The 1st day of November 1752

All Hallows’ Day

Luminary: Sunrise 15 minutes after 7.

Observation: Venus sets 18 minutes after 5 in the afternoon.

Prognostication: Those who boast of high degree will likewise die in effigy.

 

Like a good omen for the future, the fire in the great carved inglenook of Eglantine Hall still glowed in its embers the next morning. Gazing at the wall that displayed their speculations, Tabitha announced they must begin at once to tax their wits – for no time could be lost.

‘It is a shame that Darius, the surest witness, died before he could be properly questioned,’ Nat remarked, chewing on bread and cold bacon.

At the mention of Darius, Tabitha picked up a pen and wrote in a child-like, round hand: You still have my master to reckon with. I’ve seen you swallowing his crafty words. You reckon him such a great good fellow while all the time he plays you for fools.

‘That is what he said to me – his very words.’

‘There is an ambiguity about the word “great”,’ Nat said, musing. ‘It could mean extremely good, as in virtuous; or that the man himself is considered great – that is, of high rank. The reference to craft certainly confirms the hypocrisy we have both detected in the parson’s character.’

Tabitha agreed and went on, slowly. ‘I’ve been thinking, Nat, about Joshua … He discovered my mother’s body and was also close by when Francis was discovered. And this escape Darius made from the bridge – he certainly had a confederate among our party; someone who had access to the prisoner’s carriage.’ Taking a slow breath, she confided further. ‘At Michaelmas, Bess opened Joshua’s document bag. He has been observing all your movements, over many weeks. Don’t look like that.’

He had sprung up from his chair, but slowly sat back down, saying caustically, ‘That two-faced … Well, he is your fond friend. You know him best.’

She ignored the childishness of his tone. ‘Be sensible. It is more likely that someone has asked him to watch over you than that he does so on his own account. He is not a likely creator of the almanack, even if he is not quite the dotard you imagine. More likely, he is under the influence of this unknown man. For Joshua does venerate power and rank.’

Nat strode over to the wall and inspected his own handiwork.

‘Have you looked at all of the almanack’s predictions?’ she asked him.

‘Blood, burning, and bones this month, if I recollect. Very cheering.’

‘“Those who boast of high degree will likewise die in effigy.”’ Who do you suppose that is? We have underestimated these prognostications before.’

Nat found it hard not to show his contempt.

‘It is styled exactly in the manner of most false predictions, from Nostradamus to Mother Shipton – vague, general, applicable to many cases.’

Tabitha frowned at the crude verse.

‘Remember the “mighty confusion” he caused by giving out the wrong assizes date in September?’

‘And so?’

‘It could be that Sir John, or the doctor, or some other high-born person will die. Though why in effigy, I cannot say.’

‘I pray it won’t be so.’

‘False or not, De Angelo, or someone styling himself as such, sent my mother and Francis those threatening verses. If there is a message it is the fall of a great family: the De Vallorys.’

‘Well, what of your virtuous doctor?’ he asked. ‘You say he dislikes his brother.’

‘They have always been at odds. It is common knowledge the doctor would have made a better overseer of the estate. But remember, if De Angelo was present at Francis’s murder, it cannot be the doctor; a dozen people saw him at breakfast that morning.’

‘Nevertheless, he is bookish, a classicist, of high rank and has a profession both great and good. You have been closest to him. Does he have any strange notions, any cruelty in his nature?’

‘None at all. He is an unusually kind man. Don’t pull that face; I am an excellent judge of men.’ Seeing him unconvinced, she stepped over and sat on his knee, saying, ‘Or else why would I be here with you?’

They kissed but she pulled back before they could sink into languorous lovemaking.

‘Though, of course, there is still you to consider, Nat.’

She spoke sweetly, observing his face, glorying in the curves of his mouth and his fine-boned features. ‘For all I know, every word of accusation you have made against others could be balderdash.’

He laughed, his shrewd eyes watching her under half-closed lids.

Leaving Nat to study the almanack further, Tabitha at length set off for Netherlea. Stepping outside, no sun shone from the blankness of the sky, while from above came only the sound of crows, fretfully cawing. The dark season in the countryside meant icy iron-hard earth, and the labour of constantly collecting firewood. But by January, London would welcome both her and Nat with gaiety and the familiar luxuries of the playhouse, warm taverns and brightly lit shops. As for Bess, she had formed a notion of where she might foster her; she would return for her soon, when she and Nat were settled in some decent lodging place.

Seeing a huddle of women near the church door selling leftover Soul Cakes, she hailed them to buy a cake for Nanny. As she waited for her farthing change, her eye was caught by the bonfire rising on the Church Green. Piles of faggots and tree branches were being heaped in preparation for the commemoration of Parliament’s delivery from the Gunpowder Plot. A group of youngsters had made a remarkably ugly effigy from cast-off habiliments stuffed with straw. Now they dragged it feet-first along the ground, like a corpse across a battlefield. Turning back to the village women, she caught them all staring intently at her. So, she thought grimly, news of her appearance at the Manor Court the day before had spread fast.

Going into the church she found the All Hallows’ service had just ended, leaving a welcome warmth from the newly departed congregation. The De Vallory monument now dominated the nave; the relief image of the standing figure had been sealed upright into the wall. She could see now that it was a figure of a man, with a remarkably well-carved cloth veiling his features. She approached it and studied the Latin inscription, for only the oval lozenge bore words in English, stating Francis’s name and rank.

Tabitha sat in an empty pew and pulled a piece of blank paper out of her pocket. It took a long, painstaking while to write down the words, letter by letter.

‘You were my son’s coming-of-age gift,’ sneered a voice from a nearby pew. ‘I am surprised such vermin is allowed on sacred ground.’ She had been waylaid again by Lady Daphne, only this time the mistress of Bold Hall was alone. There was no polite answer Tabitha could make. She attempted a curtsy and began to back away.

‘But we are all dust now,’ said the haughty voice, behind the heavy mourning veil. Tabitha nodded, but just as she reached the church’s aisle the woman lamented, ‘He gives life and he takes it away.’

Tabitha stopped stock-still, looking back at the woman, a bowed figure shrunken within yards of black satin, frilled over outmoded wide skirts. Finally, when the silence grew too long, Tabitha quietly asked, ‘Who takes life away, your ladyship?’

With great ill-timing, a ratcheting click from the clockwork above their heads started up, and the brass bell in the tower rang out nine ear-deafening times. Hastily, her ladyship rose with a sway of ancient hoops. Without another word, she dragged herself slowly up the aisle and out of the church.

It had been a laborious task to transcribe the inscription; but it was the work of moments to unpick the vestry door once more. She was pleased that Parson Dilks was not to be seen; though she figured that Sir John would defend her action to Hell and back. Opening up the Book of Mortalities she carefully removed the false page attached by dabs of wax. Beside her mother’s original entry, she wrote clear across the margin: Murdered by the hand of Darius Goff, who escaped trial by drowning on the 7th day of October 1752.

Satisfied, she placed it back on its shelf and picked up the parish accounts that listed all the pennies and halfpennies handed out to itinerant beggars as an incentive to leave Netherlea. She leafed through the pages for all of spring 1750 but found no likely candidate who might have discovered her mother alone; only old folk, a nursing mother and wandering children, all of them harried back on to the highway. Impatiently, she drummed her fingers against the wooden table. Damn his blood, her mother’s violator must be a Netherlea man, but he had left no trace of himself, save for the conception of little Bess.

The fog still hung in wispy skeins as she arrived on the High Street and let herself into Nanny’s child-sized almshouse. The old lady lay motionless in a curtained box bed in the back room. The vitality she had possessed when Tabitha had last talked with her had vanished. Mottled skin hung now about her beaky nose and hollowed eyes. Tabitha pulled up a stool and took her claw-like hand into her own. Here was a foretaste of all of their fates, she mused. How heartily she wished she had been able to comfort her own mother at her end. Instead, she said a simple prayer, chastened to reflect on mankind’s being forever close to death.

Tabitha was too late to learn any more from Nanny. She set the Soul Cake out on a communion tray, alongside untouched wine and wafers. She poured a measure of wine into the glass, and the scent of it rose, more palatable than any that she could recall sipping from the church goblet. With great gentleness she cradled Nanny’s shoulders, and attempted to help her take a sip, but it was no use; the old lady’s drooping lips remained shut tight. After straightening her bed linen and combing her hair, Tabitha could think of no other way to help her. Quietly, she let herself out, and began to retrace her steps down the High Street.

‘Good day, Tabitha.’ At the side of the highway the doctor was slowly dismounting from his carriage, leaning crookedly on his cane. Truly, she thought, Netherlea was peopled by a great many ailing folk.

‘Are you back home at your cottage yet?’ They fell into step together, though Tabitha had to slow to match his palsied gait.

‘No. Though I am feeling stronger, now, with many thanks to you.’ She told him she had just come from Nanny Seagoes: ‘I am afraid her end is very close.’

‘Indeed. It is a blessing that her neighbours care for her. I call as often as my other duties allow. But, Tabitha, we are well met.’ He halted, leaning on his stick, panting with exertion. ‘I need to sit.’ He gasped and pointed to the tavern. ‘Would you oblige me by sharing some refreshment?’

Even at ten of the morning, a group of village ne’er-do-wells hung about the inn. The sight of the door assailed her with a memory of standing in the reeking inn yard, as goosebumps of cold and distress rose beneath a too-thin gown. No, she would not torment herself by returning there.

‘I’ll not go inside, Doctor.’

Yet who could reprove her for resting outside a moment? Together they sat on a bench, where Tabitha accepted only small beer from the barmaid. The drinkers had hushed at their approach, and she was struck with the troubling notion that the whole village watched the pair of them in fascination. Was it her imagination, or did one of the local topers jeer under his breath, ‘She don’t look much like her picture, does she, then?’ At the eruption of scornful laughter, she looked quickly in their direction, but they had turned aside.

‘That was a fine performance yesterday,’ the doctor said, with great warmth in his jaundiced eyes. ‘What an extraordinary story you told. And my brother was so eager to claim that little maid as Francis’s child. A lesser woman might have tried to deceive him and claim a birthright for Bess.’

‘I am not a fraudster, Doctor.’

He courteously inclined his grey head. ‘And you have helped me greatly in my work. I will not forget that. It is this Starling fellow I need to discuss with you – I have heard alarming news of him. I speak only as someone with a great regard for you, Tabitha, as I hope you will believe. I cannot repeat a confidence, but I believe he exploits you.’

Tabitha’s chin jerked up. ‘How is that, Doctor?’

‘It is hard to speak and at the same time keep my promise. I do not simply mean he exploits you only as a – a very handsome woman.’

She felt unnerved. ‘Then how?’

‘Has he told you why he is here in Netherlea?’

His words could not have hit a more sensitive target. Crestfallen, she shook her head.

‘Ask him. And whatever he tells you,’ the doctor said, ‘consider this. What can his true reason be for all those impertinent speculations about who killed poor Francis?’

She answered stiffly, ‘I am sure there is a very good reason.’

Soon after, she made her excuses and left the doctor with a promise to return to her duties the following week. Resentment propelled her swiftly along the High Street. She had broken her vow to her mother, had been forced to confess that she had lived as a common whore in front of Sir John and his boorish cronies. But as for Nat – why, he still kept his cards mighty close. Must she forever be the last to know of his schemes? If he did love her – and for the first time she pondered the distinction between love and feverish lust – he owed her his trust, and, above all, the truth.

One final incident rattled her entirely. As she hurried past the blacksmith’s yard, she passed by the same bonfire-building youngsters she had first seen near the church, now begging for pennies around their guy. In all the bonfire celebrations that Tabitha could remember, only a narrow compass of characters had been represented; the most usual was a feather-hatted Guy Fawkes, or an effigy of the pope in crimson and gold. But this year the effigy’s face was daubed with round demonic eyes, its body hidden beneath a black coat tricked out with rags of gold. A tuneless but enthusiastic song reached her ears:

Guy Fawkes, Guy,

Poke him in the eye,

Shove him in the chimney pot

And there let him die.

Her eye was caught by a printed pamphlet pinned to the effigy’s coat, and she snatched it up, despite the lads’ protests – but she had read only the title, A Noble House Cursed by a Curious Bloody Almanack, before a thuggish youth whipped it away.

‘Where did you get this?’ she demanded.

‘The tavern. Landlord had heaps of ’em, but they all sold out. He says they’re the work of that writer fellow, Starling.’ Then, smirking at her, he said, ‘Ain’t you ‘er what’s in it?’ He opened it up beyond her arm’s length, tantalizing her with a crude woodcut of a woman. Her own name, Tabitha Hart, was inked below it as clear as day.

She picked up her skirts and ran breathlessly home, trying to close her ears to any hints of laughter.

With a strong apprehension that her whole existence was about to change forever, she approached Eglantine Hall. Skin him alive, what had Nat done? She would give him such a tongue-lashing when she found him, true love or not. As she stumped up the stairs she rehearsed a stream of insults beneath her breath. He had behaved like a hired hackney, a poxy pen, a money-grubbing louse!

But the bitter words did not leave her lips, for Nat sat hunched over his desk, and when he raised his face it was gaunt with hopelessness. She could see at once that fate had struck him some great blow and, forgetting her anger, she rushed to comfort him.

‘What is it, my love?’

‘Tabitha,’ he said, like a lost boy. ‘I have betrayed everyone. And you, especially.’

‘The pamphlet? I saw it. But I’ve not yet read it.’

He pushed a copy towards her across the desk, gingerly, as if it were dipped in poison, and her gaze flitted swiftly over the text. It was extraordinarily strange to read of Netherlea as if it were a town in a chapbook; as if she, Sir John and Francis and all the rest of them, were wooden puppets gallivanting on a painted stage. Then she turned the page and saw again the idiotic woodcut of a long-haired siren, with two spherical breasts protruding from a gown not fashionable since the days of Queen Anne. Beneath it was printed a caption: The fair village searcher, Miss Tabitha Hart.

‘Dammit, Nat, I look like a ship’s figurehead carved from oak, and twice as old besides,’ she quipped, as lightly as she could. Next she saw an engraving of Sir John and Lady Daphne, done many years earlier, when they must first have been married.

Nat’s voice was husky with sorrow when he spoke. ‘Sir John has read it. He knows I wrote it. And, God forgive me, he fell to the ground in horrified surprise. An apoplexy, they say. He may die. The doors of Bold Hall are closed to me. I have brought everything to ruin.’

Tabitha took note of the bottle of brandy on the floor beside him, and of the sing-song lilt of his voice. Her anger, which had cooled a little, hardened now like metal ore – she was ready for a fight.

‘So I see. You have done the murderer’s work for him.’

‘I need to find De Angelo. We need to unmask him.’

She raised her brows. ‘Why, so you can earn a fee for writing about that, too?’

He shook his head wildly, as if a wasp had landed in his unkempt hair.

‘No. I want to help you. And to catch this monster. But most of all – I need your good opinion.’

The greater consequences of what Nat had done were beginning to play out in her mind. ‘La, it’s my good opinion you seek, is it? Well you have already abused that with the absolute disdain you have shown me.’ This time she was unable to disguise her hurt. ‘Did you think I would be flattered at being paraded in public like this?’ She threw the pamphlet down on the table, the sight of her own printed name burning in her mind.

The dismay in his face momentarily checked her. Then she remembered the doctor’s remarks, and her words surged hotly from her mouth before she could restrain them.

‘Have you used me, Nat? Did you befriend me only to write this scurrilous pamphlet?’

Her sorrow seemed to wake him from his fug. He stood, unsteadily, and threw his arms around her. For a moment she hoped that time could revert to a happier day; to yesterday, perhaps.

‘No, never. I love you. I merely … I had a sudden hankering to write of these extraordinary matters and was possessed like a lunatic. I am heartily sorry. But I know the fate of these newspaper pieces – it will soon be forgotten.’

That was too much.

‘You think so? Here, in Netherlea? Where any slight is remembered from a century back, and more? You have paraded me and all these others as an entertainment for the whole nation!’

‘Damn me, then.’ He sank his face against her shoulder. ‘Let’s go to bed,’ he whispered.

‘No.’ She pulled back from him, keen to observe the effect of her words. ‘Listen. No one here will ever freely speak to you again; and maybe not to me, either. Our pursuit of this villain is ended, for good and all. And the worst of it is that many folk out there believe now that you committed these murders, having written in such neat and nice detail of them. I felt it out there in the village – and I saw it, too. That damned pamphlet was pinned to the guy they will burn. The effigy in the almanack verse is meant to be you.’

‘I wanted to keep this from you, Tabitha – but there’s something else.’ He staggered up and rifled through his mess of papers, handing her a neat page of verse. ‘This was pinned on the door after you left.’

I observe how you meddle

My schemes to ensnare,

My wit has unmasked you,

Sir John’s son and heir;

But you’ll never unmask me

And fool, if you do

’Tis not me who will swing

By the neck – it is you.

De Angelo

Nat’s hands shook as he set the paper down.

‘Dear God.’ Tabitha snatched it up and read it again. Sir John’s son and heir.

Of course. Hannah Dove, a defenceless orphan, must have been given such generous parish assistance because she was carrying a child. Her move to Cambridgeshire was simply a means to rid Sir John of the nuisance of his merry-begotten child – who had grown up to be Nat.

‘And what this says is true?’ She searched his face, finding only a faint trace of the full De Vallory lips and high brow. ‘You are Sir John’s son?’

Nat groaned.

‘His natural son. He got my mother with child when she was a fifteen-year-old in the care of the parish. I only learned the truth of it last year, after my stepfather died. Before you ask, I am here with my mother’s blessing.’

Consequences, like a perilous pile of stones, seemed to be rising carelessly above her head. Tabitha looked at Nat with dawning horror. He had come to Netherlea, and met Sir John, in utmost secrecy; perhaps, having received no assurances from his father, he had sought to take his birthright by force. That was what any lawyer in the land would argue. The villagers and Joshua were all convinced of his guilt, even before they knew aught of this final damning fact.

‘And when,’ she said coldly, ‘did you think to tell me this?’

He looked at her and shook his head, as if in pain.

Tabitha found she had risen from her chair. Now there were two Nat Starlings – her darling sweetheart and this other man, so secretive and sly. While she had confessed her every flaw and frailty, he had kept this dangerous secret hidden till it was forced from him.

‘I must go,’ she said weakly, and turned on her heel, feeling little spurs of fear speeding her away into the night.