Wasp (31 page)

Nightingale watched the ladies come off the stagecoaches at the posting house. She copied their voices, their walk, the way they spoke to servants. She never realised how difficult it would be to pass as anything other than a Masque. Though her pale grey dress and cloak were up to the part, there was more to this deception than being able to flick and flutter her fan the way a common woman would. Her father’s solicitor is no buffoon and she doesn’t know how long she’ll be able to fool him. Her fingers are aching, she’s twiddled and twisted them so much.

The clock has a long brass pendulum swinging in a chipped case. It’s too big for the room. The ticking sounds are like mice gnawing the wainscoting. The first time it chimed its secretive hour Nightingale jumped, spilling her drink over the tea table. She had nothing to mop it clean and ended up using one of the cushions from the armchair, which would likely leave an ugly stain. The rug under Nightingale’s slippers is worn. She contemplates getting up and slipping back out of the door but remembers, again, she has no money for the tea. If caught, the innkeeper with his big hands and blue-veined nose might not think twice about beating her.

Think, Nightingale. Think.

She has a bracelet. It’s a pretty silver thing engraved with jade flowers and must be worth a tidy sum. Surely Ferguson will accept it as payment. Oh, why won’t that clock shut up?

At last the door ghosts open and Ferguson breezes into the lounge. A smile splits his face. He glances at the tea and tosses the innkeeper a guinea. The man’s frown disappears and he backs out of the room. Nightingale doesn’t move. Usually so sharp, she’s fumbling for things to say. Ferguson warms his hands at the hearth. He moves easily, as if this is his own parlour.

Nightingale puts down her tea dish. It rattles on the tabletop. Ferguson chuckles. That’s good. She can feel irritated with him. Feeling irritated will help her cope with her unease.

He beckons and she gets up to follow him. Not a word has passed between them. They leave through a back door which opens onto a lane choked with rubbish. Rats scatter out of their path. From a gaping upstairs window a man’s voice, hurling abuse, floats on the thick air. Somewhere within, a baby is crying. Its wailing jangles Nightingale’s already fractured nerves. The man curses again. A woman’s voice rises in protest. A slap. Silence.

A scuffed green door is set into the wall. Ferguson unlocks it and waves Nightingale inside. A flight of stairs, the wood bare and splintered, leads up into the gloom. She hitches skirts and starts to climb. The taffeta rustles like dried leaves in the confined space. She hears Ferguson’s tread on the boards behind her.

Three doors lead off a cramped landing. Nightingale waits. Ferguson is wheezing a little by the time he joins her. He plucks a key out of his waistcoat pocket, jiggles it into the lock and pushes the door. It sticks in the frame. He shoulders it open. A smell of damp linen and dust smacks Nightingale’s nostrils.

‘Come in,’ Ferguson says, gesturing. ‘Come in.’

A bed hugs one wall. Underneath, a rug barely covers the stained floorboards. A wardrobe shares a corner with a dresser on which sits a pitcher, bowl and two glasses. The only window is closed, the ledge below littered with fly husks.

Perspiration stings her forehead. The air’s stifling. The door closes behind her. The latch clicks.

Ferguson pours two drinks from a hip flask and hands one to Nightingale. Brandy from the smell of it. He smiles and takes a generous swig, half draining the glass.

Nightingale sips the brandy and smiles back.

‘You must excuse the accommodation,’ he gestures around him, ‘but it was the best I could achieve at such, shall we say, short notice? Besides, I assumed you wished discretion.’

‘Yes.’

‘Indeed. Your message, arriving as it did, left me both surprised and perplexed. Your father, along with myself and most of society, assumed you lost to the ether. In honesty, many would claim it would be better if you stayed lost.’

‘I can settle your mind on that account. I’ve no wish to trouble Father or his brand of society. Let me be as dead to them as they are to me.’

‘If only one could be sure that this is the case.’

‘Be assured. I’ve no desire to be dealt with in such a shabby manner again.’

‘Then this meeting is not for social purposes?’

Nightingale squeezes her fingers together. ‘No, it is not. I want my child, nothing more. Find her, and I’ll never trouble you or anyone connected with my family again.’

‘You genuinely do not know where it is?’

‘No.’

‘And you think it can be located, despite the coin your father spent trying to track it down? He can’t afford such a loose end. The consequences for his estate could prove significant.’

‘This is a baby you’re talking about. My daughter. She is not an it.’

He spreads his hands. ‘Of course not. You must pardon me. This is all a shock, as I explained. But tell me, how do you propose that I find your
daughter
if you don’t know her whereabouts yourself?’

‘A man took her from me. He said he was going to give the child to someone who could care for her. I want to know where she is, nothing more.’

‘And you let him do this?’

‘I was in no position to stop him. I was
 . . . 
compromised.’

‘Compromised?’ Ferguson empties his glass. ‘That could mean a great many things. I assume this fellow is the quack who dealt so roughly with your father’s men and spirited you off into the night.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you know where he is?’

‘I can tell you where to find him.’

‘Hmm, not quite the same thing. So you’re still keeping secrets, Anna Torrance. Well, that’s to be expected. However, my professional services don’t come without charge.’

Nightingale slips the bracelet from under her sleeve and places it on the table beside the brandy decanter. Ferguson glances at it.

‘You offer me this bauble?’

‘You don’t have to be a silversmith to recognise its worth.’

‘So tell me where I might find this baby snatcher of yours.’

Nightingale lists the apothecaries, herbalists, Wise Women.

‘And you consider yourself a fit mother now?’

‘I’m in a better position to try and be one.’

‘Would this fellow agree?’

‘No.’

‘I may have to use less than convivial means to obtain the information you desire.’

Nightingale swallows. Her tongue is dry as bark. She tries a sip of brandy but it’s an unusual concoction and nips her throat. ‘Don’t let him know I’m involved. Get what I’ve asked for and nothing more.’

‘And what is to stop me turning both the child and you over to your father?’

‘Why would you? I’m not asking you to fetch her, only to ascertain her whereabouts. I’ve already explained that I shall not trouble Father again. He may consider us both dead if he wishes. You have my word.’

Ferguson taps the empty glass against his chin. ‘And what might that word be truly worth, I wonder? You look like you’ve fallen a long way, Anna Torrance, standing there in that cheap dress with powder caking your face.’

‘I didn’t wish to draw attention to myself.’

‘So why the face paint? Pox got you? How do I know you’re any more a fit mother than you were before? You might be taking the child into a bawdy house. It would be remiss of me to permit such a thing.’

‘Since when did your breed ever trouble yourself with matters of conscience? You’ve been paid. Do what I ask otherwise I’ll take my jewellery and go.’

‘I need to know what I’m dealing with, Anna.’

Before she can stop him, he takes his kerchief and swipes it across her cheek. Air brushes over exposed skin. She slaps a hand to her face. Too late, he’s seen it. The powder-stained square of lace falls from his fingers.

‘Dear Lord,’ he says, voice drawn taut. ‘It seems you have fallen in a way none of us quite expected.’

Nightingale forgets about the bracelet. She forgets about the brandy glass still clutched in her hand, and her exposed Emblem. She tears at the latch, runs out the door and skitters down the steps outside. In the hot air of the alleyway she trips over her own feet and slaps into the opposite wall. Pain judders up both arms. The alley seems to fall in on her.

Ferguson doesn’t follow. Nightingale waits as long as she dares, hauling air into her lungs. When she thinks she can walk again she makes for the end of the alley, holding the wall for support. With her free hand she pats powder back across her exposed Emblem then pulls her cloak around her shoulders. Everything is quiet. Even the dogs have stopped barking.

She fights the impulse to run. Ahead is the twist in the lane beyond which the carriage is waiting. Nightingale can’t see anything through the unkempt hedge. Has the driver become impatient and left? Perhaps it was Ferguson’s intention that she never return to the city. If so she’ll not get five miles on foot, even if she could find the proper road. Hiring transport is out of the question. Ferguson has her only item of value. Even if she did manage to drag herself back to the House what would she tell the Abbess? That she was jiggled by a footpad? If so, how would she explain the clothes? For all she knew, Kingfisher might already have been sent after her.

The coach is waiting. Nightingale scrambles up the step and collapses onto the seat. The driver sets off immediately. At this time of day the landscape is sleepy. No one pays her nondescript carriage any heed. The horses kick up a good pace despite the road. Nightingale leaves the window down, grateful for the breeze. It strengthens as they clatter into open country and she draws her cloak tighter around herself. The brim of her straw bonnet flutters like starling’s wings.

What have I done? What am I going to do?

Undercurrents

‘I can’t believe I let him talk to me that way,’ Wasp says. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen, was it? I felt so demeaned. I thought he would hit me if I didn’t do what he wished.’

‘No need to get upset,’ Hummingbird says. ‘All sorts like to try their luck. Most are just a gaggle of blustering fools. First clients are usually the worst. They feel intimidated by us and try to lay down their own rules. Others, like Sir James, get drunk and think they can fumble us as they please. He’ll get a black mark next to his name and a warning from the Abbess. Any real trouble and he’d have felt a hatpin in his pintle.’

‘You make it sound like nothing happened.’

‘Well, not much did.’

‘Was it something I said? Did I provoke him?’

‘From what you’ve told me I think you dealt with it well enough. At least you didn’t laugh. That really would have pricked his pride. Five minutes in the company of a Masque and all these highhanded politicians turn into children. You need to know how to play them.’

Hummingbird casts a glance into the gloomy streets. ‘I heard you put up with much worse in that Comfort Home. The brutality, the inmates who would steal the hair off your head. I’d thought you’d be able to cope with any trick from our ennobled friends.’

‘Such a place would make a brute of anyone. I survived because I believed that, no matter what happened to me on the outside, inside I was still better than those who were abusing me. Has anything changed? Sir James was like a bully or a cruel big brother. Even when he was warned off by Kingfisher it all seemed a twisted game to him.’

‘He hardly touched you. You said so yourself.’

‘He opened the top of my head and stuck a barb inside my mind. I was assaulted as readily as if he’d lifted my skirts and bundled me into the gutter. He got the better of me and I let him do it. That’s why he walked away laughing. That’s why I hate myself. The Abbess said I was reborn, that when I became a Masque my past would die. I believed her. I thought my past could be cast aside. I had started to convince myself that my time in the Comfort Home never really happened, that it was a fictional episode from a novel or one of those dreadful stories in the magazines from the circulating library. My God-fearing father would’ve shot me if he knew the things I did in the Comfort Home, if he’d heard what came out of my mouth. And just when I thought I could be a sweet little girl again out jumps the past and screams in my face.’

Hummingbird doesn’t say anything else, for which Wasp is grateful. By the time their carriage draws up in front of the House she’s composed herself with the help of some borrowed rouge.

Rain starts falling when they step onto the kerb, a clinging drizzle that spangles their wigs and chases them up the steps to the front door. Like butterflies turning into caterpillars, the girls shed their glittering wings on stepping back into the velvet throat of the House. Greedily it swallows their charms. Gowns, hats and jewellery all vanish into the dressing-room coffers.

The Abbess is waiting for them in the hall. ‘Did the night go well?’

‘There was an incident,’ Hummingbird says. ‘Kingfisher was obliged to assist us.’

‘Is Kingfisher nearby?’

‘He’s retired to the yard.’

The older woman laces her fingers together. ‘I see. Neither of you is hurt?’

‘No.’

‘You will recount tonight’s events, Hummingbird. I dislike the thought of trouble so early in your protegee’s career. Wasp, go to bed. I may speak with you tomorrow.’