A Taste for Nightshade (13 page)

It was days later that they were allowed to land at a ramshackle camp of tents and hovels set up by the men. Everything was alive; the mosquitoes buzzed in your eyes, the biting ants crawled up your legs. The place had an eye-squinting blaze to it, and smelled of parched tobacco. The women were led to airless tents and guarded by redcoats as if they were prize money. That first afternoon they sat playing chuck-penny, or wagering the knucklebones fished out of their broth. They could hear the men hard at it, hammering huts together and banging and cursing around the place. She looked around the tent and wondered what the night would bring. Outside, everything shone so hard the air trembled.

At first there had been the usual military bells, tootling of fifes, beating of drums. A few convict pals called around, and she hung about the entrance, looking for Jack. When he finally braved the redcoats, he told her a curfew had been ordered. Pulling her close, he whispered, ‘Take care tonight, love. There's talk of some of the bad 'uns going off on the rampage.'

Sure enough, they could see lags straggling in groups along the beach. Some had found a supply of grog, and were yelling like young blades out on the town. The marines didn't look to be on duty any more; the women's guards were dallying with a gang of fast girls.

She wiped her sweating brow against the canvas. ‘P'raps I should hide over there, in the bush.' She pointed at a thick stand of trees.

‘Stay with the others, eh? I 'ave to cut it now,' Jack looked more hot and mithered than she'd ever seen him.

When the bell rang out from the men's camp, she found it hard to let go of his hand. Perhaps she was turning into that posset-soft girl she was personating, after all. Once Jack had traipsed off, she eyed the clump of trees one last time.

Back inside the tent it was crowded and airless. Janey was touching up a paunchy fellow – no doubt a new pimp who would protect her. There was no one else to talk to; all her pals were in another tent. She dragged her bit of blanket into a corner, scratched her bites, and let the heat creep over her until she fell asleep.

She was woken by a hot wind that snapped the canvas hard against the ropes. Scarily fast, the tent was stranded in soot-black darkness. With a whoosh, the rain hit the tent, and started up a needling roar. The first blinder of lightning made them all jump like rabbits. A moment later thunder cracked like a giant whip, and then grumbled and rumbled on. Each time it sparked the women cursed and gasped in the darkness. Water trickled from the tent seams. Four men burst into the tent, pretended refugees from the storm.

‘Don't you be afeared o' the storm, pet. We'll take care of you.' A pock-faced ruffian sat down on the end of her blanket, trapping her legs. His eyes gorged on her rump, like he was starving and she was some fancy dish. He offered her a swig from his bottle, but she wouldn't take it. His skinny friend circled, watching her too. When she pretended to sleep, she heard them muttering. The sound of rutting had started up from the back of the tent: knocking, grunting, whimpering. Her mind was as empty as a beggar's purse. Where were the damned redcoats when you needed them? Across the way a few crazy loons ran out into the rain; she could hear them hollering and singing to the storm, as drunk as kings. The camp was fomenting fast. The cribbage-face started to grope beneath her skirts with powerful hands. She shouted, but her voice was lost in the hubbub of the storm. With a violent yank she sprang free and legged it for the canvas door. Outside, she pelted through bucketing rain towards where she thought the trees were, dismayed to find her feet sinking in a quagmire. She wheeled about, unable to see her way. If she carried on along the beach, might she not find Jack? Or at least a couple of redcoats? After fifty paces, she had no notion where she was. Rain filled her eyes and weighted her clothes. She stopped, and tried to get her bearings. She was standing calf-deep in mire. The next white sizzle of lightning lit a group of men standing barely twenty paces away, hearkening to her presence. With a lurch of her guts, she knew they had seen her. She tried to sink down, to disappear into the mud, but at the next flickering flash they were barely an arm's length away. She had no notion where the women's camp was, nor where Jack was, nor the trees, nor God Himself in His cowardly crib of a heaven.

She thought she would die; suffocated by mud, drowned in a pool of muck. After the first desperate struggle, terror unbuckled her limbs, and she played dead. One man, two men, three, then four – she didn't count. It went on for an infernal age. Her body was wrenched and grabbed and shoved and burst apart. Senseless with horror she was ground into slushy sand, her centre red raw. All of her spirit was being snuffed away. So this was Sydney Cove, the end of the earth, the end of her life, where her bones were being fucked into an unmarked grave.

When the sun stung her eyes she was sorry to find herself alive. Jack was crouching over her, his face out of kilter from the shock of it. ‘Who did this?' She couldn't speak. Her mouth was sticky with swallowed sand and men's filth. She felt as brown and stiff as an insect struggling to open its broken wings. ‘I'll get you to the hospital tent,' Jack said.

He had carried her in his arms like a child, stroking her matted hair. And very slowly, like a timid wild creature, she had moved towards him, sinking her head against his chest. The truth was, love had ambushed her that day, just when she wasn't looking. Jack was a purer creature than any other man she'd known; it wasn't just some line he was spinning.

The pipe cast up its summoning tune. Through half-closed eyes, the trees were the same sheltering giants as those she had once camped beneath, in a place like paradise. There was the same smell of crushed leaves and wet soil, the breeze peppered with the scent of woodsmoke and the quickening chill of twilight. She felt suddenly younger and more vital, as if casting off a caul of troubles. The heat of the sun burned on her cheeks again.

Jack Pierce stood before her, wearing ragged breeches, his blue coat hanging open across his naked chest, half its brass buttons gone. The phantom Jack smiled down at her, showing his crooked dog's teeth, his eyes gold-flecked and smiling. She drank in his features, and every inch of his marvellous being. He opened his mouth to tell her something – some foolishness that would make them both laugh, and then fall into each other's arms. But she couldn't stop herself reaching out to him. The flute tumbled to the ground.

In a twinkling he had vanished. No loving smile, no brass buttons – just a hushed and empty glade. Yet still she felt something – the sun burning on her face, the secret graze on her soul of Jack having stood right before her.

‘
Haere, e taku hoa
,' she chanted, and the old lingo was like sweet fruit on her lips. ‘Go, oh my friend,' she whispered. Standing up, she turned to leave. At the edge of the glade she stopped, facing the silhouette of the Hall, standing black-gabled and curlicued against the damson sky. Its bulk recalled the prison where she had first sunk into despair, and the Bailey where she had been sentenced; both of them full of stony men, with unjust power over the likes of her. It's always the Devil dancing beneath the judge's wig, Aunt Charlotte had said, and so she had found it. Like a Catholic reaching for a rosary, she felt in her bodice and found the Penny Heart. The outlines of the words were rough to her fingertips: ‘
I swear on this heart to find you one day …
'

Though the music of the pipe had left her as soft as a moonstruck girl, the Penny Heart could always be relied upon to fortify her. Tonight it felt as hard and heavy as a convict's deadweight, those hunks of iron that kept a body tethered to a few miserable feet of earth. Eyeing the Hall, bitterness ran soot-black through her veins. These people with their landed estates knew nothing of the punch-gut of starvation. Damn their eyes, their one-sided laws and their righteous airs, their always getting what they wanted. She wished on them a hundred times her own pain. She wished on them a dose of her own corroding hurt, like the acid that had long since scarred her own steely heart.

 

 

Like a polite acquaintance, Michael stayed just beyond my reach. That first night at the George he sat beside me, praising the roast beef and claret, the quick servants, and the roaring fire. ‘The currant tart is excellent here – is it not, Grace?' He ate heartily, his eyes half-closed with pleasure.

I nodded, though to me it tasted like sawdust. All evening the inn's comforts were paraded before me until I felt stung with reproach. I longed for privacy, but Michael plunged into boisterous company: men whose glassy eyes slid instantly over my shoulder to something more interesting. Skirving, the architect, I disliked at once, and Dicey the engineer too, both of whom I feared might dupe us, so evasive were their answers to straightforward questions. When I asked them what crisis had occurred the previous evening, they of course looked at me like an idiot. As the evening progressed Michael went to drink beside them and I sat alone and resentful. At ten o'clock I tapped Michael's shoulder and told him I wished to retire. He bade me a hearty goodnight, barely sparing me a glance from a hectic card game. So flushed and happy did he look that I wondered if he were performing an act to discomfit me. But no – he was merely being Michael, seeking respite from himself in drink and company. I wondered how I could endure the life that stretched before me. And I had paid – for that was how I perceived it – one thousand pounds to be treated like this.

Upstairs, in the inn's chamber, I waited in a new chemise, my hair brushed loose to my waist and my person scented with cologne. Hour after hour, the noise of drunken toasts and laughter tormented my nerves. Finally, as an owl lamented from the rooftop, I faced the prospect that Michael would never, ever want me.

In the pallor before dawn our parlour door rattled; unsteady footsteps clumped about, and a chair tumbled to the floor. I rose and opened the middle door.

‘Michael?' My anger was queasily mixed with relief. He had at least come back to our room. He tumbled onto the couch, falling instantly into drunken sleep. I returned to my bed, and for the first time, allowed myself to wail into my pillow. What in God's name had I done?

So the pattern of our days began: when Michael was not sleeping late he went out, to the site at Whitelow, to ride with local hounds, to meet his companions at inns and assemblies. His manner of living, it seemed, was not to change a jot from his bachelor days. I, on the other hand, was not invited to the George again. I received no cards or invitations. I had braced myself for a visit from the Croxons, but even they did not come. ‘I have told them they owe me a bout of freedom,' Michael said bitterly.

Earlby itself proved merely a few streets of stone cottages where the rough-hewn folk eyed my new costumes with disdain. There were a couple of mean shops and the weekly market, and the George, of course, but not even a Circulating Library, or Dissenters' chapel.

I decided I must speak to my God alone, amongst the trees and birds of the estate, like a hermitess of old. Meanwhile, Michael congratulated himself, on being free from church and family and all such bothersome constraints. He ordered fashionable coats and hats from tailors in York. ‘I can tell a great deal from the cut of a man's coat,' he lectured me. ‘One day I'll teach you about style, Grace.' He found a barber who clipped his hair in the fashionable styles of Titus and then of Brutus. He claimed expertise in horseflesh too, purchasing a fine black hunter named Dancer, and talking much of the carriage we must buy, judging our old one too shabby. The pity of it was, that still I was drawn to him and longed for the physical love that I understood crowned a true marriage. In a good temper, he was light-hearted and bestowed precious smiles on me. I discovered that love is not always benign; but humiliating and cruel.

I slept alone in the chamber I had hoped would be a shrine to our marriage vows. On the nights when Michael slept at home, when he was not at the inn or with his companions, he chose a room not even close to mine; a plain closet like a manservant's room near the long gallery, with bare walls and a narrow bed.

I began to dread retiring to that room. A series of uneasy nights led to one much worse than the rest. I lay sleepless with my bed curtains open, my candle extinguished; unhappy visions appearing from my fancy in the darkness. Each time my eyes grew heavy I was tugged back awake by the Hall's untimely groans and creaks. Sometime after the church bell rang three o'clock I heard distant footsteps, a door pulled to, and a movement on the stairs. I knew those footfalls were not imaginary. The wandering old woman of Nan's tale sprang to mind. Could a spirit haunt the spot where its misery kept it chained? My imagination unleashed, I pictured a claw of a hand outside my door, pawing for the latch. Was that a moonlit chair by my window or a motionless watcher with a pale oval of a face?

At last, annoyed by my own credulousness, I lit a candle and took a turn about the room, prodding the furniture and checking the bolt on the door. All was as it should be. Then, lifting my curtain from the casement, I wiped away the beaded moisture and looked outside. The tiny glow of a lamp twinkled near the ground at the western corner of the Hall. I fancied it was a lone person carrying it, and as they walked between tree trunks and shrubs, it periodically blinked in and out of sight. Finally it disappeared entirely, and though I waited, did not reappear.

Shivering, I clambered back into bed, trying to calculate what would attract a person to walk the grounds at night. Had I perhaps seen a poacher, or a servant, off on a nocturnal tryst?

In the crisp light of day I set off to find out, but retracing the walker's steps only took me onto the usual soggy paths. I returned to the Hall convinced that someone, a stranger, was roaming our property at night. I told Michael my worries and he scoffed that I must have been dreaming. Peg took me more seriously and took a walk with me in the area, so we might look for footsteps. But by then it had rained, and the ancient wood offered up no secrets, so we abandoned our search.

More concerning was something I found that I could grasp in my hand. For I say I slept alone – but the taint of Mrs Harper lingered in my bedchamber. When I first drew back the tulip-covered bedcover, I found ugly proof of the liberties she had taken. A hair lay twisted on the inner sheet, very thick, and perhaps thirty inches long. Hair, as I know from my picture-work, has a powerful quality.

This hair was not mouse-soft like my mother's. It was ink-black, and coarse, with kinks from tightly-fixed hairpins along its luxuriant length. Though it revolted me to touch it, I lifted it between my finger and thumb and walked to the fire. Then, anticipating the vile stink burning would make, I instead pushed it into an old silk purse, though its springiness gave it a grotesque half-living quality. After washing my hands, I changed all the bed linen. Nevertheless, whenever I lay down on those cold sheets, I swear I caught Mrs Harper's salty scent rising from the mattress.

My only solace was Peg. I congratulated myself that employing her was my one surefooted act since my marriage. I at once wrote to Miss Sybilla Claybourn in a civil but firm tone. A few days later she replied, and one phrase jumped at me like a well-aimed cat-scratch:

Michael and I were for once at breakfast together, as reserved as two strangers sharing a table at an inn. I read the letter out loud to him.

‘Do you know her?' I asked, for I had not much cared for Peg's description of Miss Claybourn. Michael only knew her land at Riverslea, he said, for it had a wonderful prospect he had admired when out riding.

‘A better prospect than ours?'

He spoke from behind his newspaper. ‘Not so large as ours. In fact I'm scarcely certain where her land ends and ours begins.'

‘So we share a boundary?' For some reason, this displeased me.

‘I will ensure the fences are maintained; then she cannot poach our staff in turn,' he quipped.

I thanked him. As for sacrificing the chance of her acquaintance, I was pleased that her rudeness removed any obligation to call on her. I had already formed an opinion of Miss Sybilla Claybourn as a highborn man-chaser.

From the first, Peg fitted her place like a key in a well-oiled lock. The meals she served were domestic miracles: fresh bread, savoury pies, and joints of meat were laid steaming on our dining table. She also concocted the best of English sweet-stuffs: flummeries, suet duffs, and the best trifle I ever ate. Even Michael admired the comfit-scattered froth of cream laid over macaroons and fizzing cherries.

Even more surprisingly, she had early success in clearing the Hall. As if by magic, the rooms I had chosen as habitable were scrubbed and polished by her band of charwomen. I paid a visit to inspect her ragtag troops, ten or so women and girls, who Peg told me always slept in their own hovels at night, for fear of tales of ghosts. Some were bent old crones and others giggling minxes, but a few looked steady enough: a stout-armed silver-haired matron, and a respectable-looking widow-woman, who I fancied must be forced to such work by unfortunate circumstances. Cloth-headed creatures, Peg called them, but soon they had the parlour and small dining room in satisfactory order. The furnishings were neither modern nor especially comfortable, but the rooms were a haven in the midst of chaos. Burrowing into the ancient mass was how I thought of it then: excavating rooms, as antiquarians unearthed those unfortunate cities destroyed by Vesuvius.

Being much thrown together, I took time to observe my new housekeeper. She was an interesting type from a painter's point of view. Her sharply arched brows gave her a quick and alert expression, and her wide mouth naturally lifted in an amused smile. I fancied her liveliness would challenge a painter, for she was like an animal with a rapid heartbeat, seeming twice as alive as the slow-witted villagers. Her eyes, too, were extraordinary: cat-like in their flat aspect and expressiveness. She had a habit of probing my gaze, boldly, as I instructed her; as if she were seeking a connection not quite appropriate between a servant and mistress.

‘Why do you stare, Peg?' I asked one day. ‘Have I got a mark on my face?'

‘I am near-sighted, Mrs Croxon. I cannot help it.'

I thought that odd, for she could read the stable clock from the kitchen window. She was certainly attractive – but somehow over-bright. She wore pink emulsion on her delicate redhead's complexion that by evening wore thin, showing what I supposed to be scars from an illness. She laboured ceaselessly to please me, but behind all her eagerness I did detect a certain strangeness to Peg Blissett. Perhaps I was unused to anyone striving so hard to gratify me. After all, there is something peculiarly intimate about having one's every wish anticipated, as if one's thoughts are not entirely private.

One morning I told Peg to be sure the cleaning women swept any hair about the place.

‘Hair?'

‘Yes, hair. I found a ghastly black hair in my bed. Mrs Harper's no doubt.'

A peculiar expression passed over her face: an emotion I couldn't interpret. When she spoke her voice was flat. ‘Who is Mrs Harper?'

‘Your predecessor. I thought I told you we were defrauded by our housekeeper.'

She shook her head, frowning mutely.

‘Goodness, Peg. You are rarely lost for words. She took her guinea wages and left,' I added. ‘Tell me, are the housekeeper's quarters comfortable?'

‘They are most comfortable,' she answered, her usual manner restored. ‘Thank you, Mrs Croxon. And you can rest easy; you won't see any more – ghastly black hair about the place.'

While Peg and her workers banged about the house, I escaped to the light-filled sanctuary of my studio. There I began a miniature of Michael copied from the sketch I had made on our journey to Delafosse Hall. Somehow, amidst the distress of our wedding day, I had captured his image as never before. He was sleeping with his head thrown back, the tendons of his throat very pronounced and vulnerable, his curls falling artfully backwards, his eyelids defined by lashes as long as a child's.

Now I began the slow work of copying my pencil sketch onto a thin sliver of ivory, using tiny brushes to articulate strokes no larger than pin-pricks. It is a curious art, to paint on ivory, for the material itself gives life to the skin. I began with a pink wash that had all the natural bloom of flesh. Every speck of an eyelash was a risk, for such work is unforgiving of errors. Yet the application of tiny strokes transported me to a place of sublime peace.

Even then I was bothered by sounds invading my concentration. Footsteps, slow and steady, grew louder on the stair, as irritating as hammer blows. They proceeded with annoying steadiness to just outside my door. Then they stopped. I cocked my head and called out, ‘Peg? Is that you?'

Someone was standing on the landing. It was surely not Old Dorcas, I sighed, roaming the house in her lunatic state. I shoved back my chair with a squeak and noisily crossed the room to swing my door open.