The Misbegotten (33 page)

‘Wait,’ said Rachel Weekes, shaking her head. ‘I can’t follow you . . . he killed her because she loved another?’

‘No!’ said Starling, louder than she’d meant to. Several heads turned towards them. ‘No, she had no other lover. She never did – I would have known about it if she had.’ Starling felt the tiniest pull of doubt as she said this. She remembered what Bridget had said – what she’d claimed she’d seen. She thought of the way she’d betrayed Alice to Bridget after she discovered the lovers’ tree, and shame smouldered in her gut. Could Alice have hidden things from her, after she proved herself so untrustworthy?

‘Why then would he kill her?’

‘I . . . I think she might have tried to break it off with him. Their engagement, which had been a secret one. I know his family did not approve of the match.’

‘Indeed not.’

‘After Mr Alleyn had gone off to the war, Alice went to Lord Faukes’s house in Box, one day. Where Mrs Alleyn lived, with Jonathan as well. She was never the same after she came back from there that day. I think Lord Faukes told her plainly that she could not marry Jonathan.’
And what Lord Faukes wanted, Lord Faukes got.
Starling pushed the memory away, her gorge rising. ‘There must have been some grave reason, some terrible threat . . . or perhaps it was something Jonathan had said or done – perhaps
he
was the betrayer! But whatever the reason, I think she wrote to Jonathan to break it off.’

‘This is what Captain Sutton has told me. That Mr Alleyn had a letter from her in Brighton, and he left at once for Bathampton.’

‘Who is Captain Sutton?’

‘A friend of Mr Alleyn’s, or was. They were in the army together, and my husband is acquainted with them. I have . . . become friends with his wife.’

At the mention of Richard Weekes, both of them fell silent for a moment. Starling felt her cheeks grow hot. She felt absurdly embarrassed, and jealous, that Rachel Weekes should share an acquaintance with Jonathan that she knew nothing about.
Folly. He is not your pet, nor your prisoner.
But in truth, that was how she had come to think of him – as her possession. He was at the centre of all her thoughts; him, and what he had done.

‘There is the proof of it,’ she said, half strangled.
Why, Alice? Why?

‘She said Jonathan took the news very badly indeed.’

‘Yes. Badly enough to kill her.’

‘But surely . . . he would have been discovered in his crime, if he had done something so terrible? Her body would have been discovered somewhere . . .’

‘Not necessarily.’ Starling swallowed against a sudden hard lump in her throat. ‘If he cast her into the river, and she was swept a goodly way before she was found . . . if she was found at all . . . nobody would know who she was. And nobody was looking for a body . . . they all thought she’d run away with another, because that’s the story that was put about.’

‘Put about by whom?’

‘By Jonathan Alleyn, and his mother. By Lord Faukes. By the gossips in Bathampton, who had always wondered about poor Alice, and jumped at the chance to malign her.’
By Bridget. Oh, how could you, Bridget?

‘I still don’t understand why you think otherwise,’ said Rachel Weekes. That strange urgency was still in her eyes, fiercer than ever.

‘I
know
otherwise, because I knew Alice. She would
never
have betrayed Jonathan. She would never have betrayed anybody. She loved him, and she was true to him all her life. She loved her home, and she loved . . . she loved me, and Bridget. She would never have gone off and left us all.
Never.

‘You are quite certain.’ It was not a question, and a sudden calm came upon Starling.
She does not scoff; she listens.

‘I know it like I know the sun will rise in the east,’ she said.

Rachel Weekes was watching Starling with a kind of steady amazement. Her tears had left her face mottled, but her eyes had dried; she seemed to consider several different things to say before choosing.

‘Jonathan Alleyn is a tortured soul . . . he said to me he wished to undo things he had done. And there is much violence in him, I have seen it. But to do so evil a thing . . . You truly believe it? You would have it that Mrs Alleyn lies to cover his crime? That she has done so all these years?’

‘Yes, she lies. Of course – what else would a mother do? Jonathan is all she has in this world, after all, especially now her father is gone.’
In that, we are alike; though our hearts be worlds apart.

‘When did Lord Faukes die?’

‘He’s seven years in his grave.’
Seven years I pray God he’s spent roasting.
Starling fought the urge to spit at the mention of him. ‘Jonathan Alleyn loved Alice, once. But he was different after the war – he was not the same man, nor has been since. You saw how he behaved, when he first saw you! He might have killed you too.’

‘Aye, he might have,’ Rachel murmured. Her eyes were distant, thoughts racing behind them. ‘But why have you not denounced him, if you are sure of his crime?’

‘A public accusation?’ said Starling, in disgust. ‘Who would believe the word of a servant over people like them? Nobody. And I would lose my position, and all access to the man. Why do you ask me all of this? To know the man you are sent to comfort?’ Starling demanded, suddenly suspicious. Rachel Weekes shifted her feet, looking almost sheepish.

‘Yes, to know him . . . to know what I am to deal with. But also to know . . . to know Alice. The one whose face I share. The one he loved so dearly. Tell me, who were her parents? Mrs Alleyn says she was nobody’s daughter.’

‘She said that?’ Starling chewed her lip for a moment. ‘Alice herself often wondered, but none of us knew who her parents were. Lord Faukes would never disclose it.’

‘And he was the only one who would have known, I suppose.’

‘He and the parents themselves, whoever they were. But to know Alice you need know only this: that she was all kindness, all decency; all generous and gentle soul.’ Starling took a deep breath, teetering on the slippery edge of the chasm of grief inside her. She feared that if she fell in, she would never climb out again. She collected herself. ‘Alice would have forgiven Jonathan for killing her. That’s what she was like. She forgave people . . . there was no malice in her. No rancour or spite. To know Jonathan Alleyn you need know only this, that it is truly a fine line between love and hate.’

‘Then I am wed to a liar, this we know, and am possibly in the employ of a murderer,’ said Rachel Weekes, as she absorbed these words. Her voice was heavy and wretched, but she did not sound afraid. Starling looked at her curiously.

‘Then you believe what I have told you? That he killed her?’

‘We . . . we have not yet had the full story of what passed between them, I am sure, and I pray it is not so. But I believe he could have.’

For a long moment the two of them simply stood in the abbey’s pooling shadows and watched each other. Starling was not sure what else she should say, and it seemed that Rachel Weekes was also confounded.

‘It would not be wise for us to meet again,’ Starling said quietly.

‘But I will be at the house many times. I will be there this Wednesday . . . if you want to talk to me again.’

‘It was you who wanted to talk to me, remember?’ Starling pointed out, and saw Rachel Weekes flinch, stung.

‘But I am well placed, am I not, to try to discover the truth of the matter?’ she ventured.

‘Why would you want to do that?’ Suspicion flared in Starling again.

‘Because—’ Mrs Weekes broke off. Her eyes searched Starling’s face, as though the answer might be there, and Starling felt something tremulous in the pit of her stomach, like sparkles of joy that faded as soon as they lit.
Ye Gods, but she is the very image of my sister.
‘I have thought, since I first entered that house, that it seemed frozen; sleeping, or perhaps only waiting,’ said Rachel Weekes. ‘Now I understand what it was that made time stop. It was Alice, and the way she vanished. She haunts that house . . . she haunts Jonathan Alleyn and his mother. Such secrets . . .’ She paused, shook her head slightly. ‘I . . . I am told I must keep going there, but I . . . I
cannot
do so, and not know the truth,’ she said vehemently. ‘The truth will set us free,’ she murmured. ‘Perhaps it could set me free.’

‘I don’t think the Bible was referring to such dark truths as these,’ said Starling. Rachel Weekes frowned, in obvious thought.

‘But twelve years have passed since Alice was seen . . . In twelve years you have found out nothing new?’ she said.

‘Twelve difficult years, I assure you.’ Starling scowled defensively. ‘I stayed on in their service only to this end . . . only to keep my enemy close. It is nine years since Mr Alleyn got back from the war for good, and he was more than half mad when he did. I had conversations with him then that he claims not to remember now – not remember at all. Then for years he was near insensible with opium . . . He dreamed four years away, and drank the rest . . .’

‘He does not remember that time? Then . . . is it not possible . . .’

‘That he does not remember killing her?’ Starling shook her head. ‘I do not believe it. Perhaps he wishes to forget, but I do not believe that he has. That he
could
.’

‘Then it is this knowledge, you believe, that torments him so?’

‘Should it not torment him to know that he slew the one person who loved him best in all the world?’

‘But he knows what you suspect of him? Then . . . how can you be safe there? How can you not fear what he might do to you?’

‘You need not fear for me. I can manage Jonathan Alleyn.’

‘It has been so long since Alice was lost,’ said Rachel Weekes. She studied Starling with wide, pitying eyes, and Starling recoiled. No one had looked at her that way in years; Alice had been the last person to. It made her feel vulnerable, somehow weaker, as though she might crack. ‘How have you borne it?’ the woman asked.

‘What choice have I had?’ Starling replied, curtly.
What have I become in those years, that I cannot stand to be comforted?
‘If Mrs Alleyn knew what I was about . . . But she lies for him, I know. She knows more of the truth than she lets on.’

‘Perhaps she also lies to herself,’ said Rachel, softly. ‘A mother’s love is a powerful thing. I have . . . I have begun to know the lady, a little. Perhaps, in time, she might speak.’

‘You must not say anything of what I have told you! Not to them . . . they must not know that I know, or in an instant they would be rid of me!’ Panic made Starling’s voice rise.
If they send me away, if they do that, what have I then?
She had the sudden, fearful sensation of losing control.

‘I shan’t speak of this to them. I . . . I don’t know what I will do.’

Starling thought quickly. It had been a relief to speak the truth and pass on her suspicions; she had not bargained on recruiting an ally – a person with her own ideas and plans. A person easily shocked, and likely to betray herself.
She could ruin everything.

‘Do nothing,’ said Starling. ‘It would be better if you didn’t see him any more. If you went no more to Lansdown Crescent. It would be safer for you, and easier for me.’

‘I
must
go. My husband commands it, and I would feel . . . duty bound to Mrs Alleyn to do so, even if he did not. What should I do?’ said Mrs Weekes. Starling took a moment to decide, chewing the inside of her mouth. Her unease remained; the sudden fear of unanticipated change.

‘If you would be a friend to me, then I . . . Mr Alleyn has Alice’s letters. All of her letters, his letters to her as well. She kept hers in a rosewood box about as long as my forearm, and in all the chaos of the days after she vanished . . . only once I had recovered my wits enough to look for it did I find it gone. No one else would have taken it, and I have seen him reading them, upon occasion. He clings to them as though they might assuage his guilt. There could be some clue in them, as to what manner of thing made her break with him. For if it was grave enough that she would do that, then it is grave enough that he might kill her for the same. For insulting him.’

‘Do men kill over insults?’ asked Mrs Weekes, softly.

‘Only every day. See if you can find where he hides the box, and in it the other letters. For all the times I’ve searched his rooms, I’ve found it not – it must be in some secret place. If you can find it out, tell me. I need to know what she wrote to him in Brighton.’

‘All right. I will try.’ Rachel Weekes’s expression betrayed scant hope of success.

‘Say nothing of this! To anyone,’ Starling whispered fiercely. Rachel Weekes gave a quick, anxious nod, but made no move.
She hardly knows where to go next, or what to do.
Starling left her there.

She was loaded with a new and different mix of emotions as she ducked out into the crowded square. The fear was still there, but the anger gone; a nagging foreboding now, and the excitement even stronger, and beneath it all the unease that came from having so long trusted nobody, and suddenly finding trust assumed by another.
Why should she trust me any more than I her? And yet she does. She does not scorn the things I told her. She does not side blindly with the Alleyns, as she might.
As if the world had lurched slightly and come out of its old rut, it suddenly seemed as though the future would be different; life would change. But for better or worse, Starling couldn’t tell.
Isn’t that what I intended when I brought her into that house? For twelve years they have woven such lies that I have not managed to penetrate them. Could she be the one to do it?
Starling did not trust the woman, nor understand her one bit, but she felt less alone than she had before; less alone than she had since she was parted from Alice.

Rachel walked with little idea of her destination. She was distracted; she left her feet to find their own path and they stopped on a quiet corner of an unswept street, where rubbish and muck were piled high in the gutters and only the ice on the puddles kept her feet dry. A starving cat came to sniff her shins, hoping for food, but when Rachel lowered her hand to stroke it, it ran away. She leaned against the wall and shut her eyes for a moment, trying to marshal her thoughts. She’d known even before the girl had spoken. She’d known as soon as she’d seen the bruise on her face, and had thought of the way Richard had named her, in his anger.
Starling.
Named her even though he’d made every effort until then to deflect Rachel’s interest in the girl, and feign blindness to her existence. And she was pretty enough, though her face was pert and her red hair dishevelled. There was a sharpness about her; the liveliness of her expression spoke of intelligence, and wit. But Starling was afraid of Richard too; it was clear from the way she’d made Rachel swear to not reveal their meeting.
It would go ill, for both of us.
Rachel took several deep breaths to calm down.
And he was with her right up until we wed. As we courted, and he said he could not live without me. And she loved him. Did he love her? Could he have, if he beats her now?