by M. J. Logue
"Apple!"
It was her old childhood name for him, from when Hapless had been his old troop nickname and she could not say Hapless, but only, Apple. She had not meant it to be a spur, or yet a leash, but he whirled on the stairs and came thumping back up two steps at a time. She put her hands to her mouth and looked up at him, and she wanted to say that she was sorry and she wanted to demand an explanation and she wanted to call him any number of rude names. All at once. Instead, she looked up at him, and he was furious and indignant and utterly wretched all at once, and her eyes prickled. "Oh, Thankful," she said, and her voice wobbled. "I love you."
"Do you?"
She nodded. "That's about the one thing I am sure of."
He heaved a deep sigh. "Tibber, it is about the only thing I am sure of."
She did not apologise for her words, though, and he did not apologise for his. He stood on the threshold of their quarters, looking like a masterless dog, until she stood aside for him to come back inside, and then he carefully put his hands on her waist and she equally carefully put her arms round him, so that their bodies were not, quite, touching. "I promise you," he said, "I swear to you, Thomazine, on my hope of heaven, I had nothing to do with my sister's death. And you may trust my word, or not trust my word, as you choose."
She moved a step closer, so that her head fitted under his chin, and rested her cheek against his beating heart. Still carefully, he lifted a hand and stroked her loose, bed-tangled hair.
"And the widow?" she said.
21
This time, he laughed. "You are persistent, mistress. And I am flattered that you think women have been falling at my feet for years, but - no, tibber, it was always you and only ever you. And with that you must rest content. Mistress Bartholomew is the widow of a good man, and a man I knew - moderately well, not an intimate, but he was a decent man. He was a sea-captain, and he died when a Dutch man o' war sank his ship a year ago for bearing an English flag in their waters."
"They did - what?" Thomazine said faintly. "Over a flag?"
"Well, the Dutch were supposed to salute it," he said, and he had that hopeful note to his voice that meant he hoped she wasn't going to keep asking questions. "That was what was agreed in the Treaty of Westminster, when the first war ended. And, ah, well, obviously, they didn't. And Captain Bartholomew took what you might describe as a degree of national pride in his flag. So he decided that if they wouldn’t salute his, he wouldn’t salute theirs. And it - yes. Well. Matters grew a little heated, and the Commonwealth Maid did not -. Ah. It was rendered unseaworthy. Permanently."
"What a remarkably stupid thing to do. I imagine Mistress Bartholomew was somewhat vexed by that, especially when she was put to the trouble of burying him."
"She wasn't, Zee. He was, uh, fifteen miles off the coast of West Africa at the time. There wasn't a lot to bring home."
"Thankful." She stepped back from his embrace, and smiled up at him, with what she meant to be a sweet, wifely expression. "Are you telling me that we are currently resident in the house of a pirate's widow?"
"No precisely, tibber. Say, rather, um, a state-licensed privateer."
"And that you, often, associate with - state-licensed privateers."
"Matthew Bartholomew was a good Parliament man," Thankful said primly, sounding so suddenly and absolutely like her father's zealous young lieutenant that he hadn't aged a day in twenty years, and she had to stuff her fist into her mouth not to burst out giggling at the unlikeliness of it. "He was with Cromwell's navy, in the first war against the Dutch, and -"
And that stopped her laughing. "Thankful, you keep saying the first war, as if there is more than one?"
"Thomazine," her husband said firmly, "you won’t have tried coffee, dearest. Would you care to?"
22
"See?" he said smugly. "I told you that fur wrap was no extravagance." He pulled the length of creamy fur snug about her shoulders, and kissed the end of her nose. "It is a raw morning, and a long walk. Perhaps -"
"Warm stockings," she said, and lifted her heavy woollen skirts to expose one stoutly-shod foot, "and dry boots."
`And he smiled. "Indeed, wife. I should say, a good half hour's walk through the City. Shall we?"
"Where -" but she wasn't sure that it mattered, very much. Thomazine was beginning to suspect that London was not an organised, orderly place, where life proceeded in a quiet fashion as it did at home. Say, rather, a place where you lived in a crooked house with a pirate's widow and ate your meals sitting cross-legged on the bed at odd hours of the day and night, like gypsies. She tucked her hand under his elbow. "Shall we, then?"
Fleet-Street was a bustling, noisy place, filled with bowing gallants who looked for all the world like an avenue of pigeons, their iridescent breasts pouted as they strutted and cooed at each other.
There was also, she noted, a remarkable deficiency of -
"There are women," Thankful said firmly, looking down his nose at one particularly dumbfounded youth. "There are other women in this place. I can see them, sir, I do have eyes in my head. There's one there, by the kitchen."
"Dear, I don’t think -"
"She may be a whore, Thomazine, but she is of the appropriate gender! There are female servants in this place and there are whores, sir, so there is a precedent for a female presence. I see no reason why a respectable gentlewoman should be barred entry, if there are others of her sex present!"
Mr Farr, of the formerly-respectable coffee-house known as the Rainbow, looked up at the irritated gentleman on his threshold, and his mouth twitched. "I think you just answered your own question, sir. Because the other - females - present, are servants and whores, and she is a gentlewoman. And because we don’t have women in coffee-shops, sir, it'd make the other customers feel uncomfortable."
"Would it," Thankful said dryly. "So far as I can tell, the wench in the window is making that gentleman very comfortable indeed. So you are happy to admit the meaner sort of female, but not an intelligent, respectable woman accompanied by her lawful husband?"
"Since you put it like that, sir -"
"Since we are assured of our creation in the image of God," Thomazine said sweetly, "and of an interest in Christ equal unto men, as also of a proportionable share in the freedoms of this commonwealth, we cannot but wonder and grieve that we should appear so despicable in your eyes as to be thought unworthy to -"
"Her father was a Leveller," Thankful added by way of explanation, and then, "an Agitant, sir. As I was myself, in the late wars. You may be assured, Mr Farr, that the ladies of my wife's household have as an equal interest with the men of this nation as those divers well-affected women who presented their petition to Parliament, those many years ago."
"A man of principle," Farr said, and Russell smiled grimly.
"With a history of taking up arms in defence of those principles. My wife would like to try your coffee, Mr Farr. Make it so."
Farr bowed. "You will, I have no doubt, be as passionate in your enthusiasm for my coffee-house as for your principles, sir? Being, as I perceive, a man of some - influence in the world?"
It might have been the new suit. (Which had been bloody expensive, despite the plainness of its cut. Which was dark, and sober, and which made Russell resemble an extremely elegant raven.) It might have been that, amongst the brightly-coloured, embroidered, beribboned gallants, and the workmanlike tradesmen, he looked like a falcon amongst starlings.
That, or it might have been the unreadable expression that was so customary on his scarred face, but whatever it was, Farr had him pegged as dangerously unpredictable, clearly.
"Are you trying to bribe my husband, sir?" Thomazine said haughtily, and Farr raised an eyebrow at her, as if she might be a talking dog.
She smiled at him - as balefully, she hoped, as her husband, though she had not the advantage of his marred cheek. "If you are, Mr Farr, I would suggest that admittance alone to your coffee-house may not be adequate. I might even go so far to say that of
the females who gain admittance, one or two armed with a mop and bucket might be of greater service. If it eases your conscience, I may kilt up my skirts and scrub your floors, because I declare, your premises stand in need of some attention. Now. Coffee, Mr Farr. And though your floors do not pass muster -"
"His bakery does," Russell said, with a happy sigh. "Coffee, Mr Farr, for two. And a dish of spiced wigs, if you would be so kind. And - we will sit as far from the windows as may be. We are here to observe, not to be observed."
23
"You are a hard woman to bargain with, Mistress Russell," her husband said contentedly, through a mouthful of breakfast.
"Now that is from mama's side of the family. Stop changing the subject."
Farr had been as good as his word. He had found them the darkest, pokiest, smokiest table, as far from the great bow window that faced onto the street as he could manage, and Thomazine was able to sit with her back against the grubby plaster by the chimney breast and observe the fascinating inner workings of a print shop and coffee shop combined.
The first thing she noticed was the smell. Coffee, or ink, or both combined, but it managed to be both bitter and oily at once, and it caught at the back of her throat and made her gag slightly. And the people, and the noise! Such a combination of prentices, and gentlemen, and tradesmen; all kinds of men together, wigs and polled heads and balding heads and greasy heads all bent together over gossip and news and cups of that bubbling black brew. She could see why such democracy might appeal to an old Leveller like her husband, but before God, the roar of ardent conversation combined with the thump and clatter of the printing press upstairs, and the thump and clatter of the kitchens behind them, was fit to give a decent woman the headache of her life.
He shrugged, looking ridiculously elegant. (He was very handsome in decent tailoring, she thought smugly. One or two of the kitchen wenches had already spotted him, and she took in great joy in twining her feet with his, under the table.)
"As of about a week ago, tibber - yes." Her husband smiled his funny, lopsided smile. "People talk such nonsense in here, maid. If you listen a minute, you'll hear all sorts of conjecture. Who's in favour with whom, and who's fallen from grace this week. If you listen very hard, you'll hear the same names, too." He leaned across the table and snagged a slab of the warm sliced bread from her plate, licking his fingers neatly of crumbs. "Arlington. Robert Holmes. Smyrna."
She shook her head, not understanding.
"Our fleet attacked the Dutch fleet at Smyrna in December," he said, still dabbing intently at her plate. "De Ruyter's men have taken to returning the favour, this last week past." He raised his eyes to her face. "That part is common currency. Everyone knows it."
A slow, shivery feeling spread down her spine, as if cold water was trickling down her shift. "Thankful, when you said the first war, you meant -"
He blinked, just once. "Any time now, my tibber."
"Husband," she said coolly, "if you are hoping to impress me with this - gossip -?"
"Hm? Oh no, love." He leaned across the table and quite absently took the last wedge of her breakfast from under her very nose, buttering it neatly. Looked up from his work, saw the look on her face, cut the spiced bread in half and set it back on her plate. "I find the fresh air gives me something of an appetite," he said, which was as close as she was likely to get to an apology from that quarter.
"I'm glad," she said, and meant it, for he looked - if not, precisely, joyous, considerably brighter than he had looked last night. Which was possibly the effect of having defeated an officious coffee-shop keeper and got outside most of a loaf of very fresh bread, both in remarkably short order. "But Thankful, what has a further war with the butterboxes got to do with you?"
"Presently, not a lot." No one was watching them. He grinned at her, his lopsided dog-chasing-a-flea grin that showed all his teeth on one side and not on the other. "Not inconceivable that it will become my business, though."
"For why, husband?"
It was not often that her man looked smug. He propped his chin in his hands and his eyes sparkled with mischief. "'M good at what I do, my tibber."
His looking smug - and remarkably handsome, and as bright-eyed as a boy - did not mollify Thomazine. Which was not to say that she had not noticed. "I see," she said, and her lips tightened. "The Navy cannot find itself decent supply officers, that it must needs recruit those newly-married ones recently retired from the Army?"
"Ah, now, Thomazine, I've got a new wife to think of, and a household -"
"Thankful," she hissed furiously, "if you think getting that bloody ruin of a house fixed up is worth getting your bloody head shot off for, I am here to assure you, sir, you are very sadly misguided! We can perfectly well live in Essex - and if you are so desperate to live in a fever-ridden swamp and breed sheep, we can always move to the Dengey peninsula and be done with it! I have a dowry - it is not, I admit, a vast one, but surely to goodness, husband, if we stand in so much want that you must -" She picked up her pewter plate and slammed it back down on the table to relieve her feelings somewhat, and heads turned. "There, now see what you have done," she said, and her chin wobbled in spite of everything she could do to stop it.
"Oh dear," her husband said. "Oh, tibber, have I - "
"Yes!" Whatever it was, he had done it, and she scowled at the crumbs on the table top and would not look at him.
"Would you mind so much?"
"If this is an excuse to have me flatter your vanity, you shameless - you miserable wretch - if you are asking would I mind if you were to go off and be a soldier again, after we have scarcely been married a month - yes, Russell, yes I would mind, very bloody much I would mind! If you didn't want to be married you should have just said so at the time, and not - not -"
She pushed the table back with a screech of wood and did not care who looked her way, struggling to her feet - these bloody hampering, trailing fashionable skirts, why could she not just wear the sensible ankle-length homespun of a plain country girl and be done, why must she be draped and festooned and looped like a pagan maypole - pushed rudely past a gaggle of slack-jawed apprentices, and stormed out.
24
"That maid's breeding, see if she ain't," Farr said sagely, and Russell favoured him with what he hoped was a quelling look.
"See why 'ee don't have wenches in the shop, then," someone else added. "Peck o' trouble, they be."
"Disruptive. That's what they are, disruptive. Especially when they're breeding."
"Well, mate, you just going to sit there and let her walk out on yer? Make a fool of you?"
She'd left her furs, and her cloak, and it was beginning to sleet.
(Thomazine was hot-tempered, but she wasn't stupid. She'd not go far.)
He got to his feet slowly, aware of every eye in the shop on him. An odd feeling, to be stared at this time for being the irresponsible young reprobate who had broken his girl's heart in the middle of a public meeting-place. Gathering her cloak over his arm, smoothing the heavy wool as if it might retain the warmth of her skin: he didn't want to go after her, he felt a bloody fool, though he wasn't angry with her, but oh, he could wish she hadn't the sort of fiery temperament that would leave him in the middle of a coffee-shop exposed to every censure while she went flouncing off in a tantrum. And that was nothing to do with a marriage of April and December, and everything to do with a marriage of fire and ice. Well, fire could melt ice, and ice could temper fire.
Fire might, on the other hand, get itself knocked on the head and robbed, if not worse, if ice didn't shape itself and stop sulking.
"No," he said mildly, "I'm going to go after her."
There was a chorus of disapproval from the apprentices, who thought that such a forward wench deserved all she got.
"Married?"
"Month past." He settled his hat firmly on his head.
"Ahhh...."
"Told you."
"Breeding."
"Intending to remain married," h
e clarified. "If you will excuse me?"
25
This was not Essex, she reminded herself.
A little too late to discover common sense, when you were a good quarter-mile away from where you'd started out and pushing your way through crowds that seemed to be thicker by the step, a confused mass of heads and ringlets and hats and feathers.
How dare he. How dare he. He behaved like a - a single man with no responsibilities, like the same shatter-brained young officer who had turned up three parts dead on her mother's doorstep on more than one occasion, when Thomazine had been growing up, expecting to be pieced back together. Well, he wasn't young any more, and he wasn't an officer, he was a husband, with - with -
She stopped in the middle of the pavement, stock-still, and someone thumped into the back of her with a heavy basket of shopping, cursing.
She wasn't - was she?
Couldn't be. They had been married not much more than a month.
Oh yes, and they'd been - acquainted, then - with each other, for some while before that. Perhaps not what Uncle Luce discreetly described as "the right true end of love", by which she understood he meant actual lying-down relations. But Thomazine and her Thankful had been - well. Hot for each other. In most places, and as often as they could conceive, without actually - yes. Well.
Could she?
Well, he was as much to blame. How dare he. How very bloody dare he, bring her to a public place where she couldn't speak her mind to him, and then tell her that he was likely to be taken up as an officer again, after twenty years and who knows how many narrow escapes, how many scars. How many times could a man put himself in the way of serious hurt, and come away with no more than broken bones, or flesh wounds - as if you could call that livid horrible thing on his poor cheek a flesh wound, as if he wasn't shy and stiff and awkward with his disfigurement -
