31st day of July to 1st day of August 1752

Lammas Eve to Lammas Day

Sun rises: 43 minutes after 4 in the morning.

Observation: Seven Stars rise 52 minutes after 9 at night.

Prognostication: Hidden truths will always out.

 

Tabitha watched a flock of birds wheeling in a pink sky limned with gold. Just beyond the garden stood the skeleton of a tree, where a blackbird perched, his lonely song fluting in the still air. The garden was as still as a waxworks; the distant sound of the river a melodic surge and fall. It was her first spell of peace since she had woken that morning; she would have liked to write to Robert, but their parting had made that impossible. Jennet had gone, at Tabitha’s insistence, to join her friends at the Lammas bonfire. Thankfully, Bess was again deep in slumber, making tiny curling movements with her fingers. It was time for the night watch.

By the light of a new wax candle she began her mother’s laying out, washing her mottled flesh and placing sweet rosemary and lavender in its hidden folds to keep her body fresh. Next, she dressed her, thankful that the death-rigor was leaving her limbs. Muttering apologies, she garbed her in her best Sunday gown of blue stripes. Then every ribbon, knot and braid had to be loosed to allow her soul to escape her body. Easing the cap from her head, she unwound the wiry grey plaits and fetched her comb. A bloody wound was revealed on her mother’s scalp. She lifted the candle flame closer to inspect it, lying ugly and gaping and darkening to black.

She had seen drowned folk before, and knew that when the tides sent bodies drifting down the Dee, a body could be bumped and scraped along the riverbed. But this was no such wound for her mother bore no other marks or scratches. She tried to imagine her mother falling directly on to a sharp stone, but she could make no sense of it. Neither was there any of the foam that usually besmirched the mouths of those who drowned.

The candle had burned a good few inches when she allowed herself to rest in the chair at her mother’s side. Muttering a few half-remembered prayers from her childhood, she felt her eyes droop. She was near drunk with tiredness, ill-equipped for the coming days of mourning.

Sleep claimed and held her fast, until in the depths of the night a movement at her side woke her. There stood the child Bess, prattling to herself in the darkness. In the candle’s guttering glow, she saw tiny fingers lift and stretch upwards to grasp her mother’s dead hand.

Suddenly all Tabitha’s stoppered rage ignited: at Robert and his conniving wife, at the Irish thief who had duped her, at the spiteful parson – and mostly at this hindrance, this child who dared to live when her own mother was lost to her forever. Before she could stop herself she pushed Bess aside, and the child slipped to the floor. A moment later, her scream split the night.

At once shame, hot and queasy, overcame Tabitha. Her anger left her and she felt instead ferocious pity. Bess had only wanted to greet her old playmate – God only knew what fond hours the two of them had shared together. She pulled the child on to her lap, clasping her squealing, wriggling body. For a long spell, she did her awkward best to hush her, until her sobs ceased and her little body slackened into sleep. Then, wary of waking her, she gently set her down.

Tabitha felt wide awake once more. Through the window, a scrap of moonlight shone, and she could sense the garden exhaling its night scent. Beyond that, the thicket began, and the path to the river. A sudden sound, two stones clinking together, alerted her to something moving. Possibly a darker shape – or perhaps not. She stood very still, straining her eyes to catch a glimpse but discerning nothing. There were plenty of creatures living in the wood, she told herself: foxes, owls, even a badger or two. A long spell of silence passed. The only sound was the rattling tremor of leaves lifted on the breeze. The creature must have turned back and gone.

Wondering what time the day would break, she looked about her for her mother’s almanack. Not finding it on its usual shelf by the Bible, she began a thorough search: under the bed, in the linen box, even feeling beneath the mattress. Next she searched the parlour, still without success.

Somewhere in the cottage was a small wooden box, where her mother’s few precious objects were collected. She sank to her knees and groped for it in the alcove beside the fire. A tinkling sound led her fingers to a small piece of ironwork. She held it up to the candle: it was nothing but a stubby square-headed nail head, rather rusty and dirty. Abandoning it on the mantel, she paced back and forth. If the almanack was missing, had someone taken it? No, it was more likely that her mother had hidden it away. She returned to the bedroom, and explored the thatched ceiling.

Every year her mother spent a precious shilling on the Chester almanack, entitled De Angelo’s Vox Stellarum, and every day she consulted the little book, her calendar, diary, horoscope and entertainment. Her mother had been no poet, but she had once called it the loom on which she spun her life; a frame that carried the warp and weft of her days. It was a guide to the sunlit hours, a reminder of when the moon was dark or bright, and a reckoner to plan each season’s tasks. Though she struggled to comprehend their exotic symbols, she puzzled over the charts of astronomy, watching the sky in eager hopes of eclipses, meteors and comets. De Angelo’s prophecies, on the fates of countries and kings, were deliberated on as profoundly as any events at hand in Netherlea. Yet her mother’s supreme pleasures were the cunning Enigmas and Riddles, which entertained her busy mind for the whole twelvemonth.

Groping with her hands along the roof beams of the far corner, Tabitha found an unfamiliar small object tacked to the wall, and, lifting the candle, discovered a tiny wooden cross. She knew it to be made of rowan twigs, a protection against evil. Her mother had always disdained such country claptrap – but latterly, it seemed, she had been fearful enough to make such a charm. Growing more alarmed still, Tabitha felt beneath the eaves until she found a recessed space, barely a foot wide. There sat the box, locked but with no sign of the key. Shaking it, she found it rattled.

There had been a time when Tabitha had lived entirely upon her wits and her fine form, sharing rooms off the Strand with her friend, Poll Shepherd. It was Poll who had shown her how to lift a few extra coins, or even better, a pocket watch, and leave the gentleman none the wiser. ‘Bleed a few drops and they don’t even feel it,’ had been Poll’s advice, and thus, the curious art of the picklock had formed part of Tabitha’s education. Now, taking a long pin from her mother’s shelf, she unfastened the box’s crude lock within minutes. Lifting the lid, she found a fold of paper containing a lock of her own father’s grey hair, a pair of ancient buckles, and a faded pink ribbon her mother had worn on her wedding day. Then a sheet of fresh paper fell out, newly inked in a large and fine hand. She read it rapidly, puzzling over its dedication:

A Riddle for Mistress Hart

I see you as you watch and spy,

Consumed with curiosity;

A maggot feeding on the dead,

And feasting on calamity.

Don’t think you’ll end my sovereign power –

’Tis you whom worms will soon devour.

D

Tabitha read it twice again. Who would have sent her mother so vile a threat? But as she glanced upwards, the rowan cross confirmed the truth: her mother had been terrified, had pleaded with her to return – and she had done so too late. She closed her eyes tight, and rocked herself in the chair. For a long spell she hated her own self, her vanity and self-regard.

The loathsome verse still lay on her lap. Who might this ‘D’ be? Her mind raced through a dozen possibilities. Then, reaching into the bottom of the box, she found the current edition of De Angelo’s almanack.

Tabitha opened it with a new wariness. There were the usual familiar pages: the twelve signs of the zodiac, the high water tables, the list of kings and queens and the astrological judgements upon the year. And there, as she had always done, her mother had neatly penned her observations, in the margins and spaces of every single day.

The year of 1752 had begun dully enough, save for a remark, at Ash Wednesday, that she had awaited Tabitha’s letter for a whole month. Otherwise, it was much as any other year: ‘I visited Old Seth, he is gaining strength,’ and ‘I wrote in the Book of Mortalities how Mistress Cox did die in childbed.’ She almost slipped over the first indication of her mother’s unease:

1 May Day. Beside this, her mother had written: Woke tonight in great fear. I know who killed Towler, and why.

Towler? Who was he? She knew no one of that name in the village. Was he a newcomer, or a passing traveller? She read on rapidly until, a month later, her mother’s cramped handwriting spoke again of her fears. Tabitha lifted the candle and read the words twice, to be certain of their import:

8 June Whitsunday. I believe the culprit has marked me. He looked at me, hard and knowing. He followed me here this night and I stood silent behind the door, very afeared.

Tabitha hurried on, rifling through pages. Here was another:

24 June St John the Baptist. D followed me silently in the woods but I retraced my way to Nanny Seagoes and stayed with her.

With sinking spirits, Tabitha saw her own name again.

15 July St Swithin. I wrote this day to Tabitha and told her to hurry. I long to have her here.

A few days later, she asked again: When will Tabitha come? D is so well regarded here that I can make no accusation.

Then, only three days ago: I am more easy. D paid me no heed today upon the High Street; perhaps it is all a lonely woman’s fancy.

And there it was, yesterday, the final entry, on the day on which she had drowned.

30 July Day Before Lammas Eve. D watched me today with a secret eye when no one else was looking. I must stay indoors till Tabitha comes.

Tabitha clapped her hand over her mouth and swayed, her gorge rising. When she laid hands upon this D, she would rend him limb from limb. Wait – had he not killed the hapless Towler? She ploughed back again through the pages. Though Towler was not a name she knew, surely his death must be in the Book of Mortalities. She must alert the constable tomorrow, and this D must be arrested for his murder.

Then she found the very first entry, and almost laughed aloud at the oddness of it.

23 April St George’s Day. Towler, Sir John’s favourite hound, died today very sudden from a violent fit. The gamekeeper rebuked me for enquiring the cause, making an ill jest that I need not enter a dog in the list of mortalities.

What in the Devil’s name was a dog’s death to her mother? The doctor’s words returned to her: ‘Your mother’s mind was disordered since the springtime.’ Tabitha leaned back in the chair, her thoughts chasing each other. Lonely women grew fond of cats and dogs, of tame blackbirds and squirrels; yet such soft-heartedness had never been her mother’s way. She had been the quick-witted daughter of a radical preacher, a clever woman with a sharp eye for her neighbours’ follies. She would no more grieve over the death of a hunting hound than the neck-twisting of a cockerel.

Suddenly the candle fizzed and died; a grey dawn seeped into the room, casting shadows across the bed. Her mother’s corpse seemed to have shrunk in the night, her cheeks sunken to the skull, the skin a waxy death mask.

Tabitha stood broad awake in the grainy light. Her mother had been the only soul on earth who had cared for her, fed her, consoled her. She looked outside at the brightening sky, hearing the chirrups of waking songbirds. Someone hereabouts had harried and frightened her mother, or perhaps worse. But he had not taken Tabitha’s return into account. Her first step must be to identify D, discreetly, privately, without arousing a jot of suspicion. And if D could be proved to have raised a finger to harm her mother – by inflicting a fatal head-wound, for instance – she would not leave Netherlea till she had avenged her, and brought the cowardly monster to justice.