A Taste for Nightshade

by Martine Bailey

  I slept alone in the chamber I had hoped would be a shrine to our marriage vows. On the nights when Michael slept at home, when he was not at the inn or with his companions, he chose a room not even close to mine; a plain closet like a manservant’s room near the long gallery, with bare walls and a narrow bed.

  I began to dread retiring to that room. A series of uneasy nights led to one much worse than the rest. I lay sleepless with my bed curtains open, my candle extinguished; unhappy visions appearing from my fancy in the darkness. Each time my eyes grew heavy I was tugged back awake by the Hall’s untimely groans and creaks. Sometime after the church bell rang three o’clock I heard distant footsteps, a door pulled to, and a movement on the stairs. I knew those footfalls were not imaginary. The wandering old woman of Nan’s tale sprang to mind. Could a spirit haunt the spot where its misery kept it chained? My imagination unleashed, I pictured a claw of a hand outside my door, pawing for the latch. Was that a moonlit chair by my window or a motionless watcher with a pale oval of a face?

  At last, annoyed by my own credulousness, I lit a candle and took a turn about the room, prodding the furniture and checking the bolt on the door. All was as it should be. Then, lifting my curtain from the casement, I wiped away the beaded moisture and looked outside. The tiny glow of a lamp twinkled near the ground at the western corner of the Hall. I fancied it was a lone person carrying it, and as they walked between tree trunks and shrubs, it periodically blinked in and out of sight. Finally it disappeared entirely, and though I waited, did not reappear.

  Shivering, I clambered back into bed, trying to calculate what would attract a person to walk the grounds at night. Had I perhaps seen a poacher, or a servant, off on a nocturnal tryst?

  In the crisp light of day I set off to find out, but retracing the walker’s steps only took me onto the usual soggy paths. I returned to the Hall convinced that someone, a stranger, was roaming our property at night. I told Michael my worries and he scoffed that I must have been dreaming. Peg took me more seriously and took a walk with me in the area, so we might look for footsteps. But by then it had rained, and the ancient wood offered up no secrets, so we abandoned our search.

  More concerning was something I found that I could grasp in my hand. For I say I slept alone – but the taint of Mrs Harper lingered in my bedchamber. When I first drew back the tulip-covered bedcover, I found ugly proof of the liberties she had taken. A hair lay twisted on the inner sheet, very thick, and perhaps thirty inches long. Hair, as I know from my picture-work, has a powerful quality.

  This hair was not mouse-soft like my mother’s. It was ink-black, and coarse, with kinks from tightly-fixed hairpins along its luxuriant length. Though it revolted me to touch it, I lifted it between my finger and thumb and walked to the fire. Then, anticipating the vile stink burning would make, I instead pushed it into an old silk purse, though its springiness gave it a grotesque half-living quality. After washing my hands, I changed all the bed linen. Nevertheless, whenever I lay down on those cold sheets, I swear I caught Mrs Harper’s salty scent rising from the mattress.

  My only solace was Peg. I congratulated myself that employing her was my one surefooted act since my marriage. I at once wrote to Miss Sybilla Claybourn in a civil but firm tone. A few days later she replied, and one phrase jumped at me like a well-aimed cat-scratch:

  … you have lost me the service of an excellent housekeeper, upon whom I was entirely dependent. I believe this to be a deliberate, unneighbourly act, and must inform you we do not generally poach staff here …

  Michael and I were for once at breakfast together, as reserved as two strangers sharing a table at an inn. I read the letter out loud to him.

  ‘Do you know her?’ I asked, for I had not much cared for Peg’s description of Miss Claybourn. Michael only knew her land at Riverslea, he said, for it had a wonderful prospect he had admired when out riding.

  ‘A better prospect than ours?’

  He spoke from behind his newspaper. ‘Not so large as ours. In fact I’m scarcely certain where her land ends and ours begins.’

  ‘So we share a boundary?’ For some reason, this displeased me.

  ‘I will ensure the fences are maintained; then she cannot poach our staff in turn,’ he quipped.

  I thanked him. As for sacrificing the chance of her acquaintance, I was pleased that her rudeness removed any obligation to call on her. I had already formed an opinion of Miss Sybilla Claybourn as a highborn man-chaser.

  From the first, Peg fitted her place like a key in a well-oiled lock. The meals she served were domestic miracles: fresh bread, savoury pies, and joints of meat were laid steaming on our dining table. She also concocted the best of English sweet-stuffs: flummeries, suet duffs, and the best trifle I ever ate. Even Michael admired the comfit-scattered froth of cream laid over macaroons and fizzing cherries.

  Even more surprisingly, she had early success in clearing the Hall. As if by magic, the rooms I had chosen as habitable were scrubbed and polished by her band of charwomen. I paid a visit to inspect her ragtag troops, ten or so women and girls, who Peg told me always slept in their own hovels at night, for fear of tales of ghosts. Some were bent old crones and others giggling minxes, but a few looked steady enough: a stout-armed silver-haired matron, and a respectable-looking widow-woman, who I fancied must be forced to such work by unfortunate circumstances. Cloth-headed creatures, Peg called them, but soon they had the parlour and small dining room in satisfactory order. The furnishings were neither modern nor especially comfortable, but the rooms were a haven in the midst of chaos. Burrowing into the ancient mass was how I thought of it then: excavating rooms, as antiquarians unearthed those unfortunate cities destroyed by Vesuvius.

  Being much thrown together, I took time to observe my new housekeeper. She was an interesting type from a painter’s point of view. Her sharply arched brows gave her a quick and alert expression, and her wide mouth naturally lifted in an amused smile. I fancied her liveliness would challenge a painter, for she was like an animal with a rapid heartbeat, seeming twice as alive as the slow-witted villagers. Her eyes, too, were extraordinary: cat-like in their flat aspect and expressiveness. She had a habit of probing my gaze, boldly, as I instructed her; as if she were seeking a connection not quite appropriate between a servant and mistress.

  ‘Why do you stare, Peg?’ I asked one day. ‘Have I got a mark on my face?’

  ‘I am near-sighted, Mrs Croxon. I cannot help it.’

  I thought that odd, for she could read the stable clock from the kitchen window. She was certainly attractive – but somehow over-bright. She wore pink emulsion on her delicate redhead’s complexion that by evening wore thin, showing what I supposed to be scars from an illness. She laboured ceaselessly to please me, but behind all her eagerness I did detect a certain strangeness to Peg Blissett. Perhaps I was unused to anyone striving so hard to gratify me. After all, there is something peculiarly intimate about having one’s every wish anticipated, as if one’s thoughts are not entirely private.

  One morning I told Peg to be sure the cleaning women swept any hair about the place.

  ‘Hair?’

  ‘Yes, hair. I found a ghastly black hair in my bed. Mrs Harper’s no doubt.’

  A peculiar expression passed over her face: an emotion I couldn’t interpret. When she spoke her voice was flat. ‘Who is Mrs Harper?’

  ‘Your predecessor. I thought I told you we were defrauded by our housekeeper.’

  She shook her head, frowning mutely.

  ‘Goodness, Peg. You are rarely lost for words. She took her guinea wages and left,’ I added. ‘Tell me, are the housekeeper’s quarters comfortable?’

  ‘They are most comfortable,’ she answered, her usual manner restored. ‘Thank you, Mrs Croxon. And you can rest easy; you won’t see any more – ghastly black hair about the place.’

  While Peg and her workers banged about the house, I escaped to the light-filled sanctuary of my studio. There I began a miniature of Michael copi
ed from the sketch I had made on our journey to Delafosse Hall. Somehow, amidst the distress of our wedding day, I had captured his image as never before. He was sleeping with his head thrown back, the tendons of his throat very pronounced and vulnerable, his curls falling artfully backwards, his eyelids defined by lashes as long as a child’s.

  Now I began the slow work of copying my pencil sketch onto a thin sliver of ivory, using tiny brushes to articulate strokes no larger than pin-pricks. It is a curious art, to paint on ivory, for the material itself gives life to the skin. I began with a pink wash that had all the natural bloom of flesh. Every speck of an eyelash was a risk, for such work is unforgiving of errors. Yet the application of tiny strokes transported me to a place of sublime peace.

  Even then I was bothered by sounds invading my concentration. Footsteps, slow and steady, grew louder on the stair, as irritating as hammer blows. They proceeded with annoying steadiness to just outside my door. Then they stopped. I cocked my head and called out, ‘Peg? Is that you?’

  Someone was standing on the landing. It was surely not Old Dorcas, I sighed, roaming the house in her lunatic state. I shoved back my chair with a squeak and noisily crossed the room to swing my door open.

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’ It was only the widowed char, her withered cheek bent low as she stood as still as stone, catching her breath at the top of the stairs. Bony hands, speckled with age, clutched the broom that she rested upon. Poor creature, I thought, reduced to this labour, when her gown showed signs of better days and her hair was wiry with silver threads.

  ‘I wondered who it was,’ I explained gently. ‘Carry on.’

  She lifted her face to mine; her features indistinct beneath the great glass lantern that crowned the staircase, for no one had yet had the courage to tackle its decades of cobwebs. Then she smiled, a complicit smile, lit by a meagre warmth behind her colourless eyes. After that I often heard the steady swish of her broom across the boards outside my door, and left her in peace to her work.

  At that time, a gloriously bright day tempted me outdoors to explore the park. It could have been May-time and not October, as ragged white clouds chased across gillyflower blue. To wander amongst such beauty and yet have no resolved existence left me aching with exquisite pain.

  I was glad of distraction when I came upon Nan, a wicker basket strapped to her back like a pedlar-woman’s. She was collecting a bounty of rosehips, sloes, and brambles that she showed me with pride. We fell into step together as she chattered in her homely manner.

  ‘Down there’s a good spot for codlins,’ she told me, and so I followed her curious hunch-backed figure through dripping glades that might have been undisturbed for centuries.

  It was short work to pick a vast heap of hard green fruit, so I offered to help her carry them home, bundling them up in my shawl. As we wended our way, I asked her where Lady Blair was buried.

  ‘Down in’t crypt in’t village church. So ’ow she’s supposed to rise and walk about I cannot say.’

  Though I knew I risked frightening myself, I asked, ‘Was she truly so dreadful, Nan?’

  Nan halted to investigate a clump of stinking leaves, her gnarled fingers pinching out a few seed pods. Raising herself with a sigh, she said, ‘She were brung up like all rich folks in them days, to do as she pleased. All these lands was her own little kingdom. We ’ad a household of twenty servants then, and I were a hale woman in me prime. We ’ad our jests and jokes behind her back, mind. We ’ad to, for she were as miserable as sin. No man would take her on, rich or poor, she being such a hately creature.

  ‘So it were just a lark to us, when Mr Ashe come here, him being not yet thirty, and she more ’n sixty. He could charm the birds from the trees, that one. Soon enough the old witch were like a chick in ’is hands. It were a kind of madness come on her, from being so long a maid.

  ‘First she thought she could buy ’im. She had her testament drawn up making ’im, her only heir – he would’ve got the Hall and all her fortune. We servants watched it happen like scenes of a doom play, rolling fast on to the road to Judgement. You see, it were no secret to us that Mr Ashe was romancing another young woman, a Miss Hannah who were biding here too. What did them two young lovebirds care if a laundry maid passed ’em in the long grass, or a gardener saw them in the summerhouse?’

  Nan paused and turned her rheumy eyes to mine with a malicious gleam of pleasure. ‘The old ’un found ’em out. There were such rantings and screamings that the Hall itself seemed to shake. Next, Miss Hannah says she’s with child.’

  ‘Poor girl,’ I said with sympathy. By now we were at the kitchen door, and when Nan beckoned me inside to see her workplace I followed, having little else to do but hear the end of her tale. Peg was not about, only the two powerfully-built sisters employed as maids-of-all-work, stood scouring copper pans.

  At the far end of the kitchen stood a low, iron-barred door. Picking up lanterns, we passed through it and clambered down chilly steps to a warren of larders and cold stores. In the lantern glow, our giant shadows danced and rocked about us, revealing the start of a tunnel dug into the rock ahead. We passed a few of the village women cleaning by lamplight: the stout, strong-looking char washing down shelves, and the widow-woman moving wine bottles. I thought the caverns marvellous; quite worthy of one of Mrs Radliffe’s tales.

  ‘Don’t you fret, I know these passages backwards and forwards – even in the pitchy dark,’ Nan’s thin voice called. ‘I never had no candles, all these years. Nowt to be scared of down here but a few rats and beetles.’

  I peered warily at the floor at Nan’s mention of rats. We moved on, past a dry larder filled with net cradles hanging from the ceiling, and a cold larder hung with grisly carcasses and stiff birds.

  ‘Here we are, mistress.’ I had to crouch to enter a barrel-vaulted cellar crammed with dusty bottles and sheaves of herbs and twigs.

  ‘This were the old cook’s ’stillery,’ said Nan, lighting more candles from her lantern. I looked about myself with pleasure; fitted with a burner, glassware and funnels, the chamber had all the romance of a necromancer’s lair.

  ‘You sit down, mistress.’ Nan tipped the contents of her basket across the table. ‘I just ’ave to start these drying before they lose their virtue.’

  As I waited, I picked up a receipt book, and idly flicked through the pages. It was no witch’s grimoire, for it opened at a method for a homely apple pie.

  Nan trailed about the shelves in search of her drying pans. ‘She’s gone and started moving my stuff. I could allus find it before.’

  ‘Mrs Blissett, do you mean?’ I remembered Peg’s kindness in keeping the old woman on; her insistence that such an unfortunate must not be turned from our door. ‘It is a new order now, Nan, and it is best to adapt to it. She has her reasons for making all these changes.’

  I couldn’t see Nan’s face, but her voice was disgruntled. ‘Oh, aye, mistress. She has them all right. I’ll make do with this.’ Settling down at the table she began to pick over her harvest, and recommenced her tale.

  ‘Right-oh, well when the mistress heard ’ow Miss Hannah were breeding, she got a wicked notion in her head. She told Mr Ashe he could have no inheritance unless he got the child signed over to herself. She would give Miss Hannah money, plenty of it, in return for the bairn being kept here as her own. Us downstairs reckoned that way she’d not only hope to keep Mr Ashe by her side, but have a new line of heirs for Delafosse, too. Miss Hannah were to be kept here until her time come. That’s how I got right friendly with ’er, for I often took her a bite and had a tattle with her.’

  ‘She must have been frightened, here alone?’

  ‘Aye, but she were that lovelorn over Mr Ashe, she hung on his every word. Then, bless ’im, next we knew he smuggled his lass out of here to another place. Mr Ashe had found his Christian conscience see, and wouldn’t let a mother be parted from her child.’

  ‘Bravo for him,’ I said with feeling.

  ‘Aye, but when the mi
stress found the pretty bird had flown, there were such a how-row! But Mr Ashe stood his ground, he was young and hot-blooded, and that night he went off to be a soldier. As for her ladyship, her heart was broke in two. Within the six-month, a letter come to say poor Mr Ashe were slain, sliced through in that battle across the ocean. She got a sort of brain-fever then, pacing the house, never resting. I grew afeared of her, for she’d come up behind you and grasp your shoulder and fix on you with frantic eyes. “Where’s my baby child?” she’d ask. “I heard him crying but I lost him just now. Where have you hidden him?”

  ‘Poor Dorcas, we called her. Her soul-case were cracked, it were a half-life she were living. Wandering and searching for that baby she were, till the day she fell dead. Then the bailiff come and told me the Hall were to go to some sort of high court, and I could stay on to keep an eye on it. And only this summer it were put to rent.’

  I tried to banish this nursemaid’s nonsense and said, ‘To think, if Mr Ashe had agreed to be her ladyship’s companion in her final years, perhaps even married her, all could have turned out well.’

  Nan turned to me, gape-jawed. ‘Perhaps I din’t make meself clear, mistress. Mr Ashe were Lady Blair’s sister’s son. He were her blood nephew. The scriptures don’t allow such unnatural connections.’

  I wondered how I had misunderstood so much. ‘No, Nan, I’m sorry, I had no notion.’

  ‘No matter, mistress. Here now, you’ll like this, I’ve kept a chest of all them old confects and devices …’

  Just then a powerful notion of being observed made me look over my shoulder. I got up to look outside, and there stood Peg at the threshold, as if just arriving in her cloak and bonnet, with a bundle in her hand.

  She bobbed at me and laughed. ‘Pardon mistress. I never expected to find you down here. It gave me a little fright, seeing you.’