‘Don’t cry, Starling. I know why you told Bridget,’ she said. ‘I know why you were angry. You wanted to hurt me some, because I have hurt you, haven’t I, dearest?’ Starling only wept more, messily; snot and tears slid down her chin. Alice’s arm went around her shoulders and squeezed. ‘You are so quick and bright; it’s easy to forget how young you are.’ She sighed softly and fetched out a handkerchief to wipe Starling’s face. ‘You and I have been so close, since you first came to us. It must be impossible for you to understand why I met Jonathan in secret, as well as the times I met him with you, and at the house. It has to do with the kind of love we feel, and my… particular situation. Perhaps you understand a little more of that now, after hearing what Bridget had to say earlier on.’ Starling glanced up and saw that her eavesdropping was no secret. She dissolved into fresh tears of misery; for a while Alice let her cry. A weak breeze shifted the willow whips.
‘Now I need to know how close we are, Starling,’ said Alice, after a while. She whispered the words, so that they seemed spoken in part to the darkness and the silent sliding river. Starling gulped and sniffed and tried to read her expression.
‘What do you mean, Alice?’ she said.
‘I have sworn to Bridget that I will detach myself from Jonathan. I had no choice but to swear it. But I shall not do it. I will not do it!’ Alice took Starling by the tops of her arms and stared into her eyes. ‘You betrayed me before because you were hurt and angry. But you betrayed me to the one person who had best reason to keep my secret with me. Perhaps it was deliberate, perhaps not, but betraying Jonathan and me to Bridget was really hardly a betrayal at all.’ Starling waited, hardly breathing. She’d never heard Alice sound so serious. ‘I will not detach myself from Jonathan, and he will not detach himself from me. It would be utterly impossible. So I will break the vow I just made to Bridget, and break it willingly, and if the time comes that Jonathan and I must flee from our families to be wed, then I will go eagerly, though I should be disgraced for ever. I tell you this now because you will have guessed it, I know. If not at once then sooner or later. So I ask you now, Starling – will you betray us again?’
‘Never!’ Starling gasped.
‘Think before you answer, dearest. It will be harder to keep this secret now. Bridget will be watching… she will doubtless make you promise to tell her if I do not keep to my word.’ Alice’s fingers clutched Starling’s shoulders, gently but insistently.
‘I will lie to her too, I don’t care! But you must promise me one thing,’ said Starling, desperately.
‘What is it?’ Alice sounded wary, worried.
‘When you go… when you go away with Jonathan, you must take me along with you. You mustn’t leave me!’
‘Starling, dearest…’
‘You must not leave me! Promise it!’ Alice pulled her closer, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
‘I promise it; and that is a promise I will keep.’
They waited until they were both calm, and composed, and resolute, before returning to the farmhouse, and to Bridget’s stern unease. As they went in Alice turned to smile at Starling, and it was that smile that reassured her, and told her she was forgiven and loved. It was that smile that made the ground under her feet turn back to solid rock from shifting sand, and convinced her to ignore that sparkle of instinct that came again, with the shadow of Lord Faukes looming large in her mind; the urge she felt to take hold of Alice’s hand and run, right then, immediately and far away.
1821
Overnight, frost had settled on every stone of the city, every leaf and blade of grass of Barton Fields, where Rachel and Richard met Captain and Mrs Sutton to walk. Mist lay thick over Bath, snaking along the river as though the water had breathed it out. It crept up the lower slopes of the city, so that only the upper crescents rose clear of it; an elegant harbour along a shifting white shore. Cassandra Sutton was swaddled in coat and woollen shawls, with gloves on her hands and leather boots laced high up her legs. She walked ahead and then skipped back to them, to show them whatever she’d found – acorns, or fir cones; once a massive horse chestnut leaf, golden brown and crusted with ice. The exercise made her cheeks pink and her eyes shine, and the child looked as vibrant as the spray of crimson hawthorn berries she next brought to show them.
‘Cassandra, do not run about so, I beg you. You’re a young lady now,’ said Harriet Sutton.
‘But if I run I’ll keep warm,’ the little girl pointed out, and smiled winningly at them as she turned and trotted away once more. Her teeth were a flash of white against the darker colouring of her face.
‘Cassandra!’ Harriet called after her, but her tone was amused, not reproachful.
‘It does children good to run, and fill their chests with fresh air,’ said Rachel.
‘True enough. But Cassandra is coming to that age when I think I ought to instil a touch more decorum in her, perhaps.’
‘Oh, she is but nine years old, is she not? I think she could safely be allowed to run wild for a couple more years.’ Rachel smiled. ‘When I was her age, my father still took me fishing for tadpoles. We would stand for hours in the muddy edges of a stream, dipping for the poor creatures. I think he longed for a boy, to take on such outings! Once Christopher was born, I was allowed to become his daughter, rather than his son. I was about Cassandra’s age when that happened, and I turned out well enough, I suppose.’
‘Indeed you did. You turned out very well indeed.’
Harriet looped her arm through Rachel’s as they walked; Richard was walking further behind, with Captain Sutton.
‘Harriet, may I ask you something?’ said Rachel.
‘Of course.’
‘Does your husband ever talk about his time in the war? The war against the French, I mean?’
‘In truth, very little.’ Harriet Sutton sighed. ‘I do not press him on it, since it seems to me that it pains him to speak of it.’
‘Do you think it… troubles him? The things he has seen and done?’
‘My husband is a good and kind man; I’m certain such violence troubles him. But he does his duty to king and country. His duty as a solider.’ Harriet turned her head to look at her husband. ‘The army needs men like my husband, to bring a measure of decency to the grotesquery of the battlefield.’
‘Indeed.’
‘What makes you ask?’
‘Mr Alleyn has lately begun to speak to me of his time in the war. Of the things he saw and did,’ said Rachel. And they are things that turn my stomach. ‘I can’t imagine how any man could come through the same and remain innocent of heart.’
‘Yes. I have heard of other soldiers who find it impossible to return to their old lives when they come home. They find society meaningless; their days pointless; their wives and families… frivolous.’
‘And what becomes of these men?’
‘Gradually, they resettle, and find peace.’ Harriet shrugged. ‘Or they do not, and turn to drink and dissolution, or retreat from the world.’
‘Or retreat into drink and dissolution, all three,’ Rachel murmured. Harriet smiled sadly.
‘What does he tell you?’
‘Such things…’ Rachel shook her head. ‘Such things that I begin to understand why his memories torment him so. Why he has lost his faith in humanity.’ And then I read him a tale of adventure and chivalry, and he sleeps, like a child.