Ace, King, Knave (40 page)

‘Because I had them. You saw my trunk when I came.’

‘You could’ve been arse-naked, Betsy, I’d have clothed you.’

It comes to her that she’s thrown away all her favourites, all but the fawney and that only because it wasn’t on her finger. She raises one foot in the bowl. The stocking is about ready to come off. She peels it with care, cursing under her breath as water trickles along her calf and drops into the basin.

Shiner says, ‘Your keepsakes didn’t bring you much luck.’

He’s right. ‘Look at that. Like beef. I’m walking on beefsteaks.’

‘I’ve news for you, Betsy.’

‘Fetch me something to bind them, will you?’

‘It’s important. Sit and listen for once.’ He catches hold of her wrists. ‘Are you listening?’

‘Yes, yes,’ says Betsy-Ann. ‘Only let me bandage my feet.’

‘They can wait. Let ’em wash a bit.’ He rises and goes to a chair a little further off. Betsy-Ann sits facing him, hands clasped to show attention.

‘I’ve gone back to Harry,’ he says, as if expecting praise.

‘I thought you would, when you considered of it.’

‘Welcomed me like a brother.’

She snorts. ‘He’s never had a brother. You just remember Flash Tom Ball.’

‘No fear. I keep sober as a Methodist’s dog.’

She is impressed despite herself. ‘How can you? Don’t it make you want to heave up?’

‘I could heave up just thinking of ’em – all maggotty – where’s these bandages you keep moaning about?’

‘Use wipers.’ The minute she says it she could tear herself, but Shiner walks into the Eye natural enough and doesn’t linger. He comes out with two big silk ones, a green and a blue, tossing them towards her so that they unfurl.

‘The King of England ain’t got silk bandages,’ says Betsy-Ann, swiping them out of the air.

‘Told you that, did he?’ He lifts the bowl of water out of her way, upending it out of the window. She hears the contents crash onto the stones below. ‘But you’ve perhaps been in company with him, you and Hartry. I never mixed with the Quality, on account of
my
ma not being a whore.’

She is at once on her guard. ‘Forget Ned, can’t you? Cheer me up a bit, I’m half crippled here.’

‘Hold your peace, I’m not finished.’

His eyes have got that sticky look: something nasty coming. She rests her throbbing toes on a towel and waits.

‘I notice you’re busy lately. Goings out, comings in.’ He taps the side of his nose.

Betsy-Ann laughs. ‘You sound like the Excise.’

‘And
you
look like a mort that’s seen bad company.’

‘Queer notion of company you’ve got – being knocked down!’

‘And losing his gifts. Unfortunate,
most
unfortunate.’

She’s not going to answer that. Frowning, she dries off her feet and ties one up in the blue wiper. The green silk is larger, so she folds it over for comfort.

‘Listen,’ Sam says as she ties the ends of the green one together. ‘What’d you say to his fams?’

‘Ned’s?’

‘You know who I mean. Delicate, with an elegant motion, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Anybody would.’

‘Well,’ says Shiner, ‘on account of those nimble fingers of his, I ’prenticed him to another trade.’ He grins to see her start. ‘He never told you, eh?’

‘Ned, a trade? What trade?’

‘He got pretty cunning, too – not a patch on me, but tolerable. Now, Betsy, you’re a game bird. Ten pounds says you can’t name Ned Hartry’s other trade.’

Never has he talked to her like this. There’s more in it than jealousy: she expected him to throw Harry’s spying, and what he saw, in her face, but he seems to be taking a different tack entirely, leading her sideways towards something. Some trap?

‘You had him beat to nothing, you say.’ She pretends to consider. ‘That’ll be boozing, I reckon.’

‘O, you’re sharp, Mrs Betsy! Watch you don’t cut yourself. Now tell me how it was that Dimber Ned went penniless to Bath and came back spliced. Did he live on air?’

‘Gaming, he said.’

Shiner raises his eyebrows. ‘With nothing to stake?’

‘Then he had a bit put by. How would
I
know?’

‘No, how would you?’ He lets that sink in. ‘Let’s say his new papa wants to see mortgages, deeds. Papers. How’d he come by those?’

‘Had ’em drawn up by a faytour, like anybody else. I wish you’d lay off, Sam. I want to lie down, rest my legs.’

‘He needed a trusty to back him.’

‘You helped him to a faytour.’

‘I said you was sharp. When he wanted papers, he knew where to come.’ He holds up his damaged hand, flexing the fingers before her eyes.

Betsy-Ann sits bolt upright. ‘
You’re
the faytour?’

‘Even now I can draw. As you may recall.’

‘So where’s your kit?’ She stares round the room before turning triumphantly back to him. ‘You liar! You never had any.’

‘Now there, gents, we see the weakness of the Sex. Goes upon appearances.’ He comes up and pushes his face into hers so that Betsy-Ann is forced to drop her eyes. ‘I’ve no kit
now
and nothing was kept
here.
More than that, you’re not in a position to know.’

She stares down at her bound feet, seeing not the blue and green bandages but the portrait he made and destroyed. ‘Are you still a faytour?’

He shakes his head. ‘Takes more than a lump of coal.’

‘Why didn’t Ned draw up the papers himself?’

‘He’d nothing ready. And he hadn’t my ability.’

No doubting him now. To think of the pair of them working together for the marriage, and she never once suspecting.

‘Damnably stupid, your Zedlanders,’ he remarks, as if reading her mind. ‘I’d barely time to dry the ink. I warned Ned, if they so much as sniffed at it, he’d have to toddle.’

‘They didn’t sniff?’

A satisfied smile. ‘Swallowed it down like melted butter.’

‘Did he pay you out of her fortune?’

‘Not entirely.’ He gives the queerest look, of cruelty and pity mixed. ‘You always did wonder how I won you, eh? How I beat the great Ned Hartry.’

Betsy-Ann leaps upright but Sam also rises and flings her backwards so that she falls against the table, crying out as her torn soles scrabble on the floorboards. She manages to pull herself back into the chair, drawing up her arms and knees for protection.

‘Now, don’t run away, Betsy.’

‘Not another word!’ she yells. ‘Not a word!’ and covers her ears. Shiner seizes her fingers, bending them backwards so that she is forced to let go.

‘Sharps playing sharps,’ he murmurs. ‘What a fancy!’

‘You forced him into it.’

‘We had an understanding. Though I shouldn’t say he agreed to the conditions.’ He leans forward, his expression gleeful, and drags down her hands until they are resting in her lap. ‘He proposed ’em. His notion entirely.’

Her mouth is too dry to spit at him.

‘He was that sick of you,’ Shiner goes on. ‘But we know our Ned, don’t we? Liable to come sniffing round again. He swore his solemn oath to keep away.’

‘He foxed you there,’ she retorts.

‘We both foxed
you
, Betsy. Did you never wonder how I beat him?’

‘Ned was in his cups. You couldn’t touch him otherwise, he’s a prince to you.’

His mouth twitches: that hit home, all right. But he masters himself as befits a sharp and says, ‘Don’t flatter yourself, girl. We settled it long before. Your prince was for handing you over like a breeding sow. It was
I
proposed the sham wager – by way of a kindness.’

If he did feel kindness towards her, he’s run through his stock long since. But O, it fits, it all fits: how long did she go on like a daisy, lamenting Ned’s bad luck?

Sam snorts. ‘You may thank your stars I’m a patient man. Haddock’s, if you please!’

For a moment she’s silent. Her insides are empty: she could be one of Sam’s cadavers, scooped out on the slab of some doctor. It won’t last, she knows: soon the pain will start up, like coming back to life with the knife already in her. While she can still think, and while Sam’s in gloating mood, she must ask more.

‘Why’d Harry peach on me?’

His eyes gleam. ‘
You
just chanced to be there. Didn’t Prince Ned explain? Harry advanced him the readies, at interest, to get started in Bath.’

‘He hasn’t paid?’

‘Cursed clever of His Highness,’ Sam says with bitter contempt. ‘If he lives to boast of it.’

And there she was, flinging an earring or two through his door. She needn’t have bothered. A stink of death, a swaggering, grinning vengeance, dogs him through the streets, sends him dodging into alleyways.

How, in the face of all this, could he pick up with her again? She can scarcely believe it. Surely this story’s lies after all, nothing but Sam Shiner’s spite?

No. It’s of a piece: Ned shies away from Harry. He won’t come near this place: that, she’s seen for herself. Events shift about, slippery, as she tries to join them up. What
is
Ned’s situation? He spoke of creditors – claimed to need the Spanish trick before he could set her up – but he also told her he’d pocketed the dowry. If that’s true, and he cares nothing for the autem mort, what need of his play-acting in the Rose of Normandy?

Where he chose to cut her.

Like Shiner, she can’t fathom why Ned would shower blunt on her, treat her to the bagnio, rather than settle with such a creditor as Harry – unless it was in the nature of bait, setting a sprat to catch a mackerel.

Such a promising start she’d thought it, as good as a declaration. The ratafia, the chair ride, the pleasures of the long night. He was tender: he played her, flattered her, watching his chance. Did he even enjoy the debauch? She winces at that thought. But yes, he relished it – as a man might relish a syllabub, no sooner consumed than forgotten. Even then she should’ve seen the way things were going: he told her to get from under Sam Shiner, but
he
wasn’t having any, O no! And if she hadn’t weakened, hadn’t half-promised the trick? She wouldn’t have seen Ned again.

So far they’ve come no further than talk: a ken far from Sam and Harry’s haunts, where she could feel safe. Her life in keeping resumed, with the only keeper she’s ever desired . . . She was ready to give up her last trump card, hoping for much in return: aye, so much gammon and moonshine!

She bites down hard on her lip: Shiner won’t have the pleasure of watching her cry. This is how the world works, why did she ever think otherwise?

Besides, she’s seen something she never glimpsed before: for Ned, half the zest of the thing lies in baiting other men. Parading her before Shiner, then handing her over only to return and cuckold his old partner. As for his dealings with Harry – paying back the brother by cheating the sister, what a bite! He makes it his sport to tease them, dangling just beyond their reach, as he dangles beyond the reach of his autem mort.

And beyond hers. Her cheeks flush at the thought. She’s never been in the pillory but she fancies it might feel like this: stripped to the waist, bucks in the crowd laughing and pointing. Fear and pain and perhaps pissing yourself in full view of the crowd. Not a friendly face in sight but mouths agape, eager to lap up your suffering and shame.

She bites down harder still, telling herself she’s not in such a plight as that, nor so foolish neither. No woman has Ned’s heart. To each he tells a different story. He’s either too deep to fathom or so shallow there’s nothing in him: a man cut from paper. The autem mort, though, gave him everything she had.

Not so Betsy-Ann Blore.

With a mean little smile, Sam says, ‘Harry’ll settle it, never fear.’

Thinks himself top dog now, doesn’t he just! She keeps her eyes lowered to hide the hatred in them, gazing down at her feet where the wipers are already blotched with blood.

40

The Nuns

There live some nuns in Romeville town And they are wondrous merry, There’s one cries Up and one cries Down And one cries Kiss me Jerry.

Darkmans they work, O, O, O, O, Darkmans they work and do not shirk.

They kiss the rod and ply the birch They’re full of burning fire, To give their love to all mankind It is their one desire.

Darkmans they work &c.

There’s Tabitha and sulky Jane And dimber little Kessie, And tallest of them all, them all, O that is black-eyed Bessy.

Darkmans she works, &c.

Now Bessy had a lover true A man of noble fame,

That plied the tables night and day And never lost a game.

Darkmans he works, &c.

One day the Abbess comes to her Says, ‘Where’s your own flash kiddey?’

Says Bessy, ‘Why?’ The bawd replies, ‘You must not be so giddy.’

Darkmans you’ll work, &c.

Says Bessy, ‘I’m no slave to you And never shall I be.

Although for blunt I sell my c—t My heart I hope is free.’

Darkmans I work, &c.

But pride it comes before a fall The bawd was good and ready For Ned was sold, without his gold His hand was not so steady.

Darkmans she works &c.

I’ve twenty pretty roses

All planted in my beds,

Leave Bessy and they shall be yours To pluck their maidenheads.

Darkmans they work, &c.

And so Black Bessy’s lost her cull And Ned has lost his doe.

The moral of my story

Is one you all do know:

Old Harry works, &c.

41

Breeding can compensate for much, Sophia reflects as she and her party are returning home. In a gesture of mutual friendship and esteem, each gentleman offers an arm to the other’s wife, Hetty exchanging small talk with Edmund as if she believed him the most virtuous of men. Mr Letcher, likewise, has the air of one who suspects little and questions less. Though he was seated facing the fire and some elements of the scene played out in the Rose of Normandy presumably eluded him, he must have felt surprise, to say the least, on discovering his absent host gaming in another part of the inn.

Did Hetty understand the look that passed between Edmund and the creature? At the time, Sophia thought it impossible, but she had no opportunity to observe. Whatever Hetty concludes, she will of course make known to Mr Letcher as soon as they find themselves alone. Sophia can already fancy her anxious hiss:
About to accost him in our sight! Plainly acquainted – poor Sophy – no use her denying – intolerable!