A Taste for Nightshade (36 page)

She got up and staggered towards me. Heaving a chair to sit beside me, she sat down heavily. Startled, Henry pulled away from me and flailed his tiny arms towards her, his eyes darting this way and that.

‘Can I hold him?'

‘No.'

‘Go on. Just for a minute. I'll look after him.'

She was staring at Henry with a round-eyed hungry look. Entranced, she reached out to him, nudging a sticky confection towards his lips. I stood up abruptly and strode away, standing tall, re-tying Henry tightly inside my shawl again. An image sprang before me: of Henry being starved of my maternal milk and fed instead on poisonous sugarplums. That must never, ever, come to pass, I swore to myself. I had lost so much: my standing, my money, even my precious crucifix. Yet now all of those were replaced by Henry, and he was alive. A new courage filled my blood.

‘Do you truly believe,' I said with a voice both clear but a little shaky, ‘that after you've taken everything else I have – do you think I would hand my child to you? You know what you can do, Peg? Pack up and go. If you go now, quickly, I promise I won't inform on you. I know that your life has been brutal – but I cannot allow you to do this to me and to my son. I came here tonight to tell Michael I want my life back. And I want my money, too.'

As I said this, I took the captain's pistol from my inside pocket and aimed it straight towards her. It was unfamiliar and awkward in my hand; but I knew its aim was true at short range.

She looked dreamily past me; I could not read what she was thinking.

‘Did you hear me? Go.' My breath was ragged. Henry began to shift uncomfortably.

At last she stood up unsteadily and looked from me to the pistol.

‘Reckon I'm cornered,' she slurred. ‘I've had a good run.'

I aimed the pistol at her swaying form. I watched her carefully, reminding myself that she was a mistress of distraction.

‘I'll count to three,' I said. ‘Then you must be gone.'

She continued to stare at the back of Henry's head, as if fascinated by his fair curls.

‘One,' I said, shakily but firmly.

Still she tottered before me in a sort of stupor.

‘Two.' When she still didn't move, I said with all the force I could find, ‘Peg, I will shoot you.'

She looked up then – slack with resignation. ‘Very well, Mrs Croxon. Only give me a gamester's chance, won't you? I should like to go downstairs and fetch some clothes, and a purse, to get me a distance away on the road.'

I hadn't anticipated this; but it did, after all, seem fair. ‘Very well.'

‘I'll just take a drink to clear me head – then I'll go and pack.'

I kept the pistol aimed upon her. She weaved towards the table and reached for a glass. The next instant a startling boom erupted – I reeled back, crouching over Henry, as a ball of fire exploded across the table; blue flames climbing almost to the ceiling. Later, I reconstructed that with her hidden hand, Peg had flung a handful of sugar sand into the mass of burning candles. By the time my dazzled eyes recovered, the flames had subsided and the air was thick with smoking burned sugar. A shape darted towards me through the smoke; it was Peg, the silver knife flashing in her hand, the sharp blade headed towards me.

I fired the pistol. Its report cracked the air, flashing with sparks. Peg halted, releasing an aggrieved scream, and crashed backwards against the table, sending glasses and crockery smashing to the floor. A blackened hole smoked in the sleeve of my green taffeta, through which Peg's blood pulsed bright crimson.

‘You slippery bitch!' she screamed, and, clutching her arm, steadied herself and rushed at me again with the blade.

I dodged backwards. All my instincts were to protect Henry, to keep him from danger. Clumsy with panic, I lost my grip on the pistol. It clattered to the floor. So I did the only thing I could think of. I ran for the door.

 

 

It was as well that Henry was bound tightly against my body, for I hurtled down those stairs with the fear of the Devil at my heels. But on the final flight I heard voices below me and almost stumbled with fright. Crouching behind the carved balustrade, I listened with a thumping heart. It was Michael's voice, though I could not distinguish his words.

The maid answered him, ‘Aye, Croxon it were. Family, is she?'

‘Croxon? What age was she?'

From high above, I heard Peg calling: ‘Michael!' I was trapped between them. As Peg began a noisy descent from the dining-room landing, I dashed around the corner and threw myself unsteadily onto the deserted Long Gallery. Once out of sight, I pressed myself flat against the cracked wainscoting, listening intently. A few feet away Peg passed me by, clambering down to the hall.

‘Lock every door and window. Jess, go through the house and seal every way out. Don't just gawp, get a move on.' A moment later she hissed, ‘Your wife's here. Look, the bitch has shot me. She wants everything back.'

Michael mumbled in a cowed tone I scarcely recognised. ‘What shall I do …' A low reprimand followed and the sound of a sharp slap.

‘She must not leave. Do you comprehend me? Go and make sure Jess does her duty.'

Silence fell again. It would be a waste of time trying the great entrance door, for I had heard the key being turned, with its familiar rusty groan. Banging and footsteps rang out from distant regions of the house. I made an effort to calm successive waves of panic that threatened to fix me to the spot. If all the doors were locked, the only means of escape I could muster was the tunnel to the summerhouse. Scarcely daring to breathe, I took infinitely careful steps down the stairs and across the hall, then tiptoed down the servants' backstairs, until I could just see Nan and the two sisters scouring pots at the kitchen table. I stood as still as a statue, as clattering from upstairs confirmed the search continued. When at last Nan stood to stoke up the fire I cautiously gave her a signal. At first she gaped, then grinned with delight. Raising my finger to my lips, I directed her to be silent, and signalled that she must distract the sisters. She was not as crack-headed as Peg had insisted, for soon afterwards she disappeared, and a cacophony of Nan's screams rose in accompaniment to the frenzied squawking of chickens. With wild oaths, the two sisters ran after her to round up the flock of escaped poultry; and in that brief spell, I grasped a lantern and headed down to the basement.

Once underground a new fear struck me, for the maze of passages was not as straightforward as I remembered. I scurried from a storeroom, to a chamber full of vats, groping the damp walls as I dipped under one archway and then another. Where I had pictured the tunnel to the summerhouse, I ran straight into a dead end. I turned back, panting, remonstrating with myself and forcing myself to think more clearly. Maybe the tunnel was a left-hand turn from the cold larder? Holding the lantern high before me, I retraced my steps. Then, at only fifty or so paces from the tunnel opening, a sound made me stop stock still. Behind me, a stone rattled. The shuffle of footsteps grew louder in the dark.

‘Grace? I know you're there.' I almost dropped the lantern as Peg's voice rang out, so close to me I could hear her breath. I turned around as quietly as I could. But she was not yet upon me, for her lantern shed only a diffused glow in the distance. Henry stirred, and a tiny sigh escaped from the depths of my cloak. Please, please, sleep, I prayed. For the first time I comprehended fully the risk of my returning here. Who would notice if I disappeared for ever? Even the captain might never discover my end, buried here in the dank and darkness. I cared not a jot for myself now, but Henry – Henry must be saved from Peg. I again envisioned his future without me, an existence in which Peg petted him with poisonous caresses. That woman must never have my son.

Ahead of me stood the tunnel to the summerhouse. Dimly I remembered that it had taken at least fifteen minutes to walk the entire way in suffocating blackness. More vividly I remembered that visitation of terror I had heard in the dark: the sound of a woman running; of whimpering, panting dread. I had a powerful conviction that it was a warning I must heed; that to have Peg at my back in that pitch-dark place did not bear contemplation. To the left was an archway, leading to an empty cavern; to the right was the cold larder, where I reckoned there must be many hiding places. Praying I might evade Peg, I stepped inside the larder. Once inside I used the habit learned from daily sketching to commit the scene instantly to my inner eye. It was a large rectangular room, furnished with metal cages containing joints of bacon and so forth. In the centre stood a butcher's block for cutting joints. Feathered game birds were strung up from the ceiling. Behind them, against the far wall, were a row of carcasses, two or three deep, hung on hooks attached to rails. I snuffed out my lantern and set it down gently in a corner. With no better plan save that once Peg had passed the larder, I might retrace my steps upstairs, I slipped into a narrow space behind the nearest of the carcasses. From the smoothness of its pelt and the metallic stink of blood, I supposed it was a slaughtered deer.

I stood very still, urging her to pass the door. But instead the light of her lantern grew stronger until it shone like a golden beacon onto cages and carcasses.

‘Are you there?' Peg's voice sounded very loud in the cave-like room. ‘You can't hide. I can see you.'

I knew she could not see me at all, for the dead creature hid me well. My pulses roared in my ears as I tried to dissolve into the darkness. At last, with a vexed tutting sound, she turned on her heels and moved off down the tunnel. Cold sweat broke out on my face. I allowed myself to release a long breath.

Then, perhaps because I at last stood still and no longer rocked him, Henry woke up. With a stab of apprehension, I felt his tiny fists flail against me. I groped inside my cloak and tried to connect his mouth to my breast. But instead of sucking, he moved his head awkwardly this way and that. Then my poor baby took a deep breath and uttered a high-pitched wail that reverberated against the stone walls. I rocked and patted him, but his crying only diminished to a nerve-scouring grizzle. Why had I not run away while I could? I wanted to weep, too. Then miraculously, Henry found his fingers and silently began to suck them. I pulled the shawl tightly around me, so he lay spread-eagled against my beating heart.

It was too late. Peg's light returned, illuminating raw meat and dead pairs of eyes. I could sense Peg rather than see her; she moved very quietly about the far side of the room, opening and closing the doors of the cages.

‘Is that my little boy?' she said from the other side of the larder. ‘Where have you hidden him?'

I risked retreating backwards, pushing past a sticky, raw carcass. I expected at any moment to feel the hard wall behind me.

‘I can see you. And hear my little boy.'

Could she see me? The lantern beam swung ever closer, hurting my eyes. Behind the raw carcass was another, this one wrapped in cloth. My hand groped backwards, hopelessly praying to find some means of escape – a door, a cupboard, anything. Then I glimpsed a second tiny light behind Peg. In the outline of the door a bent-backed figure hovered in silhouette. It was Nan. Though only a frail little woman, her light brought me a grain of comfort. I was no longer alone with Peg.

‘You will never leave,' Peg crooned in my direction. ‘For I am you, Grace Croxon.'

One of her hands held the lantern, while the other lay stiff and useless against her side. She set the light down on the butcher's block, and with her one good hand, took out the knife.

‘So you will soon be dead.'

Pinpoints of fear prickled over my skin. Warily, she began to search, edging ever closer to the rack of hanging meats where I was hidden.

Terror drove me backwards. I pushed myself behind the cloth-covered carcass. My scrabbling fingers found something peculiar. A disc of bone? No. A button. I explored further. A piece of what felt like lace. My hand reached backwards and – could it be? – was clasped by another human hand – only this hand was as cold as the grave. I stifled the scream that threatened to burst from my throat. Instead, barely able to breathe, I explored further. I found a mass of wiry human hair. Glad of my tallness, I reached around the corpse and found the iron hook that suspended what I suddenly knew with absolute certainty was Mrs Harper's gown. Then, I held that poor soul's corpse in front of me like a shield.

I knew my plan would only work if I waited until Peg stood just before me. I held my nerve, and my breath, as she swung the carcass of venison aside. Now she was no more than a few paces in front of me. I saw her pale hand reach forward, grasp the next blood-raw carcass and pull that aside. In a moment she would discover me.

Let her see what is not there, I prayed. Her distance from the weak beams of the lamp was in my favour, as was her injury and intoxication. There she stood, only inches in front of me; leaning forward, her head questing this way and that. A skull-like shadow masked most of her face. The glint of her eyes widened in triumph as she saw before her a woman in black that might have been me, her head bowed, cowering before her. Peg swung back her good arm and struck with the knife as I clasped the corpse before me, like a sandbag absorbing the blows of a cutlass. Blow after blow fell upon us. Even though Mrs Harper's poor body took most of the force of Peg's attack, still her fury almost knocked me backwards. But I thought of Henry, hidden beneath my cloak and discovered the strength of a lioness. All about us the smell of death was stifling; a sweet but foul putrescence. Then at last Peg exhaled a victorious groan, stood back, and dropped the knife.

‘Now where's my little boy,' she sighed, looking about herself as if waking from a drunken sleep.

With vicious speed I threw Mrs Harper's body towards Peg. What she thought when that cadaver sprang at her from the darkness I will never know. She screamed, as if in horrified recognition, her hands raised to her face. Clumsily, she tripped backwards onto the stone flags and tumbled with a loud gasp and crack. Sprawling on the floor, she tried to kick the corpse away. In the corner of my eye, I saw Nan creep into the room. Then, as casually as if she were butchering a rabbit, Nan retrieved the knife from the floor where Peg had dropped it.

‘No!' I cried. Peg was still groaning, half-stunned from her fall as Nan rose over her, the knife wavering in her palsied hands. With all that old woman's strength she drove the blade fast into her tormentor's chest, with a wet noise like a butcher at his block. Peg made an unnatural choking sound and her head arched backwards. Then her face froze in death; her eyes glassy, her mouth fixed open. My adversary lay felled with my gown ridden high to her knees and one shoe half-off, like a drab collapsed in an alley.

I crumpled to the floor, my breath in hoarse rushes, cradling Henry, who protested as I hugged him and kissed his precious face.

‘Come here, Nan,' I said, once I grew a little calmer. She came over to me and we gripped hands, both of us trembling like leaves. Her poor bruised arm reached out and touched Henry's head like a talisman. ‘I heard the bairn cry,' she said in a tremulous voice. ‘And I weren't going to let that she-devil near him.' Looking over her shoulder at the rumpled horror of Peg's corpse, she said, ‘That were the best day's butcherin' I ever done.' Then I laughed bitterly, for I could not believe such a terrible test of my strength had ended.

∗ ∗ ∗

Footsteps approached from the passage. It was Michael, wild-haired and pale, like a wraith of the man I had married. Nevertheless at the sight of him, the man I had once loved, the father of my new child, I felt a sudden shameful need for him. I called to him and opened my arms. But he had eyes only for Peg, lying splayed on the floor. He knelt at her side, breaking into unmanly sobs of a kind I had never heard before. I watched his cheeks grow wet while I attended to Henry. So Peg had won this final battle. Only after a long spell did he even notice me.

‘That baby.' He approached me, thin and hollow-eyed. ‘Is it mine?'

I felt near to expiring with weariness. ‘What? Like the money and the land, you mean? Yours? No, I don't believe he is, in that sense. I gave birth to him alone. And I'll care for him alone. You'd better get rid of her.' I pointed at Peg's corpse.

‘But where?' he asked, in a self-pitying tone. I looked at him with disgust.

‘Just think of somewhere to bury her. Unless you want me to send for a magistrate? I want my son to know nothing about this, ever.'

A clinging drizzle fell, but the long night was ending: a luminous smudge was growing at the eastern horizon. As I drove the pony trap through the gloom, nothing looked or felt quite real – yet a febrile energy pushed me continually onward. I was dimly aware of a deadness in my fingers and toes, and the sensation of floating through the muffled landscape. The fear that had beaten against me like a frantic bird was subsiding. I had never felt more resolute.

‘Why did you sell my land?' I asked my husband in a tone as frigid as the air.

‘That was her idea.'

‘Naturally it was.'

‘Most of the money is in my strongbox upstairs. I shall give it back to you.'

‘Of course you will. You stole it.'

Michael began to jabber, attempting to explain himself. ‘You cannot know what it was like – you cannot. That first time I met her, something extraordinary happened. After she fleeced that pound note from Peter – I was angry, but it was more than that. She ran away, and at first I lost her. I found myself inside a mansion. It was like falling into an enchanted world.Red and green lanterns lit my way, and a fountain ran with wine. And the devil was in me to find that girl.