The Devlin Diary (7 page)

J
ENNY
D
ORSET HAD
good luck before in an alley off Fleet Lane, earning five shillings from a gent stumbling home after an evening in the White Hart Tavern. Not really a gentleman, more like a middling sort, she corrects herself. And then, because she is honest with herself even when it rankles, she admits that he wasn’t even a middling sort, just some poor bloke who’d won a few coins at cards and was too drunk to count when he put the money in her hands. But in the dark, standing up in the alley, what difference did it make, gent or bloke? No difference to her purse, at any rate. Money is money, the winter’s coming on, she’s got a new mouth to feed. As she looks for a dark niche near the tavern, she thinks of little Jack, her Jackie-boy, that tiny, red-faced, wizened little monster she grudgingly loves. Soon she finds the place she remembers, an alcove just beyond the light from the lanterns outside the White Hart. Not so out of the way that no one will walk by, but private enough that a man might be persuaded to satisfy a need before he goes home to bed. She looks up and down the alley for any sign of another petticoat or a folded fan, the wanton’s stock-in-trade. She’s the interloper here, a part-timer, and if any of the regular Fleet Lane whores find her on their turf, they’ll beat her and run her off.

Confident that she’s alone, she settles back into her chosen spot and fends off the cold with a few cherished fantasies. Jenny Dorset is still young enough to believe that it’s only a matter of time before a gentleman comes along and takes her away from her life of never enough—never enough food, never enough warmth, never enough amusement—and away from her despised and servile drudgery as a seamstress’s assistant. It’s not such an outlandish idea: she’s always been pretty, everyone says so, even since the baby was born, and she is not yet eighteen. She knows that gentlemen are sometimes seen slumming ’round here, swords clattering at their hips as they make their merry way from tavern to tavern. And why shouldn’t she dream? The king himself has taken an actress as one of his mistresses and put her up in a grand house in Pall Mall with servants and coaches and every manner of luxury. Everyone knows that the only difference between an actress and a common strumpet is that actresses have the advantage of strutting their wares upon a stage.

Jenny is thinking about how this fine gentleman will be so overcome by her beauty that he will forgive her for her youthful indiscretion, the result of which was little Jackie, when three men exit the tavern. It must be packed to the rafters inside: when the door opens, Jenny hears a riot of booming voices, clattering dishes, raucous laughter. The door shuts heavily behind them. The sounds of the tavern fade, and tobacco smoke laced with the sour smell of beer wafts through the alley. As the men stand together under a dim lantern light, Jenny takes their stock. Disappointingly, they’re not grandees: no lace, no swords, no bigwigs. Roundheads, she decides, Parliamentarians who wish to take power away from the king. Not that Jenny cares much: men are men. Even the most pious Protestant can’t resist a bit of twang now and then.

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Osborne,” one of them says to another. The man he addresses has a wicked birthmark upon his brow, larger than a crown and so dark it’s nearly the color of blood.

“I have an unrestricted charter to travel between England and France signed by Arlington himself,” says he. “Not to mention my patroness in France.” The two other men—one portly and one thin, both older than the one called Osborne—share a cautious glance.

“But they’re Catholics,” the thin one says with distaste.

“All the better to cover our activities. I tell you, gentlemen”—Osborne lowers his voice—“ever since the princess made me a party to this Devil’s pact I have had more freedom than ever before. Why should we not use it to further our own ends?”

They talk some more, their voices so low Jenny can’t make out the words, then the men split up without so much as a by-your-leave. Osborne walks toward her. He’s better dressed than most men hereabouts, but somber-like, and not, by the looks of him, much of a tippler. He is old, at least thirty. Not exactly what she had hoped for in the way of custom, but just as she makes up her mind to tap his cheek with her fan and give him a sly wink, another whore steps out of the shadows.

She stands between Jenny and her mark, and she is tall enough that the hood of her cloak obscures the lower half of his face. Even so, Jenny can see him—light falls on the pair from the tavern’s upstairs windows—and in Osborne’s eyes she sees a surprise that equals her own. He’s so befuddled by the harlot’s sudden appearance that Jenny nearly laughs out loud, stifling herself when she remembers what will happen to her if the old bawd discovers her. “I’ve got something for you, Mr. Osborne,” the whore says in a sultry, dulcet-toned voice.

Osborne tries to shake her off, but she turns with him so that they remain face-to-face, his back angling toward the alley wall. His voice rises enough for Jenny to hear his anger: “I’m not going to—,” he cries, but then the whore makes a sudden lunging movement and he breaks off in the middle of the sentence. Jenny very nearly laughs again—she’s never seen a man so rattled by a whore—as he staggers back a few steps and bumps into the wall. Osborne’s hands clutch at his stomach just below his left breast. A black liquid gushes through his fingers. Jenny sees the terror in his eyes as he looks at his hands and then into the harlot’s face, and catches a glimpse of the shining blade flashing from the folds of her cloak. Osborne continues to stare at his attacker, his mouth open in mute horror. He manages to stutter, “I know you…” just before she stabs him again, low in the belly this time, then rips the knife up through his abdomen to his chest. His eyes roll back, blood spills from his lips.

Jenny claps her hand over her mouth, afraid she’ll scream and give herself away. Osborne’s body slumps to the ground. The whore squats down and quickly removes the gloves from his hands. On the smallest finger of his right hand is a gold band. She attempts to pull it off, but the ring won’t budge. Jenny’s eyes grow round as she watches the whore bend back the entire finger—it makes a sharp cracking sound, like a stout branch snapped off a tree—then cut it off with the knife, as expertly as a butcher chopping off a chicken leg. Then she grabs onto the finger next to it and slices it off, too.

Quivering with fear, Jenny shrinks into the shadows, making herself as small and invisible as she possibly can. She must have gasped, though, because the whore suddenly stops and looks around. She stands, slipping the severed fingers into her cloak pocket. Then she turns toward Jenny, the bloody knife still gripped in her hand.

Jenny can’t tell whether the woman is young or old; she wears a vizard, a black fabric mask, that conceals the lower portion of her face. Above it, her eyes are enraged, terrifying. Jenny is too petrified to speak, even though she wants to. She wants to say that she has no money, no jewels. That she is not yet eighteen. That she has a little baby named Jack, her Jackie-boy.

But all she can do is stand there and shiver.

First week of Michaelmas term

T
HE MOMENT
C
LAIRE
saw Hoddington Humphries-Todd standing in Nevile’s Court near the short flight of stairs leading up to the hall, she knew that, in essence, Andrew Kent had stood her up. “Darling!” Hoddy said, bending his lanky frame to give her a friendly buss on the cheek. “How lovely to see you. Something’s come up and Andy’s busy this evening. But he did say he’d try to make it up to you soon. In the meantime he’s asked me to be your escort. That’s if you don’t mind,” he concluded with an irresistibly lopsided grin.

“Of course I don’t mind.” Claire was delighted to see the history fellow, and she sincerely hoped that he hadn’t noticed her fleeting look of disappointment.

Possessed of a natural panache, Hoddy was looking exceptionally well, still radiant with a late-summer tan and dressed somewhat unseasonably in a dapper linen suit, as if he refused to believe that summer had ended. One glance at the sky would have convinced him otherwise. In the past few hours, the cold but clear autumn weather had been transformed by a bank of storm clouds that glowered with menace, casting a preternatural, rather medieval gloom over Trinity’s Tudor gates and stone spires.

“I take it you’ve already had the incomparable experience of dining at High Table,” Hoddy said.

“Yes.”

“Given that you will have many other opportunities to do so over the next three terms, what say you we blow this joint and go out for a hamburger and a beer?” He folded his arms over his chest and shivered. “Someplace with a cozy fire,” he added. “Alitalia lost my luggage, and this is the only decent suit I’ve got.”

“Now that’s a real burger,” Hoddy said as the waiter set down two plates with towering stacks of toasted bread, thick, juicy beef patties, and sides of crisp lettuce, fresh tomato, and perfectly browned fries—no, in England they were called chips, Claire remembered. They sat across from each other in red leather club chairs a few feet away from a crackling fire in a wide brick hearth. Overhead, the beam and plaster ceiling glowed with the warm firelight, which winked cheerfully on the mullioned windows overlooking Green Street.

“It’s not so easy to get an honest-to-God hamburger in Cambridge anymore,” Hoddy informed her, carefully adding the garnish to his two-fisted dinner while eyeing it with carnivorous zeal. “Many of the cafés and even some of the pubs have gone vegan and serve some sort of wheatgrass-soybean-hemp concoction. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you enjoy the taste of cardboard combined with garden trimmings.” He fell silent as he took his first bite, his eyes fluttering closed with pleasure. “Even Italy, home to what I am convinced is the finest cuisine in the world, cannot seem to master the art of the burger.”

They ate in companionable silence until finally Claire pushed her plate away. Hoddy was looking satiated too.

“You were in Italy all summer?” she asked.

“Except for three weeks in Mykonos and Crete.”

Claire smiled. “And here I was feeling sorry for you in that flimsy suit.”

“This flimsy suit cost a pretty euro, I’ll have you know. Anyway, my holiday in Greece was much too brief. I spent most of the summer in Rome. I could complain that it was too hot and there were too
many cars and too many tourists and it would be true, except that it was bloody fabulous in spite of all that. I haven’t quite returned yet, if you know what I mean.”

A certain melancholy in his voice and expression made Claire wonder if it was Rome he was sad to leave behind, or someone in Rome.

“You weren’t at the dinner,” Claire remarked.

“I know, I was very naughty, and I’ve already received a dressing-down from the vice-master. But I couldn’t help it. I stayed in Italy a bit longer than I’d planned. I had a quite remarkable experience, in fact,” Hoddy continued in a cheerier tone. “Some friends of friends turned out to be filmmakers shooting a film at Cinecitta, and I was given a small but important role in it.”

“You acted in a film?” Claire asked, impressed.

Hoddy preened a bit. “A watershed moment for Italian cinema, I daresay.”

“What role did you play?”

“I believe I was billed as ‘Bullet-Riddled Corpse, Number Three.’” He popped the last of his chips into his mouth. “The director said that I had an uncanny ability to appear dead. I don’t know if it was a compliment to my acting prowess or to my Englishness. In any case, it was a great deal of fun.” His smile faded. “However, I didn’t ask you here to tell you about what I did on my summer vacation.”

“No?”

“No. All the new fellows are paired up with an older fellow, who is supposed to make sure they’re getting along all right. Originally Andrew was going to do it, since he’s the one who brought you in, but he has so many responsibilities, what with being committee chairman, group leader, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, he has found this first week of term to be exceptionally busy and has asked me to take over. So, how are you getting on?”

“Fine.”

“Everything in your set of rooms okay?”

“Wonderful, in fact.”

“Yes, it’s a nice set. I believe Charles, Prince of Wales lived in it when he was here in the nineteen sixties.”

“Really?” Claire gulped.

“Yes. And before that, Lord Tennyson. Quite some time before Charles, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“You’ve been allocated your computer and printer?”

“Yes.”

“You know where the laundry room is?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve read your ‘Brief Guide for New Fellows’?”

“Cover to cover. However, I think that ‘Brief’ should be deleted from the title.”

“Point taken.” Hoddy scowled and scratched his head. “It appears you don’t need me at all.”

“That’s not true.” What she really needed to know had nothing to do with the things covered in the “Brief Guide.” Exactly why had Andrew Kent hired her? Was Elizabeth Bennett’s comment an indication of what everyone else thought? Why did Andrew seem to be avoiding her? Was he still involved with Gabriella Griseri? Perhaps all this was well beyond Hoddy’s advisory role. She stared pensively into the fire and was aware of him studying her.

“So you met Derek Goodman today,” he said.

“How did you know that?” She felt her face flush with the memory of their encounter: his charm, her susceptibility to it, her abrupt and graceless exit.

“I heard it from Toby Campbell, who was told by Radha Patel, who heard it from Liz Bennett.”

“Are you trying to tell me that everything I do will be noted and commented on?”

“Cambridge is a very small place. Everything
everyone
does is noted and commented on. I have discovered, often the hard way, that one of the most important elements of academic success is learning to get along with the disparate personalities one is forced to work with, sometimes for decades. And, in the case of the history faculty at least, not only disparate but highly neurotic, egotistic, and obsessive.”

Claire blanched. “Are they really that bad?”

“Those are their
good
points.”

“Great.” She’d landed in deep waters, way over her head. “I don’t think everyone gets along as well with others as you do. Dr. Goodman and Dr. Bennett seem to hate each other.”

“Doesn’t mean much in their case. They fight and make up on a near-weekly basis.”

“You mean they’re involved?”

“No, just friends. When they are friends.” He drained the last of his beer from the glass. “I’ve been around long enough to know where most of the bones are buried. You can ask me anything”—he leveled a sly look at her—“about anyone.”

“I see. You’re not here to tell me how to get to the laundry room, are you?”

“No.”

Claire didn’t want to come right out with her most pressing question, so she tried to think of a subtle way to phrase it. “When we were in Italy in June, Dr. Kent was involved with someone named Gabriella…” She waved her hand in a vague manner that suggested she couldn’t remember the last name. “…something or other.”

“You mean Gabriella Monalisa Arianna Griseri, the stunningly beautiful and accomplished Italian countess and television presenter?”

“She would be the one, yes.”

“What is it you want to know?”

“I was just wondering…only casually, you understand…if by chance they were still seeing each other?”

“I don’t know. Sorry to disappoint. Usually my romance radar is on full alert, but this summer I was happily involved in my own and didn’t have much time to devote to anyone else’s. But I have heard that Gabriella has been to London a few times in the past months to talk with people at the BBC. They’re considering her for the same sort of program she had in Italy, a kind of cultural chat show. And apparently Andy was introducing her ’round, as he knows lots of people in television ever since his book was made into a miniseries.”

If Andrew Kent was helping Gabriella make a move to London, Claire mused, their relationship must be serious. No wonder he’d been avoiding her.

“But I get the feeling that there’s something else on your mind.”

“It’s something Dr. Bennett said.” Claire shook her head. “At first she was being sort of nice, and then—”

“She stung you with a zinger?” Hoddy nodded sympathetically. “Yes, I’ve been on the receiving end of that barbed tongue a few times myself. She’s got a bit of a chip on her shoulder, but I can’t say that I blame her entirely. She’s one of the first women to attend Trinity in nineteen seventy-seven, when the school finally became ‘mixed,’ as we say. Something they don’t like to advertise, as it brings to mind the college’s antediluvian practices. She was one of the first female fellows as well, which couldn’t have been easy. More intelligent than most of the men here, but she hasn’t progressed up the career ladder as fast. Liz tests people. She likes to see how tough they are. Don’t let her rattle you and you’ll win her respect.”

“She said that Andrew had ‘bent over backward’ for me. Essentially she implied that he had hired me for reasons that have nothing to do with my credentials.”

“So that’s what’s bothering you.” Hoddy leaned forward to speak confidentially. “Here’s the thing. There’s been a bit of talk. Andy went out on a limb to make sure you’d have all the privileges of a fellow even though you’re not precisely a fellow. He pulled a few strings—”

“What strings?”

“Like your set of rooms, for instance. They’re especially nice. Temporary lecturers don’t usually merit a set at the college.”

“I see.” Claire bit her lip. So some of the fellows had good reason to resent her even before they met her. Great. “Hoddy, do you think he hired me for the wrong reasons?”

“I can’t pretend to know what’s on Andy’s mind, but I can say this: of all the people I know, he’s the one I can always count on to go by the book. He’s a Boy Scout. Always has been. He’s a right stand-up guy, our Andy, upholder of school, country, and tradition. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll seem to have passed him by like an express train.
It’s as if he spent his entire youth standing on an empty platform at Victoria Station with the
Times
folded under his arm, humming Rachmaninoff.”

That wasn’t Claire’s impression of Andrew Kent at all. Yes, he could be a bit stuffy and pompous sometimes, and he always assumed that he was right—something that was bound to annoy Claire, since she was usually right, of course. But she suspected that Andrew was not always so proper as Hoddy believed. In Andrew Kent she sensed a kindred spirit: someone who had followed the rules all his life but who secretly yearned to rebel and break free of convention. She had imagined that she could help him do this; that they could help each other. They had certainly disregarded some rules to uncover the truth of the Rossetti letter.

“You make him sound boring,” Claire complained.

“Sometimes I think he is.” Hoddy shrugged. “But that’s just me. I spent
my
entire youth dancing half-naked in discos, like every other normal homosexual. What is more to the point is that I believe Andy hired you because in Venice he saw, as did I, a young historian with a great deal of promise. Regardless of what his personal feelings may be, he would never do anything against the rules.”

“What are the rules?”

“Regarding personal relationships?” At Claire’s nod, he continued. “Students, for obvious moral, legal, and aesthetic reasons, are completely off-limits. You don’t have any interest in eighteen-year-old boys, do you?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Girls?”

“Ditto.”

“Relationships between fellows are not strictly forbidden, but they are strongly discouraged.”

“Fellows never get involved with each other?”

“I wouldn’t say never—but rarely, and seldom with good consequences.”

“But some fellows live at the college for years.”

“Yes, and when they marry, or partner as the case may be, they
move out. Only the master’s wife and family are allowed to live with him at the college. A good number of fellows, usually those with families, live in town. But while one is a resident fellow, sexual relationships are seriously frowned upon. Especially if the other fellow is also another fellow.” He mustered a wry grin.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s not nearly as bad as it was. Cambridge is very open-minded these days. There seem to be militant lesbians everywhere one turns. And the rugby teams no longer practice the age-old tradition of dunking queers in the fountain. Good thing for them, too, because the lesbians would beat the crap out of them.”

“Still, it hardly seems fair.”

“Perhaps it isn’t. But as you know, the colleges were originally set up much like monasteries and the fellows took vows of celibacy. I don’t think the practice was stopped until sometime in the nineteenth century. The idea that fellows would have sexually intimate relationships was anathema to the whole concept of learning. Times have changed, but the place is still somewhat hermetic. As you’ve already discovered, it’s difficult to keep secrets here. Understand, I’ve never pretended to be anyone other than who I am, but I have long found it politic to keep my professional and personal lives scrupulously separate.”