The Honey and the Sting

by E C Fremantle

  There is a pouch containing ammunition, a powder horn, patches, a packet of lead shot and a ram-rod, all familiar to her since Gifford taught her how to handle a firearm. Everyone was surprised because she met the target first time, despite the kick causing her to stumble. Gifford had assumed she’d used a pistol before, but she never had.

  She hears something. A creak. A scuff. She jumps to her feet, picking up the basket, standing absolutely still. Her heart is tapping so loudly she fears it will give her away.

  But everything falls silent, just the hum of silence and the very faint tick of the clock in the blue room, matching the tick of her heart. She returns to her search but there is nowhere else to look. She stops for a moment, to consider where she would hide a key if she really didn’t want it to be found. Looking round the room, her gaze alights on the lintel above the door and, on tiptoe, she can just reach to skim her fingertips along the top. The key falls, glinting, into her hand.

  A quick glance round the door at the silent landing and she returns to unlock the box. A strong vinegary smell assaults her on opening the lid. A bottle of ink, its stopper oozing, is the source. She lifts out a stack of papers and a leather-bound ledger, looking underneath for trinkets, a perfumed letter, a locket, a pressed flower in a fold of paper, a sonnet. She riffles through the pile of papers, bills and receipts mostly, as far as she can tell. At the bottom are several more phials of his tincture and under those is a sealed packet of papers, stamped, appearing official, as if it might come from a notary’s office. She considers opening it but changes her mind and turns to the ledger. She flicks through its pages. It appears to be some kind of journal, as there are dates written at the top of each page. Her heart beats faster. This will tell her all about him.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing in here?’ Hope jumps up, dropping the journal. Hester is standing in the doorway, holding a candle. The light throws itself over her face at a strange angle, making her seem ghoulish. ‘Put that back. You have no business …’

  Hope does as she is told, returning everything to the chest, closing the lid, locking it and replacing the key.

  ‘Now come out of there.’ Hester pulls her by the arm, shutting the door firmly. ‘What, in Heaven’s name, do you think you were doing?’ She waits for an explanation, her expression stern.

  ‘I don’t know. I was curious about him.’ She wants to cry over her own stupidity. ‘You said he had a sweetheart and I wanted to know –’

  ‘You have no right, Hope.’ Hester is clearly still aggravated, her composure frayed. ‘And, besides, Lieutenant Bloor has enough to do keeping us safe, without you mooning after him like a lovesick calf.’ She looks half dead with anguish and Hope feels terrible for adding to her burden.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice is thin as a reed. ‘I didn’t mean to –’

  She thaws, taking Hope in her arms. ‘We’re all grieving. All turned upside down.’

  Hope feels the sorrow flood back into her.

  A sudden thud sounds from the floor below – the empty rooms – followed by a clatter.

  Hester tears down the stairs, Hope following more tentatively, a noose of fear gripping her throat.

  The door is slightly open and Hope racks her mind to remember if it was closed when she passed it a few minutes earlier.

  The lieutenant has also appeared, the Giffords behind him, and pushes it open with his foot. ‘Who goes there?’

  Quiet hisses back.

  Hester follows him in, her candle throwing a yellow glow into the gloom that kisses the hulks of fabric-shrouded furniture. Dark shapes are scattered over the floor. The lieutenant stoops to pick one up. It is a pewter drinking vessel. Hester holds the candle up higher to illuminate the back wall, where, they can all see now, a tall dresser has fallen forward, casting the cups and plates that must have lined its shelves all around the room. Its linen cover lies to one side, like a ghost’s discarded shape.

  No one speaks.

  Margie breaks through the silence. ‘Must have been jolted when the balcony fell. Or else it’s that wretched cat.’ They all laugh in relief, except Hope, who can barely breathe, or move, or think.

  ‘What happened?’ It is Rafe’s sleep-shot voice, coming from the stairs.

  ‘Sweetheart!’ Hester calls to him. ‘It’s nothing to worry about. The dresser fell down in here, that’s all.’ She takes Hope firmly by the hand and, telling everyone to leave the mess until morning, marches up to where Rafe is standing, his monkey hanging from his hand. He seems small and frail, much younger than his years.

  Inside the bedroom, Hester and Hope straighten the bed. Something clangs to the floor.

  The sight of it knocks the breath right out of her.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asks Hester. ‘Hope?’

  Hope tries to reply but can’t form the words.

  ‘It’s Margie’s knife.’ Rafe picks it up, seeming more curious than perturbed. ‘How can Aunt Melis have put it here again, when she is dead?’

  Rafe is the first to use the bare word, not ‘passed’, not ‘gone’, but ‘dead’.

  ‘She must have done it this morning … before the accident.’ Hester takes the knife from her son and puts it on the cabinet beside her writing box.

  It seems to Hope as if Melis fell from the balcony days ago but only a handful of hours have passed since. Time is playing tricks again. She wants desperately to go and fetch the clock, so she can keep an eye on it, but the idea of traversing the dark landing alone and going into the blue room, with its collapsed balcony, fills her with dread. She placates herself in the only way she knows: it is the fourteenth day of August, twelve days since they left Orchard Cottage, eight days since they arrived here.

  Counting days, like a silent prayer, she undresses, folding her dress and pulling a clean shift over her head. Then she squats with the small broom and sweeps up the insect carcasses that are scattered along the skirting beneath the window. Every day there are more – yesterday she counted thirty bees and this evening there must be double that.

  Getting into bed, she is horribly aware of the cold empty expanse between her and Rafe. She doesn’t want to lie in Melis’s vacant place, as if her sister’s cold body still occupies it. ‘Can’t we all go to Ludlow together tomorrow?’ she whispers. ‘Go somewhere else. I don’t feel safe here, Hessie.’

  ‘The Ludlow trip is postponed.’ Hester’s voice is clipped but mellows when she says, ‘This really is the safest place for us. It won’t be for much longer. Ambrose will come and …’ She leaves her words hanging, which makes Hope wonder if she believes what she is saying.

  Before blowing out the candle, they lie in silence. A crack, fine as a hair, has appeared, running across the bulging ceiling and something seems to be oozing from it. Resin from the beams, she tells herself, but in the fading light it looks like blood.

  Felton

  Felton waits.

  He can hear the women talking quietly. If he presses his ear to the door of their bedchamber, he can just about make out what they are saying. Hope is pleading to travel to Ludlow, but Hester is firm. If the pliable girl knew she’d end up in a forest grave, she wouldn’t be so keen.

  Tiptoeing back to his room, his thoughts whir as his plan comes clear. He will have to find some other pretext to lure Hester into the forest, now she is bent on staying put. Grief hasn’t addled her as much as he’d hoped.

  He waits for the house to fall silent, Melis’s garbled deathbed vision of George’s murder returning to him. He does his best to dismiss the thought. But she predicted correctly the place of her own death. Coincidence, he tells himself firmly. The woman barely knew if she were coming or going. Despite his pragmatism a stitch of unease catches in him.

  He settles down to write in his journal. Laying himself bare on the page, however futile it may be, brings some small sense of respite for his cankered soul and he continues to spill his confession over the virgin pages. Eventually all he can hear is the scratch of his pen. Everyone is aslee
p.

  Locking away his writing things, he tucks Bloor’s blade inside his jacket, ensures his pistol is loaded and secured in his belt, then pinches out the candle. He moves stealthily down through the house, feeling his way through the dark, keeping close to the walls where the boards are less likely to creak.

  He uses the front door, not wanting to pass through the kitchen, too close to the Giffords’ quarters. The bolts slide back easily. He had smeared a little goose grease on them when he was doing his rounds. He stands a moment on the steps until his eyes accustom to the vague moonlight. The remains of the balcony are stacked to one side and the vine has been hacked away, where it had been hanging loose. He retrieves Gifford’s shovel from where he had tucked it earlier among the piles of rotten timber.

  The yard-dog rouses with a low growl. Felton squats, whispering to the animal, scratching its neck until it settles down again. He doesn’t use the main gate but squeezes through one of the rotten panels in the narrow space behind the barn, slipping unseen into the forest and finding his way onto the main path. After walking a short distance he leaves the track and pushes into the undergrowth, tying small lengths of twine to the trees he passes so he can find his way back. He comes, eventually, to the perfect place, a large evergreen bush with a hollow space inside its jacket of foliage.

  Hanging his shirt from a branch to avoid having to explain away any dirty stains, he begins to dig. His bad arm is feeling somewhat better and he is able to use it a little, thanks to the ministrations of the woman whose grave he is presently digging. Though the ground is hard, he chips away at the surface, building a rhythm, until the earth gives more freely. He is reminded of nights digging trenches to hide in when setting ambushes for raiding parties. He enjoyed those missions, the camaraderie, the careful strategy, and became something of an expert in stealth and surprise.

  He constructs a story in his mind, imagining arriving back at the lodge without the woman, painting a look of panic over his features. Hester is missing! She left to answer the call of nature. She was only alone for a moment and then she was gone. I searched and searched. I heard wild dogs. In packs they can be horribly … He will leave it hanging, allowing their imaginations to fill in the gap, and toys with the idea of bringing back a torn remnant of her dress, perhaps smearing it with rabbit’s blood, or leaving such an item to be found by someone else when they go out to continue the search.

  He hears something. The crack of a stick. Footfall. He stops digging, holds his breath, crouching in the fresh-dug hole, and slides his pistol from his belt, inwardly cursing the metallic click as he sets the dog-lock. The thin light of dawn filters through the trees above.

  ‘Oy!’ It is a male voice, one he doesn’t know. ‘What’s going on?’ A dark shape looms over the grave.

  Reflex-quick, on instinct, Felton fires. A flare of light and a clap of thunderous sound cracks through the night. He is temporarily deafened, his ears ringing. The shape slumps forward, falling in on top of him. Felton heaves it off. The stench is pungent, of urine and animal, strong enough to quench the sulphur smell of the blast.

  He feels great mats of woolly fibre beneath his fingers. It is a man’s snarled hair. Bile surges in his throat. Sliding his hand down to the neck, he is unable to find a pulse and neither is there any sign of breath from the crusted lips.

  He can hear the yard-dog barking in response to the shot. Felton hauls himself out of the grave, hurriedly scraping in just enough soil to cover the body for the meantime. The woman will have to share her final resting place with this stinking creature. Leaving the spade hidden, he tugs on his shirt and runs back towards the house, brushing the dirt from his breeches as he goes, working out how he will explain away the gunshot.

  On entering the yard from behind the barn, he sees Lark running out of the house. The place is in a commotion. The cockerel is on the roof of the henhouse, strutting back and forth while emitting an alarmed crowing, the goats are bleating inside the barn and the yard-dog is still barking madly, careering back and forth along the fence.

  ‘Who goes there?’ she shouts.

  ‘It is I, Lieutenant Bloor.’

  ‘Oh, thank God!’ She reaches out a hand to touch him, as if to be absolutely sure. ‘Did you hear the shot?’ She is deathly pale in dawn’s blue light. ‘I’ve been in to warn them. They are in the hiding place.’ She leans towards him, seeming to sniff at his clothes.

  ‘There’s no need for that.’ He thinks fast. ‘No need to worry. It was I who fired the shot.’

  ‘I thought I could smell sulphur on you … But why?’

  He feels bored through by her look and has to keep reminding himself she is blind. ‘I couldn’t sleep and heard a terrible racket coming from the dog. It was what roused me from my bed.’ From the paddock the grey horse watches him, as if it can see right through his lie. ‘A fox was trying to get into the henhouse. I chased it out and fired. Missed it.’

  ‘You sure it was a fox?’

  ‘I saw it.’ He nods emphatically, even though she cannot see him.

  ‘I thought I heard the shot before the dog started up.’

  ‘You must be mistaken.’ It was an error to say the dog woke him, he realizes, but all he can do is reaffirm the lie and hope she will accept it.

  Lark stands awhile, saying nothing, as if about to challenge him, but seems to change her mind. ‘Perhaps I was still asleep when the dog first barked. And I’m sure I heard footfall earlier. Long before the shot …’ She still seems doubtful.

  ‘The footfall you heard will have been me giving chase to the fox.’

  ‘Anyway, I must go up and tell Hester what’s happening.’ She turns towards the house. ‘She’ll be out of her mind with worry.’

  ‘I’ll take a look around. Make sure there’s nothing untoward, now it’s getting light …’

  Felton goes to the back door to sluice his face in the water-butt and wash any evidence from his hands. The butt is almost empty, just the gritty dregs, as it hasn’t rained in at least a week. He lifts his head to be confronted by Margie, who is standing on the stoop, arms folded.

  ‘Bloody foxes,’ she says.

  She must have overheard his conversation with Lark and Felton feels suddenly as if it is impossible to do anything in this place without someone seeing or hearing.

  ‘It might have been Hywel, who set the dog barking,’ Margie says. ‘He does tend to creep about at night, that one.’

  ‘Hywel?’

  ‘Just an elderly vagrant who wanders the woods. I leave scraps out for him so he doesn’t starve.’

  ‘Why wasn’t I told about him?’ Felton sounds angry. He is, but mostly at himself for his reckless lack of caution. He acted rashly in shooting the man and resolves to keep a better grip on himself. ‘How can I be expected to do my job properly if I’m not fully informed?’ He is thinking that at least the man he has killed won’t be missed.

  Hester

  Rafe and I sit huddled in the darkness of the priest-hole. In the rush I had remembered to pick up the kitchen knife and my hand is gripping its hilt so hard my knuckles ache.

  All falls quiet, just the clock’s tick, like water dripping onto the tight skin of a drum, resonating around the small space, a slow torture.

  Rafe is completely silent. I can hardly even hear his breath. My mind turns over and over the possibilities of what the shot in the forest might have meant, and why, when I banged on his door just now, the lieutenant was absent. I have no answers.

  The darkness gropes, and I imagine I can hear that sound again, creeping into my head, the low thrum – Melis’s sound. Rafe is now so still and so quiet I have to bat away irrational thoughts that he may be dead, that we both may be. I don’t know how much time has passed before he whispers, ‘If I went to live with my father, we wouldn’t have to hide like this, would we?’

  ‘I won’t let him take you.’ I hold his small body tight to me but he wriggles out of my grip, expelling a huff of air.

  ‘But he was nice.’r />
  I don’t know what to say. The George he met that day didn’t seem the kind of monster who would kidnap his son and hound us like this. All Rafe saw was the splendid glittering George – the mirage.

  ‘He promised me a horse.’

  ‘He can’t be trusted, sweetheart.’

  Despair warps me out of shape. I sense my strength beginning to sap and silently pray for Ambrose to reach us. I fumble, feeling around for the niche where I hid the letters. My fingers meet dust. Urgent now, I run my hands over the walls and the floor, into every crevice. Perhaps we pushed them into the back when we crawled inside. The clock chimes. The letters are gone.

  A stab of dread splits me open, spitting out a thousand unanswerable questions. Hope is the only one who knew where they were hidden. Even Melis didn’t know. Why would Hope move them? Why? Or did someone else see us put them there? Who?

  I begin to weep, desperate, silent, drooling sobs, over which I have no control. I haven’t cried since I can remember. I didn’t cry when Father died, I didn’t cry when George ruined me, or when he rejected me, I didn’t cry for Melis, and now I am crying for them all, a vat of hopeless, useless tears.

  Hope

  Hope sits with the gun in her lap cocked, barrel angled up so the shot stays in place.

  She is afraid of the gun.

  She will not allow herself to think of the ‘something bad’ in the house.

  The hand of the clock snaps into the half-hour. It is half past five and already getting light. She is trying to calculate how long it is since Lark roused them: it can’t be more than ten minutes.