A Taste for Nightshade (14 page)

‘Oh, it's you.' It was only the widowed char, her withered cheek bent low as she stood as still as stone, catching her breath at the top of the stairs. Bony hands, speckled with age, clutched the broom that she rested upon. Poor creature, I thought, reduced to this labour, when her gown showed signs of better days and her hair was wiry with silver threads.

‘I wondered who it was,' I explained gently. ‘Carry on.'

She lifted her face to mine; her features indistinct beneath the great glass lantern that crowned the staircase, for no one had yet had the courage to tackle its decades of cobwebs. Then she smiled, a complicit smile, lit by a meagre warmth behind her colourless eyes. After that I often heard the steady swish of her broom across the boards outside my door, and left her in peace to her work.

At that time, a gloriously bright day tempted me outdoors to explore the park. It could have been May-time and not October, as ragged white clouds chased across gillyflower blue. To wander amongst such beauty and yet have no resolved existence left me aching with exquisite pain.

I was glad of distraction when I came upon Nan, a wicker basket strapped to her back like a pedlar-woman's. She was collecting a bounty of rosehips, sloes, and brambles that she showed me with pride. We fell into step together as she chattered in her homely manner.

‘Down there's a good spot for codlins,' she told me, and so I followed her curious hunch-backed figure through dripping glades that might have been undisturbed for centuries.

It was short work to pick a vast heap of hard green fruit, so I offered to help her carry them home, bundling them up in my shawl. As we wended our way, I asked her where Lady Blair was buried.

‘Down in't crypt in't village church. So 'ow she's supposed to rise and walk about I cannot say.'

Though I knew I risked frightening myself, I asked, ‘Was she truly so dreadful, Nan?'

Nan halted to investigate a clump of stinking leaves, her gnarled fingers pinching out a few seed pods. Raising herself with a sigh, she said, ‘She were brung up like all rich folks in them days, to do as she pleased. All these lands was her own little kingdom. We 'ad a household of twenty servants then, and I were a hale woman in me prime. We 'ad our jests and jokes behind her back, mind. We 'ad to, for she were as miserable as sin. No man would take her on, rich or poor, she being such a hately creature.

‘So it were just a lark to us, when Mr Ashe come here, him being not yet thirty, and she more 'n sixty. He could charm the birds from the trees, that one. Soon enough the old witch were like a chick in 'is hands. It were a kind of madness come on her, from being so long a maid.

‘First she thought she could buy 'im. She had her testament drawn up making 'im, her only heir – he would've got the Hall and all her fortune. We servants watched it happen like scenes of a doom play, rolling fast on to the road to Judgement. You see, it were no secret to us that Mr Ashe was romancing another young woman, a Miss Hannah who were biding here too. What did them two young lovebirds care if a laundry maid passed 'em in the long grass, or a gardener saw them in the summerhouse?'

Nan paused and turned her rheumy eyes to mine with a malicious gleam of pleasure. ‘The old 'un found 'em out. There were such rantings and screamings that the Hall itself seemed to shake. Next, Miss Hannah says she's with child.'

‘Poor girl,' I said with sympathy. By now we were at the kitchen door, and when Nan beckoned me inside to see her workplace I followed, having little else to do but hear the end of her tale. Peg was not about, only the two powerfully-built sisters employed as maids-of-all-work, stood scouring copper pans.

At the far end of the kitchen stood a low, iron-barred door. Picking up lanterns, we passed through it and clambered down chilly steps to a warren of larders and cold stores. In the lantern glow, our giant shadows danced and rocked about us, revealing the start of a tunnel dug into the rock ahead. We passed a few of the village women cleaning by lamplight: the stout, strong-looking char washing down shelves, and the widow-woman moving wine bottles. I thought the caverns marvellous; quite worthy of one of Mrs Radliffe's tales.

‘Don't you fret, I know these passages backwards and forwards – even in the pitchy dark,' Nan's thin voice called. ‘I never had no candles, all these years. Nowt to be scared of down here but a few rats and beetles.'

I peered warily at the floor at Nan's mention of rats. We moved on, past a dry larder filled with net cradles hanging from the ceiling, and a cold larder hung with grisly carcasses and stiff birds.

‘Here we are, mistress.' I had to crouch to enter a barrel-vaulted cellar crammed with dusty bottles and sheaves of herbs and twigs.

‘This were the old cook's 'stillery,' said Nan, lighting more candles from her lantern. I looked about myself with pleasure; fitted with a burner, glassware and funnels, the chamber had all the romance of a necromancer's lair.

‘You sit down, mistress.' Nan tipped the contents of her basket across the table. ‘I just 'ave to start these drying before they lose their virtue.'

As I waited, I picked up a receipt book, and idly flicked through the pages. It was no witch's
grimoire
, for it opened at a method for a homely apple pie.

Nan trailed about the shelves in search of her drying pans. ‘
She's
gone and started moving my stuff. I could allus find it before.'

‘Mrs Blissett, do you mean?' I remembered Peg's kindness in keeping the old woman on; her insistence that such an unfortunate must not be turned from our door. ‘It is a new order now, Nan, and it is best to adapt to it. She has her reasons for making all these changes.'

I couldn't see Nan's face, but her voice was disgruntled. ‘Oh, aye, mistress. She has them all right. I'll make do with this.' Settling down at the table she began to pick over her harvest, and recommenced her tale.

‘Right-oh, well when the mistress heard 'ow Miss Hannah were breeding, she got a wicked notion in her head. She told Mr Ashe he could have no inheritance unless he got the child signed over to herself. She would give Miss Hannah money, plenty of it, in return for the bairn being kept here as her own. Us downstairs reckoned that way she'd not only hope to keep Mr Ashe by her side, but have a new line of heirs for Delafosse, too. Miss Hannah were to be kept here until her time come. That's how I got right friendly with 'er, for I often took her a bite and had a tattle with her.'

‘She must have been frightened, here alone?'

‘Aye, but she were that lovelorn over Mr Ashe, she hung on his every word. Then, bless 'im, next we knew he smuggled his lass out of here to another place. Mr Ashe had found his Christian conscience see, and wouldn't let a mother be parted from her child.'

‘Bravo for him,' I said with feeling.

‘Aye, but when the mistress found the pretty bird had flown, there were such a how-row! But Mr Ashe stood his ground, he was young and hot-blooded, and that night he went off to be a soldier. As for her ladyship, her heart was broke in two. Within the six-month, a letter come to say poor Mr Ashe were slain, sliced through in that battle across the ocean. She got a sort of brain-fever then, pacing the house, never resting. I grew afeared of her, for she'd come up behind you and grasp your shoulder and fix on you with frantic eyes. “Where's my baby child?” she'd ask. “I heard him crying but I lost him just now. Where have you hidden him?”

‘Poor Dorcas, we called her. Her soul-case were cracked, it were a half-life she were living. Wandering and searching for that baby she were, till the day she fell dead. Then the bailiff come and told me the Hall were to go to some sort of high court, and I could stay on to keep an eye on it. And only this summer it were put to rent.'

I tried to banish this nursemaid's nonsense and said, ‘To think, if Mr Ashe had agreed to be her ladyship's companion in her final years, perhaps even married her, all could have turned out well.'

Nan turned to me, gape-jawed. ‘Perhaps I din't make meself clear, mistress. Mr Ashe were Lady Blair's sister's son. He were her blood nephew. The scriptures don't allow such unnatural connections.'

I wondered how I had misunderstood so much. ‘No, Nan, I'm sorry, I had no notion.'

‘No matter, mistress. Here now, you'll like this, I've kept a chest of all them old confects and devices …'

Just then a powerful notion of being observed made me look over my shoulder. I got up to look outside, and there stood Peg at the threshold, as if just arriving in her cloak and bonnet, with a bundle in her hand.

She bobbed at me and laughed. ‘Pardon mistress. I never expected to find you down here. It gave me a little fright, seeing you.'

‘Yes, and you surprised us, too. I was – well, helping Nan carry her garden stuffs.' It was ridiculous, but I felt the need to explain my presence to Peg.

‘You mustn't take notice of old Nan's maunderings,' she said lightly, setting her bundle down. ‘You don't know fact from fable, do you, pet?'

The old dame nodded. Comprehending that I was preventing them from getting to work, I rose to return upstairs. As I left, Peg quickly gathered up her receipt book and hugged it to her breast. It was odd that I recalled the title a twelve-month later, when I had the chance to look at it more closely. Back then I had glanced at the flyleaf and seen
Mother Eve's Secrets
written in Peg Blissett's lady's hand.

 

 

‘Did you find them?'

Nan pushed the rattling seed heads towards Peg. She peered at them and saw the queer ragged crowns to their tops.

Peg jerked her head towards the door. ‘Off you go.'

Nan scuttled past her, not even daring to look in her face. Alone, Peg beat her fingers slowly against her mouth, looking into space, cogitating. Well, the old mopsy's patter had made mighty interesting listening from behind the door.

First of all, she found the right page in
Mother Eve's Secrets
for what she wanted to make. Mrs Croxon had been touching it, idly turning the pages. Yet what did it matter? She was just a flat, who couldn't see what stood before her, even if it jumped up and bit her nose.

It was while she was assembling her ingredients that she started to tidy away the small chest Nan had pulled out to show the mistress. ‘Confects', was what she'd called them. Lifting the lid it looked to be only broken china, a tarnished spoon, a piece of dried up marchpane. The small parcel in the corner had a musty look, but she opened up the stiff paper to find – what in damnation was that? The cake itself was dust, but the device had survived. Carrying it in her palm to the lamp, she spent a while studying it closely. It was a figure of a swaddled baby the size of a thumb, laid inside a miniature rocking cradle. Lifting it to her lips she set the tip of her tongue against its underside. The pleasant tingle told her it was made of sugar.

Placing it back in its bundle of paper she saw the inner sheet was a letter. Laying the stiff parchment flat on the table, she read it with growing fascination. It was written by the soppy article Nan had talked of, the one with a jack-in-the-belly. It amused her that the writer had not even inquired if Nan could read:

Well, the young mother certainly had a high theatrical style of letter-writing. Peg pursed her lips as she struggled to make out the unexpected name described by the tattered signature. Then, placing the letter and cradle back in the box, she wondered how she might put this extraordinary fact to the greatest use.

It was time to make a start on making the special Usquebaugh for the master. With
Mother Eve's Secrets
open before her, she hummed merrily under her breath. This distillery was an unexpected boon. She was building up her hoard of pretty bottles of queer potions, alchemical powders, lozenges, elixirs, and pills no larger than pin-heads. Still, she must change the lock soon, to avoid any more unwelcome visitors. She patted the chatelaine that bounced at her waist; a plaque of steel hooked to her belt, with clips holding scissors, a pincushion, and a most useful collection of knives and hooks. It was growing heavy with keys, both those she found and those Mrs Croxon handed to her in her vague, apologetic way. Now she had keys to every part of the house. 

And Nan was proving useful. Looking at the seed pods on the drying plate, she resisted the temptation to touch them. Granny had told a tale of some children eating such stuff who had then slept for four solid days, and been lucky to wake. Besides, she had other fish than eels to fry, or was that other cordials to doctor? She assembled the great glass globe of the alembic and set it on a low fire, attaching the pipe so it dripped into another bowl. Once she had seen a picture of one of those natural philosophers and their experiments. Now that was a life she might have enjoyed if she were a man; discovering new compounds and waiting to see how those who ate them fared. Grinding up the Blistering Flies in a mortar until they were shiny crimson, she smiled to herself, for it put her in mind of the Palace.

Making colours had been Mary's favourite task; squeezing green juice from spinach, or rubbing the indigo stone in water to make twilight blue. The making of cochineal red always provoked the same macabre jests. ‘A bowl of blood,' Auntie would wheeze, overseeing the carefully stirred crimson liquid. ‘That's what them anatomisers collect in a basin. I seen it in the
Newgate Calendar
. They cuts the corpse down from the gibbet and carry it off to the saw-bones's house. A soul can never go to rest, once it is drained of every drop of blood.' Wary of drips, she would carry the bowl of viscous red to Auntie to be tested. Dipping her pen in the crimson ink, Aunt Charlotte always recited the same words, to the gasps and hoots of the company.

‘“Who scribes in blood his heart's desire – condemns his soul to the Devil's fire.” Go on then, girl, ask the Devil for whatever you wishes for. 'Tis only your soul you must hand over in return.'

She had shrieked and jumped back from the dripping pen. ‘It's not proper blood, Auntie!' Auntie waited, quill pen in hand, to test the red on clean white paper. What would they ask for, they all wondered, if they could have their heart's desires? Would a thousand pounds do? Hell's teeth, it would not. They wanted palaces and treasures and gowns and gallant lovers. Occasionally the excited chatter took a sober turn. Miss Dora, mannish-faced and leather-belted, said she wanted only a few acres with chickens and a stream to walk by with a little dog. The rest scoffed at that and vied to describe the costliest diamonds and richest beaux.

‘Out damned spot! Will these hands ne'er be clean?' mocked Miss Edwina, snatching at Mary's fingers that were deep-reamed with scarlet. Edwina had once been an actress, and regaled them with the story of Lady Macbeth, who had murdered a man and could never again scrub her hands clean. And as she listened, she had sat on her stool with her chin in crimsoned hands, transported by spanking tales of ghosts and murders, blood and gold.

Every day as Peg served Mrs Croxon, her first impression of her mistress did not change: she was a fish out of water, forever with her face in a book or rambling about the grounds. She had odd notions, too. Fancy talking with that half-wit Nan? And the cold-hearted way His Nibs treated her, that was an entertainment in itself.

Still, Peg was buttering her up like a plate of hot rolls. Each morning Peg listened to her attempts to give orders, then briskly stepped in and told her what was to happen. There was some venison that would do very nicely, Peg would say, recollecting Nan's saying she could roast a saddle.

‘Oh, would you? Well, if it is not too much trouble?'

‘For you, Mrs Croxon, nothing is too much trouble.'

Then, just as Peg felt she could swan through each day without ruffling her feathers, Mrs Croxon wafted a letter in front of her. Where had that come from? Peg oversaw all the post for Delafosse Hall. That visiting card from Miss Sybilla Claybourn, for instance – that had been a close call. It was a good thing Miss Claybourn had sent Sue over with it – the same Sue she knew from the lodging house. She had invited her in to have a good old hobnob over a dish of tea in her housekeeper's quarters.

After Sue had gone, she had collected Miss Claybourn's card with the others that had arrived from the Earlby gentry. Slowly, and with some pleasurable ceremony, she burned them in the kitchen fire. As she dreamily watched the cards curl and blacken, she felt the prickle of someone watching her over her shoulder. Thrusting the last card into the fire with the poker, she looked up. But it was only Nan.

‘Looking for work?' she snapped.

Nan shook her head and shuffled off. What did she care? Even if Nan had seen her, that bag of bones couldn't read.

Now Mrs Croxon wafted a letter before her that must have been picked up directly in the village. ‘We are to have a guest. It is my oldest friend, Anne – Mrs Greenbeck. She will arrive here on the twenty-third of November.'

That was barely a month hence. Peg hid her vexation under a bright enquiry. ‘How long will she be staying here?'

‘She has not yet said. It does depend on—' On what? On how the master behaved himself, no doubt.

‘Well, of course she'll be made very welcome,' she said, wondering how she might achieve the opposite.

‘Oh, thank you, Peg. I cannot say I feel prepared for visitors yet. And the Hall, as it is—' 

Peg gave a long, sympathetic sigh. ‘We could offer a warmer welcome in the spring. Perhaps your friend could put off her visit till then?'

‘Oh no, no. It is quite settled. You must do your best, Peg. And maybe it will do me good.' She pressed her fingertips between her eyes in a nervous gesture that Peg knew well. For very different reasons, Peg guessed her mistress was just as reluctant as she herself, to have a guest to stay.

There was one thing about Mrs Croxon that did impress her. Every morning the mistress disappeared up to the garret, where Peg assumed she did mindless needlework, or Bible-reading, or some such flim-flam. Then one day, after her mistress had gone into town, Peg tried out a key from her chatelaine and took a five-minute sneak about her mistress's attic room. That writing box of hers that contained all her letters, where did she hide it?

To her surprise the chamber was filled with painting stuff, and Mrs Croxon's work was spread about for her to see. She picked up a picture of the master sleeping, ready to scoff at some wishy-washy scrawl. Instead, she looked at it for a mighty long time, unable to pull herself away. Mrs Croxon had caught His Nibs, all right. Peg didn't know how she'd done it, but it was the spit of him – it had a liveliness to the pencil lines, and a sureness to the colour. Beside it was a magnifying glass on a stand, and a tiny copy she was making onto a disc of white stuff. 

Two other miniatures hung on the wall; one of a mournful mope, who must be her mistress's dead mother. The other was a young lad, pale and fair, whom Peg guessed to be a younger brother, perhaps also dead, for it was wound with a plait of turnip blond hair. How fiddly, Peg thought, all that twiddling about with chopped-off hair. Morbid, too, touching stuff from a corpse. She crossed herself half-heartedly and carried on rifling through piles of papers, recognising the master pictured in lots of different attitudes. With his coat open and his linen loose at his neck, he looked a swell cove, like a gentleman in a play. The pictures were not always flattering, mind you; his wife had caught that downturned sulk to his mouth, and the way he slouched as he sat, absent-mindedly stroking his own hair. He was asleep in the tiny picture being worked upon. How apt was that? His handsome face completely dumb.

Pinned on the wall was a mighty fine picture of Delafosse Hall at twilight; as good as a picture in a newspaper, with the green creeper covering everything, save for the golden rectangles of the windows. It was like a builders' model of a house Peg had once seen in a shop window; there was something beguiling about the tiny doors and knockers and curtains. She traced the entrance, the old parlour windows, the drawing room, the Great Hall. Up at the top, just below the eaves, was the window to this very room. A figure stood at that window. A tiny woman was staring directly at Peg. For an instant it made her skin prick, as if she were being spied on from the miniature window by – no, she wouldn't think of that. Hurriedly, she started to put back what she had disturbed, making ready to return downstairs. Still not a sign of the writing box. But here was something useful: a folder of parchment, letter weight, and what was this? Thin transparent onion paper. She thrust a sheet in her pocket.