‘What’s it like inside?’ Starling couldn’t help but ask. Jonathan shrugged.
‘Opulent. Ugly, for the most part. In the richest possible way. As you would expect, from what has been done to the outside of the house. He has some very fine paintings, however.’ The silence resumed, Starling and Alice both hoping that Jonathan wouldn’t realise that neither one of them had the first idea what to expect of the interior of such a place.
A pipe, fiddle and drum band were playing in the square, and people had begun to dance; simple country dances that involved a good deal of spinning, promenading and galloping. The dancers’ faces grew red and sweaty in the heat of the day, but it didn’t slow them any, and the spectators clapped and stamped out the time, on and on. The three of them meandered from one end of the fair to the other, seeing all there was to see, grazing from the food sellers, admiring the hawkers’ wares. Starling ran this way and that, panting for breath, wanting to see and do it all at once. She was bewildered and enthralled by the myriad of strange faces, the crush of people, the noise and throng and chaos. It made her heart race and her head spin. She felt, for the first time in her life, like a citizen of the wider world, and she loved it. She only slowed for one thing – a song of perfect loveliness. In a quiet corner on the edge of everything, an Irish girl was singing with an old man to accompany her on the fiddle; they’d placed a grubby felt hat on the ground in front of them, and a few coins had gone in. They were battered and weather-worn, their clothes were worn out, but the fiddle had a hoarse, bittersweet timbre, and the girl’s voice was as unadorned and beautiful as any of them had ever heard.
‘My young love said to me, my mother won’t mind, she sang, and all who heard her stopped to listen. ‘She placed her hand on me, and this she did say: it will not be long, love, till our wedding day...’ Alice glanced at Jonathan, and caught him studying her. A blush flared over his long cheekbones, and he looked away, abashed. As the Irish girl’s song ended, and her spell was broken, Jonathan rummaged in his pocket and found a coin for the hat.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘Let’s go back for another of those delicious gooseberry pies.’
Soothed by the song, Starling quietened a little. She straightened her skirts and tried to walk with more decorum, like a proper young lady – moving through the fair, stepping neatly between and around the other revellers. When she glanced back, Alice had taken Jonathan’s arm; they walked with their eyes on each other, not on where they were going – they followed Starling blindly. She was their pilot and captain, just then, so she changed course, humming the song she’d just learnt, and led them back to the lady with the marshmallow, and the liquorice-flavoured fudge. Later on they walked a distance across Corsham Court’s parkland, opened to the public for the day, and rested in the shade of an ancient oak tree. They were full of food and laughter and sunshine, and drowsy from it all; shooing lazily at the buzzing flies, watching the brilliant light flicker down through the leaves. There came a roar from the edge of the park, as the winning tug o’ war team pulled the losers into a mud patch; a sudden crescendo of noise and applause that pattered and echoed against the back walls of the townhouses.
‘I wish every day was like today,’ said Starling. Jonathan had lain back with his head on his arms, and shut his eyes; Alice sat as close to him as she could without touching. They’d stopped calling each other ‘cousin’ so ostentatiously, since nobody was listening. There was nobody there to tell them they shouldn’t be; they were at their liberty, for once, and unconcerned.
‘And I,’ Alice agreed.
‘Except we would all be as fat as your old sow if it were so,’ said Jonathan.
‘No, indeed.’ Alice laughed. ‘We would dance it all away.’
‘It will not be long, love, till our wedding day,’ Starling sang softly. ‘I loved that song, didn’t you?’ She picked the feathery seeds from a stalk of grass and scattered them to the balmy air.
‘I did. Very much,’ said Alice.
The sun grew fat and was lowering in the west before they returned to the paddock by the inn where the spotted pony had been turned out for the day. He was dozing with one rear hoof tipped on its toe, occasionally whisking his tail at the midges; he seemed a trifle put out to be called upon to move. Starling fed him a piece of fudge to cheer him up. Behind them the band and the dancing went on, though many of the stalls had been packed away.
‘Can’t we stay a bit longer?’ said Starling, as Jonathan lifted the collar over the pony’s head; but she yawned as she spoke, and Alice smiled.
‘I think you’ve had enough excitement for one day, dearest,’ she said. Starling didn’t argue. Though she wouldn’t admit it, her head was pounding from all the sunshine and sugar; it felt too heavy for her neck, and she longed to put it down somewhere. The sounds of the fair receded behind them as they moved off into the failing light, with bats flying silently over their heads. Starling nestled into Alice’s side, and felt her sister’s arm settle over her shoulders; she shut her eyes, and knew herself safe. The rattle and sway of the trap, and the creak of its wheels; the soft, soft air, and Alice’s arm around her, like armour. She glanced up only once and saw Alice resting her head on Jonathan’s shoulder. Above them a few faint stars had come out, and Starling wished that the journey would never end. She wished to not arrive back at Bathampton, because just then everything was exactly as it should be; everything was perfect.
1821
‘You want to watch that one,’ said Sol Bradbury, slapping egg wash onto a pie crust with broad, messy brushstrokes. ‘Came in here bold as brass and told me she’d seen you stealing.’
‘She never said so?’ Starling replied, shocked.
‘She bloody did. You need to be more careful. If Dorcas or Mrs Hatton ever sees then that’s the end of you, and naught I can say will save you. I sent Mrs Weekes on her way, but you’d best hope she says nothing to the mistress.’
‘She’d better not, or I’ll see her off.’
‘Oh? And how will you do that if Mr Alleyn half throttling her didn’t scare her none?’ said the cook. Starling frowned and said nothing for a while. She crushed peppercorns in a pestle and mortar, pushing so hard that the stone surfaces creaked together, and set her teeth on edge. How dare she? She could hardly believe the woman’s temerity. She seemed such a thin, pale thing, so prim and bound up with manners above her station. Her voice was so quiet, so modulated, Starling couldn’t imagine her ever shouting, or cursing, or arguing. And yet she was dogged, and determined, and she kept coming back. Starling hadn’t considered that, when she’d contrived her meeting with Jonathan. She’d thought only of planning the moment, of gauging his reaction, of hoping to prise some revelation from him. Now it seemed she was stuck with Dick Weekes’s wife turning up when she was no longer wanted. Starling was almost sure that Mrs Weekes had gone straight out after her visit to the kitchens. She was almost sure she hadn’t stopped to speak to anyone else about what she’d seen below stairs. It seemed best to get rid of the evidence, however.
After the brief dinner service was done, and still simmering with an anxious kind of anger, Starling took the jute sack from under her bed, and made a quick inventory. There was the beer she’d purloined earlier that day, to go with the jars of pickled eggs, a thick slice of dry bacon, some figs, almonds and half a wheel of hard cheese, almost down to the rind but still with some edible parts. Starling went into the kitchen on soft feet and pinched the leftover bread, already sliced for upstairs and going stale, then she set off with her haul, ducking quickly out of the basement door even as she heard Dorcas’s weary footsteps shuffling on the stairs. It wasn’t the best time to go, it wasn’t the right day. She wasn’t expected. How dare she. Starling cursed Dick Weekes’s wife with silent vitriol as she marched down the hill into the city.