The 3rd day of August 1752

Lammastide

Luminary: Night increases to 9 hours and 53 minutes.

Observation: Saturn sets 34 minutes after 11 at night.

Prognostication: Females in general may face shame and other calamities.

 

Nat was drawn to Tabitha’s cottage in the manner of a moon captivated by a planet. Finding a grassy bluff within sight of the hovel, he threw himself down on his back. Above him spread the whole celestial panoply pulling him into infinity. He trained the lens of his telescope along the curvaceous windings of the constellation of the Serpent. Then he fixed his eye upon glittering Andromeda, and next on Saturn’s yellow sphere.

He rolled on to his stomach. Soon his spyglass was fixed upon the cottage. The lovely Tabitha was still awake, judging by the golden light at the window. He could see only shadows, flickerings, a quiescent presence. Yet it was a pleasure to be so close to her. He had considered calling on her, explaining that her mother had welcomed him, and offering his assistance. No, he could not do it. The truth was, he enjoyed this secret state of attraction; a circling attendant in no danger of collision.

He had few enough pleasures these days. Something was wrong with him, he was sure of it. Since his own mother had urged him to come to Netherlea he suffered violent, angry passions towards his neighbours. And now Widow Hart, his only friend, had died. He thought of the day he had first come across her in the church vestry and asked her advice in consulting the records. Her kindness made him regret not telling her the entire truth, claiming he wanted to see the Dove family’s history to make a fair copy for his mother’s Bible. What harm had it done? The lonely old dame had enjoyed showing him books of burial, marriages and births, and directed him to his mother’s birthplace at Red End. Arriving at the latter he had been shaken: the hamlet was a tumbledown ruin. Standing ankle deep in mud and dung he had asked himself: Who then am I?

Widow Hart soon guessed what he was up to. ‘Courage,’ she had said once. ‘You will find your place in the world. You are like my daughter. A dullard’s life would suit neither of you.’

‘I scarce know what I want,’ he replied. ‘Only that I must be my own man.’

She laid her thin fingers upon his arm. ‘Time is our greatest healer.’

‘Time is also our greatest teacher,’ he replied dryly, ‘yet he does have a habit of killing all his pupils.’

Winged shadows flitted across the stars; a pair of tawny owls making tremulous cries. On the path below he could hear another creature moving as quietly as a leaf blown along the ground. He stiffened: there was no breeze tonight. Nat twisted around and listened hard, hoping the interloper would not see him. Suddenly the dark shape of a man loomed directly over him.

‘Who are you?’ Nat asked, feeling wholly to the disadvantage.

‘I wondered what you was, lurking in the grass. Starling, is it? Want a drink?’

The shape squatted down beside him and Nat sat up on the grass.

‘I know you. Your name is Darius, is it not?’ In the faint starglow he recognized the tar-black eyes of Francis De Vallory’s drinking companion.

The youth took a long tug from a bottle and handed the cheap liquor over. For once, Nat took only a moderate sip, watching Darius all the while. ‘Your friend is not with you?’

Darius grunted dismissively. ‘No. He don’t need to catch his own dinner. Be that a spyglass?’

Reluctantly, Nat let him take a turn, directing him to a few notable objects in the sky.

Darius lowered it from his eye. ‘That’s a mighty handy instrument. And you know what all them stars foretell?’

‘If you mean drawing up horoscopes, then no, I don’t. I study astronomy. There’s nothing magical up there. Observation and mathematics are my tools.’

Darius snorted. ‘My family all has the second sight. And I’s known clever men who can read the future in the sky. What happens above must happen below.’

Nat shook his head, irritated. ‘Tell me then, if the heavens are so easy to read, why these prophets always fail to accurately predict deaths and wars and disasters?’

Darius leaned back on his elbows. ‘So you don’t believe the ancient paths? You would not care if I set a curse upon you?’

‘Be my guest.’ Though Nat spoke coolly, the youth was needling him and he gave in to a foolish desire to goad him in return. ‘I’ll wager you a shilling. I will predict an event that will occur with absolute certainty. And you must do the same. Then we’ll compare the validity of your hokum against my observations.’

Darius nodded; Nat could see the gleam of his teeth and eyes.

They both rose and Nat handed him the telescope, pointing with his finger to the dark gap between the constellations of Perseus and Cassiopeia. ‘If I were a mountebank astrologer, I should say, “Hearken at this fireball which proves that a great calamity will soon befall us.” But as a rational man, I simply ask you to observe Nature’s glory and marvel.’

He helped Darius find the spot and waited. It took only a minute until even with his naked eye, Nat also saw the firework flash and trailing tail of a shooting star, moving faster than lightning across the firmament.

‘How’d you know that would happen?’ Darius asked, handing back the telescope.

‘Mathematics.’ He chose not to explain that at this date meteors flew in a deluge in that part of the heavens.

‘You vouch you saw what I predicted?’

‘Aye.’

‘And your prediction?’

‘You don’t believe in curses. So you’ll not be minding if I curse our pert new neighbour.’ Darius jerked Nat’s telescope in the direction of the lighted window of Tabitha’s cottage. ‘It may take a while longer’n your trick, but I predict she’ll meet misfortune before the year is out.’

Nat felt his face glow hot. ‘Damn you for a sharper! What has she ever done to you?’

‘What’s she done to you, more like? Jumping like a rabbit to her defence, eh? Francis told me all about his night with her, when she was but a fresh pullet on the market.’

The tinker raised a pale outstretched hand towards the lighted cottage and began to speak an incantation in a gibberish tongue. Whatever he was chanting, it sounded cruel and ugly and potent.

Nat stood up, struggling to master the desire to strike Darius in his smirking face.

‘Hold your tongue, you devil!’ Then turning on his heels Nat made for home, furious that he had let the rogue draw him in.

‘So you do believe in the old ways!’ Darius crowed after him. ‘Or why you be so rattled? Come on, hand over that shilling and be done with it.’

Old ways indeed! Nat brooded miserably as he hurried along. Of course he did not believe in such claptrap. And yet, to hear Tabitha being profaned was intolerable. Nonetheless, the philosophical part of his nature asked: why should he fear a tinker’s curse?

Perhaps there were old ways of wickedness, he concluded. Ancient tricks that worked by persuasion and domination to browbeat the innocent. These were the dark dealings of alchemy and spell-casting that modern, educated men must resist. And why resist them? Because there was some lingering power in such malice, after all.

And he had recognized Darius’s sinister aspect since first clapping eyes on him. When was it he had seen him first? It had been well before the Lammas bonfire, when walking home from Widow Hart’s. Damnation, it had been the night she died. He had reckoned him to be a poacher and let him pass without regard. But the memory jolted him sufficiently to unloose a further image of Widow Hart that same night. All evening she had been distracted, her thoughts elsewhere, her actions clumsy. Then she had pleaded with him to stay longer. As he took his leave she had peered over his shoulder and asked, ‘There is no one out there?’

The garden and beyond had appeared empty and so he had reassured her. Then, no more than a quarter of a mile along his path home, he had glimpsed the poacher he now recognized as Darius.

Pox that blockhead of a constable; there was no one here in Netherlea he felt able to confide in. All the dark way back to Eglantine Hall he was agitated by the pain that he had failed to help a fellow human and, by doing so, unwittingly contributed to Widow Hart’s death.