1803
When the sun was well risen on the second day, Starling was fed a breakfast of milk porridge sweetened with honey. She ate until her stomach was full to bursting. Outside, a weak and chilly sun lit the world. The starlings had flown from the horse chestnut tree, and a small flock of spotted white hens were scuffing their feet in the yard. They ate breakfast in the kitchen, where a fresh fire snapped in the hearth; sitting at a scrubbed and pitted oak table on benches that wobbled on the uneven floor. Alice was wearing a blue dress with a wide lace collar, a little frayed at the cuffs but still finer than anything Starling had ever seen up close before. The older woman, Bridget, wore brown wool, and an apron. Starling could not quite make out the bond between the two. They seemed to be young mistress and older servant, but then, they did not always speak to one another that way.
‘How old are you, Starling?’ Alice asked her. Starling stared at her, wide-eyed. She didn’t know the answer, so she stayed silent.
‘She won’t know. How should she know? Where she’s from they don’t celebrate birthdays. Most likely her mother dropped her in the field she was working, and made no particular note of day or month. Or year,’ said Bridget.
‘So her people are farm workers, now? Well, Starling – be happy. You have come up in the world overnight. Yesterday you were a vagrant and a thief, now you are a farm labourer’s child,’ said Alice, smiling. She had plaited her fair hair to either side of a central parting, and coiled the plaits into a knot at the back of her head. Starling thought her impossibly lovely. Bridget grunted gracelessly.
‘Mock all you want. This new cosset of yours could be a faery’s changeling for all you know.’
‘A faery! Would you like that?’ Alice said to Starling, laughing. ‘When I was a little girl, I should have loved to be a faery!’
‘Well, then. I see I shall get nothing sensible from you until the novelty of this new pet has worn off,’ said Bridget. Starling stayed silent, but she listened, and she watched Bridget cautiously. While the women’s attention was elsewhere, she reached out for the honey spoon and put it, drizzling honey, into her mouth. The taste exploded on her tongue, sweet and heavy and fragrant.
‘Oi! Filthy little beast!’ Bridget cried, reaching for it. The wooden ridges rattled against Starling’s teeth as Bridget pulled the spoon away.
‘Oh, let her have it, Bridget! Can’t you see she’s starving?’ said Alice.
‘If she’s to stay she must learn to be useful, and she must learn some manners, and she’ll not learn them by being indulged in all things by you, miss,’ Bridget declared. ‘I raised you up well enough, did I not? And you’ve never been allowed to suck the honey spoon, Miss Alice. Not in my kitchen.’
‘I was never half starved, nor neglected as she has been. But very well, Bridget.’ Her voice took on a tone of calm propriety. ‘Starling, you are to put the honey into your bowl, if you would like more.’ Starling poked out her sticky tongue and licked at the slick of honey on her chin, and Alice dissolved into laughter once more.
The two women set a tin tub in front of the fire and filled it half with water from the pump, and half with hot water from a huge copper kettle. Starling watched them curiously, and had no idea of the purpose of the tub until Alice rolled up her sleeves and held out her arms to her. Starling went to her obediently, and only resisted slightly as Alice began to unfasten her filthy, rotting clothes. She made her arms rigid, to show her displeasure as the cool air of the kitchen reached her skin.
‘Oh, I know this seems strange, little one. But it is most necessary, and you will feel much better without all that grime on your skin. I saw at once that there were three things you needed – sleep, kitchen physic, and a bath. Well, we have had one and two, so now comes three,’ she said. Starling squirmed, and twisted away. Nothing good had ever happened to her that began with her clothes being taken from her. ‘Stop,’ Alice said gently. She put her hands on either side of Starling’s face and looked her in the eye. ‘It will not hurt, and no harm will come to you. Do you trust me?’ Starling thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘Good girl,’ said Alice.
Alice stripped away each filthy garment. Bridget brought in a cake of soap and a comb, linen cloths and a scrubbing brush with mean-looking bristles. Starling eyed the brush suspiciously. Her clothes consisted of a long-sleeved dress which had been stitched together from mixed scraps of fabric and tied around the middle with a length of twine, then two layers of coarse wool undergarments – leggings that came to the knee, and baggy vests. All were filthy and stinking, and so stained that their original colour had been quite forgotten. Lice crawled in all the seams and Alice pinched a flea that had landed on her arm, crushing it with her thumbnail. The discarded clothes were thrown into the fire, and the two women stared mutely at Starling’s naked body for a minute.
‘Saints preserve us,’ Bridget muttered, and for the first time Starling saw pity in the older woman’s eyes. They were looking at the scars and bruises all over her body. Alice put out soft fingers and traced the length of one wound, which had left an angry red welt from Starling’s bony left shoulder to the bottom of her hollow ribs. Frowning, Alice turned her. Her back bore the diagonal slashes of having been beaten with a cane or thong. Old scars beneath newer ones, crisscrossing; a cobweb of injury that would haunt the skin for ever. The backs of her thighs had marks that looked like splodges, raised and shiny. ‘These are burns, for certain,’ said Bridget, and Starling felt the woman’s rough fingers examining her. The touch made her shiver, and goose pimples scattered over her damaged skin.
After a while, Alice turned her to face them again; there were tears in her eyes, but she smiled. Bridget wore a thunderous scowl, and Starling shied away from her.
‘Well,’ said Alice breathlessly. ‘You are quite safe from whoever treated you this way here, Starling. Whoever your people were, we are your people now. Isn’t that right, Bridget?’ Bridget chewed at her bottom lip as if reluctant to answer, but then she said:
‘There was never a child so wicked that it deserved such punishment. I’ve a balm of rosehips and apple that will help soothe those scars. Once she’s clean.’ She went out of the kitchen towards the still room, and Alice smiled at Starling, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
‘See, there – Bridget has a sharp tongue and a hard way about her, but underneath it all her heart is like butter, and quite easy to melt. In you get.’
The water in the tub was soon dark with dirt. Alice soaped her all over and rubbed her with the cloths, ignoring the stiff brush, much to Starling’s relief. Her hair took the longest time. It was snarled up in knots and rat tails, caked with mud and filth. There were burrs caught up in it, and twigs and pieces of hay. Alice worked through it with her fingers, soaped it, combed it out as gently as she could, until eventually it was clean. Great clumps of it came loose and floated around in the soapy water like spiders. The winter sun shone in through the window, and when Bridget came back into the kitchen she paused.
‘Such a colour! Who’d think it, under all that grime?’
‘What colour is it?’ Alice asked, tipping her head this way and that as though to see better.
‘Much the same as that copper kettle, and the fire it’s sitting over.’
‘Oh, how lovely! Alas, to my eyes it is only brown,’ said Alice. Starling tipped her head curiously at Alice.
‘Well, she looks far more like a little girl now, and a bit less like a muckworm,’ said Bridget, nodding in approval.
As it dried, Starling’s hair sprang up into loose curls which seemed to delight Alice all the more. They sat in the parlour, a grander room than Starling had ever seen, though the furniture was plain and faded, and the floor of bare stone. Starling was clothed in an old dress of Alice’s, which was too big and trailed on the floor behind her. The woollen stockings were too big as well, and crept down to rumple around her ankles. Her feet were stuffed into leather slippers, tied on with string.