But even their libertarian mother was adamant – they could not ride on the box, and they weren’t allowed to lean out of the window unless the carriage had halted or was moving very slowly, with no trees or hedges nearby to snag them or lash at their eyes. At the ford was one good place, since the crossing was always made cautiously. The road slipped into the By Brook and vanished along the rocky bottom to emerge the other side, muddy and rutted, some thirty feet away. It was early in the summer and spring had been full of downpours; there were still days of torrential rain, after which the landscape gently seethed when the sun returned, steaming as it warmed and dried. So the By Brook was running high; it was deeper than usual at the ford, and faster. The water shone; a green, unbroken skin undulating over the rocky bed, reflecting the vibrant colour of young beech boughs overhead. They heard the coachman, Lenton, holler to the horses, an elongated ea-sy that slowed the carriage. They heard the first great splashes as the horses started into the water.
‘Me!’ the girls shouted at once, each desperate to be the first to look out. Their father smiled indulgently.
‘Rachel first, since you were first to pet the horses before we left, Abi.’
John Crofton dropped the window as low as it would go, and held Rachel’s small body on his knee so that she could curl her fingers over the sill and stick her head out. Droplets of water landed on her face like rain, kicked up by the horses. She gazed down at the white plumes where their legs churned the river, and smelled their sweat and the clean river scent; the sticky leather of the harness. The water came well above the horses’ knees, covering their white socks. Their tails trailed in it, tugged downstream. The carriage slowed right down, and wobbled side to side over unseen rocks. Rachel looked up at the back of Lenton’s grey head. He was sitting straight, knees wide; tweaking at the reins, keeping them slow. Then the carriage tipped slowly, the left wheel riding up high onto some obstacle on the riverbed. It inched up to a high point and then stopped altogether. Rachel gripped the sill tighter as she was pulled towards the other side of the carriage. She felt her father’s hands tighten around her middle. She felt thrilled, and yet safe.
‘Hup now. Easy on, easy on.’ The coachman’s voice stayed low and calm; the horses leaned into their collars, but the carriage stayed stuck.
‘The wheel must be wedged in some crevice,’ said Anne Crofton. ‘Can you see anything?’
‘Hop down, little girl, and let me look,’ said their father. But Rachel didn’t want to relinquish her vantage point, and hung on.
‘I want to see! My turn!’ Abi cried suddenly. She reached up and grabbed the window’s edge. She jumped, pulling on her arms to lift herself up. All of her weight was against the door. At that moment the carriage jerked forwards, and righted itself abruptly, and in the next instant the latch popped open, the door flew wide, and Abi was gone.
‘Abigail!’ Their mother’s voice was a piercing, incredulous shriek. For a sickening moment Rachel was also airborne; her father’s hands tightened convulsively, gripping her ribs so hard that it hurt. There was water and the wet, black side of the carriage beneath and behind her, then she was inside again, thrust far back into a seat and left.
‘Abigail – catch her! Lenton, catch her, man, catch her!’ John Crofton was in the river, over his knees and struggling against the current. He lurched, could not find safe footing; had to keep one hand back to grip the wheel for support. The horses tossed their heads and plunged at the sudden noise and movement; Lenton was caught up with them, wrestling with the reins.
‘Abigail! Oh, my baby! My baby!’ Anne Crofton was hysterical; Rachel hardly recognised the sounds coming out of her mouth. Her mother was leaning out of the carriage with her arm flung out and her fingers splayed as though she might somehow reach Abi and pull her back to safety. But the river was fast, and deep enough, and the girls were only just old enough to climb onto chairs and down steps, not out of heedless rivers. Rachel stood behind her mother in the unsteady carriage, and looked out. Far down the river, where it curved out of sight beneath dappled green trees, a fragment of lavender blue was racing out of sight.
‘She drowned?’ Starling’s voice made Rachel jump; all the grim inevitability of the story was in it.
‘We had to think so. We grieved as if she had… but we never found her, you see. We never found her… body. My father and our man went the whole length of the By Brook, to where it joined the Avon – here, at Bathampton – asking in every village and cot along the way. But nobody had found a little girl, alive or dead, in the water. We were so young; I remember that day only as snatches of colour and sound and scent. I don’t remember her falling, not exactly, but I remember the colour of her dress, and how pretty it looked in the water. And I have always had the feeling…’ Rachel paused, and took an uneven breath. ‘I have always had the feeling that she wasn’t gone.’
‘So when you were told about Alice Beckwith, who you looked so similar to, you thought it could be her? Your sister?’ said Bridget.
‘The accident happened not ten miles from here in the By Brook valley, and that river runs here, to join the Avon! And now you tell me that Alice was brought to you aged three years or so… don’t you see? It has to be her!’
‘Poor girl.’ Bridget was shaking her head. ‘I can see why you would want to believe it. But you have a similar look to her, not an identical one, and Alice was some issue of Lord Faukes’s, I’m convinced of it.’
‘But you don’t know it!’
‘No, I do not know for sure. But don’t agitate yourself over it so, Mrs Weekes!’
‘Don’t agitate myself, when I may have found my sister, lost to me these twenty-six years?’ Rachel felt panicked, desperate; she felt Abi fading, slipping away from her. Stay, dearest.
‘But you have not found her,’ said Starling, a grim silhouette in the doorway. Her voice was hard, and even. ‘Alice is long dead. You have not found her.’
Rachel sat in silence for the rest of the visit. She rose from the bedside and went to sit by the stove, which was finally giving out a little heat, as Starling made a soup of the dried fish and some barley she found in the cupboard, and took a bowl of it to Bridget. She watched as Starling put a smooth lump of stone on to heat as she swept the floors, then wrapped the stone in rags and slid it under the blankets near the old woman’s feet; then she brewed a pot of tea and sweetened a cup with honey for each of them. All the while, she and Bridget exchanged comments about her work and the Alleyn household, and what provisions and charity might come in before Starling next visited, and who had been caught with whom, canoodling behind the church. There was no more talk of Alice or Jonathan, or the other man in Alice’s life; as if a truce had been called until the next time. There was no more talk of Abigail, and Rachel sensed them parting around the subject like a stream around a fallen branch; as though she had brought something shameful, embarrassing, to the cottage. She said nothing, feeling cowed and angry, and foolish too. What if it is not folly to believe it? Jonathan found a note… and Bridget saw another man. What if she ran away, and is alive somewhere? The thought was so sweet it was almost unbearable, and Rachel swallowed hard. Even if she didn’t remember me, she would know me as soon as she saw me.
There were no boats heading west, so Starling and Rachel walked back to Bath along the towpath, side by side. The moon in the icy sky made everything strange and grey; the canal, the landscape, their skin and eyes – even Starling’s bright hair. For a long time neither one of them spoke. They walked quickly, the cold clenching in their chests.