The Almanack

by Martine Bailey

  ‘What, while you feast and carouse and the Devil knows what else, I must trot off with my tail between my legs? You have not even told me who this fortunate friend of yours is.’

  She again looked towards the city, to the mass of gabled roofs and spires, all of it a tempting labyrinth, then turned back to him. ‘I do believe that road leads to a blighted branch,’ she said, indicating the city with a movement of her head. ‘Do you not think the time has come to pluck our fruits before they spoil? You will think me half-crazed – but would you care to accompany me back home to Netherlea again?’

  ‘I am your servant.’ He made a small bow, baffled but bursting with happiness.

  ‘Thank you, Nat. I need to show you something odd that was written by my mother.’

  SIXTEEN

  A Riddle

  My first is the term to relate

  A circumstance present or past,

  And those who love stories to prate,

  My second will spout away fast.

  My whole in the days of our youth,

  Is what we extremely despised;

  And though it says nothing but truth,

  Yet it never need hope to be prized.

  The 21st to the 22nd day of August 1752

  Luminary: Moon at the last quarter.

  Observation: The Moon rises at 54 minutes after noon.

  Prognostication: The weak and poor will suffer oppression.

  When Tabitha had said her farewells, she felt Nat’s gaze burning upon her back as she continued homewards. Oh Venus, she was developing a bad case of lovelornedness for the fellow, but the delicious contemplation of Mr Starling must wait until they met again the next evening; there was another matter to attend to first. She was damned if Nat was going to be persecuted while ruffians like Darius ran free.

  Just beyond the stepping stones, she looked beneath the hawthorn bush. Sure enough, Jennet’s basket was carefully hidden from view there, and packed tight with bread and cheese. Placing it back where she had found it, Tabitha continued down the path and home.

  Joshua and Jennet were enjoying the last light of the day in the cottage garden while Bess sat at their feet, happily making mud pies. For all the much-trumpeted grandeur of the Grange, it was clear the pair of them preferred the modest cottage, with its bright fire and narrow walls. Joshua rose from her mother’s stool with the air of a guilty man.

  ‘Tabitha. We understood you were away until Monday.’

  ‘I had an alteration to my thinking,’ she said.

  She ruffled Bess’s fair curls as the little girl made excited sounds of greeting. With a sigh of contentment, she slumped on to a bench and breathed in the scent of her mother’s gillyflowers. Her long game with Robert over, she felt as light and free as thistledown. He would be wondering where she was by now, his evening slowly souring with disappointment. Well, the boot was on the other foot. She stretched with satisfaction.

  Joshua pulled his stool closer, appraising her and the bundle she had set down on the grass.

  ‘Jennet,’ she called. ‘I saw some wild raspberries, back by the dead tree. Would you like to fetch some?’

  The girl rose at once, eager to gather the sweet fruit. Once she had left them, Tabitha turned to Joshua.

  ‘If I tell you a secret, would you swear to never tell a soul that I was your informer?’

  ‘I don’t care for underhandedness and you know it.’ His broad face was uneasy. ‘Is it Nat Starling? What have you discovered?’

  ‘No, it is not him. But I might be able to lead you to Darius. Do you promise not to tell – on Jennet’s life?’

  ‘On Jennet’s life? I’d have to stand by that.’

  ‘Come closer, then. Don’t fire off, now. Your Jennet has a hankering for this Darius – it’s a common enough folly at her age, for he is handsome, she tells me.’ She laid a gentle hand on his own, which was fast tightening into a fist. ‘Someone has been hiding food in the hedge, Joshua, and I’ve no doubt it’s your daughter. I’ve been thinking, you could send a man – not you – to follow her. The youth isn’t far away.’

  Joshua spat on the ground. ‘I’ll give that girl such a—’

  ‘Hush,’ she whispered, fearful of Jennet’s return. ‘If you break your oath I’ll never speak another word to you. And I shall tell Jennet that you broke your promise, too.’

  Joshua breathed hard. ‘She needs a mother.’ He looked at her, eyes burning with entreaty, and a picture of that dusty spinning wheel sprang up at once in her mind.

  ‘You know I’m mighty fond of Jennet, and that’s why I’m telling you this. But more than that, I cannot give you.’

  When Jennet came weeping up the path the following afternoon, Tabitha saw at once that her plan had worked.

  ‘I hate my father,’ the girl wailed, running into Tabitha’s arms. ‘He has had Darius put in chains! I never want to see him again.’ She raised a forlorn, tear-slicked face, so bereft of hope that the sun might have fallen from the sky.

  Disentangling herself from the girl’s hot fingers, Tabitha questioned her with all the false astonishment of a Drury Lane boardwalker. Between sobs and hiccups, Jennet told her how her father’s man had found Darius hidden in the woods.

  ‘But how could they have known?’ she demanded.

  Tabitha, well-prepared, fielded the question adroitly. ‘Who has heard you speak fondly of him? One of your friends, perhaps? If Darius had nothing to do with Francis De Vallory’s death, your father is a fair man – he’ll soon be released.’

  She watched Jennet wipe her pink-rimmed eyes with the corners of her apron.

  ‘Jennet, I have a good notion. It is doling day at the hall; they are distributing all the broken food from the funeral today. Shall we go and fetch some? And deliver a portion to your father’s new prisoner?’

  At the servery at Bold Hall, they waited in line as the servants doled out portions of sliced meat, bread and a few sweetmeats. Jennet, she noticed, whispered to the servant, and after some altercation was grudgingly handed an extra portion in return. Contenting Bess with a sugar sucket, they strolled back up the High Street, Tabitha watching her young friend shrewdly. She had all the smooth-faced freshness of a girl just blooming into a woman; her reed-like waist was little more than a hand-span beneath her drab linsey-woolsey gown. In a year or two she would be a fair, good-hearted young woman, a credit to Joshua – if she could only be protected from Darius and his type.

  ‘Darius knew Francis De Vallory, didn’t he?’ she asked.

  ‘Master Francis was a puffed-up coxcomb with more riches than sense,’ replied Jennet scornfully. Tabitha was briefly surprised, before she grasped that the girl must merely be repeating Darius’s own words.

  ‘But Darius didn’t harm him,’ she added quickly. ‘He wouldn’t have. Master Francis lent him money; he was always open-handed.’

  ‘Were they good friends?’

  ‘Aye. Everyone wanted to be friends with Darius. They used to play cards together.’

  Naturally, thought Tabitha, and no doubt who won the stake. They were coming up to the jail now, and Jennet hesitated.

  ‘You are the constable’s daughter. There can be no objection to your taking the prisoner food in the name of charity.’

  Encouraged, the girl ran up to Godfrey, a good-natured fellow who had worked with Joshua for years. A moment later, she beckoned to Tabitha and, leaving Bess with Godfrey, they entered a stone cell, reeking of mildew and nightsoil. Darius lay sprawled on a bed of straw, his ankle chained to a metal ring hammered into the wall. Tabitha saw at once that the ruffian had a mighty high regard for himself, and for his own sulky-mouthed attractions. He raised a pair of smouldering black eyes towards them as they came in, feigning indifference to Jennet’s eager inquiries. He devoured every morsel she unpacked from her basket but did not trouble himself to thank her.

  Once this was over Tabitha introduced herself, with as open a smile as she could muster. ‘Thank you, Darius, for helping my mother around her cottag
e.’

  This was greeted by a blank face.

  ‘I am Widow Hart’s daughter. You recollect? There was a broken latch.’

  Tabitha held her breath, sensing some deep cogitation behind the carpenter’s jetty eyes.

  ‘I’m forever mending stuff for folk,’ he growled. He raised his index finger and beckoned Jennet to come up close beside him; as she scurried over like an eager kitten, he spoke softly in her ear, so that Tabitha could not hear a word.

  Reverently, she reached for his big-knuckled hand, scarified all over with black symbols like a sailor’s. As if granting a boon, he allowed her to caress it, laying his head back against the wall and eyeing Tabitha narrowly.

  ‘You brung my baccy?’ he abruptly asked the girl. Dutifully, she set off at once to enquire from Godfrey how some tobacco might be obtained.

  Tabitha remained with him, wondering how best to bluff this roister without showing her hand. At last, she pulled herself up to her full height and folded her arms, trying not to look at his mud-caked hobnailed boots. Though the cell was ill-lit she would swear there was a nail missing from the centre of the sole.

  ‘I am the parish searcher now, as my mother was.’

  Darius raised his heavy brows.

  ‘Therefore I had to lay out Francis’s corpse, and my head is not stuffed with straw, like those of some round here. I found a verse threatening Francis from De Angelo. You know him. What is his true name?’

  Darius’s head jerked sharply upwards, his eyes so wide that she could see little rims of white around the black discs. There – she was right on the nail.

  ‘Why don’t you peach on him and turn King’s evidence? It’s you or him,’ she urged, taking a step toward him. ‘So why shouldn’t the other fellow swing for it?’

  Like the lash of a horsewhip, his hand appeared from nowhere, snaring her wrist. The jolt was so sudden that she stumbled – he pulled her so close towards him that she could feel the heat from his unwashed body. Instantly she put Poll’s trick into action, yanking his arm hard in its socket. As quick as lightning, his other fist grasped her hair, pulling it so violently that she yowled.

  ‘You,’ he growled. ‘You think I don’t know about you? Jennet’s busybody friend who watches her every move? The poxy London whore?’

  He flung her backwards against the wall, and she staggered, winded.

  ‘It’s like this,’ he said steadily. ‘I don’t need to peach, or even lift a finger. I know what the future holds for me. I’ll not stand trial for this or any other business. It’s written in the stars, and it will come to pass. You just wait and see.’

  SEVENTEEN

  A Riddle

  With scarlet cheeks a group of beauties stood,

  I cropped their bloom and sucked their blood,

  Sweet meat they had, but neither flesh nor bone,

  Yet in each tender heart they held a stone

  I rhymed and counted but then fell to grief

  To learn my fate’s to be a common thief.

  The 22nd day of August 1752

  Luminary: Twilight ends at 44 minutes after 8 of the evening.

  Observation: Mercury hastening to the conjunction with Venus.

  Prognostication: Moves afoot to ameliorate the worst effects in some measure.

  As he waited for his rendezvous with Tabitha, Nat felt as though he had swallowed a nest of squirming vipers. His pocket watch told ten minutes after six – more than an hour later than the time they had agreed – when she at last strode through the ruined stumps of the gateposts and up the drive. He savoured the moment, watching unseen from the battlements, his heart twice the speed of his watch’s ticking. This had to be the beginning of a new epoch for him – the conjunction of two radiant planets in the cold immensity of his life.

  He ran downstairs to greet her, then was suddenly too agitated to take her arm as he led her up to the roof. She had missed the church bells at five, she said in apology, and got in a muddle about the hour – he had forgotten there was no clock at the cottage. Today she looked different from his recollection; not so conventionally beautiful, but stronger, and more vividly real. He settled on one of the two chairs he had set in the shade; she paced about the narrow roof, pausing to lean on the battlements, gazing over the pond to the church and common, the winding sparkle of the river, and the distant roofs of Bold Hall itself.

  Setting his telescope to her eye, she said, ‘This is a good viewpoint to watch who comes and goes.’

  He took the opportunity to come up behind her, circling her with his arms to guide the telescope. Gently he pointed it up to the sky that was slowly deepening to a dark forget-me-not blue.

  ‘Look. There is Venus.’ In his mind, he associated the silver-blue planet with Tabitha, a crystal droplet hanging high beside the Pole Star. ‘When the crisp winter nights arrive there will be many wondrous spectacles. I’ll show you comets and shooting stars, and with luck, the aurora of the Northern Lights.’

  ‘Yes – I should like that.’ Her eyes shone. ‘You have studied the stars?’

  ‘Yes. I have seen all six of the planets. We live now in an age without equal in learning and science. I pity the Ancients – so much more is revealed to us in this modern age.’

  He talked for a spell of studying the heavens with his professor; of comets, auroras and the distant constellations – until he became aware of a sudden change in the air, a bluster that lifted the clinging ivy and rattled the casements. Damn it, he had let her grow cold – she was hugging herself, no doubt willing him to still his tongue.

  ‘You are shivering. Come inside.’

  ‘Yes. Now I must show you my mother’s almanack.’

  He lit half a dozen candles, revealing that the worst of the mess had been tidied away. Did she cast a curious glance towards the bed in the far corner? Its linen, at least, was fresh and clean. His notions of how this evening might proceed had swung like a pendulum – from a chaste exchange over academic tomes, to a night of lascivious revels. In the absence of London pastry cooks, he had assembled the simplest of meals: a game pie, bread, cheese, apples, and a dish of cherries with scalded cream. Both ate as they talked. She opened her mother’s almanack, pointing to the crudely printed pages on which were written Widow Hart’s crabbed and cryptic comments. Perplexed, he read of the death of a hound – and, more disconcertingly, of the widow’s fears.

  ‘What else do you know?’

  She told him of the wound to her mother’s head, and of the damage to the door latch for which no one could account; also of Nanny Seagoes’ tale, that her mother had discovered the killer of a dog, and lived in fear of him ever since. And now Francis De Vallory’s butchered body had been found. Darius was a party to it, she was certain.

  ‘And all have De Angelo in common.’ She pointed at a prophecy she had marked in the almanack with a tiny dot of red ink. The motto ‘There shall be blood on the harvest corn,’ was printed below the date of Francis’s death.

  ‘Both my mother and Francis were sent these but Francis’s was destroyed by his mother.’ She held out a piece of paper, a verse addressed to Mistress Hart.

  ‘That is monstrous,’ he said after reading it, appalled by the venom of the missive. ‘You must have been horrified.’

  She nodded, a shadow of fear showing in her eyes. ‘Nat, what do you make of this riddle?’ Tabitha handed him the almanack, open at the page that bore a grotesque mask and verse titled, ‘Who Am I?’

  ‘Look, my mother attempted it and wrote “A Murderer?” below it.’

  Nat read it with slow concentration. He looked up, fixing her with shining eyes. ‘The origin of the word “riddle” is “dark saying” in Old English. It means veiled, like the Greek term “enigma” – “to speak obscurely”. So I’m afraid “murderer” is too simple a solution.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘A riddle must have two aspects: a deceptive cloak masking an inner truth. “Murderer” lacks the twisting wordplay, the flourishing of the cloak being swept as
ide. I believe the solution is—’

  ‘A riddle itself,’ she interrupted. She took it back and read it out loud: ‘“For when bold mortals me descry, I at that very moment die.” At the moment we solve it and our curiosity ends, the riddle expires too. It is rather a dreadful jest. And yet so ingenious.’

  ‘Yes. If the almanack writer is “D”, he is jesting with those who ponder his identity. De Angelo is a riddle.’

  ‘And we must solve it. So who writes these almanacks?’ she asked. ‘Surely they must be very learned scholars.’

  He flicked through the pages, shaking his head. ‘Vox Stellarum – the voice of the stars. Maybe once upon a time great scholars wrote such stuff; but I doubt they do so now. The legendary astrologers, Old Francis Moore, Nostradamus, and the like, are all in their graves.’

  He offered her the cherries; she picked one from its stalk, dousing it in cream.

  ‘But my mother purchased this almanack every single year, and its advice was always different.’

  ‘So it may have seemed; yet the compiler need only shuffle the mottos and dates. Ah, look – he’s inserted the calendar changes here, the loss of eleven days next month. There is some skill here, but it is not, I suspect, drawn from a genuine horoscope. I should know; I have written plenty of chapbook predictions myself. Dream books, prophecies, prognostications – all pure balderdash.’

  ‘How disappointing.’

  ‘We are all gullible. Who does not want to know their future?’

  Spitting out the last of the cherry stones, she counted them with her fingertip. ‘Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief. Ah – my destiny is to be a thief, it would seem.’

  ‘Aha, Miss Light-fingers! Next you will tell me that cherry stones are a most accurate means of prognostication.’

  She threw one of the stones at his face, laughing. ‘So, what is your occupation to be, when you finally ripen from boy to man?’

  He counted his cherry stones. ‘Five. A rich man,’ he said, with a smirk.