Stolen Lives (The Alice Chronicles #3)

5

S o here they are, up at Hill House on the other side of the village from Ursula’s home. In their search for Daniel they are temporarily diverted by ripening fruit. ‘What are these?’ Sam points at a tree near the front door of Hill House. ‘They look like little plums.’

‘They’re cherries, Sam. Have you not tasted cherries?’ So many things, she thinks, that I don’t know about Sam’s first years. Most children would know cherries from plums but Sam’s parents, strapped by poverty, might never have been in a position to give him cherries. ‘They’re very good to eat.’ She reaches up and pulls down a branch, picking a few of the ripest dark red cherries. ‘There, try those. Spit out the stone, just eat the fruit,’ she tells him.

She watches how his eyes blossom, savouring the sweetness, and the look reminds her of the first medlar he tasted, back last winter. He finishes off with a great blowing spit and the cherry stone lands a few feet away. Sam bursts out laughing and tries another cherry, and another, blowing out each stone as far and as loudly as he can. While he amuses himself, Alice checks the medlar tree nearby, where the fruits are already taking their rose-hip shape amongst the remains of the white blossom. The quince outside the winter parlour seems to have avoided frost damage and it too is forming fruit.

‘I really like cherries, Alice,’ Sam calls, jumping to catch at a low branch.

‘I’ll make cherry tarts, then, one for us, one for Daniel.’

‘Daniel!’ Sam cries, remembering. He dashes round the house, and Alice following is in time to see the joyous greeting between boy and man as Daniel, emerging from the barn, scoops up Sam and swings him round.

‘We had some of those cherries, Daniel,’ Sam says as he is lowered to the ground.

‘Oh, ho, so you’re scrumping my cherries are you?’ Daniel says.

‘They’re Alice’s,’ Sam retorts.

‘Actually, Daniel is right,’ Alice says. ‘He is stewarding the farm so they are his.’ Daniel swings round, his slow smile spreading, as Sam runs off, calling, ‘I’m going to get some more.’

‘Alice.’ Daniel extends his arm to her.

‘It’s good to see you, Daniel.’ And she moves naturally into his embrace, this man who could almost be the brother she never had. He came to help her on the farm during last winter’s plague and stayed through to spring when village hostility drove him out. A painful time for both of them, but a friendship that in the end survived small local jealousies. She stands back to look up at him. ‘How are you? How is the farm?’

His hand comes to rest on her shoulder. ‘Mistress Cazanove told me what happened.’

‘I asked her to.’ Daniel being unlettered, Alice wanted to ensure he did not learn of Henry’s fate from the leaky pool of village gossip.

‘It was a great sorrow to hear of it.’

She nods her thanks and they move to sit on the section of tree trunk by the stables used as a mounting block. ‘There was trouble in that house and I walked unknowing straight into it. It would never have happened if I had not married Henry. My arrival there lit the fuse—’

‘No.’

She looks.

‘Do not take it upon yourself. The lord giveth and the lord taketh away.’

‘If that is so, what good has it done?’ She is not expecting an answer so much as searching her own confusion. ‘What do you think I have gained in return for losing Henry?’

He shrugs. ‘I know not, but you are alive, Alice, and that is good. And good begets good.’

‘So now I’m to go round doing good?’

He is silent and she curses her sour humour that is so ready to make play with her tongue. ‘Sorry Daniel. I’m just so angry about everything at the moment.’

He looks down at his feet. ‘Do you want to walk the farm?’

She shakes her head. ‘I’ll do that another day. Sam won’t last out; he’s been running around in excitement ever since we arrived. Just tell me what you think on the various heads. What about charcoal? There should be enough of the hazel my father coppiced to make a decent burn this summer…’

And they go through the news on the woodland, the flock of sheep and this spring’s clip, the progress of the grain crops, the hay meadows. ‘Bit late with haymaking this year,’ he finishes. ‘It’s been wet and I think there’ll be more tonight. But I’m not too worried, we’ve time yet.’ They talk of the chickens in the yard and the year’s new hatchings, the ever-present rats, Alice’s small herb garden.

‘I didn’t know what to do so I left it alone,’ he tells her. ‘And something else you need to know, Alice. I was wondering whether to send word and now here you are.’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s the smithy, you see.’

She knows what is coming before he says it.

‘The thing is, business is returning faster than I expected. I’m needed down there two or three days a week now. I’ve taken on fellows to help here but they need supervising.’

‘You need to let the lease go, Daniel, is that what you are saying?’ The sinking feeling threatens to drag her back into melancholy. Daniel took on a lease of Hill House farm when she was married, with the idea that it would help him to remain in Hillbury while his blacksmith’s trade was slow after the plague, and would provide her with someone reliable to look after things in her absence.

‘I’ll see you through haymaking, so it’s not like anything’s going to happen immediately. But if you can find someone to manage it for you, I can show him what’s what, like handing over the reins. That would be the best way to keep things running smoothly.’

‘I was so grateful when you took on the lease to start with, Daniel. Of course you want to get back to your true calling.’ But I shall miss you, she thinks , this close link with you will never be the same again.

‘Sorry it’s a bit sudden, like. Sooner than we thought.’

‘Don’t think about that,’ she assures him. ‘I will find someone, and I should like you to approve him before I take him on.’ She reaches to lay her hand on his arm. ‘I am glad your business prospers, Daniel,’ she says. ‘You richly deserve it.’

‘Oh!’ A though strikes him. ‘There was a visitor. A man. A few weeks back. Came round here looking for you.’

‘What man?’

‘He had something for you. A packet. In the village they directed him to Mistress Cazanove but she told him it would be safe here until you came.’ He pushes himself to his feet. ‘He said it wasn’t urgent. It’s in the parlour.’

She rises and follows him into the house. The winter parlour is stifling, windows closed, facing south. She fetches a cushion from the window seat and throws it down to prop open the door.

‘Here,’ he says and hands her a small package wrapped in many layers of linen and tied with torn strips of the same fabric. Blood-coloured sealing wax covers the knots. ‘I’ll leave you to open it,’ he says. ‘I’ll be outside.’

‘Don’t go. Did he give a name, say where he came from?’

‘No, he looked like a clerk, he was on his own. On a horse. It has to do with your… with Frederick Marchant.’

‘With Frederick?’ Others would refer to him as Master Marchant or Master Apothecary when talking with her. Only Daniel knows that she and Frederick Marchant had plans to marry, before she knew Henry, plans barely made before they ended with Frederick’s death in last year’s plague. ‘Daniel, how can anyone be looking for me in connection with Frederick?’

Daniel shrugs. ‘ I seek Mistress Alice Edwards of Hill House Farm was what he said. He told me it was In the matter of Frederick Marchant, deceased . That was how he put it.’

‘Sounds like the way an attorney speaks. Well-a-day, let’s find out what it is, shall we?’ She takes a seat on one of the back stools. The threadbare linen wrappings round the package look like an old pillowcase cut into strips and wrapped this way and that, round and round, to provide layers of protection. It is evident that a book lies within.

‘It came just a few weeks ago,’ Daniel explains. ‘I said you would likely be visiting soon. Mistress Cazanove was confident you would.’

‘I imagine so,’ Alice agrees. ‘She sent Wat to collect us, and was not to be gainsaid.’ She cracks off the wax and picks at the knots, working the ties off the package. Swiftly she unrolls and unrolls to reveal an old leather-bound volume, the skin cracking and curling like autumn leaves, the edges worn to fluff. Alice opens it and smiles as she reads the title page. ‘ In libros de ratione victus …’

‘Do what?’

‘It’s by a man called Brassavola. I remember this book. Frederick showed it to me last summer when we were talking about the work of surgeons. As an apothecary Frederick was not licensed to practise surgery, of course – the different medical professions are strictly regulated – but he had picked up this book in Florence or Padua, when he was studying there. It was written last century but they are so much further advanced than we in medical studies, we have probably only recently caught up with this sort of knowledge. There are some interesting ideas on procedures, and Frederick understood a great deal more than your average sawbones. Oh, what’s this?’ She extracts a loose leaf halfway through the book, unfolds it. ‘Oh!’

Daniel looks. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s a fair copy of Frederick’s Will. Oh, Daniel.’ She smooths out the sheet. ‘ To my brother … of course, I never knew his family.’ She scans quickly down. ‘Most of his belongings were left to his brother. This book he mentions here,’ she points. ‘ To Mistress Alice Edwards of Hill House, Hillbury, who was my Right hand, Brassavola’s book, the gift from Signor Giagnoli, a grateful patient . Dear Frederick. He wrote this after the plague started, there’s the date. He knew the danger he was in, treating the sick.’ Her voice softens, remembering. ‘You know something, Daniel? When he died I thought I would never feel such love for anyone ever again. And perhaps I haven’t. I mean, I do miss Henry every day, and yet I am not numb the way I was after Frederick died. Some would say that is wicked – I don’t know.’

Daniel is silent. Nothing Alice does is wrong in his eyes, but he has long been aware that his feelings for her are very different from the feelings of friendship she holds for him.

Alice rouses herself. ‘Well, what else does it say?’ She takes up the Will again and re-reads, ‘… my Right hand, Brassavola’s book and the gift from – oh! I misread it before. It says and , Daniel – and the gift – there’s something else.’

The wrappings lie scattered around her where she sits and they set to, checking one by one each piece of cloth.

‘There’s something here,’ Daniel says. He shakes, and a tiny bag of fine linen drops with a slight clink on the stone flags. He picks it up, holding it out to her.

It is coin-sized but it does not contain coins. Alice loosens the ties and draws out something wrapped in a scrap of fine linen. She unfolds, and they both gasp as a ring drops into her lap. No ordinary ring, this. The shank is of a rich, deep red-gold, its shoulders patterned like strapwork. Clasped between them sits a pale cloudy blue polished stone. It is carved in intaglio, an image in reverse, like a seal ring. The delicate form of a woman in ancient dress of sinuous lines, her hair swathed and bunched at the nape, regards a sprig in her hand. Not a plant that Alice recognises. How this stone was worked so finely in all its detail, the curve of the cheek, the slim wrist, the drape of the chiton robe, is a wonder to her. Do such craftsmen still exist in the world? The worked gold seems similar to the strapwork on the ceiling of Ursula’s private parlour, recent in style. But is the carved stone of much older origin?

‘How beautiful!’ she breathes, holding it up to the light, delighting in its translucence.

‘Who’s the lady?’ Daniel asks.

‘I’m not sure. Perhaps one of the Muses.’

‘A handsome gift from a grateful patient, and now gifted to you,’ he says.

‘Frederick went to Italy to study,’ she says, ‘but I didn’t know he also practised out there. Clearly this grateful patient was someone of means. Frederick must have performed a great service of healing to be rewarded with such a ring.’ She slips it onto one finger but it falls off, then tries the next, where it sits snug. ‘He must have left this for safekeeping with his brother. I remember his shop was ransacked when he died.’

‘There’s a family in that place, now,’ Daniel says.

‘I’m glad.’ She gets up, shaking out her skirts, and takes up the book and the Will. ‘We’d better be making our way back. Where is Sam, I wonder?’

They find Sam lying on his back on the grass by the front door, squinting up at them in the afternoon sun. His red-stained lips, face and fingers betray his indulgence. He grins up at her. ‘I’m really full, Alice.’

‘You look it,’ she says. ‘No, don’t get up, I’m sure Daniel will help me pick some cherries, especially when we tell him he’ll get a tart out of it!’

On the way back to the village Sam dawdles, lagging behind. Several times he stops to lean against a tree.

‘Come on, Sam, are you tired?’

Sam shakes his head, starts plodding behind her once more.

‘We’ve a way to go yet,’ she tells him. ‘I’ll see if I can borrow a horse in the village. We don’t want to keep Aunt Cazanove waiting supper, do we?’

Sam stops again, holding his stomach. ‘It hurts, Alice,’ he wails.

Alice turns back, drops on one knee beside him. ‘Sam, dear, how many cherries did you eat?’

‘Quite a lot,’ he says and promptly vomits red sludge. ‘It hurts, it really hurts.’ He starts to cry as Alice uses her kerchief to wipe his face. Gently she encourages him forward. ‘Only a little way, Sam, then we can ride back. ‘You’ll feel much better when you can lie down in your bed. I expect they’ll have something at the mansion to ease your tummy.’

But after two more stops when Sam runs behind a tree and she sees him pulling desperately at his breeches, Alice realises they are not going to get back to the Cazanove house. As they turn into the village road, she picks up a whimpering Sam and carries him to the inn. The yard at the back is the way to the kitchen door. ‘Margery?’ Enticing smells drift out. Enticing for Alice; not so for Sam, and she puts him down hurriedly as the cooking aromas precipitate another vomiting attack. Supporting him and wiping his face, Alice waits for Margery Patten, landlady of Hillbury’s inn, to emerge.

‘Mistress Jerrard!’ Her voice is sharp, formal. ‘We didn’t believe it when we heard it was you of all people in the Cazanove carriage.’ Alice braces herself for Margery’s customary jealousy – which this time is apparently about becoming the guest of the richest woman in the neighbourhood – but abruptly the landlady’s voice softens in maternal pleasure. ‘And here’s young Sam!’ Children are Margery’s delight, she has five of her own, though maternal softness figures little in their lives once they approach working age. She peers closer as Sam heaves and gags. ‘Well, young man, you are in a sorry state and no mistake. Looks like you need a purge.’

Alice thinks Sam needs the opposite of a purge but refrains from comment. ‘Do you have a spare chamber for the night, Margery?’ she asks, wiping his face again.

‘Thought you were staying in high style at the mansion.’

‘I can’t put Sam on a horse to ride back to the mansion. Not in his state.’

‘Well, if you’re prepared to put up with our lowly ways the small room at the end is free. Fanny?’ she calls to her daughter stirring an iron cauldron over the fire. ‘Bring the key to the end room for Mistress Jerrard.’ She steps outside and returns, handing Alice a chamber pot. ‘Take this for the lad. What have you been doing, young man?’ She does not wait for an answer but goes on, ‘Little scrap of a fellow like you; look at you.’ She straightens his shirt and combs her fingers through his hair while Sam feebly wriggles. ‘There, all you need’s a bit of smartening up,’ Margery tells him, with a Told you so glance at Alice. ‘That feels better already, doesn’t it?’ She turns to chase Fanny for sheets, and Sam sticks out his tongue at her back. Alice places a staying hand on his shoulder and puts a finger to her lips.

‘Go and get the linen and make up the bed and the truckle. Double-quick, girl!’ Margery orders her daughter. ‘You’re needed down here.’

As Fanny passes, handing her the key, Alice offers, ‘I’ll make up the beds if you can just bring the linen, Fanny.’ She hesitates, wondering whether to ask her next question. ‘Margery? I wonder—’

‘If you don’t mind, Alice, I need your space and not your company. I’m cooking for the taproom.’ Margery returns to the pastry she was shaping into a large coffin pie.

Margery can be hospitable, and equally she can be hostile. Her power lies as much in the uncertainty of her humours as in the cutting power of her tongue. Alice ploughs on. ‘Sam needs something to settle his stomach,’ she says. ‘Do you have a little milk I can try him with?’

‘Milk? We don’t cater for children here, or hadn’t you noticed?’

‘No matter. Thank you for the chamber, Margery. I’ll settle with you in the morning. Come, Sam.’ Alice urges a drooping Sam towards the stairs. Plenty of company in the taproom tonight, she judges, from the surge of men’s voices as the door opens and closes momentarily. The waft of pipe smoke mixes with the smells of cooking, and underlying it all, as though emanating from the walls themselves, the aroma of the landlord’s home-brew. Sam groans afresh.

They wind up the steep twisting treads of the staircase, and along the narrow passage to the end where Alice unlocks the door to a very small chamber. Within, a bed, a night table and a stool. A tiny window looks out to the lime-washed houses across the road, bathed in the late light. She closes the door, pulls the truckle bed out from under the main bed and sits Sam on its edge, placing the chamber pot nearby. ‘If you feel bad again, use this, Sam.’

‘My tummy hurts so much,’ he cries, tears streaking his face where his grubby hands have spread the day’s dust.

‘I know, sweeting, I know,’ Alice tries to soothe him. ‘I’ll find some milk; that should help.’

‘You could try Widow Ford,’ Fanny suggests entering the chamber. ‘Didn’t Mistress Cazanove give her a cow when she settled her in that cottage on Baker’s Row?’

‘You’re right, she did,’ Alice says. Widowed in last year’s plague and with all those little ones of hers, Ursula’s intervention was a godsend. Her care for her tenants is a far cry from her husband’s methods, who would have seen them all flung into the oblivion of the Poor House. ‘How is Mistress Ford managing on her own?’

‘Don’t see her much,’ Fanny says. ‘But the little’uns are always running here and there so it seems they’re keeping well. There’s your sheets, Alice.’ She regards Sam, pale and gagging, clutching hands to his stomach and leaning over the chamber pot. ‘You’ll want fair water and a towel to refresh him. I doubt Mam will let me come up with it, but I’ll put by a pail and cloth in the kitchen, so just come down in a couple of minutes.’ Fanny, Alice thinks, is mature for her eleven years. Possibly having a younger sister about Sam’s age has taught her much.

Mistress Ford lives in the end house, the largest in the row. This is the only one with two upstairs rooms. One of the children opens the door to Alice’s knock and calls over her shoulder, ‘Ma? There’s a lady!’

A voice upstairs calls that she is coming. As Alice waits, she looks around at the improvements. She knew this cottage when it was a hovel with rotted window shutters, a sagging roof, crumbling chimney stack. Now, there is even a staircase set in the corner, in place of the ladder that used to rise through a hole in the ceiling.

A short woman of early middle age makes her way down the steep, twisting stairs. Mistress Ford wears grey hemp-spun skirts and a faded blue bodice over her patched shift. A simple length of cloth is wound round her head, covering her hair, the end hanging down one side. ‘Mistress Jerrard!’

‘Mistress Ford,’ Alice greets her. ‘A pleasure to see you. How does your new accommodation suit?’

‘A little tight for space with the children growing, but we do very well, I thank you. I heard young Sam is with you, is he well?’

‘It’s about Sam I came to ask your help Mistress Ford,’ Alice tells her. ‘We shall be at the inn tonight as I cannot get him back to the mansion where we are staying. A surfeit of cherries has upset his stomach, I fear, and I need something to settle it.’

‘Milk, you mean? I’ve plenty here.’ Mistress Ford points to a stone jug on a brick shelf.

‘May I beg a little for him? I brought a mug, in hopes.’ Alice draws it from her pocket.

The widow is very happy to be in a position to help another. These days it is usually the other way round for her, needing to accept help and handouts where they are offered. And yet Alice knows Mistress Ford would be mortally offended if offered money for the milk. While she pours, Alice asks, ‘I wonder if I might ask another favour, too?’

‘Of course. What is it?’

‘Could you ask one of your boys to run over to Mistress Cazanove’s and let her know that I shall not be back tonight while Sam is unwell? I’m sure he’ll be better after some of this milk and a good night’s sleep, so tell her we’ll walk back there after breakfast.’

‘Yes indeed. Joan, where is…?’ She peers out of the door. ‘Ah, Sigeric, there you are. Do you take a message to Mistress Cazanove from Mistress Jerrard here. Tell her…’

Once he has his instructions, Alice hands the boy a coin. ‘A tip for the messenger,’ she tells him. He looks big-eyed at it and Alice knows his mother has seen it also, but this Mistress Ford will allow; it is right that a messenger be paid for his services. At his mother’s bidding, young Sigeric smooths his jerkin and straightens his breeches. ‘And put your shoes on, boy! We don’t want Mistress Cazanove turning you from her door for a vagabond!’

Alice returns to the inn, hoping there will be no group of jostling drinkers spilling into the yard from an overcrowded taproom. Although it is still light, she is sharply conscious that it is questionable for a woman to be out alone late in the day, especially around an inn, gathering place of men. Her concern is baseless, however; as she crosses the yard for the kitchen door, there is only a young man emerging from the stables, hat tilted low, who doesn’t even acknowledge her. She passes him and he proceeds out of the yard heading for the front where he can enter the taproom from the street.

Up in their chamber, with a little of the milk inside him, Sam is less green in the face. Alice settles him between the cool sheets, where he soon lapses into sleep. The commotion of a baby setting up a cry in the next chamber does not wake him. Alongside the child’s cries, a young woman gives tongue, making soft-voiced requests, followed by Fanny’s responses, ‘Yes’m, yes’m.’ Then a man. He speaks more slowly and Alice can make out the words between the baby’s cries, ‘… spoiling the child in this way… disturbing my nights… a firm hand…’

The clomp of pattens on the stairs tells of Fanny’s return to the kitchen. In the next chamber the baby’s cries increase. Alice hears the man’s voice becoming peevish as he goes on, ‘… need to control this wayward crying. Attend what I say.’ The lady assents, ‘Yes my dear.’ Then the man again, ‘I shall dine downstairs… disturbed constantly in this way.’ His wife murmurs something soothing, and as his footsteps slowly recede she calls, ‘Good night, my dear,’ and there is the sound of her door closing. The baby’s cries continue through the wall.

It is several minutes later that a step outside is followed by a light tap on Alice’s door. ‘Mistress Jerrard?’

‘Is that you, Wat?’ Alice goes to open the door. ‘Ah, give you good evening. My messenger arrived, then?’

‘He did. My mistress says she will come over in the morning with the coach to fetch the two of you.’

‘No need, we can walk, Wat.’

‘Nevertheless, the coach will be here to collect you after breakfast.’

‘That’s kind, we shall—’ Alice stops as the crying baby in the next chamber starts to scream. She raises her voice a little. ‘We shall await her. Do me another kindness, would you, Wat?’ She turns to take up the cherries she collected. ‘Do you ask Esther to put these somewhere cool, please? I want to make tarts with them when I am back there.’

As she hands him the fruit, someone is coming up the stairs, and at that moment the door of the adjoining chamber opens. A young woman looks out, the child in her arms. ‘Ah, Fanny. Have you brought the caraway poultice?’

‘No, mistress,’ Fanny says. ‘Your husband said I should not.’

The baby is wailing harder than ever, and over its cries the woman’s voice is strained. ‘You understand, my husband is out of humour, he is not himself. My baby’s stomach is sorely troubled and she needs the poultice.’

‘Then I shall prepare it and bring it to you,’ Fanny assures her.

As the woman turns back, she notices Alice. ‘I hope my baby’s crying has not…’ She stops dead, her eyes widening as her mouth works but no words come out. The look of hostility takes Alice completely by surprise. Then the woman backs into her chamber snapping the door shut. There is the sound of a key turning in the lock.

Alice turns to Wat. ‘What have I done?’ she asks in a low voice. ‘Why did she look like that?’

He is staring at the closed door, he says nothing.

‘Fanny?’ she asks. ‘Did you see that? What do you make of it?’

Fanny’s face is bland. ‘No idea, sorry.’ Jug in hand, she proceeds to pour into a mug she has drawn from her apron pocket. ‘Father thought you might like some refreshment, Alice.’

‘That’s kind.’ Alice watches with appreciation the pale gold arc of small ale. Nick Patten is a competent brewer and Alice in former days often shared a mug of his brew with Margery in the inn’s kitchen when discussing their poor-visiting.

‘If you’ll excuse me, mistress,’ Wat says to Alice, ‘I’ll get back home.’

‘I’ll see you in the morning, Wat,’ Alice says as he edges round Fanny and makes for the stairs. ‘So,’ she turns to Fanny, ‘is business brisk at present? I see the hay cut has started.’

‘Pretty lively,’ Fanny tells her, ‘especially now all the local layabouts are doing a stroke of work and earning their money for a change. They swagger in and order us around like skivvies. And worse.’

‘Worse?’

‘That Bart Johnson,’ Fanny tells her, ‘Father got him in to help John in the taproom. Honestly, Alice, sometimes I wonder about my pa. He reckoned Bart being of an age with the younger rowdies would help keep them in order! Instead, Bart thought he’d try it on with me.’

‘What did your father do?’ Alice is aghast that even lecherous Bart Johnson could be so blatant.

‘Didn’t tell him.’ Fanny’s eyes twinkle. ‘Didn’t have to. Bart got my knee in a very painful place! Father found him rolling on the ground and turned him off for being drunk. And the best is, he got no pay!’ Fanny laughs gaily at the recollection. ‘Naught but midden-slop and malice between his ears,’ she says. ‘Anyway, I should go. I must get Mistress Goldwoode’s poultice or her baby will keep us all awake tonight. I’ll bring you some supper as soon as I can.’