A Taste for Nightshade

by Martine Bailey

  Others, dear girl, may wish thee wealth,

  I wish thee love and rosy health;

  Health and love to make thee say,

  Happy was my bridal day.

  ‘I shall always hang this above my bed,’ I said, my voice catching in my throat. ‘I mean – our bed,’ I added, scarcely believing that I would soon share a bed with Michael Croxon.

  ‘I would not have stitched it if I’d known it would make you so miserable,’ she said with a teasing chuckle.

  ‘Oh, Anne, thank you for your good wishes – I do so hope they all come true.’

  ‘You must write to me, dear. And I will visit if I can.’

  She took me in her arms, and for a few moments we awkwardly embraced.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  ‘Let me give you some advice,’ Mrs Croxon told me. ‘My son likes to cut a fine figure, and you must rise to his level, Grace.’ Money for new costumes was therefore discreetly provided by Mr Croxon, and I did my best to make the necessary purchases. The mere six weeks’ preparation time meant that Mrs Croxon’s dressmaker was made frantic by the commission, limited as she was in both time and fabrics. As my mother-in-law was addicted to the latest fashion plates, I soon found myself parading in the apparel of a wealthy provincial matron. She favoured high-brimmed flower-pot hats trimmed with spiky feathers – a style that suited my tall figure very ill. Even my new gowns of fashionable white muslin left me feeling uncomfortably half-dressed. I made a stand when Mrs Croxon tried to foist upon my head a gigantic mob cap the size of a potato sack. How ridiculous I looked! Henceforth, however ungrateful I might appear, I insisted on plain dark gowns of garnet or brown silk, and my one great favourite, a ruby mantle lined with otter fur. As for my wedding gown, it was spoiled by its over-garnishing of lace and frills, and such a fandango of feathers and ribbons on my headdress, that I felt like a spectacle from a pantomime. The seamstress steadfastly flattered me and made some rapid alterations with her needle, but nevertheless, despite a fortune spent on silks and velvets, I still felt myself to be the scarecrow of my father’s jibes.

  In her passion for my wedding preparations, Mrs Croxon insisted a bride cake be baked, and that I inspect it at each stage of its embellishment. It was a great circular cake, more than a foot in diameter, first covered in almond paste and then hard white sugar icing. With an air of conferring a very great favour, my future mother-in-law took me to her closet and lifted the lid of an ancient box.

  ‘These are the Blair family devices, my heirlooms I might say. Look, here is the Blair crest in sugar.’ She held in her palm a portrait moulded in white, of an angel’s head circled by streamers of coiling hair. ‘Be careful. It is very old and may crack.’ When she passed it to me I saw that the ornament, though as exquisite as a snowy cameo, was made from sugar.

  ‘My grandmother gave the entire collection to me.’ She laid out a row of exquisite sugar devices: a gilded crown, toy-like beasts, shells, and other fancies. ‘Ah, now this is the mould for a Blair bride cake.’ She laid two wooden boxwood moulds on the table, in which curious rectangular designs had been carved. ‘You cannot guess what it is?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘It is from a rather cruder age, I’m afraid. It is a great tester bed.’

  I looked more closely and recognised that the six sections could indeed be moulded and then assembled to make a tiny bed, complete with four posts, gathered curtains, and tassels the size of pin-heads.

  I must admit I blushed at that, for this woman was, after all, Michael’s mother.

  ‘Yes, I know what you are thinking. Let us have the wedding first.’

  But it was not the wedding I was blushing at, but the wedding night, and whatever vast tester bed lay waiting for me at Delafosse.

  ‘Is there much company up at Earlby?’ I asked my prospective mother-in-law another day.

  ‘Oh, the village is tolerably dull I suppose. Small farmers and weavers. But the Hall had such grand rooms, and the parkland was extensive. There is a hunting tower that was used for banquets in the days of Good Queen Bess, and a summerhouse quite in the classical style. One night there was a dance – my head was quite giddy from the punch—’

  ‘Grace doesn’t want to hear those old tales,’ interrupted her husband. ‘Michael will have his work cut out with the mill.’

  ‘Once the business thrives, they may aspire.’ Mrs Croxon shot an affronted glance at her husband. He snorted and turned back to his newspaper. ‘One may always dream,’ she pronounced defiantly, rising to leave the room.

  I was growing used to such sudden chills in the Croxon household; in response I cherished hopes of far greater happiness for myself and Michael. Delafosse Hall would be a new start, far from this bickering family and my own father’s sour remarks. I must make a friend of my housekeeper, Mrs Harper, I decided. In my daydreams, Michael and I were at last alone, waited upon by biddable servants, a pair of lovers in our own Castle Amorous, where our love could grow undisturbed.

  The means to make my daydreams more substantial arrived as an appointment with a certain Mr Tully, the notary who had drawn up my grandmother’s will. Though ordinarily a resident of Leeds, he wrote that he was drawing up my Marriage Settlement, and asked me to call upon him at a fellow lawyer’s office in Whalley. I told Michael of my appointment, and after giving the news to his father, he offered to accompany me.

  The appointment fell on the day of the town’s annual fair, and the bustle and flurry infected us with the high spirits of a holiday. From the moment we met, Michael was more animated than I had ever seen him before. In his father’s grand carriage, with only his mother’s maid as chaperone, he made waspish remarks about those we passed; I supposed he was trying to impress me, his new bride, with his superior manner. I was as impressible as butter, dazzled by my elegant husband-to-be, and flattered to be seen at his side. When we arrived at the lawyer’s he hung back, making enquiries of a groom about an equipage, as the eleven chimes of our appointment hour rang out across the yard.

  When, reluctantly, he followed me into the dark-panelled lawyer’s chambers, we had a cold reception. ‘Miss Moore?’ said an elderly dyspeptic-looking man in a horsehair wig, lifting a large gold pocket watch from his waistcoat. ‘You are late. My next appointment is at noon. Sit, sit. I must make haste.’

  Flustered, I nodded and he began to speak. Perhaps because Mr Tully had been my grandmother’s notary, I had expected his manner to be straightforward. Instead he declaimed a jumble of percentages and legal terms, all spoken very fast in a monotone. The uncomfortable notion came to me, that because of my poor understanding of mathematics, I might never comprehend my own affairs. Thereafter, my anxiety made me ever more confused. Finally he announced with formality, ‘Those are the terms of the marriage settlement. You agree, Miss Moore?’ The lawyer again took out his pocket watch. The clock on the wall showed that only fifteen minutes remained before noon.

  ‘Mr Croxon,’ I said, turning to Michael. ‘I pray you understand the terms? I am afraid I am not used to such complicated arithmetic.’

  Michael nodded. ‘Put your mind at rest, Miss Moore. I comprehend it entirely. You need not concern yourself.’

  To my surprise, Mr Tully issued an exasperated sigh and fixed his eyes upon me.

  ‘This will not do, Miss Moore. It is my duty as your Trustee to ensure that you understand your situation entirely, before signing the Agreement. I shall repeat the terms in the simplest language. There are but three items you must inwardly digest. Firstly, some would say that the value of your property is presently inflated to an artificially high price. I wish you to know that I for one believe this cotton fever will not persist.’

  ‘Sir, you cannot know—’ interrupted Michael.

  The lawyer fixed his moist eye upon Michael, showing a marked disdain. ‘Oh, I do know, sir. I have lived long enough to understand that the pendulum of land prices will eternally rise and fall. Whatever you may have been told otherwise, the current price of land such as Whit
elow cannot remain so high.’ The last was said so stridently that I heard Michael make a tiny tut of derision.

  ‘Secondly, Miss Moore, under the terms of your grandmother’s will, all rents from the land remain payable to you alone, even after marriage.’

  ‘I see,’ I said

  ‘The farms currently pay £300 per annum each Lammastide, the first day of August, into an account I hold for you at Hoare’s Bank, London. The balance is at present £3,000, as your grandmother made no withdrawals for the ten years prior to her death.’

  Michael gave a little gasp. ‘Quite a nest egg.’

  ‘You might say so,’ the lawyer said drily.

  ‘I had no idea,’ I said. Michael met my eyes with a little grimace of joy. ‘And, Mr Tully,’ I continued, ‘you spoke of the inflated value of the property. Might you tell me its value at present?’

  ‘In the region of £6,000.’

  I shook my head in bewilderment. ‘I’m not sure I comprehend such a sum.’

  Mr Tully sprang forward. ‘I shall attempt to explain. Take such a building as the one we are currently occupying, a dozen rooms, a useful situation. A house such as this might be valued at £100. Ergo, the value of your land alone might buy sixty such houses, and with the rents added to it, as many as ninety houses. So you see, your whole legacy is equal to the value of a small village.’

  I nodded, both grateful and surprised.

  ‘Miss Moore, I must tell you that upon your marriage, though the property of Whitelow remains within your legal ownership, it must be managed entirely by your husband. Under the doctrine of couverture, you are not, of course, as a woman, able to enter any form of contract. Consequently, your husband will need to take upon himself the management of your property.’

  ‘I think I understand,’ I said. ‘So while I legally own Whitelow I cannot make contracts upon it in my own name?’

  The lawyer nodded briskly, and made to continue. But Michael shifted in his chair and spoke again. ‘Am I to understand, sir, that you should therefore transfer the deeds of the property to me?’

  Mr Tully scowled. ‘I can think of only one reason to do so, Mr Croxon, and that would be to raise a sum against the property. And that is entirely what I have just spent valuable time advising your future wife not to do. Miss Moore is my client, and I strongly recommend that her inheritance is not exposed to such risky circumstances.’

  ‘But we must build a mill, sir. Are you not familiar with the saying, “He is not fit for riches, who is afraid to use them”? Our two families are agreed upon it.’

  Mr Tully turned back to me, his pale eyes skewering me with a most penetrating gaze.

  ‘While I am not in a position expressly to forbid such an action, may I suggest, Miss Moore, that all actions in the nature of loans and mortgages be directed to me, at my Leeds office, for my personal scrutiny?’

  ‘I don’t see—’ began Michael.

  ‘I am addressing Miss Moore,’ the lawyer interrupted.

  ‘Mr Tully is only helping me to safeguard my grandmother’s legacy,’ I said to Michael, in what I hoped was a calming manner. ‘What harm can it do to obtain his advice?’

  Michael, seeming to reconsider, nodded civilly – though a trifle stiffly – to us both.

  ‘If all is now clear, Miss Moore, I will call my clerk as witness and you will both sign the Marriage Settlement.’ And so we did. Michael made a rapid, theatrical squiggle with the lawyer’s pen. I glanced once more through the dense papers of legal scribework, and tentatively signed my name.

  Drawing his chair back, and placing his hands on the table, the lawyer looked up at the clock, just then commencing its midday chimes.

  ‘Fortunately, my final item is eminently simple. Miss Moore, as you remain the legal owner of the property, all instructions must of course be accompanied by your express permission, in the form of a current signature. Your signature, if I may be so bold, is a valuable commodity. Without your signature, I will not act.’

  I reached out my hand to thank Mr Tully, but already the chimes of noon had ended; and, with a curt nod, we were dismissed from the room.

  ‘What an abominable pettifogger!’ exclaimed Michael as we returned to the busy street. ‘Why the Devil did your grandmother choose such a buffoon?’

  ‘I suppose he takes care of my interests,’ I said gently.

  ‘To have to submit our plans to a glorified clerk – it is monstrous!’

  I tried to quiet him, for his outburst was drawing attention from passers-by. ‘All will be well, Michael. And I, for one, am astonished at the value of the property.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, taking my arm and leading me forward, ‘that was even better news than I expected. We shall live like royalty. And to make a start, my dear, where shall we dine?’

  After a long sojourn at a tavern, I asked that by way of celebration, we might take a turn around the fair, telling Michael how Father had always railed against what he called ‘such heathen gatherings’. So off we battled through a hubbub of fair-goers, a young crowd, jostling and jesting. Mrs Croxon’s maid begged leave to go on an errand for lace, so soon we were alone, passing amongst cheapjacks crying up the sale of trashy goods, and stalls of ribbons and sweet-stuffs. I halted to watch a troop of children tumbling like monkeys, their faces painted and their jackets twinkling with glass-cut spangles. Above our heads a tightrope walker carried a wobbling cane across a rope strung from roof to roof. Twilight was gathering, and everywhere lamps were being lit, their crimson and green shades casting a lurid glow across eager faces. We entered a ramshackle hamlet of tents, the air thick with the scent of roasted chestnuts and hot sugar. For a price any wonder could be seen: a Tale of Blackbeard, the exhibition of a man-bear or a two-headed cow. I thought it marvellous, a resurrection of some older, harum-scarum age.

  The largest crowd had gathered at a tent painted with symbols of stars and moons that advertised a Phantasm Show. I begged Michael we might see it, and so crept beneath a tent flap and blinked in the gloom, inhaling trampled grass and oil smoke. The show was being introduced by a haggard man in a black-ribboned hat, who promised monsters and phantoms that I did not for a moment believe he could conjure.

  The tent was then made very dark, and the spectres of various great men and women raised: Charles I with his severed head, wicked Salome, and Anne Boleyn, to name a few. These were cleverly depicted, floating in the darkness above us, drawing gasps and screams from the crowd. Yet being as still as pictures I guessed they were only that, a series of paintings cunningly illuminated.

  I was therefore unprepared for what came next. The most impregnable darkness fell, and a doleful clock tolled midnight. A red moon rose in the sky; a wind whistled mournfully. Before us stretched a forest of tangled grey trees, from which a flock of cruel-looking birds rose in flight and crossed the disc of the moon. From clouds of rolling mist a young woman appeared, pale and lovely, moving haltingly as she collected crimson apples and placed them in a basket on her arm. At the same time she sang a hauntingly slow song, made all the more unsettling by its being sung in the tantalising words of a foreign tongue.

  With a collective gasp, the audience sighted a shape hiding by a distant tree; a grey figure crooked and monstrous, neither man nor woman. Slowly it scuttled closer and closer to the maiden. ‘Look out!’ called a fellow close by us. The woman sitting beside me whimpered and pulled her apron up to her face as the figure drew ever nearer. Still the pale young woman stood transfixed by the moon, an angelic glow around her. Step by step the horrid shape grew larger and closer. A sudden thunderclap crashed, and everyone in the place jumped in their seats.

  ‘It’s behind you!’ bellowed desperate voices in the dark. White lightning flashed, revealing the horrid pursuer at last falling upon its victim, enveloping her in its smothering horror. A shrill female scream rang out as if uttering a death cry. For a second the air flashed red like blood, then we were once again breathing hard in the blackness.

  I found I was grasping Mi
chael’s sleeve, and quickly withdrew my hand. The haggard mountebank returned in a pool of light, and in his closing speech declaimed the mysteries of phantasms, concluding that we all, believers in the supernatural or not, would one day witness one truly terrible spectacle – our final fate. At this he doffed his hat, and that self-same moment, a light beam shone above the showman, revealing a representation of skeletal Death hovering above him, aiming his scythe at the speaker’s bare head. Next moment the lights were dimmed as a gunshot sounded, again sending everyone starting in a paroxysm from their seats.

  ‘What a hideous spectacle. It was enough to put the fear of hell into a fellow,’ complained Michael as we moved outside.

  ‘I thought it quite remarkable,’ I said, still breathless from the delicious fear it had provoked. ‘Do you not like to be frightened?’ I laughed. ‘It was only done with lamps of course, shone through something like a camera obscura, I should imagine.’

  ‘A what? How would you know of such contrivances?’

  ‘You forget, my father was a printer and something of an artist. The best artists use light boxes to sketch their outlines.’

  He looked quizzically at me. ‘I do hope you are not going to be tiresome, Grace, and get it in your head to know the answer to everything.’

  I mumbled an apology and followed him, unsure why I had been chastised.

  ‘Do you wish to leave?’ I asked gently.

  ‘In a moment.’

  I had just then spotted a gingerbread stall, and in hope of taking home a souvenir of our day, steered Michael towards it. A huddle of young people had gathered, laughing good-humouredly at the saucy mottoes on the fairings. I asked Michael if we might make a lovers’ exchange, but he had spied a nearby ale bench.

  ‘Choose something. I need a drink,’ he said, heading away. Alone, I chose from the wondrous array of gingerbread, cast into likenesses of carriages and ships, and satirical figures of admirals and kings. ‘I shall take a gilded husband,’ I said to the stallholder, and paid my own shilling. My fairing was a cavalier of a fellow, with long curling hair and a knee-length patterned coat.