The Devil’s Highway by Hannah March

Author:Hannah March [MARCH, HANNAH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472229762
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2015-08-12T21:00:00+00:00

Nine

A very young slatternly servant-girl in a sackcloth apron answered the door to him.

‘Shoo! Git away – git off with your nosing and sniffing!’

Not him, he realized after a not wholly surprised moment, but a stray dog that had followed him to the door and tried to slip in. The servant-girl ejected it with a broom. It was not the only stray he had seen foraging about Water Street. The street was what might be called respectable, but it was old and catty-cornered and river-smelling; shabby children played here and there amongst the ash-heaps and the dark entrances of mazy courts. Life with its rub and wear and awkwardness was closer here than in the airy gentility of the squares. The Honeyman house was very old, perhaps even thirteenth century, Fairfax thought: mellow stone that seemed to bulge out over the pavement, lancet windows that to his secular mind were inescapably churchy, and inside musty darkness and the creak of ancient panelling.

Pain, too. He hit his head on the lintel of the door, following the girl into the parlour. One always forgot how shocking that pain was, and he stood for a few moments quite blinded with it, cursing the midgets of the Middle Ages.

There was music, a faint melancholy scrap of melody.

Barbara Honeyman was seated at a spinet. The instrument was not large, but prominent enough in that low-beamed parlour. Candles had already been lit, throwing huge shadows on the wainscoted wall and lending a waxiness to her white skin against the black gown. The dirge-like tune she played completed the deathliness of the scene. Fairfax felt as if he had wandered into an allegorical painting in which he was expected to hold an hourglass and a parchment inscribed Here ye see, Death’s selfe and mee, Yet as wee bee, So shall thee. Or something. Wrong even to entertain such flippancy in the presence of the young widow, but somehow she brought it out in him, perhaps because he felt she was never, ever flippant herself.

‘I should perish without my music,’ she said, stroking a last minor chord. She turned to face him. ‘You think me unfeeling.’

‘Not at all. Music is a great consolation, and you must have sore need of consolation just now.’

But she wanted to explain more. ‘In my head are such thoughts,’ she said, pressing her white hands to her temples, ‘that I think they will torment me to madness. Only music, perhaps, can drive them out . . . except that it doesn’t,’ she added, looking vaguely away.

‘I’m sorry to intrude at such a time. I will not detain you long. I beg the indulgence of just a few questions.’

She shrugged, and gestured him to a chair. ‘No matter. You can hardly, sir, make me feel worse.’

‘I wonder, have you seen a doctor?’

‘What?’ Her look startled him. ‘Why should I?’

‘Well – it has been a deep shock. A sleeping-draught, perhaps, might benefit you.’ Certainly those great eyes looked terribly tireless.

‘No. Though I thank you for the thought.

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