I know I am cowardly to despair. We have reached the coast, after all, when it seemed for some weeks that we would not. The men are in grievous poor shape. They are thin, and exhausted, and much beset by frostbite and illness. We have lost thousands on the march through the mountains. I have seen… oh, but I should not write of what I have seen, because I would not wish to pain you. But I have seen things, and done things, which will haunt me ever after. I have done things, my dearest. Things I can never tell you. There is such a stain of shame upon my heart, I fear you will perceive it and love me no longer. And then I would die, Alice. I would die. A shadow of dread looms over me, and it is the sure knowledge that I am worthy of you no longer. But I will not speak of it, and can only hope you will forgive me. Yours is the sweetest and best soul I ever knew. Can you forgive me a weaker one? A corrupted one? The Spanish call us ‘Caracho’. It means something foul. It is a curse word. It is a name we deserve. I await the means to send you this letter. I long to see you, or to have a few words from you.
Yours most faithfully,
Jonathan Alleyn
Post script, January 13th. The ships are coming, Alice. This letter will travel the first leg of its journey to you with me. I will send it on when I land; we are bound for Brighton, I believe. We will be two weeks at sea, all being well. I will see you soon. To write those words makes my spirits soar.
The paper of the letter was as creased and stained as a blacksmith’s hands; one small sheet, the writing cramped and filling the margins, Jonathan’s lettering as hard as ever to read. There was a smudged thumbprint in the bottom right-hand corner, in some reddish brown substance Starling didn’t like to touch. Soon it would have to go back. That very evening, in fact, when she took up his supper tray. If he happened to notice it gone, or guess that she had taken it, he could dismiss her, long association or no, and then she would have nothing, and be nowhere. But the date of the letter made her hands shake, and made the back of her throat ache.
We will be two weeks at sea, he had written, on the thirteenth day of January. Alice had vanished on the eighth of February, 1809. That was the last day Starling had been happy, out of all the long days that came after it. The last day everything had been as it was supposed to be; and everything after was humiliation and fear, and a chaos of grief and anger. February the eighth, 1809. And the day after that, Jonathan came to the farmhouse door, all desperate and grim, like some part of him had died. The deranged ghost of himself, eyes wild with something like fury, something like despair, something like guilt. A fine alibi, to demand to see the person you have murdered. On the eighth day of February, Alice had gone out alone first thing in the morning. She went to meet Jonathan, Starling knew. She knew it like she knew the sky was above her head and the earth was beneath her feet. Alice went to meet Jonathan, and could not forgive his blackened soul, or these things he wrote of, that shamed him so. And so he killed her. Starling shut her eyes, feeling such bitter rage and disappointment welling up inside her it was almost unbearable. By itself, this letter told her nothing new, and could not prove his guilt. She ground her teeth together as she jammed it back into her pocket.
Suleiman. The word whispered in her memory; she remembered learning it for the first time – rolling it around her mouth until she had committed it to memory. Few other words had such a clear provenance in her personal lexicon. Suleiman was Jonathan’s horse, and she first saw him, and learned his name, on a late summer’s day in 1807, the year before Jonathan set sail to Portugal to fight the French. She remembered sitting in the meadow grasses by the river with Alice, counting bumblebees and damsel flies with bodies like blue enamel darning needles. Then they heard the cattle stir, disturbed from their grazing as Jonathan cantered nearer. He grinned down at them as he reined to a halt, and the horse blew out hard through flared nostrils. Starling scrambled to her feet and backed away, and the horse reared up on its hind legs, startled. Alice’s face lit up in admiration; she went fearlessly to lay a calming hand on the horse’s shoulder. Its neck was an arch of muscle and blood vessels beneath a coat that shone like polished wood.
‘Easy, boy. ’Tis only Starling and she’ll not hurt you,’ Alice murmured. ‘Oh, Jonathan! He’s magnificent! What’s his name?’
‘His name is Suleiman,’ Jonathan told her, and they both laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’ Starling demanded, cross that she had been afraid of the horse.
‘Suleiman the Magnificent,’ said Alice, as if that explained everything. Starling scowled.
Jonathan dismounted and began to relate the horse’s pedigree to Alice, and Starling stopped listening. She walked as close to the animal as she dared. It wasn’t like the farm horse or the barge horses that went plodding by every day, or even like the grey mare Jonathan usually rode. Suleiman was bright bay, his coat a rich gingery brown but for his legs and nose, which were glossy black. His mane and tail were black too – what was left of his tail, anyway. Like the barge horses’, it had been docked to six inches. Suleiman flicked this inadequate stump at the flies that settled on his flanks, and the fact that he could not reach them made him more restless still. Starling put out tentative fingers and touched his nose, which felt like the finest suede leather. The horse blew damp air onto her hand, and Starling looked right into his eyes, and was smitten.
‘Can I ride him?’ she asked, interrupting Jonathan.
‘Well… I’m not sure that would be wise, Starling. He is very sensitive, and strong,’ said Jonathan. He showed Starling his hands – there were blisters and shreds of pulled skin between his fingers from battling with the reins.
‘Oh, please! Please let me! Just here in the meadow. I’ll only walk him… I promise not to fall off.’ Jonathan still argued that she might get hurt, but Alice persuaded him, blushing when Starling hitched up her skirt and petticoat, showing them both her long drawers as Jonathan boosted her into the saddle.
‘You are too grown up for that, now, Starling,’ Alice said. ‘If you ride again it must be with the side saddle.’
Jonathan kept careful hold of one rein, and Suleiman rattled his teeth against the bit and pulled for his freedom. He seemed perplexed by such a small jockey, and danced from side to side, casting looks over his shoulder as if to ask after the meaning of it. With her pulse racing, Starling knotted her fingers through the coarse black hair of his mane, and hung on. The scent of crushed grass rose up around them, ground beneath Suleiman’s hooves. His slightest movement made her wobble in the saddle, and fight for balance, but for a few heavenly moments she rode the magnificent horse, and she loved it, and she loved Jonathan for letting her. In the end, Suleiman lost patience with walking in small circles, and danced into a canter. Starling gave a small yelp and slithered off to one side, landing with a thud in the long grass. Alice rushed over to her, but Starling was laughing, delighted.
‘Will you teach me to ride, Mr Alleyn?’ she said breathlessly. ‘Oh, will you? Please, please?’ Jonathan glanced at Alice, who smiled.