The Masters of Bow Street (26 page)

‘I do not know what I would do without you, Ruth.’

‘I do not know why you should think you might have to,’ she countered. ‘I think it would be—’

‘Go on,’ he urged. ‘What would it be?’

‘I do not think I should say what was in my mind,’ Ruth replied, and she went very pale. ‘It was not fair, Mr. Furnival.’ She handed him two muffins on a silver dish as he looked at her, half frowning.

Unexpectedly he asked, ‘Has the day made you reflect on the past, too?’

‘The past a little, the future much,’ she replied.

‘You know, except for my sister Anne, you are the only woman I have ever met who has a way of putting significance into every word she utters,’ remarked Furnival, and he ate a muffin and dabbed his chin before going on. ‘I have just sent Nicholson to Newgate to await trial at the next Sessions. At one time I thought he had corrupted too many witnesses to make that possible, but one of them had spent the night with a girl from a nearby farm, and once his testimony, was broken, that of the others collapsed. Can you imagine who was in court?’

‘No,’ she answered.

‘Eve Milharvey, Jackson’s onetime mistress,’ Furnival replied. ‘Now a Mrs. Nash.’

‘But I thought she had borne Jackson’s child and lived in the country, at Saint Albans!’

‘She was in London visiting friends,’ Furnival told her. ‘When she heard of this trouble she came to see Nicholson and offered him whatever money he needed to buy his creature comforts in Newgate. Had he not been manacled I declare he would have slapped her - across the face!’ Furnival spread butter on a muffin with almost sensual pleasure, and then held it out for her to take a bite. ‘I spoke with her after Nicholson had been taken away. Her child is growing fast, and she dotes on it.’

‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ asked Ruth.

‘A boy, Frederick by name - Frederick Jackson, to boot! More, she is married to an elderly farmer and is happy enough - and again with child,’ Furnival went on. ‘She is one of the few who have thanked me for intervening in their lives. Did you know that I suggested she should leave London?’

‘Yes,’ Ruth answered. ‘Silas told me.’

‘Ah,’ breathed Furnival. ‘There was a man of great faith and loyalty.’ He leaned back in the chair, resting his hands on the arms, stared into the fire for a while and then turned to smile at her. ‘Enough of my meandering, Ruth, what
ails
you?’

She caught her breath, but was quick to reply, ‘Fear of you, sir!’

She tried to make that sound lighthearted, tried to put laughter in her eyes, but her anxiety showed clearly; his expression convinced her of that. She was seated in a small chair opposite him and he held out both hands. Slowly she placed hers in them and he held her firmly.

‘Never be frightened of me, Ruth. Never be frightened of those who love you.’

Her heart, already beating fast, gave a wild leap at the word ‘love’, which he had never uttered to her before. Yet she was no more certain how he would receive her news than she had been, and the only word to describe her emotion
was
‘fear’.

‘What is it?’ he asked patiently.

‘I am with child,’ she said in a voice pitched high above the thumping of her heart. ‘Your child, sir, lest you should think that I have known another man.’

He sat utterly still. His grip tightened until his fingers hurt hers, but she made no attempt to draw free. He scrutinised her face as if it were the face of a stranger. His breathing seemed to stop, and the period of silence seemed agelong. Footsteps sounded in the passage, hoofbeats and carriages outside, and still he did not speak. Now her heart was beating in long, slow, painful thumps, for she could see that this was a shock to him but could only guess what was passing through his mind.

Slowly his grip on her eased; slowly the muscles of his face relaxed and she became aware of the delicate shape of his lips.

‘Ruth,’ he said, ‘I would not like our child to be a bastard. You know me as well as any woman ever can. Do you think that you can do me the honour of becoming my wife?’

They were married at St. Hilary’s by the Reverend Sebastian Smith at the end of the month of May in 1740. William and Sarah, with Francis and Cleo, were present, as well as those at Bow Street who could be spared from their work. It was a quiet wedding, and immediately after the ceremony they set out by carriage and pair for the farm at St. Giles, which was some forty odd miles from the Hyde Park Turnpike. The turnpike road led northwest and had many turns, one to Oxford, another to Aylesbury, and theirs which would take them to Dunstable, thence several miles beyond to the village of St. Giles. St. Giles Farm lay only a few hundred yards east of the road. The spring day was damp and misty, the rutted road was slippery, and now and again they passed single horsemen and others riding in pairs, any of whom might be highwaymen, but not only did the daylight discourage an attack: two guards from Great Furnival Square armed with muskets rode just behind the carriage. Of them William had said jestingly, ‘Let them act as an escort for you. It would not do if John Furnival were held up on his honeymoon and his pretty bride carried off. Dick the Raper has been very busy in these parts.’

‘I’ll be glad of the guards as a privilege,’ John said, ‘and today I won’t even declare I want it most for the protection of every man’s birthright.’

‘You did
not
say that very effectively,’ Francis retorted. Now Ruth was reflecting that every Furnival she had met had been possessed of some quality which made them extremely likeable. Whatever the rights and wrongs of their attitudes, their policies and their actions, as human beings they were good. . .

What would John’s child be like?

And would she bear a boy or a girl?

Although he had not breathed a word she was sure that John wanted a son. She glanced at him as they went along at a steady pace, the carriage itself swaying. He was staring across newly ploughed fields and meadows where sheep and cattle grazed together, his profile clear-cut and handsome, his lips relaxed. When he turned in response to her appraisal, his mouth puckered in a smile and he slid an arm about her waist.

The sun had broken through and it was warm when they arrived at the farmhouse, of which Ruth had heard so much, but nothing to prepare her for its size or its distinctiveness. Built of rich red brick and with the tall chimneys of the Tudor period, it stood against a rising stretch of woodland, oak, beech and birch, thick and beautiful. A stream from the hillside ran past the house and meandered towards St. Giles village, which looked about a mile away to the north. Some cricketers were playing on a green between here and the village, a pleasant sight. Close to the house the stream had been dammed with a brick wall and a pond had been created, on which ducks and geese and three snow-white swans were swimming. The path from the pond to the wrought-iron gateway of the drive was paved in irregular fashion with broken paving stones, and the driveway was also paved to prevent ruts caused by cart and coach wheels. Two footmen, who, Ruth later learned, served also as groom and coachman, and three maids were at the front doorway to meet the newlyweds, and the huge oaken door with heavy iron studs stood ajar. It opened onto a red-tiled main hall from which led other rooms with narrow-strip oaken floors.

Upstairs, that night, in a bedroom overlooking the stream and the pond and the lights at distant houses, Ruth said, ‘I can hardly believe this is real, John.’

‘The longer you stay here the more real you will find it,’ he promised her.

Two days later he asked if she would like to stay there all the time, with the children, while he came for weekends. The suggestion brought to the forefront of her mind an anxiety which had been hovering for many months, and now she was torn in two directions. To leave the children with others for so much of the time was against all her instincts, but she was sure that John needed her companionship and help. However he might refuse to admit it, he was not well, and she hated the thought of being away from him for long periods. She alone could help him relax; on his own he would work like the giant he was, to the point of disaster.

But no matter how much she wanted to be with him, and how great his need, how could she deny her daughters the magnificent air of the countryside, all the fresh garden products and the freedom from the squalor and disease of the city?

It was a long time before she made up her mind, though with much misgiving. Meg and Sam Fairweather, already deeply attached to the children-, would soon need a place to live in retirement, for Sam was getting too old for Bow Street. She could trust them absolutely with the girls, and there was no one with whom she could leave John.

She decided to leave her daughters here with Meg and Sam, while she stayed at Bow Street, coming here frequently for as long as she could wisely travel by coach. That would be until the seventh month of her pregnancy, she anticipated.

When the time came, for some reason she did not understand, leaving the children at St. Giles Farm worried her less than leaving James at the school had done, but as the weeks passed, her preoccupation with her fourth child, John’s obvious delight in the prospect and the level of high contentment in her life with him made her misgivings recede. But they were never far away.

Apart from this, her life seemed too good to be true.

Life for John continued in a domestic contentment he had never known before, despite increasing frustrations at Bow Street and an increasing sense of failure over efforts to win support for a peace force. Crimes increased beyond even his worst dreams, and more and more were decreed suitable for the death penalty. The thief-takers revelled in rewards for their evidence, true or false, with which to convict a man. The filth of London grew until the stench could be carried for miles on the wind and nowhere was there freedom from the effluence, and the water from the Thames became noisome and stank as it was drawn from the street stack pipes. But the parks became more beautiful than ever, the great houses more prosperous; as criminals multiplied so did those who made a good living at every craft under the sun. New docks, new warehouses, new shops, drew more and more trade from ships which not only brought rats to swell the rodent population of the city, but also rich silks and tapestries, spices, and tea and coffee.

Not only did trade from abroad increase bewilderingly and so bring more people in from the provinces to do the work, but trade from the provinces kept doubling and trebling itself. Since the first Turnpike Act in 1663, giving parishes on the Great North Road the right to take tithes from all who used it, the money going to road maintenance, a dozen new turnpikes had been added and all had become furiously busy. Whether from Derby or Manchester, Gloucester or Hereford, Oxford or Birmingham, Bath or Bristol, Chester or Coventry, Hawick or Dover, Portsmouth or Chichester, each bore thousands of tons of heavy-goods traffic to and from London.

Rutted or rock-strewn, muddy or waterlogged, well surfaced or bad, each turnpike was part of the forward-surging economy of the country, which was still based on London.

Distant from all this, on the fifteenth of December, 1740, a son was born to John and Ruth Furnival, attended by Dr. Anson, who had come from Great Furnival Square, and by Meg Fairweather as midwife.

Both mother and son thrived.

On the fourth Sunday after his birth the child was baptised and christened in the parish church of St. Giles, the Reverend Sebastian Smith assisting the vicar. Smith held the baby in his arms, sprinkled his wrinkled forehead and thin black hair liberally with holy water without waking him, and preached in a subdued boom until finally he said, ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost I hereby give to this child the names of John William Francis and I pray that he will add to the great name of Furnival still greater lustre and distinction. Amen.’

On the lips of the hundred people present there came the prayer: ‘Amen’.

The child gave his parents no anxiety. He appeared to have inherited the strength of his father with the equable temper of his mother and an intelligence which might have come from either or both. Soon after his ninth month he was taken to live part time at Bow Street, for Ruth would leave neither young John at St. Giles for long at a time nor her husband too long alone at Bow Street. They went seldom to Great Furnival Square, Ruth because she did not feel at home or happy there, John Furnival because the gap between his purposes and those of the family had widened yet further.

In the early years of the marriage, troubles of a different kind fell about their ears. Already Walpole’s yielding to powerful demands for war with Spain brought war with France to a dangerous crescendo. At last Walpole was defeated. The whole of Europe seemed to go up in flames; no nation of real consequence seemed at peace; or if there was peace, it was short-lived: George II led the British and allied armies against the French and won a victory and an uproarious burst of popularity, but rumours in newspapers and from government sources were right - the French prepared to invade across the Channel. All this time, new and more burdensome tasks were thrust upon Furnival. The repeal of the Gin Act in 1743 had eased the flow of charges for illegal sale and manufacture, but greatly increased the number of crimes which arose out of drunkenness.

Westminster became a victim of a different kind of plague: a fear of spies. Furnival was charged with seeking them out and searching for arms dumps cached for a Jacobite uprising in or near the metropolis. For not only was France threatening but the Scottish were said to be rallying around Prince Charles, who might soon become strong enough to march south with an invading army and take London and the throne. In his new position as Chief of the Secret Service, Furnival had to report daily to Thomas Pelham, Duke of Newcastle.

As the threat of an invading army increased, so did the temptation to send Ruth to join the girls at St. Giles Farm, but if the invasion did break through, rebel forces might travel very swiftly, and he might not be able to get them away from the Bedfordshire village in time. So he kept Ruth and the child at Bow Street.