An Appetite for Violets

by Martine Bailey

  The silence scared me, so I stuttered out another question. ‘So why not share it as you agreed?’

  He pointed contemptuously at my lady. ‘Because that dogess went back on her word. No sooner had she wedded Sir Geoffrey than she started up her own game. The black bitch was suddenly set upon travel, and threatened to take all the money abroad and leave me nothing. Said that if I didn’t, she’d ruin me, she’d send the Letter of Credit we concocted together to Ireland, for it bore Sir Geoffrey’s false signature in my hand. Ruin me! The trouble that harlot caused, making me chase all this way at her skirts just to keep her sweet. As for her spending, she did it to enrage me, you do know that? One day on Dover beach she said she would spend my share in double time in Paris. It’s astonishing I didn’t snuff her sooner.’

  Dover beach. I recollected two figures, a greatcoated man striding fast with his hands tight in fists.

  ‘And she’s kept that jewel close. Ever since Lady Maria showed it me, when I first rode up to Yorkshire to collect that sweet lady, I’ve had a hankering for that jewel. So hand it over, girl.’

  Please Lord, not the jewel. I had to let his boasting run on.

  ‘So who fathered Carinna’s child?’

  ‘The devil knows which filthy rake she lay with. I only knew it couldn’t be Sir Geoffrey’s.’

  ‘For sure you knew that,’ I threw back. ‘He was poxed half to death.’

  Pars pulled a sour little smile. ‘Yes, damn his soul. While he had the strength to live on like a festering corpse, the pox as good as murdered every child Lady Maria conceived and finally murdered her. The chancre reached her heart. It was a vile sore right there.’ With eyes fiercely distant he touched his own barrel chest. ‘She kept it hidden underneath the Mawton Rose.’

  I had to turn him off that jewel again. ‘But you let Lady Carinna marry him, knowing that if he bedded her, it would slowly murder her too?’

  ‘She deserved it. No one could replace Maria.’ Then he recollected himself. ‘So where’s the jewel?’

  I tried to blank my face like a white glazed platter. ‘I don’t know.’

  He moved then, taking slow heavy steps into the room, so that I backed away towards the wall, cringing like a hound. A few inches from me he halted, panting so hard so I could smell his sourness.

  ‘Biddy,’ he said, his head cocked sideways in a mockery of concern. ‘For some time you have worried me, girl. Carinna gave you fancies that could only ruin you. And that fop of a count’s attentions have puffed up your head.’ He pursed his thin lips, and the red veins flushed over his cheeks like a purple brand. ‘You forget you are only a kitchen slut.’

  I opened my mouth, but no words sprang to my rescue. I sized him up and reckoned Humphrey Pars was twice my weight. I was no match for him. We stared at one another, and I saw in his eyes something raw and monstrous that he generally kept hooded.

  ‘Those fools have spoiled you, Biddy. And if you will not support your old friends, if you would play the traitor—’

  He was talking very slow and sing-song, watching me and rubbing his fingers against each other, as if rubbing away cold sweat.

  ‘Mr Pars,’ I said, and my voice came out like a whine from a beggar. ‘You can trust me, sir. You can always—’

  Just then a distant sound reached my ears. At first only I could hear it. Evelina had woken and wanted the world to know it. Then I saw a spark of anger cross his face.

  ‘What’s that? I told you to get rid of it.’

  The babe’s stubborn wail rose up the empty stairs.

  ‘That damned squeaker! I’ll squeeze the air right out of its lungs—’

  ‘You will not!’

  ‘Only two things I asked. Get rid of that child and give me the jewel.’

  Then I said it, what I had been thinking all this long day. ‘And if I did. Then what?’

  He showed his hately smile then and it made me shiver, for I think the old serpent himself could not have smiled wider. ‘You are mighty quick tonight. It’s a pity you and that slammerkin did not truly change places. She never could keep up with me.’

  Evelina wailed on, still tugging at my nerves, so I opened my mouth just to cover the noise.

  ‘So it was never her doing at all, to give Sir Geoffrey the apoplexy?’

  ‘Her?’ he scoffed. ‘I sent a bottle of Sir Geoffrey’s favourite Usquebaugh to London to celebrate the wedding. It had foxglove mixed into the spirit. He seemed never to drink it, but when he finally did, the day could not have been better chosen, the day he and Carinna parted with hot words. My only regret is that he survived.’

  As I scrabbled for more to say, I prayed to hear Mr Loveday on the drive, but no sound came.

  ‘But surely you will be caught?’

  ‘Caught? They will have to find me first. And by then they will know Carinna stole the money. I am sending back to Mawton the most perfectly balanced accounts to prove she spent every penny. And letters held by my brother Ozias show I did all in my powers to restrain her. Pen and ink will prove my case.’

  ‘I meant for her – murder.’

  His mouth twisted in an acid downwards smile as if I made a great jest.

  ‘My dear Biddy, Carinna is not dead. She was seen all about the streets only today. And even the count would testify that this swollen hulk before us was not Carinna. It helps of course, her having been a flighty piece. So none will be surprised she’s run away with her mysterious lover and so thankfully, will never be seen again.’

  ‘I don’t understand. So whose is the funeral tomorrow?’

  The room was suddenly airless and cold. My fingers wretchedly groped the smooth wall behind me.

  ‘The funeral is for that poor unfortunate maid, of course. The one who came from Mawton with a bastard in her belly. The one who fancied herself so much cleverer than me.’

  He fixed me with his red-rimmed eyes, but I saw his muscle twitch to raise his heavy arm. ‘Obedience Leigh.’

  There was no time to think on it, I dashed beneath his lifted arm and ran for the stairs. He caught at my skirts and slowed me for a moment, but I tugged and tugged and broke away free. I ran at full pelt along the landing and could see the first step of the stairs. By the time I reached it he was thundering behind me. A hand grabbed my hair, but I wriggled forward and felt the pins tug from my scalp as my empty cap came loose in his hand. Then I was clattering down the stairs as fast as I could. I could hear him, puffing his breath out just behind me. Evelina’s wailing rose; every sinew in my body ached to grasp her and run away I knew not where. Then from behind me his heavy hand grasped my sleeve, but I shook it off. Evelina was screaming, and I told myself I would reach her.

  With a jolt my loose hair was yanked back, and my neck savagely twisted. I stumbled and missed my footing. For what felt a long age I teetered on the stair edge, and then, with a powerful punch to my kidneys from behind me, I lost my footing and fell headlong down the stairs, racketing my way down bump after bump. Reaching the bottom, though I tried to hold out my hands to protect myself, my head walloped hard against the stone floor and I knew no more of what befell me.

  XXXIV

  It was market day in Leghorn, and loud-mouthed women jostled Loveday, their squalling children staring and pointing at his unfamiliar features. At the captain’s house he had waited in a dirty servants’ room while Jesmire saw the master. He had dozed in the soupy heat, listening to washerwomen’s voices rising and falling as they scolded their wailing broods. Then someone had opened a shutter, and barely one hundred paces away he glimpsed the turquoise sea and a harbour packed tight with tall-masted sailing ships. He asked the other manservants where the ships sailed to, but their words were hard to understand. One single word rang out like a bell. ‘Kochee?’ he repeated. They nodded. The word revived him like a powerful tide. Kochee. He had disembarked at that sun-gold, spice-dusty port on his passage to England. He could picture the huddle of merchants’ houses, the brown-eyed sailors dressed only in knotted white cloths, the bea
utiful oval-faced women, their nostrils pierced with diamonds. He had to get to Kochee; it was an ache in his manger spirit, it stretched and strained like a sail in a wild wind.

  Jesmire had scuttled back at last, twitching with triumph. ‘The captain and I will suit each other very nicely,’ she said. In fact, so well did she like him that she told Loveday there was no necessity to go all the way back to Ombrosa.

  ‘But Miss Jesmire,’ he protested, ‘I tell Miss Biddy we back today. She ’spect us six clock.’

  ‘Well she will just have to be disappointed, won’t she?’ Jesmire said, smiling sourly to herself. ‘We will return to the inn tonight, and I will write henceforth to Mr Pars. The captain says my quarters will be all shipshape by noon tomorrow. The captain is a most discerning, very particular sort of—’

  Loveday brooded as she squawked on. He did want to look around this city of ships, but hated breaking his word to Biddy. Yet how could he change Jesmire’s mind? However fortunate he was to be here, it still felt very wrong to break his promise to Biddy.

  After supper Jesmire passed him a letter and told him to find the post house. Once free of her nit-picking presence he stopped at a tavern, ordered a tankard of beer, and deftly untied the letter and read its contents:

  Dear Mr Pars,

  I am delighted to inform you that I have secured a position at the most satisfactory establishment of Captain William Dodsley, Retd, of Casa Il Porto, Leghorn. As a consequence, I give you notice and request that you forward my outstanding remuneration to the address herewith given above.

  I have a number of errands still to complete, for which I require the carriage, and will send it back as soon as I am able, along with the driver and footman.

  Your servant,

  Miss Amelia Jesmire

  Once night fell, Loveday had fallen asleep at the inn. He slept uneasily until suddenly his eyes opened wide in the darkness. A sound had burrowed into his dreams and noisily cleared a path back to wakefulness. He listened, blinking slowly. Beside him, the coachman snored softly, his dark head burrowed under his coat. The noise that had woken him started up again; the wavering yarl of a crying baby. Loveday listened closely and knew that the poor little creature was frightened. The sound grew louder and louder until it scraped the insides of his ears. Pulling his coat over his head he rolled over and shut his eyes again. It was no good. The sound seemed to be just on the other side of the room’s thin wall. The baby sobbed and gasped and started up another ear-scouring wail.

  Agitated, he stood up and crossed the room to pull back the shutters. Outside the air was still warm and smelled of the sea and pungent tree sap. The moon was full, a pitted globe of silver hanging low above the rooftops.

  ‘Mother Fula,’ he whispered to the moon. She was naked and unpitying, casting bold silver rays across the sleeping town. The baby’s weeping grew quieter and sadder, sinking to a heartbreaking sob. It might be coming from anywhere; the inn was on a narrow alley with tottering buildings all about it. He trod silently on the pads of his feet towards the door, wondering if he could find its mother, the person whose love should comfort the child. But out on the landing he found only doors, and whenever he placed his ear to the rough wood, the sound of the baby disappeared. It was a puzzle, but he also knew it was something more. His manger was oddly excited. This sound – had he not heard it below the usual hubbub for most of the day? Amongst the market women this morning, and then echoing up from the laundry at the captain’s house? Even in the ale house it had droned on just below his attention, like a mosquito buzzing in the wind. He returned to the window and looked up at the moon. Mother Fula, the moon, had betrayed him to the white men on that last night on Lamahona, for she was a trickster. But she was also a truth-teller, a revealer of hidden secrets.

  He stared at her and thought of the tides she pulled across the earth with her magical will, the complex pattern of sea roads bringing bounty or loss to hunters and fishermen. He knew there were other dark flows of change that she wrought. The bleeding of women every month, the pains of birthing. The baby’s cries rose again, beseeched him, begged him – and suddenly he had no will left to stop himself from taking fate’s path. Mother Fula drove him to pull on his boots and scrabble his wig and coat into a saddlebag. He shook the coachman and rapidly told him he was going back to the villa so he must bring the carriage back alone. ‘A message come to me,’ was all he could think to say.

  Down in the stables the horsemen were snoring on bales of straw. He shook the youngest boy and held out a silver coin from his pocket. ‘Cavallo,’ he whispered, remembering the Italian word he heard so often. The boy rubbed his crusty eyes and rapidly plunged the silver inside his rags. With barely a chink or slap of sound he prepared a tall brown horse and led him out of the stall into the yard. Soon Loveday was astride it, gripping the horse’s reins with his hands and guiding its flanks with his knees. It was a crazed sort of journey to take alone at the dead of night, yet as he rode out of the sleeping city his progress was unexpectedly easy. Above him the silvered towers and arches of the fancy stone buildings were silent save for the echoes of his horse’s metal shoes. He passed the brine-smelling port with its forest of masts, and then the horse turned towards the road he had travelled the previous day. With only the gentlest of nudges, it trotted quickly from the cobbled stone streets onto the dusty road back to Ombrosa, moving as effortlessly as a fish glides to its spawning ground. Loveday’s long hair fell loose from his pigtail and lifted in the warm breeze, and his chest was bare of his tiresome coat. And Mother Fula, shining as cold and heavy as a disc of Portuguese silver, lit the road all the way to the eastern hills.

  * * *

  The night was still hushed when he noticed familiar outlines. A few torches flickered at the barred wooden gates of Ombrosa up on the black hump of the hill. Then he saw the pale blur of the ruined tower at the crossroads. Leaning over the horse’s neck he whispered into its twitching ears and stroked them gently, before carefully turning off the road. The iron gates of Villa Ombrosa stood black and watchful above him. Loveday dismounted and tied his horse’s reins to a tree. Then he pulled off his boots and hid them beneath a bush.

  His bare feet knew the way through the grounds better than his eyes. Ignoring the noisy gates he slithered under a broken fence and felt at first the hard stones of the driveway digging into his soles, then the itchy spikes of rain-parched grass. The house stood cliff-high in the darkness. Mother Fula was dropping low in the sky now, her fat body hanging over the villa’s pointed roof. He crept as silently as a snake around to the back of the house and the kitchen door. He halted there, sniffing the unfamiliar bitterness of ash and burned cloth. It smelled wrong; it smelled of badness and destruction. Then he slipped inside and found only dying embers in the kitchen grate.

  In the dim glow he saw signs of bustle and mess about the place. Cakes were scattered untidily across the table, not as Biddy usually left them, in a metal cage to protect them from insects and mice. And the air was thick with a terrible and familiar scent. Whale amber. The sweet strength of it reached his nostrils like a crowd of haunting ghosts made solid. He covered his nose with his palm and looked carefully around the room that was lit by only the dying fire. The bread basket was overturned, and a patterned cloth lay on the floor. He picked it up and sniffed it; it had a faintly human smell.

  Footstep by footstep he moved through the rooms and listened. The downstairs was empty, so he made ready to climb the stairs. Just then, his left foot felt something wet. Crouching, he dragged his finger through the stickiness. In the moonlight it looked as dark as tar. He slid his fingertip into his mouth. The metallic flavour was the familiar taste of blood. Without a sound he rose as tall and still as a bamboo cane. He listened for a long time, striving to catch every breath and shift of the house.

  The house was silent – too silent for a house of sleepers. Where were Mr Pars’ rattling snores? Or Bengo’s yaps and whimpers? Feeling his way toe by toe, he climbed the stairs. When he reach
ed the top he padded silently to Biddy’s chamber. The door lay open, the bed not slept in. Next he visited Mr Pars’ fusty room. His door also stood ajar. The shutters were open, and Mother Fula showed him the room was empty. All gone were Mr Pars’ tottering piles of papers, his dirty clothes, and ink wells. Only a portmanteau and his precious strongbox stood neat in the middle of the empty floor. Loveday asked himself why Mr Pars might have left the house in such a manner. Sudden news? Yet whose was the blood? And what of his mistress? She would not have left her bed so near her birthing time.

  He listened hard outside his mistress’s door, but heard nothing. Then, as slowly as a thief, he turned the knob and opened it. At first he thought the room was also empty. The shutters were open, and moonlight shone on the chairs, the table, the bed. The bed – his heart leaped suddenly against his ribcage. She was asleep on the bed. Leaning forward he saw the profile of his mistress lying motionless on her back, a sheet raised above her breasts. Beneath his straining toes a floorboard creaked and he flinched. His mistress did not move. Then he smelt the fug of blood – deep purple blood, like a butcher’s mangled leavings. He looked into her face and recoiled in fright. His mistress’s eyes were staring open, staring right at him. He touched her arm. It was as cold as stone.