‘Bridget?’ Starling called again, passing through a doorway on the right. Rachel waited in the first small room. The floor was bare, and the only furniture a crooked table with a stool tucked under it, a wooden cupboard, and a rocking chair which sat facing the stove. Everything felt stiff with cold, from the bones of the house to the very air itself. From the other room she heard the rustle of a straw mattress, and murmured words. ‘You can come in now – and bring the candle,’ Starling called.
Holding the candle before her made everything else recede into shadow, but Rachel saw Starling perched on a three-legged stool by a narrow cot bed, and in that bed lay a shrunken figure with cheekbones like knife edges and deep rings under its eyes; wrapped in so many layers of blankets and shawls it was hard to tell where the bed ended and the person began. ‘Bridget, this is Rachel Weekes, lately married to Dick Weekes, the wine man. Mrs Weekes, this is Bridget Barnes. Come closer so she can see you.’ Rachel did as she was told, noting how keenly Starling watched Bridget’s face. Of course. She waits to see her reaction to me. To this face which is only half mine. But if Starling had been hoping for anything as dramatic as Mr Alleyn’s response, she was disappointed. Bridget simply stared, without blinking, for such a length of time that Rachel found herself staring back, deep into the old woman’s sunken eyes. They registered recognition, but no surprise; only a deep, slow-turning sadness.
‘Well. I suppose there were only so many faces God could create. Sooner or later he had to make the same one twice,’ said Bridget. She sounded breathless; her voice was thin and the air seemed to only penetrate the topmost portion of her lungs, so that she had to take constant small snatches of it. ‘You’re welcome here, Mrs Weekes. Though your presence might cause a stir, on this of all nights.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Barnes,’ said Rachel.
‘We saw nobody, as we came to you. Nobody who might think her a ghost,’ said Starling.
‘It’s Miss Barnes,’ Bridget pointed out. ‘I never did marry. Perhaps if I had I would be tucked up warm in the house of my son or daughter now, instead of in this sty; though I shouldn’t complain of having the almshouse when there are plenty that haven’t.’ She stopped and took several breaths to catch up, coughing wheezily. ‘The damp in the walls plays havoc with my chest,’ she said, to nobody in particular.
‘Well, I may not have a warm and comfortable house I can take you to, but I do have some things for you. Look here – some candle stubs, more beer, a ham bone, some dried fish and peas and…’ Starling pulled an earthenware jar from her sack with a slight flourish. ‘Honey! I didn’t even steal it. I bought it for you, Bridget,’ she told the old woman proudly.
‘Well, now, I’m sure you didn’t need to go and spend your money on me, girl,’ Bridget muttered, but Rachel could see how pleased she was.
‘No, I didn’t,’ Starling said haughtily. ‘So be happy that I did, eh?’ For want of somewhere to put it down, Starling sat cradling the honey in her lap. She reached out with one hand to twitch the bedclothes straighter, and as she turned her face away, Rachel saw it was etched with worry. This woman is her only family, and she is a frail and expectant thing.
Under Starling’s direction, Rachel helped to carry in more wood from a pile behind the cottages. The eerie stillness in the shadows beneath the frozen trees made them hurry back inside.
‘Is there no coal?’ said Rachel, and Starling shook her head.
‘There never is. I thought about bilking some from Dan Smithers, but though he’s my friend he’ll not carry me if he thinks I’m stealing from him.’
‘I have some money. We should have bought some from him,’ Rachel pointed out, opening the stove and feeding in some smaller twigs to get it started again.
‘Open both vents on that stove, or it’ll take an hour or more to light!’ Bridget called from the bedroom. There was no water in the kettle, and with a sigh Starling went back out into the darkness, to the pump on the street, and Rachel was left alone with Bridget, feeling suddenly awkward.
She hovered in the front room for a while, until Bridget called her back to the bedside.
‘Lord, I hate this darkness,’ she grumbled. ‘It’s early evening, but could be the dead of night. My eyes can see to do nothing past four in the afternoon! And shan’t now until April next.’ Rachel took Starling’s place on the three-legged stool.
‘Spring does seem a long way ahead,’ she said. Bridget grunted.
‘You must forgive me for not rising. I’m not so much the invalid I seem, but today my chest is heavy and I have no strength. It comes and goes, some days better than others. Perhaps this will be my last winter; perhaps not.’ She spoke matter-of-factly; without fear or self-pity. ‘Your face wakes old pain. Old grief. Why have you come?’
‘I am… employed at the Alleyns’ household, on Lansdown Crescent. As reader and… companion to Mr Jonathan Alleyn…’
‘To Jonathan Alleyn? So, Starling hasn’t poisoned him yet, then, or slipped an adder into his bedclothes.’ Bridget spoke scathingly.
‘No. Not yet.’
‘Well. I’m not surprised. For all her bluster and spite, she’s a sensible girl. She has a good job there, and she knows it. Where else would she go, for heaven’s sake, if she left the Alleyns?’
‘I… do not know. She seems to hate him, though. Her master. And to hate the mistress a little as well.’
‘She has to hate him; what else can she do? She blames him for Alice leaving us. Easier to think him a murderer than to accept the other idea.’
‘You do not think he did it?’
‘No. But who can know, especially after all this time? There were so many secrets, so many meetings that I knew nothing about. I turned a blind eye as much as I could. Who was I to thwart their plans? Lord Faukes would have cast us all out if he’d found it out, but Alice loved Jonathan so keen – loved him like breath. And I loved Alice.’ She shrugged; coughed a little.
‘It seems most who knew Alice loved her. All but Josephine Alleyn.’
‘All who knew Alice loved her. Josephine Alleyn met her only once; her hatred was for what Alice was, for what she represented, not for Alice herself.’
‘And what was Alice to her?’
‘A scandal, of course. A rich man’s by-blow with no name of her own, born in shame.’ Rachel’s heart squeezed in her chest.
‘You know of Alice’s birth?’ she said, her throat going tight with nameless fear.
‘It doesn’t take a genius to fathom it. She was placed into my arms one day, a little girl with a sunny smile and hair like silk. Lord Faukes brought her, and put her into my arms, and I saw the way he favoured her. What man has tenderness for a child, unless it is his own blood?’
‘You say Alice was Lord Faukes’s child?’
‘I cannot prove it, and it was never spoken of. But why else do rich and powerful men sponsor nameless young children? And keep them tucked away, out of sight and mind?’
‘How old was she when he brought her to you? How old was Alice when you saw her first?’ Rachel pressed, leaning forward and pinning Bridget with her gaze. The old woman frowned in thought.
‘Small, still. Not more than three years of age. I never knew where she’d been before that – I knew better than to ask.’ Suddenly, Bridget’s eyes swam and her mouth twisted up, and when she spoke tears misshaped the words. ‘I was as much of a mother to that girl as whoever it was that birthed her. Mother and nurse and servant. Does Starling ever think of that? She goes on like she’s the only one that misses her.’