‘You choose poetry over philosophy, over science and reason? How like a woman.’
‘I am more accomplished at reading poetry than the more… esoteric tracts you have available.’
‘ “Yet when the soul’s disease we desperate find, Poets the old renown’d physicians are, Who for the sickly habits of the mind, Examples as the ancient cure prepare.” Is that what you hope? That my soul’s disease can be cured with poetry?’
‘Not cured perhaps. Only cheered. Who wrote that verse you spoke?’
‘Sir William Davenant.’
‘Then you must know some poetry, and take pleasure in it? Or you did, at one time?’ said Rachel.
‘I knew another, who did,’ said Jonathan. He closed his eyes wearily, so Rachel began to read again. She kept her voice low, and her tone soft, and read for half an hour without any reaction from Jonathan Alleyn, save for at one verse. When she read:
‘ “I feed a flame within, which so torments me, That it both pains my heart, and yet contents me: ’Tis such a pleasing smart, and I so love it, That I had rather die than once remove it” ’, she saw a flicker of movement, and looked up to find him watching her through barely opened eyes. Her voice faltered and she lost her place in the text, and felt herself foolish and clumsy. Then she read on, and Jonathan closed his eyes once more, and when she got up to leave she was sure he was sleeping.
Rachel shut the door behind her, and with the quiet click of the latch felt herself sag. Her head felt light and was throbbing softly, and her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten anything at breakfast, such had been her nerves over this appointment, but it was more than that that ailed her. It was him, and his torment; the shifting dark things behind his eyes, and the way he wore his rage for all to see. To keep the world from seeing something else about him? He seemed to leach the strength from her, with his gaze that was so full of things she did not understand that it might as well be empty, and the hard, uncompromising way he spoke. He made her manners and her poise and her decorum seem like paper cutout things, painted and unreal; and without them to cover her, she felt bare. Rachel went downstairs and knocked softly at the parlour door, but there was no reply. She tried the other receiving rooms, but they were similarly empty. She stood alone in the cavernous hallway for a moment, unsure of what to do. It seemed rude to let herself out, to leave without a word. In the end, she turned towards the back of the house, and found the servants’ stair that led down into the basement.
At the foot of the stairs was a broad, bare corridor leading left and right, lit by candle lamps in wall sconces which guttered at her arrival. From the right came the herby, smoky smell of the kitchen, along with sounds of industry. Rachel’s stomach growled again, and she turned towards it. It was a wide, vaulted chamber, dominated at one end by a massive inglenook containing the stove and bread oven, and a roasting fire in an open grate. She heard the pop and sizzle of hot fat, the creak of the jack wheel turning in the chimney. A squat woman with meaty arms was cracking eggs into a basin, humming to herself and quite unaware of Rachel. As Rachel drew breath to speak, the woman glanced up.
‘And who might you be, dithering in my kitchen?’ she asked. Rachel stepped forwards.
‘I have been visiting with Mr Alleyn, and I… I could not find anyone upstairs…’ The cook wiped her hands on her apron and curtsied inelegantly, looking flustered and annoyed.
‘Beg pardon, madam, I had not known you… But you should not be downstairs, as a guest…’
‘No – I know. My apologies. But, perhaps… I am not quite a guest, you see. I am in the employ of the household, for my visits.’ Rachel took a step further into the kitchen and glanced at the fire where a joint of pork was turning.
‘Well, you should no more be below stairs for all that, madam. Go on up, if it please you, and I’ll call for Falmouth to see you out…’
‘I was wondering if I might have a word with Starling? And perhaps…’ Rachel could not quite find the courage to ask the cook for something to eat; the woman was clearly irritated by the intrusion into her domain. There was a basket of pears on the table. Rachel eyed it wistfully, and was sure that the cook noticed her gaze, but she did not offer her one. Rolling her lips together so that her chin puckered, the woman went to the doorway to call along the corridor.
‘Starling! Someone wants a word with you!’ There was a pause, in which Starling did not appear, and the cook muttered a curse under her breath. ‘She’s in a world of her own of late, that one. Go back up, madam. Please. I’ll send her up to you,’ she said.
‘No, it’s quite all right. No need to fetch her, I shall go along and find her,’ said Rachel, returning to the corridor. The cook paused, and then shrugged.
‘Last door at the end, on the right.’
Rachel went along and knocked at the last door she came to; since it was open, she stepped through it. The room was split into two, and through the inner doorway she saw the red-haired girl, down on her knees, putting a bottle of ale into a jute sack. The girl jumped up when she heard Rachel come in, quickly kicked the sack underneath the bed and then turned with flaming cheeks and furious eyes. Rachel took a step back and forgot what she had been about to say.
‘This is my room,’ the girl blurted out.
‘I know. I… beg your pardon.’ Rachel joined her hands awkwardly, and then remembered that she was the girl’s superior. She drew herself up, several inches taller than Starling. ‘I want to ask you some questions. It won’t take long. I am sure you have… duties to attend to.’ Rachel glanced down to where the corner of the jute sack was still visible, poking out from beneath the bed. Starling glowered at her, but there was fear in her eyes as well. A loose tendril of ginger hair hung in front of her face, and moved in time with her breathing.
‘Questions about what? Madam,’ said the girl, curtly.
‘About Mr Alleyn – I understand you have known him the longest of all the servants. And about Miss Alice Beckwith.’
‘Alice?’ Starling faltered. Her eyes widened, and some of the anger left her. ‘You know about Alice?’
‘Precious little. Only that she treated Mr Alleyn very ill, and is partly to blame for his malaise. And that… I look like her. Or so I am led to believe.’
‘She never treated him ill! She never treated anyone or anything ill, not in her whole life!’
‘You knew her well?’
‘I… she raised me. As a sister.’
‘A sister?’
‘Aye, a sister! Partly. As a servant too, perhaps… I knew her from when I was a child.’
‘And… do I look very like her?’ Rachel asked, almost shyly. Like the girl a man loved so much that losing her has ruined him. Starling stared at her with an expression Rachel could not read.
‘That you do, Mrs Weekes. At first. You are older than she was when she disappeared, of course. And… your expressions are different. Your voice. It is a passing resemblance, nothing more.’
‘That’s just what Mr Alleyn said,’ Rachel murmured. At this, Starling blinked, and incredulity flooded her face.
‘He speaks to you about her? About Alice?’
‘But a little. Perhaps he will speak more in time.’
‘Then… you are to call again?’
‘Yes.’ Rachel drew her shoulders back, and tried to sound resolute.
‘And… he does not alarm you?’
‘Why should he?’ said Rachel, and then felt foolish, since it was this girl who had prevented Jonathan strangling her a little over a week ago. ‘He does not alarm you, that much I know.’ She remembered the hearth brush striking Jonathan across his head. How could a servant act that way, and yet not be dismissed?
‘I’ve known him a long time indeed,’ said Starling, flatly.