Stolen Lives (The Alice Chronicles #3)

6

T he solid weight of his body next to hers, the creak of the bed ropes as he turns, the feathered warmth and the slide of skin against skin, an arm thrown over, his fingertips brushing down her spine…

Alice pushes herself upright. Every morning starts as though things are as they were. Then the realisation that for her, alone in the bed, things will never be as they were. And each time, she is assailed by the sense of being a plaything for some callous deity. Death seems to ambush her time and again. The anger gets her up, gets her through those first few minutes.

Every day it is like this.

In the truckle bed alongside, Sam stirs, and she watches as he opens his eyes, sees the window and frowns.

‘Hello,’ she says, and he screws round and sees her.

‘I didn’t know where I was,’ he tells her, heavy-eyed with sleep. ‘Can I come in your bed?’

She lifts the covers and he kneels up in the truckle bed to climb in beside her. ‘We used to do this before,’ he says.

‘Before we moved to Guildford, yes. Are you feeling better?’

‘Mmm.’ He snuggles down and closes his eyes. ‘It’s not time to get up, is it?’

‘I think it’s still quite early.’ Something woke them both. Perhaps the sounds of the inn coming to life. Margery and her two eldest are the first up. Fanny’s and John’s voices are raised downstairs, some early-morning altercation between brother and sister. Alice settles down by Sam.

‘Tell me a story,’ Sam says, still with his eyes shut.

‘You want a story as well? What next? A servant to dress you?’

‘No, you’ll do,’ he says, grinning.

Voices are raised again. Margery has joined the fray downstairs and words filter muffled through the boards, only the odd phrase intelligible.

‘… not going out there,’ John says.

‘Only to look,’ Margery reasons.

‘It might be—’

‘Alice?’ Sam says, as Alice strains to hear. ‘Are you going to tell me a story?’

‘— your sister, I suppose?’

‘Hush a moment, Sam,’ Alice says. ‘I’m listening.’

‘Listening to what?’ Sam asks.

‘Hush …’

Margery’s voice, ‘… what it looked like last year.’

Then John’s response, lower toned, impossible to hear.

‘What are they saying?’ Sam asks her.

‘I don’t know. Can’t make it out,’ Alice answers, settling back on the pillow. Through the shutter, the sunlight dulls as a cloud passes over. Sam cocks his head at the sound of someone climbing the stairs, cautious footsteps approaching. He dives under the bed clothes giggling as a knock comes on the door. Margery Patten asks in a low voice,

‘Alice? Are you awake?’ and Alice instantly knows something is wrong. She swings her legs out of bed and pads across to unlock the door. The landlady stands there, fully dressed but for her cap. Her hair flows around her shoulders and Alice is surprised to see flecks of grey amongst the brown. Margery’s face is drawn, her eyes anxious.

‘What is it, Margery? What’s amiss?’

‘Nothing. That is… we need your help.’ This is new, for the proud landlady of the inn to confess to wanting assistance. She looks over Alice’s shoulder at the mound under the bedclothes. ‘Can we talk in private?’

Alice steps out into the passage, pulling the door to behind her. ‘What’s amiss?’

‘We have… it’s a… there’s a body. A dead body,’ Margery whispers.

‘A body?’

‘Outside. By the hay store. The thing is, John thinks it’s the pestilence.’

Alice gasps. ‘Not again!’

‘We can’t be sure. That is, we’ve not been close enough,’ Margery explains.

‘You must clear the inn,’ Alice says, low-voiced, urgent. Thoughts of how to get Sam to safety flood her mind. ‘Get everyone out, away from the miasma. Household, guests, everyone.’

‘No, you don’t understand,’ Margery says, laying a hand on her arm. ‘We want you to check.’

‘Me? I can’t do that!’

‘You helped ’pothecary last year.’

‘I can’t check bodies, Margery! You need a Searcher for that, to say if it’s the plague or not.’

‘Where am I going to find a Searcher? They’re only appointed when the Plague Orders are issued.’

‘Well, who did it last winter?’

‘How do I know? We’d left for Honiton. Listen, you can do this. You must,’ Margery insists. ‘You’re the only one who can.’

‘Why me?’ The risk of spreading the plague, the danger to Sam if she breathes the miasma surrounding an infected corpse. ‘Get Abel Nutley, it’s his responsibility.’ The parish constable supervised the Plague Orders last year. With neither compassion nor diligence, by all Alice has heard, but the task is rightly his. ‘Let him do his duty for once.’

‘No, I mean, you’re the one who didn’t get the plague last time,’ Margery explains. ‘It’s all right for you to approach them.’

‘It was pure good fortune that saved me. I’m not shielded,’ Alice insists.

‘You walked clean through Death and were never affected,’ Margery urges. ‘ Alice Jerrard , they said, well, ‘Alice Edwards’ then , she that is blessed by the Almighty . Everybody was saying so last winter.’

Margery, egging the pudding. No one was calling Alice ‘blessed’ to her face, rather the opposite, and behind her back. Alice takes a breath to subdue irritation. ‘You can’t ask this of me, Margery. It’s Constable Nutley’s job.’

‘Abe Nutley will look from a safe distance, swear it’s not the plague and leg it out of here,’ Margery says, and Alice is inclined to agree. Margery goes on, ‘You were the only one left in the village. You stayed put and survived. It has to be you.’

I can’t do this again. The isolation, the waiting for the plague spots to appear.

‘Course, I can always ask Daniel,’ Margery goes on with a sideways look. ‘He collected the dead and was never ill. He’ll most likely oblige.’

Alice sighs. ‘If I take a look, you must do something for me.’

‘Depends what it is,’ Margery says.

‘Has Fanny been anywhere near this body?’

‘She has not, and she’s not going to, so don’t even think it.’

‘Good, that means she is safe to come up here and look after Sam, make sure he doesn’t follow me out of curiosity.’

Margery concedes with a grudging, ‘Well, why didn’t you say?’ and hurries to summon Fanny. Alice re-enters the chamber. Sam is sitting up in the bed, curious as always. She joins him under the coverlet, wrapping her arms around and kissing him. He returns the embrace and is happy enough to lie there encircled. ‘I’m just going with Mistress Patten for a few minutes, Sam,’ she says. ‘I won’t be long.’ She sends up a quick prayer that this will be true.

‘Can I come with you, Alice?’

‘I’ll only be a few minutes. Look, here’s Fanny, she will stay with you.’ She slips out of bed and pushes her feet into her shoes. ‘If you ask her nicely, I expect she’ll tell you a story. Goodbye, sweeting.’ A brief kiss and she quickly leaves the chamber, Fanny latching the door behind her.

Margery, waiting in the passage, hands her a blanket. ‘Have this to keep the chill off your shoulders.’ It is a warm morning, promising a hot day, but having a female guest walking around in naught but her shift would do the inn’s reputation no favours. Come to think of it, Alice reasons, it would do my reputation no good either.

‘Do you have vinegar?’ she asks as they reach the foot of the stairs. They can talk normally now, no need to whisper. ‘To breathe through. It’ll be better than nothing.’

‘I have verjuice?’

‘Verjuice will be good.’

Margery bustles into the kitchen and takes a stoppered jar from a shelf. She pours a cloudy yellowish liquid from it onto a cloth, squeezing it gently to spread the wetness. ‘Will that do?’

Alice nods. ‘Where’s this body?’

‘Between the brew house and the haystore, he’s just out of sight from here. I could see him from halfway across the yard.’ Margery stands by the kitchen door, pointing.

‘Margery,’ Alice says, ‘if it is the pestilence, I won’t come back inside, I can’t risk it. I will go up to Hill House and stay out of contact up there.’

‘With Daniel looking after you, I suppose? That’ll be cosy.’

‘Oh Margery,’ Alice sighs. When will Nick’s wife understand that there was never anything going on between Alice and Daniel? ‘I can stay in a separate part from Daniel.’

‘Risking his life!’

‘As you want me to risk mine!’ Alice halts, takes a deep breath. ‘I’m just trying to think of ways to contain the infection.’

‘Mistress Cazanove should be able to find somewhere remote for you in that vast place she rattles around in.’

‘Very well, maybe that’s the answer. Either way, you must get Sam over to the mansion. They’ll look after him while I wait out the quarantine. Promise me that?’

With the pad of verjuice over her nose and mouth, and even now thinking, Just refuse; get Sam out and go , Alice suppresses craven second thoughts and starts across the yard.

After yesterday’s fine, dry weather, it has rained in the night. The barrels stacked in the yard are dark with it, little puddles have collected on their tops. Alice picks her way gingerly over the chalky ground.

Under the wall of the hay store the sharp rays of the early sun catch the soles of shod feet, heels fallen outwards. The calves sheathed in pale stockings are splashed with mud, the shins rest in a puddle. Most of the body lies in shadow, a saturated sequence of knee-hose, doublet, ruff. The man is face down, elbows crooked such that his curled fingers seem to clutch the chalky mud. He is quite tall and the doublet fitting straight and close at his waist suggests a spare form. Evidently a man of means, his gloveless hands, blue-veined with age, are soft and white. Under the fine lightweight crimson cloth of doublet and hose, soaked and clinging, the rose silk lining pokes out through carefully clean-stitched slashes like little collapsed bladders.

She circles at a distance, cautiously breathing only through the pad. His hat, plain black, straight-brimmed and unadorned by tuck or feather, lies a couple of paces away. Through his thinning grey hair his scalp shows waxy, with a bald patch at the crown, smooth and pallid. His face is turned away from her but she can see a distended cheek. The white ruff, once a fulsome affair, flops limp under the chin. The rain has softened the starch and it has wilted around his neck. His wispy hair ruffling in the morning breeze is the only thing about him that moves.

Guardedly, holding her breath, Alice approaches the body, an intimidating worm of thought insisting that he could still be alive. Unmoving he is, but perhaps he is in a drunken stupor? A man may be aggressive if roused in his cups. She leans closer, studies the swollen face, age lines obliterated from the puffy flesh, the eye staring and popping forward from the socket, the mouth open and the tongue sticking obscenely out.

She discards the vinegar cloth and bends down to the body. It still takes an effort of will to reach out and tug at the damp folds of the ruff. Her shrinking fingers make inadvertent contacts with the chill skin as she unfastens the ruff, revealing what she already knows.

The knot and the frayed ends of a thin black cord are visible at the base of his skull. The rest of the loop is drawn so tight it is half-buried in the man’s neck.

Alice feels her stomach heave, and turns aside gagging. A few seconds to recover, to run a trembling hand across her clammy forehead. She stands up and unwraps the blanket from her shoulders, casting it to cover the body, relieved to look no longer on that poor bloated face. Her empty stomach is still trying to vomit as she backs away.

‘Throttled? At our inn!’ Margery turns, pulls out a stool and plumps down. ‘Fetch your father, John. Do it quietly.’ Her usual working flush is wiped from her face.

‘He’ll still be asleep,’ John objects. ‘You know he doesn’t like—’

‘Just fetch him!’ Margery’s strained voice has risen several tones.

‘He has to know, John,’ Alice adds. ‘The sooner the better.’ She takes a stool next to Margery while they wait. A shivering grips her which has nothing to do with the morning air. She pulls the stool nearer the fire. Tears gather for a man she never knew, who came to such a gruesome end. ‘I’ve not seen him around here. Who is he, do you know?’

‘His name’s Goldwoode,’ Margery answers. ‘He was staying here. Only arrived yesterday.’

‘Goldwoode? Mistress Cazanove mentioned a man of that name.’

‘That’s right. He had a message sent to the mansion as soon as he got here.’

‘He was due there yesterday,’ Alice recalls. ‘Is that his wife in the next chamber to mine?’

‘That’s right.’

‘But, Margery, he must have been out there all night, his clothes are soaked through!’ Alice objects. ‘Why didn’t she tell you he was missing?’

‘They were in two rooms,’ Margery explains. ‘The baby was fretful all yesterday and he took a separate chamber for himself so he wouldn’t be kept awake at night.’ Margery sinks her head in her hands. ‘Oh, dear Lord, I’m going to have to tell her.’

Margery’s husband Nick arrives in the kitchen in night shirt and cap. He gives a startled glance at Alice in her shift, she returns look for look, and his mouth shuts with a snap. He gets to work, despatching John for the parish constable. Huffing and puffing at the disruption to come, he is nevertheless master enough of himself to absorb her description of what she saw. Here is a man who will cope with this unforeseen situation on his premises. Alice excuses herself to return to Sam, as Nick crosses the yard to see for himself the body by his hay store.

To avoid the grim sight in the inn yard Alice hurries Sam through the taproom where stools are piled on tables and the inn’s second son, Young Nick, roused and resentful, has been roped in to help in his brother’s absence. Sulkily he swings the broom in great sweeping arcs. The door stands open to the street and the sunbeams are thick with dancing dust motes. Last night’s rain clouds are in retreat and the warmth welcomes the two as they step outside.

Sam’s mind is taken up as usual with horses. ‘Can we go round the back and look in the stables?’ he asks her.

Alice thinks fast. ‘The horses have not yet been cleaned, out,’ she says. She holds her nose ostentatiously and screws up her face. At this Sam laughs and the danger is over as they start up the hill towards Ursula Cazanove’s mansion. It is barely a mile but is a steep climb to the top crowned with trees. The soft ground underfoot is already drying and the muddy sections are easily circumvented.

Horses are still uppermost in Sam’s thoughts twenty minutes later as they enter the great courtyard behind the mansion, where the stables stretch all along one side. ‘They don’t smell of poo, Alice,’ he tells her, pointing. ‘Can I go and look?’

‘After you have greeted your Aunt Cazanove, Sam,’ she tells him. ‘She will wish to know that you are well again.’

At that moment, Ursula comes out through the kitchens. ‘You must wonder why we are here so early,’ Alice says.

‘Esther saw you from upstairs and came to fetch me,’ Ursula says, taking Alice’s hand in hers. ‘Did you not have my message?’

‘We did indeed, but I need private words with you on a matter that touches you closely.’

Not one to waste time on needless exclamation, Ursula answers, ‘Of course, we shall go to the parlour. Sam, are you well this morning?’

‘I ate lots of cherries and I was sick,’ Sam says with gusto.

‘Ah.’ Ursula does not encourage elaboration.

‘I suspect a few unripe ones amongst them,’ Alice adds. ‘But he is well today.’

‘I hope the Pattens looked after you.’ As owner of the inn, Ursula has a particular interest in the care of its patrons.

‘They did. They were very busy in the taproom but they were kindness itself and served me an excellent supper, as you would expect from Margery.’

Ursula nods and says. ‘Let us first find an occupation for Sam. I expect you would like to see the horses, would you not, young man?’