Of Dubious Intent

by J. A. Sutherland

  It must have been Roffe, moving her arm somehow, mustn’t it?

  How could he have done this to her? Was he not her father?

  His rant to Brandt had been frightening — the worst she’d seen from him, even more so than when he’d beaten her for touching his mechanicals.

  And the words …

  Speaking of her being his, like a possession of some sort, and punishing those who’d take her from him.

  Her mother had taken her in such a way, hadn’t she? Seen something in the man she’d married that frightened her enough to flee the luxury of Roffe’s home and seek shelter in the slums, then risk the unknowns of the colonies.

  What might Roffe — the Roffe revealed to her in this cellar — do in such a case?

  He’d given little detail about her mother’s death — might he have turned that rage and violence against her as he had against Brandt? Roffe might say he sent his men, but Cat believed that less and less now. He would have wanted to confront her.

  The lantern’s light lasted for some time.

  Cat’s thoughts in the darkness that followed, and Brandt’s screams, lasted somewhat longer.

  It was Clanton, not Roffe, who finally opened the cellar door.

  Cat looked up, blinking against light of the downstairs lamps the opening door let in, which seemed much brighter after all her time in the dark. She edged away from the opening, as much as the narrow stairtop would allow, not bothering to rise.

  She wondered how long she’d sat there, lost in the darkness of her thoughts and Brandt’s screams.

  Long enough for her mouth to grow parched with thirst and her belly to ache with hunger, though the thought of food now turned her stomach.

  Clanton knelt and offered her a mug.

  She sipped, cool water slipping easily down her throat. The mug was only a quarter full and Clanton accepted it back from her once it was empty.

  “More in a bit,” Clanton said. “Let that settle.” He took a lantern from beside the cellar door and started down the stairs. “Come on, then.”

  Reluctantly, Cat rose and followed, though she longed to run. Her mind still felt clouded and it was easier to do as Clanton said. She swallowed hard and stopped, looking away, when the light reached Brandt, but Clanton called her closer. Docilely, she obeyed.

  Brandt’s body lay in a wide, sticky pool of blood. Here and there it had not been enough to cover the cellar’s cobbles, so it traced a dark path between them. The boy’s face was set in a rictus of pain and horror, not relaxed in any final peace as she might have hoped.

  Clanton sighed.

  “There’s less to clean up, y’do ‘em quick.”

  Clanton gave her no respite, nor time for any but a few sips more water, then it was to work.

  There were several barrels waiting in the kitchen near the cellar door.

  Cat had to drag one down, empty, and help him with the body. She balked at that, but Clanton’s look cowed her.

  “Easier —” Clanton grunted as he threw his weight against Brandt’s leg to bend it. “— do you not wait —” Another grunt and a sickening sound from within Brandt, accompanied by a fresh wave of the horrid smells filling the cellar. “— too long after he’s dead.”

  Cat sat back from trying to bend Brandt’s elbow in a similar fashion. It was remarkable how quickly some of Clanton’s casualness with the work had affected her. She studied Brandt’s face for a moment.

  Was she unhappy he was dead?

  No, the boy’d made her life a living hell in her time amongst the gang, singling her out for a beating more than most. Brandt, she knew, would have left her laying gutted in an alleyway without a second thought if it would gain him a tuppence — or a moment’s pleasure from her body, willing or no.

  No, she wasn’t unhappy he was dead — and she might have reveled in killing him herself if the circumstances had been different.

  The gruff, workmanlike efforts of Clanton had greatly calmed her and she was now able to think a bit more clearly than while she was trapped in the cellar with Brandt’s screams.

  “I was not in control of that,” she said, “if you’ll remember.”

  “’Course y’were,” Clanton grumbled. “Y’call out ‘Oy! I just slit his throat for him!’ An’ that cellar door opens, bang! Y’knew that. Somewhere in ya, y’knew that.” He pointed at Brandt’s elbow. “That arm won’t fold itself, girl. Back to work.”

  Cat sighed and resumed her efforts.

  She supposed he was correct. She’d known what Roffe wanted of her, after all, but had simply been unwilling to do it.

  “Easier, too,” Clanton went on, “do you wait ‘til this eases, but you’ll rarely have the days that takes — an’ the cleanup’s worse. Best if you act quicker in future.”

  “There won’t be a future,” Cat muttered.

  Clanton paused again and stared at her, then he grinned and chuckled.

  “Roffe told me y’know who he is now — what he does, too?”

  Cat nodded.

  “Well, then I’m free to say it — y’have his look in your eyes, girl. Whatever else y’do —” He nodded to Brandt’s body. “— there’ll be more o’this.”

  Brandt’s body went into the barrel.

  It was heavy work, even with the use of a wheeled handcart, to get him up the cellar stairs to the kitchen. Once there, Clanton had her fill the barrel with the harshest spirits Cat had ever smelled.

  “Not for drinking, at all,” Clanton informed her, handing over another jug.

  “What will you do with him?” Cat asked.

  “None of this,” Clanton said, handing her another jug to pour, “and an alley, if we were hurried. His lot’s expected to end there with an opened gut. The river’s good a’times. Plan the tides right and there’s merry hell to figure where he might’ve gone in. This one, though —” He held the barrel’s top in place now that it was filled and set it with a cloth-wrapped hammer. “I know a man what knows a man what knows a doctor, y’see?”

  “A doctor?”

  “Always wantin’ to poke about a man’s insides.”

  Cat swallowed hard, her stomach churning again at the thought.

  “Now,” Clanton said. “I’ll be taking this —” He knocked knuckles on the barrel’s top. “— to my man. You —” He pointed to the cellar. “— clean up the mess. There’s three barrels there I filled for you. Dump them down and scrub up the bits. Fill ‘em again from the kitchen pump and rinse it all good.”

  Cat scrubbed the cellar and finished well before Clanton returned.

  There was something cathartic about removing every trace of what happened there. Kneeling on the damp cobbles, scraping brushes against the stone, she felt satisfaction as the last of the red-tinged water went down the drains under the lamplight and the next sluicing of the cobbles showed clear and pure.

  Clanton gathered up the brushes she’d used, then ordered her to strip off her clothes. This set of the grey and green patterned garb was nearly done for, she thought, what with the rips and tears from her struggle with the gang, being flung to the alley’s cobbles, and then soaked with blood-tinged water as she cleaned the cellar floor.

  Clanton’s brusque, businesslike attitude left her oddly unembarrassed to strip so in front of him. He seemed to treat it as nothing of note, so she did as well. His acceptance of her in the aftermath of Brandt’s death was comforting.

  “You’ll want a bath, I imagine,” he said as he bundled her clothes up. “Kitchen fire’s lit, so there’ll be hot water upstairs for you.”

  That he’d lit the fire to burn those brushes and clothes, along with the last remnants of Brandt’s blood in the house, went without saying.

  Chapter 27

  Cat was kept at the townhouse for nearly a month after discovering Roffe’s true occupation and Brandt’s death, and never far from Clanton’s watchful eye. Being always watched was bad, but the forced separation from Emma was worse for her.

  Roffe watched her closer, too,
spending more time at the townhouse than was his wont before, though he still dined and slept at his club. He didn’t spend that time with Cat in any way, but watched her instead – at least at first.

  After a fortnight, Roffe began spending time in his Mechanicals Room and invited Cat to join him, but even this left her wary.

  “You seem unusually pensive,” Roffe said, head buried in some device.

  Cat longed to move closer and get a look, but she’d not been invited to. These invitations, which she might have welcomed before, left her wishing Roffe would return to his old habits. Even the occasional explanation he offered as he worked only brought to mind the violent outburst he’d had when she had the audacity to work on the little cleaning device – which, even now, sat in a shattered heap in the room’s corner.

  “I’m sorry,” Cat said.

  Roffe paused in his work and looked up, a jeweler’s loupe at his right eye making him look almost comical – if she didn’t think about the violence and murders he was capable of.

  “You’re afraid,” Roffe said.

  “I’m uncertain,” Cat allowed.

  Roffe grunted and returned to his work, making minute adjustments to the device’s insides – with, if Cat were any judge, entirely the wrong tool for the job.

  “Do as you’re told and there’ll be no cause for either,” Roffe said, jabbing forcefully at the device.

  “Will that include more murder?” Cat asked before she could stop herself.

  Roffe went still and silent, causing Cat to freeze as well, for fear of which way his mercurial moods might take him.

  “Of course, it will,” Roffe said, finally, not looking at her. “That is, after all, our family business.”

  Cat stayed silent. There was little she could say to that.

  “You should call me ‘father’, I think,” Roffe said after a few minutes, “now that it’s all out in the open.”

  Cat’s stomach turned at that, but she thought it not the time to argue.

  “As you wish, father.”

  “I sense you’re troubled,” Roffe said, looking up from the device. He pulled the loupe from his eye and frowned at her. “It would truly be best if you’d accept –”

  The mechanism he’d been working on emitted a low whirring sound that grew in pitch. Roffe rose and made to step back, but not before there was a sharp clang and bits of brass flew from the case.

  Cat jumped at the sound, but she was far enough away to escape injury. Roffe was not so lucky – a piece of brass caught his cheek, leaving a shallow cut that bled freely.

  “Damnable –” Roffe broke off, glaring from the workbench to Cat, as though she might be the cause of the trouble, then he dabbed at his cheek with one hand and left the room.

  Despite Clanton’s demands of her on their outings – the need to stay in whatever character he set her, no matter the circumstances – Cat now found them a welcome respite from the oppression of Roffe’s tenure at the townhouse.

  They returned one afternoon from such an outing, Cat dressed as the Flowergirl, so having to come in through the alley and carriage house, to find a note on the kitchen table.

  Clanton grunted as he read it.

  “Mister Roffe’s out,” he said, then immediately crushed Cat’s relief with, “Be back presently. You’re to change to proper clothes for him to escort you out.”

  “Out where?”

  Roffe’s schedule of events he planned to escort her to was usually better set than to give so little notice.

  “Don’t say,” Clanton said.

  Cat had barely time to change her clothes before the townhouse door opened again and Roffe arrived.

  He looked Cat over without a word, then nodded as though she’d somehow satisfied him and told her to come with him.

  They went to a hired carriage waiting outside and started off, neither speaking.

  The carriage came to a stop and Roffe stepped out, holding out a hand for Cat. She stepped down and looked around, shocked to her core. She recognized the place, of course, one could hardly move about the city and not know it, but what did Roffe mean bringing her here on such a day?

  The square at Newgate Prison was crowded with people, the carriage had barely made it to the edges, and Roffe grabbed her arm roughly to guide her closer to the gibbets at the far end.

  “Why are we here?”

  “I told you, to see a show,” Roffe said.

  Cat looked around. The crowd was loud and boisterous, but Roffe made his way through with ease. A poke with his walking stick, an icy glare as someone turned around, and the way parted. They were soon at the front, the very best place to view the show, if one cared for such things.

  Cat didn’t. She’d had no qualms about picking any pocket in this crowd when her gang had come here, rich or poor. The people who came to view a hanging were feeding on the misery and misfortune of others, in her opinion, perhaps colored by the knowledge that she might one day be the object of their attentions if she were caught out.

  “Mister Roffe, I’d prefer to leave.”

  “No, you’ll watch. We’ve a special treat today, and a lesson for you — wonderful timing, I couldn’t have planned better. You’ve been surly again, and I can see thoughts churning in your little mind like the gears of some device.”

  Cat pulled her arm free of his grasp. “If you wish me to learn that there’s a price for being caught in our endeavors, I’m well aware of that.”

  Roffe smiled and Cat felt the little chill she always did at that expression.

  Two men, their hands tied behind their backs, were led up onto the platform and the crowd greeted them with boos and hisses — both were young, one little more than a boy, Cat thought.

  Roffe moved behind her and grasped her shoulders, forcing her to face the platform squarely. “Watch now,” he hissed in her ear.

  It wasn’t quick. The nooses went around the men’s necks and the charges were read. Cat couldn’t hear because of the noise of the crowd. Someone threw the first bit, possibly a potato, and then more followed — rotten fruits and vegetables pelting the two men as they stood helplessly bound.

  Cat felt Roffe move closer. His body pressed against hers and he put his lips very near her ear.

  “Did you hear what they’re charged with?”

  Cat shook her head. “No, and I don’t wish to. Can we not go home?”

  “They’re sodomites.”

  Cat frowned. Roffe seemed to think this was important for her to see, but what was his purpose? Then the word registered and she stiffened.

  “Yes,” Roffe whispered. “Of course I know. Do you think aught happens in my household I’m not aware of?” He shook her roughly. “You’ve chosen a dangerous pleasure with your little maid, girl, so know this.” He released one of her arms to point at the gibbet. The crowd had tired of throwing things and the hangman was at his lever. “It’s as much a crime for you as for them. Cross me, and you’ll be denounced. It’ll be you and your Emma up there. Perhaps, if I’ve reason to think you still have value I’ll get you loose, but your little plaything will dance at Bellby’s ball, have no doubt of that.”

  The hangman pulled the lever and the two men dropped. The ropes brought them up short, but it appeared there were no friends, or none who’d acknowledge it publicly, to pull their legs and hasten them along. They twitched and jerked at the end of the ropes for what Cat thought was a horribly long time.

  What filled her mind was the thought of Emma up there — sweet, gentle Emma being pelted by the crowd and set to dancing at the end of the hangman’s rope.

  Her jaw clenched and she swallowed hard.

  “Do we understand each other?” Roffe asked.

  Cat nodded. “I understand you.”

  “Good.” Roffe jerked her around and started making his way through the crowd.

  Cat remained silent, staring straight ahead. She understood Roffe well enough, but thought he didn’t understand her. He thought by showing her this he’d cowed her — th
at her fear for Emma or herself would keep her to his line.

  She’d do that well enough, to keep Emma safe, but knew the only true safety would be if Roffe could no longer reach them. He might think her cowed, but she’d simply determined that they must escape him.

  Chapter 28

  Cat waited until Roffe off to his club for the night and she was certain Clanton was asleep, his rumbling snores audible in the kitchen even from his distant room.

  She gathered her things quickly, then went up the stairs to Roffe’s rooms. She looted those as if she were burgling the last house she ever would.

  A few coins long abandoned on a table, more coin and some of the new folding paper pounds favored by the banks, cufflinks, fancy handkerchiefs, an old shaving kit, anything at all of value and small enough size went into her bags. Then those bags down the stairs to the stables and into the coach. She made short work of the butler’s pantry, folding the silver she and Clanton never used into the linens so they’d not make a sound, then those, too, into the coach.

  She harnessed the horses as Skiff taught her, then led them out into the misty darkness of the alleyway. The traces and tack jingled and she could do nothing about the sound of hooves and wheels on the cobbles, but she hoped it was not enough to wake Clanton.

  Once away from the house, she clambered up to the coach’s bench and took up the reins. She’d not driven the coach often, mostly the manor’s cart, but it was little different. The city streets were empty for the most part and she was out onto even emptier roads before the first of the inhabitants truly started stirring.

  She drove the horses through the night, pausing only at the crossroads to hold her lantern close to signs and be sure of her way, then on again.

  It lacked an hour or so until dawn, she thought, and she could see lights in the manor’s kitchen, when the coach finally clattered into the courtyard and she drew the team to a stop. Mistress Singley would be up, setting the bread in the ovens and preparing for the day’s meals. Skiff, as well, to care for the animals. Emma would be soon to work at cleaning the house, so at least Cat had no need to fear dragging the girl out of bed.