Elyse Mady (20 page)

“Is Mr. Threws available?”

“What do you have for me?”

Hester supposed this curt answer was his way of acknowledging his name but it did little to endear him to her. Reaching into her pocket, she withdrew the letter she had been charged to deliver.

As she watched, he took it. He snapped the seal and read it, muttering imprecations below his breath. He glanced over it once more, as though committing its contents to memory. Then as quickly as he had done so, he put the letter to the flame of a solitary candle which was struggling to dispel the murkiness. The parchment browned and curled, the flames meandering over the paper, dissolving the ink in a blackened char. The wax melted, three fat blobs dropping onto the counter, scorching the worn surface, but the silversmith did not remove them.

“You may tell him I agree to his terms,” he said, waving the remains of the communiqué, about to extinguish it.

“His terms?” What terms? What sort of witness bartered his information like a business transaction? “I don’t understand.”

Threws looked at her, his eyes narrowed. “I don’t figure that damned vulture keeps you about for your understanding,” he sneered, leering at her bosom.

Hester clutched the folds of her cape a little tighter, the better to discourage his interest. It didn’t seem a deterrent though. His face was so licentious that her heart raced and her stomach churned.

“’Tis enough that you tell him I agree to his terms and he may expect to have it fulfilled. But it will take time as it is not something that can be accomplished in a trice. He may expect delivery in three weeks. A month if I encounter difficulties obtaining…supplies.” Threws paused, clearly doubtful. “Will you be collecting it?”

Hester was now convinced that whatever business Wooley was conducting had precious little to do with her brother. This shop was wrong and this man, with his odd pale eyes and his stooped, covetous gaze, was even more so. She took a step backwards and then another. Threws seemed amused by her dismay, watching with sardonic pleasure as she retreated to the door. The latch pressed against the small of her back and she wanted to weep with vexation. Beside her, George trembled, but she saw grim determination in his face. His staunch presence gave her courage.

She would not succumb to hysteria. It would serve nothing. There would be time enough for that later. For now, she must keep her wits about her.

But before she could do anything, a young man in shirtsleeves barged into the room through a narrow door at the back of the shop. Hester hadn’t noticed it before—the space was so poorly lit she could barely distinguish anything of its layout—but as it swung open, she had a brief glimpse of a smoking brazier and a vast quantity of tools and moulds.

The interloper was wearing a leather apron too, but where the old man was cool to the point of rudeness, his faced was flushed and red. He had evidently run a great distance or at great speed, or both, because he was panting.

“’Tis the law,” he cried. “Bow Street bastards…come to rumble us.”

From behind the counter, Threws leapt into action. “How long?” He cast a frantic glance through the grimy panes of the front window into the street. At a distance, came the faint sound of whistles and heavy feet.

“Even now. They’re hard on my heels.”

Threws swore viciously and cuffed the boy upside the head with a single blow. “Quickly, quickly,” he screamed in a thin, high voice. It was as if they had forgotten Hester’s presence. They disappeared into the back room without another glance. As soon as they were gone, she whirled about and lifted the latch to stumble into the street outside, George following close on her heels.

The street was transformed.

Whereas before it had lacked even a single human occupant, it was now crowded with humanity. There were officers of the law everywhere. Some were pounding on locked doors, demanding entry, while still others were hauling the denizens of the dodgy shops into the street. A woman began to berate them, her shrill voice rising above the cacophony.

Hester had to get away. Snatching at the footman’s sleeve to ensure they were not separated, she turned, trying to fight her way towards the high street. Someone knocked into her from behind and she fell to the ground, tears in her eyes as she grazed her knees and palms.

“Miss Aspinall.” A man’s voice rang out with authority.

The call of her name stopped her cold and she struggled to her feet, George hauling her up like an unruly sack of millet. She wiped her palms on her cloak, the grit and blood stinging. One of her pattens had come loose, and she listed like a poorly loaded ship. She turned around, her heart in her mouth. “Mr. Taunton.”

It was the officer who had interrogated her on the day after her brother’s arrest. Unlike his fellow officers, Taunton seemed unaffected by the chaos. His plain face was deceptively serene and untroubled. But Hester could not miss the way his eyes watched the proceedings and she would hazard a guess that little escaped his attention.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I am come on…an errand.” Even to her own ears it sounded peculiar. She tried to smile but could feel the strange distortion of her face and knew she looked panicked, not pleased. George stood behind her. She dared not look at him, afraid of what his honest face was revealing.

Taunton raised a sceptical brow. “Here? On whose behalf? Your own? Or mayhap that brother of yours?” A pair of constables lumbered by, dragging a struggling man by the shoulders while he protested his innocence at the top of his lungs.

“It is enough to know I am on an errand,” she said, trying harder to disguise her fear. But there was little doubt that Taunton was not convinced by her story. “I do not think, no matter how great the fame the Bow Street police might claim, that even they have the right to interrogate citizens as they go about their business.” She raised her chin, but beneath her enveloping cloak her hands trembled.

Would he arrest her? If she were the officer, she would question the presence of the sister of a known criminal in such a place as this too.

Taunton gazed at her, his face unreadable as he scrutinized first her and then the servant beside her. Thank God she had already completed her errand and Threws had burned the note. She had no doubt that if she still possessed it, whatever illegal plan it had contained, it would have been sufficient proof of ill doing to see her clapped in the women’s side of Newgate posthaste, the better to sleep amongst the mouldy straw and starving babes in arms.

“You persist in maintaining that you are innocent of any dishonesty?”

She thought of the lies and deceptions she had practiced of late. Towards her brother. Towards Thomas. But those were not the transgressions to which Mr. Taunton referred. “Yes. I had no knowledge of this street before I lost myself on it.”

That at least was the truth. For a moment, she thought of confessing the whole matter to the police officer.

Wooley was a criminal. He was involved in dishonest dealings and Hester was now convinced he had no intention of mounting a defense on her brother’s behalf. What would Taunton say if she were to implicate the solicitor? To tell him that it was under that one’s orders that she had come here. That between him and Mr. Threws a plot had been set in motion.

She wavered but decided against it. She had no proof. Threws had burnt the note and it would be a simple matter for both the lawyer and the silversmith to claim ignorance. And then there was the matter of the twenty pounds.

Wooley still laid claim to Thomas’s money. If she revealed his criminal enterprises now, then the chance to recover the monies paid him would be negligible. It might be a small sum to Thomas but her pride demanded she try and recover it.

“Yes,” she answered confidently. “I am.”

At length, the officer nodded. “Then you had best be on your way. See that your man fetches you a chair once you reach the high street. You’re bleeding.”

Nodding, she turned and stumbled up the street, George supporting her until she at last reached the main thoroughfare. She stood by the public pump as the trembling fear eased. When the chairmen arrived, she climbed inside.

“Where to, miss?”

“Newgate Prison.” She could no longer put off revealing what she knew of Wooley. Her brother still needed a lawyer but that it could not be him was evident. He was a danger and even if they weren’t able to recover the money they’d spent on his fees, at least they would be free of Wooley’s criminal plots.

Chapter Seventeen

Francis rushed up to him, Philip Hett in tow, and grabbed his arm roughly.

“Cook’s hurt,” he hissed. “Have you any money?”

Robert had had little contact with the other men he’d been arrested with. He’d spoken to Cook once or twice during the first few days, and Amos kept trying to fondle his ass whenever they passed by in the press yard, but once he’d removed to the master’s side, Robert had tried to have as little to do with any of them as possible.

“What does he need money for if he’s hurt?”

The former soldier shook his head. “It’s not for Cook. It’s for Boxe. Hypocrite’s oath, my ass. The poxy bastard won’t help him if someone doesn’t put up the money, for all he’s the prison doctor.”

Robert didn’t want to get involved but his conscience pushed him. “Is he badly hurt?” he asked, hoping the answer would allow him to bow out. When Hett nodded in the affirmative, he knew his hopes of retreat had been dashed.

“He’s been worked over something fierce. Can’t hardly speak for the swelling. But it’s his breathing that frightens me most. He gasps and gasps, like he can’t catch his breath and won’t let us touch him. He’s black and blue.”

Once, Hett had been a gentleman’s gentleman, serving in a fashionable house in Portland Street. He’d had a fine figure and a well-turned leg that had always shown to advantage in his livery. Now, his coat was worn and his linens a dull griege. His face was gaunt, the effects of nearly two months of meagre rations, his fingernails crusted and gnawed.

Richard Francis looked a little better, his tall frame still conveying a hard strength that boded ill for anyone who dared challenge him. He’d been in the army and well used deprivation. But his face too showed the effects of their incarceration and when he moved, Robert could see it was with the deliberate slowness of a weakened man unsure of his own step.

He would have to stand for Cook. As much as he despised the man, basic humanity—a precept in such little evidence within the stone walls that it was easy to believe it did not exist—demanded it.

“Did you find him?”

“No, it were Done. He spends most of the day in the privy. He’s caught something. Gaol fever, most likely, and he can’t eat for puking. Or shitting. He found Cook, left for dead. He didn’t think any of the others would be willing to help a molly, so he found Francis and I. We carried him as best we could into one of the cells and got him on a pallet. Then I went for the doctor.”

“And what does the doctor say?” The trio moved quickly through the yard and up the worn stone steps that led to the cells.

“That he won’t lay a hand on him ’til he’s been paid.” The anger in the former servant’s voice was harsh.

“I have some coin on me,” Robert admitted. He might have to leave his belongings unattended but he wasn’t fool enough to leave even a groat behind. He wore the small coins his sister sent in a pouch tied round his neck for safekeeping. They met no one outside the cells. They entered.

Cook was on the pallet. It was impossible to distinguish the full extent of his injuries in the dim light but the harsh irregularity of his breathing echoed through the room, each exhalation wet and laboured. From the stained profile of the publican’s nose, it had been broken very badly. Dr. Boxe stood by, his medical box clutched in his arms, doing nothing.

Robert crouched beside Cook. “Is there a light?” he asked. “Or a blanket?”

Francis answered in the negative and Robert swore. The sound of his voice seemed to rouse Cook a little. He tried to open his bruised eyes and mouthed a few faint sounds. Robert was at a loss. Cook persisted, his lips moving in a regular pattern to form the same silent words.

My—my wife.

“Your wife? You wish us to call your wife?”

James Done lurched to his feet. He was shaking, tremors and sweat pouring from him. He looked pitiable and in as much need of a doctor as the man on the pallet. The bricklayer held out his hand.

“If you will give me a ha’penny, I will see that the guards send a note to fetch her here.”

“You are not well—”

“Give me the ha’penny,” Done insisted. “I’ve done my duty by him. I didn’t have to have him hauled out of the privy or the doctor fetched. But I did, because I am still a respectable man,” he said querulously. “So I will send a note to his misbegotten wife and wash my hands of the matter completely.”

Robert handed him the copper coin and he stumbled from the cell like a badly wounded automaton.

Cook followed Done’s progress to the iron gate, his bloodshot eyes so pathetically grateful that against all expectation, Robert felt a surge of pity for him. Cook wasn’t an honest man. He must have known the perversions and condemnation he was inviting when he opened the White Swan to customers. He had taken the money of the men who frequented his pub to line his own pocket, morals be damned, and had tried to barter for his own freedom at the expense not only of his fellow accused but also the yet to be accused.

Still, no one deserved to be set upon in this fashion.

As for the motive, every man in the room knew the cause.

Someone feared what Cook might have been about to confide about his clientele. Fool had been going about the prison announcing to all and sundry that Alderman Plomer was facilitating his release in exchange for his knowledge of still anonymous participants. His pride had led to this beating and if Boxe did not intercede soon, it might yet lead to his death.

Wooley had seemed so confident of the scheme, Robert remembered suddenly. He had urged Robert to take part as well. If he had, he had no doubt that he would have joined Cook in agony on a neighbouring pallet.

Suddenly, all his doubts about the solicitor rushed upon him and he knew that he had to dismiss Wooley, no matter the risk to his own defense. The man was not to be trusted. He’d led his own client into this wilderness. Why had he not warned Cook to say nothing? Instead, he had fairly paraded the man through the prison, come what may.

“I will pay his fees,” Robert stated sharply. “So do your duty and do what you can for him.”

Boxe grimaced but while his reluctance was obvious, he still knelt beside the injured man and began to palpate his torso, pressing and prodding carefully. He lifted Cook’s bloodied shirt out of the way. Even the murkiness could not disguise the bruising or the marks the boots that had contacted his body had left. His left side looked particularly bad and that was where Boxe soon directed his attentions. Every gesture seemed to bring forth an involuntary exclamation of pain from Cook and for his sake, Robert hoped the examination would be concluded quickly.

“His ribs are broken,” Boxe announced, his head against Cook’s chest, listening to his respirations. “Two or three on the left side, certainly. On the right, I suspect that they are merely cracked. Painful, of course, but as long as none of the bones lacerate his organs and he does not develop a catarrh of the lungs, not fatal.” He shrugged, little moved by the plight of the man he was treating.

“Is that all?” Robert asked. It was a very short diagnosis for a man so visibly incapacitated. Boxe seemed surprised by his attitude and his mouth tightened.

“There are broken bones in the hand where some of the smaller bones have been shattered. I doubt he’ll ever regain full use of it. And there is a contusion on the left temple. I imagine someone struck him quite a blow,” he said, looking at the men surrounding him with the first glimmer of real curiosity. “But he’s clearly of hardy stock, and I don’t think those injuries, ugly though they may appear, will prove any great road during the healing process. These sort of things happen all too frequently in the prison for me to be surprised.” He wiped his hands fastidiously before opening his chest and withdrawing a stoppered bottle. Working the cork free, he poured the pungent black liquid into a spoon. “Tincture of opium for the pain. He should take a teaspoonful as necessary to relieve his discomfort.”

Boxe tipped the laudanum into Cook’s mouth. His patient took it eagerly, slipping almost at once into unconsciousness. The men around him gave a collective sigh of relief. None of them could see Cook and not think of their own vulnerability to just such an attack.

“I’ll need light if I’m to bandage his wounds,” the doctor said. “Has he any candles?”

Hett shook his head. “Hasn’t the garnish for it.”

“He may have some of mine. And a blanket. I doubt he’s got one of those, either.” Robert offered grudgingly, biting back his angry rebuke. For Cook’s sake, it would not do to anger the prison doctor. God knew what the supercilious fool would do if Robert challenged him any further. He wouldn’t put it past the man to withhold relief or refuse to treat the patient at all.

He was heading back, a bundle of blankets, two small candles, still joined at the wick, flint and a clean nightshirt from his own quarters in his arms when he was hailed.

The voice was so unexpected he stumbled, and the burden tumbled onto the filthy paving stones. “Hester!”

He and his sister had not seen each other since their disastrous encounter in Newman’s parlour, when they’d quarrelled over her decision to remain in Ramsay’s care.

She’d written—short, stilted notes that mentioned nothing of her new life or of Thomas Ramsay delivered in the baskets George Simpson carried. Robert replied in the same tone. Businesslike enquiries about his health from her and requests for another set of clean shirts or to have shears sharpened and returned.

Nothing of his fear or his regrets. Nothing of her hurt or her anger. They were as strangers to each other.

Once he’d removed to the master’s side, he’d returned to his trade in a limited fashion. He’d sewn some two-dozen shirts and patched twice as many again. One man, from the debtor’s quadrangle, had even commissioned a new suit of clothes, for which Robert had insisted on being paid in full before work began.

On first glance she looked well. The gown, he noticed instantly, was new. Fashionably cut, with a blue velvet spencer with tasselled cuffs. But her face beneath her wide bonnet was pale and the hem of her dress heavily soiled, as though she had fallen to her knees. Hard on her heels, Ramsay’s footman followed.

“Hester,” Robert said, speaking past the sharp sting of his throat, “It is not safe for you to come here. Even with George for your protection.”

“I had to come.”

He hesitated. “Has something happened with—with Ramsay?”

His sister stiffened then shook her head. “No. Not with Thomas. It is Wooley.”

“Wooley?” He did not understand. “What has Wooley to do with your arrival? You met him the once, to deliver my payment. Beyond that—”

“I have met with him regularly. Sometimes by appointment, sometimes by chance,” she corrected him. “He asked me to stand as his messenger and today, he sent me to deliver a note that he told me would aid in your defence. Then, do you know what happened?”

“He lied.” It wasn’t a response to her question; he said the words with absolute certainty. Anger suffused his body. Cook was a guilty man and while Wooley bore some of the responsibility for endangering him with his reckless scheme, an equal portion could be heaped on the publican’s head.

Hester was an innocent. For Wooley to have involved her, Robert could not forgive.

Her face reflected shock. “You knew?” Quickly, she sketched out what had happened in the coiner’s illegal workshop. She shook with remembered fear but the words did not stop flowing until she had told the whole of her experience. He had never been prouder.

He took her gloved hand in his own. “Come with me.”

When she saw Cook’s ruined face in the cell, Hester began to tremble again. George muttered imprecations under his breath, but Robert ignored him, all his attention on his sister.

“Wooley did this,” he stated, willing her to understand the seriousness of the situation.

“Why? Is this man not his client too?”

“He was,” he admitted. “I cannot tell you why Wooley acts as he does. Why he seems intent on committing the very crimes he ought to defend against. But while he might not have thrown the blows, it was his greed, his wilful blindness that laid this man out as you see. He cared nothing for Cook. He cares nothing for me. I was duped and gullible, desperate to believe that I might have a chance of defending myself against the charges I face. I know now that was a false hope. No one will defend me.”

“No.”

The weak light that permeated through the iron bars let Robert distinguish the anguished expression on her face. He tried to smile but could not seem to mould his own visage into the proper shape.

“I have accepted that I will be found guilty,” he said gently. “If I am lucky, I will only be transported. If I am unlucky, I will hang.” He’d spent the better part of two months pretending that he was not in desperate straits, and that if he acted the part of an innocent man, he would be found such. He knew that the time for delusion was past. In a little more than two weeks, he would stand trial.

He would be asked of his guilt or his innocence, the evidence would be presented and the jury would likely not even retire to decide his fate. A few minutes of conference at most. It might take ten minutes, possibly twenty, but the whole of his trial would take no more than an hour. Most trials, he’d learned, were over in less than a quarter of an hour. Murder. Rape. Theft. Sodomy. They were all dispatched with dispassionate efficiency.

“I am sorry that I will not be able to protect you as I promised our mother and father. You must do the best you can, once I am found guilty.”

“Robert, stop.”

He continued. “Perhaps you can ask Mr. Ramsay to lend you passage. I’m sure in Nova Scotia or Upper Canada or even the subcontinent, you could begin your life anew. No one need know of me and what I’ve done—”

“Robert, stop.” She laid a hand on his arm, just above his manacles. Her touch, gentle and caring, stunned him. How could she possibly care for him? He had done so little to deserve it. He had ruined her life as well as his own with his folly and his vices. He deserved everything that was to be meted out to him.

“There is a barrister,” she said earnestly. “Thomas has told me he is very well respected. A friend of the family, I believe. You could engage Sir John. He will defend you. You will not hang!”