The Misbegotten

1821

‘You want to watch that one,’ said Sol Bradbury, slapping egg wash onto a pie crust with broad, messy brushstrokes. ‘Came in here bold as brass and told me she’d seen you stealing.’

‘She never said so?’ Starling replied, shocked.

‘She bloody did. You need to be more careful. If Dorcas or Mrs Hatton ever sees then that’s the end of you, and naught I can say will save you. I sent Mrs Weekes on her way, but you’d best hope she says nothing to the mistress.’

‘She’d better not, or I’ll see her off.’

‘Oh? And how will you do that if Mr Alleyn half throttling her didn’t scare her none?’ said the cook. Starling frowned and said nothing for a while. She crushed peppercorns in a pestle and mortar, pushing so hard that the stone surfaces creaked together, and set her teeth on edge. How dare she? She could hardly believe the woman’s temerity. She seemed such a thin, pale thing, so prim and bound up with manners above her station. Her voice was so quiet, so modulated, Starling couldn’t imagine her ever shouting, or cursing, or arguing. And yet she was dogged, and determined, and she kept coming back. Starling hadn’t considered that, when she’d contrived her meeting with Jonathan. She’d thought only of planning the moment, of gauging his reaction, of hoping to prise some revelation from him. Now it seemed she was stuck with Dick Weekes’s wife turning up when she was no longer wanted. Starling was almost sure that Mrs Weekes had gone straight out after her visit to the kitchens. She was almost sure she hadn’t stopped to speak to anyone else about what she’d seen below stairs. It seemed best to get rid of the evidence, however.

After the brief dinner service was done, and still simmering with an anxious kind of anger, Starling took the jute sack from under her bed, and made a quick inventory. There was the beer she’d purloined earlier that day, to go with the jars of pickled eggs, a thick slice of dry bacon, some figs, almonds and half a wheel of hard cheese, almost down to the rind but still with some edible parts. Starling went into the kitchen on soft feet and pinched the leftover bread, already sliced for upstairs and going stale, then she set off with her haul, ducking quickly out of the basement door even as she heard Dorcas’s weary footsteps shuffling on the stairs. It wasn’t the best time to go, it wasn’t the right day. She wasn’t expected. How dare she. Starling cursed Dick Weekes’s wife with silent vitriol as she marched down the hill into the city.

Rachel was dawdling outside the Roman Baths. The early evening was already chill and dark, and a raw breeze angled through the damp streets, but Rachel had grown weary of sitting in the silent house, waiting for Richard’s return. So she wandered the nearby streets instead, watching people and horses and carriages; gentlemen emerging from the baths with their damp hair steaming; children playing in the gutter, keeping an eye out for anything that was dropped or would be easy to steal. They played in the drifts of dead leaves beneath the plane tree in Abbey Green, throwing them up into the air and laughing as they fell like rain around them. Rachel smiled as she watched them, and wished for a child of her own. Something to devote herself to. She eavesdropped on snatches of conversation, and carried a basket over her arm in the pretence of being out on some errand, but even as this cheered her up she felt herself becoming a parasite, drawing on the lives of others. She’d been searching her purse for the pennies to buy a baked apple from a man with a handcart full of hot coals, when she saw Starling hurrying by, unmistakable with her red hair catching the torchlight; pretty in spite of her sour expression.

Weeks after her move to Bath, Rachel still saw precious few faces that she knew. The Alleyns’ servant was walking down Stall Street, heading south at a smart lick that made the woollen skirts of her dress billow and flap. Tucked under her arm was a bulging jute sack, which Rachel recognised at once. Her heart picked up with some nameless excitement, and without thought she left the apple seller and made after Starling as quickly as she could. This girl had spoken the only kind words about Alice Beckwith that Rachel had yet heard, and she found herself wanting to hear more. Then she remembered the humiliating way the cook at Lansdown Crescent had treated her, and found herself equally keen to know the purpose of the bag of stolen food. The girl was easy to spot in the weaving mass of people, but she moved quickly, straight-backed and with her chin jutting out in front of her, like a challenge to the world; Rachel almost had to run to keep up with her. Her pattens made her clumsy on the cobbles, and she skidded as she hurried along.

At the bottom of Stall Street Starling didn’t pause, carrying on into Horse Street and then over the river via the old bridge. There she slowed, and turned to the east, to where the river curled northwards and the canal branched off it. She seemed to search amongst the boats and barges there. Rachel waited in the shadow of the bridge, and then followed at a safe distance. The wharf side was all mud and filth; her feet sank so deeply that she felt it seeping through the seams of her shoes, in spite of her pattens. The smell of the river was foul, even with the weather as cold as it had been; a dank, fishy reek, with putrefaction at its heart. Rachel took shallow breaths, following as discreetly as she could as Starling went along the wharf, speaking to the boatmen in turn. She means to sell her stolen goods, then?

It was mostly men, down on the wharves; men working and talking and making deals; spitting, eating bread from dirty handkerchiefs and swigging from bottles. A few gaudy young women loitered here and there, with messy hair and smudged rouge on their faces. They smiled and called out to the workers, and with a jolt Rachel realised that they were whores. She suddenly noticed some of the men giving her curious, measuring looks, and one of them grinned a mouthful of ruined brown teeth at her. Rachel pulled her shawl tighter around her neck, and kept her eyes down. She almost turned to flee back over the bridge, back to safety, but her nameless, insistent curiosity was stronger. Starling had stopped to speak to one man aboard a barge. A thick-legged patchwork horse stood by patiently, harnessed to the craft, and Rachel crept closer, straining her ears to hear what they were saying. Their breath steamed around them, pale in the torchlight.

‘That’s too much – come now, it’s a short enough distance,’ Starling told the bargeman, who was wizened and dirty. In the darkness it was hard to make out what his boat carried, but from the looks of him, Rachel guessed it was coal.

‘I needn’t carry the likes of you at all, if I so choose,’ the man pointed out, but his face wore half a smile.

‘You’re a rogue, Dan Smithers. A penny, then, and a song as we go.’

‘A penny, and a taste of your lips.’

‘A song is all you’ll get from my lips, or I’ll gut you with your own hook. Take it or leave it.’ Starling put her hand on her hip, and the bargeman laughed.

‘I bet you would, an’ all. Hop aboard then, for I’m behind time leaving as ’tis.’ Starling tucked the sack under her arm and jumped lightly onto the deck. Dan Smithers called out to his horseman, and the animal threw its weight into the harness. The barge eased away towards the mouth of the canal, from where it would pass beneath the pretty iron bridges of Sydney Gardens, and then out of the city. Starling settled herself down on top of the cargo, and as the boat vanished into darkness Rachel heard her voice, surprisingly sweet, drifting back over the water, singing a sad song about lost love.

Not selling the food then, but taking it somewhere – to someone? Resigning herself to not knowing, Rachel hurried back from the waterside, over the bridge and away from the bald, ugly stares of the river men. Against the pale yellow horizon, the black skeletons of trees stood stark on distant hills, and Rachel was suddenly saddened by her own curiosity about the red-haired girl, by the urge she’d felt to take part in her life, when she had no business to. She walked quickly back to Abbeygate Street, and only once she was standing in front of the shop, looking up at the lit parlour window that told her Richard had come home, did she realise that she didn’t want to go inside. She stood on the pavement, staring up stupidly, as if she had any other option. Richard might not necessarily be drunk, she reminded herself. He might be sweet, and tired, and tender for once. But he would want to lie with her, as he always did, and the prospect left her cold. How else do you hope to get with child, then? the echo voice chided her gently.

For a minute or two she stood on the pavement, and absurdly wished herself aboard the barge with Starling, drifting steadily out of the city, rather than going into her home, and to her husband’s bed. The servant girl always moved with a purpose; always had a steely gleam in her eye. She was not cowed, even when Rachel caught her thieving. Whereas I am constantly cowed. By my husband, by Josephine Alleyn, and her son. And her cook. Rachel’s shoulders sagged wearily at the thought. And as she stood there, she remembered something Starling had said to her earlier that day. She was too good for this world. She remembered the serving girl’s obvious grief, and the significance of the words became plain to her. Starling believes that Alice Beckwith is dead. Rachel had a sudden strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, like a warning, and she waited a while longer in the street, trying to decipher it. But the night breeze bit at her fingers, and the streets were emptier now, and she could not linger for ever. So she squared her shoulders, and lifted her chin like Starling did, and went inside to Richard.

His mood was light and affectionate, and Rachel felt some of her anxiety dissipate. Richard took her hand and smiled as she came in, and led her to sit with him on the sofa. He had closed the shutters, and banked up the fire; the room was close and cosy with warmth and low light.

‘How are you, my dear Mrs Weekes?’ he said, leaning his head back to look at her. With the firelight glowing on his skin and hair, and curving into the contours of his face, he was angelic. It was hard to imagine the angry way he sometimes spoke to her. There is a beast in all men; that was what Jonathan Alleyn had said. But he had been speaking about himself, and Rachel refused to believe it.

‘I am well, Mr Weekes. How was business today?’

‘It was brisk, and that’s good. More and more families arrive every day now, for the season, and thanks to word of mouth, and most especially word of Mrs Alleyn’s mouth, my new Bordeaux is much in demand, as is a sweet rose port, lately in from Lisbon.’

‘That is excellent news, indeed.’

‘It is all happening, Rachel. Just as I’d hoped… I have you, the best wife I could wish for, and my business grows… The house is transformed by you, come alive. And soon we will have a finer place, not one over the shop… a house we can fill with children.’ He smiled, and put one hand to the side of her face. His fingers smelled of wood dust and wine-steeped cork, and Rachel shut her eyes, leaning into him.

‘Yes. I should like that very much.’

Richard’s other hand came to rest on her belly, warm and heavy. His touch was somehow proprietary and reverent at the same time, and this time she welcomed it.

‘And what of you? How went your visit to the Alleyns today? Less upsetting than the last time, I hope?’ he said.

‘Yes, much less so.’ Rachel thought of the awful things Jonathan Alleyn had said to her, and the way he snapped; the way his eyes filled with rage and pain at a moment’s notice. And then she thought of the copper mouse, and how he’d fallen asleep to the sound of her voice. She was unsure what she wanted to say to Richard about it – he was so strange and volatile when it came to Mrs Alleyn and her son. ‘He seemed content to be read to. I stayed perhaps an hour with him… and there were no mishaps, not like before.’

‘That is excellent. Excellent, Rachel. And… you were paid?’

‘I was not. Mrs Alleyn made no mention of it before I went up to her son, and afterwards… afterwards I could not find her. I saw only the servants. Speaking of which, I saw one of them just now, doing something rather peculiar.’

‘Oh? Saw one of which?’

‘The Alleyns’ kitchen maid – the red-haired one, who I also saw at the inn on our wedding day. She helped me the first time I met Jonathan Alleyn – she helped me when I was attacked. But I saw her just now, taking a barge boat out of the city with food she had taken from the house.’

‘How can you possibly know this?’ Richard took his hands away from her, sitting forward slightly.

‘I saw her. I saw her at the house, taking something – a bottle of ale. She was putting it into a sack, and then just now I saw her taking that sack and boarding a barge on the canal… I’m certain of what I saw, and yet…

‘What?’

‘When I tried to tell the cook about it, the woman would hear nothing of it. Do you think I ought to tell Mrs Alleyn?’

‘No.’ Richard rose abruptly and walked to the window, even though the shutters were closed. His back was poker straight, his arms folded.

‘What? How no? Surely-’

‘It is not your business!’ Richard kept his back to her, speaking to the chipped paint and woodworm holes of the shutters. ‘And it is scarcely any way to repay the wench if she did indeed help you.’

‘I know. But, surely, if the girl is thieving… If she is being stolen from, Mrs Alleyn-’

‘You told the cook, and that was dutiful. You need do nothing more. It is not your place to involve yourself in such things.’ His voice was hard, flat. ‘And how did you happen to be down at the river, to see this girl board a boat?’

‘I… well, I saw her in the street, so I… followed her,’ Rachel said reluctantly.

There was a silence. Richard turned to face her, and with a jolt of fear she saw the anger again, suffusing his face like a rising tide.

‘I am sure there are better things you could do with your time than run around after serving girls, on business of their own that is none of yours. Wouldn’t you agree?’ he said softly.

‘Yes, Richard.’ Rachel blinked, and looked away. But after another pause, she could not help but speak again, could not help but try to explain herself. ‘I only wanted to… confirm to myself, whether or not the girl was up to no good…’

‘I will hear no more about it! You are to have nothing to do with the likes of Starling! Do you hear me, Rachel? You are to have nothing to do with her!’ He ground the words out, and she could no more fathom the cause of his anger than she could think of a way to assuage it. When she opened her mouth nothing came out, and she was forced to try a second time.

‘Yes, Mr Weekes. I understand it.’ It was little more than a whisper. Richard gave a single curt nod, and strode to the foot of the stairs.

‘I am to bed. Are you coming?’ He held out a hand to her, one that trembled ever so slightly. Is that just anger, or something else? Rachel rose without a word, feeling like a fool who erred and knew not why. As he lay her down with impatience in every caress, Rachel realised that he’d named the girl. Starling. He’d known exactly who she’d been talking about, though he’d always professed ignorance when Rachel had mentioned the girl before. He knows her. For some reason, this realisation made her eyes fill, and she couldn’t tell if they were tears of confusion, or pain, or anger. There is a beast in all men. She shut her eyes tight, and thought of the copper mouse; its little feet running, its bright and beady eyes. She thought about it all the while, until Richard was asleep and she could breathe again.

Jonathan Alleyn was so quiet in the days after Mrs Weekes’s visit that Starling began to worry. His black mood, his state of disarray, was like a downward spiral that once halted could be hard to jerk back into motion. She wanted him weak, and vulnerable, and restless. She needed him to be so, because that was all that mattered to her. It was all she could do. So she spent the day wondering how to torment him, and decided that she needed to start, as she ever did, by making him drink. Plain wine was not strong enough; she needed something else. Once he began drinking, he would fall back into despair. She thought of Dick Weekes, and the way he had brushed her aside. For that pale cow, who has helped not a jot. Starling ground her teeth, and refused to be thwarted. She’d been peeling potatoes; when they were done she swept the skins into her apron and carried them out to the midden, then went downstairs, right down into the bones of the house, where the leaching damp caused the stone walls to powder and weep green mould.

Before, Dick had doctored the wine for Jonathan with some clear, tasteless spirit he got in from Russia; she didn’t know what it was called, or where she could come by more. The remnants of the house’s wine stock was laid down in the low, cramped cellar beneath the kitchen. The front few racks had some newer bottles, supplied by Dick, but further away from the foot of the stairs were racks holding odd relics – bottles left by residents from a previous time. A time when the house was alive and occupied; when there might have been guests for dinner, and card parties, and small dances in the front parlour sometimes. The sawdust on the floor had rotted down to a hard mat that smelled of fungus and made Starling’s eyes itch. She searched for something she could add to his wine without spoiling the taste of it, but there was only some ancient brandy, which stank to high heaven when she pulled the cork. She put it back in disgust, and went up to the still room. There was proof spirit there, used by her and Sol for making lemon water and spirit of peppermint. She uncorked the bottle, but hesitated. If he should keel over dead… That’s what Dick had said. He will not, surely? Starling stayed frozen a moment more, caught in an agony of indecision. Then she took a tiny sip from the bottle. It scorched her tongue, made her cough and spit. She restoppered the bottle and hung her head in defeat.

She went down to the Moor’s Head, but Sadie was cross and tired, and had no time to listen to her. Starling glanced around for familiar faces, but the only ones she saw belonged to people she had no wish to speak to. So she left again, and walked slowly along the street until she came to the foot of the abbey, a vast hulk of medieval architecture that dwarfed the new townhouses surrounding it, like a bear sleeping amidst cats. She gazed up at the carvings around the doorway; the massive Gothic window above. There was a stone ladder on the right-hand side of the façade, with tiny angels climbing its many, many rungs. That is like life, Starling thought. An endless ladder, and sometimes it is too hard to keep climbing. Suddenly, she felt very small. She felt small, and lost, and unbelievably tired, standing in the dark at the foot of the huge building. She swayed, and for a second she was seven years old again, starving and beaten, standing outside the farmhouse at Bathampton, too weak to take the final step towards it. The city rushed around her in a giddy blur, she tottered, and would have fallen if strong arms hadn’t stopped her, appearing from nowhere to catch her under her arms.

Bewildered, Starling twisted around and found Richard Weekes looking down at her with a strange expression on his face. The starry sky wheeled behind him, the buildings and street were a blur, and for a moment his face was the only thing she could see, the only thing that made sense. With a cry, she threw her arms around his neck, and held on to him tightly. An inexplicable sob made her chest clench painfully. After a moment, Dick disengaged her arms, his fingers gripping tightly when she tried to hold on to him.

‘Leave off, Starling!’ he said, with a shove that made her stumble again.

‘Dick, I-’ Starling broke off, and shook her head to clear it. For an awful moment, she’d been about to declare her need for him.

‘What are you doing, standing here mooning up at the abbey at this time in the evening?’

‘I was just… I was walking back. It’s none of your business what I do, is it?’ She took a deep breath to steady herself, drew back her shoulders and ignored the treacherous little voice inside her head that said: Let him want me again. Let him. But though Dick did reach out to her then, it was to take her arm in a painful grip and give it an angry wrench.

‘It is my business when what you do involves my wife.

‘What are you talking about? Let go!’ Starling pulled against him, but it only made him hold her tighter.

‘I’m talking about the way my wife keeps having cause to mention you. She’s seen you here, she’s seen you there; you’ve helped her with Mr Alleyn, she’s seen you stealing, and taking a barge out of the city… what in hell are you playing at? I told you to stay away from her!’

‘What? She’s seen me do what?’ Starling frowned in confusion. ‘I’d have nothing to do with her if it were up to me! How is it my fault if she comes creeping around the Alleyns’ house? If she spies, and follows? How can I help that? It was you that brought her to meet them, you that brought her into my way!’

Richard paused, and seemed to think, but he did not let her go. Starling’s arm was going numb where he held it; a tear slid down her cheek and she hoped he would not see it in the darkness.

‘Why were you watching her? Why were you in the room when she met Mr Alleyn?’ he said at last.

‘It was a good job I was, or he might have killed her! Haven’t I always told you what he’s like? He’s a murderer, as she nearly found out first hand-’

‘You’re up to something, Starling, and I want to know what it is. Speak.’

‘Are you drunk? Leave off!’ Starling tried to twist away but Richard caught her other arm as well, and shook her.

‘Speak! Are you trying to turn her against me? Have you spoken to her about me, about us? If you have, I swear, I shall-’

‘I’ve said nothing! As little as I can! It’s her that seeks me out!’

‘I don’t believe you. You knew of her visit to Jonathan Alleyn – her first visit. You knew to spy on them… what was the meaning of it? I will hear it, Starling, or I will have your teeth out…’ He spoke vehemently, with his face thrust into hers; flecks of spittle flew from his lips to land on her. He spits on me now, like this, when just weeks ago it was kisses that left such traces on my skin.

‘There’s something… there’s something about her you don’t know. That you can’t know…’ Starling said reluctantly. He shook her again.

‘What?’ The word fell hard, like a blow.

‘She looks… she looks just like Alice. Alice Beckwith.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Your Rachel Weekes looks just like Alice Beckwith! My mistress, slain by Jonathan Alleyn!’ Starling swallowed, breathing hard. ‘That’s why he near killed her.’

There was a moment of stillness then. Starling waited, trying to ignore the pain in her arms; Richard stared into her face and some unreadable expression smothered his anger for a second. But only for a second. He released Starling, pushing her away so hard that she staggered. Then he laughed a bitter, joyless laugh that echoed across the square.

‘Alice Beckwith!’ he cried, and then laughed again, throwing his head back and appealing to the heedless sky. ‘I will hear no more about Alice bloody Beckwith! Dear God, Starling, you have plagued me with her so much her very name sets my teeth on edge!’

‘You wanted to know the reason they invited her back, and the reason he flew at her, and the reason they have arranged to keep her visiting… well, there is the reason. You wanted it and I’ve given it to you. Alice Beckwith. Mrs Weekes is the spit and image of his lost sweetheart. Now you have the truth of it don’t harp on at me if you like it not,’ said Starling. Dick ran his hands through his hair and down over his face, then folded his arms and glared at her.

‘I know how Mrs Alleyn feels about that girl – the Beckwith girl… What reason could she possibly have to encourage her son in his obsession?’

‘She thinks it will help him, in the long run. For he has a visitor now at least, some link to the outside world. If she must put up with Mrs Weekes’s face to get him that, then it seems she is willing to.’ Again, Richard paused to think.

‘And you knew of this – you knew of this likeness from your first sight of my wife.’

‘Of course. It was like seeing the dead walk. She chilled my blood, truth be told; though your wife is older, of course, and not as fair.’

‘You saw her first of all, at our wedding feast. Did you… did you have anything to do with our invitation to Lansdown Crescent? With me being asked to present my wife to Mrs Alleyn?’

‘Well, you didn’t think it was through any merit of yours, did you?’ said Starling, recklessly. Richard clamped his jaw shut and looked away. In the dark, she couldn’t see the blush she was sure would be mottling his skin. She swallowed, and felt her tenderness towards him coming on in the guise of regret, and shame for mocking him. She raised a hand to touch his arm but thought better of it. ‘Dick, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…’

‘Didn’t mean what?’ His voice was cold.

‘I didn’t mean to… keep this from you. But you broke with me, and told me to speak no more about Alice… I only wanted to see if… to see if seeing her brought out some confession in him. In Mr Alleyn. I thought that if he saw her, he would-’

‘You’re behind it all, then? This is all your plan? And what is that plan? Do you intend him to fall in love with my wife? For her to betray me for that mad cripple? Is that how you plan to be reunited with me?’

‘What? Are you simple? No, as I said, I only-’

The blow caught her off guard; it came backhanded, across her right cheek, and it knocked her to the ground. The world spun around her again; she tasted blood in her mouth. She grazed the heels of her hands against the filthy flagstones of the abbey square, and could feel grit in the cuts, stinging. Fury made her forget her fear and she glared up at Richard, baring her teeth as she struggled to rise.

‘Stay, or I will knock you down again.’ Richard held his knuckles in front of her face in warning, so Starling sank back to her knees, chest heaving, eyes snapping with rage. ‘Now hear this – you will not approach my wife. You will not speak to my wife. You will mind your business and your tongue, and you will say nothing of Alice Beckwith to her. If she learns about it, then I will know where she got it from. I will not have you infect her with your madness, Starling.’ He stepped back and looked down at her coldly. For a second, Starling thought he would kick her. She braced herself to dodge it but he only turned and walked away, boot heels pounding the stones.

Just then a party of young people walked into the square, chattering and laughing, and Starling silently thanked them for driving him off. She began to rise but her legs were watery and weak. So she stayed there, and wrapped her arms around her knees, feeling the freezing ground numb her skin through her skirts. Her head was throbbing from the knock he’d given her, and she found one of her back teeth loose, wobbling in the bloody gum. She laid her left cheek against her hands, and stared into the shadows at the foot of the abbey. But Rachel Weekes already knows about Alice. She resolved to avoid Richard Weekes from then on. It would mean no more visits to the Moor’s Head, or to Sadie. Where then shall I go? Silent stone faces stared down at her from the abbey walls, and gave her no answers. Her breath steamed in the moonlight. This ladder is too tall for me. She stayed a long time, and lost herself in reverie. She thought of sunshine and soft hands; she thought of the lovers’ tree.