Instruments of Darkness

by Imogen Robertson

  The girl regarded her with great composure.

  “Mr. Hugh must look to himself. I have my own concerns, and have no mind to talk to the squire. I have told you, after all.” Her hand drifted across her belly. “And I have left Thornleigh. I am to go to London. That is why I am here. Michaels’s boy met me on the way down from the Hall.” Her face became a little flushed and her eyes brightened. The word “London” seemed to work on her like a tonic. Crowther looked a little confused.

  “You were keen enough to look out for Hugh last night, Patience, when you locked him away from his guns.”

  She nodded, and her speaking palm slid back to her thigh and gave it a pat.

  “My prospects are much improved today. I am to go into business—my cousin and I have decided to open a little shop. We shall all do quite nicely, I think. But you must let me go now. I am taking a ride to Pulborough to catch the evening stage. George will be wanting to leave by now.”

  There was a rattle and shout downstairs. Crowther glanced out of the window to see one of the local farmers’ lads on the front of his cart twisting round and looking up toward them, just as the girl had said. Patience bent down to pick up her cloak, and for the first time Crowther noticed the neat little bundle under the chair.

  “Be careful,” he said, watching her gather up the little parcel and annoyed, in spite of himself, at the ease and self-satisfaction in her movements. “From what we hear, Lord Thornleigh’s servants do not always prosper in London.”

  She stood and pulled her cloak over her shoulders.

  “You mean Shapin?” she asked. “The man that got transported, all those years ago?”

  Harriet nodded.

  “He was my uncle. He was killed fighting for the rebels in Boston in the end. Mother always said he was a simpleton really, surprised her that he turned thief. She didn’t think he had the wit for it.” She gathered her bundle into her arms, holding it over the slight curve of her belly. “I have wit. But perhaps some day I shall go to America too. They have thrown out all the kings and lords there. You will know where to find me in London by applying to Caleb Jackson’s tea shop in Southwark.”

  Crowther stepped forward.

  “One more thing, Patience.” He reached into his pocket and brought out the small shard of embroidery they had found on the thorns in the coppice. “Do you recognize this?”

  She glanced at it. “I do. Mr. Hugh used to have a waistcoat made of such stuff. Mrs. Mortimer made it up. He handed it over to Mr. Wicksteed in the winter, though. I had to take it in for him. Mr. Hugh is naturally broader in his shoulders.”

  She lifted the latch to the door, then turned back on her heel.

  “I don’t think Mr. Thornleigh did poison Cartwright, or do for Nurse Bray, but he is probably right when he says that he deserves to hang, you know. Most men do deserve it, I think—don’t you, ma’am?”

  She smiled at them again, and without waiting for a reply stepped out of the door and away, leaving Harriet and Crowther staring after her.

  “Good God,” Harriet said after a few moments. They heard a laugh outside and then the cart crunch forward on the road. Patience was away. Harriet imagined her holding onto its rocking sides with her smug smile and wide eyes, for all the world looking as if she had just finished licking cream from her lips. Crowther examined his fingertips.

  “What do you think—perhaps four months gone?” Harriet nodded. “Hugh’s child.”

  “So it seems he believes. I think it not unlikely.” A thought seemed to strike Crowther. “Are you shocked?”

  Harriet considered. “Perhaps I am. How upsetting to find oneself a prude.”

  Crowther looked at her. “I think it is not your prudery, but the fact you do not like the girl that leads you to be shocked. Come. Let us return to Caveley. Your sister will think us lost forever, and we must decide if we have enough to scare the squire back into Hugh’s camp.”

  “I am not sure we will, until Wicksteed’s motive and the manner of his hold over Hugh are made clearer. And Patience was right, we still have to struggle with Hugh’s conviction that he should hang for some reason. Until we can get under that, we have nothing.”

  Rachel had indeed been long anxious for their return. She greeted them rather white-faced, and before the room to the salon door had closed behind them she had put a letter into Harriet’s hands.

  “I have had one. They arrived just after you left. I am sure just such another waits you at home, Crowther.”

  She looked in danger of tears, so Crowther took her elbow and guided her to a seat. Harriet meantime had opened the letter and was reading it. High spots of color appeared in her cheeks. She looked up at her sister.

  “Were there any others?”

  “Mrs. Heathcote received one, and brought it straight to me as I was reading my own. Said she thought we should burn them, and that she would follow us to the ends of the earth.” Rachel smiled faintly. “I have never seen her so indignant.”

  “Good.”

  Harriet put the sheet in Crowther’s hand. It was neatly written, grammatically faultless, twenty lines of pure hate. Harriet was an adulteress, a witch; he an evil heathen who cut souls from men’s bodies and ate their flesh. They should leave the area before the populus knew what the letter-writer did and their homes were burned out from under them. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, it ended. Crowther was not surprised to find there was no signature.

  “I agree with Mrs. Heathcote,” he said, throwing the sheet onto the side table. Rachel eyed it nervously as if it still had the power to leap up of its own accord and bite her. “They should be burned. Do you recognize the writing?”

  Harriet sat down and dropped her gloves on top of the letter with studied carelessness.

  “Yes. I think it is that of Thornleigh’s housekeeper. The squire has probably been talking to her, or Wicksteed. She needs very little encouragement to be vicious at the best of times, from what I know of her.” She paused and folded her hands on her lap. “Well, I am glad we have got them.”

  “Oh, Harry!”

  “No, Rachel, I am. I feel we have been floundering around, discovering any number of unpleasant things, but getting no nearer to the truth. This . . .” she looked down at the letter, “seems to show that we are hitting home.”

  But Rachel would not be comforted.

  “Does it? Or does it mean that the people here are beginning to find us a rather troublesome bunch of neighbors?”

  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 scar 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 . . .”