‘I did not say—’ Forster stammered.
‘Clearly you are not who you seem,’ Metcalfe decided. He seemed to speak in jest, but his behaviour was so unpredictable, it was hard to be sure. ‘Tell us sir – are you an impostor? Were you out upon the estate last night, murdering stags? Did you chop off their heads and drag them to the front steps for me to discover?’
Mr Forster was stunned by the accusation – naturally enough. But before we could explain, or he could reply, we were called to the dining room.
As Kitty had predicted, the atmosphere at supper was strained. I had hoped to eat and retire as swiftly as possible – smuggling out a bottle of claret or two – but Mr Aislabie had other plans. He was convinced I knew the identities of the conspirators, and spent the meal attempting to coax the truth from me. He appealed to my compassion, my sense of decency. He pointed out that if I stayed at Studley Hall – ‘and damn it Hawkins, you will stay until I’m satisfied’ – that my own life was at risk. ‘Do you not care for your wife’s safety?’ he asked, glowering at me down the table.
‘John.’ Lady Judith put a hand on Kitty’s arm. ‘You are perfectly safe, my dear, I assure you. There will be twenty men guarding the house and grounds tonight. All the male servants will stay up, and Mr Simpson’s men will take turns at watch.’
Kitty smiled. She was, I’m sure, thinking of the dagger nestled inside her gown, the handle disguised as a brooch at her breast. And of the brace of pistols under the bed, and the dagger beneath our pillow.
‘I will visit Mr Sneaton in the morning and reason with him,’ Lady Judith said. ‘He will hand over the ledger, and Master Fleet will give up his information. Good will prevail. Now please, let us speak no more on the matter. I think Mrs Fairwood might faint.’
We all turned to look at Elizabeth Fairwood, who had not spoken once since we had sat down. She was indeed very pale, her face frozen in its customary mask. She was wearing the same grey fustian gown she had worn at dinner, a dress more suited to a governess than a gentlewoman. Only the jewel at her throat gave a hint of her wealth and status: the glittering diamond flower with the ruby at its heart. Her true mother’s brooch, if she was who she claimed to be. ‘It is a terrible business,’ she said, in a flat voice. ‘Those poor animals.’
Kitty narrowed her eyes at this. Mrs Fairwood’s compassion rang hollow, to be sure. I had seen her gazing at the stags from the window this morning. I’d seen no pity in her gaze. If anything, she had looked rather peevish.
Mr Forster, seated to her left, did his best to rouse the table to more cheerful matters. Even his clothes brightened the room, the gold buttons on his scarlet waistcoat gleaming in the candlelight. For once he did not speak of architecture, but entertained us with stories of his two friends, who had now reached Rome and had both sent letters. Each was in love with the same woman, he explained, without the other’s knowledge. The lady, meanwhile, was being showered with gifts from both suitors and presumably laughing behind her hand at the ridiculous Englishmen.
‘Tom and I have plans to visit Rome,’ Kitty said. ‘I should like to travel all across the world, to the very ends of the earth.’ She laughed at her own eagerness, and the rest of the table joined her, save for Mrs Fairwood. ‘Tom has a friend who lives in the colonies.’
‘New York. He’s set up a trading company.’
Forster leaned forward. ‘There are vast fortunes to be made out there, no doubt – in the south most of all. A whole great continent to exploit – and the cheapest of labour. Slaves and criminals – they must be the hardest working souls in the world. D’you know, I have always wondered – why do we waste so much abundant, free labour on the colonies? Just think, Mr Aislabie, if you could whip your men when required? Your stables would be built in a matter of weeks. You’d need a good slave master, some pitiless brute—’
‘No!’ Mrs Fairwood cried, and dropped her fork to her plate. She drew a steadying breath. ‘Please, sir. I beg you. Do not speak of such dreadful things.’
‘Dreadful?’ Forster seemed puzzled. ‘But I’m afraid it’s how the world turns, madam.’ He tried to catch her eyes, but she kept her gaze upon her plate. Her shoulders were trembling with suppressed emotion, her slim hands gripping the table. Forster appealed to Aislabie. ‘Sir, I’m sure you would agree—’
Mrs Fairwood scraped back her chair with a violent movement. ‘I pray you would excuse me,’ she said, and hurried from the room.
Mr Aislabie rose to follow her, then thought better of it. He sat back down, and gave Forster a critical look. ‘England is not a country of slaves, sir.’
‘No indeed, sir,’ Forster agreed hastily with his would-be patron, smiling about the table. ‘We are all free men here, thank God.’
Lady Judith signalled to Bagby to refill her glass.
Metcalfe roused himself. ‘Think I’ll take a walk about the gardens.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Metcalfe, it’s long past nine o’clock. It’ll be pitch black out there,’ Aislabie grumbled.
‘We carry our darkness with us, Uncle,’ Metcalfe said, then bowed and excused himself.
‘Does anyone in this house,’ Lady Judith asked, ‘know how to conduct an agreeable conversation?’
We retired to the drawing room and did our best to pretend this was a perfectly regular evening. To my surprise Mrs Fairwood joined us there, though she crossed at once to the harpsichord and began to play. Aislabie watched her for a while, with a quiet pride, before suggesting a game or two of cards. Fortune favoured me at last.
I am excessively good at cards. I played every day at school, and every night at Oxford. I survived for three years in London almost entirely upon my winnings. I have an exceptional talent for remembering what has been played, and for judging the meaning of each decision, based upon my opponent’s character and behaviour. There is an alchemy to it that I cannot put down in words – a hundred subtle ingredients I must draw upon in the few moments before I make my own play. One must understand the risks each player is prepared to take, and read the expression in every eye, no matter how fleeting. From these reactions, and the cards left to play, I am able to make swift calculations on the best use of my own hand. Not only that, I can do it tired, or sick, or drunk.
I wish this much-honed skill extended beyond the gaming tables, that this were all some great metaphor for how I conduct my life. True, cards have taught me how to read minute expressions of the face very well, if I bother to concentrate. But away from the table there are too many distinctions and distractions to make precise predictions. Life is not like a game of cards; life is like nothing but itself. That is why it is so precious.
Kitty preferred cockpits and wrestling to playing cards, and tended to grow restless sitting too long at the gaming table. But she made an exception that strange, unsettled night at Studley Hall. It was as if we had all decided to ignore the encroaching danger – as there was so little we might do about it. Aislabie and Lady Judith were both experienced players, but they were too confident and too focused upon each other’s game. I had plucked almost twenty pounds from Aislabie before the end of the night.
As we played, Lady Judith did her best to counsel her husband on Sneaton’s behalf, in her subtle way. A passing reference to some work that needed doing about the hall, and how Sneaton would be best placed to arrange it. A reminder of how he had ordered the wallpaper and much of the furniture in the room, obtaining the very best price for each item. Aislabie gritted his teeth through each hint and said at last, when his patience grew thin, ‘Enough, madam. Sneaton has put my family at risk with his stubbornness. I will not change my mind on the matter.’
‘You have always loved him for his integrity,’ Lady Judith said, behind her cards. ‘And now you punish him for it.’
Aislabie frowned at her over his cards, and lost the game.
Forster did not join us at the card table. He spent the time speaking to Elizabeth Fairwood while she sat at the harpsichord. I cannot remember what she played, tho
ugh she played it well. The rest of the world disappears when I play cards. I didn’t pay attention to their conversation, spoken softly beneath the music. I didn’t notice whether Bagby stayed in the drawing room, or if he came back and forth to refill our glasses and bring fresh candles. And I don’t recall when Metcalfe returned from his solitary walk around the water gardens. I noticed him only when we rose from the table at last and saw him slumped alone by the fire, rubbing his forehead with the tips of his fingers, as if suffering from a headache. His fingernails were black with grime.
‘Good heavens, it is past eleven,’ Mr Forster exclaimed.
And with that, our party broke up.
Bagby escorted us to our chamber, with two footmen following close behind. I had been inside two gaols in the last few months, I knew how it felt to be led back to a cell. ‘I will not be locked in like some damned criminal,’ I said, as we reached the door. ‘I would rather stay up all night on watch.’
‘As would I,’ Kitty said.
Bagby considered her for a moment, not unkindly. ‘Mr Aislabie has twenty men on guard, with dogs. It would be no place for a lady.’ He glanced at me, and added in a knowing tone: ‘If you wish to stand watch, mistress, I should keep an eye upon your husband.’
‘What do you mean? What does he mean, Tom?’
‘I don’t know.’ But I’d had my fill of his insolence. I grabbed him by the throat and shoved him against the wall, squeezing hard. ‘Pray tell us. What do you mean, Bagby?’
His eyes bulged, and he began to choke.
The two footmen pulled me away, with Kitty’s help. Bagby fell to the ground, pulling at his cravat to loosen it. Kitty took my hand and dragged me into our chamber as he lurched to his feet, wig askew. When he had regained his composure, and fixed his wig, he took the key from the lock.
‘What if there is a fire?’ Kitty asked, as he closed the door on us.
‘I’m to stand guard here,’ Bagby replied. ‘All night.’ The key turned in the lock.
The sound of it sent a wave of rage through me. I rushed to the door and kicked it as hard as I could. ‘I’m not your prisoner, damn you!’ I kicked the door again for good measure, splintering the bottom panel. I think I might have torn the door from its hinges had I not turned, and seen Kitty’s face.
‘Tom. Peace. This won’t help.’
‘Fucking Aislabie,’ I snapped, and snatching the nearest thing to hand I threw it against the wall. A sherry glass, as it transpired, still half full. I began to pace the room, kicking at the walls. ‘I am not his fucking prisoner.’ Except I was. Locked up again. Pacing my cell again.
Kitty understood rage. I’d watched her kick and punch and curse at the world, and now she watched me do the same, until my anger was spent. She understood my hatred at being trapped, after my time in the Marshalsea and Newgate. She knew what had happened to me in the Marshalsea strongroom that night, and how it still haunted me. She poured some sherry into our remaining glass and proffered it, more as a tonic than as liquor.
I knocked it back in one gulp and offered her a weak smile. ‘I’m sorry.’
She stepped into my arms.
‘When I was in Newgate,’ I said, closing my eyes, ‘I used to dream of holding you like this.’
She sighed into my neck.
I broke free, after a time. Sam had not yet returned – the casement window was open, and his room was empty.
Kitty squeezed into the room with me. ‘Look at these,’ she murmured, flicking through a sheaf of sketches he had left upon his bed. ‘How well he draws. See, he’s captured those strange icicle shapes on the banqueting house.’
‘What was he doing up there?’ I wondered, taking some of the pages from her. Perhaps there was some clue within them, something that had helped him discover the identity of Aislabie’s foes. There were architectural studies of the canal and the moon ponds, and details of the new folly under construction – but that meant little. He liked to puzzle out the workings of things through his sketches, whether he was drawing some mechanical device or the skeleton of a bird. The cascades and the canal would have interested him in themselves, and might have no other meaning.
The subsequent pages were filled with character studies of the Aislabies and their guests, Mrs Fairwood with her eyes lowered, next to a portrait of Forster in his smart coat and bandaged arm. His mouth was open, which was characteristic, to be sure. Sam had made several attempts at Sneaton, with separate details of his scars, his wooden leg, and ruined eye. I had grown used to the way Sam witnessed the world and recorded it in his drawings, though I never liked to see my own face in there. But here I was – a portrait from our journey into Yorkshire, when he’d had hour upon hour to study me. I was leaning back into a corner of the carriage, away from the window. He had filled in part of the carriage interior behind me, shading heavily with his pencil. It looked as though a great charcoal shadow had gathered about my shoulders.
Kitty had found another set of portraits. She held up the page for me: four sketches of Sally Shutt. They were the most well observed and finished of all the pictures.
‘Is he sweet on her?’ Kitty asked.
‘Either that or he suspects her of something dreadful.’
‘Or both. Well, there is no shame in falling for a maidservant, is there, Tom?’
I smiled at her.
‘Has he gone to visit Sneaton, do you think?’
‘I expect so. I’d hoped he would have returned by now.’ I dropped the pictures back upon the bed.
‘He knows how to take care of himself.’
I wandered back into our chamber. ‘We must leave the window open for him.’ I peered out, and saw one of Simpson’s men standing beneath the oak tree holding a lantern. ‘Damn it.’ I craned my neck further out of the window and saw more lanterns, left and right. The men had formed a boundary all the way around the house. I hadn’t really thought I could take Sam’s route out of the window and along the oak tree – I valued my neck too well for that. But this confirmed it. There was no way I could leave the room tonight, which meant that my earlier thought to visit Sneaton and persuade him to talk at pistol point was now impossible.
‘Sam had the same idea, most likely,’ Kitty said. ‘No doubt Mr Sneaton is bound to a chair at this very moment, begging for his life.’
I hunted through my belongings. My pistols were still in their box beneath the bed, but Sam had retrieved his blade. I began to pace again, worried for Sam and worried for Sneaton.
‘He won’t risk sneaking past the men,’ Kitty said. ‘He’ll find shelter overnight, wait until he can slip back unseen. You know how he is.’
I nodded, absently.
‘Tom.’ She stroked my arm. ‘Sam has survived fourteen years in the worst slums in London. He’s a Fleet. I don’t think it’s his fate to die in a deer park.’
I frowned, and touched my mother’s cross for luck.
We undressed and slipped into bed, shivering from the draught blowing through the open window. I snuffed out the candle and lay in the dark, worrying.
‘He’ll be back by morning,’ Kitty whispered, running a hand beneath my shirt. ‘Most likely with the ledger tucked in his breeches.’
We laughed at this, then fell silent.
Kitty curled into me and kissed my jaw. ‘You’re not responsible for him, Tom.’
The silence fell heavy around the bed.
*
There is a body lying on the riverbank.
Sam spends two hours hunting for the ledger in Sneaton’s cottage, while the old bastard sits snoring in his chair. Two hours of nimble fingers – the quiet pulling of drawers, riffling through neat stacks of ledgers. Senses alert to any sound or movement, to the very density of the air. All the skills his father taught him and a few he’d taught himself, roving through St Giles at night.
He finds nothing.
He returns to the hearth and slides the dagger from his pocket. He holds the blade an inch from Sneaton’s neck, keeping his breath steady
. No pleasure in this, and no fear. He lets the scene unfurl in his mind, testing it for flaws. First, he would press the blade deeper. Sneaton would wake with a start, and feel the bite of steel. Sam imagines the terror in the old man’s good eye. No pleasure in this, no pleasure. Sam would ask his questions. Would the old man answer him? Maybe. Maybe not. He was stubborn, and loyal to his master. He might refuse, even under the threat of death. And then what?
Never make a threat you can’t keep. His father’s rule and one that Sam respects. A man’s only as good as his word.
He can’t kill Sneaton. Everyone would know he’d done it.
Sam lowers his blade. No pleasure, no fear. No disappointment. Well, perhaps a twinge.
There is nothing more he can do tonight. Tomorrow will bring new opportunities. This is the first rule of the Fleets: Stay alive till morning.
He leaves the cottage. Mr Sneaton, oblivious, sleeps on.
Sam crosses the estate towards Studley Hall, hurrying through the deer park. He is very quiet, but the deer scent him in the air and rise up from their half slumber. A stag bellows, and the herd moves away across the grass.
And here Sam’s luck runs out. Five minutes one way, five minutes another and no one would have discovered him. But two figures have stepped away from the house to talk urgently, and now, as if conjured by magic, their problem is walking towards them across the grass.
They grab him before he has a chance to pull out his blade. He fights hard but they are stronger than him, much stronger than he expected.
‘What should we do with him?’
He’s frightened now. ‘Please, sirs – I won’t say nothing. I’ll say I was telling stories.’
They don’t believe him.
A decision is made.
Sam isn’t struggling any more, he’s too afraid. He thinks of his mother. He is, after all, still a boy.
‘Please,’ he whispers.
He feels a sharp crack to his skull.
A Death at Fountains Abbey Page 17
