The Misbegotten (47 page)

‘Starling suggested as much.’

‘What?’

‘I . . .’ Rachel hesitated, unwilling to reveal the extent of her contact with Starling. ‘We have spoken, Starling and I. She was curious about my face . . . my resemblance to Alice.’ She held her breath but Jonathan sounded sad rather than angry.

‘Yes. She loved Alice as much as I did.’

‘She does not believe that Alice was keeping other company. That she ran away with anybody else.’

‘I know. She thinks I killed her.’ He looked at Rachel and smiled at the shock on her face. ‘We have had many years in which to fling hurtful and violent things at one another, Starling and I.’

‘But, she also told me . . .’ Rachel paused again, unsure if it was right or wrong to speak. ‘They had a housekeeper. Bridget Barnes.’

‘Bridget saw Alice speaking with another man, shortly before she vanished,’ said Jonathan.

‘You know already?’ said Rachel. Jonathan was still breathing deeply, his chest rising and falling emphatically.

‘Yes. My grandfather got it from her, and told me. But still, I . . . won’t condemn her. I
know
when my mother is lying. Whoever this man was, and why ever Alice went away with him, she can only have thought it was for the best. They must have deceived her in some way. Or perhaps taken her against her will.’

‘But you always seemed so angry with her – you seemed to blame Alice for abandoning you!’

‘And I did, for a time. Perhaps I still do, in darker hours; for I cannot think why she would go, and why she would stay away all this time. What could have been so terrible that we could not have surmounted it, together? So then, I think again – they must have forced her away somehow.’

‘Why would they, when she had been prepared to break it off with you? Your family didn’t want the two of you to wed. Alice went to them and revealed your intentions, and something was said to frighten her. She wrote to you to break it off. Why then would they go further?’

‘I don’t know! Don’t you think I’ve asked myself these things, time and time again? The only people who know are Alice and my mother. One cannot tell me, the other refuses to.’

‘So you think . . .’ Rachel was finding it hard to speak. Her voice was trapped in her throat, choked by her heart. ‘You think that Alice is still alive?’

‘Yes, of course. I pray that she is. I would rather . . . I would rather have her alive somewhere, in love with another, sparing me not a thought . . . I would rather that than she be dead. Only Starling ever thought that would be better.’

‘So would I,’ said Rachel, but quietly, and Jonathan didn’t seem to hear. They stood a while, each lost in thought, with the sun shining in their eyes and a buzzard circling high overhead, riding the warm air as it rose from the hill. Rachel let her arms hang down by her sides and tried not to wish that he would unfold his arms and take her hand again. She felt childish, foolish, to think it.
What would I gain from such a gesture?
Again, the echo answered her, as softly as a pent breath gently released.
Everything.

By early November it had been more than six weeks since any news of Jonathan had reached the farmhouse in Bathampton. When he’d come to tell them, that summer, that he was going to Portugal to fight the French, Starling hadn’t had the first clue where Portugal was, or why the French should be there instead of in France, and they’d spent a while hunting out the atlas and poring over maps of Europe. Her betrayal of Alice after her discovery of the lovers’ tree seemed forgotten, as did their plans to run away. The war with France had postponed everything, and as if she guessed as much, Bridget had met the news of Jonathan’s departure to the Peninsula with a kind of sombre relief. Jonathan was pulled in half; spoke in one breath of glory and duty, and in the next of how much he would miss them all, and long to return. Whenever he mentioned it, Alice’s eyes swam with tears which she refused to shed in his presence. But once he’d taken his final leave of them, they fell like rain.

Jonathan’s letters came each week, sometimes in twos and threes. He wrote nearly every day, but the letters were sent in groups, as and when they could be. He filled every available inch of the paper, the writing so cramped it was harder than ever to decipher. They came smeared and splodged sometimes; they came smelling of smoke, or gunpowder, or the prickling scent of dust. One came burnt, with an uneven black ring through the middle and a reek of cinders, the words inside the circle lost for ever. Alice snatched them all up and devoured them, and once she’d read each one to herself several times, she would read them out loud to Bridget and Starling; but always with pauses, gaps where she censored the words, and glanced up at Bridget with a look at once apologetic and defiant. And then the letters stopped, and they could only wait. After two weeks without word, Starling got bored and turned her attention to other things. But for Alice, the burden of waiting got heavier and heavier every day.

She woke Starling up one night, while the room was black and cold. She hadn’t lit a candle, and her grasping hands seemed to come from nowhere, like the darkness itself come alive. Starling scrambled back, trying to break away.

‘Hush, hush! It’s me!’ Alice whispered, tense and urgent. Her throat sounded tight.

‘What’s wrong? What’s happened? I can’t see anything!’

‘I had a terrible thought, dearest.’ Her voice was a homeless, breathy thing. ‘What if Jonathan has been killed? If Lord Faukes has had word of him . . . perhaps he would not think to inform us. He doesn’t know of our . . . bond, after all, does he? What if that’s it, Starling? What if he’s dead and they haven’t told me?’ Starling could think of nothing to say, and the invisible hands gripped her wrists ever tighter, until the nails cut in. ‘I shall have to go there. I shall have to go to Box and ask.’

‘Alice, no! You’re not allowed!’ said Starling.

‘But I must know,’ said Alice, and then she said nothing more.

Come morning, Starling and Bridget woke to find Alice gone. With nerves making her stomach feel watery and ill, Starling told Bridget where she had most likely gone. Bridget’s lips turned bloodless and pale. It was less than five miles to walk to Box, but steep, and might take Alice an hour and a half if no traffic agreed to carry her. After three hours, Starling began to watch for her, keeping an eye out of the nearest window, whatever room she was in. Bridget was grim and silent, and worked with a single-minded intensity that betrayed how anxious she was.

‘Lord Faukes loves Alice,’ Starling said to her at one point. ‘He will be kind to her, I think.’ But Bridget merely grunted.

‘You know little enough of men, or of the world, Starling no-name.’ Which put Starling’s nose out of joint so that she resolved not to speak to Bridget again until Alice got back. Just half an hour later, Starling was watching from the kitchen window when she saw Alice’s familiar willowy figure approaching.

‘She’s back!’ she shouted excitedly, forgetting her vow at once. Alice marched across the yard and through the door, shoulders stooped and chin dipped into her chest. She turned and slammed the door shut behind her, then stood swaying, leaning forwards until her forehead touched the wood.

‘What is it? Is he dead then?’ Bridget demanded.

‘Bridget! Don’t say that!’ Starling cried.

‘Better to know. Well, Alice? What news?’ But Alice only stood with her face to the door, and did not answer. When Bridget and Starling turned her, they were shocked. Her face was ashen, almost grey; her lips had a bluish tinge, eyes wide and staring. She shook so badly that the tremors were more like convulsions, jarring through her body.

‘
Alice
!’ Starling threw her arms around her.

‘Leave off, girl! If she’s faint that won’t help!’ said Bridget. With her ear pressed to Alice’s chest, Starling heard her heartbeat, racing and stuttering, just as it had the first night Starling had met her. It skipped beats, then fired in short, staccato bursts; a pause and then a flurry, with no rhythm, no pattern; it felt as though a small and desperate animal was trapped behind her ribs. Then there was a long pause between beats, longer than the others, and Starling looked up as Alice’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she crumpled to the floor.

The doctor came and bled Alice into a white porcelain bowl; he told them she must rest and drink dark ale to fortify her. Alice slept deeply for twenty-four hours, her face so white and her body so still that she might have died. Starling crept into the room now and then, to reassure herself with the gentle waft of Alice’s breath on her cheek. When she woke up they fed her, and made her drink beef broth. They washed her, and brushed her hair, but for two days Alice said nothing, and only stared straight ahead. There were shadows under her eyes like bruises, smudged purple; faint blue veins crawled under her skin. Starling built up the fire in the grate but it did nothing to banish the chill and the gloom from the room. At the end of the third day she crawled onto the bed to lie beside Alice.

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ she whispered. She could think of nothing else that might have rendered Alice so low. ‘Bridget believes it. Is it true?’ She couldn’t imagine it; couldn’t imagine Jonathan not existing any more. Real people didn’t die; not real people that she had seen and touched and spoken to. She could not grasp the weight of it, but it gave her that same watery, sick feeling, churning inside her. ‘Is he dead, Alice? Is that what Lord Faukes told you?’ She didn’t really expect an answer but she got one, though Alice’s voice was a puny murmur of sound.

‘No, Starling. Jonathan is not dead. Not that they had heard.’

‘Oh,
Alice
!’ Starling cried, joyfully, turning to embrace her. ‘Then why are you so sad? Did he chastise you? Lord Faukes? Was he cruel? Even if he was, even if we have to leave Bathampton . . . well, it doesn’t matter because Jonathan will come back and marry you and look after us. All will be well, Alice!’ She beamed at her big sister. ‘All will be well.’ But Alice shook her head minutely, and two fat, swollen tears dropped onto her cheeks, one from each eye, in perfect unison.

‘No. Nothing will be well. I am . . .’ She blinked, searching for the words. ‘I cannot marry him. I can never marry Jonathan.’

Starling waited while Rachel Weekes went in to Mrs Alleyn, to give her usual report on her visit with Jonathan. The reports had been getting shorter and shorter, though the visits grew longer and longer. Starling had a strange feeling about that. A kernel of mistrust in her gut; hard and bitter as an apple pip.
And now they walk out together, arm in arm. I wanted her to torment him with that face, but she heals him.
She was restless with frustration. All her years of hard work, all the little punishments she had meted out; all of it was being undone by something she herself had set in motion. When she heard the front door close she darted out and up the servants’ stair, glaring at Rachel Weekes as they moved away together along the garden wall.

‘What are you doing? Are you on his side now?’ Starling snapped, the words surprising her. She hadn’t been aware of thinking them.

‘What?’

‘Walking the high common like . . . like . . .’

‘Like what?’ said Rachel Weekes. She seemed distracted, and Starling noticed her split lip, the bruise on her jaw.

‘What did he beat you for?’ she asked, in all curiosity. It seemed that Rachel Weekes’s marriage had followed the same course as her own liaison with Dick, only more rapidly. She still felt angry with the woman for marrying him, but now it was because she’d been stupid enough to saddle herself with him. Rachel’s attention settled onto her more steadily.

‘What’s wrong, Starling?’ she said levelly.

‘What do you mean?’ Starling was taken aback by her tone; affronted. ‘You know what’s wrong. I thought you wanted the same as me – to find out why he hurt Alice, and to prove it. But now I think what you want might have changed, mightn’t it? What now, are you in
love
with Jonathan Alleyn?’

‘No,’ said Rachel, with a kind of startled outrage that spoke volumes.

‘Hard luck if you are. You’re married to Dick Weekes, until God parts you. And Jonathan loves
Alice
, not you.’

There was a pause, and Rachel stared hard at Starling until she could hardly bear it. The weight of the taller woman’s gaze seemed to crush her.

‘What have I done to you, to make you try to wound me so?’ she said.

‘You were supposed to be on
my
side!’ Starling sounded childish to her own ears. She folded her arms in disgust, to hide the tremulous, unhappy feeling that was growing inside her. ‘Tell me what you found out today.’

‘I asked him about Alice’s last letter to him. He said she called their love an
abomination
. She said they should never see each other again.’

‘Abomination . . . I hardly know what that means.’

‘It means that Bridget was right, perhaps, about Alice being Lord Faukes’s child. If the love she and Jonathan had was incestuous . . .’

‘No.’ Starling shook her head. The idea made her sick to her stomach. ‘Alice couldn’t have been Faukes’s child. No man so vile could sire such a sweet girl.’

‘What did he do to you? Lord Faukes, I mean?’

‘What do you think he did? What do all men of power do? They take without asking.’ Starling heard the bitterness in her own voice; the ugliness. Rachel Weekes’s face reflected her pity, and disgust. Starling spoke on, to deflect it. ‘What of your lost sister – what of that? Now you say it was not her?’

‘I . . . I want it to be. I want Alice to be Abi . . .’

‘But she could be . . . she could be, couldn’t she? If she
was
Lord Faukes’s, wouldn’t he have had her from birth? Wouldn’t he have brought her to Bridget sooner?’
What are you saying, mindless fool? Alice was your own sister, not hers.

Starling sighed sharply through her nose. ‘Anyway, it matters not, and can never be known for sure. But do you believe now that Mr Alleyn killed her? That he had reason to?’

‘I don’t . . . I don’t know.’ Rachel frowned, and looked down at her hands. She cradled one in the other, and rubbed her thumb over its surface as if to check for a wound or a mark. ‘He spoke of . . . dark spaces. Dark spaces in his memory.’ The words, spoken reluctantly, sent a thrill through Starling.