The Misbegotten
| The Misbegotten | |
| Webb, Katherine | |
| Orion (2013) | |
| Rating: | **** |
| Tags: | Fiction, General |
Dark truths. Beautiful lies.
Bath, England, 1821. Rachel Crofton escapes the binds of her unhappy employment as a governess by marrying a charming self-made businessman. She sees a chance to create the family and home she has so long been without, but her new life soon takes an unexpected turn.
Through her new husband's connections, Rachel is invited to become the companion of the reclusive Jonathan Alleyn, a man tortured by memories of the Peninsula War, and tormented by the disappearance of his childhood sweetheart, Alice.
Starling, foundling servant to the Alleyn family, is convinced that Alice, the woman she loved as a sister, was stolen from her. Did Alice run away? Or did something altogether more sinister occur? Starling is determined to uncover the truth. Others want only to forget, and will go to extreme lengths to do so.
Rachel's arrival has an unsettling effect on the whole Alleyn household, and suddenly it seems that the dark deeds of the past will no longer stay contained.Shattering truths lurk behind Bath's immaculate facades, but the courage Rachel and Starling need to bring these truths to light will come at a very high price.
The mystery of a woman's disappearance powers this gripping story of two young women who unravel past misdeeds to discover the truth. An engrossing tale of deceit, passion and courage WOMAN & HOME on The Misbegotten This is an engrossing and totally convincing piece of storytelling, a perfect curl-up-by-the-fire read YOU Magazine on The Unseen In a series of flashbacks, Katherine Webb's enticing Gothic tale weaves between the 'present' Bath of 1821 and the events of 16 years earlier, with some stark depictions of the horrors of war. A compelling and convincing novel DAILY MAIL on The Misbegotten 20130920 An atmospheric page-turner WOMAN & HOME on The Unseen Brilliant and absorbing drama GOOD HOUSEKEEPING on The Legacy A dreamy summer epic ESSENTIALS on A Half Forgotton Song Another intricately constructed, beautifully written historical masterpiece -- Lisa Ballantyne
Katherine Webb was born in 1977 and grew up in rural Hampshire before reading History at Durham University. She has since spent time living in London and Venice, and now lives in Wiltshire. www.facebook.com/KatherineWebbAuthor
Katherine Webb
How hard is the fortune of all womankind,
Forever subjected, forever confined,
The parent controls us until we are wives,
The husband enslaves us the rest of our lives.
(‘The Ladies’ Case’,
trad
. C18th English song)
Thy heart is bound to another,
Wound tight, like a lovers’ tree;
Both may fall, but not one, or the other;
In between finds no place for me.
So let me, then, like a briar rose be –
And grow myself around both of thee.
The day the child walked in from the marsh was one of deadening cold. A north wind had blown steadily all day, making ears and chests and bones ache; the child’s bare feet crackled through a crust of ice on the watery ground. She came slowly towards the farmhouse from the west, with the swollen river sliding silently beside her and the sun hanging low over her shoulder, baleful and milky as a blind eye. A young woman quit the farmhouse and crossed the yard towards the chicken coop. She didn’t see the child at first, as she wrapped her shawl tightly around her shoulders and turned her face to the sky, to watch a vast murmuration of starlings that was coming to roost in the horse chestnut tree. The birds chattered and squealed to one another, shifting in flight like a single amorphous being, like smoke, before they vanished as one into the naked branches.
The child kept walking, right through the gate and into the yard. She faltered when the young woman did notice her and call out – not hearing the words, just the sound, which startled her. She stopped, and swayed on her feet. The farmhouse was large, built of pale stone. Smoke scattered from its chimneys, and through the windows of the lower floor a warm yellow light shone out onto the muddy ground. That light pulled irresistibly at the child, as it would a moth. It spoke of heat, of shelter; the possibility of food. With jagged little steps she continued towards it. The yard ran slightly uphill towards the house and the effort of the climb caused her to zigzag, stumbling left and right. She was so close, so nearly able to put out her hand and soak it in that golden glow. But then she fell, and did not rise again. She heard the young woman cry out in alarm, and felt herself handled, gathered up. Then she felt nothing more for a time.
The child woke later because of the pain in her hands and feet. The unfamiliar warmth of her blood caused them to itch and throb and tingle unbearably. She tried to fidget, but was held too tightly. She opened her eyes. The young woman from the yard now held her on her lap, wrapped in a blanket. Beside them, a fire roared in a cavernous fireplace. The heat and light were staggering. There was a beamed ceiling over her head, and lambent candles on a nearby shelf, and it seemed like another world.
‘You cannot mean to put her out – not with it so cold!’ said the young woman. Her voice was soft, but passionate. The child looked up at her and saw a face of such loveliness that she thought it might be an angel that held her. The angel’s hair was very, very pale, the colour of fresh cream. Her eyes were huge and soft, and very blue, fringed with long lashes like tiny golden feathers; she had high cheekbones, an angular jaw, and a pointed chin gentled by the hint of a dimple in it.
‘She’s a vagabond, make no mistake about it.’ This was an older voice, grim in tone.
‘What does that matter? She’s a child, and she’ll surely die if she spends another night without shelter, and food. Look – look at her! Nothing but bones, like some poor chick cast out of the nest.’ The young woman looked down, saw that the child was awake, and smiled.
‘She’ll be unlatching the door for her people in the night – you mark my words. She’ll let them in and they’ll carry off everything we have, including your virtue!’
‘Oh, Bridget! Don’t be so frightened, always! You’re a slave to your suspicions. She will do no such thing – she’s just a child! An innocent.’
‘There’s none so innocent in this house as you, Miss Alice,’ Bridget muttered. ‘I speak from prudence, not from fear. Which way did she come?’
‘I don’t know. One moment she was not there, the next, she was.’ The young woman pulled a feather from the child’s hair with her fingertips. ‘It was like the starlings brought her.’
‘That’s naught but fancy. She’ll be crawling with lice and vermin – don’t hold her so close to you! Can’t you smell the rot on her?’
‘How can you speak like that about a child, Bridget? Have you no heart?’ Alice cradled the child closer to her, protectively. The child pressed her ear to Alice’s chest, and heard the way her heart raced, even though she seemed calm. It raced and it faltered and it stumbled over itself. She felt the rapid rise and fall of breath beneath her saviour’s ribs. ‘To put her out would be tantamount to murder. Infanticide! I will not do it. And neither will you.’
For a moment, the two women glared at one another. Then Bridget got up from her chair and folded her scrawny arms.
‘So be it, and on your head the consequences, miss,’ she said.
‘Good. Thank you, Bridget. Will you kindly fetch her some soup? She must be hungry.’ Only once the older woman had left the room did Alice relax a little, and press her spare hand to her chest. She looked down at the child and smiled again. ‘Arguing with Bridget always sets my heart stammering,’ she said breathlessly. ‘What’s your name, little one?’ But the child could not reply. Her tongue felt frozen in her mouth, and her mind was too crowded with the sensations of heat and tingling. ‘You need have no fear now. You will be safe and warm here, and you will have food. Oh, look – here’s another!’ Alice said, teasing a second feather from the child’s hair. ‘We shall call you Starling for now.’ Starling gazed at this angel and in that instant forgot everything – where she had been, who she belonged to, her name before, and the hunger raking at her insides. She forgot everything but that she loved Alice, and would stay with her always, and do everything to please her. Then she slept.
The day of the wedding was one of signs and portents. Rachel tried not to see them, since the higher half of her mind knew better than to believe in them, but still they kept coming. She could well imagine her mother scolding such frailty of thought, but with a smile to soften the words.
Nerves, my dear. ’Tis nothing but a touch of nerves.
Nevertheless, Rachel kept seeing them, and the signs seemed like warnings, one and all. A solitary magpie, strutting on the lawn; a mistle thrush singing on the gatepost. She stepped on her petticoat as she put it on, and tore it along the waistband; as she unwound the rags from her hair, every curl fell flat immediately. But it was the first dry day in over a week – that was surely a good sign. Early September, and the weather had turned stormy during the last days of August, with heavy rain and strong winds that tore down the still-green leaves. Rachel had hoped it would still be summer when she wed, but it was definitely autumn. Another sign. Arms aching, she gave up on her hair and went to the window. There was sunshine, but it was low and brittle – the kind of sun that got into your eyes and was blinding instead of warming.
This will be the last time I stand at a window of Hartford Hall, wishing I was somewhere else
, she reminded herself, and this thought trumped all the warning signs. In the morning she would wake up to a new life, in a new home, as a new person. A wife; no longer a spinster, a nobody.
Rachel’s mother would have brushed away these supposed signs, for sure, and reassured her daughter that the match was a fair one, given the circumstances. Anne Crofton had been a practical woman; kind and affectionate but wholly pragmatic. She hadn’t married Rachel’s father for love, but out of good sense; though love later grew between them. She would have approved of the cautious way in which Rachel had considered Richard Weekes’s proposal before accepting. He was lower than her in birth, to be sure, but his prospects were good, his business flourishing. His income was more than enough to keep a wife in modest comfort. His manners were a little coarse but there was no doubting his charm; and with innate charm, Rachel could work to shape the rest. A rough diamond, to which she could bring a shine. And however more rarefied her birth had been, the fact remained that her current status was lowly. All these things she could hear her mother say, when she shut her eyes at night and missed her parents with a feeling like a terrible ache in her bones. And in her father’s voice . . . well, he would have said less. Instead, she would have seen the misgiving in his eyes, because John Crofton had married for love, and always said it had made him the happiest man alive.