The Silk House : A Novel (2020)

by Nunn, Kayte

  Rowan did not return directly to the merchant’s house, calling instead at the coaching inns at the far end of the high street. She had no luck at the first one, but at the second was told to wait in the dining room while the innkeeper went in search of Miss Stephenson.

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’ Mary stood in front of Rowan. ‘Do you carry a message from Mr Hollander perhaps? Has he reconciled his accounts?’ she asked, a hopeful expression lighting her face.

  Rowan shook her head, glanced about and noticed that the innkeeper loitered across the room, doubtless hoping to glean some gossip. ‘Might we go somewhere more private?’ she asked in a low voice. ‘Please, it is in your interest to hear what I have to say.’

  ‘Very well. It is rather pleasant out, but let me fetch my cloak in any case.’

  ‘I shall wait for you near the church – the one at the far end of town.’

  Mary nodded in agreement and Rowan hastened from the inn.

  She did not have long to wait, as she soon saw the figure of Mary Stephenson several yards away. From a distance her cloak could have been the same as Rowan’s, but as she drew closer Rowan saw that it was made from far finer fabric, albeit moth-eaten in places.

  ‘Well,’ Mary said, standing in front of her, ‘what is it that you have to tell me?’

  Rowan had become a gambler, her words were her dice, though even before she spoke she was not certain there was a winning side to be had. ‘When I overheard Mr Hollander say that he did not believe he had received the fabric, I could no longer remain silent. How could he not have recognised it? It is a design apart from anything I have ever seen.’

  Mary flinched.

  ‘He is not to be trusted,’ Rowan continued in a whisper, her eyes darting about to make sure she was not overheard.

  Mary seemed confused. ‘But you are his servant. Why risk your position to tell me this? And why would he lie to me, when he has promised to see me on the morrow?’

  ‘He intends to leave for Bath at first light,’ Rowan confessed.

  ‘He what?’ Mary’s eyes hardened. ‘I still do not understand. Why does he toy with me so? If he does not like my work, why commission me in the first place? He does nothing but waste all of our time.’

  ‘If you please, mistress, I do believe him to be deranged.’

  ‘Deranged? How so?’

  ‘Inconstant. He has but a loose grip on the present, let alone the past. Forgets what he has promised. It is as if he wishes to make one happy in the moment, but then denies it henceforth.’ Rowan stopped there, convinced that she had said too much. She had not forgotten her mother’s stories of the scold’s bridle, and though Rowan knew they were no longer used, there would still be dreadful consequences of speaking about her master in such a way were he to discover her disloyalty.

  ‘How can he conduct a business in this manner? It is preposterous.’

  ‘Everything is not as it seems in that house, and I thought it only proper to warn you.’

  ‘The way you warned me about the danger of my design?’ Mary asked, pacing up and down in front of Rowan. ‘I cannot return to London and tell my sister I have failed in my endeavours.’ Mary turned, her hands clenched, her jaw set. ‘I will not be made a fool of, damn him! He will regret his actions, I will make sure of it.’

  ‘Please,’ said Rowan. ‘He cannot know that it was I who told you.’

  Mary’s expression softened. ‘You have risked plenty, and for that I am most grateful. He shall not know what brings my swift return. Here,’ – she held out a copper – ‘for your trouble. I am sorry; it is all I can spare.’

  Rowan shook her head. ‘I did not come to you in hopes of recompense,’ she said. ‘Only out of a sense for what is right.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘I must away, for I will be missed if I am gone too long.’ She hurried from the churchyard, conjuring an excuse on her lips should Prudence enquire after her absence.

  Mary paced, not caring that her skirts had become muddied from the path. How utterly foolish she was to have been duped by such a man. She cursed herself for being so trusting of his word, for being dazzled – she now admitted – by his apparent wealth, by his good looks and charming manner. It seemed they were naught but a sham.

  She would not be the fool he took her for. She would place more of her work eventually – the whispers of the draw boys and apprentices and the reaction of Mrs Hollander to her designs were proof of her talent. She wasn’t about to stop believing in herself after a single misstep, but she would be far less trusting in her future dealings.

  THIRTY-NINE

  July 1769, Oxleigh

  An unnatural quiet had descended upon the town and Rowan went about her duties with an uncharacteristic slowness, lingering over simple tasks and taking long pauses between them. The growing tension in the air felt like the hours before a thunderstorm broke. The master was absent once again. Rowan, who had seen him head in the direction of the tavern at the end of the high street, privately suspected he had made his way to the card tables.

  Before he left, Patrick had instructed her to repack his trunk with fresh clothes for his departure, but once that was done, she found she could not summon the energy for her normal tasks. She was tired of the lies, the undercurrent of deception that had seeped into the house, poisoning the air like a canker. No one seemed spared it. Even Prudence had been avoiding her lately. Could this be because of Alice’s accusations? She had done her best to help Alice, but the maid appeared to wish her nothing but ill.

  Rowan could hardly wait for the afternoon to arrive and as the bell began to strike two, she was already throwing her cloak over her dress, for indeed the sky was the purple of a bruise and seemed ready to rain at a moment’s notice. She slipped out of the back door and followed the side passage that led to the high street. A few yards along, she saw two familiar figures: her master and Miss Stephenson, standing underneath the sign of The Seven Stars. She could not hear what they were saying, but she pulled the hood of her cloak further over her head to avoid being seen by them. She needn’t have worried, for neither would have noticed her, so intent were they on each other. As she drew closer, idling at a shopfront, she risked another glance. They appeared to be arguing, and at that moment, she saw her master grasp Miss Stephenson by the wrist and pull her along the street. She knew at once that they were headed in the direction of the river. A sudden vision of the swirling millrace filled her mind, a red shape caught in the whitewater at the centre of the pool. Something terrible would befall the woman from London; Rowan felt it as if it were a knife to her belly.

  Tommy called after her from the doorway of the butcher’s shop, but she ignored him, forging on.

  The pair were out of sight now, but Rowan walked rapidly along the street and veered into a narrow lane that would bring her to the mill from the other direction. Her cloak snagged on a gorse bush causing her to stumble and tear a stocking, but she pressed on, running now in an effort to reach the mill first.

  She gasped with the effort of running, her breath coming in great gulps, but did not let up, even as her chest began to burn. But when she reached the riverbank, someone else entirely stood before her.

  Her mistress. Caroline. Wrapped in a scarlet velvet cloak, her fair hair loose about her shoulders. She had a wild look in her eyes, as if she had lost all reason, and Rowan noticed that her hands shook as if with a palsy when she raised them before her.

  ‘Should you be abroad, mistress?’ Rowan gasped.

  ‘You knew?’ Caroline demanded, ignoring her concerns.

  ‘Knew what?’ Rowan, fearing her betrayal had come to light, steeled herself to take her punishment, whatever it might entail. She swallowed a lump that had risen in her throat, ready for the worst. But the name her mistress said next was not the one she had expected to hear.

  ‘Alice and my husband.’

  Rowan regarded her dumbly, unable to confirm or deny her mistress’s suspicions, feeling a wave of relief that her own sins had not ye
t come to light.

  ‘I must know the truth.’ Caroline spoke through gritted teeth. ‘I have searched the town, every tavern and alley. Is he this way?’

  ‘I followed them – him,’ said Rowan. ‘Come, let us keep looking.’

  They reached the river, and both could see the couple some way ahead on the path in front of them, near where the water widened at the millpond.

  Mary-Louise, the silk designer and her master.

  Rowan and Caroline pressed on. As they drew closer, Rowan could see that they were both making jerky movements, their heads drawn forward, eyes wide; arms gesticulating wildly. Patrick Hollander seemed unsteady on his feet, staggering as if drunk. His stock was awry and his pockets pulled out as if to show they concealed nothing. The noise of the millrace meant that she could not hear a word that was said, though the animosity between the pair was clear enough.

  Her master raised his arms as if in submission, but in doing so caught Miss Stephenson on the shoulder. She rocked backwards, so close to the water that Rowan gasped. She saw her master’s mouth move, but she could not hear his words.

  ‘Patrick!’ Caroline screamed, loud enough to be heard over the rush of the water.

  Patrick and Mary both stopped, as if astonished to discover that they were not alone.

  Rowan watched as Caroline gathered her skirts and, despite her increased girth, hastened towards them. As she reached her husband, she placed a hand on his arm, but he threw it off and Caroline reeled at the force of it. Unbalanced, she stumbled backwards, then tripped over her cloak, which had become tangled about her feet.

  Rowan watched in frozen silence as one moment her mistress was standing there, and the next she was gone, down like a felled oak, plunging into the churning water, swallowed up in an instant.

  Patrick bellowed after her.

  Rowan stood, rooted to the spot, watching as he threw off his jacket and waded into the pond, shouting his wife’s name.

  Rowan felt thick-witted, as if in a fog, her ears filled with the roaring sound of the water. Time seemed to slow, honey dripping from a comb, as she stood at the edge and fretted, watching her master wade deeper into the pond. Finally, she found her voice, though the words she screamed as he disappeared into the water were foreign to her, sounded even to her ears like a curse. All she could see of Caroline was her cloak floating on the surface, her earlier vision made a dreadful truth.

  Then, Tommy was by her side. She didn’t stop to ask how he came to be there, simply pointed to the cloak. Without hesitation he, too, cast off his jacket and waded in as Mary moved further away, scanning the water downstream.

  Patrick was deeper, in the centre of the pond now, ducking down where the cloak had swirled, but each time he came up empty-handed. ‘Caroline!’ he shouted, his eyes wild as he searched the water beneath him. ‘Caroline! Show yourself!’ Three, four, five times Rowan watched him dive. He looked towards the bank. ‘I cannot … I cannot see,’ he called out to them. ‘I cannot find her! It is as though she has been sucked into a whirlpool.’ Then, he disappeared again and again but did not come up a twelfth time.

  Tommy was in the water too, had reached the spot where Patrick had been and began to duck down into the churning water.

  After a long moment he surfaced, turned towards Rowan, wiped the water from his eyes and shook his head. Not giving up, he continued to dive.

  ‘She’s here!’ Mary shouted. She had run further along the bank where the pool joined the river and the water was calmer. ‘Over here!’ she pointed.

  Rowan abandoned her position by the edge of the pond and ran towards the river. She could see the red cloak, dark like spilled blood, under the water.

  Caring no longer for the fact that she feared the water, Rowan ran along the path, cast off her own cloak and waded in. She stumbled and almost fell, drawn dangerously deeper as the water caught her skirts. She struggled on, not thinking of her own safety, taking great wracking breaths until she reached her mistress. Holding underneath her arms, Rowan pulled her towards the calmer water. Mary waded in and helped drag Caroline, wrapped about with chickweed so fine it looked like lace, closer to the bank.

  Together they wiped the weed from her face, leaned in to see if there was the slightest chance that the spark of life might not have left her.

  ‘He pushed her,’ Mary gasped. ‘I saw it. He might not have meant to, but he pushed her in. He nearly did for me as well.’ She shook with shock and the cold, her arms and skirts running with rivers of water. ‘He is the devil himself.’ She reached an arm around Rowan. ‘Are you quite well? You yourself could have drowned.’

  Teeth chattering, Rowan felt the woman’s warmth beneath her soaked clothing, a small comfort.

  They held Caroline free of the water, unsure of what to do. For a few moments there was nothing, then, after what seemed like an age, Rowan saw a slight breath escape her mistress’s lips.

  Relief surged through her as the breaths came more regularly. Together, she and Mary pulled her onto the riverbank. Once she was convinced that her mistress had clung to life, Rowan sat back on her heels, unable to comprehend everything that had happened in the space of a few terrible minutes.

  ‘We must get her home,’ she said when she had regained her composure.

  ‘But how?’ Mary asked.

  ‘Fetch help. The butcher has a cart.’ Rowan was unafraid to take charge now.

  Mary stood up, wrung out her skirt as best she could, then left at a halting pace – for her petticoats and underclothes clung wetly to her legs – towards the town.

  Rowan cast around for Tommy, fearing the worst. She didn’t dare take a breath herself until she had seen him. Finally, his sleek head popped up as an otter’s might and he splashed to the surface. In her relief she was distracted by movement on the far bank. Her master’s body had rolled on its side, and for a moment Rowan imagined it must have been the current pushing him thus, that it was a corpse coughed up by the river. She let out a shriek when she saw him sit upright, shake the water out of his hair, lean forward and choke a stream of water onto the bank. ‘Tommy!’ she screamed. ‘Help him.’ Despite everything he had done and not done, she could not see a person go unaided when they were in need of assistance. Besides, she knew that when he eventually came to understand what had happened, Patrick Hollander would have to live with his actions.

  That, she knew, was a far greater punishment than any other one could conceive.

  FORTY

  July 1769, Oxleigh

  Caroline lay in her bedchamber, her breathing shallow and laboured. She had been helped from the river by the butcher and another apprentice summoned by Mary Stephenson. Though more used to animal carcasses, they loaded her onto the cart with surprising gentleness as Rowan, Tommy and Mary looked on. Patrick staggered towards them, letting out a great howl of rage and anguish as he saw his wife’s unmoving form. ‘She is not …’ he slurred. ‘She cannot be …’ Tommy grasped his arm, holding him back from the cart as they got underway. ‘They have her now,’ he said. ‘You’ll do best to summon the doctor.’

  Patrick shrugged himself free of Tommy’s grasp and took off unsteadily after the cart.

  When they reached the house, the butcher and apprentice carried Caroline upstairs to her chamber. Alice removed her waterlogged gown and Rowan placed her hands on her mistress’s barrel of a belly, praying that life still grew therein. She crossed herself as they tucked the sheet around the unresponsive form and waited for the doctor.

  He arrived within the hour, insisted they leave the room and then emerged a short time later wearing a sombre expression. Rowan saw him go to the parlour to speak with her master, didn’t need to hear his words to know that her mistress might never wake up.

  Mary had returned to her lodgings only after Rowan had reassured her that there was nothing more for her to do. Her gown was wet through and covered in mud, but she barely noticed the chill of it for her body and mind were as if stupefied. It was as though the horror she had recentl
y witnessed was at arm’s length, had been but a bad dream, for it was too awful to contemplate. She feared that Mistress Hollander might not survive; she had never seen a face so drained of colour. Her skin had been pale grey, and the sight of it remained in Mary’s mind as she staggered along the high street, oblivious to the concerned and curious glances thrown her way. Teeth chattering, she stumbled into her room and peeled her gown from her body before fumbling with the laces of her stays, disrobing entirely and crawling under the blankets. It was a long while before the shivering stopped.

  Much later a knock woke her and Mary hastily threw on a clean chemise. ‘Who’s there?’ she asked.

  ‘Heard what happened,’ said the innkeeper’s wife as Mary opened the door a crack. ‘’Twere a terrible tragedy. Who would credit it?’ She shook her head ruefully, sucked her teeth and stood there, clearly hoping for more gossip on the matter.

  Mary was silent. She seemed to have forgotten the art of speech entirely.

  Realising she would get no answer, the woman offered up the tray she was carrying. ‘This should warm you up. There’s been a letter delivered here too. Addressed to you. It went to The Seven Stars first, but then they thought to try here.’

  Mary regarded the tray without much curiosity but stood back and let the woman enter.

  After she had spooned some of the soup, nearly choking as it burned down her throat, Mary’s eyes slid to the letter and registered the familiar writing.

  Three days Caroline lay in her bed, growing ever paler, a faint rattle coming from her lungs with every breath, while her husband sat vigil by her bedside, refusing to leave it, nor able to touch the food that Rowan carried up for him.