The Battling Bluestocking

by Scott, Amanda

  9

  IN THE TIME THAT it took her to change into her habit, Jessica’s horse was brought around from the stables, which faced onto Little Brook Street, and she and Andrew were soon riding down Brook Street and through Grosvenor Square, where Andrew was able to point out Sir Brian’s house in the first block of Charles Street. It was a mere fifteen minutes more to Park Lane and the northeast entrance to Hyde Park.

  While they rode through the streets of Mayfair, their mounts required their constant attention, so what conversation there was was desultory. But upon entering the park, where they could simply allow their horses to wander along from one path to another without much thought, Jessica set herself to draw Andrew into speaking about his uncle by asking him to tell her more about Shaldon Park.

  The young man followed her lead without hesitation, explaining that he had lived with his uncle for some eight years or so, since the death of his own parents in an influenza epidemic.

  “There wasn’t anyone on my father’s side to take charge of me, and he had named Uncle Brian my trustee, so I came along to him. Of course, I was usually at school, you know, but I spend holidays at Shaldon Park, trotting about after him while he looked over the mines and rode about the estate.”

  “It must have been difficult for you, losing both your parents so suddenly like that,” Jessica sympathized.

  “Lord, yes. I was a handful, all right and tight. You should hear some of the tales Uncle Brian can tell. But he understood. Probably better than most men would have—young men, anyway—for you must know that he was only twenty-four or so when it happened. But he had been in my position himself, for his father died when he was nineteen, and though he hadn’t had an uncle to take charge of his affairs, he understood what I was feeling.”

  “Had he no one? What of his mother?”

  “Oh, she was about, of course, but she’s a bit flighty and not the sort a fellow can depend upon. Shouldn’t speak so of one’s great-aunt, I expect, but she was quite overcome by my great-uncle’s death—he simply fell dead one night while he was preparing for bed, you know. Hadn’t even reached his fiftieth birthday yet. Bit of a shock to the poor lady’s sensibilities.”

  “I should think it would be.”

  “Yes, well, she stayed at Shaldon Park for less than a year before returning to her own folk in Yorkshire. She visits occasionally, but I don’t think she cares much for Cornwall. Says it’s too damp and windy for her liking.”

  “And you, Andrew, do you like Cornwall?”

  His eyes lit up, and his mouth quirked into a self-conscious little grin. “I think I must love it as much as my uncle does. Of course, my own estates are there, too—on the River Fowey, between Brown Willy and Bath’s Plot. That’s north of Shaldon Park, you know. And east, too, of course. On the edge of Bodmin Moor.”

  He spoke proudly, and that alone told her much of the way his uncle had raised him. She knew the area he spoke of, knew too that Bodmin Moor, like most of the higher moors of Cornwall, was more likely to boast vast, infertile wastelands of peaty bogs, wild grasses, and sedges than the fertile, flower-filled lushness that characterized Shaldon Park. Still, those moors, dotted by the castlelike tors of granite that seemed to surge upward everywhere, had their own wild, picturesque beauty, and if Andrew had learned to appreciate it without coveting green lushness instead, that was all to the good. Then it occurred to her that he was no doubt Sir Brian’s heir. Perhaps it had never entered his head that he might not have both properties.

  “I expect he’s taught you all he knows of mining and sugar planting,” she suggested blandly.

  “Why on earth would he, when I’ve scant interest in such things? There are two stone quarries on my land, but most of my tenants are small-acreage farmers and sheep-herders. He’s caused me to learn a deal of what I need to know about wintering sheep, shearing, and such like stuff, for he’s taken me along to sit in on his talks with my bailiff whenever it’s been possible for him to do so. Let his own sons—when he’s got some—learn about tin and copper and sugar when they’re old enough to attend to his teaching.”

  “Tin and copper? I thought he mined coal,” Jessica said absently, her mind on Sir Brian’s sons.

  “Lord, no.” He stared at her. “There’s no coal mining that I know about in Cornwall. Lead, copper, zinc, tin—that sort of stuff. But coal is mined in the Midlands and the North—Newcastle and Manchester, places like that.”

  Jessica’ gave a helpless little shake of her head and cast him a rueful smile. “My lamentable ignorance of geography again, I expect. One hears so much from Aunt Susan and her friends about the horrors of the coal mines that one just naturally thinks of coal when one thinks of mining. Still and all, a mine is a mine. No doubt the danger and the exploitation are the same in all of them.”

  “I never paid enough heed to the details to deny that,” Andrew said, glancing at her quizzically, “but I’d wager every groat I’ve got that Uncle Brian’s mines are safe and his people well cared for.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt for a moment that his intentions in that direction are better than most,” Jessica said, remembering what Janet St. Erth had said about his intervention on Hayle’s behalf, “but that doesn’t mean that his mines are not dangerous or that he doesn’t exploit women and small children in exactly the same way that any other mine owner does. He has certainly never denied that when I’ve laid the accusation at his door.”

  Andrew shot her that quizzical look again, but he said nothing further, and some moments later they met some friends of his who fell in beside them, and their private conversation came to a necessary halt. As they rode back along Brook Street some time later, Jessica found her thoughts returning once again to Sir Brian. She tried to imagine him as a nineteen-year-old youth whose father had just died unexpectedly, leaving him vast estates to care for. It was not easy to picture the confident Sir Brian in any light other than the one in which she presently saw him, but she decided he must have felt alone and abandoned at the time. No doubt there had been someone to assist him, a banker or a man of affairs. There generally was, in her experience, someone of that sort around at such times, particularly when the property involved was as extensive as Sir Brian’s seemed to be. Nevertheless, it could not have been the same as having someone at hand who truly cared about him. Surely Andrew had been luckier, having Sir Brian to help him over the difficult time after his parents’ deaths. Sir Brian, she thought fondly, would be very comforting to have around during a critical time such as that must have been.

  When they arrived back in Hanover Square, Jessica invited Andrew to step inside for a bit of refreshment.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” he replied, helping her from the saddle and turning his reins over to her groom.

  They went up the stone steps together, but the tall front door opened before they reached it. Bates took a step toward them, his normally benign expression a good deal distressed.

  “Oh, Miss Jessica, what a to-do! I don’t know what her ladyship can be thinking about. Truly I don’t. Good afternoon, Mr. Liskeard. I beg your pardon for blurting such stuff, Miss Jessica, but—”

  “I told him, Miss Jessica,” stated Mrs. Birdlip righteously, appearing behind the butler, alternately wringing her hands, then wiping them upon the skirts of her black bombazine dress. “I told him just how it would be if he didn’t keep an eye on that shifty fellow. But would he listen?” Then she, too, seemed to become aware for the first time of Andrew’s presence, and colored with confusion, apologizing for speaking out of turn.

  “It’s quite all right,” Jessica interposed reassuringly when the butler looked likely to defend himself against the housekeeper’s accusations. “Mr. Liskeard must be counted nearly one of the family by now, as both of you must know. What’s toward?”

  “It was that dreadful sweep, Miss Jessica,” began the housekeeper as they stepped into the hall. “Just as I had suspicioned, he was not the least to be trusted.”

  Bates shut the door before a
sserting his authority by casting a quelling glance at Mrs. Birdlip, who fell immediately silent. “It is as she says, Miss Jessica,” he said then in a subdued tone. “’Twas all my doing, I fear, but the man promised on his mother’s soul that he used naught but those modern machines to accomplish his business. I swear, I had not the slightest inkling that he meant to bring that boy along with him.”

  “Merciful heavens!” Jessica breathed.

  “A climbing boy!” Andrew exclaimed, grasping the gist as quickly as Jessica had. “Next you will say that Lady Susan walked in upon them whilst the sweep was still at his work.”

  “Indeed, she did,” said Mrs. Birdlip, nodding her gray head fervently.

  Bates nodded. “It was disastrous. I have never seen her ladyship in such a taking. The fellow had somehow smuggled the poor boy into the house without anyone’s being the wiser, and they were in the yellow bedchamber on the second floor when her ladyship returned from King’s Bench. Evidently the fellow was actually brutalizing the child when she walked in upon them. Oh, Miss Jessica, it was dreadful.”

  “The poor little boy.” Jessica shook her head in sympathy.

  “I wasn’t thinking of the boy, miss. ’Twas her ladyship. Lost her dignity entirely, and nearly brought the house down around our ears, if I may be so bold as to put the matter in such a common way.”

  “That disgusting man,” put in Mrs. Birdlip, “a standing there in all his dirt bellowing at her poor ladyship that he didn’t care what people said about not wanting boys used. Said they always complain their chimneys wasn’t cleaned proper with only the machines and such.”

  “Lady Susan,” said Bates, directing another repressive look at the housekeeper, “sent the sweep about his business, without so much as giving him time to clean up the mess or collect his gear.”

  “Good heavens,” Jessica muttered, “we’ll have a constable on the doorstep before the sun has set.”

  “We may that, Miss Jessica,” the butler agreed in solemn tones, “but if we do, it won’t be on account of a few brushes and bits of canvas. I regret to say that her ladyship refused to let Mr. Crick take the little climbing boy away with him, as well.”

  Bates fell silent, letting that thunderbolt take its full effect upon his listeners. The silence went unbroken for several seconds, until it seemed to Jessica that the very walls were waiting for her response. She glanced at Andrew.

  “I think perhaps I had better go up to her.”

  “Well, if you think I mean just to go about my business in a casual gentlemanly fashion whilst you hear the rest of this devilish tale, you’ve got another think coming, ma’am. Lead the way.”

  Jessica glanced questioningly at the butler. “She is in the drawing room, miss, with the boy. She has sent for Sir William Knighton.”

  Jessica had started up the sweeping stairway, but at Bates’s last words she turned back. “A doctor! Is she ill, then?” Andrew, behind her, likewise stopped and looked back.

  The butler shook his white-fringed head. “No, miss, not her ladyship, the boy. I fear some of his burns are rather severe.”

  “Merciful heavens!” Jessica exclaimed.

  Waiting to hear no more, she hurried upstairs and along the railed gallery to the drawing room, where she found her aunt and one of the maidservants hovering over a settee upon which an old sheet had been spread in order to protect it from the scrawny, soot-covered little boy who crouched there, looking not so much hurt as frightened out of his wits.

  “Jessica, my love! At last.” Lady Susan got to her feet and strode toward them, her gloved hands held out to take Jessica’s. It was clear from the fact that she still wore the high-poke bonnet she had donned that morning before sallying forth to the King’s Bench, that her ladyship had not stopped for a moment to take stock of herself since returning to find the sweep in her house. “Did Bates tell you?”

  “Aunt Susan, whatever are you about?” Jessica demanded, but her tone was gentle, and the look she gave her aunt was one of compassion if not understanding. “You cannot keep this child. His master will be back with the constable.”

  “Nonsense, he wouldn’t dare,” declared her ladyship militantly. “I should have him up on charges so fast his head would spin. And so I told him to his miserable face.”

  “Cor, missus, Jem don’t be afraid o’ no gentry mort,” observed the tyke on the settee, his gravelly voice reflecting his fear and at the same time making him sound older than he looked. “’E’ll be back, awright, ’n when ’e gits ’is ’ands on me, ’ere won’t be but a morsel left t’ me backside. Not wiv all this row, ’n all.”

  “I’ve told you, Jeremy, you’ve nothing to fear,” Lady Susan said firmly, turning to face him. Her expression softened in response to the abject terror in the child’s eyes. “I couldn’t let that dreadful man take him away again,” she said to Jessica and Andrew. “When I walked in upon them, he was lighting brands under the child’s bare feet in order to force him up the chimney.”

  “I dassn’t like goin’ up inta the dark,” little Jeremy muttered. “’E always gi’es me a ’otfoot. On’y way I’ll go up a bleedin’ chimbley.”

  “Well, he shant’ be let to do it again, my dear.”

  The boy shook his head in patent disbelief, and Jessica turned to Andrew. “We’ve got to do something. I don’t know what the law is with regard to situations of this nature, but if the boy is properly apprenticed to that sweep, I fear we haven’t a leg to stand upon. We shall be forced to give him back.”

  The child cowered further into the corner of the settee. “’E’ll gi’e me what-fer, ’e will. Near kilt me t’ last time.”

  “You are quite right about the law,” Lady Susan agreed bitterly. “Though I doubt that awful man realized it at the time, there are no real charges I could bring against him that would amount to any more than his having to pay a fine. We shall simply have to make a case of it, use this poor lad to see some changes made.” Her eyes brightened at the thought. “We can do it, Jessica. I know we can. Just as soon as Sir William has seen him and the child has had a bath”—the boy recoiled from the last word in horror—“I shall call a meeting of the Society to End Employment of Climbing Boys. Someone will know precisely what must be done.”

  Jessica stared at her aunt in dismay. Just the thought of such a course struck fear into her heart, for she could easily imagine the sort of scandal Lady Susan might stir. The beau monde would rock with it.

  Andrew’s expression reflected her feelings. “I wish Uncle Brian were here,” he said in an undertone when Lady Susan turned back to her charge. “Would you like me to find him? I’m sure he will be at the house or at one or another of his clubs, you know. I could run him to earth in a trice.”

  “Nonsense,” retorted Jessica, her own spirit reasserting itself. “There is nothing he can do that you and I cannot do as well. We simply must think. There has got to be a way to remedy this situation before we all find ourselves in the basket.”

  “What are you two muttering about?” demanded Lady Susan, patting the boy’s filthy head, then removing her gloves when she realized she had got soot upon them. “Do you not think we can succeed with such a campaign? Maybe we cannot, but I certainly think we ought to try. We must help this child. Look here,” she added to the boy, handing him a crystal globe containing an intricately carved village scene. “Shake this, and see what happens.”

  “Cor, I knows wha’ ’appens,” he said scornfully, his fears forgotten for the brief moment as he took the globe into his grubby hands. “Ye shakes it, like this, ’n it makes snow. Me mum ’ad one like this.” But despite his scornful tone, he turned the globe first one way and then the other, seeming to delight in the snowy scene that resulted.

  Jessica stared at him. The crystal was not an expensive toy, but she doubted that any climbing boy’s mother would possess one. Clearly the child was a prevaricator. She turned back to her aunt.

  “I agree that we must do what we can for him, Aunt, but I doubt that usin
g him as the focal point for a campaign against the iniquities of his position will accomplish that. In the first place, you can be accused of stealing him from his rightful master. The laws covering apprenticeship are very clear.”

  “’Fraid she’s right about that, Lady Susan,” Andrew put in. “There’s not a court in the land wouldn’t turn him over to his rightful owner, same as any other piece of property.”

  “But he’s a child, not a piece of property.”

  “Well, that’s true enough, and perhaps I oughtn’t to have put the matter in such a way. ’Tisn’t the child the sweep owns, so much as the right to his services as an apprentice. Can’t hope to change that. Dashed well been the law in England for centuries, you know.”

  “Well, it’s exactly the same as slavery, and there should be a law against it,” declared Lady Susan. “And I think we should use Jeremy here to fight for such a law.”

  Jessica had been thinking. She turned now to Andrew, her brow furrowed. “Can you purchase an apprentice?” she asked.

  “Not like one purchases slaves,” he said, “but I suppose the result is much the same. One purchases their papers of apprenticeship.”

  “Jem jest bought me,” contributed the boy on the settee. “Paid two-poun’-ten fer me, ’e did.”

  “There, you see,” said Lady Susan. “Just like slavery.”

  “I do see,” said Jessica slowly, her eyes beginning to light. “Andrew, if that dreadful man paid two-pounds-ten for the boy, wouldn’t he be likely to sell him again if the price offered him were higher?”

  “Not selling the boy,” Andrew corrected her, but when she glared at him, he retreated. “Oh, very well, same thing. I daresay he might accept a good offer if one were made.”

  “Well, then, we’re going to make that offer. Where does Jem live, Jeremy?”

  “In Kettle Lane, back o’ the Fleet, in Cheapside,” responded the boy promptly. “Ye really gonna buy me papers orf ’im?” Jessica nodded. “’E won’ like it, miss. Bit of a brute, Jem is. You watch yerself wiv ’im, y’ ’ear?”