The 24th Day of December 1752

Christmas Eve

Luminary: Moon rises 4 minutes after 9.

Observation: Venus is an occidental evening star.

Prognostication: The minds of the people are filled with ambiguous forebodings.

 

On Christmas Eve morning, Nat had taken such steps as he could to prepare himself for a rapid departure; he had paid for his face to be shaved and his hair to be dressed. Then there was nothing for it but to wait. He found himself repeatedly dragging the noisy leg iron back and forth to the window, hoping to gain his first glimpse of Tabitha. The snow in the castle yard had been mostly swept away by breakfast time, and he could see nothing beyond the high turreted walls. When a carriage rolled in through the gateway, however, its roof was white with snow. To his dismay, he saw the sheriff dismount from it, and beside him walked Constable Saxton, bearing his staff of office. They disappeared into the sheriff’s lodgings while Nat continued to fret at the window.

The constable was in Chester devilish early; he envied him travelling with Tabitha from Netherlea. He told himself that Tabitha must even now be making her way to the Goldsmith’s Fair. He had no doubt that she was as sharp as a razor, but still he wished that he could have accompanied her. Those merchants would try to swindle her – he silently urged her to hold out for as much as twenty guineas.

When might she come to the gaol – as early as noon? The castle bell rang out midday, then one, then two, and then three. An unpleasantly hollow feeling grew inside his ribcage; he feared that she had tried to sell the watch to someone who suspected it had been stolen. He sank his head into his hands and wondered how his conscience could bear it if he had delivered her up to the law, too.

Night had fallen by four o’clock. Torches were lit against the walls in the courtyard and he could just see moving silhouettes and hear drunken shouts. Heavy steps rang out on the stone stairs leading up to his cell; then the door opened, and the soldier he knew as Jansen pushed a drunken youth inside.

Nat sprang up. ‘Have you seen Tabitha?’

Jansen busied himself attaching the drunken youth to a chain upon the wall.

‘Looks like our lady has brought no Christmas gift, for me nor for you,’ he said in a gruff undertone.

‘Something must have gone wrong,’ Nat hissed. ‘She promised to be here. Some trouble must have delayed her.’

Jansen looked quizzically up at him, through his tangled hair. ‘More’s the shame if she don’t come. The apprentice boys are out holidaying; there are fights on every street corner. I could have smuggled you out in all the hubbub.’

‘Give her time,’ Nat begged.

‘Aye, but hark you, my watch ends at six – and I won’t be back here till your trial day. I’m right sorry. I did my best.’

‘If she comes before six?’

‘If she has the money I stand by my word.’

For the next hour Nat stood upon the stool at the darkened window, conjuring a vision of Tabitha running up to his door, laughing about some foolish delay and spiriting him off to a coach that would speed them down the dark highway. He glanced over at his new cellmate, who was lying upon his stomach, groaning miserably from a surfeit of drink. The lad would not even bear witness to his escape.

The bells rang out six o’clock, and Nat collapsed back upon the stone ledge. His ignorance of Tabitha’s whereabouts was the most appalling thing of all. For a long time he closed his eyes, confronting a series of horrific possibilities. The worst – and, it seemed to him, the most likely – eventuality was that De Angelo had seized her. He remembered her bold good sense, her loyal heart. He longed for brandy, or even a large black tablet such as Reuben Pearce had possessed, to consign himself to oblivion.

Striving to control his fears, he lit a candle, and for the first time grew concerned that the apprentice boy was gasping in a loud and painful fashion. Nat dragged himself across the chamber and prodded him then, reluctantly, heaved him over on to his back, and gave an involuntary cry. The freckle-faced lad was not drunk, but insensible from a wound to his chest that had stained his woollen coat dark with blood.

Nat shouted at his door, but no one answered. He hollered again before remembering Jansen’s warning that most of the soldiery would be taking a holiday tonight. He felt quite empty of ideas; no one would call on him until at least seven the next morning. He made an attempt to staunch the lad’s wound but had no doubt he was too badly injured for anyone but a surgeon to save. He raked his fingers through his hair and despaired. All his plans were confounded.

Forcing himself to grow calmer, he picked up the paper Tabitha had brought him, which bore the transcription of the De Vallory monument. He smiled indulgently over Tabitha’s sketch, for, in truth, she was not the most skilled of artists. He could just identify what appeared to be a figure of a man with a sheet cast over his head, something like an All Hallows’ ghost; certainly, the features of the effigy were entirely obscured. He could not at once think which god or character from the classical world this was meant to represent. Beneath the figure’s raised foot lay a skeleton attempting to rise upon its elbows, twisting its skull to stare upwards at its conqueror. Nat read the inscription:

Francis John De Vallory,

Only Son of Sir John Lawrence De Vallory by Lady Daphne, the daughter of Clement Fifield,

departed this life August fourth 1752, in the twentieth year of His Age.

Only son, was he? Nat sighed, resigned to his own claim being never substantiated. He was truly sorry, however, that Sir John’s only legitimate heir had died in such a violent manner. He had seen the despair in Sir John’s face and would wish such pain upon no parent.

Below were inscribed a dozen lines of Latin. Nat’s eyes speedily picked out a number of conventional and platitudinous words: sleep, truth, gentle. Well, he had the whole oppressive evening before him, so he supposed he might as well translate it from start to finish.

Behold the Veiled One,

Bringer of Truth

He was about halfway through the verse when it struck him, with a tiny thrill of interest, that he was reading a riddle. The effigy had to be a classical figure, for the Golden Age described by Ovid and Hesiod was clearly referred to; he racked his brain but could not find a solution. He caught his breath in excitement as the eighth line was revealed to him:

The sickle-bearer,

Reaper of men.

He dismissed his suspicion; surely this was a conventional description of Death, or Time, who traditionally carried a sickle. There were a number of jarring lines, however:

The serpent-twined staff

Of victorious sleep …

As quickly as he could, he completed the last few couplets.

My wandering twin,

Be-ringed with light,

Devourer of kin

Reaper of years.

Nat leaned back against the chilled wall of his cell and tapped his pen rhythmically against the rickety table. What the devil was this? It was a mighty odd funerary inscription, for it spoke nothing of Francis’s qualities. Instead, it appeared to be a laudatory verse about the veiled figure standing above the inscription, and whoever had composed it had been extraordinarily free in his theme. Surely this was more than a personification of Time or Death? The figure also carried a serpent upon a staff and bore a ring of light. It had to be Saturn, he decided, remembering Ovid’s lines about the god who had ruled a mystical Golden Age before the foundation of the world. And Saturn was another name for Chronos, or Time, and the twin was the planetary wanderer, Saturn, which also sported a ring of light.

Nat squeezed his eyes tight shut and tried to remember all he knew about Saturn. He had once seen a ghastly painting of Saturn destroying his own kin by eating them, thereby forbidding them dominion over himself. He was a cruel god, a forerunner of the grotesque figures of skeletal Death himself.

Nat shook his head in astonishment. Was he correct, to think this described Francis’s murder by means of a reaping scythe, and the bringing of eternal night to Netherlea by use of poison? And a serpent carried upon a staff – why, the solution to the riddle was really rather easy.

Easy, but also terrifying. Where in Heaven’s name was Tabitha? Both his mind and his body were suddenly so agitated that he felt he might scream if he could not at once go and search for her. If he had been cold before, he now found himself shivering like a plague victim.

For now, he had uncovered the identity of De Angelo. And the certainty grew like ice upon his limbs that the longer he was kept apart from Tabitha, the sooner De Angelo would strike.