Petty Treason

by Madeleine E. Robins

  Miss Tolerance dropped the Times in disgust and took up the newest number of the Gazette, leafing through to the Dueling Notices. The gentlemen of London, she noted, had not been behindhand in attempting their mutual slaughter:

  By the sword, fatally, Mr. John Wantage, by Lord Desston.

  By shot, Sir Walter Coigne, by an anonymous gentleman.

  By shot, fatally, Alan, Lord Bennis, by Mr. Hottyn, in a matter of family honor.

  Miss Tolerance thought of Henri Beauville and turned the page.

  She passed over the shipping news, then went back and read the departures carefully. The Lucy Singer had departed that morning for Madras. Among the passengers, a Miss Anne Colcannon.

  Miss Tolerance raised a glass to the Lucy Singer and its passengers.

  A glance out the window demonstrated to Miss Tolerance that the evening was well begun, although it was only a little past five o’clock. The Ladies’ Salon had become lively with noise, and Miss Tolerance was not in a mood to listen to the effusions of her sex. She collected her coat and left, standing for a moment on Tarsio’s steps; the dank chill of the air was redoubled, and wisps of sour yellow fog were thickening near the ground. Then Miss Tolerance pulled the collar of her cloak a little tighter and hailed a hackney carriage. She had one more task to accomplish, and thought she had best do it now, with several glasses of good burgundy to give her courage.

  Sir Walter Mandif had a comfortable red-brick house on Gracechurch Street; the windows at the front gave a cheery light in the misty darkness, and the brass doorplate and knocker shone with reflected light. She was admitted to the house by a very young man, not much more than a boy, whose attempt at dignity was largely overmastered by the high spirits of his age. Miss Tolerance explained her errand and he bounded off, puppylike, to see if Sir Walter would permit her a few words. He returned a moment later to bring her to a comfortable office paneled in light wood and well lit around the desk. There were shelves along two walls, filled with books; more books were stacked upon a marble-topped sideboard next to the door. On the floor along the wall to the right of the desk a long line of ledgers stood. There was a tiled fireplace and a small fire in it which cast warm shadows on the backs of two chairs arranged to face the desk. A very pleasant work place, Miss Tolerance thought. How is it I never visited here before?

  Sir Walter sat at his desk surrounded by half a dozen large books, writing in a ledger which appeared to be a fellow of those that stood on the floor. He seemed both focused and relaxed, as if concentration were a comfortable state for him; only the slight pursing of his lips suggested that he was taking pains with his work.

  The only sounds were the snap and lick of the fire and the scratch of Sir Walter’s pen upon the ledger pages. “Miss Tolerance, sir,” the boy said.

  Sir Walter looked up from the page and smiled.

  Miss Tolerance examined that smile and saw in it a genuine pleasure which touched her. She also thought she saw caution. Did he think that she had come to quarrel?

  “I am happy to see you,” he said simply, rising from his chair. “Please, sit. Will you take some wine?” He called the manservant back. “Michael, the claret and glasses, please.”

  Miss Tolerance watched the boy go, then took one of the winged chairs that faced the desk. She licked her lips, annoyed with her own nervousness, and looked squarely at Sir Walter.

  “I have come to say I am sorry,” she said simply. “To apologize for what I have said, and what I have thought. I hope you can forgive me; I do not have so many friends that I can afford to squander their goodwill.” Her voice was low and quiet.

  Sir Walter shook his head. “It was I—” He stopped as a slight rattle announced that Michael was returning with the wine. The boy carried the tray with an energy that made Miss Tolerance fear for the decanter; when all was safely settled on the desk Michael grinned as if it were perfectly natural that the world should appreciate his success. Mandif thanked the boy and dismissed him, then took the time to pour out two glasses of claret. He presented Miss Tolerance with one and sipped from his own before he continued.

  “I presumed too much on our friendship, I think. I underestimated—” He paused. “These last months, indeed the whole summer, have been hard ones for you. A difference of opinion with a friend must have seemed like a judgment upon—”

  “But you were right,” Miss Tolerance said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You were right,” she said again. “It is part of what I have to tell you, and I hope you will understand why I waited as long as I did, when I have told you the whole.”

  Sir Walter looked at her in surprise. “Right about what? The newspapers—Heddison’s statement said—”

  “An agreeable fiction. There are certain things I learned only after Mr. Heddison had announced his triumph: blame a dead spy and free a brutalized woman. But in the matter of the Chevalier d’Aubigny’s death, the spy was blameless. Anne d’Aubigny killed her husband.”

  The magistrate sat back. “Perhaps you will explain.”

  Miss Tolerance nodded. Carefully she explained the circumstances of Anne d’Aubigny’s marriage, and the events which had led to d’Aubigny’s death. “Once she began to strike him she kept on until she saw his brains upon the sheet, because she was not certain he would die otherwise. She seems to have believed he had nearly superhuman strength.”

  “Then the tale of letters implicating Beauville and Touvois—”

  “It was true: Beauville was meant to kill d’Aubigny and steal the letters, but he never found them. Anne d’Aubigny knew nothing of them.”

  “If all you tell me is so, the chevalier appears to have reaped what he sowed,” Sir Walter said. “I am all a-maze. But why are you apologizing to me?”

  “Why would I not? You said it was the wife, and you were right. I could not keep my feelings from coloring what I saw. I believed Anne d’Aubigny was innocent for no better reason than that I wanted her to be. I saw her as a woman betrayed by the man she loved—”

  “Which appears to me to be an accurate reading of the facts. You seem to me to have been correct about most of the facts in the case.” Sir Walter rose from his chair, wineglass in his hand. He did not approach Miss Tolerance; instead, he paced along the far wall, speaking thoughtfully. “We disagreed, and that was not pleasant. That will happen among colleagues. But you seem very intent upon finding yourself guilty.” Miss Tolerance looked at him sharply. Sir Walter said, very gently, “I think you have mistrusted your own judgment for some time. Since last spring, or at least since your testimony at Versellion’s trial.”

  “Do you think I have no reason to do so?”

  “I think that if you expect your judgment to be entirely unaffected by your prejudices, you may next expect to achieve sainthood. So you were not entirely right about Anne d’Aubigny. You were not entirely wrong, either.”

  The fire snapped. Miss Tolerance could not find her voice to reply, and was suddenly aware that tears stood in her eyes, ready to fall.

  “My dear, if you find your errors intolerable you will have a very hard life.”

  Miss Tolerance’s shoulders began to shake. She was perhaps as surprised as Sir Walter to discover that, despite the tears which had rolled silently down her cheeks, she was laughing. It took her some minutes to regain her composure, during which time Sir Walter watched her with an expression of amazement.

  “Sir Walter, I hope I never again quarrel with you,” she said at last. “You have a perspective—and a way of stating it—which is … tonic.” She briskly took her handkerchief from her reticule.

  Sir Walter poured a little more claret into her glass.

  “So: Madame Touvois and Beauville were involved in treason and in the death of Mrs. Vose; the chevalier was a blackmailer; and Anne d’Aubigny, with some justification, it seems to me, dashed her husband’s brains out. Is there anything else you wish to tell me?”

  Miss Tolerance thought guiltily of Cumberland, but shook her head.


  “Well, this leaves me with the interesting question of how I am to act in this matter.”

  Miss Tolerance shook her head. “I think I have spared you that problem.” She was not sure how Sir Walter would take her last bit of news.

  “Spared me? How so?”

  “Anne d’Aubigny sailed for India this morning.”

  Sir Walter opened his mouth and closed it again. He nodded to Miss Tolerance as if in acknowledgment of a point well played. “I could, of course, send a letter to the authorities in India. But from what you tell me it appears that justice, if not the law, has been served.”

  Miss Tolerance nodded. “I truly think it has.”

  A clock on the mantel ticked through the seconds. Miss Tolerance turned her wineglass between her fingers but did not drink. She was in great anxiety to know Sir Walter’s mind—and his feelings toward her.

  At last, “Do you know Shakespeare, Miss Tolerance?”

  She blinked. “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “Mrs. Siddons is appearing in Macbeth at New Covent Garden Theatre tonight. Would you care to see it? Her Lady Macbeth is accounted very fine. I often find, when I am puzzling out human behavior, that recourse to Shakespeare’s plays can make things clearer. I don’t believe there was an emotion or motive that the playwright did not at some point touch upon. Do you find it so?”

  Miss Tolerance recognized an olive branch when one was presented to her. “I know but little Shakespeare, Sir Walter. Romeo loved Juliet, I believe, and Hamlet was a melancholy prince. Further than that I dare not venture. I was an indifferent student with an uninspired governess in my schoolroom days.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Sir Walter said.

  “‘Tis all too true,” Miss Tolerance said. “But I hope I have somewhat mended my ways.”

  “Then you will accompany me?”

  Miss Tolerance smiled and sipped her wine. “I would be very happy to, Sir Walter. It is always my pleasure to learn something new.”

  Also by Madeleine E. Robins

  The Stone War

  Point of Honour

  “Madeleine Robins writes with rare conviction.”

  —The New York Times

  PRAISE FOR PETTY TREASON

  “Robins knows how to whip up a historical pastiche so that it neither violates the reality of the period nor strikes us as off-puttingly arcane. Robins is writing a series that’s shaping up to be a crowd pleaser in the best sense.”

  —Salon.com

  “Sarah may be a ‘Fallen Woman,’ but she’s also clever, resourceful, and highly capable with a sword. She is so well realized that we accept the conceit of a female sleuth—a liberated Elizabeth Bennett, as it were—who fences, wears men’s clothing, and lives behind her aunt’s brothel. One hopes that the delicate hint of romance with the Magistrate Sir Walter Mandif is realized in future novels in this most pleasing and agreeable series.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “An action-packed, suspense-filled read, complete with a nineteenth century heroine reminiscent of the present day Buffy the Vampire Slayer … Sarah is an intriguing and eminently likeable protagonist who dons men’s clothing and fends off attackers with remarkable skill. This smoothly plotted mystery boasts an intricately woven story and historical accuracy. An installment not be missed.”—Romantic Times BookClub Magazine (4 stars)

  PRAISE FOR POINT OF HONOUR

  “Sarah is a fascinating heroine, and Robins surrounds her with equally intriguing secondary characters. Politics, deception, danger, and a bit of romance all come together beautifully in this superb debut.”

  —Booklist

  “Sarah Tolerance is smart, beautiful, resourceful, tough, and totally believable and real. Murder, prostitution, blackmail, and action are woven perfectly into this tale. I will certainly read the next episode in this series. I’d do so tomorrow if I had it.”

  —Stuart M. Kaminsky, bestselling author of the Toby Peters and Inspector Rostnikov novels

  “Self-reliant, gutsy, and forthright at a time when women weren’t supposed to be any of those things, Sara Tolerance is a breath of fresh air. I loved Point of Honor.”

  —Barbara D’Amato, author of Authorized Personnel Only

  “An elegant Regency romance with an edge and a point.”

  —Sarah Smith, author of The Vanished Child

  History and Appreciation

  In the real world—and friends of the English Regency period will know at once that the world of Petty Treason does not take place within the realm of real history—there was an attempt on the life of Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, in May of 1810. Cumberland’s valet, Joseph Sellis, was later found in his room, an apparent suicide, and an inquest found that Sellis had been the assassin and, failing of his object, had taken his own life. However, there were persistent rumors that Cumberland had killed Sellis, either to hush up an affair with Sellis’s wife, or to quash rumors that he had made homosexual advances to the valet. I have, in the self-serving way of writers, twisted the whole business to suit my story, and painted Cumberland darker than he was—although he appears to have been unpleasant enough. A high Tory, he was virulently anti-Catholic and reactionary; he detested the common folk, and they returned his dislike with interest. Mothers were said to have chided their wild daughters by telling them that the Duke of Cumberland would come for them if they did not behave; there were even rumors that he had fathered a child with one of his sisters, the princess Sophia. Cumberland was generally considered to be the real black sheep of the family, but there is absolutely no evidence that he connived at anything so byzantine as the plot I have laid out here. I will say that the history of George III and his children is filled with the sort of family dysfunction that could keep a panel of psychiatrists busy for years.

  English law at the time of Petty Treason was less friendly to the accused than American law (or current English law) is. A suspect did not have the right to confront his accusers; he (and his legal representatives) were often unable to find out the nature of the charges or proofs against them; hearsay was quite acceptable evidence; and the suspect did not have the right to testify in his own behalf. There was no such thing as a not-guilty plea, but you could not be tried without your consent. However, prisoners who “stood mute” and did not give consent to trial were frequently pressed: laid on a stone table, naked, and piled with stones until they confessed or consented to trial … or died. At a time when the death penalty was commonplace for theft of anything worth more than a shilling, and the last burning on the charge of petit treason was only a couple of decades past, justice depended largely upon the goodwill and common sense of the people administering it. There were no London police per se at the time, either: individual parishes were protected by the Watch, elderly men who patrolled the streets at night. The Public Offices, modeled after the Bow Street magistrate’s office, were an early attempt to put a crime-fighting force in London, but the major tool of law enforcement was the informer, and informers were paid well.

  England in 1810 was at war—a condition in which the country had existed off and on for almost thirty years—and a series of bad harvests, coupled with the financial demands of the war and growing industrialization, wrought havoc with the nation’s economy. At this point, there was a growing political tension between those who, like Cumberland, felt that the French (with their frighteningly egalitarian policies) must be vanquished at all costs, and those who believed steps must be taken to ease the pressure on the people of England, who were, after all, supporting the war, and sometimes starving for it.

  The more I learn about this period, the more I find there is to learn. While my mistakes and inventions are my own, I have had enormous help and support from a number of people, and I couldn’t have gotten anything right without them. Andrew Sigel not only enthusiastically embraced Sarah Tolerance and her world, he was invaluable in helping me think out what-ifs of my particular branching off of history. He supplied books, made comments, and was general
ly a Prince of the Blood. Likewise Greer Gilman, Sherwood Smith, eluki bes shahar, and Gregory Feeley. As always, my thanks to my fencing teachers, Richard Rizk, David Brimmer, T. J. Glenn, Duncan Eagleson, and M. Lucie Chin, whose grace and style have a huge impact on Miss Tolerance’s own. The members of my writers group, as always, were not only supportive but constructive, catching the Big Errors before I made a fool of myself in print.

  My thanks and a wave to the staff at Starbucks (Ninety-third and Broadway in New York City) for cheery greetings, a comfortable space to sit and write, and keeping the coffee coming.

  More thanks: again and always to Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden and Anna Genoese, for their generous enthusiasm and editorial acumen; my agent, Valerie Smith, and my publisher, Tom Doherty, for making so many things possible. More thanks to Tor’s design, production, and marketing departments, all of whom labor long and hard in the service of Tor Books (and thanks, in particular, to copy editor S. B. Kleinman, who manages to juggle the antique language in this book with a fine eye for typos, inconsistencies, and momentary lapses on the part of the author). They all make me look good. To my best bud, Claire Eddy, who always seems to have time to help me gnaw on a bit of plot, and to Melissa Singer—both of whom are not only editors but fellow travelers on the working-mom road—the usual love and appreciation. To Steve Popkes, thanks for years of being out there and keeping me honest.