrs Croxon, her first impression of her mistress did not change: she was a fish out of water, forever with her face in a book or rambling about the grounds. She had odd notions, too. Fancy talking with that half-wit Nan? And the cold-hearted way His Nibs treated her, that was an entertainment in itself.
Still, Peg was buttering her up like a plate of hot rolls. Each morning Peg listened to her attempts to give orders, then briskly stepped in and told her what was to happen. There was some venison that would do very nicely, Peg would say, recollecting Nan’s saying she could roast a saddle.
‘Oh, would you? Well, if it is not too much trouble?’
‘For you, Mrs Croxon, nothing is too much trouble.’
Then, just as Peg felt she could swan through each day without ruffling her feathers, Mrs Croxon wafted a letter in front of her. Where had that come from? Peg oversaw all the post for Delafosse Hall. That visiting card from Miss Sybilla Claybourn, for instance – that had been a close call. It was a good thing Miss Claybourn had sent Sue over with it – the same Sue she knew from the lodging house. She had invited her in to have a good old hobnob over a dish of tea in her housekeeper’s quarters.
After Sue had gone, she had collected Miss Claybourn’s card with the others that had arrived from the Earlby gentry. Slowly, and with some pleasurable ceremony, she burned them in the kitchen fire. As she dreamily watched the cards curl and blacken, she felt the prickle of someone watching her over her shoulder. Thrusting the last card into the fire with the poker, she looked up. But it was only Nan.
‘Looking for work?’ she snapped.
Nan shook her head and shuffled off. What did she care? Even if Nan had seen her, that bag of bones couldn’t read.
Now Mrs Croxon wafted a letter before her that must have been picked up directly in the village. ‘We are to have a guest. It is my oldest friend, Anne – Mrs Greenbeck. She will arrive here on the twenty-third of November.’
That was barely a month hence. Peg hid her vexation under a bright enquiry. ‘How long will she be staying here?’
‘She has not yet said. It does depend on—’ On what? On how the master behaved himself, no doubt.
‘Well, of course she’ll be made very welcome,’ she said, wondering how she might achieve the opposite.
‘Oh, thank you, Peg. I cannot say I feel prepared for visitors yet. And the Hall, as it is—’
Peg gave a long, sympathetic sigh. ‘We could offer a warmer welcome in the spring. Perhaps your friend could put off her visit till then?’
‘Oh no, no. It is quite settled. You must do your best, Peg. And maybe it will do me good.’ She pressed her fingertips between her eyes in a nervous gesture that Peg knew well. For very different reasons, Peg guessed her mistress was just as reluctant as she herself, to have a guest to stay.
There was one thing about Mrs Croxon that did impress her. Every morning the mistress disappeared up to the garret, where Peg assumed she did mindless needlework, or Bible-reading, or some such flim-flam. Then one day, after her mistress had gone into town, Peg tried out a key from her chatelaine and took a five-minute sneak about her mistress’s attic room. That writing box of hers that contained all her letters, where did she hide it?
To her surprise the chamber was filled with painting stuff, and Mrs Croxon’s work was spread about for her to see. She picked up a picture of the master sleeping, ready to scoff at some wishy-washy scrawl. Instead, she looked at it for a mighty long time, unable to pull herself away. Mrs Croxon had caught His Nibs, all right. Peg didn’t know how she’d done it, but it was the spit of him – it had a liveliness to the pencil lines, and a sureness to the colour. Beside it was a magnifying glass on a stand, and a tiny copy she was making onto a disc of white stuff.
Two other miniatures hung on the wall; one of a mournful mope, who must be her mistress’s dead mother. The other was a young lad, pale and fair, whom Peg guessed to be a younger brother, perhaps also dead, for it was wound with a plait of turnip blond hair. How fiddly, Peg thought, all that twiddling about with chopped-off hair. Morbid, too, touching stuff from a corpse. She crossed herself half-heartedly and carried on rifling through piles of papers, recognising the master pictured in lots of different attitudes. With his coat open and his linen loose at his neck, he looked a swell cove, like a gentleman in a play. The pictures were not always flattering, mind you; his wife had caught that downturned sulk to his mouth, and the way he slouched as he sat, absent-mindedly stroking his own hair. He was asleep in the tiny picture being worked upon. How apt was that? His handsome face completely dumb.
Pinned on the wall was a mighty fine picture of Delafosse Hall at twilight; as good as a picture in a newspaper, with the green creeper covering everything, save for the golden rectangles of the windows. It was like a builders’ model of a house Peg had once seen in a shop window; there was something beguiling about the tiny doors and knockers and curtains. She traced the entrance, the old parlour windows, the drawing room, the Great Hall. Up at the top, just below the eaves, was the window to this very room. A figure stood at that window. A tiny woman was staring directly at Peg. For an instant it made her skin prick, as if she were being spied on from the miniature window by – no, she wouldn’t think of that. Hurriedly, she started to put back what she had disturbed, making ready to return downstairs. Still not a sign of the writing box. But here was something useful: a folder of parchment, letter weight, and what was this? Thin transparent onion paper. She thrust a sheet in her pocket.
No, it wasn’t just the picture that had made her uneasy – it was a noise on the stair. The stair creaked again, closer and louder. Peg froze. What reason could she give for having unlocked the door and come in here? Before she could think at all, the door was flung open. Guiltily, she sprang backwards.
‘What the Devil are you doing in Mrs Croxon’s room?�
�� Peter Croxon filled the doorway, spite sharpening his tousled fair features. Lord! If there was one person she didn’t want sneaking up on her, it was the master’s moralising brother. He remembered her from old, she could see it in his stony eyes.
‘Tidying up,’ she answered smartly, moving the pictures about on the table.
‘I very much doubt that. Where is Mrs Croxon?’
‘Out,’ she said, eyes cast down, willing him to go.
‘She is out, sir. Or have you forgotten your position here? Oh, and by the way, I have noticed that for a housekeeper you employ remarkably few servants.’
She didn’t reply, but scowled at him as she made to leave. In answer he blocked the door with his outstretched arm. His leanness was the sort that was strong and fast. He also stood a good head taller than her.
‘Now we are alone, Peg, or whatever you call yourself these days – know this. I am watching you,’ he said in a low growl. Still he refused to budge out of the way. ‘And I am watching Grace, too. If anything should happen to her—’
She made a calculation and glanced up at him with a beseeching expression. ‘Mr Croxon, if you would be good enough not to tell the mistress I was here —’
The Penny Heart Page 15