Blood & Sugar

by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

  We crossed the Thames on the Woolwich ferry, after I’d purchased a shift and a shawl for Cinnamon. Even once she was dressed, an army officer and a beautiful mulatto girl, riding two to a horse, attracted much attention on the Ratcliffe Highway. For this reason, I avoided the city, taking the lanes cutting north of London, eventually joining the New Road linking the outlying villages of Islington, Somer’s Town and Tottenham Court. Zephyrus was exhausted after his gallop, struggling under the weight of two. I slowed him to a walk, and it was ten o’clock by the time we reached Marylebone.

  We rode into the Yorkshire Stingo’s yard, and I lifted Cinnamon down. A young black boy was kicking a cabbage around, and I paid him a penny to watch Zephyrus. In the taproom a few of last night’s drinkers still jabbered incoherently. The same hostile African tapwoman was behind the bar. Her eyes were bleary, her apron stained, and I guessed she’d been up all night. She came alive as her eyes fastened on Cinnamon, seeming to understand the situation without being told.

  She helped Cinnamon to a chair, and called to her potboy to fetch warm ale. A blanket was procured. Cinnamon wouldn’t stop shivering.

  ‘I need to see Caesar John,’ I said. ‘This woman needs help.’

  The tapwoman nodded, and disappeared through the curtain. When she returned, she beckoned us through, to a wood-panelled room furnished with a large dining table and chairs. Caesar John and three of his men sat around it drinking and smoking. I recognized the huge African built like a boxer and the elderly coachman. I guessed their night’s work had just come to an end.

  Cinnamon stared at them. I wondered if she’d ever seen free blacks like this before. Empty plates littered the table, and the air was rich with the smell of bacon. Caesar John pointed at Cinnamon with his toothpick. ‘Who the fuck is she?’

  ‘A slave girl owned by the mayor of Deptford. He was trying to send her to his plantations. I took her off a Guineaman.’

  ‘She have anything to do with that other business? With Archer’s ship? Those drowned slaves?’

  ‘Yes, she was on the ship when they drowned them.’

  ‘Is that why they were sending her away?’

  ‘I don’t think so. She doesn’t know anything.’ I looked at Cinnamon. ‘Do you?’

  She seemed close to collapse, her skin ashen, eyes unfocused. ‘I heard no discussions between the sailors,’ she said softly. ‘I wish I had, but it was just as Scipio told you. I’m sorry I lied.’

  Another black man walked in through the curtain, coated with dust from the road. Caesar John rose to meet him, and they conferred in hushed tones. The man seemed to be giving him bad news. Caesar John looked over at me, glaring.

  ‘I want the girl gone. Take her somewhere else. I can’t help her.’

  ‘There’s nowhere I can take her where she’ll be safe. Her master is a vindictive man. He’ll be looking for her.’

  ‘That’s not my problem.’

  The tapwoman laid both palms flat on the table. ‘Did I hear that right? You going to send this girl away?’

  ‘Quiet, woman! You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I know she’s a child. I know she looks sick. You scared, John? I thought I knew a man, not a mewling boy.’

  In another time and another place, I might have enjoyed the spectacle of Caesar John being flayed by his woman. As it was, my stomach was too curdled with anxiety and dread.

  ‘Listen, Bronze,’ Caesar John said. ‘I’m thinking of you, of all of us. You don’t know what these fucksters can do.’

  ‘Oh, I know, John. I seen it my whole life. That’s why you have to help her. Look at her, man. Where else is she supposed to go?’

  Caesar John made a fist on the table. ‘One week,’ he said at last. ‘No more. You find somewhere else by then, or I’m putting her out on the street.’

  Bronze kissed him and he shook her off. ‘Jezebel.’ He nodded to the coachman. ‘We take her to the sponging house. Ready the carriage.’

  He beckoned me to him. ‘There’s something you need to know.’ He nodded at the man with the dusty clothes. ‘Tell him.’

  *

  London was bathed in a weak wash of afternoon sunlight, filtered through a brooding, pewter sky. One minute the whores and pigeons preened in it, the next they plumped resentful feathers. The curved shop windows of the Strand flashed black and gold with the movement of the clouds.

  Between the street and the river stood a large, derelict hospital, its ancient brick halls open to the elements, gutted by fire two years earlier. Mendicants and Irish had moved in, and as I walked across the site, I saw men huddled around campfires, and women pegging washing strung between the ruined buildings.

  I needed to rest. I needed to think. But I needed to see this first.

  Following the directions Caesar John’s man had given me, I walked down towards the river. Ahead was a large roofless hall, its blackened beams rising from the brickwork like a skeleton’s ribcage. Outside it two men stood next to an oxcart, their staffs and greatcoats marking them out from the mendicants.

  They challenged me as I approached. ‘You can’t go in there, sir. Orders of the Bow Street magistrate.’

  ‘War Office business.’ I waved my letters of credential. ‘Show me, please.’

  The interior of the hall was filled with rubble. I presumed this was why even the beggars had given it a wide berth. The remnants of a large fire smouldered in a spot that had been partially cleared of debris. More Bow Street Runners stood around it, gazing towards the roof. A man was hanging from one of the beams, over the fire.

  Many of his injuries were familiar to me. His back laid open by the whip. His swollen, tortured hands tied behind him. John Monday’s slave brand seared into his chest. His throat slashed.

  The flames had reached halfway up the dead man’s pendulous thighs, just below the point where they met the heavy rolls of his stomach. The skin of his legs was blackened, horrifically burned. I imagined him writhing and rolling on the rope, trying to raise his body above the flames. Moses Graham had died badly. I stared at his rictus mouth and bulging eyes, gripping my hands into fists to stop them trembling.

  The Runners were trying to work out how to get him down, neither man inclined to climb up to the beam to cut the rope.

  ‘When was he found?’ I asked.

  ‘This morning. A vagrant stumbled across him.’ The man sounded uninterested, almost bored. ‘From the smell of him, I’d say he’s been up there a couple of days.’

  ‘There were no witnesses? He can’t have died quietly.’

  ‘We asked around the camps. No one remembers seeing him. I suppose you wouldn’t spot him in the dark. Probably a dispute between villains. A fight got out of hand.’

  ‘This man was not a villain. He was a gentleman, an artist.’

  He shrugged. ‘Put a wig on them, it don’t change their true nature. Violence is in their blood. Negroes are the descendants of Cain, you know. God stained his skin dark to punish him for the killing of his brother, Abel. Read your Bible, sir, it’s all in there.’

  I spoke quietly in an attempt to rein in my rage. ‘He was one of the gentlest men I ever met.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  The louring sky matched my mood, as I rode home through the hot dusty streets. The gathering wind felt portentous, though I struggled to see how things could get worse. Every time I thought about that fire burning under Moses Graham, something stabbed inside me. I thought it likely my ribs were broken. Sweat rolled off me.

  Outside my door, a large black-and-gold coach-and-six was drawn up. Beggarly children crowded around it, impressed by the footmen and the glossy black horses. The coachman flicked them with his whip when they strayed too close.

  Pomfret met me in the hall. He had evidently grown tired of being surprised by my appearance, for he merely bowed. ‘Mr Napier Smith is waiting for you in the drawing room, sir.’

  Of course he was.

  *

  Napier Smith was standing, studyi
ng Caro’s portrait. He appraised me fleetingly with his cold blue eyes. His youthful face was flushed with anger, and I remembered the Woolwich harbour master’s words: I wouldn’t cross the Chairman of the West India lobby for all the sugar in Jamaica.

  I was too weary for niceties. ‘What is it you want, Mr Smith?’

  ‘Lucius Stokes tells me that you’ve been back to Deptford. I’ve written to Nicholas Cavill-Lawrence to let him know. Disregarding your patron’s orders – now that’s a bold step. Taking that slave girl off my ship – I’d call that bold too.’ He smiled coldly. ‘You know, I’ve been trying to work out why you would do all this. Risk a glittering future for a man such as Archer. Finally, I think I understand.’

  Blood pulsed behind my ears, a primal sense of warning.

  Smith turned back to the portrait. ‘A beautiful woman. If she were mine, I wouldn’t leave her at home to go delving after dead men in Deptford. But perhaps you do not place as high a premium upon her worth as another man might.’

  ‘I don’t grasp your meaning, sir,’ I said, though I feared I did.

  ‘Don’t you? We’ve been looking for a molly whom Archer trusted, someone from his past. I think that person was right under our noses all along.’

  I like to think that I kept my nerve, that my voice didn’t shake. I’m not sure I did. ‘If you mean to imply what I think you do, then I will not dignify such an allegation with a response. Except to say that if you repeat it publicly, I will sue.’

  Smith smacked his gloves against his hand, a duellist’s slap. ‘If proof exists then I will find it. And if it doesn’t – well, perhaps I’ll find it anyway.’ He turned a circle, looking around the room as he did so. ‘This house isn’t yours, they tell me. Everything’s in trust for your wife. Old Craven didn’t have much faith in you as a son-in-law, eh? Good guess.’ His eyes flicked back to me. ‘You will cease your hunt for Archer’s killer, or I’ll take everything you have left. Your name. Your reputation. Your family’s happiness. Oh, and I want the slave girl too. And a letter of apology for the temerity of your theft.’

  It was one of those moments on which a man’s future turns. On one side certain ruin. On the other a woman’s life, a dead man’s memory, and a gentleman’s ability to live with himself. When put like that, my reply came readily enough.

  ‘You asked me before if I supported abolition, Mr Smith. I lied. I support it entirely – with every sinew in my body, every rational thought I’ve given to the subject, every decent, human impulse I’ve ever had. Your trade disgusts me, sir. You and your friends disgust me. Now leave my house, before I have my footmen throw you out.’

  *

  I was still sitting there, several hours later, when Caro came home.

  She stared at me. ‘Oh, Harry. What have they done to your face?’ She walked over and touched my cheek, the first time she’d done so in many months. ‘You are a bonfire. I will send for Doctor Everett.’

  ‘Please, won’t you sit down? I must tell you something.’

  Perhaps hearing some hint of my inner turmoil, she did as I asked.

  ‘It’s about Tad,’ I said. ‘He and I.’

  She was holding herself tightly, and now she looked away. ‘Do we really need to talk about Thaddeus now?’

  ‘I’m afraid we do. Napier Smith came to the house earlier. He is unhappy about some of the things I’ve been doing in Deptford.’ I stopped, drew a breath. ‘He has made certain allegations about Tad, and now he threatens to draw me into them too. There is no truth to them, but I am not sure that will matter. I tell you this because I want you to consult a lawyer. Someone who can guide you on how best to shield yourself and Gabriel from any unpleasantness that will follow. I’ll not take Gabriel from you. It is important that you know that.’

  I readied myself for a salvo of questions, but her eyes were distant as oceans. Just when I was starting to wonder if she’d even heard, she spoke again: ‘Did Thaddeus ever tell you that he came to my father’s house to see me?’

  I shook my head, confused. ‘Came to see you when?’

  ‘Not long before we were married. He was drunk and rather upset. I had to bribe the servants to ensure Father never heard of it. He’d come to tell me you didn’t love me. That you loved somebody else and always had.’

  I stared at her. ‘That isn’t true. I did love you. I do.’

  I felt as if I was falling with no idea what was beneath me. The buzzing in my ears had stopped. I heard her very clearly, perhaps more clearly than I had ever done before.

  ‘That’s what I told him. He went away disappointed. I think he hoped I’d manufacture some reason to break off our engagement.’

  For once I could read the hurt in her eyes, understood it. ‘But you believed him.’

  She stared intently at the portrait over the fire, the happier Caro.

  ‘So why didn’t you?’ I said hoarsely. ‘Break off our engagement, I mean.’

  ‘Because I’d fought so hard to have you. I’d used up all my capital with Father, and I didn’t want to have to marry the manner of man he’d have chosen for me. Sometimes all our choices wear cruel faces. This was one such time. Nor would I give Thaddeus the satisfaction.’

  I wasn’t falling, but sinking. The shadow of The Dark Angel above. The depths below full of shipwrecks, so many ghosts. Many things suddenly made sense to me, and I wondered that I hadn’t seen it before. Her distance before the wedding, which I’d put down to nerves. The spectre that had always lain between us in the marital bed.

  ‘I regret that he caused you pain – more than you can know. He had no right to do that.’

  She was silent a long moment. ‘Does Napier Smith have any proof of his suspicions?’

  ‘There is no proof. I told you. It isn’t true. But he implied he would falsify proof if necessary.’ And if he talked to Nathaniel … The thought made me recoil.

  She rose from the sofa and took a turn about the room, something she did when she wanted to think more clearly. She stopped in front of the window, a black silhouette against the glare. I couldn’t read her expression.

  ‘I don’t want a divorce or a separation, Harry. Nor do I want a scandal. I want Gabriel to grow up proud to be your son. If Smith means to destroy you, then we must make the consequences unpalatable to him. He is a man of business. Let him see the debit side.’

  Something about that ‘we’ touched me inexpressibly. My voice thickened. ‘Hurt a man like Smith? I’m not sure we can.’

  ‘Will you tell me about it – Deptford? Thaddeus’s murder?’

  We talked for several hours, long after the light had faded and she called for candles. Caro had always been a good listener, and she saved her questions until the end. I left out only Nathaniel. Everything else we discussed and sifted. The strangeness of it all did not escape me. We were like two allied generals advancing towards a common enemy, with only ancient treaties to define us. Gradually a strategy took shape and gathered form.

  Our plan was not without risk, but we both agreed that it might work. From the theory, came the means, came the method. At one point she paused to pour more wine, and I felt compelled to speak. Not out of expectation, nor even hope, but because I needed to hear her say it.

  ‘This ship on which we sail – is there truly no way of righting her?’

  I saw from her expression that she understood we were no longer talking about Smith and his threats – but about Carlisle House, about young viscounts, and separate rooms.

  Her smile contained worlds: intimacy and distance, anger and absolution, defiance and regret. ‘It is the curse of the Cravens to want it all. If we don’t have it, we feel compelled to go out and find it. Nothing’s perfect, Harry. I understand that now. We simply have to make the best of the cards we’ve drawn.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  We met in St James’s Park. Ladies and gentlemen were strolling the lime walks. Soldiers drilled on the grass. An old woman was selling milk, still warm from her red cow. Idling apprentices made eyes
at whores they couldn’t afford. My patron, Nicholas Cavill-Lawrence, Under-Secretary of State for War, gazed inscrutably at one of the girls.

  ‘I cannot imagine what you think we have to say to one another. I only agreed to this meeting for Caro’s sake. Did you ever stop to think of her? She valued our friendship. I did too.’

  Caro had said he would start like this – ramble on about loyalty first – she said he liked to believe he was the stripe of man who cared about such things. I waited for him to talk himself out.

  ‘The ministry’s borough-mongers have withdrawn your funding for the by-election. I hear the West India lobby are planning to stand a candidate against you. If I were you, I’d withdraw now. Save yourself the embarrassment. I’d like you to clear your desk at the War Office by the end of the week.’

  I heard the news distantly, as if it had happened to someone else. Someone with whom I was acquainted, but didn’t like very much.

  ‘I understand, sir. I won’t seek to change your mind. Yet I must ask for your help with one small matter. Not for my sake, for Caro’s. Napier Smith plans to slander my reputation with lies that would hurt her and Gabriel.’

  ‘What did you expect?’ His expression didn’t soften. ‘You’re hardly helping yourself. Smith says that even after all of this, you intend to return to Deptford.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Have you identified the killer yet?’

  ‘No, but I will.’

  ‘And the missing papers? Any trace of those?’

  ‘They are in Deptford, I’m sure of it. Archer took possession of them the day before he died.’

  My answer, whilst equivocal, was not nearly so interesting as the question. Napier Smith hadn’t asked about the contracts when he’d come to my house yesterday, but then perhaps they were only of secondary importance to him. Not, I felt, to Cavill-Lawrence.

  He took a silk handkerchief from his pocket, and mopped the sweat from his grey, lined brow. ‘I cannot help you. It is unfortunate for Caro that she married a man so hell-bent upon his family’s unhappiness. Yet she has made her bed. It isn’t my place to ameliorate the cost of her decisions. Nor the cost of yours.’