Elisabeth Fairchild (30 page)

He uncorked the jug. Like cologne, he liberally dashed the cheap rum about his neck and shoulders. That his breath might be equally perfumed, he swigged a mouthful.

And with the sweet sting of the spirits on his tongue he thought of Dulcie.

He corked the bottle, did his best to cork thoughts as well. Longing weakened him, dulled his edge. Just the sort of thing to make him careless, to get him killed. Too close loomed the finishing of this job with Thistlewood’s radicals, to risk personal feelings getting in his way. He struggled to shut away desire, to closet craving, to nip the bloom of affection.

Always, in the past, he had fought off feminine distractions. And yet, this time, the harder he fought, the greater swelled his need. He could not box it in. Like the fruity odor of the rum, thoughts of her intoxicated. Like the soft glow of moonlight, she brightened the dark corners of his mind, illuminating the squalid world in which he immersed himself.

His nights he gave, grudgingly, to the mistress of his work. Tonight he took himself to a meeting of the Spencean Philanthropists. They met in the parlor beside the White Lion’s taproom, a rough, dark, disreputable place that discouraged all but the regulars. Watered rum, bad brandy and cheap gin fermented brave ideas and wilder plots. Thistlewood’s lot trolled this ale-washed backwater of discontent for new members to join their cause.

Dulcie. His bootheels on the dirty stairs whispered her name. Thoughts of her hung about his head like midges. He could not shoo them, could not chase smell and taste of her from nose, from tongue. Like an alley cat in season, he longed to scale again the drainpipe that led to her window, longed to make her bed, her body, his own. Never before had a woman so possessed his thoughts and desires. Never had he fought so hard the pull.

He pushed into the smoky warmth of the taproom, gait changed, posture lurching. He played the drunken fool this evening, a man who came to this taproom from other taprooms.

Dulcie Selwyn was the only decent woman he knew who would not look upon him in this instant and find him disgusting; the only woman he knew that would not be fooled by this pretended inebriation. He staggered past the barman, held up his jug with a thick-tongued cry. “Bring me another!”

Deliberately, he ran up against another drunken sot who loudly insulted his ancestors, then stumbled into the parlor. He dropped his jug with a crash. Heads rose hissing in that nest of political vipers. Drunkenly, he laughed at his own foolishness, with swaying gait stepped over the broken jug.

He joined Thistlewood’s table, sliding jovially onto the bench. The barmaid, a pockmarked lass, bosom well exposed, delivered more spirits. His heart cried out for fleshly fulfillment against Dulcie’s soft breast.

Harrison, across the table from Roger, threw back his tankard to guzzle.

“We could take them down at the funeral,” he suggested with an aromatic belch. “I have been chatting up the horse-guard. The whole of them are to go to Windsor.”

Not maids the men concerned themselves with, but ministers.

Harrison leaned forward, bathing them in the breath of his idea. “We could kill ‘em all! Graveside.” He sniggered, shoved at Davidson, who sat beside him. “Push ‘em in on top of the king ‘afore the hole is filled.”

“Damn fool notion, mon,” Davidson cuffed at his ear.

“Ow!” Harrison rubbed it, frowning.

Davidson shook his head. “’Tis a cheese-brained notion going all the way to Windsor--bearing arms--the streets lined with Grenadier Guards and Royal Horse. How far do you think we might get? They would lock us up and throw away the key!”

“’Tis too long since the Ministers came together publicly. Seems a shame to waste the opportunity,” Tidd pointed out.

“A great waste,” Thistlewood slammed down his pot of ale, liquid sloshing the boards at his elbow. His voice rang with an intensity that turned heads, that stilled the passage of tankards and pots to ready lips, that silenced every voice within earshot. “Lads, don’t you see? It is London we should help ourselves to, not Windsor. Everyone will be gone to Windsor. Guards, ministers, royals, nobles.”

They leaned in to listen, drawn by the glittering promise of his eyes.

“While the cat’s away, we mice could take the barracks, the cannon at Grey’s Inn, and the six pieces in the artillery ground. And no one left to stop us! With big guns at our disposal, the Bank of England--” he clenched his hand “would fall into our grasp like a ripe plum.”

The cool assurance of this calmly voiced treason held them riveted.

Roger’s spirit ached.

After this was over. Then he would allow himself thoughts of Dulcie--feelings. Then he would tell her, if heart still urged, if body still hungered, if spirit remained unswayed. Then, and only then would he allow himself the luxury of love.

Thistlewood had plans. “We will need men in Hyde Park, to prevent messengers from getting through. More men to take the telegraph, to prevent communication with Woolwich.”

They nodded, his recommendations logical.

“More men to the seaports.” He counted them out. “Dover, Marsgate, Ramsgate, Brighton.”

“Why?” Harrison’s face reflected the growing alarm simmering beneath the surface of every expression.

Roger rested his chin in the palms of his hands, shifting his gaze from one to the other of them, pretending himself groggy with spirits.

Thistlewood’s brows rose. “We would need to prevent citizens from leaving England, don’t you see, unless they’ve been issued legal passport from our provisional government.”

“Ah!” Harrison said, bureaucratic order comforting. Thistlewood was entirely serious, and entirely capable of carrying the thing off, given enough deluded souls to dispense his initiative.

Roger’s chin rose unsteadily from the support of his hands. “All of thish in time for the funeral tomorrow? Besht get busy.” He leaned drunkenly against Thistlewood.

His stupidness had the desired effect, breaking Thistlewood’s spell.

Thistlewood knew it. He poked at Roger’s shoulder with disgust. “Sit up, man. You’re a disgrace.”

“Schleepy!” Roger complained. “An’ so mush to do.” Eyes gone glassy, he made a pillow of the table.

“What of the ministers?” Tidd asked.

Roger snorted, turning his head to address the puddle of ale at Thistlewood’s elbow. “Canna’ have the minishters gadding about, gedding in the way.”

“Blow the chapel,” Brunt urged, under his breath.

Roger dipped a finger in the puddle, used the spill to draw a line along the table. “Noo, noo,” he chided softly. “Noo good. Sh-choolboyz you will end up killing. The public will be pished.”

“Schoolboys?” Monument, a stiff young man who kept to himself more often than not, sounded appalled.

“Lads from Eton.” Davidson nodded. “Do you never read the paper, mon? The prince has asked a great lot of them to be the last to pay their respects to ‘is father.”

“Tha’s right!” Roger punctuated his declaration with a belch. He should know. It had been his idea, the schoolboys. His idea, too, that the Prince stay in Brighton, miss the funeral. Safer all around. “Mussen blow up schoo’boys.” He wagged a wet finger at Thistlewood.

Ings joined them. He unbuttoned his coat, flinging cold droplets of rain. “With four little ones of my own I’ve no stomach for that sort of revolution. But, what about this kind, lads?”

From beneath the coat he drew a long, thin paper parcel, tied up with string.

Thistlewood pounced upon it like a cat upon a rat, and placed it lengthwise along the table, in front of Roger’s nose. He plucked away the string. “Both sides sharpened?”

Ing smiled, winked. “As you asked, though he made some noise about it.”

Thistlewood drew from its nest of brown paper, mean as a wasp, a long-bladed cutlass. Wielding it so that its freshly honed edge ran silver with the light, he brought it to bear, lightly, against Ing’s rounded belly. “No stomach for killing children, Ings?”

Ings nodded, wordless.

“And you, Edwards! Have you no head for taking London by morning?” He swiveled the blade, as Roger groggily raised head, a rude beknighting of Roger’s pate that sent him face first into the crumpled paper. “All right. I’ve a better plan in mind.”

“What plan?” Tidd asked.

Thistlewood winked at him, beckoned them close. Roger lifted his head from the table with a drunken groan.

Thistlewood whispered, “It shall be revealed to you on the day of action. Until then . . .” He sat back, raised the cutlass high, so that it caught the eyes of all who sat before him.

Swinging it with the flair of a skilled swordsman, he brought the blade to rest dangerously against Roger’s exposed throat.

“Any of you who lose stomach, heart, or head--anyone suspected of informing on the group--I will personally dispatch.”

Roger froze, mind racing. Who had sussed him out? Who had revealed by an ill-considered word in the wrong person’s ear, his true identity? Dulcie?

“Do you hear me lads?” Thistlewood bent to whisper right in his ear, washing Roger’s face with the stomach turning odor of sausage, garlic and onion. “Do you hear me Edwards?”

“I hear you,” Roger mumbled. Did Thistlewood mean to make an example of him, here and now?

Thistlewood leaned closer. The blade, keen and cold, moved--stung as it grazed Roger’s skin. “I have heard there is an informant amongst our number!”

A gasp or two. Sharp movement as the men looked about, suspicion and fear in their glances.

Roger backed away from the blade, felt the warm trickle of blood from the surface scratch. His pulse pounded loud in his ears. Was this how he ended? Throat slit, his blood puddling a rum sticky table? Would Dulcie--his brothers--ever know what had become of him?

Beneath the table his fingers traveled slowly down his calf, seeking out the dirk he kept strapped inside his boot. If die he must, he would take Thistlewood with him.

He concentrated on making his voice carry just the right blend of inebriated surprise. “Informant? Kill the bashtard!”

“I mean to do just that,” Thistlewood promised.

Roger palmed the dirk from his boot and lifted it to Thistlewood’s abdoman, waiting for the final slide of the blade at his throat. He would not die alone.

“Not Edwards!” Ings exclaimed. “He has just borrowed two bob from me!”

“And no renigging on the debt!” Roger muttered wryly, as if he partook of a jest.

The blade at his throat moved. Cool air, not the heat of fresh blood, kissed the spot where it had too long been pressed.

“It could be any one of you,” Thistlewood’s sense of betrayal lent a hard edge to the words. “I promise you, if I find the scoundrel, I shall run the knave through.”

Anger fueled Dulcie’s call upon Lord Sidmouth the following morning, and melancholy, in contemplating her lack of success as much with Roger as with the task he assigned her.

Once again, Sidmouth’s butler’s nose raked skyward, “My Lord is out.”

She did not waste time arguing. Beyond the butler, through a window, she saw enough to lead her to believe Lord Sidmouth more easily approached from the back of the house than by way of the front. She must run her quarry to ground. The Houses of Parliament were closed, like everything else, in mourning, awaiting the funeral. Sidmouth was not to be met that evening at any event--theatre, opera or ball. All such frivolity had been postponed. The funeral took precedence.

She walked to the mews that hugged the back of the house. There, a flurry of activity reigned. Grooms shouted orders, harness jingled, hooves and bootheels beat restlessly on the cobbles.

“Windsor,” she heard and, “--the king.”

Doors flung wide, a dark carriage rattled out of the stable, bay horses snorting, breath pluming white. The haste of their gait as the coachman chirruped them into motion, whipped her skirts into a flutter.

And in the window, Lord Sidmouth, the weak morning sun pale upon his cheek.

“No! Wait!” She lifted her hand as he passed.

The carriage rattled purposefully on. No sign of recognition from Sidmouth. She was but one more woman in black, a woman who mourned not the death of her king so much as the death of the future she had long imagined must be hers.

February 16, 1821

Dawn proved nose-bitingly chill, eye-blearingly foggy. Determined to get word to Sidmouth, Dulcie set out for Windsor with her father, to the tune of bells ringing all over London--church bells tolling the passing of a king.

Blackness claimed the day, a bleakness of thought as all considered their own mortality, their own frail humanity. If a king might go mad, and die ignobly, his riches and power useless to save him, or ease his passing, what might be the fate of the average man or woman?

Trumpets joined the bells, plaintive and mournful--from the walls of the tower, from the palace and the Royal barracks. Into the muffled, mournful noise of a nation’s sadness the carriage rolled, into a pearl gray fog. Her father thought it his idea they should go to Windsor. Dulcie, the note to Sidmouth tucked in her pocket, knew better.

She knew they would meet. Knew this message would today be delivered. She could feel it in her bones.

They headed west, caught up in the crowds, all headed west, to Windsor. Every hotel, posting house and inn posted placards in windows and along walkways. Engaged. No rooms. She thought of Manchester. Cold thoughts, nothing to warm her.

Like the ghosts of that violent past, in every chilly fogbound open space and field, horses lifted their heads as the carriage passed--an army of horses descended upon London bringing all of England to witness the funeral procession.

Bells rang them out of London, fellow mourners served as escort. Vehicles, crepe hung, crowded the road. Faces peered at her from fogged windows. She peered back, unabashedly, searching for two faces among the many: Sidmouth, that she might deliver her message, and Roger, that she might bid him farewell.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

February 16, 1820

St. George’s, Windsor