A Seditious Affair

by K. J. Charles

  “Why does it matter?”

  The brute shrugged. “Laws aren’t always right.”

  Dominic wasn’t having that. “That is seditious talk.”

  “Seditious my arse. Or yours, because you know damned well we’d both swing for what we just did. You telling me that law’s right?”

  “It’s the law of the land.”

  “Oh, well, shall we trot round to Bow Street then? ‘Hello, Mr. Redbreast, this fellow buggered me, and I loved it. String us up’?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “It is.” The brute sat up. He wore the formidable scowl that indicated thought. “It’s exactly the point. When the Duke of Cumberland cut his valet’s throat—”

  “That is slander!” The wine splashed over Dominic’s fingers. “Don’t repeat that.”

  “Oh, come on. Half of London knows he did it. Word is, he fathered a child on his own sister.”

  “Well, he didn’t,” Dominic snapped. “Either. That’s a gross libel put about by muckrakers and rabble-rousers.”

  “Aye? Well, let’s call it an analogy then and just imagine Cumberland cut his valet’s throat. You think he’d hang for it?”

  Dominic sat back. “Perhaps not,” he admitted. “No.”

  “So there’s not one law for all, in the first place. And are you going to prosecute me for sodomy? Turn king’s evidence?”

  “No.”

  “So there are laws you don’t think will be enforced and laws you don’t think should be enforced. Right. Now, say this—what was it?—brother—”

  “Wife’s brother.”

  “Right. Say what his mate did was rape. Left a few girls bleeding, and your wife’s brother kept it quiet. Are you sitting here asking me what I reckon you should do?”

  “No,” Dominic said again.

  “What are you doing?”

  Dominic sighed. “Hanging him high, and be damned to my wife. I see what you’re saying. But this isn’t the same thing.”

  “Why not?”

  Dominic wasn’t entirely sure. Because sedition was a serious crime, but it lacked an immediate victim? Because it was one thing to upset a theoretical wife, quite another to bring trouble down on Richard?

  He stared into his glass, watching the liquid swirl. “Oh, blast it. I don’t need you to tell me what’s right. I know what’s right. I just don’t want to do it.”

  “I’m not going to tell you to do wrong, if that’s what you’re hoping. You can choose that for yourself.”

  “You’re a comfort.”

  “You don’t come to me for comfort,” the brute pointed out. “Tell you this, though. I never heard how the right thing to do was to betray your friends. Not ever.”

  “No.” Dominic tossed back the remainder of his wine, held out the glass for more. “No. I can’t quite reconcile that either.”

  “You got to choose your side.” The brute sloshed out the Moselle as if it were gin. “I was saying that to a lad I know just a couple of days ago. He’s another one trying to make a circle square by thinking. Well, sometimes you can’t. You got to stand by your friends or your duty, right? Can’t do both, and you got to choose.”

  “That’s it precisely,” Dominic said. “And I don’t want to.”

  The brute looked at him. Then he put down his glass on the side table, reached out a powerful arm, and gripped Dominic’s shoulder, pulling him over, and Dominic let himself be pulled until he could rest against the brute’s shoulder, leaning into his strength, and feel his steady heart.

  “It ain’t much fun doing what’s right, sometimes.” The brute’s voice was quiet. “I’ve done it and paid for it and been sorry for my choices even when I couldn’t’ve chosen otherwise. Sometimes there’s no way that means you can look yourself in the face afterward. I know this much, Tory: You’re wrongheaded in your politics, but you’re a decent man. Whether you’ll make the right decisions, I don’t know, but I’d back you to try your best, and if your friends can’t see that, they’re fools.”

  Dominic had to take a moment before he could reply. His throat felt absurdly tight. “Thank you.” The brute’s arm tightened, and Dominic blurted, “I wish—”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  I wish you’d tell me your name.

  I wish I dared tell you mine.

  Chapter 3

  Silas looked around the shop with some satisfaction, ignoring George Charkin’s grumbles. It felt like a good day.

  They’d put the heavy bookcase over the trapdoor to the cellar, where he kept the handpress. It was a nuisance to do, especially since they’d just have to move it all back in a couple of days when he finished the next Jack Cade pamphlet, but better sure than sorry. Wouldn’t want to risk the law, after all.

  The law. That made him think of the Tory last night, torn by his dilemma. Looking for the right thing to do when his body was still marked by Silas’s fingers and teeth and prick, when he’d just been on his knees, begging for permission to spend. There was something Silas planned to do again—keep him on the verge of firing his shot for an hour or more, make him plead and gasp for it. That was what the Tory needed, not the pain or the shame but the surrender. He had to give it all up, and he had to be forced to it.

  It was no surprise he was fretting about a duty. Silas would have wagered he was some kind of upstanding citizen in the rest of his life. A minister or a lawyer maybe, a man who put principle before everything and was brought low by a blackguard radical in his private hours.

  His precious, peculiar Tory.

  “You going to help me with this or what?” George’s skinny arms strained to lift a crate. Silas shook himself out of his reverie and hurried over. Work to do.

  He could have sworn that the Tory was going to ask his name, though. Had known he would, with a sense of leaping anticipation for something, he wasn’t sure what, and had been disappointed when the question hadn’t come. He’d already decided he’d give his name if asked. Maybe that was rash, but he wanted to hear the Tory say it. Would it sound vulgar in that educated gentleman’s voice? Would the Tory use it to beg him, Please, Silas, please…?

  “Ow!” bellowed George. “You landed that right on my foot! Bloody wake up!”

  Silas mumbled an apology of sorts. Wake up indeed. It felt like a very long time till next Wednesday.

  An hour or so later, he was going through the ledger when he heard a noise outside. Tramping feet, a familiar stir in the crowd.

  “What’s going on?” he asked George, indicating the door.

  George went and peered out. “Couple of swells and a squad with ’em. Six men, two redcoats.”

  “Where are they going?”

  George paused, then said, voice a little strangled, “Looks like…no, but…God’s tits, Silas, they’re coming here.”

  “Hell!” Silas shoved himself to his feet as George lurched away from the door, and the men crashed in.

  “Oi!” Silas bellowed, coming out from behind the counter as a redcoat shoved George back. “What d’you think you’re doing?” That was ignored. The men jostled their way into the dusty little shop. It was crammed with books and shelving, no room for so many people, especially not ones who intended to cause damage. There was a heavy crash as a shelf was upturned and books cascaded to the floor. “Oi!” A plain-clothed man heaved at another pile of books, and Silas grabbed at his arm, knowing it was foolish, but too angry to care. “You! Get off that.”

  “Assault!” the man bellowed, and a fist crashed into Silas’s face from the side. Silas shook his head, swinging to fight, and caught a glimpse of two men at the back watching.

  “Stop,” said a voice, cold and clear. Not a gentleman’s, by the tones of it. A jackal of the law. “Silas Mason?”

  “Aye.” A redcoat was gripping his sleeve. Silas snarled at him, barely bothering to glance at the speaker. “Get off me. Get your dogs out of my shop.”

  “My name is Thaddeus Skelton of the Home Office,�
� said the speaker. “I am here with my colleague Mr. Frey to investigate reports of the printing and distribution of seditious and treasonous pamphlets from these premises. What have you to say?”

  Silas looked up then, looked from Skelton, an evil-faced weasel if ever he saw one, to his companion, and found he had nothing to say at all.

  The Tory stood in his shop. He was dressed with quiet severity, his expensive caped greatcoat giving his outline deceptive size and breadth. I’d have known you otherwise, Silas thought. I’d have known you the second you came in. He wore a curly-brimmed hat, held a gold-topped black cane. Looked like a gentleman.

  He was a man of the Home Office. He was Dominic Frey, whose name Silas had heard often enough and last on the lips of Harry Vane, as a friend.

  This was the duty, Silas thought. You were worrying about raiding my shop in case it implicated my lad Harry, and you went ahead and did it.

  You traitorous bastard.

  Frey was staring at him, trying to keep his face still, but he couldn’t mask the pure sick horror in his eyes. He looked like he was sweating ice.

  Silas cleared his throat. “There’s no sedition here, and no treason, and no printing, come to that. Where’s your warrant?”

  “Warrant,” said Skelton scornfully. “Would an innocent man demand to see a warrant?”

  “My right,” Silas managed.

  “Here.” Skelton tossed a paper onto the desk. “One more chance, Mason. Tell us where the press is, or we’ll just have to find it ourselves.”

  “Look all you want.” Pure defiance. If they found the trapdoor, they’d find the press, piles of Jack Cade’s pamphlets, several drafts of his ongoing work on the Peterloo Massacre. He’d be dragged to gaol under the Tory’s blank, dark stare.

  The Tory wouldn’t speak for him. He couldn’t expect that.

  Skelton sneered. “Carry on, men.”

  They did. They crashed and clattered, upturning boxes, grabbing handfuls of paper, turfing books onto the floor with a disrespect that should have made Silas rage. George voiced protest at one point, as a soldier kicked his way into a locked chest, and was grabbed and sent stumbling to the floor with a rip of cloth. At the front of the shop, a windowpane shattered.

  Silas stood, and watched, and felt the Tory watch him. Saw the Tory’s caped shoulders rise and fall and felt his own harsh breathing come into line with them, as though their hearts beat in time.

  “Nothing, sir,” a man muttered at last.

  “Take the papers,” Skelton ordered. His face was rigid with the effort not to show disappointment. “We’ll check them all. You don’t get away so easily, Mason.”

  “I’ll want those back,” Silas said, showing defiance by rote.

  “Oh, we’ll come back,” Skelton said. “Don’t worry. You’ll see us again.”

  The men fanned out, picking up papers, the Tory among them, moving through Silas’s shop as if he had a right. Because he was one of them, one of the persecutors, part of the apparatus of tyranny that kept the people chained. The enemy.

  “Let’s go,” the Tory said at last, his first words. He sounded hoarse. He’d sounded hoarse last night, after Silas had fucked his mouth till he choked and gasped. Skelton gave a tight nod, and the lot of them clattered out.

  “Damn their eyes,” George said from Silas’s side. His coat hung off him in rags now. “Damn them to hell. Oh Gawd, Silas.”

  “They didn’t find anything. There’s naught in those papers. They’ve nothing, no evidence.”

  “Aye, but…the shop.”

  They looked around at the catastrophe of litter and damage, books splayed open on the floor, some with pages come adrift. Silas swore under his breath and then more loudly. “Well, we’d best clear up then.”

  “Swine,” George said. “Bloody swine. Oh, look at this.” He picked something up from where it rested by a shelf. A gold-headed ebony cane. “Swell left his stick. Reckon we can sell it?”

  “Don’t be a damned fool. They’d do you for stolen goods straight off,” Silas said. “He probably left it on purpose—” He broke off as that purpose dawned on him.

  George blinked at him. “Silas? You all right?”

  “Go,” Silas said. “Go on, lad, get home. You’ve done enough today.”

  “What?” George looked baffled. Not surprising; Silas did not often give half holidays.

  “Go,” he repeated. “Get your coat mended. Here.” He tossed George a shilling. “It’s coming on cold. I’ll tidy up.”

  “But you need—”

  “Just piss off,” Silas rasped, running out of subterfuge, and his expression made George swallow whatever loyal protest was on his lips. He scurried out, leaving Silas alone with the wreckage of his shop, waiting for a man to come back for his cane.

  He was kneeling on the floor, picking up the splinters of the broken chest, when he heard footsteps. The door creaked open, and a shadow blotted out the watery autumn sun.

  “Best shut the door,” Silas said, rising. “Got things to say, don’t we?”

  “Your assistant?”

  “Sent him home.”

  The Tory closed the door, careful and quiet. They looked at each other.

  Silas was filthy and shirt-sleeved. He was never more than a decent working man at best; now he knew he looked like the refuse of the streets. And here was the Tory—Dominic Frey—in his full magnificence. Rich, well dressed, and so far above Silas he couldn’t even see that far down.

  Well, he’d come here, so he could start talking. Silas rested his elbows on the shop counter and waited.

  The Tory licked his lips. “What do you intend to do?”

  “About what?”

  “You have my reputation in your hands.” His voice shook a little. “We both know you could have destroyed me with a word.”

  “Aye,” Silas said. “I could have. If I was the kind of man who threw his fellows to the dogs for his own benefit.”

  “I tried.” The Tory sounded as though he were suffocating. “I tried to find Harry last night, to warn him. I came here with the express intent of making sure he wasn’t implicated, and—” He choked. “You.”

  “Me.”

  “You’re a seditionist,” the Tory said. It sounded—not incredulous. More as though he was finally acknowledging something he’d have seen a long time ago if he hadn’t been so careful to look the other way. “A radical. A freethinker.”

  “Atheist,” Silas said, and saw Frey flinch. Let him know it; let him have his pretty face rubbed in it. “That’s what I am. An atheist and a democrat, and I say be damned to your God, and your law, and your mad king too. Your whole stinking state.”

  Anger warred with fear on the Tory’s face now. “If you speak like that, I will arrest you. I will not conceal treason to save myself.”

  “I won’t be muzzled,” Silas snarled. “Not by you, Mr. Frey of the Home Office, nor by anyone. I speak for the people.”

  “And write for them,” the Tory said. “Are you Jack Cade?”

  “Rot in hell.”

  They stared at each other. Breath coming too fast, faces too close, anger and fear roiling between them.

  “What would you have me do?” The Tory sounded as though he was continuing a conversation, perhaps one in his own head. “I’m in the Home Office. This is my duty.”

  “Aye, duty. You do yours and I do mine. Only, my duty, as I see it, is to tell people there’s a better way than tyranny and unjust law. And yours is to uphold the law when you ain’t too busy breaking it bent over in a whorehouse.” He saw the Tory’s nostrils flare, a little giveaway twitch of anger. It made him want to hit harder, to push the man until he pushed back and see what he was like in a real fight, but there was something he had to do. He cleared his throat. “What about Harry?”

  The Tory blinked, just once. “Harry. Yes.” Impressive control. He’d come by that honestly. “I will try to keep him out of this, if I can. He went under a false name here, correct?”

  “H
arry Gordon. That’s what his parents called him.”

  “Well, he’s Alexander Vane’s son, and some people know Alexander Vane, gentleman, became Alexander Gordon, demagogue. Skelton will remember Gordon, I have no doubt, but I don’t know if he’ll make the connection.”

  “Will Harry suffer if he does?”

  “Maybe. I will try to prevent that. Harry is sponsored by Lord Richard Vane, his cousin and my very good friend. I shan’t—”

  “Richard?” Silas said. “The big fellow that took my Harry off to be a gentleman, is that your Richard? It is, ain’t it?”

  The last vestiges of blood drained from the Tory’s skin, but when he spoke, his voice was commanding. “Listen well. If you choose to ruin me with what we have done, that is the law, and I will take the consequences. But I’ll cut your throat and mine before I let you use my words against Richard.”

  Of course he would be loyal to his own sort, his old lover. The stupid, overgrown, arrogant bastard who’d set his claws in the Tory’s heart and left him so blinded with self-disgust that he’d probably never see clearly again.

  Gentlemen. Fucksters, the lot of them.

  “If I want you dealt with, I’ll do it myself,” Silas said. “And it won’t be through men who’ve never harmed me direct, any more than through latitats and lawcourts. And I tell you what else.” He could feel the anger rising through his muscles, the delayed shame at having to stand and watch men do as they pleased with his life. “Don’t you whine at me. You could have me gaoled at the crook of a finger on any charge you like and make sure I’ve no chance to talk, and you know it.”

  “Is that what you think? That I would do that?” The Tory’s knuckles were white.

  “You think I’m a fucking informer!”

  The Tory breathed in and out. “I don’t think you’re an informer. But I have seen quite enough men inform on their friends, given inducement. How do you think we came to this shop?”

  “Someone squawked, did they?” Silas bared his teeth. “Going to tell me who?”

  “No.” The Tory stuck his hands deep into the pockets of his expensive coat—to hide their shaking, Silas would have wagered. “I know you are a seditionist. I don’t know how much of one. I imagine we will be back to find out. And I cannot spare you the consequences of what you have done because of what we have done. I cannot and I will not.”