The Misbegotten

1808

In the kitchen at the farmhouse, there was a suspended, ringing moment after Starling blurted out Alice’s and Jonathan’s secret. When it ended she was sent upstairs, but she did not quite go all the way. She sank into the same spot by the banisters from which she’d first seen Jonathan and Lord Faukes, though it was harder for her to fit there than it had been, and there was such a restlessness in all her limbs it was near impossible to remain quiet or still. For a long time, Alice only wept, and that was the hardest thing of all to bear. She wept with a kind of frantic need that prevented Bridget from saying anything at all. Starling heard the scrape of chair legs on the kitchen floor, and the kettle coming to the boil on the range.

‘Alice, child, stop now,’ said Bridget, after several long minutes. ‘Take a deep breath, slowly now. Be calm, be calm. Take a sip of tea.’ She heard the trembling rattle of a china cup in its saucer.

‘Bridget, you must not tell him! Promise me! Please, I beg you, for he will prevent us from ever seeing one another if you do, and he will like as not cast us out and we will have nothing and be ruined! And I will never see him again!’ Alice gabbled.

‘All this you knew, and yet you continued your liaison – you indulged your feelings, and encouraged them to grow. All this you knew, and also that I am employed by Lord Faukes, and must obey his commands.’ Bridget spoke heavily, wearily.

‘I indulged my feelings, and encouraged them to grow? No, I am compelled by my feelings, Bridget! You must know, you must understand… haven’t you ever been in love?’ Alice’s voice was shaking. Starling knew she would be pale, wild-eyed. Do not let her take one of her turns because of what I said.

‘I fancied I was once, and it was no more prudent than this love you have for young Mr Alleyn. My father stepped in and prevented our becoming too attached to each other, and before I had shamed myself publicly. It was a painful separation, I shan’t deny it. But now I see the sense of it, and you must see the sense of removing your affections from Mr Alleyn.’

‘The sense? No, I see no sense in that! I see no sense in separating, or being kept apart, when our souls are wound tight together and have been these many years! You must have seen it? You must have known the way we feel for each other?’

‘I’ve known it, yes. Anyone with eyes in their head would know it, seeing you together in the same room. Even Lord Faukes knows it, though he does not know you would disobey him like this, and meet with his grandson in secret – as I did not know it. Alice, what were you thinking? He is engaged to another! And even if he were not, he is destined to make a fine marriage, into a noble family.’

‘Would I not make a fine wife for him?’ said Alice, in a tone of such misery that Starling couldn’t stand it.

‘You are as fine to me and those that know you as any high-born lady, Alice, but that is not the way the world works, and no amount of love or wishing will ever change it. You have no name. You have no family, and no fortune. Jonathan is the son of a noble lady.’

‘He does not love Beatrice Fallonbrooke! And he will not marry her; he has sworn it to me. These past three years, he has tried to remove himself from the engagement. Only his honour and duty to the lady prevent him from renouncing her publicly.’

‘His honour? How honourable is it to lead you a dance like this, and break your heart, when he knows he cannot wed you? He will be cut off if he does. You would have nothing, and nowhere to go. All doors would close to you.’

‘If we were wed, I would happily live under a hedge with him!’

‘Foolish girl! Think! Think about what would happen!’

There was a long silence. Starling didn’t dare breathe, and her chest burned. Her pulse was thumping painfully in her head; she tried shutting her eyes but it only got worse.

‘Please don’t tell him,’ Alice whispered then.

‘I am duty bound to. He will separate you, I fear. We will be moved away, too far for any secret meetings to take place.’ Bridget’s voice was flat, unhappy.

‘Moved away? No! Please, Bridget… I won’t survive it.’

‘You’ll survive it because you’ll have to. What choice is there? Be grateful it was me Starling told on you to, and not Lord Faukes… I don’t know what would happen if he found out the full story.’ Bridget’s voice was laced with warning. In the silence that fell again, Starling heard Alice draw in a deep, gulping breath. She thought then about running down to the kitchen, throwing herself down in front of them and saying something, anything, to undo what she had done, and mean their lives would not be turned upside down, and Alice’s heart broken. She found that not a single muscle in her body would respond to the command. The numbness of sheer panic held her, and her shame was like a heavy weight pushing down on her.

‘Believe me, I would rather not have to leave this house. We have been comfortable here, these twenty years…’ Bridget muttered then. Alice gave a gasp.

‘Then do not tell, dear Bridget! Pretend as though nothing has changed! As though Starling had not spoken, or I had denied it all and you believed me!’

‘I can’t do that… if it were found out…’

‘It will not be! How could it be?’ Alice’s voice was bright with desperate hope. ‘Don’t shake your head, Bridget – tell me you will stay silent, and we can remain here in Bathampton, and all will be as it was before!’

‘Alice! This is not a game!’ Bridget cried. ‘Lord Faukes loves you, and has always been gentle with you. But make no mistake, he is a powerful man, and he will have things his way. I have seen how he deals with those who defy him… And in the not trifling matter of his grandson’s marriage? You wouldn’t be able to throw yourself into his lap and weep your way out of that one, mark my words.’

‘He will not hear of it, Bridget.’ Alice sounded calmer, and resolute.

‘And you must swear to see Jonathan in secret no more. You must separate yourself from him. Swear it, Alice; because sooner or later these things are found out. They always are.’

‘I… I-’

‘Swear it to me, Alice, or I will have to report it now. You would leave me no choice. Jonathan Alleyn is not for you, however much you care for him.’

‘Very well, then. I swear it.’ This was spoken in a small, strangled voice.

‘You must talk to Starling. I thought her loyal to you, to both of us.’ Bridget gave a sigh. ‘She has proved otherwise.’ At this, Starling’s limbs awoke. She scrambled up and flew down the stairs, running out of the house as fast as her feet would carry her, because she could not stand to hear what either one of them would say to her.

She roamed along the canal for a long time, then high onto the ridge above the western edge of Bathampton, from where Ralph Allen’s folly looked down – the turreted and crenellated wall of a sham castle, newly built to embellish the view from the gentleman’s town house. Starling stared up at it and wondered at the power some men had, to change the world to suit them better. When we others must just do as we are bid, and be meek and malleable. She thought about what Bridget had said of Lord Faukes – he will have things his way. She remembered the sudden warning she’d felt, nameless and wordless, deep in her bones, during one of his visits a year or so before.

She’d fetched him a glass of port while he was alone by the fire in the parlour, and he’d taken hold of her wrist to prevent her turning away. Normally she stayed out of his sight as much as she could; she tried to draw as little attention to herself as possible.

‘Wait a while, girl. Starling,’ he said, smiling so that his cheeks turned his eyes into crescents. Starling did as she was bid. She pulled experimentally at her arm but his grip, though gentle, was quite unbreakable. She let her hand hang limply at the end of her wrist. In some hindquarter of her brain, she divorced herself from it completely; if she had to leave the limb behind to free herself, she would do it. She watched him in silence as his thumb moved around to press into the vulnerable underside of her wrist, where the blood was warm and close to the skin. He massaged her in small circles, considering, and the prickling feeling this gave her went straight to that hidden part of her mind that knew to bite, and kick, and run. She balanced her weight evenly on both feet, poised slightly on her toes, ready. She started to shake. ‘Do not fear me, girl. Why should you fear me?’ he said, with a chuckle. I do not fear you, Starling realised. I hate you. ‘How old are you now?’

‘Rising twelve, we think, sir,’ she said reluctantly.

‘Quite the little maid,’ he said cheerfully, and laughed again though his eyes never left her, and it was not mirth that filled them but a kind of hunger. Starling glared at him then, and let everything she was feeling fill her face. Lord Faukes recoiled, though he did not let go her hand. ‘Mind your manners, little vixen. I had a horse once look at me the way you just did. I was forced to beat that mare bloody, so I was.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Starling looked down instead, because she could not keep the hate from showing.

‘That’s better.’ Lord Faukes dropped her wrist and laced his hands across his gut, shifting his weight. The chair creaked. ‘Remember who owns you, girl. Remember to whom you are beholden.’ In that instant Alice came in from the stables with her cheeks glowing and her hair unravelled, and went to embrace the old man with a smile. For a second, Starling wanted to step between them – Alice had no idea how to bite or kick or run. But she could not, since there was no excuse to other than every instinct she possessed, commanding it.

Alice found her eventually, as the sky was turning milky pale and a sliver of moon had risen. Starling had found her way to the lovers’ tree, and was sitting in the shadows on the protruding root, quiet and numb and miserable. She started to cry when she saw Alice approaching, because the shame was intolerable. Alice sat down beside her, all serious and calm. Her pale hair caught the last of the light, but her eyes were in darkness.

‘Don’t cry, Starling. I know why you told Bridget,’ she said. ‘I know why you were angry. You wanted to hurt me some, because I have hurt you, haven’t I, dearest?’ Starling only wept more, messily; snot and tears slid down her chin. Alice’s arm went around her shoulders and squeezed. ‘You are so quick and bright; it’s easy to forget how young you are.’ She sighed softly and fetched out a handkerchief to wipe Starling’s face. ‘You and I have been so close, since you first came to us. It must be impossible for you to understand why I met Jonathan in secret, as well as the times I met him with you, and at the house. It has to do with the kind of love we feel, and my… particular situation. Perhaps you understand a little more of that now, after hearing what Bridget had to say earlier on.’ Starling glanced up and saw that her eavesdropping was no secret. She dissolved into fresh tears of misery; for a while Alice let her cry. A weak breeze shifted the willow whips.

‘Now I need to know how close we are, Starling,’ said Alice, after a while. She whispered the words, so that they seemed spoken in part to the darkness and the silent sliding river. Starling gulped and sniffed and tried to read her expression.

‘What do you mean, Alice?’ she said.

‘I have sworn to Bridget that I will detach myself from Jonathan. I had no choice but to swear it. But I shall not do it. I will not do it!’ Alice took Starling by the tops of her arms and stared into her eyes. ‘You betrayed me before because you were hurt and angry. But you betrayed me to the one person who had best reason to keep my secret with me. Perhaps it was deliberate, perhaps not, but betraying Jonathan and me to Bridget was really hardly a betrayal at all.’ Starling waited, hardly breathing. She’d never heard Alice sound so serious. ‘I will not detach myself from Jonathan, and he will not detach himself from me. It would be utterly impossible. So I will break the vow I just made to Bridget, and break it willingly, and if the time comes that Jonathan and I must flee from our families to be wed, then I will go eagerly, though I should be disgraced for ever. I tell you this now because you will have guessed it, I know. If not at once then sooner or later. So I ask you now, Starling – will you betray us again?’

‘Never!’ Starling gasped.

‘Think before you answer, dearest. It will be harder to keep this secret now. Bridget will be watching… she will doubtless make you promise to tell her if I do not keep to my word.’ Alice’s fingers clutched Starling’s shoulders, gently but insistently.

‘I will lie to her too, I don’t care! But you must promise me one thing,’ said Starling, desperately.

‘What is it?’ Alice sounded wary, worried.

‘When you go… when you go away with Jonathan, you must take me along with you. You mustn’t leave me!’

‘Starling, dearest…’

‘You must not leave me! Promise it!’ Alice pulled her closer, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

‘I promise it; and that is a promise I will keep.’

They waited until they were both calm, and composed, and resolute, before returning to the farmhouse, and to Bridget’s stern unease. As they went in Alice turned to smile at Starling, and it was that smile that reassured her, and told her she was forgiven and loved. It was that smile that made the ground under her feet turn back to solid rock from shifting sand, and convinced her to ignore that sparkle of instinct that came again, with the shadow of Lord Faukes looming large in her mind; the urge she felt to take hold of Alice’s hand and run, right then, immediately and far away.