The Prophet, page 4
Doctor Caldwell shrugged. ‘You poets look for complications where there are none, De Vallory. It is common enough for a villain to lead a girl in the family way to a secluded spot and then deprive her of both her own and the infant’s life. And was she not found by children? They no doubt played a game with her, in all their innocence. I’ll report what I’ve discovered to the coroner. Without even a name, or any witnesses, I doubt he will waste much time upon it.’
What he actually meant, Tabitha raged, was that without a name the girl would have no family or friends to fight for justice. Her gaze returned to the victim, who was so much like her former self – much the same age, with the same undignified experience of the flesh trade and even the same state of pregnancy. Yet she had been murdered as a chattel while Tabitha’s every wish had come true. To her surprise she felt a burning lump constricting her throat.
Doctor Caldwell had moved to inspect his shining metal instruments. He picked up a short sharp knife. ‘First, I must confirm what remains of the foetus.’
Soon she heard Joshua groaning and hurrying away. Then Nat muttered his apologies as he retreated from the chapel. Tabitha sank her head into her hands, praying that the examination would end quickly.
SIX
Back in her bedchamber, dozens of thoughts chased the prospect of sleep from Tabitha’s mind. The identity of the dead girl was one matter. She tried again to picture where they had met. The memory was misty and old, from before the time when Tabitha lived in London. Closing her eyes, she caught a fleeting image of the heart-shaped face very much alive, making a wry grimace and laughing. No, her name was now obliterated in the horror of her brutal death.
Grisell returned, bringing Tabitha’s half-sister, Bess. Both bobbed a curtsey and the maidservant grumbled, ‘She’s been mithering for you all morning.’
‘Come here, little chick.’ Tabitha patted the bed beside her. Bess bounded towards her, and athletically pulled herself on to the high mattress. She pulled her little sister close, stroking her straw-coloured curls. ‘Leave her here for an hour, Grisell.’
The woman gave a toothless smile of pleasure. ‘If I might go visiting for a short spell?’
She gave the woman leave, and once they were alone Bess announced, ‘I don’t like Grisell. She always says, “Be still and no singing.” Grisell is a grumpy baggage.’
Tabitha stifled a burst of laughter. If Grisell was a sourpuss, she had found her match in forthright young Bess. Tabitha twisted her half-sister’s flaxen hair into ringlets. Her own father had been a steady countryman, contentedly married to her mother until his early death. Bess, on the other hand, had been unlawfully fathered by Sir John’s brother; it was a criminal act against her mother that still left a foul stain on Tabitha’s memory. Privately, she considered it a blessing that Bess’s father had died in prison, for he had delved deep in the occult arts and deserved no part in the life of her lovely sister.
‘You must not speak so of Grisell. Remember when we read your Pretty Little Pocket Book? You must learn to be a little lady. Be kind to those who wait on you. Young ladies must show charity.’
Bess gave a dramatic sigh, then quickly grinned and started to sing ‘Baa baa black sheep’ with more enthusiasm than melodic pitch. Then she lay down beside Tabitha and commanded her to ‘Go to sleep.’
Tabitha closed her eyes and made a gentle snoring sound. Bess giggled, reached down and kissed her cheek with two soft lips and demanded that she ‘Wake up.’ Again and again, Tabitha had to pretend to sleep and upon being kissed, wake up and look around herself as if astonished.
Suddenly Bess changed the game. ‘Baby,’ she chattered, caressing Tabitha’s stomach. ‘Baby, wake up.’
Tabitha stiffened. Bess leaned down and pressed her lips against her stomach. She waited but nothing happened. Bess’s tiny hands patted her flesh. Again, she demanded, ‘Baby. Wake up.’
In reply, something fluttered inside her womb. The baby was moving. She held her breath, feeling the unmistakable quiver of a separate being moving inside her.
‘How did you do that?’ Tabitha whispered.
Bess raised a single finger to her lips to shush her. ‘Baby loves me, Tabby.’ The little girl’s face was bright with certainty. No wonder the servants found her an odd little girl. Tabitha felt safe again; the baby loved Bess. Content, the little girl splayed her warm body against her sister’s, until their breathing rose and fell in unison and they both fell fast asleep.
SEVEN
That evening, Tabitha and Nat were eating a supper of cold meat and pickles in the parlour with Sir John. The gathering was dismal, for each few minutes Sir John reached down with his one good arm in search of Hector, who had for years sat like a sentinel beside his master’s chair. Whenever his hand grasped air the old man gave a little bleat of disappointment. Since his attack of apoplexy the old man was trapped and twisted inside his broken body. The last year had brought many blows. First, he had lost his son Francis, slaughtered in the harvest corn. His wife, Lady Daphne, was now confined in a genteel private house near Cambridge under the care of an enlightened doctor, her mind so disordered that she could no longer live in society. Yet in a twist of fate, he had learned that Nat Starling, sired on his young serving maid, was his misbegotten son. Gratefully, Sir John had acknowledged him and welcomed Nat and Tabitha to Bold Hall. Now Sir John looked hard at his son, his watery eyes begging him to explain the dog’s absence. Nat repeated the news again, though he had told his father a dozen times. Today’s search had again brought no luck.
A sudden pounding on the stair brought Higgott, their steward, bursting into the room, sweating hard. ‘Sirs, Madam. That soldier fellow who called on Mister De Vallory has struck young Tom. We’ve locked him in the scullery.’
Nat stood abruptly and reached for his coat. ‘Dammit. I clean forgot to question him. God knows there was no need to cause an affray.’
Tabitha also rose. Her husband had many virtues: he knew by heart all of Isaac Newton’s thoughts on time and its passing, and the universe and suchlike, yet he rarely turned up anywhere at the correct time.
‘Let’s talk to him together,’ she said, then kissed her father-in-law goodnight and bade Grisell put him to bed. Down in the kitchen wing they found Tom very shaken from having taken the soldier’s fist against his jaw. He raised a swollen face that showed one less tooth and a great deal of damaged pride. ‘He’s your killer,’ he muttered after spitting a gobbet of blood. ‘He has black murder in his heart, that one.’
Tabitha strode to the scullery and observed their captive through the grille in the door. He was hunched over the stone table, his great cannonball head sunk deep in his hands.
Two brawny lads led Jacob Hollingsworth out into the anteroom. Tonight, the angry lines carved into his face lent him a frightening aspect. ‘You cannot keep an innocent man prisoner. Let me on my way.’
‘That’s for me to decide,’ Nat retorted. ‘Tom, what happened?’
Tom gave a rambling account of how the soldier had arrived at noon and turned wild by the afternoon, threatening to walk out without seeing the master.
Nat asked the captive. ‘And what do you say?’
‘I need to go.’
‘So you tell me. But that’s no reason to strike a loyal servant of mine.’
With a pained sigh the soldier bowed to Nat and grudgingly said he was sorry. Nat continued to eye him coldly. ‘The girl beneath the tree. What was she to you?’
‘I never seen her. You can’t go blaming me when I never seen her before.’
Nat shook his head. ‘And what of Baptist Gunn and his followers? Did you ever see her with them?’
‘I told you, I never seen her. You go arrest Gunn and that mob in the treehouse before you blame me. Heathens, they are. Won’t take the sacrament, nor marry in church as God commanded. If you break one commandment, why not the lot of them? They struck my mother. Every springtime she’s picked her simples in the hedgerows but now those devils claim the whole crop for themselves. There be one young jade, called herself Repentance, or some such cant. She cursed at my mother, a venerable lady of seventy years. And then she struck her.’
‘The girl you speak of, was she young, slender, five foot tall, considered pretty?’ asked Nat.
‘No, that i’nt her. The hussy I’m speaking of had the pit-marks of the pox all over her face.’
‘Will you swear on the Bible that you never saw that young woman by the Mondrem Oak?’
Hollingsworth’s angry eyes slid furtively away from Nat. He took his time, adjusting the buckle at his waist. ‘I will swear,’ he said at last.
‘Were you in the forest on May Eve?’ Tabitha broke in. ‘Perhaps you went a-Maying to find a girl?’
The soldier cast her a sheepish glance. ‘No. I would have naught to do with the doxies round here. I am a clean-living man, my lady. The army brings discipline to a man’s life.’
Nat broke in. ‘And an observant eye, I reckon. When you go about the forest perhaps you’ve seen more than most?’
Hollingsworth considered hard before he spoke up. ‘Sir, you should know that come nightfall that forest is thick with poachers. Where they come from I cannot say. And it’s not just venison, Your Honour. Game birds, fish, conies. They all fetch a good price at the Chester market.’
‘You have names?’ Higgott stepped forward.
‘They was always in disguise when I seen them. They darken their faces with black stuff and wear slouch hats and black cloaks.’
‘But you can tell us more?’ Nat challenged.
The soldier lifted his large chin and considered. ‘I will not be called a rat. There’s a great crowd of them and but one of me.’
‘We won’t repeat what you tell us,’ Nat said quickly.
‘Well, I seen them congregate in that drinking place. At the sign of the bush on the Old Coach Road. They come together on moonless nights with their sticks and their dogs and their snares, just like the ballads do say.’
When the gathering had dispersed Tabitha and Nat climbed the great carved staircase to their separate chambers. ‘He lied when I asked him about meeting a girl,’ Tabitha said.
‘Aye. The man could not give a straight answer. But I’m glad to know of these raids upon our game.’
She was tired out but roused herself to warn him. ‘Remember, only the western portion of the forest belongs to Sir John. If these poachers are taking Lord Langley’s venison, let them be.’
He guided her gently. ‘If Langley finds out we knew of it but did nothing he will bear a hard grudge. Next time they meet I’ll follow them. The new moon isn’t long now, the first night of June.’
Nat’s candle sent golden beams of light along the walls of the corridor. Here were paintings of Nat’s forebears, a long line of noble De Vallorys reaching back to the days of doublets and farthingales. What would they have done to protect their game? she wondered.
‘Nat, I don’t like you hunting poachers alone. Tell Joshua to call the sheriff in.’
‘And turn all the men of the forest against me? I’ll take a quiet look at what’s afoot. I too can track quarry through a moonless night.’
Nat paused before a portrait of a stout child of two years or so, clutching a feathered hat. A wolfhound puppy pranced at the hem of the child’s damask gown.
‘My father,’ Nat said with amusement in his voice. ‘See the coral at his belt.’ It was a pretty stick of orange-red coral set in a silver rattle hung with bells. ‘Earlier, my father gave it to me. He wants our child to use it.’
Seeing the De Vallory crest stamped into the silver rattle, Tabitha’s spirits rose. It confirmed what she could scarcely grasp: that the child she carried would be born to honour, wealth and rank. Yet there was no portrait of Nat in damask and lace in this gallery. His family had lived in a hovel in the poorest part of Netherlea, though he had later been raised in a noble house in Cambridgeshire where his mother was housekeeper.
‘I am sorry you were not tutored as a child to take on your position,’ she said gently.
‘Yes, but I am here now,’ he replied. ‘I should like to think my experience of the world is all the broader for it.’
‘For sure your experience is agreeably broad. And yet you leave me here all alone,’ she teased, as they reached her chamber. He held her fast against the door, a hand on either side of her, body to body. Her tiredness fell away and she murmured in his ear, ‘I am here now, sir, if you want company.’
He kissed her and broke free. ‘I wish for nothing more. But Doctor Caldwell will disapprove. And we must be strong, my love. The pleasures of the marriage bed will be all the sweeter for a little more denial.’
EIGHT
14 May 1753
Mrs Sukey Adams presented herself in the drawing room the next afternoon. Tabitha’s first impression was of a flaxen-haired countrywoman whose natural bloom had been blighted by misfortune. Her pink cheeks were smooth but her faded eyes were weary. The pronounced swelling of her stomach was hidden modestly behind a voluminous white apron. She carried her pregnancy well and high and showed strong arms and work-reddened hands. Tabitha privately laughed at her own folly in imagining a hard-faced, crafty spy sent by Doctor Caldwell.
Mrs Adams spoke in a pleasant voice though she blushed when speaking of her circumstances. ‘I am lodging in Chester with my little boy, Davey. And looking about for a position as a nurse, my lady. I am well able, having brought up my own son and my sister’s children. My little Davey will of course stop with my sister till my time comes. I suppose I must tell you …’ Steeling herself, she turned her face aside before attempting to continue. ‘I am sorry to say that my husband, a journeyman who travelled much between Chester and Ireland in the linen trade has – well, he has discarded me.’ Tears welled in her eyes.
‘Sit, sit,’ Tabitha insisted. Then she fetched the woman a glass of cordial, studying her all the while. There were clear signs of the hard times Mrs Adams had faced. Though she wore a blue linsey-wolsey gown over a white shift, her cap and costume were in dire need of a washtub and hot iron. Her shoes were cheap and mud-caked, as if she had walked the river-path from Chester.
‘So you see,’ Mrs Adams continued after taking a thirsty draught from the glass, ‘I am afraid I must throw myself upon the charity of the world to support me and Davey. But I am a most willing worker, well used to childbed and my little boy was always a greedy eater, yet I had a flow of milk enough for two. As for the coming weeks, I am a good needlewoman and won a church prize for my delicate stitchwork. I do so like to sew childbed cloths.’
‘And when will your own confinement be?’ Tabitha asked.
A glow of expectation lit the nurse’s colourless eyes. ‘About Midsummer’s Day, I reckon. But as I say, I can manage the two little infants at once.’
‘But what if your child is later than mine? Your milk will not yet be ready.’
‘In that case I have a most nutritious receipt for goats’ milk mixed with a little arrowroot. I have seen children grow heartily on the mixture and it shall not be for long. And I am entirely at your disposal.’
The woman’s eagerness to please was a pleasant contrast to the occasional surliness of Grisell and the other Bold Hall servants. Devil take them, she had been lucky to have her great-aunt Sarah as an ally in the servants’ hall. ‘I shall do my best to keep the worst of them in line,’ she had promised Tabitha upon her promotion as housekeeper. This prospective nursemaid appeared to be cut from more sensitive cloth altogether.
‘You must have been heartbroken to find yourself alone at such a time,’ Tabitha said gently.
Mrs Adams eyes shone with sorrow. ‘Oh, I am, my lady. But I have plenty of love to give your little one. Please, my lady. You shall not find a more devoted nurse.’
The woman’s simple appeal convinced Tabitha. There were so many careless creatures left in charge of nursing infants. She recalled a nurse at Netherlea who had swaddled a collection of babies and hung them on hooks on the wall while she went off to market. And there had been worse tales, of infants scalded, dropped and accidentally poisoned.
‘Very well. I shall give you a trial, Mrs Adams.’
‘Do call me Sukey, won’t you, my lady?’
‘I will. You may board and lodge here till my confinement. I shall give you ten shillings for the two months remaining and the first month of confinement. What say you?’
Mrs Adams stood up and bobbed low, patches of crimson flaring at her throat and cheeks. ‘Thank you. You have such a good heart, my lady. I only ask a half-day’s leave to visit Davey each week. Just till you are confined, that is.’
‘And until you are also brought to childbed,’ Tabitha recalled. ‘See my housekeeper for what will suit her, but naturally I have no objection to you visiting your little boy. Now, Sukey, do you need to arrange for your box to be fetched? How soon can you begin?’
Sukey Adams curtsied again. ‘Why, I shall start this very minute if that suits. Times are hard, my lady. I carry all I own upon my back.’
NINE
17 May 1753
A few days later, the casement of Tabitha’s parlour stood open to a radiant view of soft summer sunlight and high billowing clouds. For more than an hour Sukey had been planning the baby’s clothes and a great pile of fabrics had been fingered and discarded.
‘These rough linens will only do for the baby’s clouts,’ Sukey declared. ‘And there is little enough time left to order muslins and silks for your little one. You must have gowns and caps and mantles, as well as all the swaddling bands and bed-stuffs.’
It was too late in the day to visit Chester so Tabitha wrote a list in preparation to buy the best that the city’s linen drapers could provide. Pricked with the notion that she might have been lax in her preparations, she asked Sukey, ‘Do not milliners and suchlike sell sets of baby clothes?’
‘Oh, you shouldn’t want that common stuff, my lady. I have in mind such lordly little clothes with ribbons and holy point patterns. I shall make every stitch with love,’ she added complacently. Then, after considering, the nurse asked, ‘Forgive me asking, but did you not sew any linens in preparation of your marriage?’
