The 22nd day of August 1752

Luminary: Twilight ends at 44 minutes after 8 of the evening.

Observation: Mercury hastening to the conjunction with Venus.

Prognostication: Moves afoot to ameliorate the worst effects in some measure.

 

As he waited for his rendezvous with Tabitha, Nat felt as though he had swallowed a nest of squirming vipers. His pocket watch told ten minutes after six – more than an hour later than the time they had agreed – when she at last strode through the ruined stumps of the gateposts and up the drive. He savoured the moment, watching unseen from the battlements, his heart twice the speed of his watch’s ticking. This had to be the beginning of a new epoch for him – the conjunction of two radiant planets in the cold immensity of his life.

He ran downstairs to greet her, then was suddenly too agitated to take her arm as he led her up to the roof. She had missed the church bells at five, she said in apology, and got in a muddle about the hour – he had forgotten there was no clock at the cottage. Today she looked different from his recollection; not so conventionally beautiful, but stronger, and more vividly real. He settled on one of the two chairs he had set in the shade; she paced about the narrow roof, pausing to lean on the battlements, gazing over the pond to the church and common, the winding sparkle of the river, and the distant roofs of Bold Hall itself.

Setting his telescope to her eye, she said, ‘This is a good viewpoint to watch who comes and goes.’

He took the opportunity to come up behind her, circling her with his arms to guide the telescope. Gently he pointed it up to the sky that was slowly deepening to a dark forget-me-not blue.

‘Look. There is Venus.’ In his mind, he associated the silver-blue planet with Tabitha, a crystal droplet hanging high beside the Pole Star. ‘When the crisp winter nights arrive there will be many wondrous spectacles. I’ll show you comets and shooting stars, and with luck, the aurora of the Northern Lights.’

‘Yes – I should like that.’ Her eyes shone. ‘You have studied the stars?’

‘Yes. I have seen all six of the planets. We live now in an age without equal in learning and science. I pity the Ancients – so much more is revealed to us in this modern age.’

He talked for a spell of studying the heavens with his professor; of comets, auroras and the distant constellations – until he became aware of a sudden change in the air, a bluster that lifted the clinging ivy and rattled the casements. Damn it, he had let her grow cold – she was hugging herself, no doubt willing him to still his tongue.

‘You are shivering. Come inside.’

‘Yes. Now I must show you my mother’s almanack.’

He lit half a dozen candles, revealing that the worst of the mess had been tidied away. Did she cast a curious glance towards the bed in the far corner? Its linen, at least, was fresh and clean. His notions of how this evening might proceed had swung like a pendulum – from a chaste exchange over academic tomes, to a night of lascivious revels. In the absence of London pastry cooks, he had assembled the simplest of meals: a game pie, bread, cheese, apples, and a dish of cherries with scalded cream. Both ate as they talked. She opened her mother’s almanack, pointing to the crudely printed pages on which were written Widow Hart’s crabbed and cryptic comments. Perplexed, he read of the death of a hound – and, more disconcertingly, of the widow’s fears.

‘What else do you know?’

She told him of the wound to her mother’s head, and of the damage to the door latch for which no one could account; also of Nanny Seagoes’ tale, that her mother had discovered the killer of a dog, and lived in fear of him ever since. And now Francis De Vallory’s butchered body had been found. Darius was a party to it, she was certain.

‘And all have De Angelo in common.’ She pointed at a prophecy she had marked in the almanack with a tiny dot of red ink. The motto ‘There shall be blood on the harvest corn,’ was printed below the date of Francis’s death.

‘Both my mother and Francis were sent these but Francis’s was destroyed by his mother.’ She held out a piece of paper, a verse addressed to Mistress Hart.

‘That is monstrous,’ he said after reading it, appalled by the venom of the missive. ‘You must have been horrified.’

She nodded, a shadow of fear showing in her eyes. ‘Nat, what do you make of this riddle?’ Tabitha handed him the almanack, open at the page that bore a grotesque mask and verse titled, ‘Who Am I?’

‘Look, my mother attempted it and wrote “A Murderer?” below it.’

Nat read it with slow concentration. He looked up, fixing her with shining eyes. ‘The origin of the word “riddle” is “dark saying” in Old English. It means veiled, like the Greek term “enigma” – “to speak obscurely”. So I’m afraid “murderer” is too simple a solution.’

‘Why so?’

‘A riddle must have two aspects: a deceptive cloak masking an inner truth. “Murderer” lacks the twisting wordplay, the flourishing of the cloak being swept aside. I believe the solution is—’

‘A riddle itself,’ she interrupted. She took it back and read it out loud: ‘“For when bold mortals me descry, I at that very moment die.” At the moment we solve it and our curiosity ends, the riddle expires too. It is rather a dreadful jest. And yet so ingenious.’

‘Yes. If the almanack writer is “D”, he is jesting with those who ponder his identity. De Angelo is a riddle.’

‘And we must solve it. So who writes these almanacks?’ she asked. ‘Surely they must be very learned scholars.’

He flicked through the pages, shaking his head. ‘Vox Stellarum – the voice of the stars. Maybe once upon a time great scholars wrote such stuff; but I doubt they do so now. The legendary astrologers, Old Francis Moore, Nostradamus, and the like, are all in their graves.’

He offered her the cherries; she picked one from its stalk, dousing it in cream.

‘But my mother purchased this almanack every single year, and its advice was always different.’

‘So it may have seemed; yet the compiler need only shuffle the mottos and dates. Ah, look – he’s inserted the calendar changes here, the loss of eleven days next month. There is some skill here, but it is not, I suspect, drawn from a genuine horoscope. I should know; I have written plenty of chapbook predictions myself. Dream books, prophecies, prognostications – all pure balderdash.’

‘How disappointing.’

‘We are all gullible. Who does not want to know their future?’

Spitting out the last of the cherry stones, she counted them with her fingertip. ‘Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief. Ah – my destiny is to be a thief, it would seem.’

‘Aha, Miss Light-fingers! Next you will tell me that cherry stones are a most accurate means of prognostication.’

She threw one of the stones at his face, laughing. ‘So, what is your occupation to be, when you finally ripen from boy to man?’

He counted his cherry stones. ‘Five. A rich man,’ he said, with a smirk.

‘Ha! A thief would like to know such a man.’

He made a play of pulling his pockets inside out. ‘So plunder me.’ He leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowed, challenging her.

‘You have not climbed your great tree yet, you wastrel,’ she said, unable to suppress a smile. ‘Will you help me solve this puzzle?’

Putting the almanack down, he pulled out a large handbill; uncurling it, he fetched his ink and quill.

‘Who, then, could be this “D”, do you reckon?’

She bit her lip and looked out of the window at the darkening sky. ‘Darius. Parson Dilks. All of the De Vallory family, of course: Sir John, Lady Daphne, and the doctor. Then there is Mistress Nell Dainty, who begrudged my mother’s position as searcher and her cottage. But I find it hard to picture her wielding a bloody scythe, never mind compiling an almanack.’

She stared hard at the list of names he had inked on to the back of the playbill. ‘None of it makes sense. What of D for dairymaid? Or here is another I had not thought of before – the dogman up at the kennels, Willis.’

Nat added Zusanna and Willis to the list. ‘Certainly, the dogman must be worth a visit – we must learn how Towler died.’

She nodded. ‘Nat, I still cannot comprehend how the coming year is described with such accuracy. Last Thursday there was a rain shower, just as predicted.’

‘That is merely a random event. Loose enough arrows, and some will strike home.’

‘But all this – this blood and doom and mischance? The prognostication for December is that the year will reach “A violent and bloody end.”’

He picked up the almanack and perused a few pages, then looked at her keenly.

‘You almost persuade me of your case: that someone has written this with a malevolent purpose … that this De Angelo appears to predict the future, but in fact brings these awful events to pass.’

‘But who could do so, here in Netherlea? Who could conceive, and then write, such an almanack? Darius is not sufficiently educated. Dilks is unlikely – and he claims he was away from home when my mother was murdered. It is not in the doctor’s character, and neither would he kill his own nephew. And as for Sir John, why would he murder his heir? Lady De Vallory I cannot believe capable. True, there is a dark stranger who wanders the woods, but he, of course, may be … you. And so, I’m afraid, may the compiler of the almanack.’ She turned to his writing desk and picked up a freshly scribed page: ‘The Bloody Tragedy of the Monster of Newgate’ complete with a stomach-curdling description of the execution.

He snatched it from her hand. ‘Don’t look at that nonsense.’

Then came the question he was dreading.

‘Nat, what business did you have with my mother?’

He reached for his tankard, knowing that she, of all people, would not swallow an easy lie.

‘She was an old friend of my own mother’s. I told you my mother was born in Netherlea. And I knew she was the searcher.’

‘You knew she was the searcher?’ A stony cast settled on her features. ‘What did you want from her?’

‘Information.’ His mouth was dry. He took another long draught of ale, his mind in a jumble. The silence that followed forced him to add: ‘About my own mother.’

She continued to watch him.

‘And about me,’ he heard himself muttering. Oh, this was too bad; she was drawing him out like an eel from a basket. And what if she was Saxton’s informer? What if he had sent her to seduce him into error with her honeyed tongue? A sensation like liquid ice filled his veins.

‘What was your mother’s name?’

‘Hannah Dove.’ He raked his fingers through his hair. ‘Tabitha, truly, I would rather not speak of it. Your mother helped me with a matter that was pertinent to me alone.’

‘But it may have caused her death,’ she protested. ‘Are you the man whom the sexton saw reading the parish book in the vestry a while back?’

‘Me?’ He did have a dim recollection of being disturbed in his perusal by a grimy, bent-spined fellow. ‘It may have been. They are public documents?’

‘No, they are not.’

‘Then I was ignorant of the custom – that is all.’

‘I am sorry, Nat. Forgive my ill temper. I am still grieving for my mother.’ For an instant, she looked so heartbroken that he seized her hand in sympathy. She squeezed it softly in return. Instead of matters of suspicion, they broke off, and talked a while of London; of the lamplit alleys leading off Covent Garden’s piazza, where they had both frequented the same coffee houses and taverns.

‘Your conundrum was not so very difficult to solve. “Where fodder is traded”; that is the Haymarket. So when did you see me there?’

‘Last season, at the opening of The Modish Couple. Seeing you here, without your silks and jewels, I did at first wonder if it were truly you. But there is something remarkable about your face.’ He cocked his head to one side and appraised her. ‘I might even like you better now, without your paint and feathers.’

‘You perverse creature.’ Yet she looked pleased. ‘That was a remarkable night. My friend Poll had strung pearls in my hair, and I had a new gown of flowered silk; I was quite in love with it.’

‘You were standing beneath the great chandelier. Every eye was on you. I swore never to forget you – and now, like a miracle, here you are.’

She pressed his fingers and leaned forward very close, her lips parted – but, like a blockhead, he prattled on. Later, he calculated that was the exact moment he should have kissed her. ‘You had that old fellow always with you then – that naval-seeming man.’

‘Robert Tate.’

‘Was that the old goat’s name? He was in no wise good enough for you.’

She shook her head good-naturedly. ‘Of course not. And, no doubt, you are?’

‘I am.’

With a quick movement she raised his hand to her lips.

‘Nat, you are just what I need at present. And I confess: it was Robert Tate I was to meet in Chester on Friday; yet I came home with you instead. But before we are distracted – and you are a most distracting fellow – I need you to apply your clever brain to determine whether any crime was committed against my mother. And, when you have done so … perhaps a reward may be due?’

‘I will do all I can to help you,’ he said. ‘I swear it with my heart.’

They looked directly into each other’s faces; he felt a little breathless. He had now a task to perform for her and told himself he would not fail. As for waiting for her to oblige him, he would wait until the Last Judgement. She looked on him with her frank brown eyes; then, without a word, she withdrew her hand and stood to fetch her cloak, and went to the door, refusing his offer to escort her back to the cottage.

‘I wish you would not go alone. Do take care, Tabitha.’

‘I will. I am taking care. You see,’ she said, ‘the only suspect capable of all these enigmatical intrigues is you, Nat Starling – or might my mother more rightly have known you as another “D”, Nathaniel Dove?’