Christie Dickason - The Memory Palace

‘They do look absurd here, but I love them,’ said Zeal.

The statues stood mostly upright, though some of the plinths had begun to tilt in the mud of the banks. At the top of the highest pond, Nereus, the father of the nymphs, leaned forward as if trying to show his dolphin something in the water.

‘I thought Harry was mad when all those carts arrived from London, but they’ve settled in like the rustics they originally were.’ Zeal stroked the marble thigh of the nymph Panope, then smiled when she spied a hen’s nest between the marble feet. ‘I imagine they’re happy to be back where they belong. I would be.’

She turned her head to see Wentworth watching her. With the morning sun behind him, the grey stubble on his chin glistened. Dried oak bark and pieces of leaf had stuck to his ancient coat.

‘You’re not ready to die,’ he said. ‘You overflow with life. You can’t deceive me.’

‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘I have reasoned it through, again and again. You won’t change my mind. Don’t make it even harder for me.’

‘Why are you so set?’

‘That’s not your concern. But it’s my only reasonable choice.’

‘I’m offering a dreadful service. You owe me the truth.’ He bent to pick a large grub from the grass at his feet and tossed it onto the pond.

In silence, she watched the spreading circles, then the violent spasm on the surface as a pike struck.

He cursed under his breath. ‘You will love again, you know! Even if John Nightingale is never able to return.’

‘Don’t presume!’

‘Grant my age some small advantage! Please believe me – love comes and goes without apparent reason. You think you will never love again. Then it strikes…’

‘You’re wrong to think…’

‘Your heart was a desert and then it bloomed. And now you fear the rain will never fall again. Is that why you despair?’

‘How dare you!’

‘Forgive me,’ he said at once. ‘But I do not understand your rush to self-destruction. Nightingale may come back…in spite of what I said…Men have been pardoned before, exiles have returned home. They have even survived sea voyages, as I myself can testify. The man’s ship has scarcely cleared Southampton. Why not defer despair for a year or two?’

Zeal backed away from this unexpected outburst of passion. She hugged herself tightly. ‘I can’t afford to wait.’

‘You’re pregnant.’

‘How do you know? Is it so clear to see?’

‘You just told me.’ He threw another grub into the pond. ‘Is it Harry’s or John’s?’

‘John’s.’

‘Does he know?’

‘When he left, I wasn’t sure.’

Wentworth studied the water for some time. ‘Could it not possibly be husband Harry’s?’

‘Never! By my own testimony!’

He raised his eyebrows.

‘I didn’t see the danger then.’ She laid both hands on her belly. ‘Like a fool, I swore falsely, as Harry asked me. I lied under oath and swore that I was still a virgin, that the marriage was never consummated. And Harry was judged never to have been my true husband.’

‘Ah,’ Wentworth said. ‘I see. I wondered at the ease of the annulment.’

‘So, whoever is deemed to be its father, the babe is still a bastard. It can never inherit this estate nor anything else. What sort of life could it have? A beggar! And it’s my fault, for lying! I should never have agreed!’

Wentworth raised a hand to try to calm her.

‘As for me…a criminal either way.’ She shivered. ‘Either perjurer or fornicator, no escape. And our parish minister is violent against all odious depravity…unlike our own forgiving Doctor Bowler. Doctor Gifford will want to see me naked at the back of a cart.’

‘I don’t think…’

‘But I have thought! Again and again. Carefully, reasonably. Can you see a sworn virgin turned unwed mother trying to act as the mistress of an estate? Always assuming that the estate is not made forfeit! But I can’t kill John’s child secretly and still live myself. I can’t have the child and survive the consequences. Death is the only reasonable way!’

‘I have a kindlier way.’

She waited, eyes closed, as if he had offered to deliver the fatal blow himself.

‘Marry me.’

‘There you are!’ Rachel, a ripe twenty-four, had acquired Zeal as her mistress while the latter was still a Hackney schoolgirl and did not intend to change her manner just because the girl now owned an estate in some godforsaken corner of Hampshire. ‘I left your tray on your bed back at High House. Did you want me to do something with this?’

‘Not yet!’ Zeal snatched back the letter she had left to be sent to John after her death.

‘Your skirt hem is covered in mud.’ Rachel did not quite dare to ask where she had been so early. However, Zeal felt curious eyes on her back as they trudged up the track that led to High House.

‘We both have wet feet now,’ observed Rachel.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Zeal had said.

Wentworth flinched. ‘Is it my age?’

She shook her head.

‘The only ridicule I fear is yours,’ he said. ‘I meant the form of marriage only. Please don’t fear that there’s any need for love. Warm friendship, perhaps, in time.’

‘No.’

‘Is it my modest circumstances, then?’

‘At least you can offer me a set of fine fishing rods. All I would bring you in jointure are a bastard, ridicule, a burned-out house and a few sheep. It’s a fine gesture, but I can’t accept.’

‘Don’t mistake me, Zeal. I’m not a man for fine gestures. I’m old and lonely. You would do me a great favour.’

She stepped back and collided with the nymph. ‘You know very well which way the favour lies. To marry a woman with a bastard in her belly, abandoned by both husband and lover…you won’t survive the laughter.’

‘Laughter has never concerned me so long as I get what I want.’

Their glances collided for the length of a heartbeat.

‘Master Wentworth, only three weeks ago, I vowed to stay true to John Nightingale.’

‘A vow won’t help him if you’re dead.’

She did not reply.

‘I hate to think that death is preferable to a few years of my company,’ he said.

‘You don’t want to marry any more than I want to die. I’ve never seen a man so content with his own company.’

‘I want the child.’

She caught her breath.

‘I’ve no children who are alive to me,’ he said. ‘I’d be proud to claim Nightingale’s pup as my own. Until he wants it back, of course.’ He shouldered his rod. ‘In the name of the man you love, consider my proposal. Save his child. Life need not change much. Take time to reflect. I won’t retract my offer. You will find me at Pot Pool, below the mill.’

Zeal had not meant to go back to High House, but now that Rachel had intercepted her, she could not think what else to do. She had used up all her will on the chapel roof during the night. The two women paused for breath on the brow of the grassy ridge that separated the two estates.

‘Winter’s coming.’ Rachel gazed back across the ruined house at the bright slaps of colour on Hawk Ridge.

‘I need to sit down,’ said Zeal.

‘Madam! Think of your skirts,’ cried Rachel, too late.

After breakfast, Zeal rode her mare back to Hawkridge. While she waited in the office for her estate steward, Tuddenham, to finish in the stables, she picked up a stack of sooty papers, then set it down again. The old lethargy sucked at her again.

Wentworth offers a way out. Take it.

But I vowed to stay true to John. I believe that excludes marriage to someone else.

But this would be merely the form of marriage. An arrangement.