A Taste for Nightshade (25 page)

A mad ire boiled over in her veins. She stumbled to her feet and cursed Jack's murderer with every oath under the sun. She jabbed at his chest with the spear as he danced backwards, laughing at her as if she were an angry gnat. Then, as if it were a jest, he grasped her hair, yanked her towards him and raised a hideous tooth-edged knife towards her throat. So here we go, she thought, reckoning she breathed her last. She screwed up her eyes and waited. She had faced death on the gallows and she was ready to do it again. Let it only be sharp, let it only be short, she prayed.

A woman's shriek cut the air; then the third of the party, a black-tressed woman, thrust her broad body between them. Before she could comprehend a thing, the woman swept off her feathery garment and threw it over Mary's head. The next she knew, she was being bundled up and hauled away by her rescuer.

She understood she was the woman's property now, and had perforce to follow – but for the rest of her life she regretted looking backwards. Jack's murderer dragged him up to kneeling by his beautiful golden hair, so that he looked almost alive. Then the tooth-edged weapon was raised, and, with the carelessness of a slaughterman, the warrior sliced through Jack's fair neck. The native shrieked and howled as he raised his gory prize. Jack's head swung crazily, his blue eyes blind, his severed neck streaming with gore.

She hunched inside the canoe as they paddled at speed up the river. Her boiling fit of anger ended, her mind crumpled, ashen and empty. Jack was dead. The notion kept slapping her awake each time she sank into a half-swoon. Everything had happened so fast she couldn't make sense of it. Only after a long time did she summon the courage to look about herself; and for the second time, she wished she had fallen in a fit or died rather than witness what she saw. Jack's head was spiked on the prow of the canoe, his skin like candlewax, his eyes staring open.

Groping in a fog, she reckoned her own life must be almost done with. Maybe they had to chop her own head off in some special place? Or maybe they made a greater spectacle of a woman's execution? What if it was slow and long-drawn-out? She remembered the tooth-edged knife, the stone cudgel. Her teeth chattered, and her blood-stained hands dithered in her lap.

The big woman in the feather cloak put a heavy hand on her arm and started jabbering in a strange lingo. Struggling to stir up the sluggish embers of her mind, she knew she must read this woman's wishes or die. She had a broad and proud face, well used to command, her chin and lips deep-scored and dyed with strange designs. Her monstrous stone jewellery clanked as she moved close to Mary, waving her fingers in the air. ‘Tapoo,' she said slowly, as if speaking to a child. Mary made an almighty effort to stop shaking. It took no great skill to comprehend that this woman was her lifeline, her one chance.

‘Tapoo,' she echoed hoarsely. The woman smiled and patted her arm.

After that she forced herself never to look at Jack's dear face again, though she fancied he must be watching her with mournful devotion. Her whole being was bent upon the savage woman and how she might ingratiate herself. After all, she told herself, though she had fallen into a den of devils, she wasn't dead – not yet.

‘Peg?'

She nearly jumped from her skin. Mrs Croxon was standing on the path, loaded up with her painting gear. Peg stood up too quickly and the flute fell to the ground.

‘What are you doing out here?' her mistress asked. She groped about for the flute, pulling it inside her apron. Then she sighed, and gave a sad little smile.

‘I had to take a moment's rest,' she said wearily. ‘I'm afraid our talk the other day left me very low-spirited, Mrs Croxon.' She wiped her eyes that were dry of tears.

‘Oh, I am sorry, Peg.' Mrs Croxon came right up to her, and patted her arm. Peg struggled not to flinch; she didn't care for such familiarity. ‘And I spoke harshly to you this morning, too.'

Peg shook her head sadly. ‘So you should, mistress. I take too strong an interest in what you do, and I know it's not right. Comes of having so little meself. You see I never had such a good mistress as you in all my time in service. I'd do anything to please you, and that's the truth.'

‘Peg.' Her mistress stared at her with helpless pity. ‘Come inside now, dear. Let us be friends again.' She reached out her hand to lead her back to the house. ‘It will do you no good, sitting out here in the cold. Have you your – what was it you were holding?'

‘Nothing,' she mumbled.

‘I couldn't help but notice. Is it a musical instrument of some sort? On a few occasions I've heard a quite haunting sound.'

God damn her ears. ‘Aye.'

‘Is it Jack's flute?'

She nodded, affecting a sad countenance.

‘Would you like it included in your portrait? I fancy it's like a mourning pendant or a lock of hair – an object that once belonged to a loved one.'

‘I never even thought of it.' That was true, at least. And there was something to be said for having the flute in the picture.

‘Come along, then. Why don't we finish the portrait now?'

‘Oh. I need to see how dinner is getting on.'

‘If you can sit for me now, bread and butter will suffice. I have ground the perfect lily green to colour your eyes. Don't rush away, Peg. You need warmth and company. Take a rest, and the picture will be finished and ready by six o'clock when the master comes home.'

So there she was again, whirligigged up into the mistress's studio, Jack's flute clutched to her bosom.

‘Today I'll just do the new section – yes, your hand just as it was – and then tint it. This gives a lovely bloom to your skin; now it just needs a wash or two of colour.'

She got out her pencil and started to sketch in the flute, peering hard at it with narrowed eyes.

‘What is it made of?'

Peg shrugged helplessly.

‘I've never seen anything quite like it. Is it ivory? Do you mind my asking where Jack got it?'

Keep your secrets hidden, she urged herself. ‘I don't know. Never asked.'

‘Is it some sort of native handiwork?'

Peg concentrated on keeping her pose nice and still. In spite of all the friendly sorry-saying, Mrs Croxon had a new bite to her. And that blue gown from York did look well on her tall frame. ‘Could be,' she said, through barely parted lips.

‘I have an interest in such
memento mori
, as you may have noticed. I lost my mother when I was only a girl.' She indicated the picture of the gawk-faced woman.

When her mistress turned to it Peg yawned. It had to be all that fresh air.

‘And that was my first sweetheart; John Francis Rawdon.' She wittered on about a local boy, who had gone and left her, all because of her father's tyrannical manner.

‘He sailed away and left me, long since. Then when I was in York, who should seek me out but John Francis himself? He has finally come home to England.'

Peg jolted to attention. What was that? This sweetheart fellow had been in York?

‘Of course, I told him I am married now.'

‘And most happily married, too,' Peg broke in.

‘Naturally. But if John Francis had only called a year earlier—' Mrs Croxon looked rather wistful.

‘Surely he cannot be so handsome a gentleman as the master?'

‘No, certainly not.' Her laughter was gentle. ‘But first love …' She raised her eyebrows and shook her head, all in a very good humour.

Two men fussing over Grace Croxon? Who did her mistress think she was – the Queen of Bloody Hearts? True, her appearance was much improved, but only thanks to Peg's directions. Peg struggled with her annoyance, striving to hold a smile.

‘Yet to lose your first love as you did, Peg.' Her mistress's long glance might have been kind, but to her, it felt withering. She couldn't be quite sure of her mistress today. Was she dangling some sort of challenge before her?

‘My Jack would never have left me,' she burst out, all at once. ‘He would have loved me till the world's end. He swore it on a mighty oath. He would have married me, like that.' She snapped her fingers. Then, recollecting herself, she shifted in her chair ‘Sorry, Mrs Croxon. All this talk of Jack has upset me – that is all.'

Mrs Croxon said nothing. Finally she asked in a little voice, ‘What happened to him?'

‘He was killed. My Jack is dead.'

‘How? An accident?'

‘Worse than that. He were killed by a warrior on the island we were shipwrecked on. At least it were quick, though it was – shocking terrible.'

‘And you? How did you survive?'

Peg was suddenly too weary to fashion anything new. ‘I was rescued by a native woman, of the name of Areki-Tapiru.'

‘Goodness.'

‘She saved my life.'

‘And then?'

‘I lived with them, I don't know how long. Then, at last – well, my tribe did sometimes make exchanges with white traders.'

‘What sort of exchanges?'

‘They wanted muskets. And the white traders sometimes wanted hostages; a missionary's daughter or suchlike. I wasn't going to stay there all my life if I could help it. And then – I got back here.'

‘You should write all this down, Peg. It's an extraordinary story. I don't know how you bear it.'

‘Oh, I find the strength. I made a vow to get back home, and I've kept it.'

‘That's good. And maybe, one day?' She gave a silly little smile. What was it with the woman? Since she'd lost her maidenhead she thought of naught but tumbling.

‘Take another man? Never.'

‘You are still young.'

‘Do you think so?' She didn't feel young – she hadn't felt young for years. Her best years had been wasted in grim endurance.

‘Let's take a break before I make the final strokes. What do you think?' Mrs Croxon propped up the portrait for her to see and stood back, looking pleased with herself.

Peg's first glance at the portrait left her dumbfounded. ‘Begging your pardon, Mrs Croxon. I don't know.'

‘It is how I see you, Peg. Often the way we see ourselves is different from those who observe us.'

As if she didn't know that, she scoffed silently. That was her stock in trade.

Mrs Croxon went to fetch some fresh colours. Once she was alone, Peg studied the portrait properly. She recognised her own flat, heart-shaped face raised to the beholder, her lips just parted, her features very handsome. But her mistress had captured a peculiar expression; she looked, for all the world, a lost and tragical woman. Her lovely eyes stared into a terrible past. As for her pitiful costume, it was the garb of a loser in life's game of fortune. It was a cruel picture, and she hated it. Mrs Croxon's eye was as sharp as a scalpel of truth that cut away layer after layer of humbug. It said without words the question that flayed her alive: if she was so clever, why had she lost all she'd ever wanted?

Mrs Croxon reappeared with a jug and a glass jar. ‘Do you like it?'

‘You've got me all wrong,' Peg said. ‘That's never me.'

 

 

I asked Peg to sit down again. I was stung by her attitude, and exceedingly eager to get the portrait finished. As I picked up my brushes, I felt sorry for Peg – sorry that I had dragged her up there and painted a portrait she didn't like, and sorry too for all the blows life had dealt her. She seemed quite a different character from the excited fabulist of her first sitting. Was it any surprise I had painted her as a woman haunted by disappointment?

Yet I still had a pinch of doubt about her story. In an atlas, I had confirmed that Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro did indeed lie on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Yet the heart of her tale was certainly true; that she had loved a man, and he had died. And now, by interpreting her essential character as tragic, I had upset her further. Poor Peg. I congratulated myself that I possessed so much that she would never have: a gentleman husband, wealth and rank. Life, I thought, is indeed a lottery. Save for the accident of her low birth, Peg might have been a person of fashion; a vibrant beauty, painted by an academician in oils.

Intending to make a quick end to it, I started mixing the lily green I had made especially from crushed flowers, hoping exactly to tint her eyes, rattling my tiny brush in the jar. Then I subjected her to my closest gaze.

‘Your eyes,' I said, musingly. ‘They are a very unusual green; in different lights they reflect brown and blue. Do they perhaps reflect whatever light falls on them?'

Peg replied that she couldn't say. ‘Do, please, sit very still.' I looked very hard, then used my green with a wash of yellow ochre to tint the iris, and a ring of burnt umber. A pinprick of white titanium gave them startling life. I was happy with them; surely even Peg would admire her lively cat-like eyes.

‘And your throat now, Peg. Please, pull off your kerchief. You have such luminous skin.'

She removed her kerchief.

‘And that necklace, if you please.' I pointed at the ribbon around her neck, from which was suspended a metal pendant. On the instant I froze; I immediately lost my capacity for speech. It was a copper disc. It was the convict token.

Recovering, I stood up and held out my hand. ‘Give that to me.' A succession of responses crossed Peg's face: surprise, hostility, and finally, cringing horror.

‘Please, Mrs Croxon.' She grasped the copper disc and hid it in her hand.

‘Give it to me,' I insisted.

‘God help me,' she whimpered, still clutching it tightly. I lifted the ribbon up and over her head, I read the engraving and knew every word of it at once; for it commemorated Mary Jebb.

‘Did you take this from my husband?'

She raised her head, shaking it weakly. ‘No.'

‘Stay as you are.' I rushed downstairs to Michael's room, grateful he was absent, and hastily rifled through his box. There it lay, the twin to the copper disc that swung in my hand. In every respect of size and pattern, in every crude letter, it was identical. As I climbed the stairs back to my studio I prayed I was wrong, beginning to feel, in little flashes of fear, that my world had been thrown off its axis onto some other crazy course. A few moments later I was back in my room. There Peg still sat, hunched like a beggar before a parish overseer, her face in her hands.

I sat down before her. ‘Speak the truth. Are you Mary Jebb?'

She didn't make a sound; only rocked, with a tiny, childish movement.

‘Come along. Why else would you wear such a thing?' I thrust it before her in my open palm. With her face still hidden, she shook her head.

‘Was this your voyage? Were you transported to “the ends of the earth”?'

Still she sat silent, though breathing harshly. Of course she was Mary Jebb, I told myself. I was a dolt. How had I not apprehended it months ago?

‘Mary,' I said gently. ‘I will judge you only as I know you. Earlier I called you friend. Listen to me. It is better to be truthful than be forever lying.'

I touched her arm very lightly. A sob emerged from her wet and rumpled face.

‘I'm sorry,' she croaked. ‘I will say it. I was a convict.' She lifted her hand and ineffectually wiped her tears. ‘It were such a small crime, Mrs Croxon. I was but a young girl, new up from the country, whose granny had just died. I see now I was led into bad ways by this man Charlie, who sent me out daily to hawk stuff about the streets. He taught me little tricks; to short-change folk when they wasn't looking, all that sort of racket. If I didn't hand over a good sum every day I got a leathering from Charlie – a beating, I should say. He had others in his power – pocket-divers who lifted watches, and harlots who – well, you know, I'm sure. I never had as much money to give him as they did, and he let me know it all right. Then one day I got the chance to lift a whole pound note, from a gentleman who needed change, and so I tried out a sting that Charlie had showed me. My heart was racketing, my nerves was all done in – but I switched the pound note for a blank, and nearly got away with it.'

She covered her mouth and shook her head miserably. ‘But he come running after me, the gentleman. I thought I'd leg it back to my landlady that cared for me since my granny died. I ran like the clappers, but he wouldn't give up – not that one. In the end, he chased me up to the rooftop and caught me there like a rabbit. I gave him his pound note back. I got down on me knees. I prayed to him to be a Christian and forgive me. I told him I was only doing it under threat from the ruffian who would skin me alive. And I said to him, I begged him to remember it, his word would send me to the gallows.'

I shook my head in sympathy, but did not speak.

‘He of course was a gentleman, a very handsome, high-speaking sort of gentleman, and once I was thrown in the cells I looked even worse than ever, having to sell the clothes off my back just to stay alive. The day I was up at the Bailey, he steps in as a witness. I had not a hope against him, me in my rags, and him with his dandy rig-out and silky words. Over in no time, it was; the judge puts his black cap on and tells me I'm to swing. And that fellow laughs with the lawyer, like it's all a jest, sending a poor girl to her death. I was so frightened of that man, Mrs Croxon. He said we was all vermin to be stamped out.'

As she spoke, another part of me strove to catch up with the facts. Vermin. I had heard that expression very often, and recently.

‘Yet you did live,' I whispered.

‘No thanks to him. The day they come to hang me I was nearly dead already, from terror. Then, when I'm standing at the wooden steps, praying to God for forgiveness before I'm to be strangled, a reprieve comes. Me and three other women are wanted to serve the convicts, out in Botany Bay. And so we was, Mrs Croxon, packed off to serve them like a herd of brood mares. Can you imagine that?' She looked up at me with a ghastly expression. ‘Gangs of murderers and cut-throats, using your body like a—'

‘Don't,' I said sharply. ‘I understand. But these horrible pendants?'

She glanced at the object in my hand and licked her lips.

‘While we was waiting to board the ships there was an engraver, a decent old cove, convicted of printing tracts against the authorities. It was him who made them. Love tokens they called them. When you think you are going away from all you've ever known, your home, children, old folk, sweetheart, you get a pitiful urge not to be forgot.' She touched the spot on her breast where the old copper penny had hung. ‘Them verses you get scribed – “When this you see, remember me”, and suchlike – it's all anyone will ever touch of you again. You know you in't never coming back.

‘As for the voyage, I told you the honest truth about that – only I was in irons, of course. So was Jack. But we loved each other, I swear that on the Bible. So we took our chance and bolted from the colony. It were either that or starve, and that's the honest truth. And I swear, mistress, I come home so grateful for my second chance at life. Every day I thanked God, and swore I'd take the honest path.'

‘But your term is not expired?'

‘No. And that's what undone me.'

I nodded, but by now I no longer wanted to hear any more. Outside, the afternoon light was leaching away, and deep shadows gathered at the corners of the room. Not wanting to break off to make a light, I watched Peg's face growing indistinct save for the gleam of her fearful eyes.

‘When I got back to Manchester, the gentleman that convicted me – he saw me in the street. He followed me secretly and caught hold of me. He told me I must follow his orders. He made such terrible threats I had no choice.'

‘What orders?' I was beginning to feel curiously cold and detached; as if the scene before me was happening to someone else. But Peg, or Mary as I knew her now, would no longer meet my gaze.

‘To break the law again,' she said quickly. ‘To do as he said under pain of being sent back to the gallows. And I would swing this time, with no chance of a pardon. Can you comprehend how that feels?'

For a moment, I did contemplate the horror of being condemned to death. A death in life, counting the hours and minutes until the barbaric rope choked the life from you.

‘Tell me, Mary,' my voice was unsteady, ‘why does Michael keep your token?'

Now her words emerged in a breathless tangle. ‘I never had a sweetheart. When the others had their love hearts made I had no one to remember me. Then I got a fancy. I wanted what that gentleman had done to be engraved on his conscience for ever.'

‘Michael? It was him, wasn't it? The man who convicted you.'

She nodded, and collapsed into shuddering tears.

‘So what does he want you to do?'

She peered up at me, and I saw, in her sorrowing face, that it was she who pitied me. She spoke in a conspiratorial hiss. ‘He told me he was getting married. And that he had rather have married another, a great beauty. And that I must help him or be hanged. I must come here and earn your trust. Oh, Mrs Croxon, I should rather be struck dumb than have to speak of it.'

‘Help him? How?'

‘He has not said yet. Only that he needs someone unafraid to break the law.'

‘Tell me. Has he given any instructions?'

She shook her head. ‘Only to be certain you are happy. He wants you to feel – falsely content.'

‘I knew it in my heart, I knew it.' I balled my fists and beat the table. ‘He has used me. What a fool I am.'

She stood up then, and came to me with her hand outstretched. ‘Mrs Croxon, I swear on my mother's grave I will never do you harm. You called me friend.' She laid her work-roughened hand on mine and looked into my eyes. ‘You are good. I have learned from you what goodness is. Not like – that other woman he is enslaved to.'

‘Oh God; what should I do? I thought he was starting to care for me.' I wiped my eyes on the back of my hand.

‘Oh no, Mrs Croxon. If you only knew how he speaks of you. He calls you an obstacle, an open purse. He needs only your money; he speaks of it all the time.'

The pain I felt then was so intense that for a moment I wished I was dead. Then I calmed myself a little.

‘And what of you, Peg? He must not be allowed to bully you. I need time to think.' I squeezed her hand in return. ‘Will you be my ally while I decide what to do?'

Her green eyes met mine, honest and friendly. ‘I will.'

Somehow I endured the rest of that day. Questions circled me like snapping dogs: what should I do, or say, to Michael, and how could I hide my distress? I felt tattered and dishevelled, as if a thread of me had snagged and now I was unravelling.

Michael did not return at six, or seven, or eight. Unable to calm my anxiety, I took a dose of the Poppy Drops at nine. At ten I glimpsed his carriage-light outside. Standing at the top of the stairs, I listened in vain for his voice. Finally, Peg pattered up the stairs to find me.

‘He is waiting in the dining room,' she said in a low voice.

‘We must both behave in our usual manner,' I whispered.

She nodded gravely.

‘Why was he delayed?'

‘Something about the mill. Bad news, I fear.'

When I entered the dining room, Michael was already halfway through his usual bottle. He stood up very flushed and agitated.

‘Where have you been? Whitelow was torched at sunset. Just as the housing for the machine was finished. Hundreds of pounds' worth of materials have gone up in smoke. Come and see it for yourself!' He grasped my hand and dragged me up stair after stair until we emerged through a door onto a flat part of the roof. The night was biting cold and bitter black, save for an orange fireball to the far west. I grasped the balustrade, lamenting all the stupid loss of it. My grandmother's kind bequest, I thought, is but kindling on a bonfire of vanities.

‘Arson,' Michael ranted. ‘The cowards crept up just after we left. I was nearly home when the message arrived. Don't these wretches want to work? We build mills to give them employment, and they make plots to destroy them. And what of me? What do I do now?'

He fretted, fearing that Whitelow might be attacked again. Such uprisings were spreading across the country. A few weeks earlier Grimshaw's mill at Manchester had been destroyed by fire; the newspapers told of lawlessness, of machine breaking, of Loom Riots.

At dinner, Michael's marrow spoon delved into the stumps of roasted bone, while I pushed a little of the oily stuff about my plate. ‘Did you hear the other news? The King of France is put to trial by his own subjects! That is where we are all headed if the government does not destroy these apes. This attack is only the beginning.'