Monday looked away.
‘I don’t understand,’ Mrs Monday said. ‘What does he mean?’
I had little sympathy for her distress, nor her confusion. ‘Tell me, madam, do you ever pray for George, your old house-slave? He didn’t get a funeral, did he? He ended up in Deptford Reach, a scapegoat. Does he trouble your conscience? Or don’t Africans count before your God?’
She frowned at my words and my tone. ‘What does George have to do with this?’
‘I only wonder why you did nothing to prevent his murder? When one word from you could have saved him.’
Her lip quivered. ‘I told them the truth. I never went with any Negro. They didn’t believe me.’
‘You only needed to mention your lover’s name. You said the child was a throwback, and so he was. But you let people believe you meant your throwback, or your husband’s, whereas the African blood was on your lover’s side.’
It had been right in front of me all along, but I had missed it. Vaughan’s curly black hair, his swarthy skin, his birth on a plantation, all those rumours he spread about his Spanish blood.
‘Brabazon guessed,’ I said. ‘He told me he wasn’t surprised that Vaughan lost his mind. I didn’t see what he meant at the time, but I do now. People say mixing the blood weakens it. It’s balderdash, of course, but Brabazon believes it.’
Her eyes met mine, and I was surprised to see defiance there, rather than shame. It angered me. ‘George must have seen you together, and under torture, he told your first husband. That’s why Owen Forrester wanted nothing more to do with you after that. But it was too late for George. If it doesn’t trouble your conscience, then it should.’
Monday passed a hand across his weathered face. ‘It is an old sin. There is no need to rake over it now.’
Mrs Monday’s hands were crossed in front of her. She tugged at the elbows of her dress. ‘What did he mean, John, when he said Vaughan wasn’t on that ship? Brabazon said he was.’
‘That’s what Brabazon believed,’ I said. ‘Your husband told his officers that he’d moved Vaughan to a safe place in order to prevent him from speaking to Archer. He even went so far as buying opium to maintain the pretence. I think Brabazon saw lights on The Dark Angel, put two and two together, and came up with five. Just as I did.’
‘Then where is Evan?’ she said.
Monday pursed his lips. I remembered him down on his knees in the church. You think you understand the consequences of Archer’s visit here? You haven’t the first idea.
‘Evan Vaughan was already sick when Archer first came to town,’ I said, ‘but Archer’s visit turned his conscience inside out. Archer refused to give him absolution for the drowned slaves, and so Vaughan sought forgiveness for his other crimes elsewhere. Then he disappeared. Before he did, he and your husband went for a drink together down in Deptford Strand.’
Mary had been out on the quayside that night. She’d just finished with a customer, and was taking a rest in one of the alleys. Vaughan and Monday had come walking along the dock, arm in arm, a friendship forged in the crucible of the Middle Passage. Vaughan was drunk, Mary said, his voice loud and ragged, doing most of the talking. Monday had listened, and then suddenly stepped away. Vaughan spoke more urgently, and Monday turned his back. Vaughan ran after him, and angry words were exchanged.
In the fight that followed, no knives were drawn, but neither man gave any quarter. The blow that finished it was glancing, but Vaughan fell badly and hit his head. Monday had stared down at him, Vaughan groaning, asking for help. Then Monday had rolled him to the edge of the quay, and pushed him over.
Mary, in the shadows, had heard the splash. She’d watched Monday walk away, and then crept onto the quayside. There she’d found Vaughan’s purse, fallen from his pocket during the struggle. It held six guineas and some banknotes, and so she decided to ignore the noises she heard from the water, considering it a night well done. She’d sold the banknotes in Greenwich for a fraction of their worth, and afterwards regretted it. The notes had been signed over to Vaughan by their previous owner. They could be traced to him, and thence to Mary. For weeks she’d waited nervously for the magistrate’s knock. A rich gentleman had been murdered, she’d stolen his money. Who’d believe her story?
Yet the magistrate never came, and she’d started to breathe more easily. Then Tad had come to see her, asking all his questions about Evan Vaughan. The letters were only supposed to frighten him, just as they were later supposed to frighten me. She’d left me the first letter the night I’d interrogated her about Vaughan at the bathhouse, slipping it under my door when the inn was busy, while I’d been at the opium house. She’d sent the second after she’d heard I was back in town. I couldn’t hold it against her, especially after she’d saved me from the river. In the great scheme of things, her crimes amounted to little.
‘Where is Evan?’ Mrs Monday asked again.
Her husband raised his head. ‘He told me you still looked at him as you used to, tempting him with Eve’s promise. That he tried to resist, out of deference to our friendship, but he was a man and hot-blooded. He wanted my absolution, but I wouldn’t give it. It wasn’t like that, was it, Eleanor? He forced you, was that it?’
She was still looking at me. ‘Where is Evan, sir? It is important that you tell me.’
‘Evan Vaughan is dead, madam.’
She groaned and sank onto a chair. Monday rose and knelt before her, gripping her hands. ‘He didn’t love you, Eleanor. He never did. Did he stand by you when you got with child and were shamed by your husband? If he made dalliance with you consequently, it was because it was there to take. You opened your legs for him like a whore – with Evan Vaughan who had lain with half the women in Deptford.’
To my shock, she flew at him, clawing and scratching, her features contorted, mewling an animal sound. Monday raised a hand and hit her across the face. ‘We signed a contract, properly witnessed, there was no duress. I will not tolerate thievery, madam, I never did.’
I left them to their bitter marriage and their troubled consciences. In the hall, the mulatto boy was still spinning his top, and as I reached the front door, he spoke to me. ‘Please, sir,’ he said, staring at my olive skin. ‘Are you my father?’
‘No,’ I said, my voice thick with compassion and pain and fatigue. ‘I’m sorry. I am not.’
He held my gaze a moment longer, as if to ascertain the veracity of my answer. Then he turned back to his top, spinning it down the hall.
I walked out of that strange, unhappy house, thinking of Evan Vaughan. I had never met him, and yet the damage he had wrought by his various crimes had confronted me everywhere in Deptford. That poor boy was another victim. I never did learn his name. Perhaps I could have done more for him. I wish I had.
I found Zephyrus at the coaching inn, checked his saddle, and was relieved to see that Monday’s contracts were still there. We took the Kent Road out of Deptford, and I didn’t look back. The storm had blown itself out overnight, the sun high, the air fresh. In the distance I could see London, a city of gold.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
A day later, I stood in Nicholas Cavill-Lawrence’s wood-panelled office overlooking the Horseguards’ parade ground. My burns had been properly dressed, though I still moved gingerly. Deptford had left me with many scars, not all of which would heal.
Cavill-Lawrence pressed his manicured thumbs together. A portrait of King George the Third gazed down upon his loyal servant.
‘I met with Lucius Stokes and the Deptford magistrate this morning,’ he said. ‘We are all in agreement. Thaddeus Archer was murdered by a slave ship officer named Frank Drake, a villain engaged in thievery from the Navy Yard. During his stay in Deptford, Mr Archer uncovered his crimes, and so Drake killed him. He also murdered his accessory, a cabin boy named Daniel Waterman. The magistrate was on the verge of arresting Drake, but he hung himself before he could be apprehended. The explosion on The Dark Angel was an unfortunate accident, in which the mayor
’s secretary also sadly died. Mrs Bradstreet and her maid were murdered by an intruder, entirely unconnected to these other matters.’
‘And the dead Africans in London? Moses Graham and Proudlock?’ I decided not to mention Jupiter, judging that it was best to keep Caesar John’s name out of this.
Cavill-Lawrence regarded me haughtily. ‘Nobody cares about dead Negroes. An inquest will be held into Drake’s suicide, which you are under no circumstances to attend. I’m told this magistrate, Child, is a good man. He’ll do what he’s told.’
‘I’m sure he will,’ I murmured.
‘There is one thing Stokes wanted me to ask you. A surgeon named James Brabazon – he’s gone missing apparently. Nobody’s seen him since the night of the explosion. Stokes thought you might know something about it?’
My gaze didn’t falter. ‘I’m afraid not.’
Cavill-Lawrence nodded, not caring. ‘Which brings us back to business. I have spoken to Napier Smith, and explained that due to your war record, your reputation is of paramount importance to the crown.’ He glanced up at the portrait. ‘His Majesty likes his heroes – and Lord knows, we have few enough of them in this war. I have made it plain to Smith that any attempt to blacken your reputation would be looked upon most unfavourably by the ministry. It took him a little while to understand, but he does now. Your post here remains open, should you wish to resume it until the by-election. Your opponent has withdrawn his name from consideration, I am told.’
I was thinking about Amelia, her cold damp face in my lap. I was remembering the man I’d seen at Tad’s rooms: Cavill-Lawrence’s agent. Had that same man killed Amelia and her maid? Had it been his pink hand I’d seen, grabbing the bannister? Cavill-Lawrence had certainly been determined to find those contracts. Murder seemed excessive, but maybe it hadn’t been a question of orders. Maybe Amelia had simply returned home unexpectedly. Or maybe the assassin had been sent by someone else, another member of the syndicate, one of those fine, upstanding gentlemen, desperate to protect his good name and reputation?
Perhaps a better man than I, given these suspicions, would have refused Cavill-Lawrence’s offer of patronage. Yet I had a duty to the living, as well as to the dead. I owed it to Caro and Gabriel.
I took the contracts from my coat, and placed them on the desk in front of Cavill-Lawrence. He picked them up and walked to the fire, where he raised a flame by jabbing the coals with a poker. It made me think of that night at Tad’s rooms, when I’d burned his letters. Now I’m just a ghost in a story you once told of yourself.
I had few illusions about Cavill-Lawrence. With the contracts burned, I’d lost my hold on him. Ostensibly we had a deal, but there would come a time in the future when Cavill-Lawrence needed the West India lobby more than he needed my goodwill. Caro put the odds that he’d renege at a shilling to a guinea.
Whilst I’d been in Deptford, she’d gone to see her brothers, the bankers. The Cravens were a tight clan, and they stuck together. She had explained a tiny fragment of the situation in which we found ourselves, and thereby procured copies of Cavill-Lawrence’s banking records.
It was all there in his accounts. Cavill-Lawrence had been busy. Several large deposits coincided with the granting of army contracts. Several more came from gentlemen who had subsequently been awarded high offices in prestigious regiments. Cavill-Lawrence had chosen to invest these monies in the slave trade, and was growing richer by the day.
Ministerial corruption was a little like adultery, Caro had said, without a trace of irony. Keep it out of the drawing room, and nobody cared. Put it on the front page of a newspaper, and it was a different story.
Perhaps I wouldn’t need it. I hoped that I would not. Call it an insurance policy, if you will.
*
Cinnamon was sitting in the same place I’d left her, near to the fire in the sponging house’s parlour. She looked a little healthier, but she still sat apart from the other slaves. She held my gaze with that strange intensity, then turned away.
Caesar John drew me aside. ‘They’ve had men looking for her all over London. Crimping gangs, thief-takers, slavers. Bronze says informants have been to the Stingo. The girl’s bounty is set at two hundred guineas. That’s far more than she’s worth. What the devil is going on?’
‘I’m not sure. We need to talk to her, but we must do so gently.’
One of his men made a fire for us in the storeroom. We sat on a damask sofa, the room lit by silver candlesticks upon black-and-gilt torchères.
‘Scipio is dead,’ I told her.
She went very still.
‘He was the murderer, but I think you already know that. It’s why you tried to stop me returning to Deptford. Was that for his sake or for mine?’
‘I thought he would kill you.’
‘Did you ever love him? He believed that you did.’
‘I let him think it, because I thought he’d help me escape from Mr Stokes. My mother said men never find it hard to believe that a woman loves them.’
Her plan had worked better than she’d ever hoped. Instead of becoming her saviour, Scipio had become another gaoler.
‘Whose idea was it to kill Archer? Yours or Scipio’s?’
‘Scipio discovered that Stokes was planning to send me away. He said it was because I’d spoken to Archer. The West India lobby were nervous that I would lie in court – that I’d say I overheard the sailors plotting to kill the slaves. I tried again to convince Scipio to help me escape, but he wouldn’t do it. He said killing Archer was the only way to keep me in England.’ She turned, one half of her face in candlelight, the other in shadow. ‘I hoped Archer would take me to London – then he wouldn’t have to die. But he betrayed me. After that, I stopped trying to change Scipio’s mind.’
‘Did you know about the others? The Africans in London?’
‘Scipio said they were Archer’s friends, and unless he killed them too, they might come to Deptford, as Archer had. I couldn’t be safe unless The Dark Angel’s officers were also safe.’
‘Then why did you tell me about her, that first day I was in Deptford?’
‘Because I wanted to be free – of all of them. All I needed was to get to London. If you thought I knew something, I hoped you’d take me there.’
‘Tell me about the knife,’ I said. ‘Scipio didn’t go to the Mondays’ house the day it disappeared, but you were there.’
She stared into the fire. ‘I went into the study while Mrs Monday was meeting with Mr Stokes and Mr Child. I knew the knives were there. They were a gift from an African prince. Captain Vaughan had shown them to me on our voyage back to Deptford. He told me if I ever ran away from him, then he’d cut my pretty throat.’ She wrapped her hands around her neck. ‘We needed it to look as if Monday or one of his officers killed Archer. Then they wouldn’t hunt for the killer. I hid the knife in the stable-loft when Mrs Monday and I were attending to Daniel Waterman. Scipio went there later to retrieve it.’
Where he’d encountered Mrs Grimshaw, and then Nathaniel. ‘Did Daniel Waterman see you with the knife in the stable-loft, or was it Scipio he saw?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps neither. Mr Brabazon thought he was talking about something that happened on board the ship. There was a woman slave—’ She broke off.
‘But you couldn’t risk it, so you killed him anyway. Held a pillow over his face while Mrs Monday was talking to Mrs Grimshaw in the yard.’
She met my gaze, the candles making bonfires of her eyes. ‘Do you want me to say that I am sorry? He dropped children into the sea. While they screamed for their mothers.’
I felt desperately sad. I knew what Tad would have wanted me to do. He would have said it wasn’t her fault, it was slavery’s. I wished I could hear him say it, to give me the strength to go on, but since the destruction of The Dark Angel, our conversations had fallen silent.
‘He came to Deptford to help you,’ I said, ‘to help Africans everywhere.’
‘You say it as though I had a ch
oice. This was my life, my hope of freedom. That’s all there is.’
My eyes were pricking, a burr constricted my throat. ‘I don’t think they were sending you away because they thought you’d lie in court. I think they were afraid you’d tell the truth – that you know something about that voyage that could have helped Archer. Will you tell me about it? Everything, from the beginning?’
For a moment she said nothing, her gaze fixed on some unspeakable place inside herself. Then she leaned towards me, and the shadows crowded in. ‘The slavers came the day my father died,’ she said.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
She told it softly, looking at the flames, her voice devoid of emotion. Perhaps there was no other way to tell it.
‘The fort at Cape Coast was large and white. It gleamed in the sun like bleached coral. We had an apartment there. It was the only home I’d ever known. Papa looked very handsome in his uniform, and Mama wore dresses sent from London. She used to laugh, imagining the faces of the mantua-makers, if they ever knew their fine gowns were worn against African skin. For twelve years I was happy. Then Papa fell sick.
‘For weeks our rooms were filled with death and decay. The fort doctor came, but he told Mama he could do nothing. When the doctor had gone, Mama worked obeah spells, but Papa’s ancestors were calling him, she said. I kissed Papa, and sat with him. Sometimes Mama cried. Once Papa woke and murmured my name. Then he closed his eyes, and did not open them again.’ She blinked, her shadow dark against a square of firelight on the wall. ‘That afternoon, the slavers came for Mama and I.’
She had been reading in her room, but she ran in when she heard her mother scream. Captain Jackson – her father’s friend – was standing in their parlour. He had hold of Mama, which confused her. Two strangers were with him. One big and broad, with a pock-marked face and a bald head. The other had long flaxen hair like one of her dolls. The flaxen man walked up to Mama, and gripped her by the jaw. He told her to open her mouth, and when she refused, he hit her.
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