Turning the Stones (3 page)

My memory still refuses to disclose the sequence of events that brought me to that bloody bedchamber, and this amnesia makes me suspect myself. Shall I wake up tomorrow to find that I have killed a man? I will admit that, like most people, I have a capacity for anger and animosity, but does that make me capable of taking a life? Will you believe me when I say that I am innocent? I yearn for that understanding.

*

The light has gone and our surroundings are as dark as a bag now. It suddenly occurs to me to wonder: who is this
you
to whom I plead my case?

*

At the village of Hammersmith we changed horses and a knave in a mashed hat and a sour coat took a seat by my side. I am frightened of him. His head lolls on his shoulders with the reeling of the coach like something unhinged. He keeps pestering me with a black velvet scarf, which I am sure he has stolen. ‘Come now, wench,’ he wheedles, ‘only pay me a little florin for this lovely scarf.’ The harassment continues as we cross a heath in a descending fog. The road is a queasy one and the darkness intensifies my fear.

‘Give us a florin then.’ The nagger dangles the scarf in my face. He grins at the fellow sitting on the other side of him,
who is similarly ragtag and sinister. ‘She won’t pay up,’ he sniggers. ‘What do you say, shall we make her?’

Fortunately for me, his neighbour chooses that moment to vomit over the railing of the coach. By the time the ensuing commotion has settled, there are dull spots of light visible ahead. The presence of an inn must not please my tormenter at all, because he seizes his chance, as soon as the
Demon
slows, to make a hurried departure. In fact he scuttles with such haste on to the packets piled in the boot and thence to the road that he leaves behind the scarf. And now it is mine.

I wrap myself in the scarf’s soft velvet. What a boon it is in this sharp night air. And its blackness offers a fleeting sensation of invisibility. Nevertheless, I eye with anxiety the arrival of a new passenger. He is a well-upholstered individual carrying a pannier – the coach sagged quite significantly as he came aboard – but as he settles among us with a genial expression on his big face, my tension slightly eases. The pannier contains a brace of leverets, he announces. They have hung for twentyfour hours and he does not expect them to raise a stink. The woman with the child looks up and observes that there is nothing worse than a green leveret. She ducks her head suddenly as if regretting her remark and presses her lips to the forehead of the sleeping toddler in a flutter of kisses that seem to have the effect of reassuring herself as much as the child.

She is not alone in her need of comfort. My own longing for solace is so grievous, I have begun to pour out my woes to a phantom auditor. To
you
.

*

The horses that have been put on at our last change are wretchedly used up – an old piebald with swollen hind legs and a
couple of nags that can scarcely stand, with bald patches on their coats where the harness has rubbed – yet somehow we lurch on, hour after hour in the black night, occasionally shifting our haunches on the hard roof. I continue faint and cold and worrying at things that are beyond my understanding. Why, for instance, am I dressed in my good gown and petticoat? For I have suddenly recognised them as such – is not the gown my best blue lustring satin and the petticoat the peach taffeta that Mrs Waterland gave me to wear in London? I have stared a hole in my petticoat this past hour, but I cannot bring to mind in any way the occasion that caused me to put on this attire.

This coach is fiendishly uncomfortable and yet I am so tired I almost dozed off just now despite the cold mist and the jouncing about. But I forced myself awake. I should not like to lose my grip on this brass rail and crash overboard. On my journey down to London with Eliza, the driver set off so precipitously from one of the inns – I think it was the Cock in Stoney Stratford – that a woman fell from the roof of the coach. I remember glimpsing a cinnamon petticoat spilled on the cobbles. There ensued an altercation between the coachman and the woman’s husband, the coachman shouting that it was not his fault the passenger had not secured herself, and since she was not dead he had nothing to answer and must get on. The other outsiders threw down the couple’s luggage and a bundle, which turned out to be a small child. With a crack of the lash and a hi-ho, we set off, abandoning the injured family in the yard.

I have learned my lesson in that regard. Here I cling securely to my perch, not daring to get down even to stretch my legs
between stages. In any case, now that we are in full night, there are watchmen stationed at the yards of the inns. They are well rewarded, I have read, for apprehending suspects of felonies. And so I imprison myself on the roof of the
Demon
, afraid most of the time even to catch the eye of my fellow passengers. Above, black clouds sail across a black sky. Below, the wheels thunder.

To whom do I make these observations?

It is to you: my mysterious, nameless mother.

Of course it is you to whom my story is addressed. It is you whom I desire to convince of my truthfulness.

I have nothing at all of you save for the knowledge that you gave birth to me. But this stark fact, that I am connected to you by an unbreakable bond of blood, is the only prop I have in my hour of need. How strange and rare and potent those words:
my mother
. The thought of you at this bleakest of times makes my soul feel less forsaken, even though you are dead.

Because I am sure you must be dead – you are, aren’t you?

Well, I will not let that be an obstacle. You seem very real to me now. Often unseeable things seem real to me. I have always been prey to torrents of sense impressions. It is as though none of my doors is ever quite closed. Is that a tendency I inherited from you? Perhaps you might have thought, too, as I do, that there is more to the world than meets the eye. I will even go so far as to say that the human mind might have a capacity for communication that has not yet been entirely revealed to us. That possibility excites me. It brings me to wonder if you could even actually hear me
now or read my thoughts, in a manner of speaking, from some other plane of existence.

Well. You see I go too far with these notions. I will admit that I am fanciful.

It is such a comfort to talk to you.

I beseech you with all my heart to listen to me – for if not you, who else?

The Cursing Stones, Connemara
April, 1766

A soft day it was today, wasn’t it, with the sun shining in and out behind the rain and a little gathering of clouds late in the afternoon. I waited until twilight came on and then my two feet brought me to the place of the stones. I suppose, Nora, you might have seen me from your high perch, going about my mission.

Few things can be more terrible than the words ‘The devil bless you’, but say them I did as I stood before the cursing stones. I made nine circuits around them, walking against the direction of the sun. At the end of each circuit I called out, ‘Your souls be damned for what you have done!’ I felt myself tremble in the core of my body and a blast of wind arrived that made me wonder if someone from the other side had come to see what I was up to. But they would have known I had a right to be there. I told the wind to go back and so it went.

Each stone I petted like the head of a darling babe and then I whispered in its ear the penalty that must be paid by those people. Hard though it was, I turned the stones leftwards. Lookit, those stones there are not much larger than a child’s ball but it is a business to move them. They make you work at it. There is a reluctance, Nora, on their
part. But if it were easy the curse would not be worth a tinker’s dam.

As I wrenched the last stone in the direction of the devil, didn’t it seem to me that it let out a groan – but whether of horror or of sorrow I could not say. But I will tell you that it frightened me to hear that cry. Impossible it was to know if the stone was in sympathy with my loss or if it lamented being brought to such vindictive work.

Night Coach to Reading, Berkshire
April, 1766

We have arrived at the Saracen’s Head, a few furlongs, I am told, out of Slough. As we passed beneath the inn’s swinging sign, I caught a glimpse of a forbidding image painted on its boards, an Arab whose turban was pinned with a sickle moon, before the sign knocked off the leveret-keeper’s hat. The rest of us were obliged to duck before we turned into the yard to avoid a braining. Peeping over the rail, I see no sign of a burly overcoated watchman with his lantern. I am thankful to note that the further we travel from London, the less prevalent are these apprehenders, but I do not come into the yard of an inn without flinching.

Two lads have run out from the dark tavern to cheer our change with a tray of cold sausages and a bucket of spirits. I sacrifice one of the pennies in my moneybag in order to purchase a cup of gin. I hope that it will help to soften the bolus of anxieties that is jammed in my chest, but I have swallowed only a mouthful of it when someone jogs my arm and the gin spills in my lap. A youth begs my pardon. Where has he come from? I don’t remember his climbing on board at the last stage. He seems to feel the heat of my stare, because he turns up his collar, pulls down his hat and pretends to fall into a doze.

As I am about to throw down my cup to the lad in the yard, my line of sight is drawn to two men some yards behind him, who appear on horseback from under the covered entranceway. Fearfully I shrink down on the roof and draw my scarf over my head. The men dismount and turn their pale faces towards the coach and it seems to me that they are watching the two or three disembarking passengers. Then the men lead their horses to the water trough on the perimeter of the yard. Is it possible for me to say at this distance that one of them is similar in build to the footman who pursued me in London?

But if he were the footman, he would have had me brought from the coach at this pause. Or do they mean not to have me arrested at all, but to take me off at a lonely spot on the dark road and, and …? You see how I go spinning into a helix of conjecture and consequence that brings the sweat to my armpits and a lurch to my heart, while forgetting that this is entirely my own speculation.

But now one of the watching men
does
begin to make his way towards the
Demon
and my panicked thought is that I must get off this coach! But how? The way is blocked by the gasping leveret-keeper, who is climbing ponderously aboard by way of the hind boot, where the wool bales are stacked. He swings around and plumps down his huge arse so that he is facing the rear of the coach and settles his pannier on his knees again. And suddenly, with a resumption of our jinglings and creakings, we are off!

There is a shout from below. The footman, if it is he, has missed his chance.

I crouch behind the great slab of the leveret-keeper’s back,
grateful for his bulk. And rolling on into the blue night, I allow myself to sneak a look at the receding road. I have every expectation of an approach by those cloaked horsemen, but the
Demon
continues on its rickety way with no one in pursuit. At length I begin to breathe more easily. I turn to gaze at the quiet beauty of the sky – it is thick with stars and wads of silver clouds. Soon I will be on a fast coach to Bristol and away on the tides to freedom.

But all at once the wretched
Demon
lumbers to a stop.

We have arrived at the foot of a sticky rise that resists our progress and we are called to get down in order to relieve the horses. They stand mud-spattered in the moonlight with a spectral glow rising from their steaming coats, while the driver orders the men to form up and push the helpless machine. I hang back from the other women as we climb the hill, listening to the coach being manhandled behind us and the skitter of the drovers’ dogs. One of the passengers does all the urging, while skidding and unskidding the brake, and the driver calms the galled horses. There are no hedgerows here, only the fields and a great swathe of woodland like a frontier.

The coach arrives at last at the crest of the rise and the driver stands up in his box to call us to come aboard. But he hesitates – and my pulse starts to quicken. He has swung around to stare with obvious strain in his bearing at a bend that lies in the road ahead. Then we all become aware of the reason for his alert – the reverberant hoof-beats thudding towards us. Not highwaymen, surely? Why would anyone bother to hold up a ramshackle night coach? Still, I tear into the field at the side of the road, although it is only a feathery sea of young barley that gives little cover. The woodland being
too far to reach, I throw myself down and burrow into the soft, damp crop. The hoof-beats come closer. I press into the cold earth, peering through the grassy veil of barley to see who it is that runs upon the coach.

I can make out three horsemen. One of them, wearing a visor on his face, is pointing a pistol at the driver, and two others have come up on the rear of the coach.

A muffled voice cries out, ‘Throw down your cargo, man!’ They are highwaymen after all.

To my surprise, the driver decides to risk a flight. At a crack of the whip, his team leaps forward and the robber in front must yield to them. A shot rings out, but there is no stopping the coach, which takes off at a rattling pace. The highwaymen in turn spur their mounts onward and the drovers must call the dogs to heel. The dogs watch in a sulk as the pistol-men disappear over the brow of the next rise in pursuit of the
Demon
, and I clamber to my feet and brush down my damp skirts, feeling giddy with euphoria at my reprieve.

My fellow passengers are flocking together on the road in indignation. An old man eventually makes himself heard. He insists, his words carrying in the stillness, that the coach was transporting cash concealed in bags of wool, placed on the run-down vehicle for disguise. This news delights me for now I see the mysterious men at the Saracen’s Head in a different light. They were interested in the
Demon
, not in me. At any event, the coach has disappeared with everyone’s luggage. The passengers set off in its wake, their strident review of the hold-up gradually receding into the night. I have no intention of being among their number when they totter into the next hostelry on the road, where an alarm will be raised, witnesses
sought and questions asked. How far it is to Reading I can only guess, but I hope that I will reach an inn before daybreak and find a coach to take me onwards to Bristol – and to France.