‘No. Nothing will be well. I am…’ She blinked, searching for the words. ‘I cannot marry him. I can never marry Jonathan.’
1821
Starling waited while Rachel Weekes went in to Mrs Alleyn, to give her usual report on her visit with Jonathan. The reports had been getting shorter and shorter, though the visits grew longer and longer. Starling had a strange feeling about that. A kernel of mistrust in her gut; hard and bitter as an apple pip. And now they walk out together, arm in arm. I wanted her to torment him with that face, but she heals him. She was restless with frustration. All her years of hard work, all the little punishments she had meted out; all of it was being undone by something she herself had set in motion. When she heard the front door close she darted out and up the servants’ stair, glaring at Rachel Weekes as they moved away together along the garden wall.
‘What are you doing? Are you on his side now?’ Starling snapped, the words surprising her. She hadn’t been aware of thinking them.
‘What?’
‘Walking the high common like… like…’
‘Like what?’ said Rachel Weekes. She seemed distracted, and Starling noticed her split lip, the bruise on her jaw.
‘What did he beat you for?’ she asked, in all curiosity. It seemed that Rachel Weekes’s marriage had followed the same course as her own liaison with Dick, only more rapidly. She still felt angry with the woman for marrying him, but now it was because she’d been stupid enough to saddle herself with him. Rachel’s attention settled onto her more steadily.
‘What’s wrong, Starling?’ she said levelly.
‘What do you mean?’ Starling was taken aback by her tone; affronted. ‘You know what’s wrong. I thought you wanted the same as me – to find out why he hurt Alice, and to prove it. But now I think what you want might have changed, mightn’t it? What now, are you in love with Jonathan Alleyn?’
‘No,’ said Rachel, with a kind of startled outrage that spoke volumes.
‘Hard luck if you are. You’re married to Dick Weekes, until God parts you. And Jonathan loves Alice, not you.’
There was a pause, and Rachel stared hard at Starling until she could hardly bear it. The weight of the taller woman’s gaze seemed to crush her.
‘What have I done to you, to make you try to wound me so?’ she said.
‘You were supposed to be on my side!’ Starling sounded childish to her own ears. She folded her arms in disgust, to hide the tremulous, unhappy feeling that was growing inside her. ‘Tell me what you found out today.’
‘I asked him about Alice’s last letter to him. He said she called their love an abomination. She said they should never see each other again.’
‘Abomination… I hardly know what that means.’
‘It means that Bridget was right, perhaps, about Alice being Lord Faukes’s child. If the love she and Jonathan had was incestuous…’
‘No.’ Starling shook her head. The idea made her sick to her stomach. ‘Alice couldn’t have been Faukes’s child. No man so vile could sire such a sweet girl.’
‘What did he do to you? Lord Faukes, I mean?’
‘What do you think he did? What do all men of power do? They take without asking.’ Starling heard the bitterness in her own voice; the ugliness. Rachel Weekes’s face reflected her pity, and disgust. Starling spoke on, to deflect it. ‘What of your lost sister – what of that? Now you say it was not her?’
‘I… I want it to be. I want Alice to be Abi…’
‘But she could be… she could be, couldn’t she? If she was Lord Faukes’s, wouldn’t he have had her from birth? Wouldn’t he have brought her to Bridget sooner?’ What are you saying, mindless fool? Alice was your own sister, not hers.
Starling sighed sharply through her nose. ‘Anyway, it matters not, and can never be known for sure. But do you believe now that Mr Alleyn killed her? That he had reason to?’
‘I don’t… I don’t know.’ Rachel frowned, and looked down at her hands. She cradled one in the other, and rubbed her thumb over its surface as if to check for a wound or a mark. ‘He spoke of… dark spaces. Dark spaces in his memory.’ The words, spoken reluctantly, sent a thrill through Starling.
‘It is as I said – see how he begins to build the story that he was out of his mind, and can’t remember doing it? That’s what he’s hiding behind, and how he’ll end up forgiving himself.’
‘No. I don’t think he’ll ever forgive himself. He’s no longer sure he saw a note to Alice. The one he said he found in the lovers’ tree. He says it might… have been a nightmare.’
‘I knew it! I knew it.’ Starling’s throat was aching tight; she thought she might scream, or laugh.
‘What of the man Bridget saw her talking to?’
‘What of him? We will never know who he was. And anyway, it was innocent. It was nothing.’
‘Why should Alice argue with a man in the street?’
‘It matters not! He is almost ready to confess to you! I am certain of it. You must press him more. When will you come again?’ She grasped Rachel’s hand to force her concentration, her words tumbling eagerly, shaking with excitement.
‘And what then?’
‘When he confesses? Then I will…’ Starling trailed off. There was such a sudden, ringing emptiness in her head that she noticed the damp, gritty smell of stone all around; she noticed the chill in the air making her nose run, and the stinging under her thumbnails from peeling oranges that morning. She had no idea how to answer Rachel Weekes’s question.
‘Have you tried asking him?’
‘What?’ Starling whispered, distracted.
‘The things you want to know… have you tried asking him at any time, in all the twelve years since you both lost her?’
‘Yes, of course I have! I asked, over and over, in the beginning. But he was only ever silent about it – about her. About everything!’
‘Fresh back from the war, he would have been? Full of misery and guilt and the horror of it… And I wonder how kindly you asked him, Starling. And were they questions, or accusations?’ Rachel Weekes made the reprimand so gentle that Starling barely noticed the sting. ‘Have you asked him since, or have you only sought to keep him as mired in despair as you could?’
‘He deserves no kindnesses from me. Or anyone.’
‘Are you sure?’ Starling thought on it a while. She knew the answer; she had always known the answer. He deserved no kindnesses – and hadn’t this pale facsimile of Alice near enough confirmed his guilt, just now? And yet Starling stayed silent, and was silent for so long that the time to reply came and went. Mrs Weekes took her hand and squeezed it in parting, and as she walked away Starling was left with the ghost of her warmth on her fingers.
Since you both lost her. Rachel Weekes’s words flew around in her head like snowflakes, settling on her with a freezing touch, time and again. No. I lost her. He took her. Starling went up to Jonathan’s rooms with cheese and grapes for his lunch, without even being asked, and found herself standing in front of him. He was in his chair by the window, where she most often found him of late; his back turned to the dark, cluttered contents of his rooms so that he could watch the world instead, with light on his face and his eyes far away. A trail of footprints led the way to him, flecks of grass and damp autumn leaves that had come in on his boots from the common. When he looked up at her his face was calm, and he almost smiled to see her. Starling clenched her fists and this fledgling smile vanished. He seemed to tense himself, ready for whatever she would throw at him. Have you tried asking him? So many questions sprang into her mind, and each one gave her a feeling of pressure behind her eyes. She blinked furiously at it. Why did you kill her? How did you kill her? Where did you hide her afterwards? How can you bear to draw breath? Why should I not kill you too?