An Appetite for Violets (37 page)

He was a few hundred paces from the villa’s gates when he heard his name being called out from behind him. There was Biddy, chasing after him, waving a letter in the air. She was breathless when she caught up with him, wearing no cap over her long hair and only a grubby shift on her naked body. But her despair seemed lifted; there was the shine of anticipation in her face, as if she had made a new resolution.

‘Mr Loveday, would you do me a kindness and take this letter to the post house and see it is delivered at once? Here is a piece of silver.’

He dismounted and took it, standing before her. ‘My true name Keraf,’ he said shyly.

‘Keraf.’ She spoke the word, hesitating. ‘Take good care of yourself, won’t you?’

‘And you too.’ On an impulse he touched the springy curls of her hair. ‘May the good spirits guide you, my friend.’

Suddenly she threw her arms around him and squeezed him. In a moment it was over; he felt happy and blessed.

‘Now get on with you,’ she said, smiling back at him. ‘Go and give that lovely wife and boy of yours a right rollicking surprise.’

‘Perhaps.’ He mounted the horse again and caught up the reins; he was free.

He rode on down the dusty road, only halting a moment on the bridge at Ombrosa. Opening his saddlebag he pulled out the stupid wig that looked like a frizzled white monkey. With grim pleasure he flung it over the parapet into the river. Next he drew the gaudy coat from the bag and dangled that for a moment, only just remembering to rescue Biddy’s letter from the pocket before he dropped that too. The coat and the wig were slowly swept into a fast-running channel. Then, like a pale bladder and a small hairy creature, they were gone.

He did not bother to read Biddy’s letter. Now he had begun his great journey the affairs of white people, yarping like parrots, no longer concerned him. But as he left the letter at the post house with the silver coin, he casually read the name.
Signor Renzo Cellini.
He remembered how the big man had lifted Biddy so gently onto the white horse and watched her as if she was the only living creature in the world. Then the faint scent of briny sea reached his nostrils, and he took up the reins and thought of nothing at all but the strong tide of the road pulling him home.

XXXVI

Villa Ombrosa

Being this day Easter Sunday, 1773
Biddy Leigh, her journal

The best way for a bruise or swelling

If the bruise be very bad apply a poultice; scald a basin then put in boiling water, then your bread and elder leaves and cover with a plate. When your bread has imbibed sufficient, drain it off and spread on a flannel and put on the bruise to supple the skin.

From an Ancient Remedy given to Martha Garland by a much esteemed apothecary in Chester named John Delafosse, 1747

Not long after the dust had settled behind Mr Loveday’s horse, a priest and his company pulled up at the front door in a cart. The priest himself was flint-faced and shabby; I think Mr Pars must have offered a poor sort of price for the service. Yet they knew their business, and a terrible scuffling came from my lady’s chamber, and soon after, a rough-hewn coffin was scraped down the stairs. I led them to the graveyard and pressed a handkerchief to my face for most of the burial. But there came one dreadful moment when I glanced into the gaping hole and saw Mr Pars’ dead finger poking through the new-dug soil. I vexed the priest by reaching down and casting a handful of earth to cover it, quite in the wrong part of the rite. Just the thought of that finger still makes me shiver; the yellow tobacco stains I knew so well, and the murderous heft of his grip on my hair.

After all the tracing of crosses in the air and maundering chantings, the priest came angling over for his tip, rabbiting on as he held out a grubby palm. I had to go inside to fetch coin from the strongbox, and that’s how I missed the setting up of the headstone. When I came back they were hoisting it upright in the soil. There was no doubting Mr Pars had paid a pretty penny for that quick piece of work. I thrust a piece of silver in the priest’s hand and bid him farewell, hastening back inside. But it was not fast enough to stop myself from seeing the words commissioned by that wicked man:

OBEDIENCE LEIGH

a Domestic of Mawton Hall, Cheshire,

who died at Ombrosa, Easter Saturday, 1773,

aged 22 years

I felt the spite of those words like they were cut right into my flesh and bone. But I reckoned the Bible verse he’d had engraved beneath was chosen more for my mistress’s sake than mine, intending that we’d share our grave together:

If any desire to be first, the same shall be last, and servant of all.

Servant of all! That was mighty Christian of him. It made me giddy to see my own memorial writ out like that. No, I would not bloody oblige him by dying, I repeated again and again. Still, it gave me the shivers, to see my own given name scribed in stone, remembering my death to all who saw it.

*   *   *

I sat all the rest of the afternoon on the terrace thinking half-crazed thoughts. I could not rightly reckon up what had happened – my mistress dead, old Pars avenged and buried with her. The horrors flashed and flickered in my eyes, more real than the terrace standing before me, like a devilish magic lantern that could not be snuffed out. I sat and sat, struggling to decide. Which way now, Biddy Leigh?

Slowly the sun set like a peach, and night hid the rows of lime trees. The iron gates and chalky road disappeared from view. My head still ached despite the poultice cooling on my brow. I pulled on a shawl; the night-midges were starting to bite.

I knew I should go. Kitt’s letter lay curled on my lap. Kitt Tyrone. Handsome Kitt, with his buttons like guineas, and his sweet plump lips. There had been a thread between the two of us, that fond look we had shared in Paris.

Trotting hooves and a creaking axle made me start. I peered into the darkness. Thank God the horses passed. Inside, Evelina whimpered, and Carla whispered murmurs of comfort. It was a good sound, like a miracle after those terrible days.

From along the valley the single toll of the Ombrosa bell rang the half-hour. I got up and batted away invisible mites. There was a ship that sailed to Dover, Mr Loveday said. I had money to buy a passage and set myself up in London or any place I fancied. Now hark at that, I thought – with the money from the strongbox I could be a lady and never lift a finger. I could spend all my days in the plush upstairs world of crystal and silks and never creep back downstairs through the boot-scuffed door. And by Christ, I wanted it now. And I had the means to have it if I played my hand cleverly. I spun myself a tale of life as Carinna, flashing my gold on fashions and routs. In time the money would disappear of course, and then the credit. Oh, but the racketing journey to ruin would be a glory.

I steeled myself to face my lady’s room. It was the work of moments to turn the cradle back to an innocent wooden box. A quick search showed Mr Pars had burned all my lady’s goods – all those fine silks and feathers from Paris were ash in the wind. It sickened me that, his wanting to burn her very self to a cinder. Yet he had raked the ashes, so it was surely the ruby he wanted. He had known it was hidden and no doubt believed he would find it in a heap of riddlings. Well, Mr Pars, I said to myself, you had not reckoned with my years of hiding precious things away from others’ snatching fingers.

Before I left I determined to leave Kitt a message that only he could read. Not a written letter, for that might be held up by a judge and used to send me to the gallows. So I pulled out the rose red gown from my bundle and set that upon my lady’s wooden clothes stand. Will he remember it, I wondered, from our night in Paris? Then down in the kitchen I found Carla nodding in a chair with the baby contentedly nuzzling her breast. Her dreamy eyes lifted and she yawned very wide. She was not a tidy servant, for nothing had been cleared since morning.

‘Eat what you will, then pack. I go out first, then we all go later,’ I said.

‘Where we go, mistress?’

I shrugged. ‘I cannot say. Carla, let no one in.
Capisci?
’

‘
Si,
signora.’ And the lazy kiss she set on the top of Evelina’s head made me forgive her slatternly ways.

My last batch of funeral cakes were still scattered all across the kitchen table. The scent of ambergris rose from the cakes, so musky and sweet it caught like raw spirit in my throat. With my back to Carla I broke each one in half till I found the ruby where I had baked it safe from greedy eyes. With a rinse in fresh water it was none the worse for its heating in an oven. That damned stone, it had brought nothing but ill luck to those who had owned it. So back upstairs I slipped the Rose into the front of the scarlet gown, along with Kitt’s own letter from Marseilles. Surely, without spelling my message in writing, he would know I wanted the ruby to be his?

*   *   *

It was getting late. Washing my scalp I saw the poultice had started its work and the elder leaves had soothed my bruises. I had only one last gown of Carinna’s to wear, with the dark cloak I’d kept in my own room. Then I got flustered by my lateness. Yet, would he even come? Mr Loveday’s note might not have reached him, or worse – he might have read it and hardened his heart to me. I hurried along the lane, mouthing little prayers that he might come. As I reached the tower my heart pounded like a racketing drum.

No one was waiting for me. I wondered at the hour, and in answer, heard the ten long strokes of the church bell. Above me bats flittered through the night, faster than my eye could follow. Leaning against the warm stone wall, I tried to make my breathing steady, though I felt a great commotion at my centre. He will not come. The words repeated in my ears like striking hammers. I swallowed down the startings of a sob. To be weak now, that will never do, I told myself. For one day more you must be strong. I strained to listen for his coming, but only heard the slither of creatures in the dry grass, and the whispery crackle of cones shifting on the black cypress trees.

He will not come, I told myself. And now I was here beside the tower the prospect was so terrible that it seemed like a great black chasm that might any moment swallow me whole. I do not know how long I stood there, as desolation weighed upon me. Then the sound of hooves reached me from the road. I lifted my head, though I reckoned it a farmer heading back from the market. The horse stopped. I held my breath tight. Then came footsteps, and still I feared it was some stranger, or even Kitt Tyrone come to search out his sister’s murderer. Finally, a great dark shape approached me, and I knew the square shoulders and steady gait.

‘Renzo?’ My voice was thick with unspilled tears.

I remember only reaching out to him like I was drowning. Then I was deep in his arms and felt safe for the first time in many days. He caressed my hair, stroked my back, and said, ‘Oh, my darling one, my dear one, do not cry.’ It was like going home, but not to any place I had ever known before.

He pulled back and looked at me, and his broad face wore such a look of kindness that it made me sob again into his chest.

‘My Lady, Carinna. What has happened?’

His fingers returned to my hair and found the lump on my scalp. It was time to tell him the truth. I halted my tears, took a deep breath, and jumped into that unknown place.

‘My name is Obedience Leigh,’ I said. ‘And what has happened is – thanks to God I am still alive.’

I told him the truth in a tumble of words – that my mistress was dead and that it had always been her notion that I pretend to be her. And that any moment her brother might come and discover all.

‘Mr Pars was right, they will arrest me for it, I am sure. And her being poisoned stands against me. Who else to suspect but her own cook? I have thought long about it today. I must leave this place. Take the baby and go somewhere no one knows me.’

Still he held me. There was no loosening of his grip around my middle. But neither did he speak.

‘And now I have told you all of it,’ I said flatly. ‘I am not the great lady you fancied I was. Renzo, I cannot employ you, I have no household. I am just – an under-cook.’

I tried to read his expression; his treacle black eyes moved across my face as if he tried to decipher a letter in a foreign language.

‘So much that is new.’ He began to walk away. Then he turned back to face me. ‘So much not expected.’

He walked to his horse, and I had to hold myself back from running after him. He fussed with the bridle and my soul held its breath to think he might leap in the saddle and leave me for ever. Instead he looked back at me and I at him. My life seemed to hang on a dark giddy edge, but I had not the strength to pull myself back. He looked at me again. He smiled and gave a little laugh. Then he strode back to me.

‘You are telling the truth. I know it. I am amazed but glad you told me. Yet, a cook!’ He laughed. ‘No wonder I try so hard to impress you.’

He took both my hands in his and said more gravely, ‘But Bibi – the name is still strange – did you also pretend to love me?’

I told him my name was Biddy.

‘Bidi? Bibi is better. Bibiana is the Italian way.’

Then I showed him my answer to whether I loved him as fiercely as I could. And when our lips parted I murmured, ‘I love you, Renzo. It has pained me beyond measure to lie to you. You are my true love, I swear it.’

In the moonlight I saw his hesitating smile. He touched my cheek as if it was a rare flower. ‘You have a new name. But Bibi, I have a question?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is there a Signor Leigh?’

‘Why, my father, for sure.’