The Misbegotten (15 page)

‘Why? Are you a healer?’

‘No.’

‘Are you a . . . nun? A saint, perhaps? Or a whore?’ he asked. Rachel’s tongue froze in shock, so she could not reply. ‘One of those three, then. I wonder which?’ His tone was mocking. ‘Nun, saint, or whore.’

‘None of those,’ she managed at last.

‘A pity. I could have used a whore’s company. She will not have them in the house, though. My mother. A great irony, given that all women are whores; be it for coin, status or safety that they sell themselves. Come closer, into the light. I can’t see your face properly.’

Rachel moved woodenly, feeling as though she’d stumbled into a strange and unsettling dream. She had never been in so alien a situation, not even when she’d stood over her father as all their possessions were taken out into the street. She went around to the far side of the desk and stood in front of Jonathan Alleyn’s chair. She felt the meagre warmth of the coals on her face, and when she looked at him she almost recoiled. He was gaunt and deathly pale, with hollows beneath his cheekbones. She made out lines across his brow and at the corners of his eyes, and streaks of grey in his unkempt hair. He was tall but too thin, his shoulders jutting out beneath his shirt, legs long and lean. A hand, curled into a fist and held against his mouth, was ridged with tendons, and his eyes were unsettlingly bright. He drew breath to speak again, but when Rachel met his gaze his voice trailed away, even as his lips still moved. His hand dropped down, and his mouth hung slightly open. This was it, Rachel realised. This was why she had been sent. ‘
Alice?
’ he whispered, and in his voice was a broken heart, an ocean of hope and pain and loss. Rachel swallowed, and didn’t dare to speak.
So it is Alice that they see, when they look at me. This man and his mother. The girl who left him, it must surely be?
Tears ran from the corners of Jonathan’s eyes, shining with the firelight. His face flooded with such hurt, such misery that for a second Rachel wanted to reach out and wipe his tears away. Her hands rose and strayed towards him, and he snatched at them roughly, pulling her down to kneel in front of him. She tried to pull away but he held her fast, his grip unbreakable. ‘Why?’ he whispered. His breath stank sharply of spirits. ‘Oh, why did you do it? Why did you leave me?’

Rachel stared into his ravaged eyes, transfixed. She could hardly think straight; her heart was jumping in her throat.

‘Mr Alleyn,’ she gasped, at last. ‘I . . .’ At the sound of her voice he blinked, and his face hardened. The look of pain and hope in his eyes faded away, and anger replaced it. One hand clasped her chin, and turned her face towards the fire’s orange light.

‘What trick is this? You are not her. Answer me!’ he rasped.

‘I am Rachel Weekes, and—’

‘Who?
Who?
’ He shook her, and she tried again to twist out of his grip. In an instant he released her chin, and his hand locked around her neck instead. ‘Answer me, or by God I will choke the life from you! I swear it!’ He brought his other hand to reinforce the first, and Rachel scrabbled at them, trying to prise her fingers beneath his, to no avail. Panic surged through her, making her clumsy.

‘I am Rachel Weekes! I know no Alice! I . . . I was invited by your mother!’ she cried. ‘Let go of me!’

‘My mother? So this is some game of hers, is it? I should have suspected as much. But how
dare
you, madam? How
dare
you come to me and pretend to be what you are not?’

‘I did no such thing—’ She tried to argue, but could not get enough air. His hands around her neck were like iron, and bright spots began to swirl in the corners of her eyes. He was all she could see; his face grim and terrible, rearing over her, teeth clenched in murderous fury. Behind him, the room swirled in darkness. She batted at his hands, his arms and face, as though such feeble blows might make him loosen his grip; where her windpipe was crushed there was a deep, stabbing pain. She felt insubstantial, weak; her every effort futile.
He will kill me
, came the realisation in the back of her mind, oddly calm, even as her heart pounded in terror and her lungs burned for air.

‘Let her go!’ a woman shouted. Rachel felt other hands tugging at Jonathan’s fingers. ‘Leave off, I say!’ There was a flurry of movement, a struggle, and Rachel looked up in time to see the hearth brush strike her assailant’s head with a ringing percussion. Soot showered him and he reeled backwards, coughing. Released from his grip, Rachel fell to the floor, gasping for breath. She tried to see who had saved her, but the woman had darted out of reach of Jonathan Alleyn’s rage, into the shadows. He stood, rubbing at his eyes, snarling in fury.

‘Starling, you treacherous bitch!’ he shouted. Rachel struggled to her feet, and fled. She bolted down the stairs, past Mrs Alleyn who waited for her at the bottom.

‘Mrs Weekes? Are you well?’ she called out in consternation, as Rachel raced by. Rachel didn’t stop to speak, or collect her cloak. She rushed out into the rarefied air of the crescent, heedless of anything but the need to escape.

Starling dissected their meeting, over and over – Jonathan Alleyn and Rachel Weekes. She ran it by her mind’s eye as she boiled a ham, as she scraped the scales from a sole, as she scalded the distilling jars and peeled apples for a pie. As the bustle of dinner being prepared and sent up went on around her; the steady exchange of hot plates for cold ones, returning from Mrs Alleyn’s table all but untouched. The lady of the house dined alone most nights, with a place set for her son, ever empty, by her side. Starling felt as though she’d stepped aside from it all, like there was a wall around her, muffling everything. She thought about what had happened, and wondered why she felt no satisfaction. Not quite
no
satisfaction, perhaps. Hadn’t she wanted him to reveal himself? To show that he was a murderer? And hadn’t he obliged her, by near strangling Dick’s new wife? But she’d known there was violence in him, that was nothing new.
Was that how he did it, then? With his bare hands around her neck?

Alice’s narrow neck, fragile as a bird’s; soft skin and downy hair, catching the light. Jonathan’s strong hands with their long, elegant fingers. Once he had sat Starling on his knee in front of the old piano at the farmhouse in Bathampton, and though it was tuneless from the damp, he’d tried to teach her a song to play. She’d watched his hands closely. His nails were so clean, and perfectly shaped; the knuckles and joints stood proud along his fingers. As he’d played she been mesmerised by the movement of tendons beneath his skin, so she hadn’t paid any attention to the notes he was playing. When he’d said
your turn
, and she hadn’t known where to start, the look of disappointment on his face had stung her somewhat. To distract him she’d grabbed his hand in both of hers and nipped one of the fingers, laughing when he gasped, and then darted away to find Alice.
Your little termagant bit me
, he said, when they found her in the yard, but he was smiling as he said it.

And yet. And yet.
Why did you leave me?
That was what he’d asked her. Starling paused near the top of the servants’ stair and leaned against the wall, turning her face to the small window to look up at the night sky. The moon was bright, the stars clear and stark. She could feel the chill coming through the glass, drifting down to settle on her face. It had been a cold autumn so far, and promised a cold winter. The air smelled gritty and old. Starling shut her eyes, furious with herself.
What did you expect? For him to cry: It cannot be! I murdered thee! Idiot.
She had prepared him as well as she could in the short time available to her. She’d taken him more of the strengthened wine, and made as many sharp noises as she could as she straightened his rooms. She’d tipped the food meant for him into a sack to dispose of later, so that his stomach had nothing in it but the spirits. The dead rat she’d left under his desk three days earlier was really beginning to stink, filling the air with the smell of its decay. She hoped it made him feel as though death itself was stalking him.

Why did you leave me?
It was that phrase that bothered her. That was not what a murderer would ask of his victim, surely? That made it sound as though he really did believe the lies that were told about Alice having another lover, about her absconding with him, and leaving them all behind. Unless . . . unless that was the reason Jonathan had killed her? His motive had long puzzled Starling. She knew more of men now than she had known then, a good deal more, but still she was sure that he’d loved Alice. He’d loved her for years. He and Alice had grown up side by side, though they’d spent more time apart than they had together. But if Jonathan had thought, for some reason, that Alice
planned
to leave him . . . that could well have been enough to make him harm her. Not the Jonathan from before the war, but the Jonathan from afterwards. The Jonathan who came back from Spain, so very different from the boy who’d set off to fight all full of ideas about honour and glory. But Alice would never have left him. Alice loved him more than air. Starling let her head fall back against the stone wall with a thump.

There was no way she could rest. She finished up her work, threw her shawl around her shoulders and let herself quietly out of the house. Her boot heels rang against the swept stones of the pavement. Beyond the light of the guttering streetlamps was the black swathe of steep pasture in front of the crescent, and beyond that, to the south and east, the rest of the city – a shadowed labyrinth in the darkness. The pinprick sparkle of lanterns looked like a feeble echo of the stars above. Alice would have sighed at the beauty of it, but knowing that only gave Starling a sour taste in her mouth, and she turned her eyes away, refusing to be beguiled. She walked so briskly to the Moor’s Head that she was breathless when she arrived, and damp beneath her clothes. It was stifling as ever inside the inn, ripe with the stink of people, of sweat and dissolution. Dick Weekes was there with some of the old crowd, and Starling was happier to see him than she would ever admit. She got a drink from Sadie and sauntered over to his table.

He was laughing at some joke, but fell serious when he looked up and saw her. He was all russet brown and handsome; lips curved into a subtle pout. Starling hated the feeling that seeing him gave her – a pang of some deep longing or other. The touch of his hands, perhaps, or his desire for her. The way he would let her talk, on and on, propped on one elbow above him after their love play.

‘It didn’t take you long to find your way back in here,’ she said loudly, above the din. ‘I’m surprised the missus let you out, tonight of all nights.’

‘What’s special about tonight?’ said Dick, frowning.

‘Oh, nothing. Only I imagined she’d be somewhat rattled, after her visit to the Alleyns today.’

‘Bring your arse to anchor, wench,’ said old Peter Hawkes, who as ever could not tear his eyes from her red hair and tight bodice. Starling shrugged and pushed herself a space on the bench beside Dick. The other men at the table turned away, uninterested, and Dick only looked blank.

‘You mean, you didn’t know?’ said Starling. ‘She never told you she was going? Or had been?’ She shook her head slowly, arching her brows. ‘Such secrets, so early in a marriage.’ Dick’s nostrils flared. How he hated to be teased.

‘I’ve not seen my wife yet this evening. But I’m sure she will tell me herself, when I do,’ he said curtly.

‘Perhaps. Perhaps I shouldn’t have let her secret out. But then, I’m more allied to you than to her, I suppose.’ Starling let her hand rest on his thigh, and leaned closer to speak into his ear. ‘I’ll need some more strong wine. As strong as you can make it.’

‘You’ll not have it. Not from me.’ Dick took a long drink, then stared down into his cup as if to close himself off from her. ‘Let it rest, Starling. Let the poor bugger rest, won’t you? What’s he ever done to you, anyway? What has all your scheming brought about? Nothing at all, that’s what.’

‘He’s a murderer. He killed his betrothed, my sister . . .’

‘Who says so, apart from you? Who in the whole country of England says so, apart from
you
?’ His words were hard, and they stung her. ‘Who even thinks Alice Beckwith is dead, apart from you? She’s probably living in some northern county, happy as a lark with husband and bairns, and all the while you stew away like some witch at her cauldron, plotting to avenge a murder that never took place!’ He pointed an angry finger at her. A tiny worm of doubt twisted in Starling’s gut, just for a second.

‘Alice would
never
have left just like that . . . I know the truth of the matter,’ she said.

‘So you say. But it wouldn’t be the first time a woman was wrong, now would it? You think you were a sister to her, but you weren’t. You’re some vagabond’s brat, taken in as a hobby. Of course she’d leave you, if she saw fit. Do you know how ridiculous you sound, going on and on about her? Do yourself a favour, and give it up. It’s not just him you hurt, you know. I was there myself the other day. Mrs Alleyn . . . she sickens alongside her son. Because of you.’

‘It’s his own guilt that sickens him – I’ve heard him confess, so I have! I only want the truth to be known.’

‘No, you don’t. You don’t want to hear the truth, that’s your problem. Alice Beckwith got hot for another man, and ran off rather than face up to her benefactor. Will you spend your whole life trying to pretend it was otherwise?’

Starling was shocked into angry silence for a moment.

‘You’re wrong,’ she said at last, but Richard ignored her. ‘I’d have known if she had another lover.’ She took a long swallow of her beer, though her stomach was clenched tight and she found it hard to swallow. Still Richard kept his eyes in front of him, and Starling could only look at the side of his face. She suddenly felt frightened, and couldn’t say why. A curl of brown hair hung in front of his ear, and before she knew it she had reached out and tucked it back for him. Dick twisted about, and knocked her hand away.

‘I meant what I said, Starling,’ he said coldly. ‘There’ll be no more of that, between you and me.’ She stared at him, her mouth falling open. ‘Take Mr Hawkes here out the back, if you must rut. He’s always wanted to dance the blanket hornpipe with you, haven’t you, Hawkes?’ Peter Hawkes leered at her, and dipped his grizzled chin in assent.