Jeffrey, sword drawn, had little more than a glimpse of a middle-sized man in a blue coat with white waistcoat. Then he went out at full-length lunge for the right side of the attacker’s chest.
But he had no chance against this newcomer. Not many swordsmen, caught off-balance at full stretch, could have recoiled to guard-position and still parried an oblique thrust he must wheel round to meet.
The newcomer parried it—almost with ease.
He was breathing hard, but so was Jeffrey. The parry had thrown the newcomer into an awkward position for a riposte. But he made no riposte; he needed none to show his mastery. Instead he laughed in Jeffrey’s face.
“Don’t try it,” he advised. “You can’t touch me, as you see. This small-sword-play of yours, though tolerable enough for a novice, is not what Hamnet Tawnish thinks it is.”
“Else you need not have troubled to stab me in the back, if you had thought you could do it fairly?”
“‘Fairly’? What is ‘fairly’? Don’t talk like a fool!”
The two points, still engaged, circled and ticked against each other. Both men, strung to guard-alertness with knees bent and left hand balanced out, watched each other’s eyes through the line of the crossed blades.
Jeffrey saw a flatfish, middle-aged face with a snub nose and a contemptuous smile. He saw in it, mysteriously, a personal hatred he had begun to share.
Silver lace glittered on the newcomer’s coat. White waistcoat and stockings stood out vividly against blackish matting. Feinting several times, with a dazzle of light on the blade, he forced his adversary round so that Jeffrey’s back was towards the grotto and his own back towards the stairs. Then he disengaged and moved a little away.
“Don’t talk like a fool, I say! Where’s the girl?”
“What girl? And to whom do I owe the honour of being near assassinated?”
“My name is Skelly, Ruthven Skelly, aforetime Major Skelly of a most worthy regiment. Now where is Kitty Wilkes?”
“I don’t know. I should be unlikely to say so if I did.”
“Do you want the steel through your guts now?”
“You must try to put it there. I am taking you into custody for attempted murder.”
“Come, that’s, uncommonly kind of you. How do you propose to do this?”
“If not in one way, then in another. Put up your sword.”
Afterwards Jeffrey could never remember just when the fiddle-scraping and the whispery voice from below had ceased. He thought they had stopped abruptly when he fell flat to the floor in dodging the thrust at his back. But he was never sure.
What he did see now, in the dim light from the front windows, was the burly and blue-chinned man who had just emerged from the enclosed stairwell a dozen feet behind Major Skelly’s back.
This man, one of those to whom he had made a signal not long ago on the balcony at the King’s Head, was a constable. He served the same function by day that a watchman served by night. From a thong at his wrist hung the heavy ironwood truncheon which was his badge of authority as pole and lanthorn were the watchman’s.
“Major Skelly,” Jeffrey said, “will you put up your sword?”
“Where’s the wench? She has not taken refuge with her aunt; that door has been shut to her for years. She is not hiding below-stairs, or with that thievish girl-cousin who supports her. She may not even be here. Your life will be the longer if you tell me. Where is she?”
“Major Skelly, you had better put up your sword. Look behind you.”
“Come, have done with this. Do you think I’m to be gulled with the oldest swordsman’s trick that—”
“Lampkin, below the shells. Break it!”
Major Skelly’s eyes changed as he saw Jeffrey’s. He had braced himself to turn, but even his incredible speed was not enough. The ironwood truncheon rose and smote down; it struck the sword-blade high up, just under the two circular hilt-pieces called shells; the tempered steel snapped with a crack like an explosion in this confined space.
Somebody uttered a cry, but not in their group. Briefly Jeffrey looked round, towards the windows at the front and the farthest grotto on the right. When he glanced back again, the constable named Lampkin had gripped a left hand on Major Skelly’s shoulder. Major Skelly remained unshaken, still smiling. But his eyes had changed, murderously, and Jeffrey did not meet them.
“Well, my blood,” Lampkin said to Jeffrey, with amiable heartiness, “what’s to be done now?”
“Did you observe what happened?”
“All of it, my blood! Who was the fiddler?”
“I can’t say. He was none of my doing. As for this one, don’t trust a round-house. Hale him to Justice Fielding’s and lock him up there.”
“Now, do you think you can hold me?” enquired Major Skelly. “Do you truly think you can hold me?”
“Stow your whids,” said Lampkin, raising the truncheon; “stow your whids, you damned sneaking-budge rascal!”
“I don’t blame him,” said Major Skelly, ignoring Lampkin and looking at Jeffrey. “He knows no better. You will see me again, good sir. And sooner than you think. And alone. And you will not like it.”
“Take him, Lampkin.”
Major Skelly nursed a numbed wrist as he was flung round, but he smiled over his shoulder. The pieces of the broken sword, polished blade and wire-woven grip with engraved knuckle-guard gleamed against the matting. Fear, hot and unstifled, gripped Jeffrey before he could fight it away.
He walked towards the windows at the front, and looked round the edge of the last grotto on the right. A door was there, in a section of wall projecting almost as far as the grotto. He saw light-coloured eyes and dark hair in a half-open doorway.
“There is no more danger at present, Kitty,” he said. “You had better come out now.”
X
The Bagnio in Covent Garden
ON THE SOUTH-EAST SIDE of Covent Garden, as the hands of the clock crawled past six, he faced Kitty Wilkes again in another room which also was two storeys above the street-floor like the room at the waxwork.
But all else had changed, including his mood and Kitty’s.
Many persons would have been astonished at this room’s handsome appointments, no less than its fragrant cleanliness. Against a light-brown wainscot, polished until each panel shone, hung large pictures in gilded frames. But a tester-bed stood in the alcove. Below the dressing-table, draped in silk, you could see projecting the edge of a portable wooden washing-stand with a copper bowl and underneath, like a drawer, a wooden bidet which could be drawn out.
Kitty had not failed to observe this.
Stolid and yet timid, even now she would not remove her black cloak with the hood drawn up. She would neither sit down nor touch the tea he had ordered for her together with a sneaker of punch for himself. Her light-grey eyes, set off by dark lashes, regarded him from inside the hood as though from inside a mask.
“I will aid you,” she declared with passion. “Indeed and indeed I will tell you what you wish to know. But, oh, sir, pray make allowance for my natural sensibilities! Don’t be peery; don’t be suspicious; don’t press me!”
“Nobody has pressed you, Kitty. Will you allow this?”
“Oh, indeed I do!”
But she lowered her eyes when she said it, after a quick glance at the door.
“You begged to be conveyed away from Mrs. Salmon’s—”
“Oh, and I am grateful!”
“You begged to be conveyed from there to a place where we might talk privily. Well, that was two hours ago; and I have allowed time for your natural sensibilities. I went below-stairs; I went through the hot-room and the hot-bath …”
“The hot-room?”
“It is in the cellar, and no whit sinister. It is the sweating-room attached to the Oriental baths at this establishment, the only one of its kind in London. I sent a waiter to fetch my good clothes from the other side of the square; and I wear those clothes now, as you see.”
“I do
indeed. And you locked the door when you left me! You locked me in here!”
“There was no intent to alarm you, be assured. Yet we are both acquainted with another young woman who has a taste for running away at any awkward or inconvenient time. You had some such seeming about you, or so I thought, from the moment we arrived here.”
“Pray, sir, where are we?”
“It is a bagnio. It is called the Hummums.”
“Yes. I feared as much.”
Kitty turned towards the pewter tea-service on a table beside the fireplace. Then, wringing her hands, she turned back again.
“Most fine gentlemen, I know, think it a point of honour that they must seduce or ravish any servant-maid who shall take their fancy. They even think it comical if she should resist. But I had hoped for better behaviour of you. Sir, sir, this is not worthy! I am only trying to help Miss Peg and Sir Mortimer!”
“Kitty, one moment!”
“It is not true, as Major Skelly seemed to think, that my aunt’s door is forever closed to me. We quarrelled; I own it. Aunt Gabrielle gave me something of education, and hoped I should take upon myself the conduct of the waxwork. She was much incensed when I thought to find an easier life as a lady’s maid.
“Well, she was right; I was the fool and dupe. After what has happened I can’t return to St. James’s Square, even if I should desire it: which I don’t. But how shall I return to my aunt either,” and again Kitty glanced at the tea-service, “if I am to be drugged and’ ravished in a common bagnio? Because there is so little virtue among fine ladies, is there no virtue at all in this world? Is it even comical that there should be?”
“I don’t think it comical, Kitty.”
“In your heart you do. They all do.”
“Whatever I think or once thought, I am well paid out for it. Now, will you listen to me?”
“Sir—”
“There is no drug in the tea and no design against your virtue. I brought you here because I await a message from a certain Dr. Abel; it is the only place he knows to find me. But he is not here; he has sent no message; I can’t say what may have happened.— Wait!”
The clock at St. Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, rang the half-hour after six. Once more Jeffrey went to the window and looked out.
The light was fading into dusk. Some drunk soldiers reeled out from under the eastern piazza, with prostitutes running beside them as though at football. Otherwise Covent Garden lay in somnolence until it should awake with the uproar of gaming-houses and night-cellars.
From here on the south-east side, fairly high up, he had a good view out over the square. At both Covent Garden and Drury Lane Theatres, whose shapes he could see ahead of him and on the right, the play would have begun. Pit and boxes would be filled to watch wigged actors declaiming under chandeliers bright with candles; Mr. Garrick himself was appearing in King Lear.
But the light was fading here, and hope with it. On Jeffrey’s left, as he glanced down towards the turning where Southampton Street mounted to Covent Garden from the Strand, he could see an undertaker’s sign, a tavern sign, the red-and-white striped pole which marked a barber’s. But nobody moved on the cobblestones; there was no sign of Dr. Abel.
“Sir—!”
“Well, have it as you please.” Jeffrey turned back. “Yet my sole design, like yours, is to aid Miss Peg and fetch her out of Newgate before the doors are locked this night. Are you aware she has been sent to Newgate?”
“Yes, I am aware. Madam said it would be Bridewell—oh, most gleeful! Since last night there has been little talk in that house save of London Bridge and Bridewell, London Bridge and Bridewell, London Bridge and Bridewell. But at scarce noon today Miss Peg sent a message for much of her clothes to be delivered to the keeper’s lodging at Newgate. I chose them; a footman took them. And almost I decided not to aid her.”
“Not to aid her?”
“As though she took joy at being imprisoned! As though she would mock and taunt at us all! It was hateful.”
“Have you ever been inside Newgate Prison? Even as one of the visitors, that’s to say, who throng there in droves from eight in the morning until nine at night?”
“Visit Newgate? No, never! It would terrify me.”
“Then do you fancy she is not more terrified as a prisoner? Peg is frightened out of her wits and strikes these attitudes to keep up courage. It may drive her to some greater act of folly if she is not released. Do you dislike her so very much?”
“Dislike her? Dislike her? Oh, God help me, I am more attracted to her than is seemly or than befits my place. I—I own at times I have been envious of her; she has so much in this world that others don’t have. But I have tried to atone for this. Have my actions not atoned?”
“They have. Now look at me, Kitty.”
“Sir—!”
“It grows darker, but look at me! Do you still believe, can you possibly believe, I have any intent to seduce or ravish you?”
“No. No, not now.” Kitty spoke after a pause, and with something like a sob. “I am not clever; I am sometimes stupid; I am always fearful. Well, what would you have of me?”
“I must learn what you desired to tell me in St. James’s Square this morning. I must learn all you know or even suspect. All!”
Shadows thickened in corners of the room; shadows blurred the paintings in gilded frames; shadows crept out across polished boards to where Kitty stood at the fire-place. She whipped off her cloak, folded it with care, and draped it across a chair. Then, breathing quickly, she stood there in a gown that was of coarse green serge but greatly became her and had a frill of lace round the square opening of the bodice.
“All I am sure of,” she said, “is that I was resolved to hazard it when I listened outside the door and overheard what you and madam were saying in madam’s dressing-room. Yes, I listened; we all listen. And again it was London Bridge and Bridewell, London Bridge and Bridewell, with the other things in madam’s wicked mind. Yet I was sure afraid. When I detained you below-stairs in the foyer, and Hughes pounced upon us …”
“Hughes?”
“That is the knavish steward whose skull you near cracked against the cabinet; and, oh, I am so glad you did! I hoped and prayed he had not heard what I said to you. If he had not, I thought, I might still meet you at the waxwork. Each week, if it should be convenient to madam, I am permitted an afternoon free to go and visit my aunt Gabrielle.”
“To visit your aunt?”
“Aunt Gabrielle, I tell you, will have me back at any time I so desire it. But I do not truly go to visit her; I have been too foolishly proud, since I said I could fend for myself. I go only to meet my cousin Denise at the door of the waxwork, when Denise is free too. We walk in the Park, and eat cream buns, and dream of what our lives might be.”
“Denise is the small scrawny girl, very precocious, who behaved this day like a great mistress of intrigue?”
“Yes; and so she is. She envies me; I envy her; it is ever the same.”
“Well? Go on.”
“Well!” Kitty wrung her hands. “The afternoon I am permitted to go abroad is always a different day. This week’s was to be a Saturday, today. Because it was arranged aforetime, I hoped I might go from the house unsuspected. And I ran to take counsel with Denise. ‘But what,’ said I, ‘if Hughes overheard? What if they be peery of me? What if madam should send someone to follow when I speak with Mr. Wynne?’ ‘Lord, lord,’ cried Denise, ‘but that is not easy.’”
“Yes. I can hear her saying it.”
“My aunt is ill; that is truth; she can’t leave her bed. We could act unbeknownst to her, Denise said. There—there is a street-fiddler we know well. He calls himself Luigi, as so many musicians take foreign names, though he is no foreigner at all.”
“You sent that fiddler?”
“Well, Denise did. ’Twas she who thought of it.”
“What was the fiddler to do?”
“Luigi (oh, or so we thought!) would follow and warn you or
me if anything went wrong.”
“How?”
Kitty lifted her shoulders.
“If you arrived soon after four o’clock, as I thought you must, Denise could hold back the first group of visitors; this is always done. She would know you from my describing; she could send you ahead of the others, with a broad hint to seek me on the floor of the tableaux. And I should be waiting where you found me: on the enclosed stairs up to my aunt’s lodgings, with the door to the stairs half open so that I might run either way without being surprised.”
“But the fiddler?”
“Luigi would wait in the street. When you should arrive, Denise should make a sign at him through the window to enter after you. She would pretend she desired to turn him away, but yield and allow him to go with the first group. Then, while Denise took long at the business of showing our visitors the parcel of dwarfs and giants on the street-floor, Luigi could leave the group and creep upstairs to make sure no person had followed to do us harm.
“Don’t you perceive it? By that time, Denise swore, Luigi would know whether a trap had been set. If no person followed you, I would come out and meet you. If some person did follow, Luigi would play and sing a tune that would warn me.”
“London Bridge Is Falling Down?”
“What else? What else was suitable? Denise said. And who is peery of a street-fiddler, sawing away either without-doors or within? If I heard that tune, I could remain hid with the door locked. Luigi could whisper to you that you must go away. Oh, I thought it so clever and so crafty! Were we to blame if the plan miscarried?”
“Nobody blames you, Kitty.”
“You—you mean that truly?”
“I mean it truly. But how, in exactness, did the plan miscarry?”
“Why, we had not thought any would try to stab you in the back! We had thought any follower must be among the visitors through the front door, and not hid in the waxwork since the morning opening as Major Skelly must have been. I can’t in exactness say what occurred, but it can be guessed. When Luigi saw him creep after you with sword drawn, Luigi’s poor courage came as unstuck as mine. He played only a stave or two about London Bridge, and then, as afterwards you heard Denise cry in the uproar, he ran away as though from the devil.”
The Demoniacs Page 13
