A Taste for Nightshade (16 page)

Back at the Hall, once I had bathed away my terror and changed my clothes, I found Michael waiting for me. Instead of his usual resentment, my husband set himself to charm me. Over supper he talked of our future together, of creating the perfect home, a fine country estate, and even, he hinted, the founding of a dynasty, here at Delafosse. If only we could get the mill built, all our paltry problems would end. We would make a fortune from the business and restore the house to its original splendour. It was simple.

Finally, he got to the nub of the matter. He had seen a steam engine demonstrated at Skipton. The river ran low in different seasons and our future profits were at risk. All the forward-looking manufacturers were installing steam. ‘Imagine a herd of beasts made of steel,' he urged. Power and speed were his watchwords; but, as he talked of pistons and valves, I no longer listened, only watched his pale cheeks flush, as if he were already fired by the unnatural forces he described. There was such a curious logic to his argument that a few times it rose to the tip of my tongue to indulge him. But I knew Michael better now. Remembering Mr Tully's advice, I kept my mouth closed. Then, as I rose to retire, he did too. He reached awkwardly for my hand, his long white fingers brushing mine. I looked up at him; at his face so intensely watching me; the sad need in his eyes like a lure. Dumbfounded, I pulled my hand clumsily away.

But once we had parted I was unable to sleep. The horror in the tunnel, followed by Michael's febrile mood had both infected me. His talk of spending money on the Hall was difficult to resist. Anne's visit was fast approaching, and I pictured her peering along the shabby corridors of Delafosse, disappointed by the chaos and collapse. Perhaps Michael was right, and I should spend my way out of unhappiness. If I did, would he be civil to Anne? If only she would delay her visit until spring. Even Peg had grasped what a deliverance that would be.

Anne's letter had also contained disconcerting news: ‘I am afraid I bring momentous news that strikes at the heart of our friendship. I cannot write of it now, I must speak when we are alone.' Had she discovered something about my father, or about Michael? My mind ran harum-scarum over nervous speculations: why might she no longer be my friend?

The church bell rang out two o'clock. Footsteps, light but clear, ran along the wooden boards below my room. Michael's room was down there, by the Long Gallery. I sat upright and lit a candle. Apparently he could not sleep either. The answer, I decided, was to go downstairs and tell him to buy the machine. In return I hoped he would promise to be kinder to me, and to Anne too. The notion struck me that the middle of the night was the best time to speak to him. He had been excited all evening; perhaps, after his bungled attempt to caress me, he wanted to do more than merely speak?

A few minutes later I stood outside Michael's door, hesitating as the floorboards creaked beneath my bare feet. Caution urged me to sleep on my decision, but the memory of my bed's heart-shrinking emptiness left me standing in a sort of stupor. If I can only buy the machine he will be more amiable, I told myself. I rapped anxiously at his door. There was no reply.

The door opened without hindrance. My candle revealed Michael's empty bed, the sheets untouched. I looked about in disappointment. There stood his pomades, brushes, and silverware, laid out before a mirror. I knew that he buffed, polished and maintained his appearance; I often caught him admiring himself in the mirror. His favourite midnight blue coat hung on a hook. I pressed my face to the fabric, inhaling his male scent, tempered with sweet cologne.

Setting down the candle on his desk, I saw from his heavily inked blotter that he had been a busy correspondent. But when I held the blotter to the mirror I could make no sense of it, save ‘The George Inn', and the impress of his signature, an almost unreadable ‘
M
' with a scribbled tail.

I have never been a prying person, valuing privacy myself. So it was a new emotion, to feel the perversity of maddening curiosity. I knew as I searched Michael's room that I would suffer from the consequences, but I did it just the same. Pry into a cloud and be struck by a thunderbolt, they say.

First, I listened for any sound from the corridor. All was quiet. Holding my breath, I lifted the lid of his writing desk and delicately sifted through its contents. At first I found unpaid bills for astronomical sums, from tailors in Manchester and York, incurred on visits after which Michael had complained bitterly of his heavy labours. A bundle of letters from his mother made petty enquiries about the Hall, but contained not a single word about me. There was a torn half of a theatre ticket, and many descriptions of equipages for sale. I almost didn't lift the copper disc lodged beneath the papers, assuming it to be an old seal. Then I grasped its crumpled ribbon and pulled it out.

A dirty old penny swung from my fingers, with crude writing scratched on its surface. I held it to the candle and read with some difficulty:

I felt a queer jolt of alarm, for the verse had a menacing quality. I asked myself why Michael kept such a filthy object. He surely couldn't be the intended recipient of such a crude threat? But if he was – had the writer of the message found Michael yet? Or did he keep the coin in his desk in anticipation of being found on that promised day?

I turned the coin over, expecting to see the king's head, or Britannia. Instead, I read with increasing uneasiness:

MARY JEBB AGE 19
TRANSPORTED 7 YEARS
TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

Below was a clumsily etched arrow-pierced heart. Surely it could not be a love token? The pattern of hearts and chains about the circumference recalled a sailor's flesh inscribed with inky doves and flowers – brands that marked them as outcasts from respectable life. Mary Jebb, I mused – what an ugly name. Yet she was a young woman, or she had been when the token was made; and young women were undoubtedly prone to romantic feelings. No, I decided, there had to be another, more trivial reason for Michael's keeping it. He had probably never even met the woman. I laid it down and put everything carefully back just as it had been before.

Perplexed, I set off in search of my husband. His study, the library – all lay empty. I doubted he had left the house, for his new horse Dancer had taken a tumble, and Michael was more concerned with his horse than his own cuts and bruises. He was at home and awake, I was convinced of it. Wanting to find him without pacing every inch of the Hall's labyrinthine passages, I decided to go outside, and from that vantage point, search for a lit curtain. With a wild sense of purpose I fetched shoes and a cloak from my room, lit a dark lantern, and let myself out of a side door.

Outside, I shivered in a landscape of greys and silvers, the stone walls and cobbles looming pale in the wintry air. The only true colour was an amber penumbra shimmering around the moon. Beyond the silvered slope of overgrown lawn, the mass of black trees moved to and fro in the breeze, with a strange undulation like waving sea fronds. Stepping onto the frost-crisped grass, I turned back to gain a view of the house. Every window of the Hall was dark, like a colony of sleeping eyes inside a hive. Then, taking a last survey of the park, I noticed a tiny golden light above the horizon. I peered at it, unable to locate its source. Shivering but determined, I set off in the darkness towards it.

After some short time hurrying along the path, I understood that the source of the light was the hunting tower. Opening the small hinged door of my lantern and following its narrow beam, I puzzled over why Michael would go there. He had never spoken of the place, and I had thought it abandoned. Growing closer, the golden spark grew into a rectangle of warm light framed by the diamond panes of an upper-floor window. By now the cold had shocked me into full alertness, and instinctively wary, I shuttered the door of my lantern to hide its light. Soundlessly, I opened the tower door and stood on the threshold, listening.

I could hear movement and low voices upstairs. As quietly as I could, I stepped inside and gently set the door to. Then, tiptoeing to the bottom of the spiral staircase, I listened again, and heard what I at first understood to be people struggling. A woman's voice spoke in a low murmur, coaxing or crooning. Suddenly she cried out, and there began a rhythmic slapping of flesh upon flesh. A man's voice reached me: a wordless remonstration. With a thump against my ribcage I knew the man was Michael. I guessed that those sounds were an accompaniment to something Michael had never wanted from me – the sound of a man and a woman, taking passionate pleasure in each other's bodies. I stood transfixed, holding back tears. I had hoped that Michael and I were taking small steps towards a life together, that one day my husband's coldness would thaw. I had deluded myself. Now I had proof he took his pleasure with some other woman. I stood a long while in a sort of daze, until a loud scraping of furniture interrupted my wretched thoughts, portending their departure.

A table stood covered in a fusty cloth. On a whim I crouched behind it. I could have fled but I had to see
her
– it was a primitive pain I had to inflict on myself. As they came down the stairs, my heart beat so violently it seemed they must hear it. From my hiding place I had only a partial view of Michael's legs, moving slowly. In his shadow was the woman, wearing black skirts. They did not speak; the only sound was a metallic slithering, as if she wore many necklaces or bangles. As she passed through the door I moved to gain a fuller view. She was tall, and her loose black hair tumbled past her waist. With a loud click I heard the key turn. They had locked me inside.

In my wretchedness I scarcely cared. I curled in upon myself in the darkness, the woman's image searing my mind's eye. I pictured her hair, lush and raven-black, spreading luxuriantly while my husband coupled with her. I guessed who she was, of course. That hair – to think that I had touched it, had even kept a long coarse strand inside my purse. Like parts of a child's puzzle slotting together, I remembered that Michael had visited Earlby seven times before we had married. I added that strange account of Mrs Harper's sudden departure, her impudent use of my – no, what should have been our – bed. I was convinced Michael had crept away to see Mrs Harper on our wedding night. No doubt he met her frequently, unknown to me.

A sickened curiosity gripped me to see the place where they had met. Upstairs the fire had sunk to red embers, but the room was still rich with the tang of sweat and naked flesh. There were the remains of sweetmeats on the table, and a discarded bottle and two glasses. I carried one glass to the fire and saw the rim was smeared with the tell-tale residue from a woman's painted lips. I raised the glass to my lips; it had a spirituous reek and the lees sparkled like tiny spangles of gold. I looked about the room in despair. On such a cold night they must at first have prepared a great fire, for an untidy heap of birch kindling lay tumbled across the floor. The smell and heat made me sick, for it amplified something salty, primitive and strange.

My stupor was interrupted by the sound of the door below being unlocked. Someone had returned. Hastily, I tiptoed up the corkscrew stair to the roof. Up there it was so biting cold and dark I barely had the courage to place one foot before another. I could still hear movements from the room below, pacing back and forth, and the fire being dampened down. In my frantic state, I strove to hold onto the corner turret, at the same time creeping around it to hide. Like a tight-rope walker I inched my way, hampered by my limbs' unruly shaking. I thought I heard someone coming up the stair, and took a step further away.

My ankle hit the low barrier that edged the roof. For a long, anguished moment I felt myself flailing in empty air. Then I lost my balance entirely and plunged down from the roof, into rushing blackness.

 

 

‘Mistress is dead! Mistress is dead!' Nan's caterwauling entry startled Peg as she stood raking the embers of the fire to start breakfast. The old woman slumped down, slack-jawed onto a stool.

‘What's going on?' Peg shook her bony shoulder.

‘I were out picking simples at first light, and I saw her. She's lying dead in't bushes by the tower,' mumbled Nan.

Peg ran all the way in the grey dawn, her heels flying and a procession of notions skittering through her head. And there indeed lay her mistress, looking horribly corpse-like in a tangle of gorse. She halted warily; knelt, and touched her. She was certainly cold, but Peg had to be sure of it. She gave her waxy face a little smack. Mrs Croxon took a sharp breath and rolled her head aside. Peg peered at the scene and read it like a book: the roof of the tower and its low barricade, her mistress's fall broken by the springy branches. And here she was, all alone with her mistress, and Nan even now telling everyone she was dead. Peg froze above her mistress like a lioness, calculating different paths and different futures. Slowly she pulled off her shawl, and raised it in a tight wad above Mrs Croxon's face.

How stupid Mrs Croxon looked. Peg hesitated, weighing it all up – the danger of being caught, the risk to her liberty, the possible complications. No. It would serve her no advantage. She dropped the shawl gently to the ground as the sound of runners pelting down the path exploded behind her. The master ran to his wife's side, and Peg followed him, very grave-faced, as he carried her back to the house.

Half an hour later Dr Sampson, one of the master's cronies from the George, hurried up the stairs. Peg made up a tray of hot tea, cake, and brandy and took it directly upstairs. Lingering, she caught almost every word that Mr Croxon and the doctor exchanged, through the gap in the door.

‘—a queer place for your wife to take a tumble,' said the doctor in his deep bass voice.

‘I'm afraid she has trouble sleeping. She gets up sometimes and wanders. Nerves, I suppose.'

‘We'll need to keep a weather eye on that, Croxon.'

When their voices dropped, she knocked, and the master ushered her forward into the sickroom, that smelt nastily of purging. The mistress lay with her eyes closed, her face chalky white. The doctor, a plump, whiskery fellow, held up Mrs Croxon's arm that wore a trail of leeches as black as jetty slugs.

‘This is the woman,' the master said to the doctor, nodding his head at Peg. ‘My dear wife knows and trusts her.' The doctor appraised her, and Peg shrank herself into a little curtsey. She made sure he saw nothing but a modest gown on a neat figure, a demure face, a thoughtful tray of refreshments.

‘Mr Croxon does not want a stranger to nurse his wife. You will step up and do your best, eh, Mrs Blissett?'

She nodded, her eyes cast down.

‘Your mistress has been badly cut and bruised, and then exposed to many hours' severe chill. Thankfully, no limbs appear to have been broken. Indeed, she has had an astonishing escape from harm. But your patient will be enfeebled for some time, and will need delicate handling. No doubt her nerves are shaken, but with care she may escape the worst effects of her accident.'

‘She looks so weak,' she said.

‘That is the effect of the leeches,' the physician replied. ‘She must sleep without disturbance. If she calls for drink, give her only lime water today. Send for me if there are convulsions or unusual signs, but I do not expect them. So – until tomorrow.'

‘I shall dine out, Mrs Blissett.' Naturally, His Nibs was fidgeting to leave the sickroom in the doctor's wake. ‘No need to go back downstairs,' he called from the doorway. ‘Devote yourself to your mistress.'

They both vanished, leaving her quite in charge. Peg poured herself a dish of tea and sat down heavily beside the bed. Slowly, she ate her master's piece of cake, and then the doctor's. Then she lifted her aching feet onto the bed, sat back comfortably, and started on the brandy.

Only once in her life had she been laid low, after the Great Storm at Sydney Cove. Jack had carried her to the hospital hut, but new wretches arrived every day with jail fever, and soon it was heaped with the dying. Without fresh victuals, scurvy broke out, killing even more colonists every day. Women like her were ordered to shift for themselves. Though still sore from cuts and bruises, she had to face the prospect of limping back to the camp. True, there was her wedding to get up for, but it grieved her to marry Jack in such a tatterdemalion state. No fresh clothes or even a hank of thread had been shipped out for the women's use. Her wretched gown was in ribbons, and only covered her bosom thanks to the pins she guarded like treasure. As for the wounds to her face, and clump of missing hair, she was glad there was no mirror to inspect herself.

Then Jack approached her with a shamefaced expression, before burying his head in his hands. ‘Go on,' she said, ‘tell me the worst.' When she finally got the words out of him, she could have spat venom at having such damnable bad luck. ‘The reverend says I'm to tell you there's a woman, Annie Mobbs she's called, sailed on the
Scarborough
.' She waited in silence as he twisted his greasy cap in his hands.

‘She's going about saying me and her was married, two years back at Plymouth. Mary,' he cried, clutching her hand, ‘I was as drunk as a lord, fresh off the ship. Surely it don't stand?' Jack wept like a baby while she watched him, dead-eyed with disappointment.

It did stand, for in spite of the reverend turning a blind eye every day to husbands or wives alive on the other side of the world, he would not bigamously marry Jack, whose wife brandished a scrap of paper and a brass wedding ring. He was ordered to live with Annie Mobbs in a married man's hut, much to that ugly trull's jubilation.

‘So where the Devil do I go now, Jack?' She had lost her sweet-girl manner, for she had backed a loser, after all.

‘It breaks my heart,' he whined like a puling child. ‘You must stay in Sodom Camp with the other women.' When he reached for her hand she slapped him away.

She found quarters in Ma Watson and Brinny's tent, in a corner vacated by a woman who had given up the ghost in childbed. There was general rejoicing that the infant had snuffed it too, for had it lived, its death might have proved a great deal slower and noisier. Her quarters stank like a pigsty in the breathless heat of the daytime, but once the sun set it was perishing cold. The talk was always the same old patter: of the brainless government, the stingy rations, which cove had stabbed who in a fight, and who shared whose bed. Across the way, Janey's tent was a brothel of canvas, the scene of knife-fights and grog-fuelled riots, from which men tumbled, drunk and dangerous. These were no swell gentlemen living by thieves' honour, but wiry wretches with naught to live for but oblivion and the chance to hurt someone weaker than themselves. It was then that a mad mongrel known as Stingo began to sniff about her, mumbling lewd descriptions of what he wished to do to her, and twice she had to run from his pawing hands. The squat figure of Annie Mobbs haunted her too; everywhere she heard her mocking laughter and yawling Devon lingo. If it were possible to wish someone dead, her raging thoughts would have struck Mobbs down like gunshot.

You are still alive, she repeated to herself, as if words were ropes to hold her afloat in a trough of night soil. But the truth was that her quick wits were failing by the day. She blamed the soupy heat that made it hard to walk for even a minute. Nothing behaved as it should any more: it was like the view across the heat-scorched land, the shadows wobbling like water in the sunlight, the shapes of men elongated like trembling trees. And the work she was given, collecting shells on the seashore to make mortar for the new town, left time hanging heavy. She was riled with herself, too, in a fuddled way, unable to shake off the notion she had missed the main chance, though what that chance was she wasn't sure. Not to be a whore in the brothel tent, mind, not since Janey was dispatched to Kingdom Come by a glass bottle shoved in her pretty face. She grunted when she heard the news, unable to form a fitting epitaph. The truth was, since the Great Storm, while her body produced aching pain, her mind was as barren as a coiner's blank.

There were men in the early days, redcoats or lags, it no longer mattered, who she shuffled off with, into the bush. With her eyes closed against the red disc of the sun, she barely noticed the fumbling and grunting – all her thoughts were consumed by the salivating vision of her fee: a mouthful of food. Sometimes she fell in with a mob of black women who gathered in a gully near the beach. When she
coo-eed
to them, they grinned back, showing perfect teeth, their children creeping forward boldly to touch her pearly northern skin. They exchanged gestures about the children, complaints about empty bellies. To the accompaniment of hoots of laughter, she tested their lingo: the sweet tea leaves she searched for were
warraburra
, and the desire to eat, which she mimicked hand to mouth, they called
pattaa
. They were secretive, leather-hard people, not unkind, willing to give her a sip of bitter drink from their gourds or a wriggling grub from a hole in the ground to chew. From them she learned to plait grasses, and best of all, which roots were edible and how to cook them in the ashes of the fire.

But, like everyone else, she was starving. Her daily ration produced a ladleful of saltless slop, to which the women struggled to add more – chickweed or a roasted rat, or any grub or sea creature. Aunt Charlotte had called kitchen fare belly timber, and so it proved, for without food the spirit collapsed, like a beached ship weathered away to rotting ribs and yawning holes. At night, dreams of food flared like bonfires in her fancy, of a long-forgotten moment spreading dripping onto bread, the brown specks of meat juice, the relief of jaws sinking into plenty. In one harrowing dream she found a sugar-crusted cake forgotten in her pocket. It haunted her waking hours; the compulsion to search, the certainty it might still be there in her pocket, squashed and delicious.

Dr Sampson left a brown bottle labelled ‘The Mixture'. While Mrs Croxon slept, it took only a moment to exchange the contents with her own Hystericon. Nightshade had been one of Granny's favourite simples; doled out to women troubled by fits or to bring on the Twilight Sleep when in childbed. With her mistress sleeping like a waxy corpse, Peg took a little holiday, making brews in the distillery, and setting off again to search for the writing box. In chamber or studio, there was not a sign of the damnable object. By the third day, however, her mistress started to rebel.

‘No more,' she croaked through cracked lips, pushing the glass of pungent potion away. Thereafter, there was no disputing that Dr Sampson's patient was making a good recovery. When her mistress finally sat up to attempt some chicken hash, she glanced up at Peg and mumbled, ‘Don't look at me like that. I didn't try to – end my own life. It was an accident.'

An accident. Peg took a deep breath. ‘At the tower?'

Mrs Croxon's red-rimmed eyes looked away and her face crumpled. ‘Yes, you may as well know. I was looking for my husband.' She wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. Her genteel voice wavered. ‘I have decided to leave him. Make a sensible parting between the two of us. Live a quiet life somewhere else. Alone.'