The Misbegotten (23 page)

Josephine Alleyn saw her first. She was by the canary’s cage again, speaking words of soft entreaty to the bird. The canary cocked its head at her, eyes sharp and unblinking, but it said nothing.

‘Ah, Mrs Weekes. It is good of you to come. My little bird here is silent and sad. Nothing I can feed him or say to him seems to cheer him,’ she said wistfully. She passed the bird another sunflower seed, but it only looked at it, and did not take it.

‘I understand that whistling to them sometimes encourages them to sing,’ said Rachel. She hovered by the door, unsure whether to go further into the room or not.

‘Oh? A pity. A lady should never whistle. Such a coarse habit, and it creases the mouth. Perhaps Falmouth might be persuaded to give it a try. But then, I never once heard a jolly sound come from that man, in more than twenty years of service. I fear his company might make my poor canary even sadder.’ Josephine looked over at Rachel with a wan smile.

‘Some other music, perhaps? Do you play, Mrs Alleyn?’
Anything but the shroud of silence in this house.

‘I used to. My father loved music, and I often played the piano for him before I married, and then after my husband had died, when I returned to live with him. My husband died when Jonathan was only five. Did you know that? Poor boy, he really never knew him. Lord Faukes was more like a father to Jonathan than a grandfather.’

‘He was lucky, then, to have such a grandfather.’

‘Lucky? Yes . . .’ Josephine sighed, and fell into thought, and Rachel waited uncomfortably.

‘Will I be sitting with your son in this room, Mrs Alleyn, or in some other?’ she asked at last.

‘What? Oh, no. He will not come down. I will take you up to him.’ The older lady turned and walked slowly towards the door, her face immobile, betraying nothing of her thoughts. Rachel’s heart sank.
Back to his rooms then, to the darkness and the vile smell and the feeling of being confined, just like that poor canary.

She tried to remain calm, as they climbed the stone stairs in silence. Josephine Alleyn walked with her all the way to her son’s door, and by the time they reached it she was wearing an equal measure of hope and doubt on her lovely face. Rachel tried desperately to think of Jonathan Alleyn as he had seemed the last time she called – apologetic, uncomfortable, and even nervous – rather than as she had first met him: violent and inebriated. They almost seemed like two distinct people.
Oh, let him be sober at least.
She would not stay if he was drunk, she decided there and then. There would be little point in reading to him if his mind was addled. Josephine Alleyn knocked on her son’s door and then opened it, then stepped aside and ushered Rachel in, alone. ‘Perhaps the Bible, if all else fails,’ Mrs Alleyn whispered, before she closed the door. ‘Perhaps the Bible would help him back into the light.’

The room was in near darkness again, and at once Rachel was on edge. The stink of death and decay had gone, however, so she was able to breathe more easily. She turned, and saw Jonathan Alleyn sitting in an armchair in the bay window. His long legs were thrust out in front of him, his elbow rested on the arm of the chair, fingers pressing lightly into the side of his face.

‘Mr Alleyn—’ said Rachel, nerves making her voice blare out abruptly. Jonathan quickly raised his fingers in protest.

‘Please, not so loud. Do come and sit, Mrs Weekes.’ He gestured at a wooden chair that had been placed opposite him, near enough for her hem to brush the tips of his boots as she sat down in it. It was cool by the window; a draught crept around the shutters, and Rachel shivered.

‘It will be very hard for me to read with so little light,’ she said, more quietly.

‘To read?’ he said. A strip of light lit one of his watchful brown eyes, and sculpted itself into the contours of his face – the hollows in his cheeks and beneath his brows. His scrutiny again gave her that conspicuous feeling, that sense that all her words and expressions were false.
It is her he sees.
As if reading her thoughts, Jonathan Alleyn frowned. ‘In truth, you are not so very like her. Like Alice. It is only a . . . an initial resemblance. You are taller, and narrower, your eyes are more grey than blue. Your hair is . . . your hair is just as pale as hers; your face . . . remarkably alike. But much of the similarity goes once speech and expression animate your features,’ he said. Rachel felt absurdly disappointed, almost insulted.
But much time has passed; the years will work changes.
‘When I first saw you my vision was blurred . . . the headaches do that sometimes.’

‘Well, I never claimed any connection to Alice Beckwith . . .’

‘No more you did. You came in ignorance. I . . . I must apologise again for my reaction. For laying hands on you. It was inexcusable.’ He spoke in a flat voice, with no marked emotion or expression, and only a slight frown to give his words credence. Rachel began to form an acceptance of his apology, but it wouldn’t come. She laced her fingers in her lap and studied them.

‘Laying hands on me? You half strangled me.’ The words burst out, unbidden. Shocked at her own frankness, she saw a look of surprise and then despair fill Jonathan’s face.

‘I barely remember,’ he muttered. ‘It has vanished into the dark spaces.’

‘Well,’ said Rachel, not quite understanding him. She rearranged her hands. ‘How are you today? You’re not suffering a headache now?’

‘No, madam. Though the term “ache” scarcely gives a true idea of the sensation. It is more like a knife, twisting slowly in my skull. Like a thunderstorm, caught between my temples.’

‘Have you consulted a doctor over it?’

‘My mother has sent every doctor, quack and hedge witch in England to me at some time or another,’ he snapped. ‘All they do is bleed me, which makes me weak, then tell me to rest. None of it does any good. Only wine . . . only wine eases it. For a time.’ He shut his eyes for a moment then leant forwards suddenly, moving so quickly that Rachel jumped. ‘It’s the things I have seen, you understand? It’s the things I have seen and the things I have done, clawing away at my mind like rats!’

‘Things . . . things you saw in the war with the French?’ Rachel ventured, cautiously.

‘Oh, how much you know, about the war and what happened there, and about Alice . . . How much everybody knows and how all the voices chatter on and how well informed everybody is about my infirmity! About my very
thoughts
!’ he snapped, leaning back again, disgusted.

‘In truth, sir, I know very little. I was only trying to—’

‘You know nothing,’ he stated flatly.

Stung, Rachel sat silent for a moment. There was a slight sound from the far end of the room, where a doorway led through to his bedchamber. She thought at once of the redhaired servant.
Starling.
Was she watching them again? Keeping guard?

‘It was nothing. Only the house shifting in this wind,’ said Jonathan.

‘Last time . . . last time I was here there was a girl,’ said Rachel. Jonathan grunted.

‘Yes, that one. She gets everywhere. Sneaks around this house like a cat, far too bold for her own good.’ He shut his eyes and pressed his fingertips into his temple again.

‘A curious name. Has she no other?’

‘No. She is a curious girl, given her curious name by another girl, the sweetest that ever lived.’

‘You mean . . . Miss Beckwith? Did Starling belong to her, then?’ said Rachel, puzzled.

‘You are not here to question me about Alice Beckwith.’ He spoke in that flat, adamant tone again, cold and hard as steel. Rachel swallowed to ease her dry throat.

‘Why am I here, sir?’ she asked eventually, steadily.

‘You’re here because my mother will not stop trying to fix what cannot be fixed. You’re here because you bear a passing resemblance to a woman I loved, a woman I would have married, a woman who—’ He cut himself off, took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know why you’re here. There is no need for you to be. You may go.’

‘I understood I was here to read to you. To assist you in that, when it is beyond you these days?’

‘To assist me?’

‘Yes. What would you like me to read?’

‘You didn’t bring something with you? Something wholesome and healing, something that will be good for my soul? Psalms? A book of sermons?’ The question was sour.
He wishes me gone.
For a second Rachel almost stood up to leave, but something kept her in her chair. It would feel like failure, she realised, should she leave so soon, having achieved so little.
Give every endeavour your best effort
, her father had said, over and again, usually in reference to a page of unconjugated Latin.
But what is my endeavour here? To help this man, or to know what ails him? To know Alice, who changed everything.

‘I’ll choose something from your shelf, shall I?’ she said, in as light a tone as she could muster.

Jonathan said nothing as she went over to the wooden shelves that filled one wall of the room. She ran her eyes along the spines of his books, many of which were dusty and faded, and had names she could barely understand, or which were written in foreign languages. There were other things on the shelves as well – strange implements, mechanical toys and little jointed wooden figures, like the ones her mother had sometimes used for her drawing studies. There were the three glass jars with their pale, fleshy occupants that seemed to look back at Rachel. She recoiled from such dead, unnatural scrutiny. For a while, she was so intrigued with her exploration of the shelves that she forgot her purpose in looking. She ran her fingers along a smooth wooden tube, nine inches in length and screwed together from two sections, widening at one end like a funnel.

‘It’s for listening to a person’s chest. To their heart, and their breathing, and all the strange mechanisms of the body.’ Jonathan spoke quietly, close behind her. Rachel hadn’t heard him approach, and tried not to show her unease.

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘A Frenchman has invented it, lately; a man by the name of Laennec. Shall I show you? The sound is quite incredible. As though skin and bones and flesh have been peeled away, and the heart is left naked to be examined.’

‘No, I don’t want that,’ said Rachel, alarmed. ‘Your mother told me that you hated the French, and all things French. That you would not even have French wine to drink.’

Jonathan’s expression darkened. ‘She knows nothing of what I think, nor how I feel. It is quite astonishing, how much she misunderstands . . .’

‘I believe it pains her a great deal that—’

‘Stop. You know nothing, Mrs Weekes, and you make yourself sound foolish.’ Rachel bit her lip angrily, and said nothing. She took a step away from him, along the shelf, until her eyes fell on a tiny toy mouse.

It was life-sized – a little more than three inches long, with a delicate whip of a tail. Its body was made of thin, overlapping scales of copper, the edges crenulated to mimic the look of fur. Its tail was a piece of leather, stiff enough to stand out behind it, everything else was made of the same bright copper but for its eyes, which were round jet beads, large and lustrous. It was attached to a piece of ebony wood, as though it had been walking across it when it had frozen, and turned to metal. Rachel picked it up gently, and examined it. The detail was exquisite. Individual horse hairs had been attached to give it whiskers; it had tiny copper claws, and its ears were tiny, perfect circles.

‘You like it?’ Jonathan asked, his tone softening.

‘It’s charming,’ said Rachel.

‘Look – see what it does.’ He took the copper mouse from her, turned it around and wound a key that fitted into the wooden base, and then held it out on his palm. As the key wound down, the little mouse moved. Its feet pattered along as though it was running, then it paused, and lifted its nose as if to sniff at the air. Its tail curled higher and it sat back on its haunches, front paws dangling under its chin. Then it returned to all four feet and ran on. Again it performed this cycle, as Rachel watched, delighted; then after a minute or so the spring wound down and the mouse fell still.

Rachel looked up, smiling.

‘I have seen something like this before,’ she said. ‘A schoolfriend of mine had a box, and when the key was wound, the scene on the lid came to life, and little skaters slid about on a frozen lake. But it was just a flat scene, not a real creature like this. It’s wonderful . . . where did you come by it?’

‘I made it,’ said Jonathan.

‘Truly, Mr Alleyn? How came you by such skill?’

‘I was trying . . . I read a treatise on such mechanisms by a Swiss man, a maker of clocks. And I have taken apart several other such toys, to learn how they function. Most of my efforts were failures, but then this little mouse . . . continues to run.’ His tone was strange, almost embarrassed.

‘It is exquisite, Mr Alleyn. And a fine skill to have taught oneself as a hobby, to be sure,’ she said encouragingly, but her words had the opposite effect. Jonathan frowned, and turned the copper mouse over in his hands.

‘A hobby?’ He shook his head and thought for a while. ‘The philosophers have it that animals have no souls. That without a soul, the body is just a machine, like this. It performs mechanical functions with no thought, no governing mind. There was an automaton built by a Frenchman, the
Canard Digerateur
– do you know of it? The digesting duck? It can eat grain and digest it, just like a real duck. Does that not prove that animals are mere machines?’ He paused, and Rachel shook her head, baffled. ‘But if they have no souls, why is their blood hot, like ours? Why do they show fear? Why do they hunger? Why do they fight for life? Why will a cow stand and fight a wolf rather than let her calf be taken?’

‘I do not . . . but animals cannot have souls. It is written . . .’

‘In the Bible? Yes. A great many things are written in the Bible.’

‘Surely, you do not doubt the word of God?’

‘I doubt God a great deal, Mrs Weekes, as would you, had you seen and done what I have seen and done. And if animals have no souls, than perhaps neither has man. Perhaps we are all but machines.’

‘You cannot truly think so.’

‘Can I not? What can you understand of what I think? You have no knowledge of what man can do to his fellow man. I tell you, if there is a soul then there is also a beast in all men, which would take over all thought and deed if it could, and wreak havoc.’