Blood & Sugar

by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

  Amelia listened without interruption as I told her about my time in Deptford. I sought to spare her many of the details. The thumbscrew. The lashes. The brand. I wished I had the power to erase them from my own memory. I kept thinking of Tad, lying there on Brabazon’s table. At times it overwhelmed my resolve.

  ‘So his enemies killed him,’ she said. ‘Just as he feared they would.’

  ‘I think that’s what we must presume. Can you recall anything else Tad said about them? Or that first attempt on his life?’

  ‘I have been trying to remember. He talked very fast – the way he always did when he was excited – and some of it seemed so far-fetched. He mentioned enemies in Deptford, but he also talked about a cabal of wealthy slave traders. They controlled Parliament, he said, and their power ran deeper in this country than most people would ever know.’

  ‘The West India lobby.’ During our time at Oxford we had often described them in such terms.

  ‘You have heard of them then? I wasn’t sure if they really existed.’

  ‘They are a group of the wealthiest plantation owners and slave merchants who act in concert to protect their interests. Like the East India Company. Or the wool merchants. Their trade might be unsavoury, but there’s nothing sinister about them.’

  ‘Are you sure? If Tad really thought he could end slavery, then wouldn’t they have a motive for wanting him dead?’

  ‘But how on earth did he expect to do that? You said it yourself, slavery is a vast commercial enterprise. Many of the richest men in the kingdom invest in slaving voyages, and ordinary people like the cheap commodities it allows them to buy. The trade can’t just disappear overnight.’

  ‘Tad seemed to think it could – or at least that he could deliver it a mortal blow. Did you tell the magistrate he’d gone to Deptford to collect something?’

  ‘He didn’t seem interested. Or rather he pretended not to be. Neither he nor the mayor would answer my questions. It made me wonder if they’re protecting someone in the town. Tad had rancorous dealings with one of the local slave merchants and he was attacked by a slave ship sailor at the dock.’

  ‘Have you looked to see if the thing he went to collect is in his bag?’

  I hadn’t been able to bring myself to examine it in the carriage. The realization that Tad was dead kept hitting me again and again. Each time was worse than the time before.

  ‘I think it unlikely. Mayor Stokes and the magistrate, Child, were quite content for me to take it.’

  We laid Tad’s possessions out on Amelia’s tea table. A dirty shirt and stockings, a half-empty bottle of gin, a volume of the writings of the radical thinker Thomas Paine, a bundle of abolitionist pamphlets, Tad’s mahogany writing box, a ring of keys. Amelia opened the writing box and we spent a few minutes looking through the letters inside. They were mainly bills and angry missives from creditors, along with a few items of legal correspondence. As Child had said, nothing seemed relevant to his murder.

  Amelia picked up one of the pamphlets.

  ‘F is for freedom,’ she read,

  ‘In England all men shall be

  Released from chains of bondage

  In equal liberty.’

  An engraving beneath the verse depicted a muscular African breaking the shackles that bound him. Below, in bold black capitals, was a proclamation: SLAVES OF ENGLAND, FREEDOM IS YOURS TO WREST. THE CHILDREN OF LIBERTY WILL PROTECT YOU.

  ‘Tad fought for the rights of slaves in the London courts,’ she said. ‘Many dozens of them are free because of him.’

  ‘Mr Child said he had been stirring up trouble with the slaves in Deptford. Did Tad ever mention these people in the pamphlet, the Children of Liberty?’

  ‘Not that I recall. Might they know more about his scheme to end slavery?’

  ‘It’s possible, though I don’t know how we’d find them.’

  She stared at the pamphlet disconsolately. ‘I am so fixed upon my own struggles I confess I barely give the plight of Africans a thought. Tad had his troubles too, yet he cared only for the enslaved, the dispossessed.’

  ‘He saw the world as a sculptor sees a block of stone. Not how it is. How it could be.’

  ‘You cared too, as I recall? About slavery, I mean. Most young men don’t.’

  I gazed at the engraving, remembering. ‘When I was a child, my mother had a black pageboy named Ben. We played together often – when Father wasn’t there to see it. I had been raised to believe that Africans were inferior as a race, but I discovered that Ben saw and felt and thought much the same as I. Once I knew it, slavery just seemed wrong to me.’

  ‘Where is Ben now? Still a slave?’

  ‘Father sold him after Mother died. I was nine years old, Ben only a little older. I begged Father not to do it, but his debts were mounting, and Ben was worth thirty guineas. I remember watching as the carriage drove away, knowing I’d never see him again. His new owner took him to the Caribbean to work on a plantation.’

  ‘Do you still believe in abolition?’

  I hesitated. In Whitehall, West Indian revenues were spoken of in hallowed tones. A young placeman countenancing abolition could wish farewell to his political prospects. In time, when I had more influence, I hoped to own my true convictions. For the moment, I judged it prudent to hold my tongue. Yet here, with Amelia, I felt compelled to speak the truth.

  ‘I think slavery the most abhorrent design ever conceived by man. How we can call ourselves a Christian nation, I don’t know. But abolition will never happen. Not in my lifetime anyway. The trade’s too lucrative. And people just don’t care enough about Africans on the other side of the world.’

  She smiled. ‘Tad would have said you needed faith.’

  Her words made me think of Miss Cinnamon’s curious statement. ‘Someone at the mayor’s house told me that Tad went to Deptford to see his dark angel. Does that mean anything to you?’

  ‘A woman, do you mean?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Tad had women, I do know that.’ A wash of colour flooded her cheeks. ‘A lot of women, by all accounts, though not the sort you’d introduce to your sister. Maybe this woman – his dark angel – will know what Tad was doing in Deptford?’

  My attention had wandered, disjointed thoughts racing through my mind. All the events of the day. All the unanswered questions. He’d told Amelia to go to me if anything happened to him. He’d said Harry Corsham would know what to do. Except I didn’t.

  I picked up the ring of keys. ‘These must be Tad’s. I think I should take a look inside his rooms and see if anything there will tell us more.’

  Amelia gave me a wan smile. ‘Thank you, Captain Corsham.’

  She had found a leather pouch in one of the side pockets of the valise, and she opened it and shook it over her palm. A small package of red waxed paper fell out. She unwrapped the paper, which was inked with oriental characters. Inside was a brown lump about the size of a damson. Amelia sniffed it and passed it to me without comment. The lump was malleable between my fingers, like glazier’s putty. It held an aroma of fresh-mown hay.

  ‘It’s opium,’ I said. ‘Men like to eat the smoke of it. It fills their heads with wild dreams and delusions.’

  ‘I know what it is. I lived in India, remember.’

  ‘Did you ever see Tad smoke it? It was not a vice he had before I went to America.’

  ‘Never.’ She dropped the opium onto the table, and studied me intently. ‘Why did you go to America? One minute you were here, and the next gone without a word. You and Tad argued, I do know that. Was that why you left?’

  ‘Is that what he said?’

  ‘He said it was over a girl. That you loved the same woman. Is that true?’

  For a moment I couldn’t speak, as the events of the day hit me once again. Tad was dead and things could never be put right.

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ I said.

  Still she wouldn’t let the matter drop. ‘Just know that he loved you – whatever wrong you m
ight have done him, or the reverse. He was never the same after you left. He missed you, Captain Corsham.’

  Each word was a stiletto thrust into my conscience. I bowed my head, trying not to listen.

  ‘So many of my memories of him are memories of you. The pair of you down from Oxford. Days on the river. Papa and his dogs. You were as much an Archer as any of us who bore the name. Mama wept when you left. She loved you like a son. But then you would hardly be one of us, would you, if you had not disappointed her?’ She smiled at me sadly. ‘And now you and I are the only ones left.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  We reached the limits of London at a little after eight o’clock. The great dome of St Paul’s was gilded by the evening sun, the City bustling with clerks and stockjobbers heading home or in search of their dinner. As we wended our way west to Soho, the streets grew livelier, spilling with gentleman revellers and their whores. I watched distractedly, absorbed by memories of Tad. London looked the same and yet everything was different.

  We pulled up outside Carlisle House, and I jumped down from the carriage, without waiting for Sam to fit the steps. The doormen knew me and waved me through, to cries of protest from those queuing to get inside. I hurried through a series of gilded anterooms into the ballroom.

  Light and music and colours whirled past me: satin gowns, embroidered waistcoats, silk fans. I searched the room for my wife, dazzled by the play of light upon crystal and mirror. I couldn’t see her in the ballroom and I hurried on. Over the Chinese Bridge, through the courtyard garden, into the Star Room where faro and hazard were played. The newspapers likened Carlisle House to the Fall of Rome. Caro called it Eden without the innocence. Tad, who had objected more to the people than to the pleasure, had called it the tenth circle of hell.

  Tonight it felt like it. My uniform was suffocating and my cravat felt like a noose, though the players at the gaming tables seemed oblivious to the heat. I passed men I knew and they wished me luck in the by-election. They weren’t to know that nothing was further from my mind. I thought only of Tad. Tad and Caro. There she was.

  She was laughing, one hand raised to her piled chestnut hair, adorned tonight with a spray of ostrich feathers. In the candlelight her features held a misleading fragility: delicate bones, the softest mouth. She was wearing a robe en chemise of oyster satin, the bodice gathered with turquoise ribbons. Her diamond bracelets cast rainbows as she shook the dice.

  The gentlemen surrounding her wore white dress suits and attentive smiles. I looked for the young viscount who had called at the house last week, but I couldn’t see him. Perhaps he had been banished from her circle. To turn up at her house, drunk, trying to provoke her husband into a duel, was surely in breach of whatever rules she made them play by. Not the fact of the thing, but the look of the thing. Even love was constrained by the iron laws of Caro’s drawing room.

  I pushed my way through to her side, and drew her away from the group. ‘Ho there, Corsham,’ someone called after us. ‘Bring her back soon, old man. She’s luck.’

  I pulled her into one of the little alcoves garlanded with leaves that were supposed to resemble lovers’ bowers in a pleasure garden. ‘Harry?’ she said. ‘Whatever is the matter?’

  ‘Thaddeus Archer is dead.’

  She stared at me. ‘Good Lord. How very shocking.’

  ‘He was murdered.’ My voice broke. ‘They tortured him first and then they cut his throat.’

  I had spared Amelia Bradstreet those details, but Caro was her father’s daughter. She had the old bastard’s mettle and fixity of purpose. Her only reaction was a slight intake of breath.

  ‘I’ve been in Deptford. That’s where his body was found.’

  ‘Deptford?’ She said it as though it were China or Hades. ‘Whatever was he doing there?’

  ‘Some scheme to do with slavery. Amelia and I are trying to find out.’

  She frowned at the name. ‘Surely that is down to the Deptford authorities?’

  ‘The authorities can’t be trusted. Tad told Amelia as much, and today I saw what they were like myself. I’m on my way to his rooms now. I hope to find something there. I didn’t want you to worry.’

  I was aware that I was babbling. My face wore a sheen of sweat, and I could feel a pulse beating in my neck. Caro was looking at me as one might regard a patient at the Bedlam Hospital, concerned and cautious all at once.

  ‘I cannot think it right to get involved.’

  ‘Tad told Amelia to come to me if anything happened to him. Nothing about this feels right, Caro. He said there was a conspiracy against him, slave merchants and politicians. He said they wanted him dead.’

  ‘All the more reason to leave it well alone.’ She lowered her voice. ‘You are about to enter Parliament, Harry. If there ever was a time to be caught up in a sensational murder, this isn’t it. Just think of the constituency. Some of the freeholders are slave merchants themselves.’

  ‘The freeholders will vote the way the ministry bribes them to vote. Cavill-Lawrence assures me that I needn’t worry on that score.’

  ‘Even so. Why take the chance?’ Again I saw the late Charles Craven in his daughter’s eyes, the banker’s mind swift to calculate risk and reward.

  ‘Because he asked for me. Because Amelia has no one else.’

  She tipped her head on one side to look at me, a Whitechapel prize-fighter’s jut of the jaw. ‘If Amelia’s friends have deserted her, then whose fault is that?’

  My leg ached after the exertion of the day. Tiredness seemed to penetrate the marrow of my bones. ‘It was years ago, and Lord knows she has paid for her mistake. Was it really such a crime to fall in love?’

  ‘The crime wasn’t the falling in love. The crime was to elope to Calcutta with another woman’s husband. Leonora Bradstreet was crushed by what they did. They humiliated her, and she died of a broken heart.’ Caro frowned. ‘Did you give her any money?’

  ‘A little. Just to cover the costs of the funeral. Look, never mind Amelia. This isn’t about her.’

  ‘Then what is it about? You have hardly seen Thaddeus since Oxford.’

  I grappled for an explanation she’d understand. ‘He was a friend when I needed one most. After Father died. Other than Mother and Ben he was the first person who ever gave a damn.’ My eyes swept over the familiar faces around the gaming tables, men I also called ‘friends’. A word that could encompass nothing and everything.

  ‘If you find what you’re looking for at his rooms? What then?’

  ‘I will take the evidence to the Deptford magistrate, and hope it compels him to act.’

  ‘And if it doesn’t?’

  ‘Then I will spend a few days in Deptford asking around. If I can discover who murdered Tad, then I can bring a private prosecution against them. I can use my influence to have the case moved from Deptford to London.’

  The measure of Caro’s opposition could be judged by the length of her silence. In the one that followed, an army might have laid siege to Troy.

  ‘Harry, this is madness. A scandal could ruin everything. You must see that.’

  By everything she meant the by-election and the ministerial offices that would surely follow. In time, a peerage and a seat at the Cabinet table. Perhaps – though we rarely spoke of it, even between ourselves – occupancy of a certain house in Downing Street. It all seemed so inconsequential to me now.

  ‘I will be discreet, I promise. But I must do this.’

  We looked at one another, each willing the other to understand. Eventually Caro lowered her eyes. ‘Then there is nothing more to say.’

  I watched as she walked back to her admirers, smiling, as if nothing was amiss. Someone handed her the dice, she kissed them, and everyone laughed.

  The newspapers called us a gilded couple and predicted great things for us. To the world, we presented a federal front. As Homer says, we confounded our enemies and delighted our friends. It was to my eternal regret that we so rarely delighted each other.

  CHAPTER S
EVEN

  Lincoln’s Inn had always reminded me of an Oxford college. The imposing brick gatehouse on Chancery Lane, the chapel, the dining hall, the students of law and the barristers in black silk robes. I hurried through the darkened courts and alleys, moonlight silvering stray coils of river fog. Snatches of evensong drifted from the chapel.

  I had only visited Tad here once before – on the last occasion I’d seen him alive, just after my return from the American war. Our meeting kept returning to me in flashes. I kept seeing his bleak, ashen face. More awful even than the face on Brabazon’s table.

  I turned into New Square, gravel crunching underfoot. Red-brick houses loomed tall and still in the mist. I was so distracted by my thoughts that I wasn’t looking where I was going, and collided with someone on the steps of Tad’s building.

  ‘Watch yourself, damn loitersack,’ he said.

  The speaker was a young African, rather short in stature, muscles bulging beneath his moss-green coat. A red, three-cornered hat was pulled down low over his face and as he turned, I saw one side of it was a twisted mess of hideous scars. The disfigurement compounded the feeling of menace his expression provoked.

  Muttering apologies, I spun away from him into the lobby of Tad’s building. I’d come armed with money for bribes, but the porter was asleep in his booth. A tortoiseshell cat on his counter watched me as I crept up the stairs.

  On the landing, I struggled to remember the way to Tad’s rooms. The building was a maze of corridors lined with doors to sets of barrister’s chambers, the walls hung with portraits of long-dead lawyers in lacy jabots. Eventually, after a few wrong turns, I found Tad’s door and fitted his key into the lock with unsteady fingers.

  The sitting room was large and cold. A window had been left open and moonlight lay in pale rectangles on the ceiling. I froze in the half-light, as I saw a man walking towards me. For an instant I thought that it was Tad. He veered away from me to grab two large leather bags on the floor by the window. I stared, confused, as he swung his legs over the sill, and disappeared.