by M. J. Logue
"Usually are, mistress. They'd not be a lot of use to me, else."
"But - but Master Gillespie, you will have roused half of Buckinghamshire, sir, have you no -"
"Half of Buckinghamshire's used to it, lass. It's not the first time. Now -"
He moved aside, unexpectedly lithe for all his muscular bulk, as she fell to her knees, retching up bile. As taken by surprise herself as he was, as she huddled on all fours amongst the rubble with her eyes and nose burning and her whole body shaking, drooling bitter spittle. After a long moment he heaved a great sigh and knelt beside her, rubbing her back awkwardly. "Acht, mistress, I've told him ye shouldn't be staying here, but you know how he is, once that man o' yours has an idea in his head there's not much will shift it save a musket-butt between the eyes. Well, maybe now he'll listen. This is no place for a lass."
"Why?" She was sick, but she wasn't stupid. "What is there here, that you must prowl the house through the dark hours with a brace of primed pistols? What are you hiding?"
He snorted. "Hiding? I wish. Well. Ye've seen what state the roof's in." And then he puffed his cheeks out, and blew his hair out of his eyes, looking uncomfortable and suddenly considerably younger. "We get a fair few visitors, mistress, with one thing and another, and not all of 'em mean well. Hunting for gold that don't exist is a game, aye, I'd not mind that. Stones through the windows, and pulling away the timbers that's shoring up the west wing, that's no game. That's wanton damage, mistress, and I'll not have it."
"Why should they do such a thing?"
She did not see Gillespie spit, but she heard it land, with a wet splat. "Don’t pretend to be dafter than you are, Mistress Russell, it doesn't become ye. You know verra well. And so does he, though he'll carry on pretending he doesn’t till hell freezes over, wanting to protect ye. I asked him to take you hence and maybe this time ye'll heed me, for sooner or later it'll end in tears, lass. Someone will get hurt. Or worse."
"I will not be driven from -"
"No one's talking of retreat, mistress. For myself, I'm talking of a tactical withdrawal, aye? Withdraw, and recover your ground. And if your man queries me, tell him to remember Dunbar." He snorted again. "Though he'll not - remember Dunbar, that is, given that he was under a dead horse for the better part of the battle and off his head with fever for nigh on a fortnight afterwards. Aye, though enough in his right mind to tell his master he knew me - me, a bloody Covenanter, an enemy soldier, who'd taken up arms against him. Oh, he knew me, all right. I'd hauled him out from under the horse in the first place. I'd not have left a dog to die so. Well, he lied to Cromwell himself, Mistress Russell. He looked him in the eye, all bloody and stinking wi' the dirt of battle as he still was - looked him full in the face and he swore on the Bible I was his own troop lieutenant and had got confused amongst the Scots prisoners in the battle, since I was in no state to speak for myself by then. Your man had me took out of the prisoners, for what I'd done for him, and but for him I'd have perished wi' the rest of my men, in the cathedral at Durham where that black-souled bastard Cromwell put us, the sick and the hurt together, to die like dogs."
Oh, Thankful. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because he couldn’t murder anyone, lass. Any man that can save the life of a worthless - heh! worthless by their count, not by mine! - prisoner of war, at the risk of his own neck, is no' a man who goes sneaking about the countryside murdering old ladies in their beds. So. If you care to, you can betray both myself and your good man, and have me transported and the major hanged. If ye feel ye cannot trust my word as an officer and as a gentlemen." He laughed again, with a weary bitterness. "A Scot can yet be both, despite what Master Cromwell might have had ye believe. Both our lives in your hand, mistress, as parole. Have him take ye hence, out of harm's way, and then -"
He patted her shoulder again, awkwardly. "In all charity, lass, give him his good name back."
18
She was shaking, with cold and weariness and sickness, but she sat on the edge of their rough bed of sheepskins and pulled her shoes and stockings off, unhooked her skirt ad tugged the laces of her bodice free and left them where they fell, puddled colourless on the bare boards in the first rosy light of dawn.
Then she crawled under the blankets and held her husband very tight. (Gillespie did not think him capable of it, either. Go away, Mistress Coventry. Take your vengeful ghost elsewhere.)
He turned over in her arms, murmuring sleepily, and buried his face in her hair. "Wassmatter, tibber?"
Her head just under his chin, her cheek against the beating hollow in his throat. He was warm, and solid, and reassuring, and just being held so began to still the tremors that ran through her. "Cold," he said firmly, and pulled the blankets over them both again, and began to rub her back. And her breathing began to steady, and her heart to settle, and she was on the verge of sleep, yawning fit to crack her jaw.
"Bout time we slept in a proper bed again, Zee," he mumbled into her hair. "Still got lodgings in London. If you wish it?"
2
SPARK
19
Thomazine sat down on the lumpy, homely bed in her first proper lodgings as a married woman, smiled nicely at her landlady, and waited until the door was closed before she flopped backwards, with a groan.
It was a bare sixty miles from White Notley to London. Sixty miles, a couple of days' ride, even in January. And it had taken them a week.
To be fair, it had taken almost two months of painstaking correspondence, of drafting carefully-worded letters and awaiting replies, of appointments with mantua-makers and shoemakers and, under duress, tailors, before they were anything like ready to travel anywhere. It had driven her stark mad. Every time she had seen her husband, he'd had inky fingers, and had had one eye on the road over her shoulder, in case of any inward-bound responses.
Her mother had been rather taken with Thomazine's new wardrobe, even though Thankful had looked askance at it being only the finest Essex had to offer. And, in all honesty, though Thomazine was not a vain girl she had to admit that the long, clean lines of the new fashions suited a girl of her height and slenderness, and that her husband had a good eye for line and colour. Would wear none of it himself, mind, for fear of drawing the eye, but would see her garbed like a peacock.
She carried her tiny rabbit with her, though, in her little hanging pocket, under her skirts against her thigh.
It was a reminder that her husband was exactly the same man as she had known for twenty years, and not quite so fixated on presentation and propriety as he seemed to have become, lately. By a mutual and unspoken agreement, they had returned to her parents and said nothing of that peculiar defamation that had seen them driven from Four Ashes. Because in the daylight, when you took it out and looked at it, it was a ridiculous, contemptible thing, a coward's whisper, to malign a man who wasn't there to defend himself. It would blow over, when the next scandal-broth came their way. But for the meantime - she thought of the grim Gillespie prowling the ruins with a brace of loaded pistols through the dark, and shuddered.
He had changed, though, since that night. He'd not taken as much care over their marriage, as he had with those letters to and from London, before Christmas, or with his choosing of the cut and style of her new wardrobe.
And he had not taken such care with their lodgings, either, she noticed. His old bachelor-lodgings, in Aldgate, he said, with a respectable widow. She'd expected some plump, white-haired old beldame. She got Jane Bartholomew, who must have been barely five years older than Thomazine, who was neat, plump, becomingly timid, and very pretty, and who had a plump little baby at her skirts. (And where, Thomazine thought grimly in her pettier moments, might that plump little baby have come from, with Thankful comfortably ensconced in the attic at the time?)
And London was a seeping wet disappointment. It was not full of exotic sights and smells, unless you happened to count the stink of far too many unwashed bodies in too small a space exotic. And shit. It smelt of shit. A lot. S
he suspected that of the many fascinating modern developments of this age, the ability to empty a jakes more than once a year in this part of London was not amongst them.
They put men's heads on spikes, and that was just barbaric. Thankful had refused to take her where they said Cromwell's head was exhibited as a warning and a terrible vengeance by the King on his enemies, on a spike above Westminster Hall. He had known Ireton, and Cromwell, as living men. He did not care to see their decaying skulls impaled for the crows to pick at.
You could buy anything you chose, in London. Anything you had the coin for, if your heart desired it and your mind could conceive it, you could have. Aye, and buy pardon for it afterwards, if you wanted. Anything from a ribbon to a life, with dreadful, thin, scrabbling figures scratching in the drowning mud at the side of the river to see what they might scavenge and sell. Thomazine wanted to give them money, she wanted to empty her purse and see them all fed and clothed decently -
"Wouldn’t help, tibber," he said, without looking at her, keeping his eyes resolutely fixed on the road in front of them. "Too many."
And he'd tapped on the roof of their hired carriage with the hilt of his sword to encourage the driver to move off, an affectation which she was beginning to find profoundly annoying.
Their lodgings were clean, and decent, and shabby. Mistress Bartholomew was a timid little mouse who hardly dared look Thomazine in the eye, but scuttled from room to room with the Bartholomew-baby clinging to her skirts like a fat white spider, wielding an anxious broom and rearranging the furniture. A good housekeeper, Thomazine admitted, grudgingly, but she wondered if there had ever been a Master Bartholomew, or whether that fat little baby's round blue eyes might turn slate-grey as he grew older.
She risked a look at her husband at that moment. His slate-grey eyes were closed, and if she were feeling charitable, which she was not, ringed about with slate-grey shadows. He looked tired, and pale, and a little ill. "Dear?" she said gently, and the unscarred side of his mouth lifted, though he did not open his eyes.
"Am I?"
He had come in from another of his interminable affairs of business, and laid on the bed without troubling to take his muddy boots off. There, that was another thing she did not care for, about London. It bred fevers and agues worse than a dog bred fleas. If they had been at home in Essex, with fresh air and decent feeding, he would not look as if he had aged ten years and lost as many pounds in weight, in a little under a week. She passed her hand gently over his forehead and he stirred under her touch, murmuring as if he were grateful for it.
"Are you unwell?" she said, and tucked a little of his loose hair out of his eyes, behind his ear.
"Just tired."
"I can ask Mistress Bartholomew to make you up a posset."
"No, tibber, she has enough to tease her without -"
"Without my teasing her further?" Her lips tightened. Like that, again, then. "I can make it myself, you know. I need not trouble that good lady at all."
"Thomazine, I am fine. I am just tired. Will you not leave me be?"
"Surely," she said crossly, and slid off the bed and stomped to the window. Making as much noise as possible with her wooden heels on the bare wooden boards, which was childish, but satisfying.
Few riders came down this far into Aldgate. Their carriage had been stared at as if it came from the moon, when they arrived. A shabby part of the city, but dignified-shabby, not desperate, not beggarly. This was where working men and women lived; the silk workers, the seamen, the carpenters. Poor, but decent. But a carriage was beyond most of their wildest dreaming, and even the stabling of a fairly average horse was an expense few could support. The dark horse picking its way gingerly through the puddles and the missing cobbles was not an average horse. It was a rather fine one, if presently somewhat dejected, in the penetrating grey mizzle. And its rider was dismounting, and disappearing under the projecting overhang of Mistress Bartholomew's upper storey. He retained a firm hold of his mount's bridle, Thomazine noted with amusement.
Shouting. There was always shouting, in London. Any time of the day or night, someone, somewhere would be shouting, whether it was wares, or bloody murder, or the night-soil cart, or the watch. So many people, all coming and going, all the time. They did not keep sensible hours, like Christians, but instead came and went through the day.
The Bartholomew-baby yelled, suddenly, downstairs, and there was a slam as of a heavy door and then a thumping of footsteps on the stairs.
"Major Russell, sir?" Jane Bartholomew's mousy little voice peeped on the landing. "Major Russell, I have a letter for you, sir. A messenger just brought it, sir. Could you, please?"
Thomazine leaned on the windowsill, and said nothing, in a very pointed fashion.
Neither did Thankful, and she turned round. He'd turned his head a little on the pillow, and one hand - ink-stained, which reassured her somewhat that his business affairs were presently, at least, just that - lay limp on his breast, the other trailing on the boards. He looked like a marble effigy of a knight on a church memorial, and he was about as likely to wake up as one.
She pulled the door open, and glared at the little widow. "My husband is sleeping, madam. He is not to be disturbed."
"I'm glad," their landlady said, and a nervous little smile came and went about her lips. "He does work ever so hard. I hope you will- will take care of him, mistress. I am fond of the major. Could you take the letter, please? It’s just that if I keep it, Daniel is likely to gnaw on it." She thrust it into Thomazine's hands - a thin packet, sealed with a blob of expensive blood-red wax and a signet seal. Her mouth twitched again. "He's teething, mistress. I daren't leave him with anything."
And there were still probably any number of tart retorts to that, but as Thomazine would have been making them to the back of the widow's sensibly-capped little head as she scuttled back downstairs to the baby, she did not lower herself to making them.
She set the letter on the coffer at the end of the bed, where he would be sure to see it when he woke up.
It would be dark, soon, and cold. Boots crunched and hissed on the road outside, and she heard the whimper of a rising wind in the chimney behind the bed-head.
It was not a night to be alone.
20
It was not a morning to be alone, either, but she woke up in bed with the rain pelting on the windows and her husband perched on the end of the bed, humming like an atonal bee, half-dressed with his letter in his hand.
"Good news?" she hazarded sleepily, and he wrinkled his nose.
"Not really, my tibber, but better than no news. It seems the Earl of Birstall is willing to condescend to receiving our humble company at an informal little supper this evening."
She stared at him. "Who, is what?"
"Birstall. Not ideal, but better than nothing."
"Thankful -" she was beginning to wonder if she was actually still dreaming, "Thankful, what on earth are you talking about?"
He grinned, and tossed her the letter. It still made as little sense to her, but it seemed to be a genuine letter, although it was signed by someone called Fairmantle, not Birstall -
"His name is Charles Fairmantle, and he is the Earl of Birstall," Thankful explained. "And he is an old neighbour at Four Ashes, though not a man I should care to call an intimate. He is not really a fit person for you to know, Thomazine, but he is a beginning, and hopefully he will act as an introduction to slightly more appropriate society."
"What," it had all started so well, too. She hadn't seen him look quite so happy in weeks. Since they'd arrived. And now -"husband, might I enquire, why you think you have the authority to dictate who I may and may not be acquainted with? You brought me here -"
"You wanted to come!"
"I wanted to? I wanted to come and live in a garret upstairs from one of your cast-off mistresses and eat stale pies for breakfast? I did?"
"Madam, your temper -"
"My temper," she said, quite calmly. "Mine. You drag me from
my family, to stay in some mouse-haunted attic in a slum, and you accuse me of intemperacy -"
"It is a perfectly respectable house, madam!" he snapped back at her. "And you have done nothing but complain since you arrived, and let me tell you -"
"Well, you hardly keep your mistresses in comfort, sir, do you? That whore downstairs -"
"Thomazine." He looked as if he might shake her, and she sat back hard against the wall, drawing the bolster into her lap for protection, so that he could not. "Is that, truly, what you think?"
"That Mistress Bartholomew is your light o'love? Well, do you deny it? She seems very fond of you -"
"Your father would be ashamed of you," he said, very clearly, and stood up, smoothing his hair back with both hands to tie it neatly at the nape of his neck. (Without brushing it. He was, then, so shaken. Good.)
"For -?"
"Jealousy, madam, unwarranted, unreasoning jealousy - sheer vicious spite! And I should never have suspected you of it! How could you even think it, Thomazine? How could you?"
"I hardly know what to think of you, Thankful! I married you thinking you were a retired soldier with no money, and all of a sudden it turns out your family owns half of Buckinghamshire! And you might have killed your sister, and your landlady might have whelped your bastard, and on the other hand you might be as hapless as daddy always called you -"
He stared at her for a second. And then he inclined his head with an icy courtesy, and snatched his coat up off the floor, and stalked past her.
"Then I have no more to say to you, madam. I bid you a good day."
He was half way down the stairs, and every line of him said that he wasn't coming back. Thomazine was torn between an urge to launch the chamber-pot at the back of his head, and a sudden, childish, frightened need not to let him go, because she did not mean those things, any of them, and more than that she did not want to be alone in this place -
