The 21st day of December 1752

St Thomas’s Day (New Calendar)

Luminary: The shortest day – 7 hours and 34 minutes long.

Observation: The Sun enters Capricorn 56 minutes after 11.

Prognostication: A loose stitch unravels the greatest works.

 

Nat had now been moved to a new cell on a higher floor of the gaol. He was dismayed to find himself sharing it with another inmate, an apothecary named Reuben Pearce, a cadaverous fellow with watchful eyes that followed him about the room. He wore a balding wig and a patched black gown, like the wreck of a once-fine fellow. It was not cheering to Nat, either, that Pearce had already been condemned to the gallows. He looked around the small stone-hewn room, at the iron rings in the wall and the large, though securely barred, window and wondered if he was now in the notorious Dead Men’s Cell.

When Tabitha visited on St Thomas’s Day, Pearce watched her keenly, not even shifting himself to the far end of the cell. Her news was not good. Nanny Seagoes had been hastened to an early death and so Nat’s trial was going to prove a vastly speedy performance with not even a single friend to stand up and commend his character. She pulled some handwritten papers from her pocket.

‘For what it’s worth, Nat, I’ve written out the words on the De Vallory memorial.’

He pushed the papers inside the front of his coat that looked none too clean now. Then, leaning towards Tabitha, he said, ‘We must speak softly. Our companion is listening.’

Tabitha raised her mouth close to his ear. ‘I am full of apprehensions, Nat. You must consider escape.’

He started back. ‘I would rather choose justice.’

‘I would rather choose a living bridegroom.’ She raised a hopeful smile.

‘But how?’ He spoke as quietly as he could.

‘Jansen the guard is in need of a large sum to reach Virginia. He has an uncle there who needs his help to run a profitable farm. I think it better odds than discovering the identity of De Angelo.’

He nodded, cautioning her to speak even more softly.

‘On the journey over here I talked with Joshua. Sir John’s business brings him back and forth in his cart to Chester often. On Christmas Eve he’ll carry me here again when there’s to be a Goldsmith’s Fair. There will be many strangers about, and I’ll pass myself off as a genteel widow. It is my best chance to sell the timepiece and raise the money.’

‘It is too dangerous. Consider, Tabitha, the object is known to be stolen – you could also risk the gallows. Sell the ring I gave you, instead.’

She pulled out the ring from where it hung on a ribbon inside her bodice. The gem sparkled like a tiny star, even in the gloom of the cell. ‘I cannot. I have never possessed anything so precious,’ she whispered, and he felt a lump grow in his throat.

‘Very well. Then you must sell Jupiter, and any possessions of mine you can find of worth at Eglantine Hall.’

He reached out and pulled her to him. Her face was cold, but her mouth was warm and yielding; when they drew apart, she was half-smiling at him, a little hope restored.

When Tabitha had left him, Nat slumped back against the slippery stonework and unstoppered the bottle of brandy. Later that evening he would settle down to Latin translation, and then consign himself to blessed oblivion.

‘You like to drink, Mr Starling.’ The apothecary had an insinuating, wheezing voice that Nat found excessively provoking.

‘What is it to you?’ he answered sharply. ‘I see you are lusting after my brandy, sir. Do you intend to spoil my enjoyment entirely?’

‘Pray be kind, sir. If I might taste only a drop – at two o’clock this afternoon I will dance on the air, as they say. It would be my very last comfort on this earth.’

With ill grace, Nat carried it over to the apothecary, who snatched it from him and applied it speedily to his lips.

‘That was a very fine woman,’ Pearce said. ‘Worth living for.’

The castle bell rang out the hour of one o’clock, and Nat shuddered to hear it; this man had less than an hour remaining until he was strung up at the Gallows Hill.

‘I heard you talking of De Angelo as if he still lived,’ Pearce said, taking a further slug of brandy. ‘He’s dead and gone, sir.’

Nat took a sharp breath. ‘Dead? You knew him? The same fellow who wrote the almanack?’

‘Indeed, sir. I was apprenticed to him years back. Plaguey old quack, God bless his bones.’

‘Where was that?’

‘Lamb Row here in Chester, it was. He had his so-called consulting rooms upon the top landing. Called himself an astrologer, blood-letter, magus, star-gazer, and any other esoteric art that he could get his aged tongue to pronounce. A prize charlatan, I’d call him. But he did have one great art, and that was his almanack. It is still printed, they say.’

Nat seized the man’s arm. ‘Who prints it now?’

Pearce shook his head. ‘I wish I knew, sir. All the printing blocks were lost; I went to fetch them myself when I heard he’d snuffed it, but they had been stolen by then. The almanacks are a canny business – no need to change much, excepting the dates and a few novel predictions. Every year he had orders for two thousand copies. Sixpence a head; that made more money than even cakes and ale.’

Nat grasped both of Pearce’s shoulders, shaking his bony frame. ‘Think, man. Who could have taken them?’

Now a new sound drifted in through the barred grate; it was the rhythmic tramp of soldiers marching into the courtyard.

‘Tell me. Who took them?’

Pearce’s eyes were circular with fear as a hammering knock sounded on the door below them. When he spoke, Nat could scarcely hear what he said through his chattering teeth.

‘If I knew … I’d have chased that poxed thief. And stolen them back.’ He cowered away from Nat and drank deep from the bottle. Nat could not find the cruelty necessary to wrestle the brandy away.

‘Did you ever know a ruffian of the name Darius?’

‘No.’ Pearce was shaking now like a hound in a rainstorm.

‘How did this De Angelo die?’

‘That’s not his real name,’ wheezed the apothecary. ‘He was old Don Eagle – Don always loved an anagram.’

‘And? How did he die?’

‘It was a dropsy; he swelled up like a fish bladder.’

Now they both hearkened to the sound of voices in the yard, and Nat’s own stomach clutched with sympathetic fear as heavy footsteps approached from the stairway. Pearce hugged the bottle to his heart. ‘Thank you, my friend. Bless you and good luck.’ He lifted off his balding wig and, after poking around inside it, pulled a large black tablet from out of the horsehair. ‘Dutch courage,’ he explained. ‘The best of my physic I’ve saved till last.’

He threw it into his mouth and swigged it back with the last few gulps of brandy.

‘My wits will be jigging with the fairies by the time they carry me up to the scaffold. I always was a coward …’

‘Have you a spare one for me, friend?’

Pearce shook out his wig by its pigtail and made a bleak face. ‘All gone. A plucky fellow like you will have no need for it.’

Hell’s teeth! ‘Listen, Pearce – did De Angelo ever talk of Netherlea?’

The door opened. At the first sight of the guards, Pearce tried to flatten himself against the wall, his eyes as round as pebbles.

‘Tell me! You owe me for the brandy,’ Nat said fiercely, as the soldiers seized Pearce by the arms and dragged him across the floor.

‘Netherlea?’ he said stupidly, as he crossed the threshold to the stairs. ‘Aye. That’s where De Vallory lived.’

Nat stood at the barred window, drawn to witness Pearce’s final journey as a wasp is drawn to the honey trap he will drown in. The apothecary tottered across the frosty yard to where the city boundary was marked by the ancient white Gloverstone. There the sheriff’s men waited with a cart, ready to draw him to the crowd at Gallows Hill. Pearce could no longer stand up straight, and was leaning unsteadily against a guard. At least he would have a painless end when the time came.

Nat squinted. As though to ape the dimming of the limelights at the Playhouse, the sky had muted to the colour of dark lead. Was a storm approaching? As he watched, a few large and feathery snowflakes danced gracefully down to the earth and, in the distance, he heard the orders for the cart to set off towards the gallows.

The sky was growing darker every moment, a low, charcoal smudge. Would Tabitha be able to find out more about the real De Angelo? He had a little money still to spare, but had quill, pen and paper to hand. Quickly, he wrote her a few lines, giving Pearce’s story in brief and the address at Lamb Row. De Vallory, he recalled bitterly. Which De Vallory would have dealings with a charlatan astrologer? Calling out to the guard, he gave him sixpence and hoped that, with luck, the post boy might overtake Tabitha on the road.