The 31st day of October 1752

All Hallows’ Eve

Luminary: Sun sets 46 minutes after 4 of the afternoon.

Observation: Saturn an evening star and Mars under the Sun’s beams and invisible.

Prognostication: Persons overcharged with honour are malcontented.

 

Tabitha’s denial caused a ripple of mixed astonishment and hilarity to spread throughout the hall. Sir John roused himself enough to shake his head in bemusement.

‘So tell us, Tabitha, for our parson has clearly leapt to some hasty conclusions. Who is the child’s mother?’

It was Tabitha’s turn to grow sombre. ‘I promised never to tell another soul – and now you force me to break my word.’

‘I take full responsibility for that,’ insisted Sir John.

Tabitha hesitated until the silence rang in her ears.

‘Bess was born to my own mother.’

‘Widow Hart?’ barked Dilks. ‘A woman who paraded herself as an example of virtue? And a parish officer, besides. This is an outrage!’

‘Silence, Parson,’ interrupted the doctor. ‘Tabitha, how did this come about?’

Reluctantly, Tabitha recalled the bitter events of 1750.

‘My mother and I had a series of misfortunes. Firstly, our cow died of some malady, and without her milk we had little to take to market. We both fell sick, too. Then, at Easter I had the chance to go to Chester fair, and earn a few shillings. I was away for only two nights, but it was a hard price I paid for those coins. On my return my mother seemed altered, forever in low spirits. But I had more to consider than my mother’s temperament that year; our stock of goods had grown pitiful, and we scratched our way through the summer upon only gleanings and wildstuffs. By Michaelmas, though, even I could see that something serious ailed her. When I asked her, she fell to weeping, and told me she had seen certain signs she would bear a child. I confess I was disgusted.

‘“How could you?” I demanded. “At your great age?” For she was then aged three-and-forty. She then told me the strangest part of it, and this I tell you truly, on this Bible oath. She told me she had no recollection whatsoever of how it had occurred. At first, I did not believe her – I thought she was concealing some awful secret. But on one thing we were agreed: that it would be better to die than be a respectable widow who gave birth in a village of such cutting tongues as those of Netherlea.’

‘Do you not think it more likely that your mother was confused in her mind?’

The doctor, she dimly felt, was trying to be kind. ‘As to dates – it continually astonishes me how frequently women cannot recollect events. Then nine months later a child appears: quod erat demonstrandum.’

This raised a chorus of laughter.

‘I am afraid I must disagree, Doctor. My mother had a certain method of understanding dates, known to many country women. She kept an almanack, and beside five or six days each month, she made a set of pinpricks as a guide. Indeed, it always amused her that menfolk fail to grasp why their wives are so fond of their almanacks; especially those who are weary of childbearing.’

The doctor nodded, interested, but she could see that many others were affronted at the notion of women exerting such private power. Her mother, in her brisk and country fashion, had gone on to explain how every woman should learn which quarter of the moon in which to have no man near her.

‘Bearing too many children weakens the woman and risks her life. Once you have the method learned, the changes in your womb are clearly written in the sky for those who know moonlore.’

It was a lesson Tabitha had never forgotten; and in London, she and Poll had nailed a broadsheet almanack on their wall and arranged their adventures accordingly.

‘We were both agreed on her staying here. There was nowhere else to go but Netherlea, and besides my mother was an excellent searcher, and many villagers put their trust in her. I was young and thoughtless. I complained that it was more usual that the daughter brought the babe home, than the mother. It was that remark which laid our plan. I told my mother she might pass the child off as mine. What did I care? I longed to go to London and promised I would send her money for the child’s upkeep. In that way, my mother could continue as the virtuous dame she deserved to be.’

Tabitha paused, remembering how simple their arrangement had seemed. The expression of joy and gratitude on her mother’s face had sealed the agreement for her.

‘You sacrificed your own reputation,’ Sir John murmured.

‘It did not seem so at the time. No one in London would know me. As for Netherlea, I cared not a whit. The ruse was easily achieved. That winter we both ventured outside only when bundled up in cloaks. The only difficulty was her work as searcher; as she grew less nimble, my mother no longer dared to visit the dead and dying. It was then that Mr Dilks threatened to take my mother’s cottage from her, saying she must either work or be turned out. So I took on her duties, for I had seen her lay out the dead often enough; though I was careful to bolster my figure when I met our neighbours. Thankfully, Mother was too thin to show she was breeding, and no one was any the wiser.

‘And then, on St Stephen’s Day, the day after Christmas, her travail began. Our grain box was empty, but I dared not leave my mother to collect our longed-for Christmas dole from the hall. We neither of us ate for two light-headed days. But thankfully, my mother was safely delivered and, it not being her first child, she did well enough with only myself as midwife.’

Tabitha looked at the assembled men who sat in judgement upon her. She could not describe the horror of attending her own mother’s birthing, as the distraught widow wept and prayed and convulsed in her torment. Without the familiar clutch of women to offer good cheer and encouragement, Tabitha had been forced to deal alone with the surprising fluids and profusion of blood, and to sever the navel-string herself. She remembered lifting the slippery red-faced creature, and bathing it, under her mother’s panting instructions. Then she had wrapped it in torn cloths and, lacking any Christian blessing, her mother had whispered an ancient prayer and sprinkled the child with salt before placing her father’s old seal, in lieu of a coin, inside Bess’s tiny hand. Tabitha had looked on in stunned disgust, considering the child nothing but a memorial to her mother’s folly.

It was then, on her bed of travail, that her mother had made Tabitha swear an oath on her own birthing blood.

‘You must never tell a soul that she is mine, Tabitha. I wish to die here in Netherlea without rebuke. Do you promise, daughter? Do you promise never to break this vow?’

She had held out a bloodied hand and Tabitha had clasped its claggy warmth with scarcely a thought. All she wanted was to escape.

She looked up to find her audience waiting for her to continue. This time, she began to warm to her explanation.

‘Once my mother could stand again, we changed places and I lay in her bed. My mother walked, frail and unfed, to visit the parish officers, and to borrow the birthing box of baby linen. When Mr Frith understood I was unwed, he told her it had been loaned to a respectable family. Mother wept, and made a petition for food and warm garments, but that too was refused by the parish overseer.’ Tabitha turned to the same Mr Frith. ‘We were starving in your midst, and you refused us charity,’ she said, glad to see the man drop his eyes shamefacedly to the table.

Mr Dilks sprang to his defence. ‘Your mother falsely represented that child as being yours, her errant daughter’s!’

‘Yes. And when my mother could not tell you a name, you threatened her with a whipping. You told me I deserved a spell in the house of correction.’

It was some gratification to see Sir John shake his head dolefully.

‘Your mother lied in the parish books. And you,’ Dilks said spitefully, ‘summoned my curate to perform a baptism that was entirely deceitful.’

‘Yes. And you continued to harry us for the shilling to pay for it. You may recall what a biting January it was that year. At the end of my wits, I set off one day to beg for food. And yes, I got your precious shilling by another method, but at least my mother and half-sister survived to see the spring.’

‘You mean that you took up as a common prostitute?’ said Mr Dilks, shining with triumph.

She nodded. ‘Yes. Those rumours are true. I had to sell my body, so that we could live.’ Her face grew hot, remembering that Nat was listening. God forgive her, he had admired her as an elegant lady of the town, passing almost as genteel beneath the tolerant gaze of the beau monde. The pitiful truth was that a gentleman had halted his carriage where she stood with an outstretched hand at the roadside. Her fingers were swollen with chilblains and she had been grateful to shelter from the sleet in his warm carriage. He had offered her a drink of spirits, and with uneasy apprehension, she had understood that he would pay her if he could make free with her body.

As a girl of nineteen, she had sold her maidenhead for ten shillings, and an uncomfortable quarter-hour later, she had trudged down the lane to buy food. It was not a decision she had struggled with. To escape, she needed not only to pay her fare, but also to leave her mother a good sum to tide her over. And so she had begun the flesh-trade, and steeled herself to visit the tavern and linger, shivering, in the cobbled yard that stank of ale lees and worse.

Money had been her only passion; if a man offered her a glass of ale she refused it and twisted the penny from his fingers instead. Greasy and warm, those coins jangled in her pockets like the golden keys to the gates of London. Then at last, one day in springtime, she handed her mother five whole pounds and told her she would leave the next day and send more money by the summer’s end. Since then Tabitha had dutifully carried out every term of their agreement.

‘It is a scandal that we harbour such a harlot,’ the parson complained. ‘I want the cottage back at once, and this filthy baggage set on her way.’

‘Enough!’ Sir John struck the table with his fist. ‘I will not have Tabitha and the child ousted like that. Do you hear me? The terms of the tenancy must at least be honoured – to New Year’s Eve, I believe.’ He turned back to Tabitha, eyeing her sternly under his bushy brows. ‘And you still have no idea of the child’s father?’

She shook her head. ‘No. But I am certain my mother would never have risked scandal.’

Turning to face the parson, she said, loudly and steadily, ‘If I was forced to sell myself, it was only because no one here – not one of you – would help us. It was the same when my mother was attacked and drowned. Not one of you believed me. Only by facing death at Darius’s hand did I find proof that you were all wrong; that he was an accomplice to a man hereabouts, hiding the terrible sin of her murder.’

She looked at everyone in the room, as steadily as her ragged breathing would allow; and no one answered, save for Sir John.

‘That is not a matter for this court, Tabitha. But your accusation is noted.’

It was a hushed gathering that finally broke up that afternoon. Afterwards, Sir John came to her, his shoulders bowed and weary, as if the court had been as much of an ordeal for him as for her. In front of all the company, he called her a dutiful daughter who put many another to shame. But she excused herself and set off in search of solitude. The men sitting in that court had hounded her mother. And now she had been forced to murder her mother’s reputation, too.

She halted, alone, in an empty corridor, and banged her bunched fists against the wall, grazing her knuckles so that Nat’s ring dug painfully into her fingers. For the past month she had been slumbering, drunk on the draught of love, but she was wide awake now. Her mother’s tragic history must have been resurrected for a greater purpose. For almost two years Tabitha had sheltered her mother from the cutting tongues of Netherlea; now she had only two months left before she herself would be turned out of the cottage. And in those final dark months of the year, she was damned if she wasn’t going to restore her mother’s name and unmask De Angelo. She would make him suffer for his crimes.

She rode back to Eglantine Hall on Jupiter, behind an attentive, gentle Nat. How did he feel towards her now? As they passed the darkening fields, a procession of men and boys marked the ancient boundaries of common land, gouging marks into the trunks of trees. As they caught up with them she did not at once recognize them; they were guisers, with blackened faces and ribbon-strewn garb.

She threw them a few coppers. She had forgot it was All Hallows’ Eve, a night to perform old customs and appease the spirits. Well, tonight her mother’s spirit felt palpably real, summoned like a chilly wraith from her grave. She could feel it alive in the bitterness of woodsmoke drifting on the wind, in the nip of cold on her nose and fingers, and the sun’s descent into the winter darkness that soon would face them all.

When they returned to the apartment, she felt unnerved, as if the earth had jolted on its axis and was forever out of kilter. She watched Nat build up the fire.

‘Well, Nat, now you know why I left Netherlea. And still you haven’t said a word to me.’

At once he stood and pulled her into his arms, and the entire world righted again.

When he spoke, his voice was warm and gentle. ‘You told the harsh truth and they deserved it. Sweetheart, do you want to go to London? We can leave tomorrow. I will go wherever you go.’

She shook her head. ‘They have given us two months longer. I shall brave it out.’

He brought her a glass of heated brandy, and she made a toast to the empty air. ‘To you, Mother. Forgive my oath-breaking.’

She took a long draught and then sat, bewitched by the lively flames. Very quietly, she said, ‘We must keep the fire burning all the night of Hallows’ Eve, so no evil may enter this house.’