Ace, King, Knave

by Maria McCann

  ‘Is that very dangerous?’ Sophia asks.

  ‘Few things are more so.’ He speaks with a grave emphasis, his eyes turned full upon her. ‘It would be wicked of me to pretend otherwise.’

  ‘Is there any chance of his knowing me?’

  He lays his hand upon hers: a fatherly gesture, intended to impart endurance.

  ‘My dear Madam, what am I to say? You naturally desire your husband to regain consciousness. Try to bear in mind that insensibility can be an instance of Divine Mercy. Were he conscious, his suffering would be intolerable.’

  It comes to Sophia that the man talks only of suffering or lack of it.

  ‘You don’t expect him to live.’

  ‘He may,’ Wilson quietly corrects her, ‘but I think it unlikely. I shall do my utmost, but my best advice is to prepare yourself. Pray for him, and leave the rest to Heaven.’

  ‘Edmund would laugh at prayer.’ The wretched tears, that have never gone quite away, are pricking now in her eyes and throat. ‘He has lived a very – imperfect life. How, in his present state, can he make his peace with God?’

  ‘That, I’m afraid, is a question I cannot answer,’ replies the surgeon. ‘But consider: how can we know what might be passing in your husband’s soul, even as we speak? To God all things are possible.’ He gives her hand one final pat and moves away to rummage in his bag.

  Edmund is again raised in the strong arms of Betsy-Ann Blore, turned and laid on his side. The blood around the smaller wound is beginning to congeal.

  Sophia stands aside, forcing herself to watch as Edmund is probed for splinters, then stitched up, his breath coming with an ominous wheeze. The spring before her marriage, Papa’s hunter, Blaze, impaled himself on a fence. Radley told Mama that the horse bubbled bloody foam at the mouth: will Edmund do that? Perhaps he is conscious, paralysed, speechless, suffering unimaginably as his flesh is gathered and crimped under the needle.

  Or perhaps he dreams himself safe, strolling amid pleasant gardens, when he was never more in danger: his soul, the immortal part of him, hangs upon the brink of the abyss.

  Nothing, she thinks, is more important than such moments. We know it as we sit by a sickbed or kneel by a grave. Then we arise, and go about the world’s business, and forget.

  ‘Sir,’ Betsy-Ann Blore is saying. Sophia becomes aware that Edmund’s breathing has changed, the wheeze grown shallower and more ragged.

  The surgeon shakes his head.

  ‘What’s happening to him, Sir?’

  ‘It’s as I thought, the internal bleeding.’ He cuts the thread with which he has pulled Edmund together like so much cloth. ‘If we keep him propped up, Miss, it will help him to breathe. You,’ he beckons to one of Cosgrove’s spying maids, ‘get cushions for his back.’

  Edmund moans. Sophia is on her knees directly, crying into his ear: ‘Repent, Edmund! God will forgive you ―’ so that the surgeon is obliged to edge her aside in order to continue propping the patient. Straightening, she sees Betsy-Ann’s sleeves rolled up, her naked forearms bloodied and trembling with the effort of holding Edmund’s torso upright.

  ‘He’s going,’ the maid says, as if seeing a tradesman off the premises. Since it is his privilege to pronounce upon the patient’s condition, the surgeon does not reply. He again takes up Edmund’s wrist, feeling for the pulse, then lays it down with a gentleness that tells Sophia everything she dreads to know. With a cry of exhaustion Betsy-Ann gives way, allowing Edmund to sink back.

  Sophia kneels once more by the side of the bed, clasping Edmund’s hand between her own. It is in this manner that she sees her husband die, insensible of either wife or mistress. His breathing ceases abruptly, without any marked change beforehand; his eyes remain closed but his mouth falls a little open. The maid, with a knowing look, pinches it shut. Sophia watches Edmund’s face grow pale, as if the skull is working its way up to the surface of his skin. His mortal flesh is now a death mask; the immortal Edmund is fled, gone to stand before the Judgement Seat. What can he find to say there, after such a life! Yet God is Love and has Eternity to hear his creature’s plea and consider it, perhaps to forgive.

  ‘A very sad business, a dreadful business,’ the surgeon murmurs. Sophia realises that her torn shoulder is pincered with pain. She does not move away; it seems as if she and Edmund are suffering together, even though he is no longer here. ‘Altogether shocking. Such a fine fellow’ (will he never hold his tongue?) ‘should have lived to see seventy.’

  Even the heartless maid is now gazing on Edmund. Around the bed, the living are fixed, fascinated by death, until Sophia has to swallow down a hysterical urge to laugh.

  It is not until the sheet is pulled over Edmund’s face that Sophia realises she has not the wherewithal to pay the surgeon. She stammers out an apology but the man assures her this is quite unnecessary. Nor will he call at her house: it is already agreed that Mr Cosgrove will settle the account.

  ‘Let him, since he wants to,’ whispers Betsy-Ann. ‘Takes off some of the scandal.’

  Sophia has not sufficient strength for contention. She submits, asking only what she should do about the body.

  ‘That will depend upon your personal arrangements,’ replies the surgeon. ‘You may send someone to bring him away. I’m sure Mr Cosgrove will help, so far as it lies within his power.’

  ‘He is too kind.’ How does one arrange a funeral in this city? For that matter, she has no very clear idea of how it would be done at Buller, but supposes Papa would speak with the minister and the carpenter, who between them would engage everyone else. Here she has nobody to whom she can apply. So very private has her religion become that even the habit of churchgoing has fallen away.

  It occurs to her that collecting the remains is only the beginning of her perplexities. Should Edmund be interred in the chapel at Buller Hall? How intolerable to pray there, with his memorial in full view! Besides, he was never of the place, and despised everything it stood for; had he become master, he would have pillaged the estate. And then the business of the inscription: Mr Zedland, or Mr Hartry?

  Was the man lying on the bed ever her husband at all?

  Downstairs a man in a greasy wig is writing in a notebook. Cosgrove presents him as an officer, come to take statements about the night’s dreadful events, and asks if Mrs Hartry is equal to answering his questions. Mrs Hartry replies that she is. She explains that she had not seen her husband for some days, and fearing his taste for gaming had got the better of him, had come to the club to see if he was there. While waiting in the crowd she was attacked and threatened by Harry Blore, to whom Mr Hartry owed money. A humiliating scene ensued, followed by Blore’s assault upon her husband.

  ‘Did you see Mr Blore fire the fatal shot?’

  ‘I heard it. He showed me the pistol earlier.’

  The man, a skilled scribe, notes her answers almost as quickly as she can produce them. When he looks up his eyes are shrewd.

  ‘And the other lady? What is her part in all this?’

  Sophia is at a loss.

  ‘Harry Blore was my brother,’ says Betsy-Ann. ‘My name is Betsy-Ann Blore.’

  ‘Did you know Mrs Hartry before tonight?’

  ‘Miss Blore was a friend of my husband,’ Sophia replies, having by now worked out that the flimsiest investigation will reveal Betsy-Ann’s visits to the house. ‘I’m not familiar with London and I wished to see Cosgrove’s. She offered to accompany me.’

  ‘Very obliging, I’m sure,’ says the man, sitting back and putting the quill between his teeth. He’s letting her see that he’s noticed the garments. ‘And you disguised yourself? Made something of a . . . a prank of it?’

  ‘I wished not to be recognised.’

  ‘And why was that, Mrs Hartry?’

  ‘So my husband shouldn’t think I was spying on him.’ Although I was. It rings so loudly in Sophia’s ears that surely the man can hear it.

  ‘It’s fortunate for you, Mrs Hartry, that you were standing where you were
. A number of witnesses have confirmed that you were placed almost opposite the door when the shot was fired.’

  ‘Do you mean it might have hit me?’

  ‘I mean you could been under suspicion. We found no pistol on Mr Blore or anywhere near his body. Several persons report the shots as coming from further off, from a tree at the edge of the square. We believe there may have been an assassin concealed amid its branches. The first shot hit Mr Hartry, the second Mr Blore.’

  ‘Someone in a tree?’

  ‘That’s my information. Are you quite sure, Mrs Hartry, that Mr Blore showed you a pistol?’

  ‘I saw something shiny. He said I’d get a taste of it.’

  ‘Something shiny,’ the man repeats. ‘Not necessarily a pistol.’

  ‘He carried a shiv,’ says Betsy-Ann.

  ‘Is that so?’ He reaches into his pocket and brings out a brutal-looking knife. ‘And is this the one?’ The haft is of some dull grey metal, the blade about eight inches long.

  Betsy-Ann nods. ‘Could be.’

  ‘I doubt he meant to use this on Mr Hartry,’ the officer tells her. ‘Too many witnesses. He wanted the satisfaction of milling him, that’s all. Someone else had different ideas.’

  ‘But he was holding the knife?’ Sophia asks.

  ‘We found it between the flagstones. It’s my opinion that he lost it as he fell.’

  They are ushered into Mr Cosgrove’s personal carriage with assurances of continuing assistance. The man has been kind far beyond what was expedient: at the memory of her earlier contempt, Sophia’s face floods with shame.

  As they are driven away she cannot help but look back. Behind the great windows the players continue unabashed, no doubt stimulated by the frisson of passion and scandal attaching to tonight’s events. Rain has begun to fall. Night air and drizzle are sucked into the carriage but she lacks the energy to shut them out: it is Betsy-Ann who leans forward and closes the blind. ‘What will you do now, Madam? Go back to Zedland?’

  For an instant Sophia thinks it is Edmund she means. ‘I expect so,’ she says. Her future existence rises before her in pitiless detail: that poor dupe Sophy Buller, the talk of every tea party, her life a blend of ennui and humiliation.

  ‘It’ll be hard for you after Town,’ says Betsy-Ann, who seems to have forgotten her earlier fury. ‘Unless you leave your papa’s house, you know.’

  ‘Marry, you mean?’ She can barely restrain a laugh: Edmund not yet in the ground, and his mistress matchmaking on his wife’s behalf! She toys with the idea of informing Betsy-Ann that – Edmund having squandered her modest portion, partly on Betsy-Ann herself – she has nothing with which to attract a suitor.

  ‘All men aren’t alike,’ says Betsy-Ann.

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘Once you’re over this, you’ll be right enough. Comfortable.’

  If Sophia were not so beaten down she would order the woman to stop prattling. Comfortable! Possibly this is for Betsy-Ann a mode of begging, of hinting that her own prospects are unappealing, but the truth of the matter is that at present, Sophia cannot care about Betsy-Ann Blore. Her sentiments are desiccated, hard, parched: in a nutshell, used up. Even the thought of her parents produces only a sullen dread. They will want to preach and moralise when the sole thing she craves is privacy, the better to grieve. For the grief has barely started: she has seen enough mourners to know that.

  ‘I could perhaps work for a chaunter cull,’ says Betsy-Ann. ‘I make up songs in my head but I can’t write ’em. I reckon he could put me to use.’

  ‘Indeed,’ says Sophia.

  She insists that the driver go first to Betsy-Ann’s lodging. By the time they arrive, the moon has come out from behind the clouds and Sophia has sufficient curiosity about this place, which she has so long imagined, to exert herself and raise the window blind. There stands Miss Blore, ghostly on the house steps, her face turned back towards the carriage while she fumbles for her key and the driver, instructed by Cosgrove, waits to see her safely inside. Sophia also waits, with a sense that some part of her life is ending, unwitnessed, in this obscure street. At last the key is produced. As Betsy-Ann puts it to the lock and enters, a glimmering candle appears at a top-floor window: the landlady, Sophia supposes, curious to see what company her lodger keeps.

  She feigns not to see Betsy-Ann’s wave of farewell. Instead, she sits back in the shadowed interior as the vehicle pulls away. Afterwards she remembers: the lodging was not the one she wanted to see, the one where Betsy-Ann was installed by Edmund. She was mistaken in that, as in so many things.

  At her own house she happens to glance upwards in alighting. There are chinks of light between the first-floor shutters. The candles should all be snuffed, and the servants in bed: evidently they are profiting by her absence. She hands the driver the shilling she had saved for a chair on the way home.

  The bell brings a sound of footsteps within but to her surprise, no extinguishing of the lights upstairs, which have evidently been forgotten. What does it matter? She will soon be rid of the entire household.

  A faint rustle announces the arrival of a maid at the door.

  ‘Who is it?’ Fan’s voice is anxious.

  ‘Mrs Zedland.’

  ‘Mrs Zedland, Madam ― !’ The bolt shoots and there at last is Fan, candle in hand.

  Sophia wonders what the driver makes of Mrs Zedland who is also Mrs Hartry, but he is already moving off. She steps inside, fatigue sucking at her. Fan helps her off with the pelisse: if she recognises it, she gives no sign.

  ‘Forgive my asking, Madam, but is anything amiss? We thought you’d had an accident, or you were lost ―’

  ‘You see I’m not.’

  ‘― and you have company, you see ―’

  Company, at this hour? She starts as a man’s step is heard descending the stair.

  ‘Mr Letcher?’

  ‘Sophy? Is that you?’

  ‘Papa!’ For Papa it is, holding out a lamp, and behind him, beyond its dim circle of light, an indistinct figure in a night wrapper: Mama.

  Instead of coming directly to embrace her, Papa holds the lamp aloft and studies his daughter. Once more, Sophia is aware that her shoes are damp and disagreeable, her entire appearance bedraggled in the extreme. Papa exclaims in disgust. ‘What’s that smell?’

  ‘Vomit,’ Sophia murmurs. ‘Blood.’

  ‘Blood? What the Deuce ―?’

  Mama hurries forward. ‘O, my darling, are you hurt? Shall we send for help? Who did this to you – Edmund?’

  50

  O I am one loves company

  Drink up

  With drink and dancing night and day Drink up drink up

  Give me a man with an open purse A merry heart, a mighty tarse Who’ll love and never count it loss Drink up drink up drink up

  Damn parsons they’re but buzzing flies Drink up

  That fill men’s heads with canting lies Drink up drink up

  Gay company’s the thing my boys With kisses and with pretty toys To find the way to sweetest joys Drink up drink up drink up

  I gave my love my heart to hold Drink up

  Put in his pocket with his gold Drink up drink up

  I kissed him and his ring I wore He turned me then from out his door And took up with a richer whore Drink up drink up drink up

  I beat him when his back was turned Drink up

  I said Take that ’tis fairly earned Drink up drink up

  He said My love pray do not scold I must have her for truth be told She has a hundred pounds in gold Drink up drink up drink up

  I took from him my diamond ring Drink up

  I took from him most everything Drink up drink up

  There’s nothing so becomes a whore As does the keeping of a score And chalking it upon the door Drink up drink up drink up

  His quittance I have fairly signed Drink up

  It’s out of sight and out of mind Drink up drink up

  And I must find another one

  To kiss m
y lips and plump my bum Now my old cully’s dead and gone, Drink up drink up drink up

  51

  The drove lies between flooded fields and he is walking before her, talking with Keshlie, Keshlie skipping, holding his hand. The back of Keshlie’s gown comes undone and begins to drop away from her, Betsy-Ann fussing along behind, gathering up the stuff, tying it anyhow, hoping nobody will notice, until her sister is naked but still skipping, seemingly unaware, such a daisy she is, and Ned turns and winks at Betsy-Ann, and turns Keshlie to face her and the child is smeared with something, some dust from the roadside where she has fallen. Ned says, ‘What a dirty little thing,’ and takes off his hat – his finest, with the gold brocade – and makes to put it over Keshlie’s head, but instead it goes over Betsy-Ann’s, and she struggles in darkness, and by the time she gets the hat off they are far away in the field, the child still skipping, water splashing up round her feet and her white body twinkling.

  *

  Rolled in her old quilt, she lies stretched before the hearth. A sullen light oozes, rather than shines, into the room; a faint wisp of yellow-grey smoke shows that the fire is not quite out. On her hands and knees Betsy-Ann drags herself to the coal scuttle, and pours some slack over the embers. She kneels there with the bellows, breathing life into it, Romeville’s familiar waking noises all around her. Somewhere kegs are being loaded onto a dray. A woman down the street is crying hot rolls. She thinks of her Eye, in Shiner’s place, lying open now and ransacked.

  Blind Eye.

  She hugs her knees, hoping to still a queasy curdling that she knows comes from drink. Last night when she came home, O, didn’t she go it! A week’s worth down her throat: laughing and crying together, and screaming, and rolling on the floor.

  The fire begins to pick up. She stays a long time unmoving, watching the smoke. No sneaking about with Ned now, of any description: he’s secured, the property of his autem mort.

  When she saw the black boy, she thought nothing of it. Not such a fashion, now, as they used to be, but still you see them. He was out of livery and might have been anybody’s. Shockingly turned out, in fact, his shoes hanging off his heels: what could Ned be playing at, not to find him in better togs? The boy was already backing off, heading towards the tree. She supposed he was too shabby to enter, and was there to see the Quality go in and out while he waited for his master.