“Crowther, Dr. Trevelyan has suggested I take the children to see James, and I am afraid.”
He folded his fingers together. “Your son is a thinking child, Mrs. Westerman. Be open with him.”
“But if James . . .” Harriet halted and drew breath before continuing. “If James does not recover, will not Stephen then always remember his father as he is now?”
Crowther considered before he spoke. “Dr. Trevelyan is a good man. Follow his recommendation. As for Stephen, he will grow up with the portrait of the captain at Caveley and the testimony of your household and yourself to temper whatever impressions he gains now. He must know it is a thing that can be spoken of.”
Harriet thanked him and left the room with her brow furrowed. Crowther drew out his pocket watch and tapped the glass gently. Now he would have to sup here and wait for Mr. Tompkins to appear. He thought of the desk in his study in Hartswood where the maids were not so flighty and the air clearer, and with a spasm of irritation cursed his king and the Navy and most especially Mr. Nathaniel Fitzraven.
The door to the roundhouse opened and Sam started up from the shadows like a pointer-bitch spotting game. Jocasta shuffled out with Boyo in her arms. The constable had some words with those left inside and pushed the door to again, making it fast with a flick of his wrist. Sam watched as Jocasta put something in the man’s hands and heard the clink of coin. He waited till the constable had turned his back again and picked up his pipe before he slipped into step beside her.
“Youse all right, Mrs. Bligh?”
She jumped at the sound of his voice. “You here, are you? Yes, lad. I’m all right.” She bent down and set Boyo on the ground beside them, stretching her back like an old woman as she stood again.
“They’re not sending you up before the justice, then?”
“No, Sam. I came to an arrangement with the constable.” She spat the last word out and set off again. The little boy bobbed at her side.
“Was it true, what you said?”
“It was.”
“That Milky Boy and that sour mother of his killed that pretty lady?”
“I’ve just said so, haven’t I?”
“They got awful angry with you.”
Jocasta didn’t see any need to reply, so after a moment Sam tried again.
“What are you going to do, Mrs. Bligh? No one believes you, do they? I mean, no one that matters anyway.”
Jocasta straightened her back, and her pace became more assured. Sam had to scurry a little to keep up.
“Neither they do, boy. But then they think my cards are nothing but fairy tales, and I’ve got nothing but a scrap of paper with four words on it otherwise.”
“You ain’t going to let it lie though, are you?”
“No, boy, I ain’t. Did that once before and it ruined my peace a while.”
Sam hopped along beside her a few more moments, then said in a rush, “May I stay with you again tonight? It’s cold.” Jocasta stopped and turned to look at him. He blushed then held out his hand. He had a shilling in it. “You can have this.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Where’d you get that, Sam?”
“Honest!” he said. “After the constable pulled you away I watched them take the lady home again. Milky Boy gave me a note to take to his offices and the man there gave me this.”
“So you know where the Admiralty Office is then?”
Sam nodded so hard, Jocasta thought his ears must be ringing.
“All right then. Come on. I need bread and bed. There’s much to think on.”
“What will you do though, Mrs. Bligh? People never listen to us.”
“Papers and facts and times and things seen in the real—that’s what those people like. We’ll find ’em and we’ll make them listen, Sam. We’ll make them.”
Harriet was greeted in the nursery with great affection. Her little daughter Anne, with Susan’s promptings, displayed the full range of her talents at pointing out objects around the room or fetching them on the other children’s instructions. She did not, it seemed, resent being ordered about by her fellows, but fetched ball, and hoop and soldiers with a firm waddling gate and great pride, laughing and clapping her hands at the praise she received. Harriet’s son, Stephen, was a little more withdrawn than usual when the initial rush of excitement at his mother’s presence had worked itself out, so when Susan had Eustache, Jonathan and Anne curled in a corner looking at the pictures in Little Goody Two-Shoes, Harriet took him on her lap, and as he pulled on her copper-colored curls and played with the rings on her left hand, she asked him if anything had upset him that day.
“No,” he said carefully and exactly. He had taken off her promise ring and was examining its opals now in the last light of the fire. He had the dark hair and blue eyes of her husband. Love for them both fell over her in a sudden rush, and she pulled him close to her. It was a terrible thing to love. It made the whole world dangerous. Her son submitted a moment, then wriggled his shoulders. She bit her lip and released the pressure of her embrace. Stephen leaned against her and continued to twist the ring to make the milky stone in its center catch colors. After a few moments he said. “Mama, do you remember when I was very little and Hartley got hurt?”
Harriet struggled for a second, then nodded. He was speaking of one of the many cats their housekeeper in Caveley had owned during the years they had been in residence. Hartley had been an adventurous beast, and having made his way out of a window on one of the upper stories of the house, had slipped on the damp roof slates and fallen to the yard. Stephen had found him while walking the grounds with his nurse. The cat had still been breathing, but was badly hurt and in pain. It had tried to bite Stephen when he attempted to comfort it, and Harriet had asked her coachman, David, to break its neck.
She stroked her son’s hair. “I remember, Stephen. It was very sad. Why did you think of that today?”
He fidgeted against her and tilted his head toward his chin. “Nothing,” he mumbled, “only there is a cat who lives in the Square reminded me.” He said nothing further.
Harriet drew in her breath. “Stephen, you know your papa is very ill at the moment.”
“Yes, Mama, that is why we must live here. So that he can be looked after by people who are almost as clever as Mr. Crowther.”
“That’s right, young man,” she said very carefully. “But you know, don’t you, Stephen, that Papa loves us still very much, and we love him. He is just not able to show it at the moment. Just like Hartley loved you and would come and sit on your bed in the mornings, but he could not show it when he was hurt.”
The little boy was silent. Harriet lifted his chin so she could look into his eyes. He was so like his father, yet there was at times a softness in him that did not come from herself, or her husband. He had plucked it from the sea winds when she sailed, big with him, feeling his kicks under her belly as the ship rocked, and bound it into his character.
“Your papa loves you,” she said. “And you liked Dr. Trevelyan, didn’t you? He is going to make Papa well again.”
He looked at her. “Then may we all go home?”
Harriet’s voice was steady as she replied, “Yes, my love. Then we may all go home.”
There was a light rap at the door and the housekeeper peeped into the room. “Excuse me, madam, but a gentleman has called for you and Mr. Crowther. He asked that you should be told. I’ll help get these off to bed, and there’s some supper laid out.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Martin.” Harriet kissed her son’s hair once more and lifted him off her knee.
She paused briefly at the pier glass in the hallway and touched her hair into some sort of order. For the first time since August she recognized herself in the mirror.
Catching hold of the banister, she ran down the stairs to meet Mr. Tompkins.
9
“Sam,” Jocasta said, when they had something inside them and Boyo was chasing rabbits in his dreams in front of the fire, “you made any friends since you left the work
house? Other boys who might be keen to earn a penny or two is my meaning.”
Sam wrapped his arms around his knees. “Couple, I suppose.”
“Will you fetch them along in the morning, bright and early times?”
He nodded, then reached out his hand toward the coverlet that spent its days draped over Jocasta’s settee. “It’s pretty,” he said. “Did you patch it yourself, Mrs. Bligh?”
“I did, boy.”
“Like your skirt.”
“Like the skirt.”
“It’s so many colors . . .” He shifted and settled on the floor with his hands under his head. Jocasta watched him. No one had ever waited for her before. She’d never, it seemed to her, in all the years she tramped through, been looked for and expected by another being. She sniffed.
“It’s patchwork. I’ve read cards enough for every draper’s girl in the Strand and they know my likings. However small an offcut, if it’s jewel-bright or patterned they’ll save it for me, and bring it along next time they need to know if their fella likes them. Then there’s the tailors and maids, and oftentimes if you know where to go, you’ll find some old thing a lady’s worn dancing about in the candlelight that’s worth paying for, for the bits in the folds that have not faded.” Sam’s eyes were open, and she saw that, as she spoke, his eyes were dancing across the patterns and colors of the coverlet. The bits of silk caught the firelight from the air and shivered with it, and the poplin and cotton seemed to glow with a pulse.
“Times I sit here,” Jocasta murmured, “and I think to mesel’, What things have you seen? to one square or other. Were you a dancing dress in a fine house, bunched up in a fat wardrobe with a dozen others, or were you stretched by the back of some sour red-faced old justice drooling after the next bribe to find, and spitting on the floor?” His eyes were closing. “Times I’m sitting here, Sam, I feel like a dragon in her lair sat on a great pile of jewels and stories . . .”
His breathing was a sleeping pace now, and she turned and picked up a plain blanket from the end of her bed and dropped it over him. She sat a while longer in the dying firelight though. It seemed that when she had seen that pert little girl in the back of the wagon, her head all bloodied and her eyes closed, the world had cursed and roared at her. It reminded her of when, as a child, she had seen a man dead and watched another walking away from the body. She had told then, and been cursed as a storyteller. She’d been stubborn, but not stubborn enough. She earned a reputation as a liar that followed her around the valley, and never got a man or child to hear and believe her. She could still see the man in the green coat disappearing into the woods. It hadn’t helped that she’d been so scared she’d run up the fell and shivered an hour before heading back to her aunt’s house where she bided. The story of the baron’s death was being chanted outside every door in the village by then, and they thought she was just trying to draw eyes to herself. Not for all her weepings would they listen, and they hadn’t today neither, though she’d felt like a child again, crying against the storm, shouting and baying as if she could stop the world from turning. She was not a child now, however. There’d be a way, a way to watch and gather and patch it all together and make the seams strong. She’d make a noose of it all for Mother Mitchell and Milky Boy’s necks, and for all it was strung together with her sewing, it’d throttle them. Then she’d pluck that brooch from Mother Mitchell’s corpse and bury it in Kate’s grave with her.
PART IV
1
MONDAY, 19 NOVEMBER 1781
Harriet had dreamed of her husband, of battles at sea, and of Manzerotti and Marin singing the “Yellow Rose Duet” on the deck of the Marquis de La Fayette, and woke somber and wondering in her mind, but with a dark energy curling through her veins that felt more like herself. It was unfortunate that Mr. Tobias Tompkins had spent the crucial hours of Thursday afternoon asleep over his books, and his visit had therefore been no more than annoyance, but nevertheless Harriet felt a sense of purpose in her blood this morning and was grateful for it.
When Crowther looked up from his newspaper at the breakfast table, he was glad to see her approach with a firm step, if a little concerned for his continued peace. Graves had the good sense not to speak during the breakfast hour. It was a habit Mrs. Westerman refused to learn. This morning, before she had even set down her coffee cup on the table she had declared her intention of quizzing them both about the race of the castrati. At this, Mrs. Service declared it was time Susan began her Italian practice, and Miss Trench, with a speaking look that her sister ignored, found it an excellent moment to go and consult with Mrs. Martin about a receipt for a burns salve she had recently been sent. Crowther could see the wisdom of Mrs. Westerman informing herself before their proposed meeting with Manzerotti, but he was not, as a rule, at his most brilliant at this hour of the morning, while when she was in health Mrs. Westerman always seemed to have an unnatural store of energy on waking. He wished it was as easy here as it was in Caveley for her to walk it off before they met in the mornings.
Harriet freely admitted she shared the suspicion of many of her countrymen regarding castrati. She appealed to the gentlemen for better information and Graves began by telling her of the remarkable musical training the castrati received from childhood.
“It gives their voices a power unparalleled,” he said. “They were used instead of women when the fairer sex giving voice on stage or in church was regarded as an offense against God, and they have been at the heart of Italian opera ever since.”
Harriet was impatient with the explanation and snapped her toast into indignant crumbs.
“But how could God be less offended by the practice of maiming His creatures in childhood?” she demanded. “Graves, you cannot approve of the fact that these children are operated on in such a way. It must be the ruin of their lives, whatever the success that some achieve. Though you may envy their training I doubt you would change places with them. And they become so . . . strange as a result.”
Graves shifted in his seat rather uncomfortably at the mention of the operation.
“I believe, Mrs. Westerman,” he said, adjusting his coat, “that there is a polite fiction that these boys were damaged in their . . . lower parts . . . and that disease or accident rendered it necessary to . . .”
On seeing Harriet roll her eyes and attack the preserves, Crowther put down his newspaper and took over.
“It is of interest what the removal of the testicles before puberty does to a child, though I agree that morally, it seems indefensible.” He had Harriet’s attention, but apparently she had also noticed Graves twist in discomfort again, and was amused. Crowther continued, “The voice does still alter as the subject ages, but retains its high register.”
“I have never heard a castrato speak, rather than sing,” she said. “Describe it.” Then bit down on her breakfast.
Crowther watched the movement of the muscles of her jaw for a moment before replying; “The speaking voice of a castrato is rather pleasant, if a little strange. It is rounder than a woman’s and not shrill, but rather has a sort of cooing. It recalls the pigeons in the Square outside here.”
Crowther had thought this information would suffice, but Mrs. Westerman did not seem to agree. Apparently she would shake all the facts out of him, as a terrier shakes the life out of a rabbit when it has it by the neck. Dabbing at her lips, she returned to her coffee, giving him a slight wave.
“Say on, Crowther. I have my prejudices, I know, and come to you for enlightenment. You cannot refuse a pupil.” It was an encouraging indication that having something more to occupy her mind than her husband’s recovery was improving her health and spirits already. However, a man is generous indeed who can take delight in such things so early in the day.
Crowther knitted his fingers together as he gathered his thoughts. “Physically, the operation has several effects that are not yet fully comprehended,” he began. “Development is hampered and altered as the child becomes adult in ways other than those that
affect the vocal cords.” He coughed slightly. “I had the privilege of attending the autopsy of a renowned castrato in Milan some years ago. He serves as my example.”
Harriet interrupted: “How came you ghouls—sorry, gentlemen of science—by such a body? I thought any known castrato must have money enough for a lead-lined coffin and a man or two to stand guard by his grave while he rotted in peace.”
Crowther was not disposed this morning to find Mrs. Westerman entertaining. He snapped, “The gentleman in question was a man of means, indeed, and a great friend of one of the professors of anatomy at the university. He suggested that his friend would like to examine his corpse long before he died, and repeated the offer on his deathbed in front of other witnesses. He was glad to be of use to his friends at a time when mortality has normally robbed us of the pleasure of doing service.”
Harriet wrinkled her nose. “Very well. Though I cannot imagine making a similar offer myself—even to you, Crowther.”
“No matter, Mrs. Westerman. I doubt the examination would produce any scientifically significant results.” Harriet, in spite of herself, looked a little put out at that. He continued smoothly on. “Many of the castrati grow unusually tall—why, we cannot say. The bones of the gentleman I examined were sound, however, so their height does not seem to weaken them physically. Their thyroid cartilage does not grow as pronounced as in ordinary men . . .” He paused on seeing her raise an eyebrow. “Their Adam’s apple is small, madam.” Again she gestured him to carry on, then renewed her attack on Mrs. Martin’s jam. “And of course they have a tendency to collect soft matter in a manner unusual for their sex, and somewhat more like a woman. The gentleman I examined was unusually fleshy around his chest and hips, though that of course is not guaranteed by the operation. Manzerotti is, as we have seen, rather slender, for instance. In summation, the effect can be highly unusual. I remember walking into a drawing room where a castrato was present among the fashionable crowd. To see this mountain of a man, some six feet tall perhaps and covered in soft fat under his finery, holding forth in that strange fluting tone was . . .” he paused and looked up at Graves’s ceiling rose for inspiration “. . . odd.”
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