Ripley put his hand up to his chin as if to try and find the bit of fluff that was starting to sprout, and twisted the paper round so it sat between them.
‘These are names of boats, I think. I recognise one or two from reports of battles with the Frenchies. They’re some of them written out full, some of them noted quick, like. This here at the top . . . and here . . .’ his finger drifted further down the page and jabbed at another word on its ownsome ‘. . . these are places. Spithead and Portsmouth. Then under each are the boats and each name has a note or two. Like here – says
Pegasus
, six months provisioned, ready for sea, and here says
Repulse 64
will be ready in fourteen days.’
Jocasta frowned. ‘What’s the sixty-four?’
‘Number of guns on the boat, I think, Mrs Bligh. And on it goes – both these pages are covered with names like that. Here’s one arrived from Ireland, here’s another they say on a cruise.’
‘What’s that then?’
Ripley shrugged and turned the paper back to her. ‘When they go out and find another fella’s boat and take the stuff on it. Or so I think. Naval types all go to Maisie’s chophouse further up the Strand when they’re about. Her husband was in the Service till he died of it, see. So I don’t hear a lot of naval talk.’
‘Fred comes here, mind,’ Jocasta said, as she folded up the paper and put it back in her pocket.
Ripley sat back and stretched his arms. ‘That’s clerks not sailors. We get a fair few of them, all inky and thin and gnawing on the bones past where your dog’d leave them.’
‘You did us a good turn with that Fred last night, Ripley.’
‘Always glad to do you a favour, Mrs Bligh. Not that it was much of a trial. He was in here with two others and they were glowing before they sat down.’ He curled his lip. ‘All mighty pleased with themselves and trying to grab Sally’s arse, though his wife’s only been in her grave a day. I’d call him a dog but that would be an insult to your Boyo.’
‘He turned mournful by time he got home.’
‘Sally got sick of it and gave him a slap and an earful. He was so pissed by then he turned from up to down like a hoop.’
They paused, both examining the grain on the rough table between them. Ripley spoke up again first.
‘Were there lots of papers like that, Mrs Bligh?’
‘Aye. Plenty.’
Ripley scratched slowly at the back of his neck. ‘It’s treason, isn’t it? They don’t just hang you for that. If that list was meant for the French or Americans, that’s cause to cut a man’s guts out while he’s still breathing. Legal. Have an eye to it. I heard about Finn and Clayton.’
Jocasta stood heavily and beckoned Sam over. ‘You’re getting awful wise as you grow, Ripley, ain’t you?’
He folded his arms. ‘Don’t have no choice in the matter, Mrs Bligh. Anyways, I’m saying you need a sailor, one you can trust, and a highup.’
‘I know. And higher than I can reach so we’d better find a way to climb.’
VII.4
C
APTAIN JAMES WESTERMAN got up very quickly when they Centered the room. He had been reading in his armchair in the larg room that was curre
ntly his home. For a moment he seemed confused about what to do with the book that he now held in his hands, then, having laid it very carefully on the side-table, he came towards them with a swift, awkward stride.
Harriet moved forward and said his name. His face brightened as she did so. She held her face to one side to be kissed but found herself instead folded hard in his arms. The strength of the embrace drove the air out of her lungs. ‘Harry, Harry, Harry . . .’ he said. His stubble was rough against her skin. ‘You are my wife.’
She made her body as soft as possible, her voice steady, closing her hands behind his back as best as she could. ‘I am, James.’ His hand swam down her spine and pulled her firmly against him, pressing his mouth against her throat. Then he suddenly released her, and stepping back, took her shoulders in his hands and studied her. He was smiling widely, his eyes glittering like the water on a fair day.
‘My beautiful wife.’
He then turned towards his son. Stephen had set down his model by the door and now approached slowly with his hand extended in front of him. ‘. . . And my boy!’ Ignoring the hand, James picked Stephen up under his arms and swung him round. Harriet saw a moment of fear in the child’s eyes and began to step forward, but before the thought could catch into form, she heard her son’s fierce high laugh. James gathered the boy to his chest and bent over till the lad was almost upside down, giggling and struggling. James tipped him back up and threw him in the air again before setting him down on his heels and crouching down so they were eye to eye.
‘And what will you be when you grow up, Stephen?’
‘A sailor, sir.’
James roared with laughter. ‘That’s my lad! That’s my good boy!’ Stephen flung his arms around his father’s neck and James patted his back. ‘That’s my good boy! And you shall have fair winds and fine battles and a pretty wife and a clever son just like me.’
Harriet lowered herself carefully into the chair James had vacated and glanced at the book he had been puzzling over. It was a child’s book of simple rhymes and stories. On one of the blank pages she saw that someone had tried to write a word, then, troubled by it, had fiercely scrubbed it out and filled the page instead with angry black lines. It took her a moment to recognise the hand as James’s.
He and Stephen were now examining the model of the
Splendour
. Stephen was explaining how part of the side planking came away to expose the gun decks. Each battery was in position with its crew. Stephen introduced each of the tiny figures and James nodded slowly over them.
‘There is one missing,’ he said suddenly, with a frown.
Stephen sat back on his heels. ‘Who, Papa?’
‘The Frenchman,’ said James slowly.
Stephen put his head on one side and bit his fingertip. ‘I have no other figures, Papa.’ Then, with sudden cheerfulness: ‘Might we use the cook?’ He pushed his fingers into the boat and pulled out a tiny being hardly bigger than his fingernail. He looked up at his father’s frowning face. ‘Will it do, sir?’ James nodded slowly. ‘Where does he go, Papa?’
James reached in a finger through the planking and tapped a spot Harriet could not see.
‘In the sick-bay, sir?’ His father nodded and Stephen placed the little figure on its back. James picked up the figures on the quarter-deck one by one, examining each till he found the one with epaulettes. He lifted it level with his eyes and looked into its tiny features.
‘Ha!’ he said, with apparent joy, and placed his model self next to the Frenchman. Stephen watched him.
‘What are you talking about with the Frenchman, Papa?’
James bit his thumb. ‘He was crying. I made him cry more.’ He began to sing some tune Harriet did not recognise. Stephen looked confused, but curious. James suddenly turned towards his son.
‘Are you a spy?’
‘No, sir!’ Stephen said smartly, and lifted his chin. ‘Death to traitors, Sir!’ James laughed very heartily and clapped him on the back, then leaning close to the little boy and looking up at Harriet, he whispered: ‘Is
she
a spy?’
Stephen laughed. ‘No, sir! That is Mama. She is very clever.’
James met Harriet’s eye for a moment. ‘Pretty, too!’ Harriet looked away.
Stephen pushed one of the gun carriages to and fro on its tiny wheels.
‘I do not think baby Anne is a spy either, sir. I can’t answer for her character, but she is very little.’
A slow delighted smile spread over James’s face.
‘I have a daughter too.’ He turned to Stephen and took his shoulders. ‘You must look after them, Stephen. Do not let the spies get them!’ Stephen looked a little afraid, but nodded bravely. ‘Good lad, good lad,’ James said, rather distracted, then turned away, singing the same tune again. He brought his palm suddenly to his forehead with a slap that made Harriet jump. ‘I cannot get that song out of my head. Hate it. Smells bad.’
Stephen took the tiny figure of his father from the sick-bay and placed it on the quarter-deck with the other officers and fitted the side planking back in place. James turned to watch him and put out a hand to touch the rigging. His fingers drifted down the main topgallant, and skimmed the mizzen staysail.
Stephen looked up at him and said quietly, ‘What are your orders, Captain?’
‘Are we provisioned and watered, Lieutenant?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Where stands the wind?’
‘North-by-north-west, sir.’
‘Very good.’ James traced the stern with a fingertip. When he spoke again, his voice was so soft Harriet had to strain to hear it. ‘You may set topsails, Mr Westerman.’
VII.5
M
OLLOY THEY FOUND in the Pear and Oats wreathed in his usual pipe-smoke – though this time when he looked up at them he gave them a leering smile that
made it look as if his face would split and fall then and there.
‘Come to make your thanks, Mrs Bligh?’
‘I have.’
‘Any profit yet?’
‘Nothing but extra trouble and questions.’
Molloy pulled his pipe out from between his teeth, spat on the floor and lost his good humour.
‘I should never have let you bounce me about with your cards, Mrs Bligh. Now I suppose I am to get my share of those troubles instead of coin.’
Jocasta met his eye steadily enough. ‘If you’ll take it.’
‘Bah! Woman!’ He looked about the place. A couple of men in worn coats nursed their beer at the far end of the long bar, and a young woman with nothing but a holed and dirty shawl over her stays pushed a filthy rag across one of the table-tops in the middle of the room. She was ghostly pale, and nothing in her figure or movement suggested she was much taken with the world around her. Molloy selected his places of business with care. There would be some warmth and some liquor to sit over, and not too far from the more populated places; but he needed rooms with corners enough for private conversation and where the few regulars would crawl in quiet and mind their own business, and the bright, noisy, curious or prosperous would stick their noses in only to hurry by again quick. ‘Still too early in the day for my usual trade. Send that lad out for food so at least I won’t starve listening to you, and listen I will.’
Jocasta took a handful of coins from her pocket and laid them on the table by her side. Sam hesitated a moment then snatched them up.
Jocasta spoke without looking at him. ‘Two doors down. Samson’s pie shop.’ He nodded and was gone without a word. Molloy leaned back against the settle and drew a little circle in the air with the bitten end of his pipe.
‘Begin, Mrs Bligh.’
Jocasta hissed between her teeth, and Molloy smiled at it. Then she looked down at the table, wet her lips and opened them. ‘This girl came to see me on Friday gone, name of Kate Mitchell . . .’
Stephen was quiet when they climbed back into the coach, but seemed content.
After they had gone a little way Harriet asked: ‘Are you glad to have seen your Papa, my pet?’
He nodded and touched the rigging of his model with one hand. ‘He is still very strong, isn’t he, Mama?’
‘Yes. He is.’
‘And he liked the ship?’
‘Very much, I think.’
‘Then I shall bring it again, next time we come.’ With that he looked out of the window at the passing hedgerow, and seemed to have no further need for conversation.
Harriet thought of her discussion with Trevelyan in the hallway and tried to will patience and quiet into her blood, then picked up the last of the letters from Isabella to Fitzraven. It was only now she noticed that this one had been franked in London, and the date was only some two weeks ago. What, she wondered, would Isabella need to communicate in a letter, given she must at this time have been seeing Fitzraven almost everyday at His Majesty’s? It was short and its tone was so unlike the last that Harriet’s heart squeezed a little with the echo of Isabella’s disappointment in the man who had sired her. Then her pulse skipped forward, and she found she was holding the paper hard enough to crease it.
‘Oh, Isabella! Why did you not think to tell us, child?’
‘What is it, Mama?’
Harriet looked up a little guiltily. ‘Sorry, Stephen. I did not intend to speak aloud. Something in this letter has upset me.’
He frowned. ‘It is not about spies, is it, Mama?’
‘I fear it might be, Stephen. It might be a little bit about spies . . .’
Fitzraven
,
I had hoped that we might become friends, but I see no natural affection for me in your manner or actions. I hold Mr Bywater in great esteem, but I feel no necessity on commenting further on my friendship with that gentleman to you. I do not believe you have earned any right to be consulted as you suggest about who I should consider as a husband. I would not trifle with his affections by encouraging other men. And even if my heart were completely free I would not use my ‘charms’, as you refer to them to extract gossip or rumour military or civilian. You mistake my profession.
I see the people you are with and I urge you with my last duty as a daughter to cease any contact with them. Until you can assure me the activities you hinted at have ceased entirely, or were no more than figments of your imagination, your strange need to demand respect through pretended or surreptitiously gathered knowledge, rather than earn it by the manners and behaviour of a gentleman, I would ask we meet as mere acquaintances. Morgan has orders not to admit you to my presence. Isabella
‘Why did she not say?’ Harriet murmured.
Stephen was looking at his mother with concern. ‘Mama! Are there spies coming? I am to protect you from spies!’
She smiled at him and folded the letter. ‘And you do a very fine job of it, sir. Continue to patrol Berkeley Square Gardens with Lord Thornleigh and I think we shall all do very well.’ Then she added, as she looked out of the window, ‘My mind is playing tricks on me. I noticed some smell as we left Dr Trevelyan’s . . .’
Her son sat up looking very pleased. ‘Paint, Mama. The nice maid Clara was telling me about it while you were talking so
long
to the doctor. There was a man in painting and plastering, and now Clara must keep the windows open even though the weather is cold to drive off the smell. Even though it has been two weeks since he came.’
Harriet thought back some weeks to a visit to James. Dr Trevelyan had been apologising about the works in his house, though Harriet herself had been hardly fit to notice.
‘You are a very fine young man, Stephen.’
The little boy shrugged and turned to look out of the window, but Harriet could see the happy flush in his cheeks. She thought about the strange tang in the air her mind had gathered and puzzled on even before she had consciously noticed it. It was not just paint, it was the fresh plaster and wood varnish too. She thought for a long moment before the picture of a room, recently seen and sharing some fragment of that odd combination of odours appeared before her eyes. The picture was of the study of Lord Carmichael. The window open in November she had noticed was to release the hanging taint in the air.