The Silversmith's Wife _ Sophia Tobin (30 page)

24th November, 1792

I counted out the pills and doubled the amount Jones told me when I asked him how many for her headache, and how many more for a long sleep. He did not question me further, such is our sympathy. I have separated the dose in a piece of waxed paper, and put it in Maynard’s snuffbox, and stowed it away with this book, beyond the prying eyes of everyone.

I have sent a pair of silver candlesticks for my friend the apothecary. They please me: chased with laurels, the signifiers of victory. He will not recognize my little joke. There are ways out of all things.

I would not have myself so callous towards Mary. I will not let our last parting be unkind. I would not like that as a memory. I feel a kind of tenderness for her, for she is sickly, and I see the trouble in her soul. A rest from the world is what she needs.

Joanna woke in the dim room, and sensed Digby’s body beside her even before she turned. When he slept so soundly, she would wonder at him. Observe his face in repose, a face that, relaxed, looked so unlike him. Her eyes ran over the shadows of his ribs, his tough limbs. His body was so hard, so wiry, it was though there was no flesh on him.

Tonight, he did not look serene. The furrows remained in his brow, and sometimes his lips moved, as though he was recounting his troubles to the silence. He looked as though he was worrying rather than resting.

We found each other, she thought, without sentiment: trouble found trouble. Last week their lovemaking had been like drinking laudanum, lulling her into peace, into darkness. Afterwards, she had slept so deeply, in such a blackness that it seemed she was falling through the night sky, with no stars and no moon. When she woke she didn’t know where she was. Then she saw him, watching her, not with a smile, simply watching. He had spread her dark hair out on the pillow with his hands, as though it was a halo. ‘You talk when you fall asleep,’ he said. ‘I could ask you anything, and you would answer it truthfully.’

‘My hair,’ she said crossly, and sat up, patting it down.

He had gone without another word, not even kissing her, only placing a touch on her shoulder.

She wondered why she still invited him in, when she did not love him, or feel a fraction of what she had felt for Stephen. She was petrified at the idea of being discovered, and even more petrified by the thought that he would be taken up one day and hung for the watch. But still, he lit a spark in her, and when he held her, his arms hard around her, she felt enclosed and safe.

The hammering on her door shocked them both. She had turned the key in it, and put her locking box against it. Digby rose swiftly, alarm in his eyes. Wordlessly, he slipped under the bed. Joanna wrapped herself in a gown and opened the door. It was Mrs Holland, carrying two candles, two fat plaits of grey hair framing her face. ‘You’d better come quickly,’ she said. ‘Missus has her pains.’

‘Is it time?’ said Joanna, dazed. She knew it was an inexact thing, but she was sure Dr Taylor had said it would be some time before the baby came. ‘I’ll be down directly,’ she said, taking one of the candles. ‘Let me dress.’

After Mrs Holland’s footsteps had died away Digby slid out from under the bed. He watched her pin back her hair and slip on a gown in one clean, athletic movement. ‘I never noticed how graceful you are,’ he said.

‘You can make your own way out?’ she said.

He looked pained. ‘The place will be in uproar,’ he said.

‘Well, wait here, then,’ she said. She left the room quickly.

As he heard her footsteps retreating, Digby took Renard’s watch from his coat, and checked the time.

Harriet’s screams could be heard halfway across the house. Unlike that day months before when she had heard of Renard’s death, there was no artifice to them; they were screams of agony and terror. At the sound, Joanna broke into a run. Mrs Holland was standing just outside the chamber door. When she saw Joanna she shook her head. ‘I cannot go in there,’ she said. ‘I remember my sister.’

Joanna nodded curtly. ‘Has the doctor been sent for?’ she said. Mrs Holland nodded. ‘And the master?’ said Joanna.

‘Hadn’t gone to bed yet,’ said Mrs Holland, a look of distaste on her face. ‘He’s in the library, playing with his prints. He just asked for more wine.’

‘Joanna?’ Harriet’s voice floated out, a thin thread. Joanna went straight in and across the room, lit with many candles in large silver candelabra. Harriet’s face was red, but her expression had a vulnerability to it, the fragility of a reed pulled tight. The shadows beneath her eyes made them seem larger, and they glowed a kind of celestial blue. Joanna thought, unaccountably, that they were the blue of a distant heaven, the blue of an ever-opening sky. She felt afraid for her mistress. ‘I can see silver all around,’ said Harriet, smiling mistily. It seemed she could not focus. Joanna fumbled for one of the silver vinaigrettes on the dressing table, and held it to Harriet’s nose. The girl jerked back into consciousness.

‘Is there water?’ called Joanna, gripping Harriet’s hand as she grimaced, her body arcing in pain.

Mrs Holland was a dim shape in the doorway. ‘It is coming,’ she said. ‘And linen.’

‘The doctor is coming,’ said Joanna, close to Harriet’s ear.

‘And what of Pierre?’ said Harriet, in a whisper. ‘What of him? Is he coming, Joanna? Is he coming for me?’

‘Hush!’ Joanna looked behind her. Mrs Holland stood, impassive. Joanna could not tell whether she had heard or not. She leaned even closer to Harriet, feeling the warmth of her own breath reflected back at her as she whispered in her ear. ‘You do not know what you are saying,’ she said. ‘Do not speak of him – your life depends on it, do not speak.’

Harriet took a breath, and screamed. Joanna felt the bones of her hand compress and shift under Harriet’s grip, and pushed back the pain. She felt the urge to pray, a long-forgotten defence against the agony of the moment, but all she could remember were the words that had been read at Stephen’s brief burial service. Still, they were something, and she whispered them under her breath so Harriet did not hear them. ‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.’ She thought of Digby, alone in her room, or creeping down through the passages of the house, and of his arms around her.

When Taylor arrived, his expressionless face comforted Joanna. She already felt exhausted with empathy. Harriet’s pain seemed to be infusing her own mind, as Stephen’s had during his last illness. She wondered where her defences had gone. Had Digby’s wordless touch, his hard arms around her, dissolved them so effectively? She slumped back in a chair as Taylor commenced his examination, seemingly impervious to Harriet’s howls. She had taken to calling for her mother.

‘The baby is almost here,’ Taylor said to Joanna. ‘Are all the necessary arrangements in place? Is the nursery prepared?’

Joanna shook her head. ‘Mr Chichester has engaged his own wet nurse, but she has not arrived in London yet. She is in Kent.’

Taylor tut-tutted under his breath as he searched through his bag.

The boy was born just after half past midnight. There was a long minute before he let out his first scream. There was a shock of recognition in Joanna’s heart; still holding Harriet’s hand, she rose to her feet.

Harriet lay uncovered, every ivory-pale limb trembling, smeared with blood. Joanna turned to her, trying to find her gaze and make her focus. ‘A healthy boy, madam,’ she said, loudly, and was rewarded with a blink. Harriet’s eyes, she realized, were not looking into nothing, but were following the child, as Taylor washed and dried him with practised roughness.

After he was swaddled, Joanna held out her arms to him. He lay like a blessing, heavy and warm, in her arms. The weight and warmth of him, the motion of him, his quivering life, drew something long-dormant from her. ‘He has brown hair, like the master, and eyes as blue as your own,’ she said to her mistress, unable to disguise the emotion in her voice. She wept.

Harriet said nothing. Joanna arranged the crook of Harriet’s arm against the pillow, and put the child there. Harriet looked at him, a long look as though she sought to memorize his face. ‘She needs rest,’ Taylor said to Joanna, dipping his hands in the bloody water, then drying them. ‘The child is small, though he screams healthily enough. I will tell Mr Chichester that the priest should be sent for as a precaution.’

‘It hardly seems necessary,’ said Joanna, gazing at the baby’s face. He seemed the embodiment of life. The words of death had dried up on her lips.

‘Of course it is necessary,’ said Taylor. ‘We must be sure that the germ of sin that is already in him does not send him plummeting to hell if he dies.’ He left the room without a backward glance. When Joanna went to search for him a few minutes later, she found him in the staircase hall, the heels of his hands against his eyes, as though he was weeping. She moved back before he saw her, and left him alone.

August, 1793

Joanna had thought she would have been sorry to leave this house, for it was where her life had begun again, but as she moved around its rooms she felt nothing at all. They would be back, she supposed. The only thing she could think of missing was the quality of the light in the staircase hall; and light was everywhere, after all. It had never taken much for her to pack up and move on, and now she had more to move: two new gowns, several books, and a white paste brooch that glittered in candlelight, a gift from her grateful mistress.

On her way to see Harriet, Joanna slipped into the Grand Salon. It was sheeted up, muffled in white like a landscape under snow. But it wasn’t cold. In the slowly simmering heat of the August afternoon, the room smelt shut-up already. It had languished since winter. She went to the window and looked out over Berkeley Square. In the two months since baby Charles had been born, the square had set its growth forwards: the plane trees were larger now, though still saplings, and was that sprinkling of colour she could see a patch of flowers? What had once seemed dark and corrupt now seemed benign to her. But she also knew she would not miss it, for she travelled with her heart, and with the child that had such a place there. Here, he had been born, and she felt as if she had been born again in her own way, her dead feelings unhusked, her heart made new.

Though Charles stared through Harriet’s blue eyes, he resembled neither Renard nor Chichester. ‘We must wait,’ said Harriet, one day, without being questioned, ‘for him to grow.’ Joanna said nothing more, and over time, silence lay on silence, and dulled her misgivings. Harriet played with the child and dandled him on her knee, but she kept a distance from him that surprised Joanna, who loved him with an intensity that consumed all her energy.

Harriet was writing in her boudoir. ‘I must write to Mama before we leave,’ she said. She sat straight, upright. The expressions that crossed her face were light, and subtle, but Joanna knew that you could never mistake this Harriet for the empty-headed bride who had come to this house. Joanna had not seen her shed a tear since Charles had been born.

‘My husband wished me to write to the silversmith, and make enquiries about our new service,’ she said. ‘I have written it; will you kindly instruct one of the footmen to take it there?’ There was not so much as a flicker of her eyelids; she spoke as though there would be no connection in her mind with Renard. You have shed his ghost, thought Joanna, and it occurred to her that Harriet had done what she never could.

‘I will take it myself, madam, if you allow,’ said Joanna. ‘I wish to take a walk before we leave. Say goodbye to the London streets.’

‘Very well,’ said Harriet. ‘Goodness. How truly sentimental you are. I would never have thought it of you.’ She handed the letter to Joanna.

As Joanna put on her cloak, she thought of Digby She had not seen him since the night of Charles’s birth, though she had gone to look for him. She thought he must have been in the shadows, watching her. She did not call to him. She had too much pride to do that. She felt, with a touch of shame, that she could let him go easily. His sins were not her own. She had not loved him. And now there was Charles, who absorbed all her love and attention.

The pendant had come back to her too. A small packet, delivered by a boy who shrugged when she asked who had paid him. It had been the night after Charles’s birth and, like the baby, it had seemed to be a gift from the angels. She wore the pendant against her heart; Harriet approved of this, smiling tartly, and saying she was a woman of sensibility.

Joanna had faith again. She knew that Stephen was still working for her. He was with God, but he was still working for her in the world: Stephen and their daughter, little Lottie. Tonight, she thought, I will light the candles and think of you, every time a flame flares into life.

The sun had risen. Orange strips of light fell diagonally across the grey rippled stone of the courtyard where Digby lived. Glowing golden light chased the darkness out of his room. He had lain awake all night, sleep banished by the prospect of deliverance. He had decided on his course of action, and even though he could not sleep, as the hours passed he became more and more accustomed to the idea. The knowledge made the decision for him; he felt peaceful, having abdicated responsibility. The peace made him almost ready to believe in a higher power; he had been on the brink of it for so long. He supposed Mary Steele was to be thanked for that.

He got up, as quietly as possible. He dressed carefully. He had extracted his best clothes from the chest before going to bed. He donned his best linen shirt, and his collarless black coat. These were the clothes he had sworn he would leave this dwelling in; these were the clothes he would wear when he escaped, and it wouldn’t be in his coffin.

He transferred the precious watch into his pocket. Only then did he set out for Berkeley Square. He walked quicker than usual; it took him less time than he had expected. He waited by the fence to the gardens.

He was disappointed in himself, for he had thought of this moment for a long time, and he had expected to enjoy it. Yet his hands were shaking, and when he observed closely he saw that the pounding of his heart trembled his shirt. He felt safe in the spot he had chosen and didn’t want to leave it.

When he saw Joanna turn from Hay’s Mews he felt even more shaken. She did not see him, walking briskly, her dark head up, on some mission. He felt a pang of longing for her. His memory of her had not had the power she had in the flesh. How straight she walked, he thought, how fine she looked; what a woman she was. ‘I wish I could take you with me,’ he said, in a whisper. He thought of running after her, calling her name. The thought of her turning, and looking at him with that smile she had, made his mouth water as though in anticipation of a feast. It would be so easy. But he had come so far, and if he spoke to her she could bring him down, or even worse, learn to look at him with contempt, one day.

He mounted the steps of the fine town house, then reached out, and banged the knocker. He tried to imprint its appearance in his mind, to remember this moment always: the brass studs in the door, the lion’s head gazing at him with its unseeing eyes.

The door opened and the butler’s face showed his disapproval; Digby saw the hesitation, and knew the man thought he might just slam the door in his face. He produced the coins, and put them in his hand. With a nod, the man opened the door further and leaned in to hear what he had to say.

‘Mrs Chichester will want to see me,’ he said. ‘Tell her it concerns Mr Pierre Renard.’ This was the exact moment to call: after breakfast, before visiting. He knew their routine of old.

He could hardly believe it, though, when the man waved him through into the hall. As he followed him, he looked up, and saw the light streaming in. It was as he had imagined it, but he was taller now, not a cowed child. He walked slowly towards a pair of double doors, which opened to show a small, plump woman: Mrs Chichester. The butler closed the door. It was the library, he thought, and looked around, trying to take every detail in.

‘What is it you have to say?’ she said, after the door had closed. He looked at her interestedly. She was more matronly now, more substantial; she had lost the slenderness she had as a bride, when he used to see her staring from her window. She had the layered toughness of a woman with experience. Digby wondered, just for a moment, if he had waited too long.

Digby took a deep breath, then removed the watch from his pocket and held it up so it swung like a pendulum. He watched her follow it with her eyes, see the slices of coloured stone, the finely chased gold case. Saw horror dawn on her face. She tried to get to the bell, but he was too quick for her. ‘Whoa there, madam,’ he said. He had her wrists. He had the sensation that if he just squeezed, he could break her; that one hand could easily encircle her neck. It was tempting in the way he had always found it tempting when a stagecoach came towards him at full pelt: a kind of curiosity about what would happen if he threw himself beneath the horses’ hooves.

‘Release me,’ she said. But the note of command in her voice was mixed with fear.

‘Only if you promise you’ll be good,’ he said. ‘No screaming, no shouting. It will serve you as well as me. For we both know the young lad isn’t your husband’s child, don’t we? If I were to say all that I knew, all hell would break loose.’

He observed with satisfaction that her eyes had widened. It had crossed his mind that she might call his bluff. From the far reaches of the house, he heard a baby cry. She nodded, and he released her.

‘What do you want?’ she said.

‘First, I want you to get me a drink,’ he said. He slipped the watch back into his pocket. He sat down in the nearest chair and looked around him, at the marble fireplace, the great pier glass, and beyond, the gardens. It was a view he had never seen before. He heard a clink, the sound of a silver wine label tinging against glass, and the sound of her pouring a drink. She was more sensible than he thought. A woman like her must have the hang of deception.

She offered him the glass. ‘I thank you,’ he said, and drank it back. It tasted as good as he thought it would: as sweet and cleansing as liquid fire.

‘You killed him,’ Harriet said. He looked up at her, in her fine white gown, her hands resting by her side. She looked calm. Quite the lady, he thought.

‘Not me,’ he said, putting the glass down a little heavily. Now he was here, he didn’t feel the urge to smash it in the fireplace. ‘He was cold when I found him.’

She sat down opposite him, her eyes never leaving his face.

‘He didn’t just have the watch,’ he said, ‘he had a letter for you, madam, that’s how I know what I know.’

‘What did it say?’ she said.

Poor lamb, he thought. Nothing. It said nothing. Your maid said it all, as she slept.

He shrugged. ‘Enough,’ he said.

‘May I see it?’ she said.

‘As if I’d bring it here,’ he said. ‘My security. You know it exists, and that’s enough. When you’ve settled with me, I’ll burn it, and you and your little baby boy can rest easy in your beds.’

‘I’ll settle with you,’ she said, with a swiftness that impressed him. ‘Name the price, and I will send you the money by way of one of my servants, tomorrow evening. My maid, Joanna.’

He nodded. He knew the wait would be agony. ‘Eight o’clock tomorrow, by the corner of Hill Street. Don’t send some gabbling maid. Send a man. He needn’t know what he carries. Make sure it’s not that Will. Talks a lot, he does.’ He was watching her close enough to see that something crumbled in her: her sense of secrets kept, scattered to the air like dust. We all have to learn, he thought. This is the gift I give you: knowledge.