Instruments of Darkness caw-1

by Imogen Robertson

  Harriet looked slightly uncomfortable.

  “Michaels is with us. Most of the village follow his lead.”

  Rachel sighed and stood, walking over to the fireplace and staring down into the empty grate.

  “And most of the local gentry follow the squire.” She turned to look at her sister again. “We would have done, Harry, a week ago. If he suggested ill of someone, we would have been guided by it.”

  Harriet had no answer to that. Rachel abandoned the fireplace and went to look out of the window where the last light of the summer day struggled to give her a view. “I just hope Mr. Clode has made it to London. If we have put those children out of reach of whatever chases them, I am happy to take the black looks of my neighbors.”

  Crowther cleared his throat, then said, “I believe your sister is right, Miss Trench. We are getting close-and as for the letters and our neighbors, I’m afraid the only way out is through the middle of it. We must frighten the truth out of the Hall, find out why the lord is marked with seven wounds, and who should really be held to account for the deaths amongst us.”

  8

  Clode woke and rubbed his eyes. In the last sputtering of the candle left for him he could see Mr. Chase’s clock. Close to midnight. The first confusions of consciousness danced about him, shreds of his dreams and the events of the last days mingling and separating with the shadows in the room. He remembered slowly. He was near the children, he had talked to their young guardian and liked him. He pulled himself up on his elbow and ran one hand round his jaw; it was rough, and he could taste stale gin in his mouth. His shoulder complained as he lifted himself up. He had slept hard, unmoving on Mr. Chase’s couch. Over his shoulder he could see the last of the light had gone, but the house was not at rest. He remembered what had woken him: there had been a clatter at the door.

  Graves exchanged a look with Miss Chase and stood. The hammering was too urgent to be ignored. He stepped out into the hall. The kitchen maid was trembling uncertainly by a display of violets on the hall stand; such was the knocking the water rippled round them, so they seemed to be quivering in sympathy with the girl’s fear. She spotted him over her shoulder and smiled uncertainly.

  “Go back to the kitchen and stay there.”

  She dashed away, her soft soles scuffing the flags. Graves went to the door.

  “Who is it?”

  The banging stopped with a shout.

  “Graves! That you? It’s Molloy! Open up now!”

  Graves felt relief and anger run through him. Opening the door, he plucked Molloy in by his collar, using the weight of the man to shut the door again behind him.

  “You? Now? God, Molloy-you hammering for money at this time of night? Come to take me to the Marshalsea-on this night? What are you thinking of?”

  Molloy was red-faced. The surprised “o” of his mouth collapsed into a frown as he found his voice.

  “We’ve no more business, you and I. I’ve come as a friend, so put me down, you idiot.” He pulled himself free of Graves’s slackened grip, and looked up at his confused face. “Yes. Your ladies sorted you out, though that’s their business and I’ll leave you to ask them of it.”

  Graves felt himself color. Molloy gave him a nasty smile, sniffed and straightened the strip of dirty linen he wore as a cravat.

  “Thing is,” he said sullenly, “Newgate has burned.”

  Graves went pale.

  “Yes, you do see, don’t you. I do come as a friend, though with no glad tidings. Happened a couple of hours ago. The lock tried to keep out the mob, but there were just too many of them. Place is all cinders and everyone who was in there is out. Not just the blue cockade lot. Everyone.”

  Graves put his back to the wall and swore. Molloy smoothed his sleeves.

  “Thing is, it gets worse. I was in the White Horse an hour ago, and I heard a man asking about the younglings here. That little girl and her brother. Mean-faced old bugger, makes me look like a fucking cherub. Yellow face.”

  Graves put his hand to his face. “That’s him. The man who killed Alexander.”

  “Thought it might be, so I put down my glass and dashed over here to tell you, like my arse was on fire. It’s no great secret you are here, son. He’ll find out before long. He had another bloke with him too, big bastard.”

  Molloy stared down at his feet. “Thought I wouldn’t try the heroics,” he muttered. “Wasn’t sure, see? But wanted to get over here and tell you.”

  Graves had gone white.

  “Thank you. I am in your debt again, it seems.” He looked up a little guiltily. “And sorry about before.”

  Molloy snorted. “Wouldn’t worry about it. I’ve had worse welcomes in better houses than this, and don’t thank me for yourself, I’d still not wipe my shoes on you. But Miss Chase is all right, and the little girl. I have a daughter too.” He cast his eyes over the violets and sniffed again. “I’ve got to go and look to my own, but you shouldn’t stay here. He knows and he’s coming.”

  Graves ran his hand through his hair. “We can put up the shutters, lock the doors.”

  Molly shook his head. “Guess that’s what Justice Hyde thought, and they took his house apart in an hour. The yellow fella only has to start it and there will be a hundred ready to help him pull this place down in a minute. Then he can hunt the kids as he pleases. Look, I can recognize a pro when I see him, and he has a mate. You’ve got no hope here, not when every other bloke in the place is down at the warehouse. You got to run.”

  He suddenly straightened. Graves turned to see the doors to the study and parlor had been opened. Clode and Miss Chase stood in the respective doorways. He could tell by their faces they had heard enough. Miss Chase gave a friendly nod to Molloy and he smiled like the lord mayor on parade.

  “Where can we go?” Graves said.

  Clode reached into the pocket of his cloak and withdrew a crumpled letter, held it up in his fist.

  “I have a place.”

  17 JUNE 1775, STONE JAIL, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

  Hugh rested and breathed deeply as he climbed the steps to Stone Jail. His hearing was still muffled from the shattering fizz and kick of the guns. His wound clawed at him, and every time his vision blurred, he saw again the haze of gunsmoke and the look on the rebel’s face he had caught with his bayonet as he scrabbled among the remains of his lunch to reload. The bloom of blood around the man’s mouth seemed to grow, blossom, every time the image recurred until, as Hugh closed his eyes now, it seemed a fountain, a wave that had covered them both. He looked at his hand where it rested on the wall, expecting to see it bloody as fresh meat. It was white, passive, obediently holding his weight against the rough surface of the wall. He almost did not recognize it as his own.

  “Come to see your friend, Mr. Hugh?”

  “Wicksteed!” He looked up in mingled horror and surprise. “How in hell?”

  “I heard you had a friend among the wounded rebels, and so hurried down here to see what could be done. Very little, I’m afraid. It is a stomach wound. He won’t last the night, poor Shapin.”

  “He’s no friend of mine.”

  “Yet here you are!” Wicksteed shrugged. “So he must mean something to you. I shall let you talk to him alone. Who knows what he might say to a friend? I will wait for you, though. That wound of yours needs tending.”

  Hugh shouldered past him and into the little room, where some dozen men lay sleeping or unconscious on rough straw against the walls. Hugh could see why the rebels had not bothered to carry them with them on their retreat. He would be surprised if any of them made it till morning. There was a movement in the growing gloom. A middle-aged man struggled up onto his forearm.

  “Mr. Thornleigh? Mr. Hugh Thornleigh?”

  Hugh stepped forward, and dropped to his knees by the man’s bed. “I am Captain Thornleigh. Are you Shapin?”

  The man stared at him hard. “I am. I used to serve your household in Sussex.”

  Thornleigh looked down at him, saw the old s
car smile across his neck.

  “So how’d you come here then, Shapin?”

  The man lay down again and let out a long shuddering breath. He stared at the ceiling.

  “Funny you should ask me that, Captain. I have been asking myself the same question every morning for the best part of thirty years. ‘How did we get here, Shapin?’ You see, I still think I’m in the garret of your father’s house in London every time I wake up and open my eyes, even now. They said I stole, and they found what was stolen under my bed, and I began to think maybe I had, they told me so often, with such a sorry shaking of their heads.” He turned so that he could look straight into Hugh’s eyes. “But you know, Captain, I think I’ve finally worked it out. Just since that bloody-backed bastard put a hole in my stomach, it’s as if he shot some sense into me. All the pictures came together, and now I can see the whole thing.”

  Hugh spat on the straw; the phlegm was mixed with blood. The misfire of the gun had cost him two of his teeth, as well as much of his cheek and the damage to his eye. The man in front of him seemed to be a philosopher, and the constant smell of blood was beginning to itch at him. He thought he could feel it like something alive on his skin, curling down his arms under his sleeves. His head throbbed, a drum that seemed to turn the world darker at every beat; the edges of his vision were hazy, scrabbled with pain and dull red flashes.

  “That’s all fine, Shapin. Now tell me what you called me here to say.”

  The man smiled at him, a smile of great contentment-joy, even. It shone through the dirt and stubble on his face, and the eyes seemed almost childlike.

  “Oh yes, sir. Certainly, sir. This is it: your father, Captain, murdered a young girl. Fucked her, got her pregnant, then murdered her. Then, once your mother had pushed out an heir, and an extra son for good measure-that’s you, mate, the guarantee-he killed her too. Threw her downstairs right in front of me.”

  The words dropped round and distinct like a string of pearls from between Shapin’s yellow shredded lips, but could not make themselves understood through the beat of the drum in Hugh’s brain. He spoke automatically, flatly.

  “You’re lying.”

  “No. First thing I’ve got straight in thirty years.” Shapin smiled again as if bestowing a blessing. He licked his lips, savoring the words. “Lord Thornleigh took a locket from the girl. Had his hair in it, and kept it just to show himself what he had done. Then your mother found it, and he killed her for knowing. It was in her hand when she died. I was there. That’s what I remembered out there in the smoke.” He looked as happy as a schoolboy praised for a well done sum. “I’d seen the girl wear the locket. I heard your mother scream as she fell, and saw Lord Thornleigh watching from above when I picked her up at the foot of the stairs. I saw her blood on her mouth, and the locket in her hand. Yet it was only today, lying there in the field with the grass and sky all above me that I thought of her again, and it all came clear.”

  “You’re a liar. A thief.”

  The joy on the man’s face washed away, leaving him spitting and red.

  “I’m neither. Your father thought maybe I’d work it all out, and got rid of me before I did. Thirty years in this stinking place, an ocean away from him, then you rock up here, Captain. You. Little Master Hugh. I was ashamed to see you in my disgrace, at first. But I saw you across the camp and it all came running back. Then I realized, lying in the grass-you’re nothing. My blood is better than yours. You are a son of a murderous cunt, your family honor is a joke, your position a fake, you’re fucking poison, your bones aren’t fit to feed the dogs on. .”

  He continued to talk, his words flinging up from below Hugh, as if he had dug up the devil himself. The drum in Hugh’s head seemed to pick up the rhythm of his speech; it was faster, louder. Hugh felt himself back in the haze of smoke, up to his knees in blood, his mother lying over the redoubt in her ballgown, her stomach shot away by a rebel flintlock, a young girl running through the grass toward his father who stood, pistol raised in front of him; there was the rebel he had stuck so hard he had been forced to push him off the end of his bayonet with his boot, only now the rebel had Hawkshaw’s face, and he was laughing at him, they were all laughing, toasting his father and his whore, laughing at him as he stumbled toward the young girl through the blood; he felt again the explosion by his face, the whip of hot metal knocking him back to the ground, back into the blood. It swam over him into his mouth and eyes, he floundered to be free, everything was red.

  The beat slowed. He blinked, realized he had been kneeling, that his hands were on Shapin’s face, one around the back of his head, the other flattened over his nose and mouth. Shapin’s hand, which must have been clamped around his wrist, fell back. Hugh pulled his hands away and Shapin’s dead eyes stared up at him. Hugh extended his fingers, looked at the back of his hands: they shook. The drumbeat was gone. His brain was suddenly quiet, open.

  Getting to his feet, he headed to the door. The fact that Wicksteed flinched as he passed was the only reason he noticed him there. They looked at each other for a moment-Hugh blank-eyed, Wicksteed open-mouthed-then Hugh was gone, his boots striking the steps to echo as he blundered out into the street.

  The letter came three weeks later. His father had had a stroke, and his stepmother was pregnant and asked for his help. The letter must have been sent even before his own awkward congratulations had been received. His father’s health had lasted for barely three months of married life. His new mother expressed herself reasonably well, and the hand was more genteel than he had feared, knowing her reputation. He read it twice before putting on his uniform in best order and applying to his senior officer for leave. Had he been more himself, he would have noted, perhaps with sadness, the alacrity with which the request was granted, and a space found for him on the next ship to leave for Plymouth.

  Standing in the gloom of the camp the evening before his departure, Hugh thought again of Alexander. The notion that his brother might be out in the world, free of Lord Thornleigh and his new wife, free of Shapin and the Hall, seemed to drop the smallest measure of comfort into his soul, and for a little while the nightmares whispered rather than roared through his head. The very last conversation they had had was hurried and incomplete, an embrace and whisper as Alexander left the house for the last time. His elder brother had been very white after the conversation with his father, and paused only to hold his brother for a second and say, “Get out of here, Hugh. Stay away from that man.” Hugh did his best, but his best was not good enough.

  Wicksteed found him, as Hugh had felt he must at some point, the afternoon before he was due to sail. The man slipped up to him as he stood watching the ship that would take him home being loaded in the dock.

  “Captain Thornleigh?”

  Hugh shifted round and blinked at him. The slighter man was holding himself unnaturally still, his hands clasped in front of him.

  “Wicksteed.”

  “I hear you are to sail tomorrow. I am sorry to hear your father is unwell.”

  Hugh said nothing.

  “So you may even be Lord Thornleigh? Even now?” Wicksteed could hold his hands still, but his eyes still glittered.

  “I have a brother.”

  Wicksteed looked out at the ship as he said, “Not one anyone can lay their hands on, I hear.” Hugh did not reply. “Lord Thornleigh-there’s a title! Lord Thornleigh might be able to do whatever he wants in life, don’t you think? But then, perhaps even his son has always been free to do what he likes. Or think he can.”

  Hugh felt his stomach tighten as he thought of those final moments with Shapin. He tried not to ask himself what Wicksteed might have seen. His silence seemed to encourage the man into further speech.

  “But we must have friends in order to be able to act as we like, you know, Captain. To keep our secrets. To keep the family honor intact. To maintain our influence.”

  Hugh reached into his pocket and pulled out a bill he had kept folded there since the Commander had agreed he shoul
d leave. He cleared his throat and stood up straight.

  “I don’t quite understand you, Wicksteed. But I have this for you. In recognition of your services to the regiment.”

  He put the note in Wicksteed’s hands. The man unfolded it and stared. Hugh waited to be thanked, then watched in surprise as he saw Wicksteed begin to shake. Bright spots of color stood out in his cheeks.

  “Five pounds! How much love do you think that buys, Captain, in these days?” Hugh was shaken enough to step back. Wicksteed followed him, hissing into his face, “Is my loyalty worth only five pounds to you? With what I know? I know about the girl, I know your father is a murderer, and I know you are the same. Five pounds!”

  He twisted the note between his fingers and threw it onto the ground between them. Spittle collected at the corners of his mouth.

  “I’m not some fool! I can write. I have written. I can write again. Everything I know I can tell, and then what member of polite society would dare to speak to you? Your family’s story could start a revolution anywhere on earth. Will your victims’ friends feed you and tend you?”

  The last question was shouted into his face and in Hugh’s eyes Wicksteed’s face suddenly became a canvas on which some demon had painted and repainted the face of everyone he had ever wronged: every man he had ever killed, every woman he had disappointed, every tenant and child of his estate, and Hawkshaw, Shapin, Cartwright’s boy. He staggered back, his mouth open.

  “Just you wait, Thornleigh. I’ll come for you. I’ll tear your heart out and eat it in front of you, and then make you thank me for it.”

  Wicksteed turned on his heel and walked away. Hugh bent down and picked up the crumpled note, smoothing it flat with trembling fingers before folding it again into his pocket.

  PART VI

  1

  WEDNESDAY, 7 JUNE 1780, SUTTON STREET, NEAR SOHO SQUARE, LONDON