‘In the initial examination of the body, perhaps not a great deal, madam. But you have a certain animal intelligence that I occasionally lack. Further to that, you do not look well. You are a creature used to activity, and simply writing letters about your husband’s health is not activity enough.’
She glanced at him, and something of her old self glinted in her green eyes.
‘London does not improve your manners, Crowther.’
‘I do not wish them improved.’
‘That is lucky.’ Harriet stood and paced across the hearthrug like a dog testing the limits of its chain. ‘Do you think Dr Trevelyan is in Mr Palmer’s pay? That he forces me into an idleness I cannot bear . . . Perhaps I should repair my reputation in the world and stay here still and grieving till I am summoned to Highgate again.’
Crowther considered the threateningly ornate chandelier above them. ‘I believe the Captain would wish you to do all in your power to help his friends. And I think, Mrs Westerman, if your husband had wished to marry a woman who would sit by his bedside weeping for
more
than three months at a time, he would not have married you. Or if he did wish some sort of paragon of patience, ready to play martyr, he was already an idiot
before
he received that blow to his head.’
Harriet was surprised into a shocked gasp. He met her gaze with an innocent smile and the gasp became a choking sort of laugh.
‘Your complimentary mood continues, I see.’ She folded her arms and rapped her fingers against the dull green sleeve of her dress. ‘And why do you wish to serve your King?’
‘Mr Palmer has flattered me; and besides, I have finished reading my paper.’
‘Then let us order the carriage.’
I.5
A
NYONE ELSE WHO had a choice – that is to say those with money enough to make a choice – had moved west of here. The ways round Covent Garden had been bad for twenty years, but Jocasta was happy to stick with what she knew, even when there was gold enough in her bag to crawl towards the cleaner air. The press of people suited her, and the house in which she lived showed no sign of falling down as yet. More than that, people knew where to find her while she bided here. From early in the day till lighting up when the boys went round with their tapers sparking up the oil-lamps on St Martin’s Lane she sat at her table and turned cards. She told the fortunes of drunks and whores, pickpockets and thief-takers, of serving girls and journeymen, weavers and sailors. There was no class of person, no matter their desperation or their fear, that did not tend hopes for better times under their greasy clothes. Sometimes even Quality found their way to her and le coins fat and gold as the sun reflected in a puddle. She would tell them what she could see, and tell it gently, and hoped they’d leave a little lighter, because for all her scowls her heart was kindly at its core.
Mostly the fortunes she told were simple enough to unpack. Some young girl would come knocking on her door with a coin warm in her hand and stutter out a question about her lover, or her chances of honest work, and even before Jocasta had let her shuffle and choose her cards she’d know what they were to say, and was forming in her mind some way to say it without it stinging too hard. It led to calm days and regular habits, and times where she’d feel comfortable, almost content, and find herself singing songs from her youth as she pumped her water in the morning. From the moment she’d recalled the dream though, realised its heaviness had shut her lips over her song that morning, she’d known that her latest period of ease was done, and that sometime in the day a man or woman would come in and turn the cards, and they’d be hurtful and snarling, and as ready to burn her own hand as the person she read for.
And so it was. Right now she saw all sorts of pictures swirling about on the table in front of her and none of them tasted good on her tongue. Jocasta Bligh stared at the cards before her and sucked in air noisily through her teeth.
The woman seated opposite her had knocked on the door ten minutes ago as Jocasta was stirring the fire to drive out the cold London damp. She was now shifting in her seat a little restlessly, trying hard not to ask what Jocasta could see. She was a neat and pretty young woman who dressed well, but not so well she looked far out of place in the alleyway outside. A shop girl, Jocasta reckoned. Her hands looked too fine to think her a maid or a cook, and her manner was too quiet to think she would sell gin to maintain herself; she had a bloom on her still and no one who traded for men’s affections kept that more than a month. Kate Mitchell, she’d named herself. She’d got herself decent, it seemed, to pay her visit, though Jocasta did not see it as a compliment to herself. The girl had brushed her blonde hair and neatened it to face what knowledge was coming, to try and aid her courage. Her eyes were darting, and she held her hands together on her lap quite tight. When she spoke, her voice placed her as a native of the city, and not educated further than the charity schools, but by the look of her she’d done well after that.
Jocasta looked at the cards again; they seemed to bob and skip lightly in front of her, back and forth. She was tasting salt, and gunpowder.
‘You have any sailors in the family?’
Mrs Mitchell frowned and put her head to one side. ‘My dad was a sailor, though I can’t say I knew him. Him and Mum got married in the Fleet and he was off again before I was born. She said he had a pigtail though, so she’s sure he wasn’t lying about that. Can’t see why he’d show his face in the cards.’ She bit her lip and looked down at her hands. ‘Though my husband, Mr Frederick Mitchell, he clerks for the Admiralty. That might be what you’re seeing.’ She craned her neck, trying to spot in the cards in front of her whatever Jocasta was catching sight of, then sighed and sat back. ‘I come to you full of concerns regarding him, Mrs Bligh. And in need of some words from a lady of sense and sight like yourself.’
‘I smell gunpowder,’ Jocasta replied.
Kate’s fingers worked at the folds of her dress. ‘I cannot say why you would. Fred’s business is all ink and papers. But still, his business is war in a way. Making sure the orders are made for the Fleet, and they are firing on the French and Americans every day now. Perhaps . . .’
Jocasta let her attention fall on the picture of The Moon in front of her. It glowed and whispered. She couldn’t catch the words, but she didn’t like their tone.
‘What’s he up to, this husband of yours?’ she murmured, as if to herself. ‘And who’s the old woman who doesn’t like you?’
Mrs Mitchell looked as if her eyes were suddenly stinging her. She started to speak low and quick. ‘We share rooms with his mother. I don’t think she is fond of me. She runs a coffee-house on Whitehall and goes to serve the gentry with refreshments at their entertainments in the season too. I think she does a pretty trade, though Freddy and I both turn our wages over to her then she hands out shillings as if we were bleeding
her
dry.’
‘Married long?’
‘Three months now.’ Kate looked very sad. ‘I offered to give up my place at Mr Broodigan’s perfumes where I serve and help her, and I thought at first she had a liking for the plan, but now she just tells me to stop where I am.’
‘And what does Fred say?’
The young woman smiled suddenly. ‘Oh, we used to laugh at her ways at first, but these last couple of weeks . . . I’ve seen him and his mother talking quiet, and they stop when I walk into the room. I came home last week and there was a man just leaving I’ve never seen before, and neither of them would say who he was. I’m sure he was leaving our rooms. Freddy says now there’s money coming if I’m patient. He bought this pretty table and a brooch for me, though a month ago he was baying at me for buying new gloves, and not fancy ones either! And he’s short with me now, won’t laugh so.’
Jocasta rubbed her nose. ‘We’ll pick through this, dearie. But you’ll need to talk it out with your boy, somehow. There’ll be no laughing again till you do.’
Kate suddenly stooped to pick up her reticule. Pulling a handful of papers from it, she thrust them towards Jocasta. ‘And I found these . . .’
The older woman looked up in surprise. ‘Sorry, dearie. I read cards, not writing. Never got the trick of it.’
Kate gathered them back to herself, doubtfully. ‘They are letters, but not to Freddy or from him, but from—’ She stopped herself. ‘There now – I’m running on. Mr Broodigan in the shop, he says I always do – but the customers like to have a chat and a gossip while they are trying their scents.’ She closed her bag and gave her head a little shake. ‘Thank you, Mrs Bligh. You’ve told me I need to go and speak clear with my husband and stop dng round it. That’s good advice and I thank you for it.’ She got to her feet. ‘I’ll be on my way.’
Jocasta frowned at the shimmering cards. ‘I’ve told you no such thing. I’ve hardly tasted air. There’s some stuff here I need to step through with you. I don’t like the look. Sit now.’
Mrs Mitchell lifted her chin and held out a coin, which trembled slightly. Jocasta drew her shawl tighter round her and would not take it, so Kate set it down neatly in the centre of the cards.
‘Jenny at the shop was right when she said you were worth speaking with, Mrs Bligh. But I have what I need now, so I’ll be away. Don’t be offended, I mean nothing against you.’
‘Not a case of offended. You’re looking all brave and clear now, but this is something fiercer than a little lack of confidence man to wife, isn’t it, my dear?’ She looked up into the young woman’s face. ‘Let us pick through before you go charging off!’
Kate opened her mouth to speak, but no words came to her, so she turned on her heel and almost stumbled, such was her hurry to get out of the room. The door clapped to behind her. Jocasta sucked in the air through her teeth again and looked back down in the cards. Their whispering was growing clearer, more insistent. A trickle of coldness started to slick in Jocasta’s belly; it grew and spread as if it were embers on dry matter.
Boyo got onto his feet and jumped up beside her. Jocasta put out her hand and rubbed behind his ears, but he could tell he hadn’t caught her attention and whined. She didn’t hear him, she was still watching the cards in front of her. The Moon, cards of the Suite of Swords several and warlike; and worst of all, though that was serious business enough, in the middle of the spread of cards where Kate had laid her shilling, was the picture of a Tower cracked and burning that filled the air with sparks and injury and people falling from it hard.
I.6
T
HE OUTHOUSE INTO which Justice Pither showed Crowther and Harriet was low, and too dark for its size to be properly judged. However, it seemed to be made up mostly of unlikely angles. It was as if a once reasonable-sized space had been gradually encroached upon by the surrounding buildings; as if its neighbours had shuffled inwards at various times and from various directions, so the space had been forced to fold in on itself, jutting out a limb, or fragment of wall wherever it could find a space in the press. The floor was earth and the air smelled damp and brown. Both Harriet and Crowther had to stoop a little as they stepped down through the doorway. The only light came from an oil-lamp hanging from a central beam. Below it, on a trestle table, was a human form shrouded in a white linen sheet. The place bred silence.
The sheet used for a covering had soaked up the damp from the corpse, making it limp and heavy, as if a solid slice of river fog had stolen over the man in his sleep and smothered him. Harriet was reminded of the deepest places in a ship after a long voyage. The air here was a little foul, but she could not say if that was the breath from the body or the river water that clung to it. Either way ther was an air of contagion about the place. It was a room for things to rot in, forgotten and brooding.
The atmosphere could not still Justice Pither, however. He had done nothing but apologise since their arrival. He continued to do so now, caught between pride at their coming and embarrassment at the cellar-like outhouse into which he had shown them. He was also disposed to treat both Harriet and Crowther with a deference that the former at least found a little grating.
‘I do not wish for miracles, sir, madam,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘But my wife, she is an energetic woman, saw your names in the paper, the Royal Society . . . and of course we had read about last summer . . . and so when this poor fellow was brought along, she suggested we might call on you for your assistance . . . and she was right. We must do what we can, and we would be so glad of your acquaintance.’
Crowther looked down at him. ‘Have you been a Justice long, Mr Pither?’
‘No, no, sir. That is to say, not so long – three months now. My wife suggested I put myself forward for it – she says London has a great need of righteous men. And I have been reading of what other men in the metropolis have managed in their areas, so I made some modest proposals . . . The Sheriff seemed most willing – then when this . . . and I thought, perhaps if you were at liberty . . . The manner, the supply of Magistrates in this Borough is uneven . . .’
Harriet looked at his rather pinched and narrow face. She guessed he was a man who, no matter the skills of his tailor, would always look rather swamped by his own clothes, but he seemed to her in many ways a cut above the usual Justices in London. The city was not known for the quality of its officers of the law. Only that spring, Mr Burke had, in the House of Commons itself, called the Middlesex Justices who were supposed to administer the law in the city ‘the scum of the earth’.