Unseemly Science (2 page)

“But I can’t imagine our factories would produce it,” said the other. “Unless for export.”

Twenty yards.

My foot caught a piece of gravel and sent it skittering into the water. Romero looked in my direction. Tilting my head forward to drop my hat brim further, I quickened my step. One of the ladies stepped aside to make room.

“Good day,” said the lawyer, as I passed.

I made no answer.

Romero’s voice was behind me now. “Republican manners confuse me,” he said.

The ladies giggled. “Without a chaperone she couldn’t speak to a strange man.”

“You think me strange? Now I’m offended.”

More giggles. Then they were beyond my hearing.

If they had been directing him, he would soon set out to cross the canal, for that is where the lady was pointing.

I did not risk a backward glance until I was climbing the brick steps of the bridge. By then he was well behind, seeming in no hurry. I crossed the water and headed up the road into the small town of Syston. If he intended some other destination, I had lost him already.

It being Sunday, the streets were quiet. Finding a small park next to the road I sat myself on a bench in the sunshine. My thinking was this: a man of expensive tastes does not cross the border for the possibility of a single client. And if Romero had found some danger threatening several people, I did not see why we should all pay for the same information. There was a deal to be done if I could locate another of his targets.

So I waited.

The shadows of the trees shifted across the road. A man on a penny-farthing lifted his homburg to me as he rattled past. I could hear children playing in the distance. But of Yan Romero there was no sign.

At last I got up and started to make my way back towards the canal. For every tingle of risk-taking excitement, there is a corresponding weight of despondency that follows when nothing has come of the adventure. I wondered whether Julia would still be on my boat. I expected that I would find her gone and the key hidden under the pot of geraniums on the roof.

I was trudging back along the lane between hawthorn and crab apple and had just passed the final cottage, when a man coughed behind me.

“Excuse me,” he said. “We passed earlier on the canal path.”

All the excitement that had left me, now rushed back. No need to turn, for I recognised Yan Romero’s London accent.

“Excuse me?” he said again.

But I was hurrying away, back across the bridge, gripping and lifting my skirts to run, not caring that I was being stared at. For the first time in two weeks the darkness had been washed from my mind. The lawyer could only have come from one place to emerge behind me. He had been visiting the last cottage in Syston.

Legal jurisdictions are like sturdy
beams. I
t is the joints between them that are weak. In such places al
l manner of dirt will gather
.

From Revolution

It was late afternoon when I returned. I lifted the geraniums on
Bessie
’s roof and found the key. The tourists were long gone, but as I unlocked the hatch, I thought I heard someone move behind me. Glancing back I found the towpath empty. The experience unsettled me.

A note in Julia’s hand lay on the galley table. A page torn from her copybook, I thought.

I shut up the stove. I hope this is right. Next time, I want to go too. I worry. You know I do.

The words made her sound like her mother – an observation that dampened my mood. I did not like to think of what she would become if forced into a life of middle class domesticity. All that uncompromising drive would surely turn to bitterness.

Though I had not previously allowed Julia to accompany me in my work, little risk seemed to be posed by this investigation. I resolved to take her with me when I returned to Syston to seek out Yan Romero’s other client.

But the following day, being Monday, Julia was obliged to help the maid with the laundry. A fire had to be built, the copper heated and linen pounded in the tub. Her parents had instituted this new regime in order, Julia believed, that she might be put off from any idea of making her own way in the world. And whilst she did not like it, she seemed to take perverse satisfaction in banking her sufferings as tokens of resolve.

I had seen the blisters on her hands. “From the mangle,” she had said, a glint of triumph in her eyes.

On Tuesday morning, I wiped condensation from the porthole glass and looked out on a world heavy with dew. Having selected an indigo shawl to drape over my shoulders, I locked up the boat and joined Julia on the towpath. Then together we set out towards Syston.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said.

Yan Romero had emerged from the last house on the lane. It was the kind of cottage a farm labourer might occupy. A strange destination for an expensive lawyer. A strange destination for an intelligence gatherer, come to that. But if something was threatening my life, as he had suggested, this was my chance to find out more.

I glanced at Julia, walking beside me. “Can you stop doing that,” I said.

“Stop what?”

“Bouncing.”

“I’m not!”

“You surely are! You’re on your toes with every step. You’re supposed to make my visit seem more respectable not less so.”

“Our visit,” she corrected.

“You must keep quiet and let me talk. Even if you think I’m doing it wrong.”

“I promise. But this is so exciting. You’re taking me on an investigation!”

“Then repay me by not saying it out loud.”

Whereas Sunday had been bustling with tourists, Tuesday’s only sounds were the slow chug past of cargo boats, the lapping of wash on the canal bank and the call of birds from bushes and alder trees.

I had not been idle since Sunday. No one around the wharf had been able to tell me who lived in the cottage. But the boy who worked for the dairy had seen a man there and taken payment for a delivery of cheese. “Smooth hands,” the boy had reported. “And clean nails.” All said as though these were signs of some terrible wrongdoing.

We had reached the bridge over the canal and I slowed to let Julia go first. But instead she folded her arms and looked at me.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. Then, when I made no immediate answer, she added: “You’ve been frowning all the way.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“What’s your worry?”

“A gap,” I said. “That’s all. A gap that needs filling.”

She would have asked more but I started climbing the brick steps and, there being no room for the two of us to walk abreast, she could do nothing but follow. Once we were across and heading down the lane, the sight of the cottage distracted her.

“You’re bouncing again,” I said.

From a distance it seemed a pleasant enough building, though its roof sagged in the middle. But the closer we came, the more obvious its decrepitude. A few green daffodil stems poked through the weeds of the front garden. Paint was peeling from the frames of two deep-set windows. One pane of glass had been replaced by a board.

I knocked on the door then stood back, glancing up to the chimney. There was no fire inside, but I could smell smoke. Burning paper, I thought. We waited in silence. I knocked again. Then, hearing no movement, I picked my way around the side of the house.

A clothes line had been strung between two trees at the back. A bed sheet hung limp in the still air. I stopped and stared, feeling my pulse accelerate. The linen was not white, but pale yellow.

“What is it?” whispered Julia, close behind me.

I put my finger to my lips and she fell silent.

A heap of ash smoked among the weeds of what should have been a garden. The embers were still glowing. I glanced at the cottage. The back door was open, though it was too dark to see inside. The papers around the edge of the fire hadn’t burned completely. I stepped closer, angling my head to read the charred corner of a document. In a fine copperplate hand it listed goods – sacks of coffee and nutmeg, their weight, number and grade.

Lifting my skirts an inch, I poked at the paper with the toe of my boot, trying to turn it. It crumbled. I began searching for other readable fragments, but Julia tugged urgently at the puffed sleeve of my blouse. My eyes snapped up to the doorway where a man stood watching us.

“It’s dangerous,” I said, blurting the first words that came to my tongue. “The fire I mean. You shouldn’t leave it unattended.”

He stepped out from the shadow of the doorway, gripping an iron poker, giving the impression of one who had used such an implement before. And not just for stoking.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

Julia took half a step back.

“I came to see you,” I said.

He was dressed to fit the cottage – a poor man’s jacket, patched at the elbow, slate grey trousers thinning to thread at the knee. He edged around the fire. I followed his glance down to the papers I’d been trying to read.

“Come inside,” he said.

My eyes flicked to the poker and then to the narrow doorway. “Please,” I said with all the politeness I could muster. “After you.”

I judged him to be in his forties. He had to duck under the door lintel as he led us into what seemed to be part living room part kitchen. It was colder inside the house than out. Damper too. I could feel the floorboards bowing under my weight.

“Sit,” he said, indicating a three-legged stool and an armchair with horsehair poking through cracks.

We both remained standing.

“Suit yourselves.”

“You haven’t learned to blend in,” I said.

“Who are you?”

“It’s the rudeness,” I said. “How long is it since you left the Kingdom?”

The belligerence written on his face turned to surprise and then to uncertainty. He paced to the window and looked out as if checking the lane, though I could see he was just buying time to think. I braced myself. If he lunged towards us I could grab the stool and fling it at him.

“I’m from the Kingdom too,” I said. “I’ve been here five years.”

“How did you know?” he asked, still looking out of the small window. “Was it really my manner?”

“Not just that,” I said. “Yellow sheets as well. No Republican would use them.”

He swore under his breath but his shoulders had dropped. The fight had gone out of him. He stepped wearily to the fireplace and propped the poker in the hearth. When he turned to look at us, I noticed the shadows under his eyes. I wasn’t the only one who had difficulty sleeping.

“They’re French,” he said. “The sheets, I mean. Should’ve dumped them before I crossed.”

“I don’t understand,” said Julia.

“Here, it’s white sheets for the living and black for the dead. But in the Kingdom…”

He dropped himself into the chair. “It’s like sleeping in sunshine. Didn’t want to let them go.”

“I would have found you anyway,” I said. “I followed the lawyer. He led me here.”

“Do you want money too?”

“I want information.”

“You’re not on an errand from the bailiff?”

“Women here don’t do such work,” I said.

It seemed we had both fled the Kingdom to get away from debts. But where I had run from the threat of indentured servitude, I guessed he had run with the funds of a failing business. Or, more likely, the savings of gullible investors. I wondered what kind of man would choose to live in poverty to hide a hoard of gold.

“Did you pay the lawyer?” I asked. “Ten guineas for two months of his precious time?”

“I beat him down to five,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “You want to know what he told me? It’ll cost you.”

Royalists do not blush when they display their avarice. But even hearing it made Julia put a hand in front of her mouth. I did a quick calculation. I could afford to go halves on five guineas. But if I let him beat me once, I had a feeling he would try again and again. Exile had left him little power, but he’d cling to it all the more for that.

“I don’t pay for information,” I said, holding his gaze, waiting for him to blink. When he did, I added: “If you tell me what you know, I’ll consider it a kindness. And naturally, when I find out more, I’ll tell you in return.”

He stared into space for a moment, running the tip of his tongue over his lip. Then he nodded. “There’s to be a treaty. That’s what Romero told me. Or, there might be a treaty. It’s not set in stone. But if it happens, it’ll not be safe for the likes of me and you. That’s what he said. Unless we pay him to help us. But he would say that, wouldn’t he?”

“What kind of treaty?”

He gave me a look. “An extradition treaty, stupid. When it’s signed, they’ll get us all. Drag us home in chains.”

No action
shall be aimless. Each gesture and movement must have its motive. And each motive must be hidden.

The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook

The first I saw of the rally was an airship descending at a steep angle behind the trees of Abbey Park. Landing would not usually have been allowed within the city, even though the weather was calm. But since the event was expected to gather an audience from far afield, bringing prestige to North Leicester, certain bylaws had been suspended.

“Slow down,” I said to Julia, who was edging ahead once more.

“We don’t want to be at the back,” she said.

“Someone must be.”

My mood had been troubled since Syston, my outlook more cynical than usual. I did admire Julia’s ideals, but had less faith in this particular enthusiasm. Having borrowed a pile of old newspapers from Mrs Simmonds, the wharf keeper’s wife, I had spent the last evening reading reports of Mrs Raike. She organised soup kitchens, Sunday schools and other works of benefit to the poor and needy. Her volunteers cared for piteous creatures living in the gutters of the city, men and women so deranged they could not dress themselves, let alone find work. I could not fault her virtue in anything I read. Yet I found myself suspicious of the publicity. Did goodness need to be spelled out in newsprint?

I threw in an extra step and drew level. “It’s too hot to be hurrying so.”

“You don’t understand how lucky we are,” she said. “Mrs Raike rarely speaks in public these days.”

“I’d been hoping to spend the holiday in comfort.”

There was no point in arguing. Perhaps it was a cultural thing. In the Kingdom, people boasted of wealth rather than good deeds. And since women were permitted to run businesses and attend universities, they had less need to pour their energies into voluntary works.

We hurried through the ironwork gates and into the park, joining a stream of others, mostly women. Charcoal grey and ivory appeared to be the colours of those enthused by volunteering. My burgundy twill seemed extravagant by comparison. To judge by the size and crispness of the hats on display, the city’s milliners had been working overtime.

The thrumming of an engine and propeller overhead grew suddenly loud and a shadow passed over us. I looked up and saw another small airship, its carriage just clearing the top of a pine tree. We hurried around the curve of the path to see it descend into a wide grassy space next to four craft that had already been tethered.

The bandstand lay ahead – an elevated platform with a pointed roof in the Chinese style. Blue and white bunting had been strung between its pillars. Hundreds of people mingled on the grass. Julia took my hand and led me through until we were standing at the very front. I could hear the chink of glassware over the murmur of voices. Standing on tiptoe, I caught sight of trestle tables laid with white cloths and jugs of lemonade.

The crowd was growing by the minute and as it did, I found myself pressed up closer to those around me. I tried to relax my shoulders. My heart had begun to beat faster. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to identify the source of my sudden tension.

Then a thrill of excitement shifted through the crowd. A tall woman standing next to me whispered: “She’s here!”

The murmur of conversations dropped to nothing. I could hear carriage wheels approaching. Then the Mayor of North Leicester was climbing onto the bandstand from steps at the back, his chain of office catching the afternoon sunshine. Two young women climbed up after him, dressed identically with pale green sashes slung from shoulder to hip. And finally Mrs Raike herself.

Wearing a black straw hat, black jacket and black skirt, she had outdone even the most austere of her congregation. A black veil covered half her face. The only colour in the outfit was a pale green ribbon pinned to her lapel. She had been wearing the same outfit, so far as I could tell, in every newspaper illustration.

The Lord Mayor had started addressing the crowd already, though I doubted many were listening. He was saying something about the people who had helped to bring the event about and how it would enhance the city’s already shining reputation. But my gaze, like those around me, was on the woman we had come to see and her two sash-wearing attendants, arranged centre stage in symmetrical formation. It was with some relief that I heard the mayor say: “Without further ado...” Then he was stepping back to a smattering of applause.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mrs Raike began, in a voice surprisingly loud, “I am deeply moved that so many of the fine people of North Leicester have gathered here on this festival day. When I started my mission, we used to meet in the front room of a modest house. We were a handful of well-meaning ladies. Determination was our only resource. At first we collected funds for charitable causes. But for every ten pounds we raised, inefficiency would devour six. Therefore we decided to risk disapproval and do the work ourselves. With only our household staff to help, we purchased soup bones, vegetables and kettles of the kind used in regimental cooking.

“As women, we know the running of a household. Whereas men…” She paused and cast a smile around the crowd, which must by now have numbered a thousand, “… men are more suited to the commercial world. When we funded kitchens run by others, thirty pence w
as
needed to feed a family. But through our endeavours, we found thirty pence sufficient to feed ten.

“We could not have guessed how the fame of our endeavours would spread. I could never have imagined standing in North Leicester on Ned Ludd Day addressing a gathering such as this.”

At this, the crowd burst into applause. As our speaker waited for quiet, I glanced across and saw Julia clapping with gusto. But all I could feel was irritation. The uncomfortable heat, the pressure of the crowd and anxiety about my future had combined. How was it, I wondered, that a nation so averse to speaking about money could be barefaced in the display of its charity?

The Lord Mayor was standing towards the back of the stage, fanning himself with the programme. The two young women in sashes were obliged to remain still and were glowing with perspiration. Mrs Raike raised a hand and the last whispering of the crowd dropped away to silence.

“What would I have felt had I known our efforts would yield this wondrous fruit? I would have been overjoyed. I would have worked still harder. And if we have achieved so much in the last twelve years, what will the next twelve bring? Consider this – could you be part of our great movement? Will you be able to look back in amazement on great works that your own hands have wrought?

“A few of you may have the skills to help us. Most will find other ways to give. And in return, you will receive the satisfaction of knowing that you are transforming our great nation.”

The crush had increased as she spoke. From my position at the front, I could not now see how far back the crowd went. All eyes were fixed on her. Except mine. A photographer had set up his camera on the bandstand platform and was inserting a glass plate. I noticed reporters there also, scribbling down her words.

The Lord Mayor stepped forwards. “Mrs Raike will now take questions.”

I could not see how many people raised their hands. The Mayor pointed and from somewhere close behind me, I heard a woman’s voice.

“Why do you organise from Derby?”

The Mayor nodded then repeated the question, loud enough for all to hear, adding: “If you would consider moving to North Leicester, we would welcome you with open arms.”

“Early in our mission,” she said, “we received a generous donation of property. A disused warehouse in Derby which we adapted to our needs – offices, dormitories, kitchens and a yard for our wagons. Perhaps in time, someone will donate a property in North Leicester also.”

The Mayor was pointing to another part of the crowd. The next question was too distant for me to hear. The Mayor cupped a hand around his ear, nodding as he listened.

I brought my eyes back to Mrs Raike. There was something about her that seemed unreal to me. Her clothing was too heavy for the weather and the arrangement of young women to either side unnecessarily theatrical. It is hard for the daughter of a conjurer to take any performance at face value. And I will never trust a veil.

I had missed the Mayor relaying the last question, but now Mrs Raike was speaking again. “Men can help,” she said. “But their role is in the workplace. They are the providers. They are naturally competitive. We are homemakers. Our inclination is to nurture and protect. The work of charity suits our gentleness.”

I turned to Julia, expecting annoyance at this characterisation. But she remained under Mrs Raike’s spell.

I should not have raised my hand. Indeed I hardly knew I had done so. But the Mayor was pointing in my direction and I found myself speaking: “I hear it said that in the Kingdom women run businesses. They study in university. Shouldn’t we aspire to the same freedoms?”

Mrs Raike stared at me. For a moment the Mayor seemed about to relay my words to the crowd but then he was pointing to another questioner.

Afterwards, the photographer stepped in and tried to position the dignitaries. But Mrs Raike would have none of it and organiszed the group into a formal line with the camera far back on the edge of the stage. It was the same arrangement I had seen in every picture of her – the star of the show a small figure in the middle, dwarfed by her surroundings.

An accordionist clambered up onto the bandstand and played the opening bars of the national anthem, whereon everyone joined together in chorus as more young women in green sashes descended with collection plates.

Oh pristine skies and cities of good industry

Protect us now from all those dark machines

We will with upright conduct strive for liberty

And set perfection over dreams

I mouthed the words. Julia did not seem to be singing either. Knowing she would be cross with me after my question, I dared not meet her eye.

Instead, I focussed on Mrs Raike, trying to see the face under the veil. I had imagined her to be perhaps
fifty
years old. But much of that impression came from the way she moved. From this angle, looking up, I was closer than the camera. To guess her age
more accurately
, I should have liked to see the skin of her neck, but that was covered by a high collar. Conveniently covered, I thought. The dark mole on her right cheek drew the eye. It was a skin blemish exaggerated in the cartoons I had seen of her. Her skin seemed strangely dry.

A loud clinking of coins alerted me to a collection plate being juggled in front of me. The woman proffering it smiled encouragement. Her brow glistened in the heat. The image so struck me that for a moment I couldn’t move. Again, she shook the plate.

Julia glared at me and pulled some more coins from her purse. “This is for my friend,” she said. “Forgive her. She’s overcome by the occasion.”

The volunteer moved on.

“You’re doing this on purpose!” Julia hissed.

“I… I wasn’t.”

“You don’t approve of Mrs Raike, and you’re displaying your ill feeling like a child!”

The Mayor had begun speaking again, gushing a great list of thanks. Mrs Raike and her entourage climbed down from the back of the bandstand. Presently an engine chugged into life and her small airship rose into the sky, lifted, it seemed, by the applause of the multitude below.

We walked away through the thinning crowd, still not speaking to each other. A bizarre suspicion was incubating in my mind. It was something that Julia would not want to hear. And I would certainly have kept it to myself, but she had once made me promise openness. Therefore, having put some distance between ourselves and listening ears, I cleared my throat and spoke.

“I have something to say concerning Mrs Raike.”

Julia turned on me with such a look as might have shrivelled a field of thistles. “Then I hope it’s an apology!”

“For what?”

“Isn’t it enough that the newspapers turn everything she does into a joke? If a childless man does charity, they don’t say it’s because he’s barren and unfulfilled! I had good news to share and you’ve spoiled it.”

“News?”

“I don’t want to say it now!”

“Please. I’m sorry. I want to know.”

I could see the conflict written in her face. Though she wanted to stay angry, bitterness was not in her nature. After a moment the frown softened.

“Very well,” she said, the corners of her mouth curving into a smile. “When I applied to be a volunteer, they asked me of my experience. When I told them of my lessons, they wanted to know about you – my teacher. I was discreet, don’t worry. I simply mentioned your brother and his work. Then, this morning, a message came from Mrs Raike herself, asking if you and he – the siblings Barnabus – would help also.”

“
Pro-bono
publico
?” I asked.

She blushed. “Must you talk of money? It’s the case of the Derbyshire ice farmers that I mentioned to you before. They’re badly served by the law.”

“If I
had
money, I wouldn’t need to talk about it.”

“But don’t you see – it’s perfect. The extradition treaty that’s so alarmed you – if it does come to pass, then you too might be helped by Mrs Raike and her lawyer friends. This is your chance to do good for her.”

“You wish me to be the deserving poor?”

“Please don’t twist my words.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, not wanting to refuse without the appearance of consideration.

She beamed. “I knew you’d see sense. Now – you had something to say?”

“Oh,” I said. “It’s nothing.” For it didn’t seem the right moment to reveal my suspicion to Julia – that her hero might not be a woman at all.