The Prophet, page 25
‘Gentlemen. I am obliged for your kind attention.’
FIFTY-FOUR
Until at last there rises a new constellation
And the child leads the man, for his name shall be a nation.
The New Prophet of the Forest
31 October 1753
All Hallows’ Eve
The green days of summer surrendered to the dominion of grey-cloaked winter. Inside Bold Hall, they fought the damp and cold with vast, log-piled fires and merry company. Nat invited Mister and Mrs Rix for an evening’s entertainment at Bold Hall’s chapel to celebrate All Hallows’ Eve, when the Unseen press their closest to humankind. As the company assembled, Tabitha maintained a cheery aspect in spite of her reluctance to return to the dilapidated chapel. It felt an age since her collapse by the chantry window. According to Doctor Caldwell, her blood was now sufficiently strengthened by steel powders and rich beef. But she was convinced that happiness fortified her better than any medicines.
Beyond the ancient windows, the night was as black as soot. Once again, candles guttered in the sconces casting an ever-shifting gloom. Nat had set four chairs in a row exactly where they had both sat on the night of Gunn’s visit. She was glad Nat had insisted that Jack be put to his cradle early with Jennet watching over him. Thankfully, this time she had remembered her warmest fur mantle and Nat drew it tight around her shoulders.
‘I want you to enjoy my entertainment, sweetheart,’ he murmured, setting a kiss on her brow. ‘You might call it a catharsis. It was a shocking trick that imposter Gunn played upon us. In the spirit of Hallows’ Eve we shall purge ourselves of his mischief.’
Nat made his way to the very spot where Gunn had given an apparent sleeping prophecy that distant summer’s night. She assured herself that there was nothing to fear; their fortunes had recovered more thoroughly than they could ever have expected. Lady Maud had exerted pressure upon her father and the Langleys had ceased all claims to Sir John’s land in Mondrem Forest. True, not all the contents of Bold Hall’s strongbox had been recovered from Gunn’s wagon at Briggestone Barrow, but they had sufficient coin to keep the estate intact. And Nat’s confidence was up; now he beamed with pleasure as he stood before them in his new French coat stitched with spangles that glittered in the candlelight. Tabitha could not help but smile with pride.
‘I welcome you to this gathering, friends. Tonight, we celebrate the occasion that has since days immemorial been celebrated as the Feast of Samhain, or Summer’s End. It is a night of mischief, when ghosts and strange spirits appear to the unwary. Tonight, to glimpse this other world will be simple. I only ask that you join me at this dimly lit window.’
They all stood and moved towards the empty frame of the chantry window. Through its unglazed frame came a soft illumination such as had glowed on the night when Tabitha had feared her own dead mother walked again. A sudden qualm made her lean on Sophie’s arm. Then, recovering herself, she attempted laughter. ‘Goodness knows what phantom Nat will have conjured for us.’
‘Heavens above,’ declared Mister Rix, who had reached the window first of all. ‘What the devil? Oh, De Vallory, that is remarkable.’
Nat was grinning like a schoolboy. ‘Very well,’ said Tabitha, bracing herself. ‘Do your best to terrify me, you rogue.’
Reaching the window, she pressed her face to the metal frame and gave a little cry. Before her lay a baby. Their own baby, Jack. He lay asleep upon a carved table. Yet, simultaneously, she could see directly through his bundled body. The outlines of the table’s carved surface could be seen through his bonneted head.
Beside her, Sophie said, ‘Oh my heart. Is it a ghost of little Jack?’
‘Not at all,’ Nat exclaimed. ‘Though he does have an oddly transparent appearance, does he not?’
‘I believe I have guessed your secret,’ Mister Rix announced.
‘Well, I have not,’ protested Sophie. ‘Do you know how it is done, Tabitha?’
Tabitha scrutinized every inch of the apparition of her child, utterly perplexed as to how Nat could have conjured their child in this semi-transparent form. ‘Is he still asleep upstairs?’ she asked in wonderment.
Nat chuckled. ‘I am not so ingenious. I must give credit to Signor Giambattista Della Porta and his inventive mind. Step inside and I’ll show you the science of this apparition.’
Nat put his arm around her waist and led her into the narrow chapel. ‘You remember how the door was locked that night? It was an essential part of the trick.’
Gazing about, Tabitha was at first horribly perplexed. The table on which she had just seen baby Jack stood fearfully empty. Next, she noticed that every wall was draped with black fabric, completely covering the altar and memorial statue. Nat turned her gently by the shoulders to face the hidden corner of the room behind the door. There stood a great pane of glass such as the gardeners used for a glasshouse window, propped against the wall. Behind it stood the exact same tableau as that glimpsed through the window – an identical table upon which lay the entirely substantial body of baby Jack. Jennet sprang forward too, from where she had waited in the shadows.
‘Heavens. Are you part of the trick, too?’ Tabitha did not know whether to scold the girl or congratulate her. ‘I still don’t see how it was done.’
Jennet reached to adjust an oil lamp, which cast a powerful beam upon the infant sleeping on the table. Suddenly, Jack’s sleeping form sprang into place upon the carved table by the window. The image was a perfect replica and yet its form was insubstantial and half-transparent.
‘Absolutely extraordinary,’ Mister Rix declared. ‘I never saw such a thing in my life.’
‘It is you I should thank for the loan of Della Porta’s Magia Naturalis. In there I found a chapter titled “How we may See in a Chamber Things that are Not”. That ingenious Neapolitan had a great interest in a type of camera obscura not unlike our modern magic lanterns. It was Della Porta’s name I saw on Gunn’s bookshelf and thus discovered the origin of his theatrical illusion.’
‘Who do you believe played the part of the spirit?’ Mister Rix asked.
‘I believe it was Gunn’s assistant.’
Tabitha looked intently into Nat’s face. ‘No, no. It could not be. I never took my eyes from him.’
Nat nodded. ‘I know. Then I recalled that the servants had said there had been no callers or visitors save for Gunn and his assistant all that day. Expecting trickery, I left orders that their cart must be left in the stables and that the main house be forbidden to them. Higgott observed how the youth passed back and forth around the house to the stable and we all thought nothing of it.’
‘And? Gunn’s assistant could not be in two places at once,’ Tabitha insisted.
‘The solution, like most fairground illusions, is rather mundane, my love. It is a classic case of occultis aperta – the solution is concealed in open view. Do you recall a pair of twins at the camp?’
Tabitha groaned. ‘I do. Not by sight, but I heard of them. There was a woman named Abundance who claimed not to know which of the two was her child’s father.’
‘I believe Gunn generally kept the twins apart so he could use them for such switches. I only saw them as a pair at the Briggestone, and even then I thought nothing of it. Only when I recreated this illusion did it occur to me that amidst all the to-ing and fro-ing from here to the stables an extra person must have slipped inside. He needed only to hide and wait for his cue to appear. And later, in all the confusion, Sukey Adams no doubt led them to the strongroom.’
Tabitha marvelled at such cleverness wasted on mere deception, seeing again in her mind the shrouded figure moving painfully towards the chantry window. ‘So why, when I asked who my enemy was, did he name “Salvation”?’
It was Jennet who gave the answer. ‘Spite. I saw what they thought of Sukey in Briggestone Barrow. Gunn’s followers knew she was a murderess. They were not all bad folk, Tabitha. They hated her and feared her, too.’
Later, Tabitha carried the baby up the carved oak staircase, pausing at the portrait of Sir John as an infant, studying the artist’s mirror-like rendition of the De Vallory rattle hanging from the child’s apron. She relived Sir John’s first sight of his grandson, when he had stretched his sinewy hand to tap the silver bells on the De Vallory rattle with a grunt of pleasure. The new generation is the dying generation’s solace, she reflected. As it did very often these days, her mind drifted to Sukey’s baby, which would be born in the spring. It was certainly uncanny that this unborn saviour had already performed his first miracle, namely saving his mother’s neck from the hangman’s noose. Moving on to her chamber, Tabitha wondered what name Sukey would give him? What was the prophecy? ‘His name will be a nation.’
She reached her chamber and set Jack down with extreme tenderness, so he would not wake. As she rose from bending, she remembered how last summer they had talked of names. Sukey had always shown tight-lipped disapproval of a name as unexalted as John, even though it represented the De Vallory family line. Then bitter Grisell had piped up with that newborn religious enthusiasm of hers.
‘There will be a great number of children named Philadelphia when Mister Gunn reaches the New World. He says the city was named after the church spoke of in the Apocalypse.’
‘What a tongue twister. I am not calling my child Philadelphia,’ Tabitha had said. ‘Would you do so, Sukey?’
The nursemaid had looked modestly down into her lap. A slow, secret smile spread across her lips, as if she saw something quite different from the intricate Tree of Life lace she was working on. ‘No,’ she said, stroking the fabric. ‘Philadelphia is but one city. I think the new realm itself would be better.’ Tabitha had imagined that the nursemaid had been thinking of Jerusalem or Eden or Heaven itself. Now it was perfectly clear what she had meant. The child would be named America.
At peace beside the De Vallorys’ elaborate oak cradle, Tabitha turned over what she had learned of Sukey’s fate. By now she must be chained in the dark bowels of a wet and heaving convict transport. She was certain Sukey would survive the voyage, for she had the iron will of an evangelist. Once on land she would be made to disembark in shackles and be consigned to a master as an indentured servant. Doubtless there would be churches aplenty in the new city and she would find a malleable preacher with an eye for a wholesome, fertile woman. In her reverie, Tabitha could see the tale unfold: the baptismal ceremony at which the parson congratulated her on the patriotism of her child’s choice of name. He might well think her a bright and comely personage sent by God to be a fitting housekeeper, or even a wife.
It was time to make a clean breast of her secret. Unpacking her mother’s box, she sorted through the written prophecies found in Grisell’s chamber, numbered on little slips of paper in a precise hand. Most were familiar but a few were novel and strange. When Jennet knocked at the door and joined her to watch over Jack, Tabitha bundled them into a flowered reticule and returned downstairs to join the others for supper.
In the dining room the table stood resplendent in the light of scores of flame-tipped candles that sent golden beams glancing over the great silver punchbowl, the crystal glasses, and the glistening pies and tarts. Nat’s eyes sparkled too as he rose and welcomed her. They celebrated the best of All Hallows’ nights, with liberal toasts, and spiced soul cakes, and a wild performance of the Souling Play by a bunch of rowdy village boys. And when the four of them were once again alone, Tabitha emptied her reticule and spread the handwritten prophecies across the polished table.
‘Is this another parlour game?’ asked Sophie, who had perhaps drunk too much of her husband’s excellent arrack punch.
‘Of a sort,’ said Tabitha. ‘For I have one final revelation in this story of Gunn and his wife. Here is the letter she sent to us requesting we visit her in gaol.’ Tabitha placed the grubby paper beside the handwritten prophecies. ‘Look. The writing is the same. I believe that Sukey – or Salvation Gunn, if you will – supplied her husband with the products of her own troubled dreams. Recall that it was she who was named a “sybil” in the handbill from Lancashire. And Jennet told me that when Gunn deserted his wife at the Briggestone, she cried out after him, “I will tell them it was me. It was me all along.” Being the superior showman, he performed the prophecies to his followers. Yet I believe it was Sukey who had the extraordinary powers. Perhaps she gave these to Grisell for safekeeping. Grisell could not have written these. She could neither read nor write.’
Nat stared at her, impressed. ‘So you believe it was Sukey Adams who had the prophetic power? It was she who foresaw the saviour’s coming? Death and fire, she must have been hoping to get with child ever since Gunn cast her off.’
Tabitha nodded. ‘I am sure she would rather have presented her own child to Baptist. It was our misfortune it took her so long to conceive.’
Their guests riffled through the little papers while Nat stared thoughtfully at the candle flame.
‘Listen to this one,’ Sophie Rix exclaimed. ‘Tall towers of glass shall come to pass. A flag of stars, a sign of George’s sorry loss. Your prophet – or should I call her prophetess – had some odd fancies.’
Nat said nothing, reading a series of slips with close attention. Mister Rix peered at another through his lorgnette. ‘Tell me, what happened to that soldier fellow who fathered Mrs Gunn’s child?’
Nat looked up. ‘His regiment was recalled to Ireland. I don’t suppose he’ll ever discover that the child exists.’
‘And is it true that this fellow held great honours?’ Rix continued, pouring himself another bumper from the decanter.
Nat held his own glass out to be refilled and recalled the story. ‘The fellow fought at the Battle of Dettingen by all accounts. The king, God bless him, was troubled by a bolting horse. It seems Jacob Hollingsworth was one of those who protected His Majesty while sheltering beneath an oak tree.’
‘Goodness me,’ Mister Rix exclaimed. ‘Not another oak tree.’
Nat moved around the table to sit beside his wife. ‘How do you interpret these rhymes, Tabitha?’
She circled the rim of her wine glass with her forefinger. ‘I am puzzled by this talk of a flag of stars. The American colonies fly the red flag of America bearing our own Union Jack, do they not? The first prophecies also tell of a new constellation. The lines Sophie just recited seem to suggest we might lose our American colony.’
‘Salvation Gunn will be pleased at that,’ Sophie chimed in.
‘Her child may yet meet his father if there is war and the Cheshires are sent over there,’ Nat said dreamily.
Mister Rix chuckled. ‘Goodness me. The king may be ageing but even he would not be so foolish as to lose our American colony.’
It was very late when Nat and Tabitha walked along the oak-panelled passage up to their bed, past the watchful eyes of long-dead De Vallorys. Jennet was relieved of her vigil and disappeared to sleep in a guest chamber. Before retiring Tabitha sat by the window nursing the babe at her breast, blessing her great good fortune. The Hallows’ Eve gale rattled the casements and Nat crossed the room in his nightshirt to fix the latch.
‘Look at the moon,’ he said. Through the glass they watched the frost-white globe shining over the silver-bright flower beds of Bold Hall’s garden.
Tabitha surrendered to its fascination; so distant yet dream-like in its strangeness. ‘Only think, it is the same moon that must be shining somewhere far away, above the Heart of Oak as Sukey Adams crosses the Atlantic.’ She looked down on the sweet, bonneted head of their child as he suckled sleepily. ‘Sometimes I fancy there is a curious connection between little Jack and Sukey’s unborn infant.’
Nat came and stood behind her, resting his hands gently on her shoulders and dropping a kiss on the top of her own – and then their son’s – head. She didn’t tell him the odd thoughts she often had; that a mere twist of fate had prevented Jack taking the place of that other child on the fateful voyage. To her it was like a tale of a mortal child miraculously saved from being switched with a fairy changeling. All she said was, ‘I am glad that thousands of miles of ocean keep them from us.’
Then she settled Jack in his cradle and they went to bed, where they made gentle love that was all the better for being quiet and sweetly slow. Afterwards, Nat’s strong arms clasped her tight as she pressed into the warm crook of his body. This was contentment; a bright star of a moment to treasure.
‘I wonder what Sukey Adams dreams of tonight?’ Nat murmured sleepily.
‘Whether crosses or crowns,’ Tabitha said softly, ‘only pray let her dreams not be of us. Or Jack.’
As she tumbled into sleep, for a moment she glimpsed the ceaseless tumult of those wild revelations, bottomless and teeming. And, for herself, she was thankful to be beached here on the brink of now, not knowing, merely hoping, surrendering to tomorrow.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
When I first set out to write a sequel to The Almanack, my idea was to place a utopian sect on the Bold Hall estate and thereby unsettle Tabitha and Nat, the hall’s new residents. At first, I was afraid this might be perceived as too unlikely in the middle of the calm and uneventful Enlightenment. However, when I began my research it proved that history is indeed stranger than most fiction.
The customary image of the eighteenth-century clergyman is of a conservative, well-connected gentleman, inhabiting a handsome rectory in return for delivering a dull weekly sermon. This was certainly the case, but at the same time a quest was evolving amongst the less privileged for a more exciting spiritual awakening. Large crowds gathered at open-air sites to hear preachers such as the Methodist leader John Wesley, alongside many other mystical leaders whose names are now lost. Wesley himself was a keen believer in the prophetic power of ‘remarkable dreams’ and collected countless examples of them on his evangelistic journeys.
Particularly fascinating are the Sleeping Prophets, who appeared to become possessed and utter prophecies to crowds while seeming to be asleep. In the early eighteenth century a number of groups had emerged in south-eastern France who manifested spirit possession, prophecy, and visions. These in time influenced English ecstatics, some of whom became known as Shakers in their native Manchester, and eventually took their beliefs to America in 1774.
FIFTY-FOUR
Until at last there rises a new constellation
And the child leads the man, for his name shall be a nation.
The New Prophet of the Forest
31 October 1753
All Hallows’ Eve
The green days of summer surrendered to the dominion of grey-cloaked winter. Inside Bold Hall, they fought the damp and cold with vast, log-piled fires and merry company. Nat invited Mister and Mrs Rix for an evening’s entertainment at Bold Hall’s chapel to celebrate All Hallows’ Eve, when the Unseen press their closest to humankind. As the company assembled, Tabitha maintained a cheery aspect in spite of her reluctance to return to the dilapidated chapel. It felt an age since her collapse by the chantry window. According to Doctor Caldwell, her blood was now sufficiently strengthened by steel powders and rich beef. But she was convinced that happiness fortified her better than any medicines.
Beyond the ancient windows, the night was as black as soot. Once again, candles guttered in the sconces casting an ever-shifting gloom. Nat had set four chairs in a row exactly where they had both sat on the night of Gunn’s visit. She was glad Nat had insisted that Jack be put to his cradle early with Jennet watching over him. Thankfully, this time she had remembered her warmest fur mantle and Nat drew it tight around her shoulders.
‘I want you to enjoy my entertainment, sweetheart,’ he murmured, setting a kiss on her brow. ‘You might call it a catharsis. It was a shocking trick that imposter Gunn played upon us. In the spirit of Hallows’ Eve we shall purge ourselves of his mischief.’
Nat made his way to the very spot where Gunn had given an apparent sleeping prophecy that distant summer’s night. She assured herself that there was nothing to fear; their fortunes had recovered more thoroughly than they could ever have expected. Lady Maud had exerted pressure upon her father and the Langleys had ceased all claims to Sir John’s land in Mondrem Forest. True, not all the contents of Bold Hall’s strongbox had been recovered from Gunn’s wagon at Briggestone Barrow, but they had sufficient coin to keep the estate intact. And Nat’s confidence was up; now he beamed with pleasure as he stood before them in his new French coat stitched with spangles that glittered in the candlelight. Tabitha could not help but smile with pride.
‘I welcome you to this gathering, friends. Tonight, we celebrate the occasion that has since days immemorial been celebrated as the Feast of Samhain, or Summer’s End. It is a night of mischief, when ghosts and strange spirits appear to the unwary. Tonight, to glimpse this other world will be simple. I only ask that you join me at this dimly lit window.’
They all stood and moved towards the empty frame of the chantry window. Through its unglazed frame came a soft illumination such as had glowed on the night when Tabitha had feared her own dead mother walked again. A sudden qualm made her lean on Sophie’s arm. Then, recovering herself, she attempted laughter. ‘Goodness knows what phantom Nat will have conjured for us.’
‘Heavens above,’ declared Mister Rix, who had reached the window first of all. ‘What the devil? Oh, De Vallory, that is remarkable.’
Nat was grinning like a schoolboy. ‘Very well,’ said Tabitha, bracing herself. ‘Do your best to terrify me, you rogue.’
Reaching the window, she pressed her face to the metal frame and gave a little cry. Before her lay a baby. Their own baby, Jack. He lay asleep upon a carved table. Yet, simultaneously, she could see directly through his bundled body. The outlines of the table’s carved surface could be seen through his bonneted head.
Beside her, Sophie said, ‘Oh my heart. Is it a ghost of little Jack?’
‘Not at all,’ Nat exclaimed. ‘Though he does have an oddly transparent appearance, does he not?’
‘I believe I have guessed your secret,’ Mister Rix announced.
‘Well, I have not,’ protested Sophie. ‘Do you know how it is done, Tabitha?’
Tabitha scrutinized every inch of the apparition of her child, utterly perplexed as to how Nat could have conjured their child in this semi-transparent form. ‘Is he still asleep upstairs?’ she asked in wonderment.
Nat chuckled. ‘I am not so ingenious. I must give credit to Signor Giambattista Della Porta and his inventive mind. Step inside and I’ll show you the science of this apparition.’
Nat put his arm around her waist and led her into the narrow chapel. ‘You remember how the door was locked that night? It was an essential part of the trick.’
Gazing about, Tabitha was at first horribly perplexed. The table on which she had just seen baby Jack stood fearfully empty. Next, she noticed that every wall was draped with black fabric, completely covering the altar and memorial statue. Nat turned her gently by the shoulders to face the hidden corner of the room behind the door. There stood a great pane of glass such as the gardeners used for a glasshouse window, propped against the wall. Behind it stood the exact same tableau as that glimpsed through the window – an identical table upon which lay the entirely substantial body of baby Jack. Jennet sprang forward too, from where she had waited in the shadows.
‘Heavens. Are you part of the trick, too?’ Tabitha did not know whether to scold the girl or congratulate her. ‘I still don’t see how it was done.’
Jennet reached to adjust an oil lamp, which cast a powerful beam upon the infant sleeping on the table. Suddenly, Jack’s sleeping form sprang into place upon the carved table by the window. The image was a perfect replica and yet its form was insubstantial and half-transparent.
‘Absolutely extraordinary,’ Mister Rix declared. ‘I never saw such a thing in my life.’
‘It is you I should thank for the loan of Della Porta’s Magia Naturalis. In there I found a chapter titled “How we may See in a Chamber Things that are Not”. That ingenious Neapolitan had a great interest in a type of camera obscura not unlike our modern magic lanterns. It was Della Porta’s name I saw on Gunn’s bookshelf and thus discovered the origin of his theatrical illusion.’
‘Who do you believe played the part of the spirit?’ Mister Rix asked.
‘I believe it was Gunn’s assistant.’
Tabitha looked intently into Nat’s face. ‘No, no. It could not be. I never took my eyes from him.’
Nat nodded. ‘I know. Then I recalled that the servants had said there had been no callers or visitors save for Gunn and his assistant all that day. Expecting trickery, I left orders that their cart must be left in the stables and that the main house be forbidden to them. Higgott observed how the youth passed back and forth around the house to the stable and we all thought nothing of it.’
‘And? Gunn’s assistant could not be in two places at once,’ Tabitha insisted.
‘The solution, like most fairground illusions, is rather mundane, my love. It is a classic case of occultis aperta – the solution is concealed in open view. Do you recall a pair of twins at the camp?’
Tabitha groaned. ‘I do. Not by sight, but I heard of them. There was a woman named Abundance who claimed not to know which of the two was her child’s father.’
‘I believe Gunn generally kept the twins apart so he could use them for such switches. I only saw them as a pair at the Briggestone, and even then I thought nothing of it. Only when I recreated this illusion did it occur to me that amidst all the to-ing and fro-ing from here to the stables an extra person must have slipped inside. He needed only to hide and wait for his cue to appear. And later, in all the confusion, Sukey Adams no doubt led them to the strongroom.’
Tabitha marvelled at such cleverness wasted on mere deception, seeing again in her mind the shrouded figure moving painfully towards the chantry window. ‘So why, when I asked who my enemy was, did he name “Salvation”?’
It was Jennet who gave the answer. ‘Spite. I saw what they thought of Sukey in Briggestone Barrow. Gunn’s followers knew she was a murderess. They were not all bad folk, Tabitha. They hated her and feared her, too.’
Later, Tabitha carried the baby up the carved oak staircase, pausing at the portrait of Sir John as an infant, studying the artist’s mirror-like rendition of the De Vallory rattle hanging from the child’s apron. She relived Sir John’s first sight of his grandson, when he had stretched his sinewy hand to tap the silver bells on the De Vallory rattle with a grunt of pleasure. The new generation is the dying generation’s solace, she reflected. As it did very often these days, her mind drifted to Sukey’s baby, which would be born in the spring. It was certainly uncanny that this unborn saviour had already performed his first miracle, namely saving his mother’s neck from the hangman’s noose. Moving on to her chamber, Tabitha wondered what name Sukey would give him? What was the prophecy? ‘His name will be a nation.’
She reached her chamber and set Jack down with extreme tenderness, so he would not wake. As she rose from bending, she remembered how last summer they had talked of names. Sukey had always shown tight-lipped disapproval of a name as unexalted as John, even though it represented the De Vallory family line. Then bitter Grisell had piped up with that newborn religious enthusiasm of hers.
‘There will be a great number of children named Philadelphia when Mister Gunn reaches the New World. He says the city was named after the church spoke of in the Apocalypse.’
‘What a tongue twister. I am not calling my child Philadelphia,’ Tabitha had said. ‘Would you do so, Sukey?’
The nursemaid had looked modestly down into her lap. A slow, secret smile spread across her lips, as if she saw something quite different from the intricate Tree of Life lace she was working on. ‘No,’ she said, stroking the fabric. ‘Philadelphia is but one city. I think the new realm itself would be better.’ Tabitha had imagined that the nursemaid had been thinking of Jerusalem or Eden or Heaven itself. Now it was perfectly clear what she had meant. The child would be named America.
At peace beside the De Vallorys’ elaborate oak cradle, Tabitha turned over what she had learned of Sukey’s fate. By now she must be chained in the dark bowels of a wet and heaving convict transport. She was certain Sukey would survive the voyage, for she had the iron will of an evangelist. Once on land she would be made to disembark in shackles and be consigned to a master as an indentured servant. Doubtless there would be churches aplenty in the new city and she would find a malleable preacher with an eye for a wholesome, fertile woman. In her reverie, Tabitha could see the tale unfold: the baptismal ceremony at which the parson congratulated her on the patriotism of her child’s choice of name. He might well think her a bright and comely personage sent by God to be a fitting housekeeper, or even a wife.
It was time to make a clean breast of her secret. Unpacking her mother’s box, she sorted through the written prophecies found in Grisell’s chamber, numbered on little slips of paper in a precise hand. Most were familiar but a few were novel and strange. When Jennet knocked at the door and joined her to watch over Jack, Tabitha bundled them into a flowered reticule and returned downstairs to join the others for supper.
In the dining room the table stood resplendent in the light of scores of flame-tipped candles that sent golden beams glancing over the great silver punchbowl, the crystal glasses, and the glistening pies and tarts. Nat’s eyes sparkled too as he rose and welcomed her. They celebrated the best of All Hallows’ nights, with liberal toasts, and spiced soul cakes, and a wild performance of the Souling Play by a bunch of rowdy village boys. And when the four of them were once again alone, Tabitha emptied her reticule and spread the handwritten prophecies across the polished table.
‘Is this another parlour game?’ asked Sophie, who had perhaps drunk too much of her husband’s excellent arrack punch.
‘Of a sort,’ said Tabitha. ‘For I have one final revelation in this story of Gunn and his wife. Here is the letter she sent to us requesting we visit her in gaol.’ Tabitha placed the grubby paper beside the handwritten prophecies. ‘Look. The writing is the same. I believe that Sukey – or Salvation Gunn, if you will – supplied her husband with the products of her own troubled dreams. Recall that it was she who was named a “sybil” in the handbill from Lancashire. And Jennet told me that when Gunn deserted his wife at the Briggestone, she cried out after him, “I will tell them it was me. It was me all along.” Being the superior showman, he performed the prophecies to his followers. Yet I believe it was Sukey who had the extraordinary powers. Perhaps she gave these to Grisell for safekeeping. Grisell could not have written these. She could neither read nor write.’
Nat stared at her, impressed. ‘So you believe it was Sukey Adams who had the prophetic power? It was she who foresaw the saviour’s coming? Death and fire, she must have been hoping to get with child ever since Gunn cast her off.’
Tabitha nodded. ‘I am sure she would rather have presented her own child to Baptist. It was our misfortune it took her so long to conceive.’
Their guests riffled through the little papers while Nat stared thoughtfully at the candle flame.
‘Listen to this one,’ Sophie Rix exclaimed. ‘Tall towers of glass shall come to pass. A flag of stars, a sign of George’s sorry loss. Your prophet – or should I call her prophetess – had some odd fancies.’
Nat said nothing, reading a series of slips with close attention. Mister Rix peered at another through his lorgnette. ‘Tell me, what happened to that soldier fellow who fathered Mrs Gunn’s child?’
Nat looked up. ‘His regiment was recalled to Ireland. I don’t suppose he’ll ever discover that the child exists.’
‘And is it true that this fellow held great honours?’ Rix continued, pouring himself another bumper from the decanter.
Nat held his own glass out to be refilled and recalled the story. ‘The fellow fought at the Battle of Dettingen by all accounts. The king, God bless him, was troubled by a bolting horse. It seems Jacob Hollingsworth was one of those who protected His Majesty while sheltering beneath an oak tree.’
‘Goodness me,’ Mister Rix exclaimed. ‘Not another oak tree.’
Nat moved around the table to sit beside his wife. ‘How do you interpret these rhymes, Tabitha?’
She circled the rim of her wine glass with her forefinger. ‘I am puzzled by this talk of a flag of stars. The American colonies fly the red flag of America bearing our own Union Jack, do they not? The first prophecies also tell of a new constellation. The lines Sophie just recited seem to suggest we might lose our American colony.’
‘Salvation Gunn will be pleased at that,’ Sophie chimed in.
‘Her child may yet meet his father if there is war and the Cheshires are sent over there,’ Nat said dreamily.
Mister Rix chuckled. ‘Goodness me. The king may be ageing but even he would not be so foolish as to lose our American colony.’
It was very late when Nat and Tabitha walked along the oak-panelled passage up to their bed, past the watchful eyes of long-dead De Vallorys. Jennet was relieved of her vigil and disappeared to sleep in a guest chamber. Before retiring Tabitha sat by the window nursing the babe at her breast, blessing her great good fortune. The Hallows’ Eve gale rattled the casements and Nat crossed the room in his nightshirt to fix the latch.
‘Look at the moon,’ he said. Through the glass they watched the frost-white globe shining over the silver-bright flower beds of Bold Hall’s garden.
Tabitha surrendered to its fascination; so distant yet dream-like in its strangeness. ‘Only think, it is the same moon that must be shining somewhere far away, above the Heart of Oak as Sukey Adams crosses the Atlantic.’ She looked down on the sweet, bonneted head of their child as he suckled sleepily. ‘Sometimes I fancy there is a curious connection between little Jack and Sukey’s unborn infant.’
Nat came and stood behind her, resting his hands gently on her shoulders and dropping a kiss on the top of her own – and then their son’s – head. She didn’t tell him the odd thoughts she often had; that a mere twist of fate had prevented Jack taking the place of that other child on the fateful voyage. To her it was like a tale of a mortal child miraculously saved from being switched with a fairy changeling. All she said was, ‘I am glad that thousands of miles of ocean keep them from us.’
Then she settled Jack in his cradle and they went to bed, where they made gentle love that was all the better for being quiet and sweetly slow. Afterwards, Nat’s strong arms clasped her tight as she pressed into the warm crook of his body. This was contentment; a bright star of a moment to treasure.
‘I wonder what Sukey Adams dreams of tonight?’ Nat murmured sleepily.
‘Whether crosses or crowns,’ Tabitha said softly, ‘only pray let her dreams not be of us. Or Jack.’
As she tumbled into sleep, for a moment she glimpsed the ceaseless tumult of those wild revelations, bottomless and teeming. And, for herself, she was thankful to be beached here on the brink of now, not knowing, merely hoping, surrendering to tomorrow.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
When I first set out to write a sequel to The Almanack, my idea was to place a utopian sect on the Bold Hall estate and thereby unsettle Tabitha and Nat, the hall’s new residents. At first, I was afraid this might be perceived as too unlikely in the middle of the calm and uneventful Enlightenment. However, when I began my research it proved that history is indeed stranger than most fiction.
The customary image of the eighteenth-century clergyman is of a conservative, well-connected gentleman, inhabiting a handsome rectory in return for delivering a dull weekly sermon. This was certainly the case, but at the same time a quest was evolving amongst the less privileged for a more exciting spiritual awakening. Large crowds gathered at open-air sites to hear preachers such as the Methodist leader John Wesley, alongside many other mystical leaders whose names are now lost. Wesley himself was a keen believer in the prophetic power of ‘remarkable dreams’ and collected countless examples of them on his evangelistic journeys.
Particularly fascinating are the Sleeping Prophets, who appeared to become possessed and utter prophecies to crowds while seeming to be asleep. In the early eighteenth century a number of groups had emerged in south-eastern France who manifested spirit possession, prophecy, and visions. These in time influenced English ecstatics, some of whom became known as Shakers in their native Manchester, and eventually took their beliefs to America in 1774.
