The Misbegotten

1807

After the fair in Corsham Jonathan dropped them off on the Batheaston side of the miller’s bridge, holding Alice’s hand as he helped her down. Then he flicked the reins and Starling and Alice watched him vanish into the gloaming; the haze of day’s end wrapping itself gently around him, and muffling the metal ring of the pony’s hooves. Alice put her arm around Starling’s shoulders and they set off towards home with the slow, tired, contented feeling of a perfect day spent. The sun’s remembered warmth was in the stones of the bridge; Starling put her hand on the parapet and felt it. The river was low and sluggish, easing sleepily between its banks and glowing faintly with borrowed light from a fat, baleful moon that had risen.

Alice was still humming the tune that the Irish girl had sung at the fair, and Starling picked it up.

‘How did it go?’ said Alice, smiling.

‘Then she made her way homeward, with one star awake, as the swan in the evening moved over the lake, Starling sang. ‘Only this is a river, not a lake, and I can’t see any swans.’

‘Oh, we need not be so literal, I think.’ Alice laughed.

‘No, but it would have been perfect if there had been swans on the river just now.’

‘Your singing voice is so lovely, little sister. Far lovelier than an actual starling’s.’ Starling glowed at the praise. She tipped her face up to the blue-black sky.

‘There’s more than one star out, too. I count… seven – no, eight,’ she said.

‘Sing some more.’

‘She laid her hand on me and this she did say, it will not be long, love, till our wedding day…’

‘I felt as though she was singing just for me, when I heard that song today,’ said Alice, dreamily. ‘I felt she was singing it just for Jonathan and me. Did you see how he blushed?’

‘Yes. But don’t say that – the girl in the song died, remember?’

‘Oh, so literal again! Well, perhaps not that part. But the first verse, and the refrain.’ Alice sighed, and then threw her arms wide, laughed again. She turned to Starling, taking both her hands and spinning her around until both were giddy and giggling. ‘He loves me well, does he not?’ she asked, breathlessly.

‘You know he does,’ said Starling, embarrassed. Alice grew calmer, her face softer, still wreathed in smiles.

‘ “If it were now to die, ’Twere now to be most happy…” Oh, I feel just like Othello, Starling! I’m so happy, I could die,’ she said. ‘So perhaps every word of the song was for me, after all.’

Starling walked on again, pulling Alice along by her hand. She couldn’t place the warning she felt just then. She looked back over her shoulder but there was no one else on the bridge; no one in the lane ahead of them.

‘Perhaps I’ll sing the song to Bridget, when she comes home,’ she said.

‘You must, dearest. You know how she loves your singing, even if she won’t say so. Only don’t forget to say you heard it from a pedlar in the village.’

‘I’ll say I heard it from Dan Smithers, the bargeman. He’s always warbling old tunes.’

‘Good idea.’ Their voices made a bird clap its wings in the leaves overhead. ‘You know, Starling, when I marry Jonathan, he will be your brother.’

‘He will?’

‘Of course. You’re my sister, so he will be your brother. Do you know what that means?’ Alice glanced down at Starling, swinging her arm in time with their languorous strides. ‘It means no harm can ever come to you. It means you will always be looked after, and kept safe.’

‘But having you for my sister means that already, doesn’t it?’

‘I wish it did, dearest.’ Alice turned her face to the moon; she was grey and silver, bathed in its light. ‘But women alone are never safe. Not truly. It is the men who rule us that decide it all.’

‘Are we not safe at Bathampton, then? You and me and Bridget?’ Starling was troubled by this news.

‘We are safe. But only because of Lord Faukes, and his good grace. Do you see? But when I am wed to Jonathan, then he will be our family. And that is the safest thing of all,’ said Alice. Starling thought about this for a moment.

‘A brother like him would be a good thing,’ she decided. ‘When will you marry him?’

Alice chuckled. ‘Just as soon as I can.’

In the distance a dog barked, and they heard the clatter of a gate latch closing. Alice sighed. ‘As soon as he is free, and it can be no secret, and be celebrated instead. People like him are rare, I think – people in whom the goodness runs right through. People like that should be cherished,’ she said. Starling felt a little guilty as she considered this.

‘I’m not like that,’ she confessed, sombrely.

‘Nor I. But we that aren’t can always strive to be. And you and I can cherish each other regardless, can’t we?’ said Alice, putting her arm around Starling’s shoulders again. They reached the George Inn, and turned along the towpath to take them back to the farmhouse. The more that Starling thought about it, the more she wanted it. She pictured life after Alice was wed, and it looked like a wide, open space in which there was freedom, and peace, and no more warnings in the back of her head. A place full of Alice’s smiles, and Jonathan’s pleasing laughter. ‘I shall very much like having Mr Alleyn for my brother,’ she said quietly, as they carried on towards home through the warm, unhurried night.