A Taste for Nightshade (35 page)

The orange glow of the campfire looked unearthly, suspended on the hilltop like the first tier of heaven, a world of swelling song and drums and stamping feet. The old song began,
Toia mai te waka …
‘Oh, haul away your war canoe …' She mouthed the words to each verse – then, as the last chorus died away, the smoky-sweet scent of the
hangi
feast filled her nostrils, so like roast pork that it made your mouth water. The chieftainess had saved her life. It was a bond between them – but in a moment she snapped it, and hurried onwards.

She scrambled down the steep track. Below, the moonlight gleamed like pewter on the rocking sea. There stood the
pakeha
ship, with lamps twinkling in the rigging like netted stars. Her mouth was as dry as dust when she finally reached the beach. She hailed a sailor who was keeping watch at the stores, and, all in a kerfuffle, they rowed her out and helped her up the ladder. She clung to the men quite pitifully as they carried her onto the deck. When the captain appeared, she was mighty relieved at his unsuspecting manner. He took her arm in a kindly, fatherly manner – so she leaned against him, shaking from head to foot.

‘Can you speak up, young lady?'

She opened her mouth, and her voice rose like a lark sailing up to the heavens. How could she ever think she'd forget the old patter?

‘God bless ye, sir,' she said, in a perfect Edinburgh accent. ‘Ma name is Flora Pilling. I was captured by those heathen devils who chase me even now. I pray, sir, dinna let them find me! Let us leave this place at once. Oh, hurry, won't you?'

Her moment of glory over, she let herself be led to a cabin – a cabin with a feather mattress and a flower-patterned jug. Voices muttered around her; that the captain was taking his chance to steal away from those damned heathens with both Flora and the muskets. As she fell asleep on the delicious cotton bolster, she heard muffled oars, and felt a jolt and quiver as the ship began to glide soundlessly away around the bay. By the time she woke again, in a sort of rapture, she could hear the sails snap full of wind, as the ship lifted on the waves like a bird, on course for home, on the long way back to England.

 

 

The rain was pelting down as the cart lurched to a halt at Delafosse Hall. I was weary from days of rough travelling, but no longer had the means to pay for even one night's rest at the George. From his sickbed on the men's ward, the captain had insisted I go to his chamber and help myself from what was his – and so, wary of Mrs Huckle, I tiptoed to his door like a thief and groped in a recess for his hidden key. The captain's quarters were as ship-shape and as neat as I remembered them. I took the remains of his savings from where they lay hidden beneath a loose board, making a silent promise to repay him as soon as I might. I paused, too, to admire his red coat hanging to attention on a hook, carefully brushed, with the buttons polished like sovereigns. Here was all that was most precious to him: his medal, his short sword and pocket pistol, and the oval portrait of his late dear wife.

I took what I needed, but even after travelling by the meanest of wagons, by the time I reached Delafosse my purse no longer held the means for me to return to London again. Alighting from the cart, I doubted anyone from Earlby would recognise me; my mourning dress had worn thin and rusty, and my cloak was filthy and torn. My fear of being noticed was of little consequence: I had to understand what had happened – to me, to my husband, and to my money. I had made a few guesses, but could no longer leave the truth undisturbed. However ill he was, I had to speak to Michael, to reach an agreement with him about my own and Henry's future, for my baby's sake.

It was a wet and weary trudge up the drive. At the final bend I halted beneath dripping branches and surveyed my home. Almost a year had passed since my marriage, and the Hall had sunk into even greater dilapidation. The creeper covering the walls was a leafless lacework of black; the roofs had buckled dangerously. The only lights shone from the mullioned first-floor windows, from which I construed that Michael was up and still at dinner. Tucking my bundle up tightly beneath my cloak, I dashed across the lawn to the church-like entrance and pulled the bell. A minute passed, with no answer. I rang again, on and on, blinking away the rain that streamed from my hat into my eyes. At last I heard footsteps, and the wicket door inched open. The maid standing behind it, lantern in her hand, was an utter stranger to me.

‘Who are you?' I asked. I knew I must be a pitiful sight, in sodden clothes, with my hair dropping loose in rats' tails.

With an affronted stare, she said, ‘The Croxons' maid, ma'am.'

‘I need to speak to your master at once.'

‘The master's away.'

‘Is he convalescing elsewhere?'

‘No, ma'am. He's only gone t' village. The mistress is in, mind.' This almost dumbfounded me. But if not Sybilla – well, I made my guess.

I barged my way past her so she had to stand aside. ‘Tell her I'll see her at once.'

‘What name shall I give?'

‘Mrs Croxon.'

‘Croxon? Wait here, ma'am.'

It was just as bone-gnawingly cold in that entrance hall as I remembered it from my first arrival. I made a hasty attempt at tidying myself, but the water hung heavy in my skirts, as if I had walked through a freezing stream.

When the servant returned she gave me a peculiar look. Goodness knows who she thought I was; some bedraggled relative of Michael's, perhaps? Climbing the carved stairway, the house seemed even danker and more ramshackle than before. As the maid's lantern sent shadows flurrying along the walls I marvelled at my own courage in returning. So, poor invalid Michael was sufficiently recovered to be abroad in the village? That proved I was correct in at least one of my deductions. But if that was correct, then other, more dangerous implications must follow.

Unlike the rest of the Hall, the dining room was beautifully dressed for a grand celebration. All my best silver was out; a score of candles stood massed in a blaze of gold. Sitting queen-like in my former seat was the black-haired woman, dressed in my green taffeta, with my diamond brooch pinned to the black belt.

‘Do take a seat.' Her voice could have passed for genteel if I hadn't known better. ‘How pleasant of you to call, Grace.'

I did so, studying her familiar heart-shaped face, looking ill and blotched from drink. ‘Good evening, Peg. I cannot say those black locks suit you half so well as your natural red.'

‘Oh, this.' She stroked the long tresses, the source of that single inky hair I had once found in my bed. ‘I rather like it. Black better suits the night.'

‘I trust you are enjoying yourself, with my money?'

‘It is very obliging of you.' Her wide mouth stretched as if it were all a great jest. Her gestures were slow, her voice thick with spirits.

‘So when is Michael home?'

‘Later.' She shrugged. ‘Join me, won't you?'

I looked at the mish-mash of sweet stuffs spread over the table; children's trash, dominated by a garish island of paste fringed with sugar sand. ‘Not if I were starving.'

‘Not good enough for you?' Her manner grew a shade cooler. ‘Tell me, have you ever starved, Grace?'

‘Almost. These last few weeks.'

‘No. I don't mean you have had to wait a few minutes for your supper. I mean starved almost to the death.' She leaned back, and an ugly belligerence hardened her face. ‘I suppose it is of no consequence that someone like me, a criminal, a convict, might starve? Who cares if my sort are chained up in irons, raped and beaten, or stranded on some savage island?'

‘You know,' I said, with sincere force, ‘that I always sympathised with you, Peg.'

She chased a dollop of jelly with her spoon. When she had eaten it she asked sullenly, ‘Would you eat anything at all, Grace? If you were starved and frightened.'

‘I cannot say.' There had, after all, been Mrs Huckle's lodgers' scraps, that I once would have thrown out in disgust. To provide milk for Henry I would have eaten anything – but I was wary of telling her a word of it.

‘Me, I've eaten weevils on the transport ship, and caterpillar bugs given me by the black folk in New South Wales – they wriggle in your mouth, but they ain't so bad. And then I ate something much, much worse.' She stared unseeing into the distance as I listened, mesmerised by the sight of her in my chair, in my clothes, eating from my favourite porcelain dish.

‘That first night I was captured,' she said, throwing a gulp of wine down her throat, ‘Areki-Tapiru gave me roast meat. Smiling she was, coaxing her new pet to eat up. And when I wouldn't eat, she hit me with her bone knife, smack on the head, so that I nearly swooned. I had to decide. Eat it or—' and she mimed a knife, slicing off her head. ‘It looked like pork; but it didn't smell right. And when I ate it, I knew right off what it was. I even got it into my head it was the right thing to do. To take Jack's flesh back home, deep inside of me. And that's how I come to be the only one who ever got home. Because I took on his strength. I learned to be strong like that tribe of warriors.'

She pushed the flute across the table. ‘I kept the bone. Had it carved nice. All I've got left of Jack Pierce.'

I looked at the yellowing bone. Horror and pity threatened to overwhelm me. I could no longer look at her without revulsion. The thought of every mouthful of Peg's food I had ever eaten made me want to retch. ‘I'm sorry,' I whispered.

‘That's it, Grace.' She put her head tipsily to one side. ‘Unlike that husband of yours, I believe you might be. Though you were a trial at times. All mope-eyed over that milksop.'

‘Well, that did not stop you in the end, did it?' I burst out. ‘Forged a letter to Mr Tully, I presume?'

She snorted with laughter, affecting exasperation. ‘The time it took to find the key to that writing box of yours, and make a skeleton copy. You led me on a merry dance.' She gazed about herself triumphantly. ‘What have you ever done to deserve all this?' She spread her palms in a gesture at all the fashionable furniture I'd bought, the silver plate, the Turkey carpets. ‘It's a lottery, ain't it? Why should you get all this and not me? Why shouldn't I have it?'

I wondered how I had ever thought her handsome. She was glitter-eyed now, as bright and ugly as a roused lunatic. My voice was shaky but clear. ‘I'll tell you why, Peg. Because no one else wants such a world as you want. Because we cannot steal, pilfer and defraud. There have to be laws to protect the weak.'

‘The weak?' she sneered, leaning back and looking pleased with herself. ‘You mean cullies like your husband?'

‘I suppose you're going to tell me what happened.' I braced myself.

She narrowed her eyes. ‘What, between me and him?' Daintily, she chose a child's crimson confection and chewed it noisily. ‘Ah, what revels we've had in the tower since I come here.' Her mouth widened in a mirthless grin. ‘A little horseplay, the lifting of his shirt, a teasing with the birch—'

I remembered the scattering of birch twigs in the tower that night, and the air pungent with desire.

‘We had a little code about the fire, d'you remember that? I'd be putting the dinner out and say, “Oh, Mr Croxon, the fire won't take, it's cold ash” or “The fire's burning good and hot tonight.” If it were a good fire he knew to meet me at the tower. And you,' she hooted with laughter and pointed at me, ‘would be sitting there with a face as blank as a china plate.' She pulled a derisory expression. ‘Naturally, the fire din't burn bright too often. I learned that from watching the best of whores, how to stoke it up and stoke it up, till he couldn't think of nothing else. Most of the time I didn't even need to touch his cock—'

‘Stop it!' I raised my hands to my ears.

‘While as for you,' she crowed. ‘I had to coax him with promises, just to get him to bed you. Still, he was keen to open your purse, if not your legs.'

‘That's a lie,' I cried out. ‘He wanted to leave here, to leave you.' I was breathing fast, staring hard into my lap. When I raised my head, she was slicing a fat piece of cake with an over-large knife. ‘No,' I repeated more weakly. ‘I knew he was in torment. Now I know his tormenter was you.'

She chewed noisily on her cake as she spoke. ‘So how do you account for his fine play-acting, then? Bravo, Michael; what a tragical death scene that was. You should've seen your face. You was confounded.'

‘Yes,' I said bitterly. ‘By a jug of plain water. Then someone explained the thimble-riggers' trick to me – that they make you see what was never even there. There never was any poison, there never was a man-chasing Sybilla Claybourn. They were all figments invented by you to deceive me. I suppose it was you who summoned my husband to the inn on my wedding night?'

She mimicked applause. ‘Give the lady a gingerbread. When that gutless brother of his, Peter Croxon, came by the George, he saw me and knew my face at once, from that other time in Manchester. So I told him a few home truths about his big brother and how he dangled on my leash. So dear brother Peter sent for your husband, all in a botheration about me. I only had to lift my little finger to get them all dancing.'

‘So Peter did send that letter.' It was horrible to hear it, and I felt myself slump. ‘And never told me.'

‘They swore a secret oath, did you not know that? If Peter Croxon would only keep quiet about me, your husband would see him right, and let him be the Croxon heir. After all, Michael had your chink to live off, didn't he?'

‘And the blood on Christmas Eve, that was some charlatan's trick?'

She laughed coarsely. ‘The bag of blood in the salamagundy? One bite and it burst. Then he had more of them, hid in his pocket. Same as any swordfight in the theatre.'

A dark red globe of what I'd seen as beetroot flashed before my inner eye.

Hearing it told like this, I felt myself suddenly no match for Peg. I should rather Michael had died than listen to this catalogue of how he had duped me so callously. I no longer had the will to make demands of anyone. Looking to the door in defeat, I wondered where in the world I might go next.

Just at this worst of moments Henry moved beneath my cloak, kicking against the shawl knotted tightly around my body. I stood up and paced to the window, praying he might settle down so I could leave at once. But whatever I did, it was no use. He began to whimper.

‘What you got in there – a ferret?'

I pulled a chair some way from the table, sat down, and unbundled Henry onto my lap, cradling his fragile head beneath my hand. ‘Shush, sweetling,' I whispered. I had no choice but to loosen my bodice and set him to my breast.

‘That's a pretty infant.' Peg was at once entirely alert. ‘Is it Michael's?'

‘Of course he is. Not that he deserves him.'

She poured another drink and watched Henry very closely over the rim as she sipped. ‘I never had none meself. None ever bred to the full-size; not even with Jack.'

‘Well, I'm sorry.'

‘It's the price to pay, specially for little girls given over for the pox cure. Once the clapped old fellow's had them, the girls don't breed. A baby would've been summat to remember Jack by. Better than a poxy bone.'