Dark Waters (16 page)

‘There's nothing wrong with that!' she announced, straightening her back and challenging me with a proud look.

‘Oh no, absolutely nothing, Mrs Fitzpatrick,' I agreed. ‘It is perfectly delicious.'

‘Then I wish you would tell folk, because this hotpot has got a bad reputation for itself, and all through no fault of its own. Clear its name for it – will you do that for me, Mr Cragg?'

I said I would do my best.

‘Well, I have taken on many cases in my years as an attorney,' I told Fidelis, after she had bustled away, ‘but this was the first time I've taken a brief from a dish of food.'

Fidelis laughed.

‘And the first time you might boast that you've seen your client eaten, Titus.'

Chapter Eleven

T
HE
M
AY
D
AY
festivities were still under way as we walked out into the sunshine of Stoney Gate. With the swollen population of the town, most of them already intent on drinking and feasting, the holiday had quickly reached an intensity I had never seen before. From various points of the compass wild cheers and raucous singing reached us on the breeze from Market Place.

We parted at the top of Cheapside and, going home, I found Elizabeth waiting. She had seen the maypole dance and was now bonneted and ready to walk out with me to see the procession.

‘Destercore is a villain, I am sure of it,' I told her, unable to rid my mind of dark suspicious thoughts. ‘He has come here to murder voters with poison, and make it look like plague, and so frighten people out of town. I think I must take this to Mayor Biggs.'

‘Can you prove it?'

‘No.'

‘Then do not speak to the mayor, Titus. Not yet. The man's fool enough as it is. There's no knowing what extremes he may go to if he thinks his party is under attack.'

As we came out of the house a group of men were hurrying towards Fisher Gate, calling to each other about some exciting event happening further down the street – an altercation between two gentlemen, which was evidently worth running to see. Curiosity quickened our own steps as we followed.

Outside Porter's there was a ruck of people. I noticed Luke Fidelis standing on the fringe of the crowd and we went over and stood beside him. Even by rising on my toes I could not see what was happening, but Fidelis is taller.

‘Dr Fidelis,' said Elizabeth, pulling at his sleeve, ‘can you see what the matter is?'

‘It is Sir Harry Hoghton and Francis Reynolds, squaring up to each other.'

‘What, the two candidates? Don't tell me they are fighting!'

‘Any moment now.'

I pushed forward between two broad-backed spectators until I could get a view. The two Whigs confronted one another like a pair of fighting cocks. Sir Henry was even redder in the face than usual as he stood there, bullish and obstinate; Reynolds was screeching with rage.

I could not catch all the words being spoken, but the injured party appeared to be Reynolds. He was rocking back and forth as a string of reproaches poured from his mouth. These he punctuated at intervals by reaching out and sharply pushing Sir Henry on the breast. His voice rose to a height of indignation and I heard him clearly for the first time.

‘You double-dealing swine! You rogue! You villain!'

Sir Henry was neither backing down, nor retreating, nor in any way showing weakness. He talked back with what might, from the grim smile on his face, have been some choice satirical remarks aimed at Reynolds's personal qualities. So he stood his ground, with his dander up and his fists clenched, happy to argue if Reynolds was arguing, and ready to box, if it came to boxing.

The crowd was murmuring in rapt anticipation of the fight, when Denis Destercore came bustling out of the Mitre, with the look of a farmer whose milk cows have escaped from their pasture. He was not a big man but he pushed through the crowd like a strong one, until he had placed himself between the two antagonists, parted them and spoken fast and earnestly. The import of what he was saying was clear, even if the words were not: the last thing that the Whig cause needed was a falling-out between the two candidates.

I tapped the shoulder of a big man in front of me, an out-of-towner whom I did not know.

‘Have you seen this from the beginning? What has happened? How is Mr Reynolds injured?'

‘Didn't you hear?' the man answered with a coarse laugh. ‘He's caught the old one planting cabbage on his patch. But the old one thinks it was
his
patch in the first place.'

I slipped back to Elizabeth and Fidelis.

‘That fellow says Hoghton's been planting cabbage on Reynolds's patch,' I reported.

Luke laughed in delight.

‘What a kitchen garden is this life!”

Then, through the screen of bodies, we saw an arm swing, and heard a cry and a curse, and at once the spectators were parting, making a path for Reynolds. Hoghton, comforted by the agent's arm around his shoulder, was holding a handkerchief spotted with blood to his nose, while Reynolds continued to breast his way through the spectators, his face a rigid mask of anger. As soon as he was free of us, he crossed the street and let himself into a house on the other side, violently slamming the door behind him. Just before the crash of the door I looked upwards at the windows overlooking the scene. There, standing at a top floor, I saw the figure of Mrs Lavinia Bryce peeping out from behind a half-drawn curtain. As she heard the door hurled against its frame she abruptly turned away, letting the curtain fall.

Elizabeth had laughed so hard she needed to straighten her bonnet.

‘Did you know about this?' I asked.

‘Oh, no! Not until this minute. Everyone knew about Mr Reynolds, of course, and his – how shall I put it? – his
arrangement
with Mrs Bryce. But it appears that Sir Harry was there before him and last night tried to reassert himself. Oh, what cock-fighting! What sport!'

I laughed with her. The effect this might have on the election I could not say, but no one could deny that it was as good as a comedy.

We made our way back by a roundabout route to Market Place where we found benches and tables had been set out in front of the White Bull. They were crammed with customers spooning up glasses of custard and supping mugs of ale while a succession of itinerant personalities entertained them. The latest was the Irishman I had seen performing card tricks the previous Monday morning – the prestidigitator of eccentric appearance. He was standing on a wooden chest and giving out a stream of speech to the crowd; Elizabeth and I stopped to hear his patter.

‘It was a grave thing, what happened,' he was saying, ‘a very grave thing indeed. The poor man died, as I hear, from eating a hotpot. A very
gravy
thing, that was.'

The audience roared with laughter, leaning into each other and slapping their knees.

‘You laugh, my masters,' said the man. His raised finger and darkened tone of voice quieted them instantly. ‘You would not, if you happened to have eaten that hotpot yourself. For you would be in the grave also. To eat such a friendly thing as a Lancashire hotpot and to die from it! How horrible. But do not despair.'

His hand whisked in the air then dived into one of his waistcoat pockets, producing a small bottle.

‘This is, my masters and mistresses, is my very own Patent Paracelsian Preservative. It is made from a unique secret formula divulged to me by a German gentleman in Württemberg who had it directly from the lips of a descendent of the great and potent wizard Paracelsus.'

The crowd gasped as he shook the bottle vigorously.

‘Yes,' he continued, ‘from Paracelsus himself, who could turn lead into gold and do diverse wondrous things, all of whose secrets were entombed with him. But not
quite
all. One particular secret was not entombed, because I have it here, yes, here, in this bottle, which I can sell to you, any of you, at the extreme modest price of sixpence, yes, sixpence, just sixpence, sirs and madams. This here is the Quintessence of Quintessence, as the good doctor himself called it – a universal specific, a guaranteed guard against contagion, poison, snakebite and the bloody flux.'

Swaying now, and bending at the waist in an inviting way, he turned until he was looking behind him.

‘Dickon!' he called, snapping his fingers, ‘come here to me.'

A forlorn-looking, cross-eyed man with thin, tangled hair and the appearance of having swallowed his own chin, shuffled out of the crowd that hedged them round. The mountebank stepped from his box, stood Dickon there in his place and produced a spoon from another of his waistcoat pockets. He pulled the cork from the bottle with his teeth and poured a dose of the preservative into the spoon. Still using his teeth he returned the cork to the bottle.

‘This here is Dickon, my particular young pal,' he said. ‘I have been worried about Dickon this last twenty-four hours, that is to say, it was his health worried me. Why? Because isn't he after partaking of that hotpot, that selfsame hotpot that did for the unfortunate deceased already mentioned? And did Dickon not guzzle the fatal stew at the very same time, and at the very same place, to whit the Gamecock Inn in this town, as the unfortunate deceased had done? He did, my ladies and gentlemen. Indeed he did.'

The crowd groaned. Every eye was fixed on the human exhibit standing before them. With his loose knees and drooping head, he looked as if he might fall dead on the spot at any moment.

‘But fear not, my valiant, and be of cheer,' the speaker went on, now addressing Dickon directly. ‘For with the irreplaceable assistance of my Patent Preservative you shall be reprieved from what will otherwise be a certain and agonizing death.'

He turned back to the crowd, leaning forward, swaying, and looking confidingly from eye to eye. ‘I have been dosing him every hour, every hour most regularly, since he told me the unwise thing he had done. Now it is time for the next ministration.'

He returned the bottle to his pocket and, reaching up with his free hand, tweaked Dickon's nose, pulling it upwards so that his mouth fell open. Neatly, he popped the spoonful of medicine into the mouth, released the nose and waited while the patient swallowed.

It was as if a sunbeam had reflected off Dickon's face and body. He lifted his head, and straightened his legs and his sagging back. A spark lit his eye, and he smiled.

‘There, do you see?' crowed the mountebank, standing back and spreading his arms to display his handiwork. ‘What could be easier and better? If it works for poor Dickon it will work for you. Now, who will buy? Sixpence a bottle is all I ask. Sixpence, only sixpence. Who will buy?'

He helped Dickon down from the box and motioned him to open it up, revealing a supply of bottles identical to the one in his pocket. In no time people were standing in line and, over the next five minutes, the Irishman did a brisk trade. The fellow had an extraordinary gift for the opportune, but his histrionics also provoked in me a brief meditation on the power of rumour and anxiety. It was that very power that (by Fidelis's reckoning) someone was trying to use to sway the country electors into fleeing the town for fear of a fictitious plague, a non-existent contagion.

A blast of wind music interrupted my thoughts. Every head turned to see the obese constable of the town, Oswald Mallender, as he strode bedizened into Market Place in his uniform (tricorn hat with silver-and-gold trim, brass chain of office) and swinging his mace, ahead of a six-strong pipe band. This in turn preceded a procession of mounted burgesses, led by Mayor Biggs looking oddly shrunken in his own regalia, heavy with silver, brass and braid. There followed the four flower-decked floats of the candidates for May Queen, each pulled along by a team of her followers, and attended by phalanxes of mostly drunk young men. They had grown hoarse from shouting political slogans over the last few days, but were now roaring louder than ever for the girl of their choice. In the general political argument few of them had a vote: in this election their voices counted for everything.

The floats trained into Market Place and drew up in a semicircle around the rear of the stage that had been put up on the east side. With magisterial deliberateness Mallender supervised the descent of the young ladies from their floats and their ascent to the platform. As soon as they were installed in full view the structure became an island surrounded by a boiling sea of men and women, waiting for Mallender to make a formal presentation of the candidates, and for the winner to be discovered by public acclamation.

The first to come forward was so nervous that she could only blush furiously, her eyes fixed on the boards. The next forced herself into the attitude of a saucy actress, with hands on hips and pouting lips. The youths gave her a cheer, but it was at least partly in derision, for she was Judith, the niece of Burgess Grimshaw. The third candidate was too young and excitable. She bounced up and down on the stage and laughed like a child rope jumping, which provoked some good-natured handclaps. But it was Maggie Satterthwaite, the fourth girl, who made the strongest impression on the public. Her wide smile, pretty face and graceful body, as she turned and waved this way and that, won by far the largest volley of cheers and whistles.

There was no doubt about the result. The shock expressed on Ephraim Grimshaw's face told the tale in full: it was the look of a man that had been overbid in a thoroughbred horse auction. His girl – what you might call the official candidate – had come a distant second. It was Maggie Satterthwaite who the people wanted as their Queen of the May, and all that remained was for her coronation by the previous Queen, a girl from Cadley called Eliza Tempest, who was standing by in readiness, wearing a crown thickly woven from spring flowers. A huddle of burgesses conferred at the back of the stage, with Ephraim Grimshaw talking urgently in the middle of them. While waiting for the announcement, the crowd sang and called out, ‘Mah-gee! Mah-gee!', ‘Send her to Parliament!' and other ribaldries. Then, in what looked like a prearranged signal, I saw Grimshaw nod at the constable, who waddled across to Maggie and spoke a few close words. Maggie clapped her hand to her mouth and took a frightened step backwards as Mallender reached out, gripped her by the wrist of her raised hand and began drawing her towards the platform steps. There were cries of protest and outstretched hands from all sides, which the constable batted away with his free hand. I looked again at Grimshaw. Having placed himself behind Mayor Biggs he was speaking rapidly into his ear while pushing him forward.