A Child of Secrets Read online

  * * *

  At last there came a morning when Jess was strong enough to protest at Eliza Potts’s brusque attentions. When the maid came at her with a flannel, to wash her face, Jess fended off the stubby-fingered hands.

  ‘Hold you hard, Eliza. Give that here cloth to me. I’ll do it.’

  Eliza relinquished the flannel and stepped back, arms folded. ‘Feelin’ better, are we? Not afore time, neither.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘I mean you’ve already hung too long on folks’ charity. Reverend Clare don’t care to have his house turned into a ’firmary. He say so. I heard him. Trouble is, Miss Lily’s spoiled. She bring in all sorts o’ mangy strays what ought to be left to fend for theirselves. She do just as soon get tired on ’em, howsomever.’

  The feeling Jess got from the maid was like a fence of that new barbed wire stuff, all prickly, cold and purple: Keep off, don’t come close. It puzzled her.

  ‘What now make you so unhappy, Eliza?’ she asked.

  Eliza stared at her narrowly, suspiciously. ‘What?’

  ‘You must be terrible unhappy, to be in such a passion all the time.’

  The maid twitched, her fine features twisting into a scowl. She snatched back the wash-cloth, tossed a towel at Jess, took up the bowl of water and emptied it into the slop-pail. ‘Sooner you’re gone away, Jessamy No-Name, the better I’ll like it. Blasted diddicoy.’

  ‘I’m no more a diddicoy than you are!’

  Flaring her nostrils, narrowing her green eyes, Eliza said, ‘Well, I have more to do than tend to a titty-totty mawther what’s no better’n she ought to be. I know about you, even if Miss Lily don’t.’ Going to the door, she looked back to toss her handsome head and add ominously, ‘And what I don’t know I’ll soon fy out.’

  Jess stared at the door as it closed, her hand vainly seeking the thread that had held the gold wedding band. It was not her nature to let herself be stepped on. ‘Sharp, that’s you, maw,’ her dad had observed when she was a little ’un, all elbows and knees, full of whys and what-fors. ‘Sharp of bone, mind and tongue. Little Miss Jessie Sharp.’ Sooner or later, she knew, she’d be obliged to sort things out with Eliza Potts.

  Eliza must have reported the patient to be recovering, for young Dolly brought up a tray laden with gruel, bread and tea. In Salt’s Yard the gruel had been watered to make it go round the whole family; the bread had been hard and usually plain, unless there’d been a scrape of lard to be had, and the tea had been weak, second or third time brewed – when it hadn’t been nothing but boiling water poured over burned crusts. Here the gruel was thick enough to chew, sweetened with honey; the bread was fresh, spread with real butter, and the tea came hot and strong, with milk in it. Jess couldn’t help but think that she didn’t deserve such fortune, and that it couldn’t possibly last.

  Dolly had just taken away the empty tray when Lily came dashing in to enquire after her protégée’s health. Close behind her came Miss Peartree, pale eyes watchful behind glinting spectacles.

  ‘Eliza tells me you’re feeling better,’ she remarked, folding her hands over her apron.

  ‘Much better, m’m,’ Jess said.

  ‘It’s “miss”. You should call me “miss”, not ma’am. My name is Miss Peartree.’

  ‘Yes’m-miss.’

  ‘And what do we call you – apart from “Jessamy”?’

  Jess felt her belly turn cold with apprehension. Here it came. She’d known it was too good to last. ‘They call me Jessie Sharp, miss.’ It was true, after all – her dad had called her ‘Miss Jessie Sharp’ and because he thought it such a joke other folk had used the nickname, ’times.

  Even so, she had a feeling Miss Peartree knew she wasn’t being honest. ‘Do they, indeed?’ the old lady said.

  Lily had been hovering, listening anxiously, looking from one to the other, seemingly under instruction not to interrupt the interview. Unable to contain herself, she said, ‘Don’t you have a family?’

  ‘Not any more.’ That was the truth, Jess reasoned. She’d cut herself off from everybody and everything; she couldn’t imagine them wanting her back. She was a runaway now, an outcast. Jess No-Name, as Eliza had said.

  ‘No one?’ Lily was all sympathy, her strange eyes wide and soft. ‘Oh, Cousin Oriana, what did I tell you? The poor thing—’

  ‘It doesn’t explain what she was doing in our woods,’ Miss Peartree said worriedly. ‘Do you have a situation, girl? You haven’t the hands of a field-worker. Where do you come from?’

  Jess sank further into her pillows. ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘’Cos you’ll send me back. And I en’t never goin’ back. Never ever!’

  ‘Why not?’ Miss Peartree asked again.

  ‘Oh, Cousin Oriana!’ Lily cried. ‘Don’t make her tell you if she doesn’t want to.’

  ‘But we must know! Don’t you understand? To have a stranger under our roof… You know what your father said. The least she can do is account for herself.’

  ‘Then at least promise that you won’t force her to go back if she has a good reason not to.’

  Miss Peartree considered that, regarding Jess askance.

  To her own surprise, Jess found answers waiting at the tip of her tongue. The truth. Well, some of it. ‘I was a maid-of-all-work,’ she said, and spread thin hands which still bore scars and calluses and itching red chilblains. ‘The missus treated me like a skivvy. She despised me. She said bad things about my family. And… there was a man. He… He…’

  A man… Memory came flooding in sickening detail, catching her unprepared. Her skull felt as if it might burst with hate and rage and self-loathing. She threw her hands to her head, as if to hold it together.

  ‘Don’t!’ Lily cried, her white face mirroring the horror she saw in Jess’s eyes. ‘Don’t say any more. Of course you can’t go back. You shall never go back. You shall stay here with us. Shan’t she, Cousin Oriana?’

  Miss Peartree didn’t know where to look. Her spinster’s soul was shocked by thoughts of atrocities her imagination was unable to conjure. The doctor had hinted at it, but she’d had to make sure. She took off her spectacles and began to polish them on a corner of her apron. ‘We shall see. For now, at least… We shall speak with your father, Lily Victoria. I’m sure he will… when he knows what… oh, dear me, how very unpleasant.’

  Covering her mouth with her hand, as if feeling sick, she escaped from a room which was suddenly crowded with unspeakable horrors.

  In her wake, Lily and Jess stared at each other wordlessly. Then, unable to face what she read in those wide, questioning, mismatched eyes, Jess turned her head and sank deeper in the bed, taking refuge in weakness.

  Lily, too, turned away, her half-skipping step taking her to the window. ‘Sir Richard’s men have cleared a way through the snow. I think I shall go for a walk later.’

  Jess lay silent, her eyes aching behind closed lids, her heart beating breathlessly. The sickness remained, a stagnant pool inside her. She’d never be free of the taint of evil. Never.

  ‘Mr Rudd came earlier,’ Lily chatted. ‘Do you remember Mr Rudd – the gamekeeper? He brought us a brace of partridge, from Sir Richard. He was asking after you. He’s a nice man.’

  Impressions came wafting like a cooling breeze on a baking August day, overlaying memories of horror. Mr Rudd. Yes, Jess remembered his soft northern voice; she’d sensed a self-conscious stiffness mingled with innate kindness. Her nostrils recalled the scent of tobacco smoke, and hints of dog, and a musky, elusive odour that was his alone. She knew she would like him, if ever they met. Whether he would like her was another matter. With so many sins blackening her soul, she doubted it.

  She looked up, seeing the other girl watching her, her strange eyes troubled. Lily leaned over her, saying earnestly, ‘You’re safe here, Jess. I shan’t let them make you go back, or do anything to betray you. We’re friends. There’s sanctuary here for as long as you need it.’

&
nbsp; ‘Whatever I’ve done?’ Jess asked.

  ‘Whatever you’ve done!’ Lily declared, then, ‘Oh, what do you mean? It wasn’t your fault. If your master and mistress mistreated you…’

  ‘Mebbe I’ve misbehaved, too.’

  ‘I don’t care! None of us can claim to be spotless as snow. Even if you have made mistakes, they can’t have been all that bad. I simply won’t believe it of you.’

  Lily’s innocence made Jess feel about a hundred years old. ‘That’s good on you, Miss Lily,’ she managed. ‘But I ’on’t put on your kindness longer’n I have to. Soon’s I can get about—’

  ‘We’ll discuss that when the time comes,’ Lily interrupted. ‘You must indulge me, dear Jess. You owe it to me. If I hadn’t found you, you might be out there now, lying frozen dead under a mound of snow.’ Tossing her skirts, she settled side-saddle on the edge of the bed, giving Jess one of her bright looks. ‘Now, tell me… Do you remember anything about our meeting in the woods?’

  ‘I remember you singin’. I thought it was angels comin’ for me. You sing beautiful, Miss Lily. Wholly beautiful.’

  ‘I know.’ But a shadow veiled her eyes as she said it. She almost turned away, saying no more, but bitter words burst from her: ‘It’s my “compensation”, God’s special gift, so Mama always told me. It’s supposed to make amends for the curse he put on me, but—’ Her eyes filled with helpless tears and she whirled away and ran to twitch the curtain back and stare out at the snow-covered garden and the leaden sky. Her hand on the curtain, clutching the velvet, told of the struggle she was having to contain herself.

  Then all at once she spun back to face Jess with a brilliant smile that was pure fakery. ‘Gracious goodness, you must have thought me quite alarming. Singing to myself, and quoting poetry. I do that when I’m melancholy. Did you recognise the speech? It was Shakespeare. Juliet’s soliloquy in the orchard. “Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds…”’

  As Jess wondered what Shakespeare might be – and who was Juliet? – the trundle of wheels and the muted clop of hooves on thin snow announced the approach of a conveyance. Exclaiming, ‘It’s Cousin Oliver’s carriage!’ Lily flew from the room, apparently to have another view from the front of the house. She returned moments later to announce, ‘It’s Clemency, and her mother.’ Her emotion veered between pleasure and panic. ‘The snow can’t be as bad as I feared if they’ve come all the way from Syderford. Oh… I must go down. I’ll bring Clemency to meet you.’ In the act of rushing away, she paused, her face bright, to add, ‘She’s my second cousin. I know you and she will like each other.’

  * * *

  The moment Jess laid eyes on Clemency Clare, however, she knew that Lily was wrong. Beautiful though she was, with a fur-trimmed bonnet framing a china-doll face, there was a brittle emptiness behind the façade. Clemency was about the same age as Lily, seventeen or maybe eighteen, young enough still to wear her golden hair loose in waves down her back, but old enough to look at the world through cynical eyes.

  She stared at Jess disdainfully, her nostrils flaring with distaste, much as the fishermen of Lynn looked at some ugly specimen of marine life caught in their nets. She directed her conversation at Lily, as if Jess were indeed an animal, or deaf and dumb. Certainly beneath her notice.

  ‘I thought she was a gypsy,’ Clemency remarked in her high, clipped voice. ‘She doesn’t look like a gypsy to me. She’s not dark enough.’

  Too quickly, Lily said, ‘That was a mistake. I only thought—’

  ‘You mean you hoped she was a gypsy. You’re obsessed with gypsies, Lily. But since she evidently is not a gypsy, then where did she come from?’

  ‘She ran away. Her employers were cruel to her, so…’ Lily was twisting her hands together in an agony of confusion. She had forgotten how easily Clemency could reduce her to jelly and make her feel unutterably stupid, but now that they met again the reality was as distressing as ever.

  Clemency’s cool blue eyes flickered across Jess. ‘How can you be sure she’s telling the truth? Mama says one can never be too careful with beggars – helpless as they look, they can still steal, or take account of what you have and where it is, for their confederates.’

  ‘Why…’ Lily’s flailing hands told of her floundering thoughts. It had never occurred to her to doubt Jess’s story.

  ‘Oh, really, Lily,’ Clemency drawled with weary condescension and the faintest of smiles. ‘You are so naive, my dear.’ Abruptly tiring of the subject, she turned away, her glance weighing and pricing everything in the room while she contrived to exchange small-talk with Lily.

  News of the lost waif had reached the Manor some days ago, it seemed. The Clares had asked among their servants and workers for anyone who had old clothes to spare, and had now brought with them a bundle of garments which, with a little alteration and repair, would provide Jess with a good wardrobe. Most of the clothes were better than she had ever owned, despite their need of a good scrub and a stitch or several.

  Even so, grateful as she was for the charity, Jess didn’t take to Clemency Clare. Not one bit. Her presence had reduced Lily to stammering uncertainty, so that Jess sensed the years of insecurity which had gone before, with Lily wanting so much to be loved but finding herself barely tolerated. Jess, the onlooker, could clearly see that the uppish Miss Clemency Clare would hardly be happy to have such an oddity tacked on to her family.

  The girl was like Granny Henefer’s pin-cushion, which the infant Jess had thought the prettiest thing she’d ever seen. But when she’d grabbed it in her small squeezing hands she’d discovered the hidden sharp points. How she had wailed: ‘That bit me!’ It had been a family joke for years; every time a Henefer dropped something, someone would say, ‘Did that bite you, then?’ and everyone would laugh.

  Now, suddenly, she saw that Lily was looking as if her beautiful cousin had bitten her, colour ebbing and flowing in her face and her unmatched eyes bright with both hurt and panic.

  ‘Staying at the Manor? Is he? You didn’t tell me he was expected.’

  ‘I didn’t know myself until yesterday,’ Clemency replied. ‘And really, I can’t imagine why it should matter to you if we invite a friend to stay with us for a few days. Just because you happen to be mashed on him—’

  ‘I’m not!’ Lily’s flush deepened to scarlet.

  ‘Oh, of course you are. The way you blush at his very name… It’s quite a joke at the Manor. Dickon can be very amusing on the subject.’

  ‘Dickon’s hateful!’ Lily muttered.

  Clemency regarded her with cool blue eyes. ‘When you behave like a lovesick calf you must expect to be teased for it.’

  Lily was miserable, her mouth shapeless with distress. As if to cover her lips’ trembling she nibbled at the skin around her bitten nails.

  ‘You really are a silly goose,’ Clemency told her. ‘Ash Haverleigh will never look twice at you. He’s looking for a wife with a fortune of her own – and he has an eye for beauty. I doubt he even knows you exist.’

  Lily chewed at her thumb unhappily, finding no answer.

  ‘Anyway,’ Clemency shrugged with a tilt of her fair head, ‘I thought it only kindly to warn you that, since we shall be coming to service at Hewinghall until Syderford church tower is made safe again, Mr Haverleigh may be in church with us on Sunday. I trust you will not be so ill-mannered as to stare and embarrass him.’

  Watching Lily’s face, where every ripple of emotion was written clear, Jess wanted to rear up in her defence. But since it was not her place to interfere she kept quiet, sensing the tug of puzzling undercurrents. Why did Clemency enjoy hurting the vulnerable Lily? Was it jealousy that Jess’s intuition scented?

  In a small, shaking voice, Lily said, ‘I don’t do that. I don’t stare at him.’

  ‘But, my dear, you do!’ Clemency Clare exclaimed. ‘You wear your heart on your sleeve. It’s so gauche.’ Without further ado, she made for the door. ‘I must go. Mama and I have to visit old Mrs Witt. She’s dying, so they
say. A bore, but, well, noblesse oblige.’

  ‘I’ll come down with you,’ Lily offered, anxious to please – anxious to make amends, as if she had been the one to cause offence.

  ‘Just as you like.’

  Some while later Jess heard the carriage departing and when Lily returned to the guest room she had rediscovered her smile and was pretending the visit had gone well.

  ‘Clemency’s beautiful, isn’t she?’ she chattered. ‘She takes after her father. Cousin Oliver was the handsomest man, in his youth, so they say. But Dickon…’ Mention of Clemency’s brother made her look a little desperate, her smile straining to stay bright. ‘He’s more like his mother. The Clares are all such wonderful, clever people. Unlike me.’ Pulling a comically mournful face, she tugged an end of her lustrous hair, drawing it out straight before letting it spring back into its natural ringlet. ‘Cousin Oliver is Papa’s nephew, you know. His father was Papa’s older brother.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jess.

  ‘Papa grew up at the Manor,’ Lily added. ‘He was curate at Syderford in his youth. Then he worked at the cathedral for a while – that’s where he met Mama, in Norwich; then later, when the living here at Hewing fell vacant, Sir Gerald Fyncham invited him to take it. After he adopted me I became a Clare, too. We’re not really related, not by blood, but they think of me as their cousin, because of Papa.’

  It was as if, by repeating that she was accepted by her adoptive family, Lily mesmerised herself into believing it.

  ‘And this Mr Haverleigh?’ Jess asked. ‘Who might he be?’