The Penny Heart (57 page)

I jumped up, unable to contain my gratitude. Peter had perjured himself to protect me. How I regretted my suspicious nature and ill will to him. Peter had proved a true friend. And Peter, I noted in passing, had indeed claimed Bleasedale Hall and married Miss Brighouse. I read on:

Upon further questioning about the two unknown women, Mr Peter Croxon said that it was speculation, but he did believe his brother had formed an irregular attachment to his housekeeper, but could not remember her name. The witness confirmed that his brother’s housekeeper did wear such an iron chatelaine at her waist, but the initials EJH meant nothing to him. With regard to the identity of the second unknown female, he had no notion whatsoever who she might be.

Only one more column of newsprint remained, and I read it greedily.

These were all the material points of evidence which Mr Sheldon summed up with great precision and perspicuity, deducing that the probability was that the deceased male was Mr Michael George Croxon, formerly of Delafosse Hall. It was however unfortunate that the two unknown females could not be identified.

The coroner affirmed that a dramatic feature of the case was the presence of the large kitchen knife in the vicinity of the bodies. However, given the long period of immersion and loss of flesh, all the usual tests of cause of death by surgeon’s examination were fruitless. It was at this late date impossible to say if the knife had played a part in the death of any of these unfortunate persons. Certainly none of the three appeared to have been robbed, as money and valuable goods were still found beside their persons.

In summing up the coroner said that there had been much speculation about this mysterious and dreadful tragedy, but that it was not his job to repeat scurrilous rumour against agitators and radicals; only to sum up the facts. One most unfortunate aspect was the erosion of the inscription on the copper disc, for it might well have provided a means of identity. He was therefore forced to advise the jury that the evidence was so slight that it was impossible to give a certain verdict of the cause of death of any of the deceased. In this light the jury gave a unanimous verdict of 1. Michael George Croxon – Death by Misadventure 2. First Female Unknown – Death by Misadventure 3. Second Female Unknown – Death by Misadventure. Accordingly the coroner issued his warrant for the burial of the bodies in a Christian manner.

I finished reading with a giddy sense of freedom. I would forever be grateful to Peter. A more vindictive man might have insisted I be found, and made to give my testimony on oath. I sat a long while, marvelling at what I’d read.

Someone knocked gently at the door. It was the captain, looking very anxious.

‘What do you say, Captain? You have had more time than I to digest the meaning of all this.’

He set his hand to his chin and mused. ‘The Devil only knows what murderous exchange took place between your husband and your servant.’ He looked at me with a scrutinising gaze and I nodded, affecting agreement. ‘My opinion is that he threatened her with recapture, and they argued – there was a tussle and both fell in the water. Or perhaps it was an unholy pact to end both their lives? As for the other woman, I reckon she was entirely unconnected.’

‘How clever you are,’ I said.

‘Howsoever it fell out, it’s certainly for the best. Those three souls can now receive a Christian burial. And you, if you do not mind my saying so, are free to do as you will. Though it might be a good time,’ he added with a sly grin, ‘to consider a change of name.’

*

Only later that night, alone, dreaming of black water flooding my eyes, my nose, my throat, was I haunted by a particular phrase. I got up and scoured the newspaper again. It confirmed that Michael’s watch chain had become tangled fast with Peg’s chatelaine – again, I heard Michael’s terrible scream. Michael had not taken his own life. Even in death Peg had seized upon him in revenge.

And also there in print were the initials engraved on the chatelaine by its unfortunate owner –
EJH
, whose thimble had been torn from its hook during God knew what struggle underground in the dark.

In my parlour are hung the best of my portraits, prettily framed and suspended from blue ribbons. The portrait I made of John Francis when a youth is much admired, as are sketches of Henry as he grows older, embellished with locks of hair fixed in curls under glass. Beside them are Mother and Anne, making a well-loved collection.

There are other pictures I keep out of sight: those of Michael and Peg are packed away in a trunk. Anne’s sampler is there too, for though her needlework deserves to be displayed, its celebration of my marriage to Michael does not. As for my painting of Delafosse Hall at dusk, I think it the strangest painting I ever made. I used to ask myself: who is that woman who stares from the window? A figment, or perhaps a symbol of my former loneliness?

On dull autumn days, when even at noon a pock-faced moon hangs high in the sky, and the sun is so hazy it scarcely sheds sufficient light to merit the description of day – then I think I know her. As I bend over paint and paper I strain to hear the rhythmic sweeping of an old-fashioned broom, swishing across the wooden boards. At such times I don’t look up. I am almost certain, but not quite sure, I might see her then.

Of course, I did see her at Delafosse; a middle-aged woman with mouse-like greying hair, dressed in the respectable black of a widow. She stood at the fringes of groups of servants, in the dusky corners of rooms, or in the muffling darkness of the basement. I believe I heard her too, by some freak of nature, in the dripping darkness of the tunnel, running for her life.

I have no recollection of painting her into the window of Delafosse Hall: a solitary figure, waiting and watching in that vast memory-haunted building; fixed and unable to leave. I pray she is at rest now, in a Christian grave, saved from the opaque black waters at Whitelow. As an anonymous gesture I settled a sum on orphaned James Harper of Pontefract.

Bless you, Eleanor Jane Harper. I remember your sad smile of encouragement across the grey light of the landing, your colourless eyes meeting mine, and the icy returning pressure of your hand clasping mine when we finally met in the flesh.

*

These are troubled days we live in. The mood in the country is still uneasy – this war with France makes every man mistrust his fellow, spreading rumours of revolution and spies. But these shores have withstood the Terrors of France, and as we move towards a new century, we harbour hope that better days will come. And one final message did reach me from those extraordinary years. At first the letter had been sent to Delafosse, where the new owner had not known what to do with it; so it was forwarded to Nan at Skipton. Finally, the minister who helped me pay her annuity sent it to my London address.

I had thought often of Anne but had only braved a letter once, to tell her I was safe and a mother.Not even that one letter had reached her, for here was her own enquity bearing many stains, postmarks, and creases. With some trepidation, began to read, bracing myself to hear a tale of starvation and depravity.

Greenbeck Farm

Parramatta

New South Wales

5th February 1795

My dearest Grace,

I am surprised not to hear from you for so long, and hope all is well with you? Or have our letters been lost at sea? Rumours reach us of shipwreck and mutiny on board those frail vessels that traverse the globe with our precious communications. I pray that this, of all my letters, will reach you, for I have not forgotten my promise to be a good correspondent. Often as I touch the ring you gave me, embellished with your own precious hair, I recollect my visit to Delafosse and the pleasures of York in your company. I wonder how Michael is, and whether you are still improving the Hall? I wonder too, if you have yet been blessed with children?

With what joy I can tell you of a wonderful improvement in our circumstances since that first unhappy account I sent you. We have moved to Parramatta town, a most pleasant place on the river, some sixteen miles from Sydney Cove. Our region has for the first time returned miraculous harvests of wheat and maize; indeed the summer here is so long that two crops of vegetables are often harvested. Soon Jacob will be Minister and we make plans to build a church, a modern wooden building with a meeting room where I hope to hold classes for the women and children. Yet I confess, to you alone, Grace, that I think Jacob has found a greater calling in agriculture than in the ministry. Last year the Governor granted us thirty magnificent acres here on the river, and our home, though constructed only of wood, and painted white with pipe clay, is one of the finest in this neighbourhood. We keep goats, pigs and poultry – did you ever picture me as a farmer’s wife? And our dear children have a fine and free existence: Robert is a sturdy fellow of almost two years now, and my youngest baby, Grace, is a little sweetheart who I trust will be just as clever and good as her namesake in England. I should never have anticipated it, my dear friend, but I am content here. When I recall those apprehensions I had, and your brother-in-law’s warnings, I do not believe God could have been more generous in his gifts.

Grace, I must tell you that here, where there is more open land than could ever be imagined back in the seething alleys of England, we have seen the most remarkable reformation of the hardest criminals. Our own nearest neighbour was once a convicted cracksman, as the locals name a house-thief, but now his farm is an exemplar from which we all gratefully learn. And this man and his family are good and peaceable people, who I believe needed only new hope and the trust of others to flourish.

But enough, I am running through my paper and I still have a most interesting account to give you. When we were in York you asked me to search out a convict named Mary Jebb. I can tell you she was a party to a most infamous escape from Sydney Cove some four years past. In mitigation, she and her fellow escapee, Jack Pierce, did escape the colony at a time of great crisis, when the population suffered most terribly from famine, illness and by all accounts the most awful notions of abandonment by the mother country. The two of them stole a boat and at dead of night sailed away, no doubt intending to sail north to the Dutch Indies or even China. For many years they were forgotten, but I can now supply the end to this tale.

A few weeks past, a whaling master named Captain Hogan came into town with news of a certain tribal chief of his acquaintance across the straits in the savage lands of New Zealand. Having become acquainted with these peoples, Captain Hogan found himself a guest at a grand feast of a Maori tribe. It was at that feast he noticed a woman with the white skin of a European but able only to speak the Maori tongue. At close quarters he observed how proudly she wore her feathered cloak and bone ornaments, and was the wife of a warrior and mother to a brood of his pale-skinned children. In despair he spoke in English, then tried a little French and Dutch. He wondered if she had been a whaler’s wife, or a planter’s daughter, shipwrecked or otherwise stranded in that land. Then the tale of that infamous couple’s escape came to his mind. ‘Mary Jebb,’ he repeated slowly. The change in the woman’s countenance was extraordinary. She grew pale and muttered wildly, as if hearing words of extraordinary power. So moved was the whaling captain by her plight that he spoke secretly to her, offering her a passage back to the Colony should she so wish it, endeavouring to persuade her to rejoin her own Christian race. But at the frequent repetition of her name, the former convict clung to her adopted tribe and would under no persuasion be parted from them. And so she lives a pagan still, and is talked of in the colony as a byword for moral degradation. Captain Hogan informed me that when he tried to teach her to once again speak her own name she no longer possessed the skill. Try as she would to repeat the letter ‘M’ she made a jumbled mess of ‘Mary’. And also of ‘Jebb’, which she could not utter at all. And soon in frustration she spat in his face and stormed away in anger.

When I reached the end of the letter I felt for a moment the hard ground of my certainties shift – could there be two Mary Jebbs? I inspected the chain of my reasoning: the Old Bailey trial confirmed I had known a red-haired convict named Mary Jebb. Her own account of her escape with Jack had always rung as true as the gospel. And there also stood as evidence the twin copper discs of the matching Penny Hearts. The ground beneath my feet felt firm again. So if I had known Mary Jebb, who was the white woman Captain Hogan failed to rescue? Peg had once spoken of freedom bought by an exchange of muskets, I recalled. Another character had been involved – that was it – a missionary’s daughter.