Blood & Sugar

by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

  Stokes turned to me. ‘Do you know what they do to thieves on the plantations? They cut off their hands.’ His gaze dropped to my pistol, took in the tenseness of my body, and he smiled. ‘It’s a good job we are not savages, like the planters. Yet I confess I am disappointed, Captain Corsham. If a gentleman wants to borrow something from a friend, it is customary to ask. Who knows, I might have said yes. I have before.’

  ‘We are not friends, Mr Stokes.’

  His smile broadened. ‘Then I believe you owe me a sovereign, do you not? After all, the girl had no right to hire herself out. The fee is mine.’

  My voice was flat. ‘You are in such dire need of a half-guinea?’

  ‘There is a principle at stake, sir. An important one.’

  Stokes held out his hand for the coin, and in the end I gave it to him, fearing that things would go worse for Cinnamon if I did not. He offered me a sardonic bow, and walked back towards the gate, followed by Scipio and his footman. Scipio did not look at me, and I presumed our association was at an end. After the night’s events, I could not say I was sorry. Off in the trees, the bay mare whinnied again. This time Zephyrus joined in. Stokes paused, just for a moment, and continued on up the drive. I didn’t know if he had heard – and there was little I could do about it if he had. All told, the night had been an abject disaster.

  I collected the horses, and led them back to Deptford Broadway, where I returned the bay mare to the coaching inn. I rode Zephyrus back to the Strand, dispirited, worried about Cinnamon. She had looked so broken, so afraid. I wondered what she endured behind closed doors, and the thought turned my anger against Scipio and Stokes into rage against myself. I had failed her.

  In the Noah’s Ark they were singing again, the taproom heaving. I went upstairs to my room and unlocked the door, half expecting to see another letter waiting for me there. Instead I froze. Slung over one of the ceiling beams was a noose. Two hooded figures stood either side of it. I reached for my pistol, just as a third man came up behind me in the hall. He put a pistol against my head. ‘Don’t move, fuckster.’ I didn’t recognize his coarse Deptford accent. He pushed me inside.

  The door closed, and one of the men took my pistol and sword. I could see the whites of their eyes through their hoods. One of them hit me hard in the stomach.

  I was no match for three men. Every time I went down, they hauled me up and hit me again. I shouted for Mrs Grimshaw and Nathaniel, but no one came. I covered my face with my hands, but they pulled them aside and stamped on my fingers. No one said a word. The silence was unnerving.

  At some point, they tied my hands behind me. I tried to speak, but my mouth was too full of blood. They pulled me to my feet, and I began struggling as I realized what they meant to do. The noose was placed over my head, the rope tightened around my throat. My legs went from under me as I was hoisted into the air.

  The rope bit. I couldn’t breathe. Panic took hold. It was the scene from my worst nightmares. The fear inside me. I kicked out, finding nothing. Distantly, I heard laughter. My vision filled with constellations. My eyes bulged.

  I was tugged on a black wave towards unconsciousness, and found I craved it. Anything to stop the burning in my lungs, the pain in my skull. My feet kicked again, this time involuntarily.

  Suddenly the world dropped back into focus, and I hit the floor like a sack of sugar. The rope was still around my neck, but I found that I could breathe. Someone thrust a knife in front of my face, and I guessed it was the one they’d used to sever the rope.

  ‘Next time, Negro-lover, we let you choke.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  I lay there for a very long time. Agony had transported me to a place where I knew my body more intimately than I ever had before, yet I was also detached from it, each bone in its own private hell. The pinnacle of the pain lay just above my consciousness, so that each time I approached it, I was swallowed again by the black depths.

  When I resurfaced, I felt unimaginably hot. Sweat coated my face, the salt burning my skin. I craved air and I crawled to the window, struggling to open the casement. The air outside was no cooler. It smelled of the slaughterhouse. Lights moved out on the water, travelling along the deck of one of the Guineamen. ‘I see you,’ I said.

  At some point in the night I must have crawled into bed. I dreamed of Caro – the kinder Caro, when we were courting. At times she became Amelia, at times Cinnamon, at times Tad. He was running up a hill ahead of me, the sun behind its crest. His shadow had elongated legs and arms, a chalk man carved into grass. I ran to catch him, but he ran faster. I awoke weeping.

  I dreamed I was looking down at myself on the bed. I lay very still, and I wondered if I was dead. The room filled with white light. I wasn’t alone. Someone was looking through the chest of drawers, going through my things. I shouted a mangled protest, and Nathaniel stared up at me.

  I awoke much later, curled on my bed, burning up. Daylight made me wince. Outside I could hear the familiar sounds of Deptford. I sat up and the room turned. The pain had receded a little, and by resting my weight upon the bedframe, I managed to stand. I could hardly bend my bad leg and the good one wasn’t much better. It took me a very long time to walk downstairs.

  Mrs Grimshaw was clearing tables in the dining room, and I realized they had been laid for lunch, rather than breakfast. She gave me a troubled look. ‘Lord have mercy, Captain Corsham. What happened to you?’

  ‘I was attacked in my room last night. You didn’t hear anything?’

  ‘No, sir. The singing …’

  She was as bad a liar as her son. I didn’t believe my cries had gone unheard, and I wondered about my assailants. Frank Drake and his friends? Or men hired by Stokes and the West India lobby? Why hadn’t they killed me?

  ‘I need to talk to you, sir,’ Mrs Grimshaw said. ‘Those things you said the other day at Mr Stokes’s – about an insurance fraud. Mr Child says you think my Amos was a party to it.’

  I was too befuddled to make a sensible decision about how to answer. ‘Yes, I think he was.’

  ‘Then your inquiry could be to my family’s detriment?’

  ‘That was never my objective,’ I said. ‘Yet if the killer is caught, and the fraud comes to light, I imagine the underwriter would want his money back.’

  Her fingers tugged at her apron strings. ‘Then I must ask you to leave, sir. We have worked so hard to keep this roof over our heads. Nathaniel has sacrificed so much. I would be a fool to let you stay here under those circumstances.’

  She had a point. I staggered back upstairs and packed, every task a torment. In the stables I collected Zephyrus, but couldn’t bring myself to mount him. I walked him up the road to Deptford Broadway, where I took a room at the coaching inn at exorbitant cost. Rosy, the landlady, clucked over my injuries. ‘You need to see a physician, sir,’ she said.

  I decided a surgeon would suffice.

  *

  Brabazon surveyed me with a trace of amusement. ‘Found yourself another war, Captain Corsham?’

  ‘That tincture you offered to make me. I need it now.’

  ‘It looks to me, sir, like you need rest and a lot of it.’

  ‘The tincture, Mr Brabazon, if you please.’

  I stood watching over him while he mixed it at the table in his surgery. I didn’t think he’d poison me, but I was leaving nothing to chance. He poured Rhenish wine into a jug, and added a measure of the laudanum he’d made the other day.

  ‘What a shocking thing to happen,’ he said. ‘You didn’t see your assailants?’

  ‘No, they were hooded.’

  ‘As was Mrs Bradstreet’s killer, I think you said.’

  ‘I don’t think this was him. There were three of them for a start. He kills those he stalks, whereas this was meant as a warning.’

  ‘One you don’t intend to heed? I can’t help thinking that is a mistake.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’

  The room was spinning again. Brabazon was adding other ingredients
to the tincture: cinnamon bark, saffron, powdered wormwood. I tried to read all the labels, but my vision blurred.

  ‘There was one other thing I wished to ask you about.’ My voice sounded strange to my ears. ‘Why did you never mention that you had seen Archer in Greenwich the day before he died?’

  My senses were oddly heightened, aware of details I wouldn’t normally see. I watched a bead of sweat form on his upper lip, before he wiped it away. His mismatched eyes seemed very bright. ‘There are no secrets in Deptford any longer, I see. As you say, I encountered Archer there. I was in Greenwich for my lecture, and I was walking past a tavern – the Artichoke, I think it was called. I saw Archer inside, I put my head in and we talked. Not for long. I was late for my lecture.’

  ‘You argued, isn’t that right?’

  ‘Yes, we did,’ he said slowly, as if trying to guess how much I already knew. ‘I was angry with Archer, as I told you, because of what happened to young Daniel Waterman. Something had happened the night before to make me angrier. I had some business down at the dock, and as I was walking past the Garraway warehouse, I saw Archer talking to Nathaniel Grimshaw. I believe I saw money changing hands.’

  He waited for a reaction. ‘Don’t you see? I was worried about the same thing happening again. Archer tempting young lads with money, inciting them to betray their friends. I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt because of one man’s misguided crusade.’

  Had he really seen Nathaniel and Tad together? Nathaniel hadn’t mentioned it, but if Tad had given him money for information, I could see why he wouldn’t. The image of him searching my bags last night had stayed with me. I’d checked my possessions, and nothing seemed to be missing. Had it been a dream? I wasn’t sure.

  Even if Brabazon was telling the truth, he was certainly lying about his visit to Greenwich. I didn’t believe it was a chance encounter. He’d met with Tad there twice in a private room. Twice they had parted on bad terms. I believed he was Tad’s informant and not a willing one at that. Yet unless I could discover the hold Tad had over him, he’d never admit it.

  Brabazon stoppered the vial and wrote out a label. We went through to his parlour, where he sat at his desk to pen a receipt.

  ‘Could I also trouble you for some liniment for these bruises?’

  ‘Certainly, just a moment.’

  He returned to the surgery, and I moved as fast as my aching body would permit. Luckily it didn’t take much effort to slide open the drawer Brabazon had closed the last time I’d been here. I barely had time to register the contents, before I heard him coming back. I closed the drawer and retook my seat as he walked in, bottle in hand.

  ‘That will be eight shillings, ten pence,’ he said.

  I paid him, exhilaration sending life through my fragile veins. There in the drawer, amidst balls of sealing wax and other clutter, was a silver ticket about the size of a large snuffbox. The number seven in Roman numerals was stamped into the metal, surrounded by engraved flowers that might have been lilies.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The tincture made me feel lighter in body. The pain dulled, yet my blood coursed like a millrace. My mouth was dry, and water didn’t seem to refresh it.

  I kept thinking about the silver ticket, sitting there in Brabazon’s drawer. I still didn’t understand its significance, but my initial suspicions had been correct: the near-identical ticket I’d found in Tad’s rooms must be connected to his inquiry into The Dark Angel. Was the ticket somehow part of Tad’s hold over Brabazon? Or did it have some other relevance? My discovery had led to more questions than answers, and yet I burned with the excitement of a huntsman drawing in on his quarry.

  I tried to eat at the coaching inn, but found I had no appetite. I slept for a couple of hours, then took another draught of the tincture. An hour later, and my leg was moving much more easily. I cleaned my weapons, and then limped down to Deptford Strand. The light was fading in the fields, and the tincture gave the world an unreal quality: the clouds defined and purple, the people blurred and indistinct. I was as Orpheus, passing through the underworld.

  In the dockside quarter, men were finishing for the day. I made a few purchases at the wholesalers, and then walked down to the river. Boatyards lined the mudflats, and from one such venture I hired a small wherry overnight.

  ‘Taking a young lady out for a moonlit row?’ the boatman leered.

  Between us we carried the wherry down to the water, where I tied her up. I put my purchases in the bottom of the boat, and returned to the harbourside. Exhausted, I sat on the wall, waiting for nightfall. I could see The Dark Angel from here, the winged woman gazing out at the darkening water. What had Moses Graham called her? A vessel of lost souls.

  I’d been sitting there a little while, when the sounds of a quarrel reached me, the usual chamber music to Deptford life. I turned and saw two figures struggling on the quayside. The man was wearing a woollen sailor’s smock. The woman I recognized. Jamaica Mary – presumably with one of her customers. She tried to run, but the man grabbed her wrist and pulled her back. He struck her in the face with his fist, then dragged her to the wall, where he hoisted her skirts, fumbling with his breeches.

  He was so intent upon copulation, that he didn’t hear me cross the quay. I drew my sword and placed the tip at his throat. ‘Stand away.’

  He did so, confused. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ I plainly did not look like a thief to him.

  ‘Nobody you know.’

  ‘Then what quarrel do we have?’

  ‘This woman does not seem willing.’

  Mary was holding her face, glaring at us both. She pulled her grubby skirts down over her cunny and spat blood on the ground.

  The man laughed. ‘You’d kill me for a penny-fuck whore? Have you lost your mind?’

  I pricked his Adam’s apple. ‘Apologize.’

  ‘Steady on.’ He raised his hands. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Not to me. To her.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry don’t cut it,’ she said. ‘He promised Mary two shillings.’

  ‘That’s a lie, we said a shilling.’

  ‘It was a shilling before you hit her,’ I said. ‘Make it three.’

  He fumbled for his purse, and gave her the coins. I let him go, and he ran off down the quay. Mary walked over to the harbour wall, where she sat, holding her face. Already tiring, I went and sat beside her.

  ‘What do you want? A free fuck?’

  I almost laughed. ‘I told you, I’m married.’

  ‘So you did.’ She gave me a long look. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I fell off a horse.’

  ‘Have big fists did he, this horse?’

  I smiled. ‘How long have you lived in Deptford, Mary?’

  ‘Near twenty years.’

  ‘Did you come here as a slave?’

  ‘You think Mary would come to this hell-hole willingly?’

  ‘How did you get your freedom?’

  She shrugged. ‘Made an old man happy, a Deptford merchant. He freed Mary in his will.’

  ‘And you stayed in Deptford?’

  ‘Tried London, didn’t like it. Came back here.’

  ‘How well do you know Peregrine Child?’

  ‘Well enough.’

  ‘Do you remember when his wife and child died? The accident?’

  She snorted. ‘That weren’t no accident.’

  ‘I heard they drowned in Deptford Reach. It isn’t true?’

  She wrapped her arms around herself. The last glow of the sun was fading. ‘Ten years ago it was. The child was born simple. Mary used to see them around town, the little boy holding his mother’s hand.’ She pulled a slack, stupid face. ‘Some say it drove the mother mad, as sure as it drove Perry Child to drink. She took the little boy down to the creek one day and filled their pockets with stones. Then they paddled along the creek until they reached the river.’ She sniffed. ‘Bad waters these. The Devil’s Reach.’

  I felt another rus
h of pity for Peregrine Child. ‘Why does he feel so beholden to Frank Drake?’

  ‘Perry thinks it was his fault. Damn, it probably was. And Drake, being his dead wife’s brother.’ She shrugged again. ‘Drake knows how to play people. Always did.’

  There must be more to it than that, I thought, especially so long after the event. We sat there for a time in silence, each lost in private contemplation. The moon was fat, the colour of old candles. It was windier tonight, the air humid again. The rain was less a promise, more a threat.

  ‘I heard another story too, about a slave who ended up in the Reach. People said he fathered Mrs Monday’s eldest child. Her first husband and his friends took him out to the marshes over there.’ I pointed to the far bank.

  She nodded. ‘Gentle George. There’s not a Negro in Deptford believes he made nasty with that woman.’

  ‘You think they got the wrong man?’

  ‘Must have done. If these mudflats could talk, they’d have a host of tales to tell.’

  ‘There was never any gossip among the slaves?’

  ‘None would admit to it. And she wasn’t saying nothing. Mary heard George knew, though. He’d seen them together, and it wasn’t rape he saw neither.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Mary forgets. It was years ago.’ She grinned. ‘You wouldn’t think it to look at her, would you?’

  My mind was wandering again. I thought of Caro, the one from my dream. The young viscount, my wife’s lover. I thought of Scipio gazing after the women in the stable-yard. Spinoza’s dangerous passions. Tad’s letters blackening in the flames. His bleak face. I touched my own face, and found I was crying again.

  ‘It true what they say?’ she asked. ‘Vaughan. Brabazon. Drake. They drowned three hundred slaves at sea? Children too?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Will they hang for it?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  She nodded, unsurprised. ‘Pity.’

  ‘Someone seeks to punish them, though. You remember the obeah? Those dead birds drove Vaughan half out of his mind.’