Theft of Life (36 page)

‘What happened?’ Francis said, and the candles flickered a little in the night breeze.

‘The day I was taken away, my mother killed herself. It was not done out of despair, not out of misery. It was punishment to my father for selling me, her jewel, made out of all her suffering. She knew he loved her above all things, so she drank poison just so he was forced to watch her die.’

A
S NIGHT THICKENED IN
London, Harriet and Crowther were sitting in a tiny room overlooking a court near Smithfield Market. They had met under the great medieval mass of St John’s Gate, in between the shadows cast by the smoking lamps. Molloy gathered them away with him at once. It was a corner of London where you might expect a gentleman to exercise a little caution whilst walking the dirt ways between the sagging and slipping wrecks of houses, and where a lady would never dare to venture. Every third building held a cellar where the gin was cheap and the voices loud. An occasional fiddler could be heard, screeching out folk tunes in the bowels. Crowther was not nervous, however, partly because he had faith in his ability to scare off most rogues who might make a try for his purse, or for Mrs Westerman’s, and partly because he walked alongside the familiar silhouette of Molloy – and no one would dare trouble
him
. Any number of legends clustered about him and hung in the folds of his long black and slightly greasy cloak. It may have been that most were lies, but he denied nothing, explained nothing, and so was immortal.

The air stank of blood from the meat market. The room’s usual occupants had been paid to find somewhere else to spend their evening, and all Harriet could know about them was what they left behind. It seemed the room was home to a family. One side was flagged with washing hung out to dry. Two shirts, much darned, stockings and half a dozen items of baby clothing dripped quietly onto the wooden floors. Harriet’s walking dress had never felt so magnificent. The room was cleanly swept and neatly arranged. She did not know what fee Molloy had promised to give the inhabitants for use of the place, but she knew he was proud of his reputation as a hard bargainer. Pulling a guinea from her purse, she hid it under a battered pint pot that sat next to her elbow. She tried to do it without Molloy noticing, but suspected she failed. The day of inactivity had weighed heavily on her.

‘Their names are Bounder and Creech, Mrs W.,’ he said.

‘How did you find them, Molloy?’

The old man was wrapped in his usual dark cloak and hunched over his pipe with his back to the wall. ‘Once I got the names from Mother Brown, it was that boy Guadeloupe. He’s only been in the country five minutes, but he’s found his way round most of the rat-holes of London.’ He sounded impressed.

‘You like him?’ Harriet said, faintly amused by the idea of Molloy liking anyone very much.

‘He knows how to shut up and listen. People think he’s simple or can’t talk English, him not being much of a conversationalist. He circled in on these two here while I slept, then sent me word he was close.’

‘He did not want to be here when we confronted them?’ she asked.

‘No. He wanted his coin, which was well earned, and then the leisure to spend it. Then I came here and picked up a rock, saw them foundering below it and sent you my little note.’

Crowther smiled. ‘You are sure they have not been warned we are here?’

Molloy went so far as to look up at Crowther from under the brim of his black hat. ‘You think anyone here would carry a tale I don’t want telling? Sorry indeed I’d be if my charm and kindness were so abused.’

‘You have our thanks. I think you are grown too rich to want any more of our gold.’

Molloy grinned and even in the semi-darkness Crowther could see the deep lines in his face rearranging themselves. ‘I’ll take it, Mr Crowther, don’t you worry about that. What do you reckon they’ll do on seeing you?’

‘They set on a man like Trimnell and then myself in the dark. One holds while the other punches. I think that they’ll run away,’ Crowther said after a pause.

Molloy gave a low and smoke-cracked laugh. ‘Their room’s off the yard and only one door to it. I’ll take your words into consideration.’ He removed his pipe and spat on the ground.

‘What is your opinion on slavery, Molloy?’ Harriet asked, after staring into the darkness a few minutes more.

He looked at her sideways. ‘Who says I have one, Mrs?’

Harriet realised she had amused him. ‘Everyone must.’

‘Oh, must they? Law is it now?’ He got his pipe glowing again and sent a great cloud into the air. ‘Wouldn’t want to be one of those darkies in their hands. Might go so far as to lend a fellow my knife if he wants to fight his way out. What’s your opinion on kiddies selling themselves for pennies? On men trying to feed their little ones on grass? Misery enough on these shores to occupy most.’

Harriet was silent for a moment. ‘We have built some almshouses in Hartswood,’ she said at last and Molloy laughed again. He laughed like old buildings would laugh.

Then: ‘Hold hard, gentry. I think our birds are come home. Bounder and Creech, it is.’ They looked out of the window where two shadows were making their way across the yard, one tall and narrow, the other rounded as a ball. ‘Let ’em settle,’ murmured Molloy, ‘then we shall pay those gentlemen a visit.’

Crowther and Harriet followed Molloy downstairs and into the shadows. It was a narrow yard, containing a rubbish pile and necessary house, and the stench made even the yards off Covent Garden smell like country air. Molloy pointed to a door and Crowther knocked on it, then pushed it open, revealing a bare room hardly larger than a shed. There was a fire going though, and by its light huddled the two men. The fat one was holding a pan in the coals with some grey mess in it. The thin one was watching it and him intently, like a dog watches his master cooking bacon.

They turned as the door opened, and on the instant the fat man leaped to his feet, almost spilling his pottage in his haste and tried to run, barging past Crowther’s thin shadow in the doorway. He ran straight into Molloy’s fist, however, and fell backwards into the room, ending up flat on his back on the dirt floor.

The other man stood up too. He was at least six feet and hardly had room to straighten. ‘You’ve killed Bounder!’ he said in a wail. The fat man on the ground groaned and the giant’s face relaxed into a smile. ‘Ah, no, you didn’t.’ Reassured on that point, he crouched back down again and tenderly lifted the pot off the fire. ‘Bounder?’ he said. ‘I think it’s done now.’

The fat man slowly pulled himself up on his elbows. ‘Then eat it.’ He looked steadily from Crowther to Molloy. Then, rubbing his jaw, he snapped at Harriet: ‘What?’

It was Molloy, rubbing his knuckles, who replied. ‘You pawned Trimnell’s coat and shoes to an old acquaintance of mine.’

Harriet was frowning. ‘Bounder … Sanden mentioned you. You are a waiter at the Jamaica Coffee House – you threw Trimnell out of there when he tried to preach Abolition.’

Bounder’s heavy face assumed an expression of studied blankness. ‘I was and I did. What of it? I know nothing of anyone’s coat.’ He said it with all the huffing dignity available to a man laid out on a dirty floor with a bruise blossoming on his jaw.

Crowther crouched down, resting his weight on his silver-headed cane and looked him in the eye. ‘Now then, Bounder, you’re stupid, but you are not as stupid as that. You didn’t mean to kill Trimnell. He was a sick man. You assaulted him, and you may be fined some shillings for it. If you tell the truth, then so shall I, and explain that to the court.’

‘It would be a different matter if it came out that you had taken his coat with you and pawned it, however,’ Harriet said, her clear voice like a bell in the squalor. ‘That would be Highway Robbery with Violence – and for that you would hang.’

Bounder began to look distinctly upset.

Creech had settled himself on a low stool by the fire; his long legs were bent almost double. He was eating whatever was in the pot with a wooden spoon and apparent relish. He spoke with his mouth full and his lips smacking. ‘He just fell down. Thought he’d fainted but he was that floppy when I put the ropes on him. “Bounder,” I said, “this bloke’s only gone and died.”’

Crowther stayed gazing at Bounder. The fat man sighed deeply and lay back down on the floor. ‘Creech …’ he said wearily.

‘What? They know it all already. And I don’t want my neck stretched.’

‘Who paid you?’ Crowther said.

Bounder sighed again. ‘No one, in the end.’

‘We
did
run off, Bounder,’ Creech said gently. ‘Trimnell bloke was supposed to get a whipping. When he died that meant trouble and no money for us.’ He pointed his spoon at Crowther. ‘We got paid when we gave that man there a beating and did it right. Mr Sawbridge was fair then.’

Creech pouted a little. ‘My nose still hurts, you know.’

The father, then, not the lover. Crowther stood up. It took an effort not to kick Bounder where he lay and pay him back for the vicious blows received. He glanced at Creech as he bent over the fire and was glad to see the bruising round his eyes and the swelling on his long nose. The fat man made no attempt to move from the ground.

‘Tell us exactly what happened, Bounder,’ Harriet said.

The man crossed his ankles and folded his hands together on his chest. ‘Sawbridge came to see me Friday morning. Asked if I had a friend would help me deliver a lesson to a dog that deserved it and was shaming his daughter. I thought he meant young Jennings for a moment, but it seems it was Mr Trimnell, his own son-in-law, he had in mind so I said yes and went and found Creech. Sawbridge was the colour of raw meat, that angry he was.’

‘I like meat,’ Creech said, staring sadly into his pot.

Bounder went on as if he had not heard.

‘The staking out and the whipping was Sawbridge’s plan. He gathered the necessary gear and gave it to us with a word on where to wait for him. He promised to give us a whole guinea because of the elaboration.’

‘We never got the guinea.’ Creech’s voice was almost tearful. ‘And I hurt my hand.’

He held it up and Harriet saw the pink slice of the infected wound across his fingers. The idea that it was Creech’s blood she had smeared on her skin from the mask was repulsive.

‘He brought you the mask too?’

‘He did,’ Bounder said quickly while Creech poked at his wound.

Crowther pulled the last details from them. Bounder had silenced Trimnell with the blows to the belly, while Creech held him then fitted the mask. The darkness in the room seemed to thicken when Bounder told them that Trimnell had been forced to climb over the churchyard railings himself, the mask already on. Harriet wondered what he had been thinking: whether he had expected to survive; whether he had seen his suffering as an offering to God with the great white Cathedral looking down on them? The whip they had kept and sold to a cab driver the following day. Bounder admitted that he had struck the blow while Trimnell was still standing.

‘My blood was up,’ he explained with a shrug. ‘I almost caught Creech here with the tail of it as he was still fitting the loops of rope to the rat’s wrists. My apologies for that, Mr Creech.’

‘Apology accepted, Mr Bounder.’

‘Rat?’ Harriet repeated, a slight break in her voice. ‘Why do you call him a rat?’

Bounder sniffed and raised his eyebrows. ‘I heard him at the Jamaica, didn’t I? We may be down on our luck at the moment, but we are Englishmen enough to see he needed a lesson. Then he falls to the ground, and we starts the pegging out.’

‘But Mr Trimnell is loose,’ Creech added helpfully.

‘So he is. I try and shake him, but he flops right back down. At which point I thought it wise to absent ourselves.’

‘So we absented,’ Creech said. ‘And didn’t get our guinea. Bounder, is there no more to eat?’

‘No,’ Bounder said, and Creech began to pick his teeth but protested no further.

‘Molloy, can you keep them here till morning?’ Crowther said. ‘We will collect them on the way to the Magistrate.’

Bounder looked suspicious. ‘We ain’t done with the talking yet?’

‘No,’ Crowther replied, looking down on him with distaste. ‘You’ll have to swear to what you’ve just said in front of the authorities. Remember to stay friendly with me, Bounder. What I say in court will save you or hang you.’

‘For you I’ll keep an eye on them,’ Molloy said. ‘Though I doubt they’ve wit or will to run.’

‘Thank you, Molloy, and good evening.’

The two men touched their hats to each other and Crowther offered Harriet his arm. Bounder still made no move to shift from where Molloy’s punch had landed him, while Creech hopefully licked the spoon one last time.

W
HEN EUSTACHE ARRIVED HOME
he went straight to the rooms set aside for the children on the upper storeys of the house, into his own chamber, and let himself cry. He had not realised that he loved Graves until Dr Fischer had threatened him. The nursemaid knocked on the door and told him supper was ready in the nursery, then she went back to the servants hall and reported to her fellows there that a few days’ proper work had left Master Eustache exhausted.

Upstairs, Jonathan and Stephen and Susan bickered happily among themselves as they ate, and as usual Eustache paid them no attention, other than looking up from time to time and hating them. Stephen, with his hero father and his exciting mother who obviously loved him more than such an ordinary noisy boy deserved. Susan, always so pleased with herself for being the eldest and complaining about their wealth. And Jonathan. Biddable and kind, always happy to give you whatever he had, if you said you wanted it. Everyone thought he was wonderful.

Eustache had very little appetite. He sat as long as he could, then when Jonathan was laughing so hard at something Stephen had said it looked as if he would fall from his place, Eustache could bear it no longer. He pushed back his chair and slammed his way back to his own room and sat on his bed, his knees drawn up to his chest. The manuscript lay in front of him, and already it seemed as if it was on fire. He felt a misery deeper than any he had ever known. All those names. All those lives stolen, then destroyed: all details carefully noted and dated in neat cramped handwriting, and he was going to give it to Fischer to burn. He knew he could do nothing else because he did not want Graves to hate him. He had felt alone his entire life, but he knew there was worse in front of him – and in front of the others – if he did not do what the man ordered. Eustache traced his hands over the writing on the page in front of him. It was wrong. They would take it away and burn it, and all those names would be lost. People like that fraud Fischer whom everyone liked so very much would carry on lying. It was wrong that all those people had died and no one would remember them, or ask after them. The pages under his hand were the one thread of words which stated they had existed and suffered in the world. It mattered. He thought about what Mr Glass had said about making decisions.