Once she’d paid the huge rental amount for her mooring, she wandered over the bridges. This city always took her by surprise. Suddenly, it was no longer late at night but the turn of another promising evening, and Bristol was teeming, and she was flotsam on its rivers, pushed this and that way by the hawkers and the hoi polloi on Boreal Avenue. She headed past the castle, which was webbed in scaffolding, and on up the hill past the houses of the middle and lesser guilds. Western enlistment posters lolled from many of the walls, but little else had changed. Apart, that was, from Alfies. She stopped at its gate, and felt the ponderous chain. Just as she’d heard in a letter from Denise, it was closed.
After Clyst and Invercombe, Alfies’ rooms had seemed small, and its rules impossibly small-minded. Pregnancy was treated like an illness, and a sense of homesick guilt hung heavy in the air. The other girls had made decent enough companions, Marion supposed, but none of them had been at their best: they came; their babies were born in a separate wing; without goodbyes, they away went again. Their few trips down into the city were closely chaperoned, as if they might escape—but where could you possibly escape to? The question had begun to obsess Marion as her time grew near, and she became mistrustful of the late-night tea, and was pleased to find that she was sleeping far less well, and grinding her teeth through prayers, once she’d starting watering it into an aspidistra. She’d stuck so far with the deal she’d made with Alice Meynell, but had decided that she couldn’t possibly relinquish her baby.
Marion had had no real idea what to expect from her confinement. The girls were full of stories, but they were best discounted, and Mam had been no help on the one tearful occasion she’d visited, and neither had Denise. Marion had never felt more alone, nor more determined, and she’d hidden a bundle of old clothing to cover Alfies’ ridiculous uniform and to wrap her baby, and followed Master Pattison, and listened carefully to the spells he muttered at locked doorways. Then her time came, and thoughts of any kind beyond getting through the next wave of pain were an impossibility. But still she was fighting not just for the life of her baby but against everything that had brought her here, and she batted away the sponge-soaked potions Mistress Pattison tried to squeeze past her lips. Finally, there was an end to it, and in her exhaustion she’d been sure she heard a baby crying. Even as the weariness surged into her, she calculated how she might conserve her non-existent strength. The room swarmed—and here came Mistress Pattison, bearing her baby back to her after the washing and weighing. But she could tell that something was wrong.
Marion laid her hands on Alfies’ gate as that white room swarmed around her with the vividity of hallucination. She saw the dead, blue-white thing she was offered, and heard Mistress Pattison’s words. Never took a breath. Some of them, the Sweet Good Elder wants to have back right away … Her world had collapsed at that moment in a way it hadn’t through all the things which had happened before. The cold, dead child had been prised from her, and she’d fallen into feverish sleep. Three days later, and without seeing any of the other girls again, Marion had left Alfies and had walked into the city and along the Avon Cut.
Turning back towards the city now, she headed down around the edges of the empty markets she’d once wandered with Ralph and then on towards the dreamhouse where Denise worked. It was still too early for the evening’s trade, and there was a long delay before the door opened. Marion was conscious as she stood inside that the earlier rain was still drying out of her clothes, and of the riverish smell they gave off as she and Denise hugged.
‘Owen’s in Bristol,’ Denise said. Although it would have been a lot better if you’d told me you were coming. Don’t they have telegrams up in that hospital place?’
You could never say, Marion thought as they set out along Silver Street towards the Halls of the Mariners’ Guild, that Denise was unchanged. Her sister had never settled on merely being pretty—the ruffed and puffed red extravagances of this particular season’s western fashions were extraordinary—but beneath all of that, she was starting to look just a little aged. She grew breathless from the mere business of walking, and, between gales of perfume, gave off the characteristic sour-dust smell of dreamhouse smoke. Marion reminded herself that her sister was now passing thirty, just as she would soon be doing herself.
They rung at the Mariners’ gates and waited as Owen emerged from a many-windowed annexe. Of course, it wasn’t the old Owen, and Marion wondered if she might have walked by this figure, fatter now in his uniform, with his scalp gleaming through his hair, if she’d passed him in the street. And then there was the question of where a mariner, a dream-mistress and a rivergirl might choose to eat, and they settled on an artificial-looking inn on the rise of Park Street. The place was thinly busy, threaded with tinny music and smoke. Nailed on the walls for purposes which Marion presumed were decorative were many implements she recognised. There were shrimp nets, whelkers’ hoes, a half-rotted rudder, and it struck her that something shorefolk and riverfolk had in common was that their ways of life were now regarded as quaint.
‘So, Marion,’ Denise said, ‘I’m still to say you’re a nurse, am I?’
‘I’ve been at the infirmary for four years, Denise.’
Undaunted, Denise gave Marion a We-all-know-why-that-is look. ‘Don’t know why you keep hopping about so. I’m sure you’d be good at something if you kept to it. And don’t think we dream-mistresses have it all easy,’ she added.
Owen pushed and picked at his plate. The silver-buttoned greyness of his helmsman’s uniform rather stood out here in Bristol, where belonging to one of the Great Guilds was no longer the sure statement of identity it had once been.
‘Why people can’t just get along with each other?’ Denise said philosophically. ‘The number of times I’ve had to help some Master Accountant or Senior Tailor dream they’re fighting for victory in the West, I feel as if I’ve won it all already …’
‘What I can’t believe,’ Owen said, ‘is how anyone can take pride in slaving.’
‘We don’t use that word here,’ Denise hissed.
‘You haven’t seen what it’s like, sis. They still transport people in ships over from Africa. Oh, I know they say it doesn’t happen, but it does. Just board one once, and you’d never touch sugar again.’
‘Well, I doubt if that’s…’ Denise trailed off.
‘So,’ Owen said. ‘What about you, Marion? What’s your position?’
‘I don’t agree with bonding, if that’s what you mean. But I can’t see how the guilds in London can simply pass a law to remove it.’
‘The thing is,’ Owen said, laying his fork and knife around his unfinished dinner. ‘I’ve got another ship. I’ll have to travel east to London tomorrow. She’s just been refitted as what’s termed a protection vessel. She’ll be carrying guns …’
There was a long pause. Denise clicked her teeth. ‘Isn’t there something else you could do?’
‘It’s a choice I’ve had to take. If I stay here in Bristol I’ll either end up crewing something similar, or I’ll be put in gaol. It’s not…’ He chuckled grimly. ‘It’s not as if I’ve become an Enforcer.’
When they left the inn, it had started raining again and Denise, in a quandary about ruining her clothes, was in a haste to get away. Still, she offered to put Marion up for the night on one of the dreamhouse sofas, and Marion declined as she had many times before, and she and Owen watched their sister scurry off down the wet street, then walked back together towards the Mariners’ Halls. They chuckled. Always, with Denise, it was hard not to smile.
‘You could stay here as well, you know, Marion …’
She shook her head. They were standing outside the guild-house gates. ‘I have a cabin in my boat.’
‘Of course—we Mariners forget that there are other kinds of craft.’
‘Don’t forget, Owen.’
‘No.’ He gazed back at her. ‘I won’t.’ He attempted a smile. You’ll be seeing Mam?’
‘I thought I’d look
in tomorrow.’
‘Send her my love…’ He made to turn. ‘I’d better be away.’
Marion laid a hand on his wet epaulettes. ‘What you were saying, Owen—I mean, about the slaver ships. You crewed one, didn’t you?’
Owen blinked. ‘The pay was so good, sis.’ She felt him shrug. ‘So I have to do something now, sis. I have to find some kind of recompense.’
‘Even if it means joining the East?’
‘Even that. I know it doesn’t sound right, but it’s the best I can manage.’
‘Good luck, then.’
‘Good luck yourself …’
The sugar factories—Bolts, Kirtlings—smelled of desertion and the wet leavings of fires. Much of Bristol had declined from the sunlit pomp of a few years before, but people still needed cheap places to stay, and it was no surprise to find that Sunshine Lodge was still in business. There was even the same smell of damp carpets in the hall. Could it even be the same old woman in the same hairnet? Marion asked for room 12A, and ascended the narrow stairs. The bed had been turned the other way, and the night’s rain was seeping a fresh contribution to the ceiling’s stains. Voices sounded through the walls. She considered rearranging the bed. It would be like the ritual elements of a spell; get them exactly right and she’d become Eliza Turner again—but Ralph would still be Ralph, and they’d still probably have that same tiff. The bed admitted her in sour creaks, and the room unspan through the stages of her weariness.
Their departure from Invercombe certainly hadn’t been the joyful thing she’d imagined. Ralph had changed in those last shifterms—or become more like his true self—although she’d imagined things between them would return to what she’d naively thought of as their natural state once they got properly away. But more and more, he’d been talking about their journey to the Fortunate Isles as some excursion from which he could return after a year or so and simply pick up his guilded life. Where would that leave her, she’d often wondered? And where would that leave her baby? The time had surely arrived for her to tell him, but she’d started to wonder if she wasn’t putting it off not because she didn’t want to make him feel tied, but because she feared he’d simply walk away. Then they’d gone to that guildhall where the pillars glittered like insects. It was the sweet arrogance of youth, Marion now supposed, which had made them think they were the first to discover—what had they used to call it, Habitual Adaptation? Clumsy phrase. Yes, she’d understood Ralph’s disappointment as he paced this room, but then he’d started talking as if proving his theory was all that mattered. Questions had tumbled in her mind, and she’d felt, it had to be admitted, nauseous. She’d needed to be alone for a while, although she’d imagined as she stumbled down the stairs that she’d return a few minutes later. After all, they still had a ship to catch.
Then she was out in the street, and not exactly breathless or tearful or running, but in a state which lay close to all of these things. The ships had been sounding, the air stirring in excited flurries, the bright posters flapping, and hawkers were selling chapbooks about the best wagon routes to take across the alkali deserts of Western Thule. The sugar factories had still been at full production in those days, and their characteristic sweetshop-and-burning smell thickened the air. It was a smell Marion would never be able to catch again without sensing a light tap on her shoulder, and hearing a well-spoken female voice.
Excuse me. It is Marion Price, isn’t it?
She’d turned unhesitatingly. Greatgrandmistress Alice Meynell had been dressed in a long coat and skirt and tight boots, all of them black, which Marion had previously thought to be one colour, but which she now realised to be something of many sheens and textures and shades.
‘I’m so glad I found you, Marion. Yes, yes, I know you’re worried about time and about Ralph—but you really needn’t be. Perhaps if we could just find somewhere to talk for a few minutes?’
She supposed she could have turned and run, but the idea that she and Ralph might escape undetected to the Fortunate Isles was gone, and she sensed as she had before that this woman was not to be resisted.
‘You’re looking pale, Marion,’ she said as they sat down in a small cafe. ‘I mean, I understand as a mother how wearying it is to be in your condition.’
Alice Meynell had smiled at her. She seemed to know everything. Then she moved the condiments aside and placed a copy of today’s Bristol Morning Post before her. Marion had been dimly aware of phrases to do with Arrests and Seizures as she and Ralph passed the placards of newsvendors, but she hadn’t understood what they meant until she saw the front page.
‘I’m sorry to say that Invercombe—and my trust in that place—has been sorely misused …’
Marion had known that some sort of delivery had been due last night, although it had hardly been uppermost in her mind, but a whole ship filled with aether was a prize beyond anything she’d ever heard talk of, and it represented an enormous betrayal that the Enforcers should discover it in the process of unloading in the weathertop fog of Clarence Cove.
‘I’m afraid, Marion, that your father is amongst the men who’ve been arrested. Weatherman Ayres did not survive. The whole business is a most sorry instance of what I believe you Westerners like to call the small trade. Perhaps I’d have been able to discourage such foolhardiness if I’d have been there at Invercombe and kept a better eye on things…’
‘My father. You said—’
‘He’s been arrested, and I also hear that he’s injured, but I honestly can’t tell you how badly. Invercombe, so I gather, is no longer safe. Such waste—all those lovely gardens—and so many arrests. Not just your father, but staff at Invercombe, and shorepeople, and then all the way up through the guilds to the Merchant Venturers who apparently financed the whole project. And there, really, lies the crux.’
Despite what she’d already heard, Marion felt herself grow cold. But Alice Meynell looked more composed and beautiful than ever, and her gaze, which was always attentive, had grown almost hypnotic. No one, Marion thought, as the greatgrandmistress of the Telegraphers’ Guild explained what she thought should now happen—not her mother, nor Ralph, nor anyone—had ever looked into her eyes quite this attentively before.
Cissy Dunning was already under arrest. So was Wilkins and so was Wyatt and so were many of Invercombe’s maids. Even if the prosecutors were persuaded that they had no involvement in the use of the house for smuggling, they would have a difficult time getting further employment in their guilds. The situation was worse for the shorefolk of Clyst. After all, they had lit the bonfires and crewed the boats. Unfortunate though it was, even those not directly involved were likely to be tainted by this affair. Why, Alice understood that Marion’s brother had only just recently been inducted into the Mariners’ Guild, which was notoriously strict on such matters. Even her sister, and her plans to become—what, a seamstress?—might well become compromised …
‘What are you saying?’
‘What I’m saying, Marion, is that things are at a most unfortunate stage. Of course, I’ll use all my influence to see that matters are dealt with as compassionately as possible. Then there’s Ralph to consider. One way or another, he’s been drawn far too closely into this. I certainly don’t advocate the practice of smuggling, Marion, but my feeling is that the blame should rest unequivocally with the senior guildsmen of Bristol who funded this and many another escapade, and not with the men and women who were simply trying to make the best living they could.’
Slowly, colder than ever, still falling, Marion nodded. ‘You’re saying you’ll help?’
‘Of course I will. But I expect a little from you in return. And before you say anything else, I should perhaps remind you why you’re here in Bristol, and the deceit you were carrying out. Fraud. Impersonation. And you knew about this delivery as well, didn’t you? None of us are quite innocent in this, I’m afraid, but it’s vital that Ralph should be able to go to Highclare without further delay or interruption, and it’s important, therefore, th
at you accept that you should have nothing further to do with him.’
‘If I don’t?’
The blue eyes hazed. ‘I believe you’re just saying that, Marion. I mean—do you really imagine you could carry on your relationship? I do realise that this is a lot for you to absorb, my dear, but, if it’s any comfort to you, such daydreams of escape as you and Ralph toyed with are to be expected from young people. Of course, it couldn’t possibly happen, any more than my poor husband Tom probably ever imagined when he made that amusing bequest. Although I’m sure it was fun while it lasted.’ She smiled. ‘I’m not some monster. I do understand how a woman feels about her child. I also realize that the baby is partly of Meynell blood, and the last thing I’d want is for any harm to come to it.’
‘How did you know?’
Alice smiled. ‘Call it intuition. But in all frankness, my dear, I don’t think you could guarantee you could give this child the life it deserves. I want you to have it adopted.’
‘You’re asking me to give up the one thing I have left.’
‘What I’m asking you to do is to be practical. There’s a place just up the hill not so far from here. It’s called Saint Alphage’s, or Alfies colloquially. Ah—I see you’ve heard of it. I’ve already arranged funding, and I can assure you that you’ll be well treated. And once the child is born, it will be given a good home, and you’ll be free to get on with your life as you wish. So, I should add, will your brother and sister, and also, as far as I can manage, will the people of Clyst and the workers of Invercombe. The arrests and the enquiries would be kept to a minimum. Your injured father will be released on compassionate grounds. I give you my word that I will do everything which lies within my powers to ensure that the only people who suffer are the Merchant Venturers and greatgrandmasters of Bristol. And I somehow doubt that you have any great concern for them…’
The House of Storms Page 27
