A Taste for Nightshade (18 page)

When the master at last made an appearance, Peg was hovering on the landing, polishing the glassware. Bathed and changed, he sauntered into the old library, brandy glass in hand.

‘What on earth are all these?' she heard him ask his wife through the half-open door. Mrs Croxon murmured something in her soft voice.

Their conversation dropped to a level too low to comprehend, but there was harmony to their speech. She heard him say, ‘—remarkable, Grace.' Then a little later, ‘Well, I could eat a horse. Do I hear dinner being served?'

Both of the Croxons admired her feast. A tureen of Nan's hare soup sent up a savoury steam, and around it was laid roasted pheasant and buttered cabbage. At the centre of the table was the buttery pudding, packed drum-tight with beef and kidney. Even the mistress ate and drank bravely, while the master pounced upon his food. Yet more dishes arrived for the second course: the master's favourite, her own hunting pudding of fruit and brandy, a bread-crumbed ham, the apple pie and syllabub, nuts and candied fruits. Outside, the rain needled the windows in stormy waves.

‘How is the kitchen fire tonight, Mrs Blissett?' Michael asked.

‘Gone out completely in this rain, sir. I was lucky to get dinner finished.'

Peg lit more candles, for the master had made no move away from his usual Usquebaugh, distilled with her own provocative additions.

He drank it leaning back, hog-pink and sated. The mistress sat as stiff as pewter, playing with the fruit on her plate.

Leaving the door ajar, Peg bustled out onto the landing and made pretence of being busy at a sideboard. She heard the glug of another glass of Usquebaugh being poured. She listened to them; knowing this feeling well, when a carefully-laid racket came to ripeness. Pride was in it, but there was scorn too. Gulls, bleaters, flats: whatever you called them, they were sugarpaste figurines performing on a glass stage. Mrs Croxon had shown a peck of spirit, but all it needed was a flick of her husband's little finger for her to melt like sugar in the rain. Hearing nothing, she returned to the half-open door and hid just behind it.

A chair was shoved back and footsteps marched towards her across the dining room. Peg sprang away like a cat from a bonfire. No one emerged. Instead, the door was banged violently shut in her face. What was this, a private meeting? Someone had denied her the satisfaction of hearing her plan ripen to fruition.

 

 

Michael had drunk a great deal from the green bottle, but had not fallen into his usual after-dinner fug. He glanced at me often, rose to slam the door, and returned to his chair to make stabbing motions with his fork at the scraps on his plate.

‘Your plans for the Hall,' he said at last in a low husky voice, ‘are very remarkable.' He looked up at me then through a curl of falling hair, and I knew from his expression that something was wrong. ‘The trouble is, I cannot live here.'

‘What do you mean?' I poured myself another glass of wine, filled with foreboding.

He sighed and twisted painfully in his chair. I tried to see past the pink flush of his skin, and wondered if Michael might be ill, not in body, but of some agony of mind.

‘I hate it here. You know I do.'

‘Even once it is refurbished?'

‘I am sorry, Grace. After all your endeavours.' His sad blue eyes met mine with unfamiliar candour. I believe he truly was sorry: he acknowledged my hours of industry to prepare the plans; my passion to improve our home. ‘The bones of the place will always remain the same.'

He stood then, and I stiffened, expecting him to leave me and retire. Instead, he stumbled towards me and slumped sideways on an empty chair. His knees touched mine; he was directly facing me.

‘What do you want me to do?' I asked gently.

He was maudlin drunk, but his usual artifice had vanished. He stared into space. ‘I don't know. I don't know what we can do.' I had seen Michael despondent before, but then he had been petulant, even affected. Tonight he was neither.

His hand slid onto mine, hot and heavy. ‘I am tired of not knowing what to do.' Still hunched and staring at the floor, he mumbled, ‘Hold me, Grace.'

I was astonished, even suspicious, but he crumpled towards me, overwhelmingly needful and solid. Clumsily, I put my arms around his neck and rocked him. He buried his head on my shoulder; I stroked his springy hair. For a long while we stayed like that, myself bewildered, Michael thinking I knew not what.

With sighing breaths he moved his face against my neck. The wet touch of his lips against my throat shot a dart of pleasure through my body. Kisses began, fast and light, up my throat towards my mouth. ‘Grace,' he mumbled, his large hands pulling me closer to him. Looking down at his face I saw smudged tears around his closed eyes. Part of me revelled in Michael's advances. Yet it was not how I wanted our marriage to be celebrated – with Michael pursuing drunken oblivion in my arms. I pulled away, though his hands still ran up and down my back, pulling me into the shelter of his body.

‘No. Not like this.'

He grasped my waist and our mouths met, his tongue pushing past my lips, between my teeth. I felt as though a delicate film or bubble was about to burst, releasing I knew not what beauty or terror.

I struggled, pushed him away, then kissed him quickly, a dry peck on the cheek, as he had once kissed me in the carriage after the fair. He looked up at me, blearily.

‘Goodnight, Michael.' I pulled away. His head fell forward onto the table, and so I left him, as drunk as a lord.

If he had not been so intoxicated I would have gone to him that night, for it was impossible to sleep. Listening to the creaks and crackings of the house, I forgot Old Dorcas and thought instead of Michael's wet tongue and the rhythmic tug of his hands. At three o'clock I got up and reluctantly took a dose of Dr Sampson's Mixture. Thereafter a sticky, treaclish sleep overcame me, broken by lurid, impure dreams.

It was from one of these dreams that a great commotion woke me: of many footsteps running, the banging of doors and feminine cries of alarm. I jumped out of bed and, though my head was giddy from my medicine, I pulled a shawl about myself, lit a candle at the embers of my fire, and went off to investigate. The sound of anxious voices drew me to the Long Gallery, where Peg and the other kitchen servants stood at the open door to the lieutenant's room.

‘What is all this?' I demanded.

Peg had taken charge and called me over. ‘Look, mistress.' She had hesitated at the threshold because her light twinkled on an extraordinary scene; of broken glass and splintered wood cast all around the room. Maybe it was the effect of the drug, but the sight was scarcely credible.

‘What has happened? Has there been an intruder?'

‘I cannot say, Mrs Croxon.'

‘Mistress,' started up Nan. ‘Old Dorcas. She's done it; she's still in a fury at young Mr Ashe. Look at what she's done.' Nan lifted a bony finger towards what remained of Moncrieff's portrait. I physically shrank back from what I saw – a monstrous mutilated face staring down from the wall. Then I understood that someone – or something – had slashed at the canvas, tearing at the man's eyes, hacking into his face.

I took a step back. It was horrible. ‘Where's the master?' I asked Peg.

‘Out, mistress.' Then in a low voice, murmured only to me. ‘I believe he got himself down to the George, where he's no doubt sleeping it off.'

Nan and the other women were gossiping in a little knot. It was all of ‘Old Dorcas' and how she couldn't sleep easy. ‘Give me your lamp, Peg, I'm going inside.'

‘Shall we not wait until morning?'

I shook my head. ‘I want to see if there is a window open or some other means of escape. It has to be the work of an intruder. I won't have this superstitious nonsense whipping everyone up.'

‘You cannot catch a phantom,' Nan piped up, and I was obliged to tell her to be quiet.

Peg was good enough to accompany me through the door, and so we picked our way through the debris by flickering candlelight. The curiosities were thrown about as if by a whirlwind – fossils, armour, ancient books, tossed higgledy-piggledy on the floor. It was the lieutenant's mementos that had suffered most: his medals cast into the empty grate, his army citation ripped into spiteful shreds. The sword, I noticed, was broken in two. But it was the portrait that disturbed me most; its desecration of the lieutenant's face was the work of a bedlamite, committed in a frenzy.

I checked the windows, but they were all secure and gave no signs of having been opened.

‘What do you think?' I asked Peg, out of the others' hearing.

She was in her night shift, her red hair swinging in a plait to her waist. ‘I wouldn't generally give credit to Nan, but isn't this more than a human might perform? This is a strange old place, mistress. I often hear steps in the night, but I don't like to say.'

It was tempting to agree with her and give ourselves a dose of the jitters. But I felt it my responsibility as the mistress of the house to defend reason against hocus pocus.

I returned to the Long Gallery and addressed my little band. ‘There is nothing we can do now, in the darkness. It appears the intruder—'

‘Mistress, it in't an intruder—' Nan started up.

‘Nan. All of this needs to be looked at in clear rational daylight. Frightening ourselves in the cold like this will only give us agues. I suggest we all return to bed and try to get some sleep.'

Nan, Joan and Bess looked sceptical at this, but I was rewarded by an approving smile from the widowed charwoman. Yet I was unnerved, as I returned to my own chamber, forced to wonder if a malevolent being – human or spirit – wandered the Hall that night.

When Peg shook my arm the sun was bright at the window. ‘Mrs Croxon, there's a woman asking after you downstairs. She says she's Mrs Greenbeck.'

I sat up in my bed, my head thick from only a little sleep and those few hours induced by a sedative. At once I recalled the destruction of Moncrieff's room, and also Michael's unsettling behaviour after dinner. And now Anne had arrived, without so much as a note to warn me.

‘It can't be. She is not due for another week.' I touched my pounding temples.

‘She is pressing to see you, else I wouldn't have bothered coming up.'

‘Give her refreshments. I need half an hour.'

‘So she will be staying?'

‘Of course she is staying. Make up the white chamber.' As she left I asked, ‘Is the master up yet?'

‘He isn't back from the George yet.'

‘It's maybe just as well, Peg.' We shared a friendly glance, both of us relieved.

My first moment with Anne dissolved all my apprehensions. At once she embraced me, pressing her soft cheek against mine. ‘Oh, Grace, I am so happy to see you.' Then she pulled back, and looked at me very steadfastly with her round brown eyes. ‘You have been unwell, dear?'

‘It is only that – I became overwrought and had a fall. But I am mending now, especially at the sight of you.' I laughed a little as I said this. Her dear face, so bright and kind, was a cheering sight; even her weather-worn travelling costume and battered black bonnet delighted me. I had a fleeting idea that Peg might not have been much impressed by such a dowdy, but that, too, seemed laughable now. Even the surprises of the night were slight events, all to be managed with calm and good sense.

Anne sat down but did not let go of my hand as she asked in a hushed tone, ‘I wondered if … your illness heralds happy news?'

‘No. Not at all.' She looked sorry at that, and squeezed my hand.

‘You will not wait long, I am sure of it.'

To change the conversation's direction I asked with some trepidation, ‘So what is this bad news you wrote of, Anne, which may affect our friendship?'

She gathered herself with some effort. ‘First we must talk of your father. Has Michael told you yet?'

I shook my head, at a loss.

‘He must want me to tell you. Grace, prepare yourself to be strong. Your father passed to God two weeks ago. I am afraid he died after an altercation in the street. For some time he, well – you know how he became excited, at times, about his beliefs?'

I nodded, suddenly drained and horribly surprised. Anne handed me her handkerchief and I wept in silence. My poor father, an old warrior in a world of imaginary foes, had truly been his own worst enemy. ‘He had been drinking?' I asked weakly. ‘Don't say he was ranting about politics?'

‘I am afraid so. A group of foolish youths baited him – since the King of France was overthrown, feelings run high in Greaves against the radical cause. Even the Brabantist Meeting Hall has been attacked. In your father's case, the coroner said there was no actual wound, but we all believe his heart was strained. He collapsed in Palatine House. Shortly afterwards he died in the small hours, with Mrs Cooper, the nurse, tending to him. Of course I wrote to you at once, but Michael advised you were not to be told just yet, being laid up by an accident yourself. I am very sorry, Grace, but he was buried at St Stephen's a week ago.'

I bowed my head, lamenting all the good things about my father: his talent, his raw faith, his hopes for the rights of the common people. ‘I am glad he felt no pain,' I said.

Anne and Jacob had arranged his few affairs under Michael's direction. Palatine House was now the property of my father-in-law and there was little else to do. She had packed up all his prints for me, for which I was most grateful. Then she tactfully left me, and I mourned my father alone, in my own way; resurrecting happier days when I had visited his print shop as a child, and the high days and holidays we had shared with my mother.

That evening I could not face dinner with Michael and Anne. Michael came up to see me, but our conversation was not friendly. I was aggrieved at his not telling me about my father and told him so. As for the ransacking of the lieutenant's room, he was irritatingly stoical. ‘All I can do is see that the place is padlocked up for good. That way, if anyone did climb in from the outside, they cannot gain access to the house. As for Moncrieff's belongings, I truly don't give a damn.'

After he had left, I continued to torment myself about whether to tell Anne the true reason why I could not be with child, the dalliance I had witnessed, and Michael's brazen requests for money. I heard Michael's voice from below, and cringed to think of him conversing with Anne. He had never been respectful towards her, for he held all religion entirely in contempt, and such a modest woman as Anne had no place in his world. When Peg brought me some plain soup for supper, she also insisted I took another dose of Dr Sampson's draught, so I might at least face the next day with more fortitude. Of the rest of that night I had only a foggy memory; of Anne wishing me goodnight, stroking my hair and saying a few prayerful words over me. After that my sleep was blessed and calm.