‘Then, this story does not make you despise me?’ he said. Rachel Weekes watched him steadily.
‘Nothing could,’ she said.
Starling saw how easily their hands stayed clasped; how unabashed they were. Their touch seemed at once casual and essential, to both of them, and Starling was excluded. Their feelings put up a barrier to her, just as the feelings between Alice and Jonathan had done, years before. She was powerless to do anything about it; she felt herself diminishing, becoming less substantial because of it. She could only watch, and try to find a voice with which to reach them.
‘What will you do now, Mrs Weekes?’ she said, and was surprised to hear how hard her voice sounded. Rachel Weekes looked from Jonathan to Starling and then back again, and it was her turn to show confusion.
‘I must… I must bury my husband, and my father-in-law. I must sell the business, or find a manager. I must…’ She frowned, letting go of Jonathan’s hand and smoothing the skirts in her lap. ‘I must find a situation, I suppose,’ she concluded, then looked up at Jonathan Alleyn with questions writ large on her face. She doubts him, but she dares to hope.
‘Mrs Weekes. You have some onerous tasks ahead of you. If I may be of any assistance, during any of it, you must please tell me,’ said Jonathan. Rachel Weekes said nothing, but gave a tiny nod. ‘I plan to leave Bath,’ Jonathan went on. ‘I’ve stayed here too long. This house has been my gaol and I would be free of it. Let my mother stay here, and reflect on all that has passed. I could go… I could go to the house at Box. There are tenants in it, but they may be given notice…’ Here Jonathan paused, and glanced at Starling. ‘Then again, no. Perhaps that place has as many unhappy memories as this one,’ he murmured. ‘I may even sell it. There are plenty of other places I could go.’
‘I think a change of situation and surroundings would be most advantageous to your continued recovery, Mr Alleyn,’ said Rachel Weekes, in a constricted voice that shook slightly. He studied her for a second, perplexed.
‘But, Mrs Weekes… Rachel,’ he said. ‘I will go nowhere unless you will accompany me.’ For a heartbeat Rachel Weekes did not react, then her smile broke over her face like the sunrise.
Starling’s throat squeezed tight, aching, as she watched this exchange and felt herself sliding away from them, quite alone. Her eyes burned and she turned, stumbling blindly for the door and the corridor outside, where Mrs Alleyn waited – another invisible person, another unwanted remnant of the past, with no place in the now.
‘Starling, wait!’ The voice that called her back was Rachel Weekes’s. Starling pivoted clumsily on her wooden feet.
‘What will you do?’ Rachel asked.
‘I know not,’ Starling replied. ‘It matters not.’
‘You cannot mean to serve Mrs Alleyn from now on, surely?’
‘No. I shan’t serve her.’
‘Then… will you come with us instead?’ Us. Already they are become ‘us’. But they were too new an entity; it was too soon, and Mrs Weekes seemed to flounder after using the word. ‘That is, will you come with me?’ she corrected herself. Starling gave her as hard a look as she could find; a glare as weighty as she could make it.
‘You’ll have need of a servant, no doubt. Perhaps I might prove too costly for you, though,’ she said. Rachel Weekes blinked, and looked hurt.
‘No, I… have little need of a servant, in truth,’ she said. ‘But I have great need of a friend.’ The two of them watched one another, and then Rachel Weekes smiled; a fleeting, transient expression. She doesn’t know if I will accept her or spurn her. She gives me that power. Starling swallowed. You cannot replace Alice. She’d meant to say it out loud, but couldn’t bring herself to. How could she, when this tall, pale creature had fought for Alice alongside her, as if she had known her, as if she too had loved her? Starling’s face was frozen; she was afraid that if she moved a muscle, all would fly out of her control. ‘Will you then? Come with me?’ Rachel Weekes asked again. And this time Starling managed to nod.
‘I will,’ she said.
1807
After the fair in Corsham Jonathan dropped them off on the Batheaston side of the miller’s bridge, holding Alice’s hand as he helped her down. Then he flicked the reins and Starling and Alice watched him vanish into the gloaming; the haze of day’s end wrapping itself gently around him, and muffling the metal ring of the pony’s hooves. Alice put her arm around Starling’s shoulders and they set off towards home with the slow, tired, contented feeling of a perfect day spent. The sun’s remembered warmth was in the stones of the bridge; Starling put her hand on the parapet and felt it. The river was low and sluggish, easing sleepily between its banks and glowing faintly with borrowed light from a fat, baleful moon that had risen.
Alice was still humming the tune that the Irish girl had sung at the fair, and Starling picked it up.
‘How did it go?’ said Alice, smiling.
‘Then she made her way homeward, with one star awake, as the swan in the evening moved over the lake, Starling sang. ‘Only this is a river, not a lake, and I can’t see any swans.’
‘Oh, we need not be so literal, I think.’ Alice laughed.
‘No, but it would have been perfect if there had been swans on the river just now.’
‘Your singing voice is so lovely, little sister. Far lovelier than an actual starling’s.’ Starling glowed at the praise. She tipped her face up to the blue-black sky.
‘There’s more than one star out, too. I count… seven – no, eight,’ she said.
‘Sing some more.’
‘She laid her hand on me and this she did say, it will not be long, love, till our wedding day…’
‘I felt as though she was singing just for me, when I heard that song today,’ said Alice, dreamily. ‘I felt she was singing it just for Jonathan and me. Did you see how he blushed?’
‘Yes. But don’t say that – the girl in the song died, remember?’
‘Oh, so literal again! Well, perhaps not that part. But the first verse, and the refrain.’ Alice sighed, and then threw her arms wide, laughed again. She turned to Starling, taking both her hands and spinning her around until both were giddy and giggling. ‘He loves me well, does he not?’ she asked, breathlessly.
‘You know he does,’ said Starling, embarrassed. Alice grew calmer, her face softer, still wreathed in smiles.
‘ “If it were now to die, ’Twere now to be most happy…” Oh, I feel just like Othello, Starling! I’m so happy, I could die,’ she said. ‘So perhaps every word of the song was for me, after all.’
Starling walked on again, pulling Alice along by her hand. She couldn’t place the warning she felt just then. She looked back over her shoulder but there was no one else on the bridge; no one in the lane ahead of them.
‘Perhaps I’ll sing the song to Bridget, when she comes home,’ she said.
‘You must, dearest. You know how she loves your singing, even if she won’t say so. Only don’t forget to say you heard it from a pedlar in the village.’
‘I’ll say I heard it from Dan Smithers, the bargeman. He’s always warbling old tunes.’
‘Good idea.’ Their voices made a bird clap its wings in the leaves overhead. ‘You know, Starling, when I marry Jonathan, he will be your brother.’
‘He will?’
‘Of course. You’re my sister, so he will be your brother. Do you know what that means?’ Alice glanced down at Starling, swinging her arm in time with their languorous strides. ‘It means no harm can ever come to you. It means you will always be looked after, and kept safe.’
‘But having you for my sister means that already, doesn’t it?’
‘I wish it did, dearest.’ Alice turned her face to the moon; she was grey and silver, bathed in its light. ‘But women alone are never safe. Not truly. It is the men who rule us that decide it all.’