The Almanack

by Martine Bailey

  At the hall she was led up to Francis’s rooms by Master Francis’s valet, a sweating, trembling foreigner who mumbled Popish oaths as he clucked about the room in search of his master’s best suit of clothes. Francis De Vallory lay twisted on a snowy bedsheet, laid over a bed decorated with embroidered peacocks. It was Tabitha’s job now to transform those hacked remains into a semblance of the youth he once had been. The valet backed away when she asked for help in pulling off Francis’s boots, so she had to heave at the stiff limbs alone, all the while struggling to preserve a measure of the youth’s dignity. His boots of fine leather were splattered with mud, from their tan tops to the fashionable low heels. The vague recollection of the footprints she had seen on the path chimed in her mind; one of the footprints had, she was sure, been made by a heeled boot like this.

  She closed her eyes and forced herself to remember. There had been a set of distinctive hobnail prints, she was convinced of that. And had there also been a third pair of footprints? Though fear pricked her like a thousand pins, she decided she must go back to the path when she had finished laying Francis out. In London there had been much talk that summer of a thief caught by taking the measure of shoe prints left behind in soil.

  She began to wash Francis with warm water from a china ewer. Pictures flashed in her inner eye, of the one and only time she had openly conversed with him while he was alive; alone together in the bedchamber of a grand Chester inn, laughing and drinking on his birthday. At just twenty, he had been little younger than herself, and she had liked his cutting humour and sardonic gift of mimicry. At the time she had thought it the most pleasant guinea she had ever earned.

  Now she removed his dew-damp clothes with difficulty, for his limbs would not relax from their contorted shape. The sun had baked his wounds, and the fabric of his shirt stuck like fish glue to his flesh. Newly slashed fibres needed careful coaxing to pull them out of hardened scabs. She counted thirteen wounds cut into his snowy flesh, from his shoulders to his buttocks; some so deep that they passed through skin to yellow fat and into white bone. Unwillingly, she thought of his last minutes kneeling in the corn, beseeching his murderer. She could think of no one on this earth who would want to do this. As the water turned rosy red, the sheet became stained too; the bed soon resembled a butcher’s block. Behind her, the valet complained of faintness, and finally fled through the door with a whimper.

  As she lifted his coat to lay it on his clothes press, a bloodstained corner of paper peeped out of his pocket. With great care, she eased it free and read it. At once she recognized the same hand, and the cruelty, of the missive sent to her mother:

  To Francis

  A harvest fails when seeds are rotten,

  A weak seed fails in fields of tares,

  A Noble House needs strength begotten,

  In clever, strong and worthy heirs;

  The Age of Gold will be reborn

  When your blood spills upon the corn.

  De Angelo

  De Angelo? So ‘D’ and the almanack writer were one and the same! Had he killed both her mother and Francis? So who the devil was De Angelo? Everyone knew him as the author of Chester’s Vox Stellarum but no one knew the man. It had to be a pen-name concealing D’s true identity. And according to her mother’s diary entries, D was a local man, a man of high regard. As though handling a pus-soaked rag, she laid the paper out on a nearby table, and hurriedly washed her hands again. Joshua needed to see this at once, and also Sir John. Time was running short – a hue and cry must be sent out to catch this lunatic. Yet first, she had to finish Francis’s laying out with the dignity he deserved.

  Tenderly, she washed the youth’s long face, noting the bloodless echo of his father’s features, the cheeks hairless. His skin was poreless, his mouth as silky and pliable as a maiden’s. He was only a youth, she thought, robbed by this monster of an even greater portion of his life than her own mother had been. When she twisted his head sidewards to wash the deepest wound on his shoulder, a dribble of bile-like liquid poured from his mouth, staining the lace pillow with a pool of yellow. It smelled of spirits, and she wondered at his having drunk intoxicating liquor so early in the morning.

  With quick movements, she washed his private parts, then, hoisting him on his side, prepared the herbs she must push inside his body to keep him fresh. She had once seen a molly boy slumped in a Covent Garden alley after being violated by a soldier, and had never forgotten the blood-streaked signs of force. Thank the saints, nothing of the kind had been inflicted on Francis.

  By the time she had tugged a suit of embroidered silk on to his limbs, the pallid youth bore the look of an effigy. He no longer felt limber; his flesh was stone cold, and the right arm that had been raised, doubtless to protect his head, was impossible to straighten. Filling a second china bowl, she scrubbed ineffectually at the brown lines rimming each of her fingernails. Catching sight of herself in a looking glass, she saw that her apron bore livid pink blotches.

  Before she could remove it, a second apparition stood in the mirror beside her: a few feet behind her stood Lady Daphne De Vallory. For a moment their eyes met in mutual astonishment. The passing years had blanched whatever remained of her ladyship’s beauty, leaving behind a strange translucence; her hair stood wiry grey beneath her muslin cap, and her complexion was crumpled under white powder.

  Lady Daphne’s ice-water eyes froze hard. ‘What are you doing here, with my son?’ She pointed towards the blood-soaked bed.

  Aristocratic disdain fought with volcanic fury in her voice. Close at hand, the mistress of Bold Hall’s face was corrugated by age, and her hollow eyes showed the skull beneath.

  Be bold, Tabitha commanded herself. These people can do you no harm. She spoke gently, as if to a child.

  ‘I was instructed to come here. I am the searcher now. This is my task.’

  ‘What is this?’ Francis’s mother snatched at the bloodstained paper and stared blindly at the writing upon it. ‘He thinks I don’t see his continual scribbling?’

  Her ladyship’s lips tightened, as if restraining a great deal more she would like to say, or in preference spit, at Tabitha. Then, turning, with a creak of her vastly hooped sacque gown, Lady Daphne threw the paper into the fire before Tabitha could stop her. In a moment it had been reduced to ash, and a jagged pain exploded at Tabitha’s temple as a porcelain shaving dish clattered to the floor.

  ‘You abomination!’ the older woman screamed. ‘You filth!’

  She picked up a brass candlestick, and made ready to throw that, too. Tabitha ran in desperation for the door. By the time she reached the head of the great wooden staircase, she found that her scalp was smeared with bright blood and her eyes felt hot, though she blinked them very fast. Death and damnation! She should never, in a thousand poxy years, have come home.

  FOURTEEN

  A Riddle

  In youth I flew high in the air,

  Or bathed upon the water fair,

  My person white with slender waist,

  On either side with fringes graced,

  Till me that tyrant man espied,

  And dragged me from my mother’s side:

  My skin he flayed, my hair he cropped,

  At head and foot my body lopped.

  And then with heart more hard than stone,

  He picked my marrow from the bone,

  Such torture did that tyrant wreak,

  He slit my tongue to make me speak:

  Though mute to ears I speak to eyes.

  Disguised I tell a thousand lies,

  From me no secret e’er can hide;

  I witness malice, lust and pride:

  All languages I can command,

  Yet not a word I understand.

  The 15th day of August 1752

  Harvest

  Luminary: The Sun rises 6 minutes after 5.

  Observation: Jupiter and Mars at the cusp.

  Prognostication: The people in a ferment and unable to settle.

  When Joshua
thumped on the cottage door the next morning, Tabitha, for once, welcomed his company. She had been alone with Bess since returning from Bold Hall, furious with herself for ever leaving London, and growing more and more frightened. She had come home by way of the Riddings’ but was sorely disappointed: already a herd of cattle had churned up the footprints on the path. All the long night, the passing bell had tolled its monotonous dirge, while again and again Francis’s body had sprung unbidden before her eyes. Murder was against nature, she repeated numbly; to hound and harm and slaughter a fellow being was unthinkable. Lady Daphne’s lashing out at her was unsettling, too. And then there was the discovery that De Angelo – or someone masquerading as him – had killed Francis and must be her mother’s pursuer, too. Time itself seemed to become like treacle, trapping Tabitha here while her every instinct urged her to run away.

  She had at once got out the almanack and hastily read it, attentive to any connections between prediction and fact. The day her mother had died carried the prognostication: ‘An unlucky day for travel.’ That same day her mother had written of locking herself indoors – and the journey she had taken to the river had indeed been the unluckiest of her life. But the prediction was too ill-defined and might apply to hundreds of different circumstances, including her own unlucky journey from London. Much more lucid was the prediction of Francis’s death: ‘There shall be blood on the harvest corn.’ Yet how could anyone, even a skilled astrologer like De Angelo, predict such butchery – unless he had carried out the slaughter himself?

  Joshua looked harried as he slumped down in a chair. With relief she told him of the riddling verse and her confrontation with Lady Daphne, touching the scabbed lump beneath her hair.

  ‘No doubt her ladyship was crazed with grief. You say there was a paper you found in Francis’s pocket signed by De Angelo?’

  ‘Yes. De Angelo, like the almanack writer. Here, I’ve written out what I can remember.’

  She passed him a piece of paper, but he merely glanced at it, and put it in his document bag.

  ‘Well, the original of the paper is destroyed, so this cannot be held valid proof for the coroner. As for De Angelo, it sounds like a hoax, wouldn’t you say? I must deal with realities – Sir John is near wild at losing his son; he’s locked himself away in his apartments. And the most outlandish rumours are being repeated: that a secret club of gentlemen ordered that Francis be murdered, or that this Darius stabbed him in a quarrel over money.’

  He rubbed his weary face.

  ‘I’ve already questioned the harvest gang. It was one of their scythes that was used; they found it missing, yesterday morning. I’d wager still it’s that stranger in the woods who has done this – but for God knows what reason. And now Sir John has ordered me to question that Starling fellow – only he said I must be subtle and not accuse or arrest him, but all of it is to be secret and underhand. What kind of play actor does he think I am?’

  He looked at her sideways.

  ‘Then I remembered how you have a sly woman’s mind – more fit for the task, maybe.’

  Tabitha was unsure if this was a compliment or an insult. ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘Come with me now, while it’s good and early. Come question Nat Starling, and make him confess to this damnable crime.’

  Tabitha had not visited Eglantine Hall since she had played in its ruins as a child. Now the sun burned slowly through luminous fog to reveal the broken skeleton of a once-grand manor – barely a third of its buildings had survived the bombardments of the Civil War. The bulk of the house was no longer habitable: it was a mere skeleton of blackened stone. The only usable quarters were in the ancient gatehouse, from which rose the distinctive twisted chimneys. It was four storeys high, part castle rampart and part monastery tower, studded with oriel windows filled with coloured glass. Crumbling effigies of saints peered down from niches through the mist.

  Joshua pushed at the carved door and found it open. Privately, Tabitha hoped Mr Starling had ventured out early that morning, for she was loath to entrap the man for Joshua’s sake. They made a rapid, stealthy search of the lower two floors, finding nothing of interest. But at the top of the next dimly lit staircase lay a grand apartment, strewn harum-scarum with a mess of discarded coats and books and hats, overturned tankards and dirty crockery. Tacked over the walls were crude prints of garish stuff: a Wheel of Fortune, mermaids and hanged men, a demon, and a bevy of bare-breasted harlots. Joshua mutely pointed towards them, his brows raised. She looked about in dismay; there was certainly a strange correspondence between these crude prints and the archaic lexicon of the almanack and the threatening verses.

  The room had been divided by a cord, upon which hung embroidered coats, ruffled linen and nightshirts, some in grave need of laundering. Beyond stood a musty-looking tester bed, upon which Nat Starling lay half-dressed in shirt and breeches, eyes closed, entirely insensible.

  Joshua prodded him with the end of his staff.

  ‘Wake up, you scoundrel, and give an account of yourself!’

  The young man did not even stir. Tabitha stepped forward and shook his arm. Lord, he stank of spirits, and the familiar fust of men addled after a long night. She called his name and shook him again, but still he didn’t stir.

  Joshua motioned to her to stop. ‘While he sleeps, we can search this place at our liberty.’

  As he began to turn over clothes, stools and boxes, she made a lacklustre show of looking about her; to her relief, he soon disappeared upstairs to search the upper apartments.

  Wandering back to Nat’s bedside, she studied his sleeping form; it had played often in her fancy since she first glimpsed him in the yard at Bold Hall. Asleep, he was as fine as she remembered, his pallid cheek shadowed with stubble, his lips just parted. His chin bore a black smudge, and his fingers, too, were black from ink. She crossed over to his writing desk. It was made of carved oak, so heavily stained that, if the hue had been crimson instead of black, it could have been taken for some pagan altar. Piles of papers lay scattered, covered in hasty scribbles.

  A print lying on a nearby table caught her eye. She laughed noiselessly, for she knew it well – a picture from Signor Aretino’s Remarkable Amours, titled The Wheelbarrow, that depicted a woman propelled upside down, her hands holding a rotating wheel, while a handsome youth impaled her from the rear. Next, she picked up an enamel snuffbox bearing a lascivious Venus, her fingers delighting in the cold slipperiness of worked gold. It was studded with gems and would be worth a good two guineas. But she laid it down again – to be caught pilfering goods in Netherlea would only heap more difficulties upon her.

  Her fingertips played over Starling’s other goods: a repeating pocket watch, a net of coins, a jewelled pin. Finally, she touched the stiff feathers of his new-cut quills. He had so many, and she needed only one – he surely wouldn’t miss it. She pulled out a snowy quill and slid it into her pocket.

  A husky voice spoke out behind her. ‘Lady, did my eyes mistake me?’

  She spun around to find Nat Starling’s bleary eyes fixed upon her as he struggled to rise from his bed.

  The heat of shame burned Tabitha’s skin. ‘I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean—’ She threw the quill back down upon the desk, horribly bent from being pushed inside her pocket.

  Nat watched her, blinking, from his mound of bedclothes. ‘I’m most obliged to you for calling, and so on – though less so for stealing my quills – but pray, why are you here, at this godless hour?’

  She pointed at the ceiling, whence came the sounds of Joshua bumping and scraping.

  ‘I’m here with the constable,’ she said as softly she could. ‘He needs to ask you some questions.’

  He raised his elbows and stretched himself awake. ‘Throw me that robe.’

  She passed him a green robe of Chinese silk, and he tied it over his sleepworn clothes. Then, padding over to a ewer in his bare feet, he found a jug and lifted it to his mouth to drink. Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he settled down aga
in on the bed and drew his fingers through dark strings of hair, then smiled up at her. She again noticed his shining tortoiseshell eyes. What was it about this fellow that made him so hard to dislike? She tried to gain the upper hand.

  ‘You do know that illustration is a physical impossibility?’ she said, touching it with a casual finger.

  He winced, smiling. ‘So you come here to correct my knowledge of anatomy, Miss Hart?’

  ‘I am employed as the searcher by the parish.’

  ‘Like your mother?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I liked your mother. I was wretched when I heard—’ He hearkened for a moment. ‘Does that infernal bell mean someone is dead?’

  Tabitha nodded, trying to convey a warning with her eyes.

  ‘That is why we’re here.’

  ‘Here? Don’t tell me Saxton suspects me of some mischief?’

  ‘More than mischief – and he comes at Sir John’s request. Take care when he returns.’

  She stood very still as furniture moved above them.

  ‘Listen,’ he said amiably, pushing disarrayed hair from his eyes. ‘You lived in London, did you not?’ To her alarm, he added in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘I believe I know you.’ His smile was mischievous and expectant.

  ‘You know me?’ She made an effort to recall him. It was no use; a cavalcade of London gentlemen had paid court to her, but she could remember barely a single face. Was the rogue saying he had known her – in the flesh? No, surely she would remember him, a diamond in the dross. Dismayed, she heard Joshua’s footsteps on the stairs.