The Honey and the Sting

by E C Fremantle

  ‘What is this?’

  She holds it up, looking at it as if she’d forgotten she was holding it. ‘I found it on the ground outside. It might have been what caused the fire.’

  ‘What is it?’ I can’t make it out.

  ‘It looks like the lieutenant’s magnifying-glass. It must have fallen from his pocket.’

  I can see it now, the metal ring and the protrusion where the handle was attached, the wood burned right away, the glass gone. Misgiving nips at me. ‘Where was it?’

  ‘Beside the henhouse. The straw’s so dry, the sun would have lit it in no time.’ She must read my expression because she says, ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do you think he intended to –’

  She interrupts me sharply. ‘Why would he do such a thing?’ She is the picture of indignation, as if I had accused her of setting the fire. ‘There’s no reason on earth. He’s the one who saved Rafe’s life. He’s a hero!’

  I can feel beads of moisture collecting over my forehead and upper lip. Again and again the balcony collapses, my sister falling endlessly.

  ‘I saw him.’ We turn at the sound of Rafe’s voice. ‘I saw him while I was collecting the eggs. He was right outside the henhouse before the door blew shut.’

  Melis is still falling, struts of the balcony crashing around her, and suspicion fizzes round my skull.

  ‘The magnifier must have fallen from his pocket,’ Hope repeats, her tone leaving no room for doubt.

  ‘Or he put it there deliberately.’ I don’t want to believe it and ask myself why he would do that, unable to find a filament of sense to follow. I am racking my brain for some specific sign of his bad intentions but all I can think of is his kindness to Rafe and his sympathy when Melis died.

  ‘Not you, too, Hester.’ Hope is making angry staccato gestures with her hands.

  ‘What do you mean – not me too?’

  ‘Lark doesn’t trust him either –’

  I interrupt her harshly: ‘You should have told me that.’ As I say it, I realize I am being unfair. Had she told me, I would likely have dismissed her qualms as nonsense. I think of the burned letters.

  Driven to know more, I scratch around in my head and remember finding Hope crouched over his box of papers, his leather journal in her hands, a guilty expression smacked over her face.

  ‘The journal. That’s where we will learn something about him.’

  Hope is being wilfully naive, shaking her head, saying, ‘You’re wrong about him.’

  ‘We shall see about that.’ My voice is firm, firmer than I feel.

  From the window I have a clear view of him slumped beside the well, like a sack of turnips.

  His room is silent. I notice a puddle under the open window where the rain must have driven in. It has soaked into the rush matting, making the place smell like a hayrick. I keep alert for the sound of footsteps. I have to stand on a chair to reach the lintel, relieved to find the key there.

  Unlocking the small chest, I remove the journal swiftly, tucking it under my shift, then replace the key and the chair. I wipe a wet footprint with my hem, still listening for the sound of his heavy tread on the stairs. As I am making sure I haven’t left a trace of my presence, I see the volume of essays beside the bed and, unable to curb my curiosity, I open the frontispiece to read the dedication he’d guarded so vehemently.

  For my blood brother, my first and dearest love. Ever yours with fondness and loyalty, your devoted GV.

  It doesn’t spring to mind until I am safely back behind the locked door of the bedchamber, the coincidence that GV also stands for George Villiers. Unease crawls up my spine. Perhaps it is no coincidence.

  The unease takes hold as I begin to see another version of events, thinking of Melis’s insistence that something evil inhabits this place. I want desperately to return to the comfort of ignorance but, steeling myself, I open the journal.

  Felton

  Felton is on the ground beside the well, crushed with fatigue, eyes gritty, throat smarting and dry, as if he has swallowed a fistful of powdered glass. The fire is out and the whole place has the stench of a battlefield.

  Margie stops to express her gratitude. She uses the word ‘hero’, too. He is glad when she heads for the sanctuary of the kitchen. He opens his good hand. The ugly serrated scar on the mound of his thumb is visible through the layer of soot. The thought of what might have happened to the boy horrifies him, renders his heart as black as his hand. It is his incompetence rather than his conscience he should be addressing. He had simply assumed, on hearing someone moving about in the henhouse, that it was Hester. It was always Hester. Each morning, since his arrival, she has collected the eggs. Had he only made sure it was her before he jammed the door – he rebukes himself mercilessly – he would not be facing this momentous setback.

  The boy might have died. He has allowed himself to grow attached to the child. He mustn’t give sentimentality room to breathe, or it will open a fissure in him, make him weak. The boy is just a boy – George’s boy. It is his duty to deliver him unscathed to his father.

  Gifford approaches the well, his gait uneven and painfully slow. He picks up the empty bucket, hangs it from the hook and winds it down. The winch complains. It needs greasing. He hoists it back up and leaves the full bucket beside Felton, patting his shoulder and meeting his eye with a nod of approval.

  ‘What you did today,’ is all he says. He is a man of few words but it is his tone that galls Felton. They all talk blithely of his bravery. If only they knew.

  He nods in acknowledgement of the old man and picks up the bucket, swallows a measure of cool water, then pours some over himself, sluicing his face. He sits with his thoughts. The storm is long gone, the sky bright once more, the sun beating down again, drying his wet shirt.

  The mother and her boy are inside the house. He thinks of the moment he delivered the child, silent with shock, into her arms and later when she had taken his hand, meeting his secret remorse with grateful eyes. It should have been me. He’d looked away when she’d said it, too quickly perhaps, for fear she would see the truth on his face. She was right – it should have been her.

  Leaden with fatigue, he drags himself up through the silent house. On entering his room he senses that something is not quite as it should be. The floor is wet but it is only because he left the window open. He inspects his chest. It is locked, appears untampered with. He dismisses his suspicions as paranoia.

  The phial of opium tincture draws his attention, like the star of Bethlehem. He drinks a generous quantity and flops onto his bed, waiting for the warm, heady swirl that makes everything matter so, so much less.

  Before he knows it he has plunged into a deep, exhausted sleep, marred by hellish dreams of fire and demons.

  THE ARROW THAT FLIETH IN THE DARK

  * * *

  Nor dies Revenge, although he sleep awhile;

  For in unquiet, quietness is feigned,

  And slumbering is a common worldly wile.

  Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy

  Hester

  I read in a horrified stupor, not stopping until I have finished it – every word. This man is up to his elbows in blood. In this outpouring, I have read of his love for George, of the lives he took in George’s name: my sister, whose death was no accident, Lieutenant Bloor, whose identity he stole, Hywel, the poor innocent vagrant. But the death I had not expected to read of in this cursed journal is that of dear Ambrose Cotton, our protector – the man, I think … oh, God, no, thought of as a father in the absence of my own. I have read, too, of the mission with which George has charged the lieutenant, the mission that brought him here to the Hall in the Forest.

  Make it seem like an accident.

  Emerging through the tangle of anguish is the crushing sense that I have somehow cheated Fate. Melis was right when she said there was a wasp in our nest. It seems so very implausible that George could truly have believed my sister and me so great a threat. Oh, but he does. This
journal describes a treacherous network of hate in which I sit enthroned, dictating a duke’s downfall, a spider at the heart of a great lethal web.

  I cast my mind back to that fateful morning at Littlemore Manor and the maid, Joan, appearing suddenly in the door to Ambrose’s study, just as I had been explaining the correspondence to him. I remember feeling mistrustful of her at the time. Ambrose had described her as ‘not the brightest button in the box’ but it appears she was just bright enough to find herself in the pay of my tormentor.

  George can’t see that those cursed letters were never more than a last resort, a means of persuasion, that all I wanted was to keep my son. He is mistaken. I see now that implausible things happen every day and destruction is often wreaked in response to a mistake – wars are waged, people die. Melis died for a mistake, as did all the others he has murdered in George’s name.

  Rage fills me, the weight of it greater by far than my fear. There is no reward for goodness.

  I slap the journal shut. ‘Where is the pistol?’

  Hope looks alarmed, seems unable to move or even ask what I have read. I rummage through the linen press until my fingers meet the cool metal barrel, pull out the weapon and hold it as if to take aim. It is considerably heavier and bigger than I remember, dwarfing my hand.

  I ruminate about creeping into his room and shooting him dead while he sleeps: I can imagine the bullet shattering his skull, spilling his brains. I could feed him poisonous mushrooms from the forest or stove in his head with a mallet or push him over the banister to fall into the stairwell. I think of all these things, of course I do, I am not a fool, but neither am I prepared to give myself over so entirely to damnation. I am thinking, designing, planning our survival. His death will not free me: rather, it will send me to Hell. And George will simply employ someone else in his stead.

  ‘What does he write?’ asks Hope.

  ‘He is not who he says he is. He was sent here by George to’ – I falter, cannot say in front of my son that he sought to murder me and Melis, he did murder Melis – ‘to kidnap –’

  ‘Me,’ says Rafe. ‘To kidnap me.’ He doesn’t seem in the least disturbed. ‘My father must want me very badly.’ His tone is peculiarly matter-of-fact.

  Rafe has weighed all the evidence and distilled it to just this, which is correct, I suppose – the bald, precise truth. I can’t find a way to explain to him that when his father wants something it is not because he loves it but because he must possess it – all the more so if it is out of his reach. How can I tell him that, to his father, he is merely a thing, not a person, no more real than the stuffed monkey that lies discarded on a corner of the bed?

  ‘You’d better read it for yourself.’ I pass her the journal. She takes it gingerly as if it might scald her. ‘And Ambrose is dead.’ Saying it is agony, but I cannot allow weakness to invade me.

  The whites of Hope’s eyes are mapped in red and tears catch in her lower lashes. ‘What will we do?’ She is petrified, slick with sweat, and shaking her head as if to rattle a marble from it.

  I focus on practicalities, on survival, and load the pistol, remembering each step as Gifford taught me. The firearm seems to shrink, or is it me who is growing, fed on the feeling of power it gives?

  ‘Are you going to –’ Her voice quivers.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I tell her calmly. ‘Look after Rafe.’

  Rafe says what Hope couldn’t. ‘Will you shoot him?’ He looks at me and picks up the nub of wax from the windowsill, beginning to soften it between his fingers, until its previous form is gone.

  I don’t answer him. Taking the gun, I creep to the lieutenant’s door and peer through a knot in the wood. He is on his bed, soot-smeared, fast asleep, the phial of opium tincture still clutched in his grimy paw. It seems doubtful he would be asleep like that if he’d discovered his journal was missing. The chest appears undisturbed, as far as I can see.

  I return to the bedchamber. ‘We’re leaving. You, me and Rafe – as soon as it’s dark.’ I begin stuffing things into a bag. ‘We’ll just take the essentials.’

  ‘Where will we go?’ whispers Rafe.

  ‘I don’t know yet. We can’t stay here.’ I turn to Hope. ‘I need you to go down and prepare some supplies for the journey. Hide them in the barn.’ Evening is already beginning to filch the light from the room. ‘Find Lark. She can help you saddle the horses and keep them out of sight.’ I meet her eyes. ‘But hurry, there’s no time to waste.’

  ‘What if he does wake?’

  ‘He won’t.’ I wish I felt as sure as I sound. ‘He’s dead to the world. And if he does, there’s nothing to say. Simply act as you would normally. Tell him he’s a hero for rescuing Rafe.’ The horrible fact of what might have happened in the fire returns, cracking through my brittle veneer. I expel the thought and continue gathering things together for the journey. ‘He won’t wake,’ I repeat, in an attempt to give her a measure of reassurance, and myself, too, if I am honest. Hope seems so friable, as if she might dissolve, and I need her robust. ‘Now go.’

  She nods firmly, taking one backward glance at me as she walks to the door. I can tell by the set of her jaw that she has found some vestige of fortitude.

  I lock the door behind her, trying not to let my mind drift to the possibility of another fire, with us trapped in the room, unable to unfasten the door. I reason that he would not risk Rafe’s safety again – not deliberately. After all, one of the main purposes of his mission – all this senseless loss of life – is so George can claim his boy. The boy he likely wouldn’t want if he were offered freely.

  ‘Can Captain come with us?’

  I hesitate. The answer is ‘No,’ but I say, ‘We’ll see.’

  Melis’s deathbed prophecy returns to me, as if she is whispering in my head. I imagine that assassin’s blade finding George’s putrid heart and am struck, for the first time, with such grim certainty that I will never be free as long as George lives.

  Hope

  Hope tiptoes, heart in mouth, down the stairs. She doesn’t know which is greater, her fear or her shame.

  Stupid, stupid girl that I am, to be taken in yet again.

  At least Worley had flattered her, brought her small gifts: a ring of pretend gold.

  This one has offered her none of that.

  Foolish girl. Foolish, foolish girl.

  The kitchen is silent.

  Gifford and Margie must be resting, shattered in the wake of the fire. She hastily bundles together some bread and cheese, fills the leather flagons with water from the butt, now replenished by the storm, and packs everything into a satchel, which she takes out to hide in the barn.

  The yard is still muddy underfoot and the stink of wet embers hangs in the air.

  It seems in another lifetime that they were hauling buckets back and forth but it was only this morning.

  Time is being deceitful again and she longs for the paralysed clock to spark back to life. What she does know is that it is the sixteenth day of August, fourteen days since they left Orchard Cottage, ten days since they arrived here. This knowledge fails to steady her.

  Glancing back at the façade of the lodge, she sees the broken balcony, its struts and planks piled near the door, the ragged scars at the top where it used to hang. The sound of Melis crashing onto the steps echoes in her skull.

  No.

  But her thoughts spin away to the henhouse, how it had also lost its balcony, and suddenly she is imagining flames licking up the lodge itself, as if its fate and that of the miniature are intertwined by some terrible dark force.

  Hope makes herself remember Hester’s words: The only evil thing here is the man sleeping across the landing.

  Lark is in the barn, legs astride a stool, milking, the liquid thrumming rhythmically into the pail. Immediately aware of Hope’s arrival, she raises her head, somehow sensing Hope’s disquiet. ‘Something’s happened. What is it?’

  ‘We need your help.’ Hurriedly she explains, adding, ‘You can’t tell
anyone. Not even your mother, your grandfather. We’ll leave as soon as night falls.’

  In quiet haste, they bring the horses in from the paddock and begin to tack them up. The animals scuff their hoofs in the dirt and shake their heads, suspecting something is awry. Lark soothes them, whispering her secret language, stroking behind their ears, and blowing on the soft place between their nostrils, which instantly calms them. Hope has never encountered anyone who has such a way with animals.

  ‘I knew that man was a wrong one.’ Lark loosely buckles the girth straps and attaches the pillion saddle to the grey. ‘I told you. You wouldn’t have it, though. People think that because I’m blind I’m stupid.’ There is a touch of bitterness in her tone. ‘People believe what they want to believe.’

  When Hope thinks about it, no one believed Melis either, yet she spoke the truth. Regret twists through her. ‘That was a mistake. I see now. I was wrong not to believe you.’

  She hadn’t looked beyond her own problems to see Lark’s: she had just seen a girl of her age living a simple life, a safe life, when in truth Lark’s sightlessness has trapped her here with no experience of the wider world. She can see now that Lark had offered real friendship and she had been too blinded by her misplaced affections to recognize it.

  Lark’s hand momentarily seeks hers and Hope feels their friendship weave anew.

  Lark passes her a hoof pick and they hastily check for stones and loose shoes, the horses obediently picking up their feet to be inspected. It occurs to Hope now that all those so-called hauntings, the knife, the cat, the fallen dresser, might have been conjured by the lieutenant to unsettle them.

  She wants to believe it. It is more palatable than the other explanation.