He helped Darius find the spot and waited. It took only a minute until even with his naked eye, Nat also saw the firework flash and trailing tail of a shooting star, moving faster than lightning across the firmament.
‘How’d you know that would happen?’ Darius asked, handing back the telescope.
‘Mathematics.’ He chose not to explain that at this date meteors flew in a deluge in that part of the heavens.
‘You vouch you saw what I predicted?’
‘Aye.’
‘And your prediction?’
‘You don’t believe in curses. So you’ll not be minding if I curse our pert new neighbour.’ Darius jerked Nat’s telescope in the direction of the lighted window of Tabitha’s cottage. ‘It may take a while longer’n your trick, but I predict she’ll meet misfortune before the year is out.’
Nat felt his face glow hot. ‘Damn you for a sharper! What has she ever done to you?’
‘What’s she done to you, more like? Jumping like a rabbit to her defence, eh? Francis told me all about his night with her, when she was but a fresh pullet on the market.’
The tinker raised a pale outstretched hand towards the lighted cottage and began to speak an incantation in a gibberish tongue. Whatever he was chanting, it sounded cruel and ugly and potent.
Nat stood up, struggling to master the desire to strike Darius in his smirking face.
‘Hold your tongue, you devil!’ Then turning on his heels Nat made for home, furious that he had let the rogue draw him in.
‘So you do believe in the old ways!’ Darius crowed after him. ‘Or why you be so rattled? Come on, hand over that shilling and be done with it.’
Old ways indeed! Nat brooded miserably as he hurried along. Of course he did not believe in such claptrap. And yet, to hear Tabitha being profaned was intolerable. Nonetheless, the philosophical part of his nature asked: why should he fear a tinker’s curse?
Perhaps there were old ways of wickedness, he concluded. Ancient tricks that worked by persuasion and domination to browbeat the innocent. These were the dark dealings of alchemy and spell-casting that modern, educated men must resist. And why resist them? Because there was some lingering power in such malice, after all.
And he had recognized Darius’s sinister aspect since first clapping eyes on him. When was it he had seen him first? It had been well before the Lammas bonfire, when walking home from Widow Hart’s. Damnation, it had been the night she died. He had reckoned him to be a poacher and let him pass without regard. But the memory jolted him sufficiently to unloose a further image of Widow Hart that same night. All evening she had been distracted, her thoughts elsewhere, her actions clumsy. Then she had pleaded with him to stay longer. As he took his leave she had peered over his shoulder and asked, ‘There is no one out there?’
The garden and beyond had appeared empty and so he had reassured her. Then, no more than a quarter of a mile along his path home, he had glimpsed the poacher he now recognized as Darius.
Pox that blockhead of a constable; there was no one here in Netherlea he felt able to confide in. All the dark way back to Eglantine Hall he was agitated by the pain that he had failed to help a fellow human and, by doing so, unwittingly contributed to Widow Hart’s death.
EIGHT
A Riddle
I am no sooner known to be,
Than all the great take leave of me;
To have me, all their cares employ,
But when possessed I quickly cloy:
I serve the ladies when alone,
To show their handy skill upon,
And when assembled, give them pleasure,
Upon their backs their chiefest treasure.
The 3rd day of August 1752
Lammastide
Luminary: Sun rises 43 minutes after 4 in the morning.
Observation: Mars and Venus are so near the Sun they will scarcely be seen.
Prognostication: Many transcendent actions upon the stage of the world.
‘Father says it’s best if you come out today.’ Jennet was bouncing Bess on her knee, an hour after daybreak on Monday morning. ‘Let’s go up to the hall and lend a hand for the harvest.’
Tabitha pulled the bedsheet up over her shoulders. In civilized society, no lady rose before ten, or breakfasted before eleven.
‘You go.’ She yawned. ‘I’ll not give those jabberers any more to gossip about. And take the child with you.’
Jennet put Bess down and stood up. ‘No, I will not be your nursemaid today. I shall go to the hall on my own, then, and earn my shilling a week.’
Tabitha’s heavy eyes opened in surprise. The girl did have some pluck, after all. And a shilling a week – that was better than being stranded here all day with the child.
Once they set out, it was good to feel the summer sun like balm on her face and shoulders. Above their heads, a great armada of clouds sailed through a china-blue sky. Even Bess was content on her leading strings, delighted with every tiny pebble and feeding butterfly.
The previous night the parlour had been serene for once; Bess sat on a rug, cheerfully casting wooden pegs about, while she and Jennet ate vegetable pottage. Seeing Joshua hesitate on the threshold, a foolish fit of sentiment had coursed through her, and she had jumped up from the table and run to embrace him. His broad face, though weathered, had not lost its agreeable boyishness. He had once again been the fond companion of her childhood: a partner in rapscallion games, and the bestower of her first sweet kiss.
When she tried to grasp his hands in hers, he backed away uneasily. ‘So at last you are home again,’ he mumbled.
She pulled a stool to the table for him and offered him a plate of pottage; to her surprise, Bess waddled over with a coloured peg as a gift and clambered contentedly on to his lap.
Tabitha asked him how he fared these days. ‘Good, good, though I’m right sorry my business in Chester kept me from your mother’s burial. As constable, I am right-hand man now to Sir John, who campaigns to be a Member of Parliament. And we’ve a new house. You remember the Grange? Too big for me and Jennet; we rattle round it like two dried peas. ’Tis a pity Mary scarce had time to furnish it – she’d have had it as fine as fivepence by now.’
She was glad he could speak of his dead wife so calmly. His disappointment when Tabitha had left him behind in Netherlea had been terrible. She could not stay in such a nowhere place, she had protested. London was her Promised Land. So Joshua had married Mary, a widow with a good dowry and a quiet-mannered daughter, Jennet. Learning by letter that Mary had died, Tabitha had been pricked with pity, even in the midst of her gadabout London life she had felt sorrow for her oldest friend.
When Jennet disappeared to the back room, Tabitha whispered to him, ‘I must talk to you privately, regarding Mother. As the constable. Alone.’
He frowned but nodded. ‘Call on me tomorrow suppertime. Come take a look about the Grange. Jennet can sit with Bess.’
Now, walking through the sunlit morning woods, Tabitha considered what facts she might lay before Joshua over supper. Catching up with Jennet, she asked, ‘Did you see my mother the night she died?’
‘Not me, but Father did. I was round earlier that morning to take Bess away to the Grange – your mother had some business or other. Then, when Father came home that evening, he set off to carry the little maid back. It was about nine o’clock by then, but he said the cottage was all dark and deserted. Father said she must have got it in her head to call on Nanny. He wasn’t best pleased.’
‘Jennet, when was the door broken?’
‘I don’t recollect. A few days ago perhaps?’
‘Well, Mother would have said something. Did she?’
The girl crinkled her face in thought.
‘So perhaps it was broken the night she died?’
Jennet halted, startled. ‘Goodness. Father said the door was open. But there was no one there.’
‘And my mother always bolted the door at night.’ Tabitha scooped Bess up in her arms to stop
her straying towards the nettles. ‘I want it repaired at once. I don’t feel safe.’
‘I can run and fetch Darius. He fixes all such things in the village.’ Jennet’s face shone with sudden joyous mischief.
‘What are you so cheerful about?’
‘Oh, me and my friends think Darius is the handsomest lad in all these parts.’
Tabitha smothered her own smile, thinking that Joshua would find his stepdaughter a handful sooner than he reckoned.
‘So, my mother knew this Darius?’
‘Aye, he used to help her – cheapest carpenter for miles.’
Another D. He might have repaired articles, but did he break them too? Recollecting the date of Towler’s death, she asked how long Darius had been in the neighbourhood.
‘Must be a year, I reckon. Aye, he were here last harvest.’
So the lad had been in the village when the dog died.
Arriving at the stepping stones, she and Jennet each took one of Bess’s tiny hands, and swung her across the river, shrieking with glee.
‘He lives on Tinker’s Meadow. I can go fetch him for you, if you like.’ Jennet was as eager as a hound in the traps.
‘Perhaps not,’ Tabitha said gently. She was sure Joshua would not want Jennet trailing after some bonny-faced tinker boy.
On Church Common, the remnants of the bonfire lay in a patch of scorched earth. Beyond that stood the mottled grey church, and the circular wall of the graveyard. It was a blow to remember her mother lay there, beneath that rippling blanket of turf. And there was Dilks’ parsonage above it, three storeys of red brick with twin white chimneys like the ears of a hare. A low flight of steps led up to the pedimented white door. Every year the villagers grumbled as they handed over their hard-earned tithes to Dilks – money or chickens, corn or rabbits. Had her mother in some way threatened the parson’s grand style of living?
The church bell was ringing seven in the morning as they hurried along the dusty track of the High Street, past the few shops and untidily thatched cottages. It was busy with early trade, though to Tabitha it looked a small and shabby sight. Barrels banged and thundered across the cobbles, and the blacksmith’s anvil rang out as a line of horses waited in his yard. The De Vallory Estate Office gleamed, with new glass windows and a brightly painted crest swinging on its sign. Next door stood the pillory, a warning to any who breached the law. Tabitha herself had barely escaped Parson Dilks’ threat that she should be punished there. If she had not fled to London, she might have been forced to stand with neck and arms locked tight while the villagers pelted her with rotten food or worse. While the infamous mobs of London changed their direction like the wind, she knew country folk had mighty long memories.
As the thought crossed her mind, she saw a trio of elderly women by the wayside gaze at her with no attempt at friendliness, and wondered just how far the rumours about her private trade had spread. The three harpies cast black looks at Bess, too. Lord, she hoped her mother had not suffered similar scorn. She needed to confide her suspicions to Joshua, and then escape this viper pit for good.
At the magnificent gates of Bold Hall, Tabitha let her fingers trail across gilded ironwork. They were locked; they had to take the long way round, up the servants’ path. Nevertheless, she could not help but be impressed by her first sight of the hall. It had been refurbished as shiny as a jackdaw, drawing the eye to its black timberwork in chevrons across clean white plaster. The sun caught in a thousand tiny panes of window glass. The smell of money reached her: the breeze-borne scent of perfumed gardens and clean laundry, utterly different to the village’s stink of poverty. It stirred some hidden part of her and she greeted it with relief, like a genteel friend well met on a night in the stews.
A score of women were at work in a cruck-roofed barn at the rear of the hall, preparing food and filling leather flagons for the harvesters. A flurry of surprised stares and nudges ran around the room at her appearance, but Jennet and she were ushered to a trestle board, and matters began well enough. Their task was to cut large pieces of cheese and wrap them in leaves, then pack them tightly in basket panniers. Bess was collected by a cheery girl who oversaw the other children in a private yard.
A pleasant serving woman bustled over, announcing that once the midday fare was delivered to the fields they should all get a share of the broken food, as well as the promised twopence a day. Keeping her head down, Tabitha listened as the hubbub rose around her. A mouthy old dame bragged of the money her soldier grandson sent her. ‘One whole pound a year, and not a finger to lift for it!’ Tabitha had once earned double that sum in a single hour in the metropolis. She rolled her eyes as it went on; country women, jostling for supremacy like ewes around the trough. They cared not a jot for fashion or gentility or taste – instead, they were rivals in breeding dutiful children, wielding the petty power of kinship. Now there was endless jawing about the corn maiden: who should make it, where to hang it and what of that sorry one made back in ’47? She yawned. Menial work was such a waste of life. Absentmindedly, she tore morsels of bread and cheese from the heap and slipped them into her mouth. Jennet looked up in alarm and shook her head.
A familiar voice cut through the clamour. ‘Why, look what the cat dragged home from London town … If it in’t that brazen-faced Tabitha Hart!’
She looked up to see Zusanna approaching, her wide hips rolling in a snowy white gown, her yellow-lashed eyes bright with triumph. The gaze of all present fell upon them both.
‘Zusanna?’ she called back. ‘Still here, up to your neck in cow muck, are you? There is a world beyond Netherlea, or have you not heard?’
Zusanna made a scoffing sound like a vixen’s bark. ‘Oh, aye. Be that the same world where trollops do parade with no gown upon their backs? I heard how you dressed so fine to make your grand return. Or do you trouble no more with clothes, since you strip yours off that often?’
The room fell as silent as the grave.
‘Well, ’tis better sport than lying with my own kin. Is Cam your nephew or your stepbrother? I never can recall.’
Zusanna banged down the plate she was carrying, and Tabitha pushed herself up, standing tall. She had a devilish urge to slap Zusanna’s lardy face.
‘I know what you are up to!’ Zusanna cried. ‘Your beguiling of Mr Starling is no secret to me.’
Before she could floor Zusanna, a heavy hand clapped down on Tabitha’s shoulder and held her firm. ‘Come with me.’ Her great-aunt Sarah spoke with cold authority, even as Tabitha turned and glared into her lean, tight face. ‘Or I’ll throw you out before them all,’ she added in a frigid whisper. She turned next to Zusanna.
‘For shame. Tabitha has lost her mother, and here you are, goading her like a fish-wife. And for the rest of you, get back to work; or be off now, but you’ll not get a farthing.’
Obediently, Tabitha followed her great-aunt out of the barn and down a bare passage.
‘I am ashamed of you. You don’t help yourself, do you?’ Stopping suddenly, she grasped one of Tabitha’s hands and inspected it. ‘I remember your bobbin-work. You used to have neat fingers, not like those caw-paws back there. I can give you work in the stillroom here – but it’s only for your mother’s sake, mind.’
Mindful of her need of money, Tabitha bobbed and smiled. Even better, she knew such favour would outrage Zusanna.
They passed the kitchens, walking through heat like an invisible wall. Through the doors, she glimpsed scarlet-faced servants sweating in shirtsleeves, cloths wound like turbans around their heads. In the stillroom, though, it was cool and high, newly rigged out with a chequered tiled floor and walls lined with bottles and earthenware pots, neatly labelled. Two women sat up to attention as her great-aunt came in.
‘Jane, you know Tabitha, my niece the Widow Hart’s girl? And you, Nell. Make use of her.’
Jane, a bran-faced girl, no more than sixteen, lifted her face from the table where she was grinding something pungent in her mortar. Nell, older, nodded warily. Damn h
er eyes, she was Zusanna’s mother – the same Mistress Dainty who had been the parson’s choice for the searcher’s position. She was an avid churchgoer and knew much – some said too much – of sickness. But she could barely read nor write, and was a poisonous gossip besides.
Well, there was nothing for it but to be biddable, Tabitha told herself, and indeed, her first day’s tasks were easy: rinsing and picking over dried fruits, grinding spices and pushing mixes through a vast hair sieve. For a long time they worked in companionable quietness, until Jane could no longer keep from questioning her.
‘Is it true you have been to London town?’
For the rest of the morning Tabitha gave a florid account of the capital. Yes, she had seen the King drive down the Strand in his golden coach – but in truth, he was a miserly soul who dined no better than a shopkeeper. And yes, the latest fashions were for skirts stretched over cane hoops more than six feet wide. And true, she had seen all the Quality parading at Vauxhall Gardens, a place like a paradise of coloured lanterns and lamp-lit scenes where fairy music played all along the Classical walks.
‘What food is there to eat?’ Jane asked.
She laughed. ‘The food at Vauxhall is robbery – five shillings for a piece of ham through which the plate can be seen as clear as glass. It is a place to be seen, not to eat.’
Nell Dainty scowled, her black brows puckered and her mouth pinched tight with condemnation.
But Nell and Jane could not resist gossiping as they worked, and naturally, the De Vallory family was the subject of their greatest interest. Tabitha slowed in her tasks to listen: how his Lordship would be wanting a new London house once he was elected to Parliament, and how the doctor would move into the hall and take charge in his absence.
‘I’ll be right glad to have the doctor as the new master,’ said Nell, whose wariness of Tabitha was in conflict with the natural looseness of her tongue. ‘He at least has brains, unlike some I could mention. He has seen the world too, and uses his physic in God’s service. But, of course, he’s not the firstborn – and then there’s what that astrologer fellow told his father.’
The Almanack Page 5
