CHAPTER XIII.
Means and Contrivances.
MR. STARKE HAD COME upon a green hand and taken an interest in his predicament, much as a cat in a garden takes an interest in the affairs of a fledgling bird, fallen from a nest under the eaves. The green hand was a timid young man, got in, he knew not how, on a charge of drunkenness and riot, and likely to as soon get out again. But in the meantime Starke would furnish him with soap and the services of a washerwoman, and a dozen other little comforts at ten times their worth. The young man nodded, blinked, and smiled weakly as Starke spoke in a friendly fashion. The prison spy was cleanly dressed, close-shaven, pink-skinned, affable; a plump, solid man with a mouth almost as wide as his face, and a face very wide indeed, but withal attentive and well-spoken. He had a habit of smiling benignly on any soul who came near, as if contemplating a benedictory phrase, and winking at odd moments. No cringing, slinking informer prospers long, and Starke was an old hand at deception.
Grainger happened to stroll by the little bench outside the tap-room.
“Good day to you, sir.”
“Good day to you,” replied Starke, with good grace.
“A new acquaintance,” said Grainger cheerfully.
“Indeed.”
Grainger stepped closer with a confidential air. “I don’t believe I have had the honour,” he said.
“This is Mr. Hughes.” Hughes mumbled something indistinct, towards which Grainger nodded. “This is Mr. Grainger, a gentleman,” Starke fluttered his hands, as if looking for the terms, “long associated with the gaol.”
“And do you assist Mr. Hughes towards penury or perdition?” said Grainger, with the utmost solicitation.
Hughes looked startled.
“Mr. Grainger is a gentleman of singular humours,” said Starke to his new companion. “It amuses him to make sport of me in this manner.”
“Quite right,” said Grainger. “It is something in my character.”
“The Bellstrom Gaol is a dangerous place,” said Starke, with a confidential wink to the new prisoner. “It contains many erratic and violent characters.”
“I don’t quite…” stammered Hughes, looking dazedly at Grainger.
Grainger made a motion, as if to pass on, and then hesitated. “Only,” he said, “I wonder what promises Mr. Starke has had of you, and what services he has promised in return.”
Hughes muttered something.
“Speak up, sir!”
“Clean linens, fresh gaiters, tea, soap, and tobacco, if you please, sir!” gabbled Hughes.
“And nothing in it but your gentlemanly agreement to repay him in turn, at a certain rate of interest,” suggested Grainger.
“A small consideration,” corrected Starke.
“Aye. And this small consideration will make you a pauper, if you pause any longer to consider it,” said Grainger.
Starke sighed, took his hat in his hands, stood, and bowed to both gentlemen, wished them a good morning, and ambled away. He could be heard to be whistling under his breath.
Hughes stared owlishly at Grainger.
“You need not thank me,” said Grainger, not unkindly. “Keep your money in your purse, for now. Or better yet: in your boot!”
He clasped his hands behind his back and walked on.
GRAINGER HAD not gone far when he came upon Mr. Tyre. He kept counsel with the raven, for the black bird sat on his shoulder and croaked secrets into his ears as it busied itself with its dagger of a beak among Mr. Tyre’s wisps of hair.
Grainger greeted man and bird cheerfully.
“Your are sportive with Mr. Starke,” observed Mr. Tyre.
“I fancy I have spoilt his dinner,” said Grainger. “I would hope to spoil his supper, as well.”
“I may venture to say that you are incautious, sir.”
“Perhaps.”
The meek old gentleman shifted in his coat, and the raven flapped its black wings. Mr. Tyre’s face was drawn in worry and concern.
“I would suggest, if I may, that you temper your boldness with foresight. The whole prison sees that you and Mr. Starke are at odds. Mr. Starke is heartily disliked, but he is still a man of influence.”
“How so?” said Grainger, with new interest.
“There are many twists and turns in the Bells, where a man may be set upon unexpectedly.”
“I am not afraid to meet Mr. Starke under any circumstances,” said Grainger.
“I am sure you do not mean that!” fussed Mr. Tyre. “Mr. Starke has no friends, but he has unexpected allies.”
“Such as Swinge—or Mr. Brock?”
Mr. Tyre spoke so softly, even the muttering of the bird on his shoulder seemed louder. “Such as Dirk Tallow. They have been conversing often enough, recently.”
“Tallow is in and out of this prison so often, he treats it as a lodging house,” said Grainger.
Mr. Tyre straightened, and the raven flew from his shoulder. He walked across the cloister and stood looking out upon the yard. “There is one other here who has many reasons to repent treating lightly with Dirk Tallow and his allies. She may tell you the measure of it better than I.”
Grainger followed Mr. Tyre’s gaze to a blank, high window in a tower wall overlooking the yard. The raven flew above, a fragment of darkness drawn up into the airs.
“Who is there?” said Grainger.
“You have heard something of her, surely. Her tale is quite the sensation. That is where Ginny Cleaves awaits the noose. It may interest you to call on her.”
GRAINGER MOUNTED the narrow, winding steps of the Maids Tower, so-called because this portion of the gaol housed the poor whores brought in off the streets of Airenchester as a net brings in fishes from the sea.
He ended in a groin vaulted chamber near the summit of the tower, an inaccessible room for those who would do themselves or others grave harm. Nearby, fascinated by the prisoner, were some gentlemen and ladies, finely attired, and pressing close against the bars, though with a care for their rich clothes. A woman darted among them, joking, wheedling, and collecting coins from the ladies. She was called the Duchess by the street-girls, a hardened procurer and bawd who ruled over her little demesne with a sharp tongue and a sure eye and the imperturbable airs of a noblewoman. On seeing Grainger, she came straight to him with a stately step.
But Grainger’s attention was not on her but the pitiful cell separated from them by a line of iron bars. Against the back wall, underneath the little slot of a window, without a scrap of furniture or any other object, sat a wild and haggard woman, staring at the assembly with the baffled defiance of a she-fox in a farmer’s trap.
“How goes it with the prisoner?” said Grainger to the Duchess.
“She has made a plea on her belly,” the old woman confided, “and will be examined at the next assizes.”
“Will it stand? Is she with child?”
The Duchess lowered her head. “There is no hope for her.”
“And so she is set forth, meanwhile, to entertain the wealthy and idle?” he said, with a nod at the languid viewing party.
“Her state is pitiable, and so fit for moral instruction,” said the Duchess, half raising a brow.
Grainger pressed what silver he had into the Duchess’s palm. “Get them gone. Admit no one else until I am done.”
Grainger waited in the shadow of the wall until the gawkers departed, ushered out by the attentive Duchess, who went down behind them.
The prisoner had not shifted from her place by the window, but panted a little. Grainger came close to the bars and set his hands upon them.
“How now, my girl?” said Grainger softly. He was moved, though he knew not how, by her wildness and distress.
Ginny Cleaves startled and drew breath when he spoke, and seemed to come out of herself and realise that they were quite alone. “What is it?”
“Do you require anything?”
“I want my man and my freedom,” she said, in a low, wandering voice.
“
I cannot supply those. But it is quiet now. We will not be disturbed for a little while.”
She threw her head back and put her hands lightly on her parted knees. Her breast rose. “What do you want with me?”
“I am told we have a common cause, though I know not the root of it.”
Her black eyes flashed with contempt. “We have naught in common.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps. Who is your man? If I can—”
“My man was Michael Harfoot. But he’s hanged.”
“The highwayman?”
“The prettiest man who ever sat upon a horse. He was bold and fierce.”
“And a comrade of Dirk Tallow’s, I hazard.”
The girl spat on the floor. “Ten Dirk Tallows are not half the worth of my Mickey.”
“A rival then.”
“That fat, vain oaf was no rival to my man. But he hated Mickey. I know it. He would have had me himself. He wanted to. Sent his hounds after me with gifts and sweet promises. But Mickey saw them off with his pistols and threatened Tallow with his blade.”
“Tallow declined the fight?”
“He’s a filthy coward, for all his bragging. That’s what Mickey said.”
“An impolitic remark,” commented Grainger. The girl made nothing of this. The straw and orange-peel that littered the floor was sharp and noxious.
“How was he taken, your highwayman?” continued Grainger.
“We was took together,” she said dully, “at a little inn on the moor.”
“Yes, but how was it contrived?”
Suddenly, she scrambled to the bars, almost to his very side, and her slim wrists slipped through the iron. “That is the thing I cannot make out! I do not see the means of it. I was took up on a charge. A little thing: selling stolen ribbons. I don’t know who swore it against me. Mickey said I should not worry, he would get me out. And so he did, by his cheat, and when I was released, I went straight to the secret place where we met, and there the magistrate’s men were waiting for us. We were taken in our bed. Him, with his sword and pistols three feet from his hand!”
“Perchance you were followed?”
A look of derision and unease crossed her face. “I know better than that. They could not follow me by the ways I know, up where it is open and wild, where the roads are lonely and clear.”
“Then you were betrayed,” said Grainger.
“Dirk Tallow had his hand in it. But I do not know how he got the better of us. I was that close and canny.” The girl wrapped her thin arms around her. “Now my man is hanged and I’m to follow. You can’t call it justice. Oh, how fine it was when we rode out together, and the high roads and the heaths were ours!”
Grainger heard footsteps deeper in the tower.
“Quickly—how did you arrange the time and the place of your last meeting?”
“I sent a message.”
“And if your note was intercepted, read?”
“I used no note. I sent my word by Lemuel Dreaver.”
“And you trust him, this go-between?”
Ginny shook her head. “Dirk Tallow don’t know him.”
Grainger stepped back from the bars and the condemned girl. Grainger could find no last word of comfort for her that did not resemble folly. He retreated down the winding stairs. At the bottom, the Duchess was waiting, and behind her stood a lean, dark-featured youth with a black wisp of a beard, who scowled at Grainger blackly.
“Who is that lad?” Grainger asked the Duchess.
“That is the girl’s brother, Daniel,” she replied.
Grainger did no more than glance at the youth. Perhaps something in the girl’s sorrow could be turned to his purpose, but he could not yet think what. In his mind he reprised Ginny Cleaves’ last walk from the Bells, her meeting on the threshold of the lonesome inn, her last embrace with her lover, the men with musket and sword creeping in at windows and door; and the bitter, bleak, rough romance and passions thereby extinguished weighed a darkness on his heart.
NEAR STAVERSIDE appeared a little inn, close to the water, though with no view but a crumbling pier, called The Gannet and Herring (or the Old Bird by its regulars), frequented mainly by clerks of the counting houses and having no more nautical an air than the old scales in the halls of the Exchange. There, on most nights, you could come upon Mr. Bensey, the law-writer.
Mr. Bensey was a small man, with a small face and a small, dusty wig. His eyes were small also, but wonderfully sharp, and his mouth was drawn together and turned down on each side, like a school-boy concentrating. He had clever, wide hands, with stub fingers, curled as though to hold a pen and blotter, and a certain inky quality had infused all his waistcoats, breeches, and coats, which had a dull black shine, even in the wavering candlelight of his solitary corner of the inn. A meek, cautious, observant man, solemn by nature but striving to be cheerful, was Mr. Bensey. He had a beauteous legal hand, and barristers in offices on Battens Hill swore by the quality of his pleadings, as though a single flourish in his best copperplate could sway the hardest judge.
He had taken a little cutlet and greens at his table and now sipped at his small beer, and at certain intervals consulted with his battered old brass pocket-watch.
Shortly, a girl dressed as a servant for a great house, but with a darker, rougher shawl covering her head, came in, and when she bared her lustrous hair, even Mr. Bensey’s weightless heart, for he had long ago been disappointed in love by a grocer’s daughter who had abandoned him for an ensign, fluttered a little at her strong, sure beauty. But, when she spoke to the innkeeper and turned to him, he rose and was all business, and all that was forgotten.
“You are the law-writer?” she said.
“I am.” He bobbed and drew out a seat for her. “I am Mr. Bensey.”
“My father’s name is Redruth.”
“I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Redruth.”
“And I am very pleased to meet you, sir.”
Her accent was that of the rougher quarters of the city, he noted without dismay, though strangely mixed with something of the broad country and the great house.
“I believe there is business to conduct between us,” he said gently.
She began to rummage within her reticule, and she brought out a thick sheath of folded papers, carelessly tied with a ribbon, so that when she put them on the table the ribbon came undone and spilled the papers everywhere.
“Oh, dear!” said Mr. Bensey faintly.
“You know what to do?” said the girl, looking at him sharply.
“I am afraid I don’t quite.” Mr. Bensey touched the corner of a letter lightly with his fingers.
“Here. What does this say?” The girl raised another folded paper to his eyes.
Mr. Bensey took it, squinted, and read off the superscription. “‘To Mr. Philip Moore, Barrister.’”
“And this—what does it say?”
“‘An appeal in the matter of Grainger v. Rex.’”
The girl frowned. “That ain’t it, either. What about this one?” And she brought a final note to his attention, with an air of defiance.
“‘Instructions,’” he read, “‘for Mr. Tristam Bensey, Esquire.’ My name is very plain. You may, perforce, make out the ‘B’ quite clearly.”
“Then those are your instructions!” exclaimed the girl, triumphant.
“I am grateful for it!” said Mr. Bensey.
The girl began to gather up the other papers and retie the ribbon, while Mr. Bensey read the instructions with a distracted air.
“Is it all correct?” the girl asked him.
Mr. Bensey looked at her, with a quizzical smile.
“I do not wish to presume…”
“And you haven’t begun, yet.”
“I anticipate a deal of business will pass between us at Mr. Grainger’s request, and I observe…” Again, Mr. Bensey did not conclude.
Cassie folded her arms. “You may observe. Anyone is free to observe.”
“I mean no offenc
e. I am in the way of—that is, from time to time I offer private tuition, usually to young gentlemen, in points connected with, with reading and writing—”
“I don’t need a school,” she said.
“By no means,” returned Mr. Bensey hastily. “But, if in the course of our meetings, I should happen to point out a word or a letter, out of habit as it were, for a young person in your position, with a concern for her advancement, it may be advantageous. For example, that is my name, there.”
The girl turned her dark eyes to the note, and her lips attempted the letters slowly. She set the paper down with a perplexity and reluctance that was curious to behold to any but the law-writer.
“No harm in it, I expect,” allowed Cassie Redruth.
“Then we are agreed,” said Mr. Bensey. “My hand on it.”
Their business so concluded, they parted. There was no one to observe Mr. Bensey, in The Gull and Herring, as he passed again and again over the papers with an air of distraction and a distant smile.
“IS IT ARRANGED?” asked Thaddeus Grainger.
“It is arranged. She will meet with the law-writer no less than once a week, on the pretext of whatever legal business we have,” returned William Quillby.
“He is a respectable, reliable sort of fellow?”
“He is a modest, unassuming sort. Little to look on, but all who know him well think highly of him.”
“And Miss Redruth suspects nothing?”
“Nothing. He is sure of it.”
“She must never see my hand in this. Her pride would not admit it.”
“My dear Thaddeus, I believe this is the truest thing you have ever done. But it is settled upon. Your part in this will remain a solemn secret.”
And this said, they parted at the prison gate.
AT A CERTAIN hour of the evening, Grainger found Mr. Ravenscraigh in the riot of the tap-room, quite undisturbed and reading a slender volume of Thucydides. Grainger was prepared to propitiate the old prisoner with a gill of brandy from a bottle drawn dusty from the cellars of his house.
“You are grown reckless, sir,” said Ravenscraigh, setting his book aside and glancing up with a stern aspect, which had yet something mocking about it.
The Raven's Seal Page 17
