Authors: Maria McCann
Fan brings tea and bread-and-butter but Hetty, generally so ready to eat upon all occasions, appears lacking in appetite.
‘I should be getting back,’ she says after half a cup of tea. ‘Letcher will worry. He wanted to come with me but I said I should be quite safe in the carriage. Some subjects are better discussed without gentlemen present.’
‘There can’t be many, Hetty, with such an excellent husband. I’m sincerely grateful for his help, and yours.’
On the doorstep Hetty turns, holding Sophia by the hands and studying her at arm’s length. ‘This business has had an effect on you,’ she says.
Sophia shrugs. ‘Of course.’
‘But not as much as I feared. I thought you would be quite broken down.’
‘I’m
comme il faut
, just as broken down as I ought to be.’
The cousins exchange smiles. Hetty says, ‘My love, your courage is admirable but don’t overdo it. Remember our door is always open. O, I nearly forgot! I brought something for you – it’s still in the carriage, I believe ―’
Her manservant, obedient to his cue, opens the door and brings out a small parcel wrapped in white paper and tied in ribbon.
‘I thank you,’ says Sophia, beginning to pick at the ribbon.
‘Open it later.’ Hetty lays a gloved hand on hers. The man helps her into the carriage and she is gone, the blinds pulled down against impertinent stares.
Sophia carries her gift back into the house and sits at a table in the Blue Room. The ribbon does not resist her long and she is able to unfold the paper, which is finely made, without tearing. Inside is a volume, finely bound:
The Memoirs of George Psalmanazar.
Left alone, she takes up the cards once more and shuffles, endeavouring to keep an ace at the top. Easy to understand, the move requires practice to render it invisible: it seems to Sophia that nothing she was ever taught called for such a pitch of concentration. What a paltry schooling hers must have been!
Sometimes, her attention flagging, she allows herself to dream a little: dressed as a gentleman, she strolls idly between the tables of a gaming club. Beneath a chandelier gleaming with wicked fire she spies Edmund, sly as the wolf in the fable, his mouth slavering as he sizes up some wealthy booby. Sophia steps up to his table, thus cutting out the booby – who, not recognising his saviour, is pettishly offended, but what of that, he must do as he pleases – and asks Edmund would he care to join her in a friendly wager, shall we say two thousand? Edmund shakes her hand. His eyes are fixed upon her so intently that the boat – no, the table – seems to rock as she takes her seat, but she boldly returns his scrutiny and snaps her fingers for fresh cards.
‘You remind me cursedly of someone I once knew,’ says Edmund, his tone softening just sufficiently to hint at memories not altogether contemptible. ‘Tell me, were you ever acquainted with a Miss Sophia Buller?’ And then, and then ―
Beyond that, fancy refuses to carry her. Granted that the Wolf-Husband has failed to recognise her in her male attire – impossible though she knows it to be – how could she engage him in such a conversation? She might, of course, feign dumbness, have herself introduced in a whisper as, ‘A Young Gentleman newly come to Town, a
mute
, but perfectly understands the rules of play,’ or ‘A Young Gentleman maimed at birth and obliged, ever since, to wear a mask in public so as not to distress the gentle hearts of the Sex,’ or even ‘A Young Gentleman of such delicate make that he might pass for a Lady’ ―
It is of no use. Notwithstanding that Sophia has read her Shakespeare, a man with whom one has shared a bed is not to be fooled by hats, wigs, breeches or even a mask: her manner of sitting down, the make of her hands, her very breathing would betray her. There will be no handful of trumps laid fanwise on the table, to the universal astonishment of the company; no cry of rage as it dawns upon Edmund that the game is at an end, the Biter Bit,
et cetera.
Instead, things will be managed dully, according to the law of the land. But O, how she would have relished her triumph!
47
Fortunate is in the hold, listening to the groans of the man next to him whose chains have rubbed the skin from his ankles. A man’s strength is of no use, here. Better to have the fine bones of youth. With an effort, he raises his head: a seabird is picking its way along the rows of slaves, hopping from one to the next as if they were stones on a beach. A sunbeam, a good omen, follows wherever it goes, the rest of the hold remaining dark.
Then he sees that the bird’s beak is stained with blood. He cries out, ‘Turn your heads, turn away from it,’ but his voice is too parched to be heard. He can only only whisper to the man beside him, ‘Look there, look there,’ and the man replies, in English, that he’s a whoreson fool.
He jerks awake, shivering, a pain in his head and eyes as if the bird has already blinded him. A fearful pain: it recalls the only time he ever joined Dog Eye in drinking punch, when his master woke at noon the following day, calling for more drink, and Fortunate crawled moaning from his truckle bed to fetch it. The stabbing spreads into his shoulders; he wonders if he has injured himself while asleep. He swivels his neck in an attempt to ease it, turning his face this way and that, and as he does so he sees a gleam cross the church wall above his head, a fugitive, quivering light as if reflected from water.
‘Is that your notion of a glim?’ hisses a male voice a few feet away. ‘Kill it before I kill you.’
The light vanishes with a snapping sound.
Fortunate’s body shrills and jangles with shock; a tiny squeak escapes him, adding to his terror. He crams his hand into his mouth, biting down hard, and to keep from shaking he presses his body into the bank of earth alongside the steps, straining his eyes upwards to the place where he saw the light. All is dark now, and there is no further cursing, but he can feel the vibration of feet passing near him. One man. Two. A confused scuffling: perhaps two more. Something soft is dragged along the grass. He hears a man grunt as it catches, and there is a faint snigger from further off.
He stays like that for many minutes, his heart painful. Were he a dog, he thinks, his ears would stand so high on his head a woman could sew them together. A clink. A laugh, followed by a growled command to mind what they are about. Everything comes to him with unnatural distinctness: the sea of sound that usually laps this grass island has drained away, meaning it is deep in the night.
When his heart has gone down a little he raises himself on cramped legs and looks out. Something white is hovering near the newly dug grave: he grimaces in terror, then remembers the dragging noise he heard: someone pulling a cloth. In another moment he sees the cloth partly raised from the ground and a dim streak of light thrown upon it from the other side, forming a screen on which the coat-tails and legs of men appear briefly in silhouette before passing out of the beam. The quivering light, he now realises, was a dark lantern not properly closed.
‘Well, lads,’ says one in a hoarse whisper, ‘it seems they left us a present. A mighty queer one.’
Another man says, ‘Not covered up. I never seen that before.’ They keep their voices low, but the sound carries across the quiet graveyard to Fortunate in his burrow.
‘It’s a decoy, I reckon. The right one is underneath.’
‘Hop in, then.’
Suppressed laughter. There follows a rustling, tussling sound as if someone is fighting a bush. The outline of a broken branch appears, then the screen vanishes as the cloth drops to the ground. He can now make out four men, two facing him across the grave, two standing on the near side.
‘Go on, Sam.’
There is a sound like an axe cleaving wood, followed by a gasp.
‘Fuck that for a decoy!’
‘I see how it is,’ says the hoarse man. ‘Another crew’s been here, and didn’t fancy the job.’
‘No more do I.’
‘Here, Sam. Davey.’
Fortunate’s breathing has slowed, and his shuddering almost ceased: he can hear the pop of lips and faint gasp that tells him they are passing round a bottle. A man laughs. ‘Shiner’s turned Methodist.’
Someone else says, ‘Not so deep as it looks, I reckon.’
Does he mean the metal jaw, or the corpse beneath? These men must be enemies of the dead man’s family, or perhaps magicians. Suppose they should perform some ceremony, and walk about the graveyard, and look down these steps?
He must get out onto the street. No use trying for the main exit, a wooden gate with a small roof over it, since the men are directly in the way. There remains another gate, a smaller one, some way behind him. If he can once get round the angle of the church wall, he will be hidden from them and can take his time seeking it in the darkness, but first he must leave his hiding place. It is a risk: were this daylight, he would be in full view as soon as he came up the steps. He reaches out towards the church wall and finds the scrap of plant-pot that marks his buried store. Never taking his eyes from the men, he gropes in the softened dirt until a finger stubs against a coin. One. Two . . . five.
He slides the money into his coat pockets where the pistols are, one in each. His fingers are slippery against the mother-of-pearl handles. Were he put to using them, would they work? Dog Eye told him they must be kept dry.
There are grunts and soft, ugly sounds like blows being struck. The sliver of light from the shuttered lantern picks out something shining that moves up and down. Fortunate’s eyes are clearing now, and he can make out the men themselves, bending, growing upright.
They are digging.
Magicians or not, they are about to commit a terrible crime. He must not be present. Now is the moment, while their ears and eyes are occupied.
As he rises the blood surges in his own ears so that he is half deaf. If they should look this way! Clinging to the stones, he moves silently round the angle of the church and half-collapses against the wall, trembling, while he looks for his way out of the churchyard.
The gate is a few yards off, next to a yew. Fortunate can just distinguish the tree, a thickening mass in the darkness, and beside it a paler patch: the gable wall of the house opposite. He pads across to the gate, feels for the top spikes, and eases it open without any creak or squeak.
He has used this gate before. It is one of a pair, facing each other across a metal pen: the gates are so devised that any stray animal attempting to enter the churchyard would find itself trapped. Fortunate pushes it open, enters the pen and softly releases the gate, taking care to make no noise. He is about to pass through the second gate when a man’s voice whispers, ‘Davey?’
Fortunate turns and flees the pen, back to the side of the church. Behind him he hears the gate crash. The far gate opens and closes, then the one nearest him. The man has entered the churchyard.
‘Who’s there?’
The man waits. Fortunate holds his breath: it seems the slamming of the gates drowned out his footsteps over the grass and back to the church wall, so that the man cannot yet place him. If he should come in search, moving away from the pen, Fortunate can perhaps dodge past him in the dark and get through it unhindered. But now the man whistles long and low.
It will be a hunt.
Where to go? If he makes for the trees, twigs will crack underfoot. He is conscious of a sweating coldness about his head and neck. Then he sees a faint gleam reflected from a gravestone at the side of the church. Someone is coming that way. If he doesn’t move now, he’ll be trapped between the two of them.
He remembers the bent railings where he first found his way in. They lie somewhere along the darkest side, away from the men. Willing all his strength into his trembling legs, he breaks from the wall and runs for it, tripping on stone ledges, staggering on the uneven ground.
‘Ware hawk!’ someone shouts. ‘There he goes!’
He is through the bushes and at the wall. This is the wrong place: the railings here are sound, the bent ones further off. Sobbing with terror, he tears through brambles, their thorns lashing his face as he feels for the rail. The man with the lantern comes round the side of the church, making straight for him.
At last he finds the place and tries to squeeze himself through. The pistol in his right pocket catches on the railing and holds him there; he wails with terror but at last falls headlong on the pavement, a tearing pain in his side where the metal crushed into him. He scrabbles upright and runs on, expecting to be pulled down. There comes a roar. When he looks back, the man with the lantern is at the railing, too big to get through. Fortunate sees the great furnace mouth and cruel eyes of the Spirit. At the same time, a gate clangs: the other man, the unseen one, is out now and on the street, but some distance away. Fortunate pushes himself on, on, until rounding a corner he comes to an alleyway. The nearest door opens to him: saved by the carelessness of a servant. He drags himself through and fumbles for the bolt, scraping his fingers. At last his hand falls on it and drives it home.
At first he can see nothing, owing to a flaring and flashing inside his eyelids. When his eyes clear, he finds himself in a yard of some kind, even darker than the churchyard and with a stale, sourish smell. From the roadway comes the pounding of feet, the gasping of his pursuers. With the desperate effort of one whose life hangs on it, Fortunate pinches his lips together and stills his breathing. The suppressed breath beats inside his skull and the darkness swarms, blinding him afresh as he takes the defender from his pocket. It is loaded: his fingers slip on the metal as he releases the catch. The pursuers have stopped near the entrance to the alley; he pictures them looking round, seeing lanes, gates, doors on every side where he might have let himself in. So close, so close, surely they can smell him out.
‘That was no trap.’
‘Best make him easy,
I
say.’
There is a moment during which he hears nothing, a silence thick with terror. Are they creeping down the alley, closing in? Then he hears them walking away, moving slowly. One of them says, ‘I had a bad feeling about this job,’ and that is the last of them apart from their retreating footsteps.