‘I don’t forget that. I only… I only tell you how I find him,’ she said quietly.
‘Then perhaps you are a poor judge of character, and situation, and should not pretend you can be of help to me; or to Alice.’ Starling glared at her, and Mrs Weekes drew her shoulders back, taking a breath.
‘I can be of help. I want to know what happened to Alice.’
Starling thought for a moment before she next spoke, gazing at the garden wall.
‘I read a letter of his – one he wrote to Alice from Spain, before he came back from the war the first time. Before he came back and… killed her.’
‘And did you not find the others, with that letter?’
‘No, it was on his desk, by itself. It must have been the last letter he wrote to her. In it he spoke of the shame he felt – that he had done bad things, and that if she knew them she would love him no more.’
‘Yes. I believe he has seen and done much that haunts him.’
‘I hope it haunts him! I hope he sees her ghost in every dark corner of the room!’ And I wish I did. I wish I saw her too. ‘If he speaks to you of the war, then try to find this out. Try to find out what he did that shamed him so, that first year of the war. I think he told Alice, and she could not accept it.’
‘I’ll try. He…’ Rachel Weekes broke off, swallowing hard. ‘He has told me things lately that made my blood run cold. Things he saw, the way the war was waged on the common people of the peninsula, as well as between the opposing armies.’
‘It’s never a pretty thing, I’ve heard tell.’ Starling nodded. ‘I have met soldiers old and new, and when they drink, they drink to forget.’
‘Who did you take food to, the week before last?’ Rachel Weekes suddenly burst out.
‘What?’ said Starling, startled. A rosy blush swept up from Mrs Weekes’s neck.
‘I… I saw you, in the city. That is to say…’
‘Oh yes.’ Starling fixed her with a flat glare. ‘I’ve not forgotten that you told on me, to Sol Bradbury. Tattled on me for thieving.’
‘Weren’t you thieving?’ Rachel Weekes retorted, flustered. ‘I… I thought to do the right thing, in reporting it,’ she said.
‘Shows what you know about rights and wrongs, doesn’t it? And Dick said you’d seen me take a boat. Why did you follow me?’
‘I just… I happened to see you in the street, and I was curious. I saw you board a barge and go out of the city, and I-’
‘And you what?’
‘I envied you.’ The words were little more than a whisper, and somehow they made all the ire in Starling melt away. She smiled, though she didn’t quite know what pleased her.
‘You envied me?’ she echoed, and shook her head. ‘You wouldn’t say so if you’d smelled Dan Smithers’s breath close to.’
‘Perhaps not,’ said Rachel Weekes, with a cautious smile of her own. Do I frighten her?
‘I took it to an old acquaintance, fallen on hard times.’ Starling paused, considering, before adding: ‘One who knew Alice of old. Perhaps the only other person but me that recalls her fondly. That recalls her at all, outside of this household.’
‘Will you go again to this acquaintance?’
‘I daresay I will, in due course.’
‘Could I go with you?’ Again there was that urgency to the woman, that keenness that Starling did not quite understand, or trust.
‘Why would you want to? It would bring down your husband’s wrath, if he found you out.’
‘He will not…’ This was spoken with less certainty. ‘I will be careful.’
‘But why would you want to? It’s a cold journey at this time of year.’
‘I want to… be free of the city for a while. And I want to talk to another person who knew Alice. It might help me to understand her better,’ she said. Starling considered her for a moment. She suddenly saw that Mrs Weekes needed something, very badly, but Starling had yet to divine what that thing might be. She shook her head.
‘You want to understand her? She’s dead, Mrs Weekes. You can’t know her now, I fear. You’re too late.’ Her own words made Starling pause; they grazed the raw edges of her own grief. ‘You speak as though you’re infatuated with her, and yet you never saw her, nor spoke to her.’
‘I see her in the mirror, you forget. And I see her in your words, and in… the words of others.’
‘Differing accounts indeed, I am sure.’
‘Truly. And I must know the truth, if I can find it out.’
‘To what end though?’ Starling pressed, doggedly. But it seemed that Rachel Weekes had no answer to this question. After a pause, and with a pleading look in her eyes, she said:
‘I could bring food. I could bring meat and bread, to pay for my presence on the visit.’
‘Very well.’ Starling relented. It could do no harm to me, surely? She risks more by it. ‘I will go again next Monday night, at around five in the evening.’
‘On All-Hallows’ Eve?’
‘Are you afraid of ghosts, Mrs Weekes?’
‘I think it might be wise to be.’
‘That is the arranged time, though. Meet me over the bridge, on the south wharf. And don’t be late, because I won’t wait if Smithers is ready to depart. It’s a wearying walk in the dark, if the boat has gone.’ Mrs Weekes looked pleased enough at this, and though Starling kept a stern face as she turned away, she found that she didn’t mind the idea of having the tall woman’s company on the dark and joyless trip along the canal.
1808
In the kitchen at the farmhouse, there was a suspended, ringing moment after Starling blurted out Alice’s and Jonathan’s secret. When it ended she was sent upstairs, but she did not quite go all the way. She sank into the same spot by the banisters from which she’d first seen Jonathan and Lord Faukes, though it was harder for her to fit there than it had been, and there was such a restlessness in all her limbs it was near impossible to remain quiet or still. For a long time, Alice only wept, and that was the hardest thing of all to bear. She wept with a kind of frantic need that prevented Bridget from saying anything at all. Starling heard the scrape of chair legs on the kitchen floor, and the kettle coming to the boil on the range.
‘Alice, child, stop now,’ said Bridget, after several long minutes. ‘Take a deep breath, slowly now. Be calm, be calm. Take a sip of tea.’ She heard the trembling rattle of a china cup in its saucer.
‘Bridget, you must not tell him! Promise me! Please, I beg you, for he will prevent us from ever seeing one another if you do, and he will like as not cast us out and we will have nothing and be ruined! And I will never see him again!’ Alice gabbled.
‘All this you knew, and yet you continued your liaison – you indulged your feelings, and encouraged them to grow. All this you knew, and also that I am employed by Lord Faukes, and must obey his commands.’ Bridget spoke heavily, wearily.
‘I indulged my feelings, and encouraged them to grow? No, I am compelled by my feelings, Bridget! You must know, you must understand… haven’t you ever been in love?’ Alice’s voice was shaking. Starling knew she would be pale, wild-eyed. Do not let her take one of her turns because of what I said.
‘I fancied I was once, and it was no more prudent than this love you have for young Mr Alleyn. My father stepped in and prevented our becoming too attached to each other, and before I had shamed myself publicly. It was a painful separation, I shan’t deny it. But now I see the sense of it, and you must see the sense of removing your affections from Mr Alleyn.’