Wasp (40 page)

‘What can I do?’

‘You? Nothing. Others will bring matters to a head. Watch carefully, then choose your path.’

‘My path leads to my daughter. Where is she?’

‘I don’t know. She was gone shortly after the Fixer brought you to my doorstep.’

‘He could have told you?’

‘Why? That was a part of your gone-away life. Bringing it back might cause more trouble than either of you can cope with.’

‘I must take that chance.’

‘Then your time is coming, songbird, as surely as the tide.’

Full Circle

Wasp is handed an Assignment by Nightingale. Neither Kingfisher nor the Abbess is at breakfast. Rumours burble around the dining room. Nightingale quells the chatter by announcing the Abbess has a mild fever and has taken to her rooms. Wasp has never seen the Abbess’s private place. Neither has anyone else she’s spoken to. Apparently a number of chambers lead off from the Mirror Room, but no windows pierce that part of the building.

Dry-mouthed, Wasp takes her scroll upstairs and unfurls it. She reads too quickly, her eyes stumbling over the words. An important Ball requiring overnight attendance. Wasp’s presence has been specifically requested, and Nightingale will accompany her.

Her eyes skim the rest of the scroll and catch something else, something scribbled along the bottom. In her anxiety she’s almost overlooked it. Cramped lettering, different from the rest of the text, and hastily written:

Moth can’t return to the Cellar. No client will touch her. She will be killed at the month’s end.

And below that:

Don’t blame the Abbess.

Wasp sucks down a gobbet of air and crumples the scroll against her chest. Moth would be taken care of, she’d been told. They hadn’t ever lied to her, had he? Everything in the room seems to stand out in stark, brittle colours. In less than eight hours she’ll be on Assignment. There doesn’t seem enough time left in the world. The end of the month is only five days away. Five days. She has no reason to doubt the message. Moth had been sent to the Cellar. Wasp herself had been branded. People who could do that to young women were capable of anything.
We don’t carry baggage in the House.
Again and again that warning. Indeed, what use would Moth be to them now?
I’ve heard things,
she’d said.
There is another place you don’t want to go.

Wasp drops the scroll onto the fire. She watches the parchment curl and burn. Even if she could pluck Moth out of this situation, where would she go? Mother Joan’s? Far too close. Richard seems an unlikely saviour, but his money and connections might prove useful. How to get a message to him? No writing paper or quills are kept in the rooms. As far as friends and relatives are concerned the girls who live here are all hanged, transported or runaways. The Abbess might have a quill and inkpot tucked under her desk in the hall. A tenuous hope and too fraught with risk.

What if she waylays a boy in the square outside and sends him off with a spoken message and a promise that Richard will give him a shilling? Hazardous, as even walks around the square are usually taken with an escort.

Richard, whatever I’ve said to you in the past, however rejected you might feel, please book an Assignment and do it soon.

A busy evening in the dressing room. Half the House is due out on Assignment and the chamber is filled with chattering girls. Maids tease hair or help with awkward fastenings while Nightingale watches implacably from the corner. During the final days of her recovery, Wasp’s mind has been working over the Harlequin’s words. The temptation is there to talk it over with Hummingbird, but she’d likely laugh and wave it all out of the window.

Wasp discards three gowns before choosing one she can tolerate. She wants something eye-catching but not too frivolous. Her instructions are to wear ivory, and the confection she holds in her arms, while uncomfortably resembling a wedding dress, is loose enough about the hips to allow a night of dancing. Given the nature of the party she has also been instructed to bring her mask. Removing her day gown, she steps into the velvet cocoon and draws it up around her shoulders.

‘You play your part with passion, Wasp.’ Nightingale has ghosted up beside her. ‘Have you dabbled in acting?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘It will be a long journey for us tonight.’

‘Us? Yes, the scroll mentioned you’d be coming.’

‘This is a demanding Assignment. Your client is very exacting. He specifically requested your presence. But there are protocols involved with which I doubt you’re familiar.’

‘And you are familiar with them?’

‘I know the tricks. We shall both need to work hard to make this a success.’

‘Who is this client? Someone I’ve escorted before?’

‘It’s enough that he has requested you.’

‘Where are we going? The Assignment never mentioned a destination.’

‘Normally I’d say another country dance at yet another country house. They are all much the same. However, in this case I believe our host has something particular in mind.’

‘A Masked Ball?’

‘That and more. Now let me help you with those fastenings. They’re more awkward than most.’

Her fingers are nimble on the clasps, and her touch surprisingly gentle. Finally she drapes a necklace around Wasp’s neck. It sparkles when the light hits it. Reflected points bobble on the walls, following the rhythm of her breathing. Then comes the perfume. Nightingale wants to drench her in lavender. Wasp claims it brings on a sneezing fit, though in truth she’d cut her nose off and pickle it before willingly wearing what she has always regarded as an ‘old woman’s scent’. So her tormentor resorts to rose petal. Wasp now smells like her mother’s flower patch. In her head she hears Hummingbird laughing.

A coach arrives within the half hour. Nightingale changed earlier and looks ready to conquer the night. Her mask is a porcelain masterpiece of shape and colour, her wig a tumble of flowered silver. Wasp’s own hair, now grown to a manageable length, has been pinned back and concealed beneath a pink wig. Once aboard she tucks away a loose strand as the carriage rumbles out of the square. No name has been supplied for her client, either real or invented. Wasp tries to tease an answer out of Nightingale but finds herself cut off with a flick of one finger.

‘Don’t say anything. Either now or when we arrive. Stay close to me. Don’t wander. Don’t talk to anyone unless I say so.’

Fine,
Wasp thinks. Her ivory gown crinkles as she settles back on the fat cushions. Leaving town, the carriage follows a road alongside a gushing river for about a mile and a half. A right fork plunges them into thick wood and everything outside turns black.

Wasp’s hands feel slick inside her gloves. Nightingale sits in silence, back straight, staring through the window, though there’s precious little to see. Wasp shifts, flutters her fan. Finally the Harlequin turns from the window.

‘This is a seldom used route but quicker by a good half hour. You can stop fidgeting. We are almost there.’

No surprise this road is ill favoured. The potholes feel deep enough to sink a barn. The carriage lurches alarmingly. Wasp bites her tongue when they bump over a fallen tree branch. Her sense of disquiet grows, and the Harlequin’s distracted attitude doesn’t help.

After having her spine nearly shaken to pieces, Wasp is relieved when the coach rattles out of the trees. Beyond the window she glimpses an open space with a huge house lit up like a market fair. It looks familiar.

‘Remember what I told you,’ Nightingale says.

Wasp nods. Sight of the house is momentarily lost behind a tall hedge.

‘Good. I hope you have a strong character, my young swan. Now put your mask on.’

A pair of iron gates open onto a crescent-shaped gravel drive. The carriage halts at the foot of a broad flight of steps. Other carriages draw up behind them. Some have two horses, some four. Coachmen cling grimly to the back, hats bobbing with the rhythm of the leather springs.Wasp can hear laughter tinkling on the night air. Coloured lanterns jiggle on cord looped around the portico. As she takes it all in, a liveried footman scuttles down the steps and opens their door.

Wasp grasps the edge of her seat. ‘I cannot go in there.’

‘You can and shall. I shall brook no disagreement.’

‘I am known here.’

Nightingale levers Wasp’s arms from the seat and pilots her towards the steps. ‘Don’t go faint on me. Lord Russell and his guests await.’

A Night of Masks

Long poles impale the lawn, torches sparking from their tips. Lanterns loop in luminous moons along the drive to the foot of the front steps. Light bleeds from every window. This is Russell Hall as Bethany Harris has seldom seen it. During family parties she’d been obliged to stay in her room with curtains drawn. One night only she had been permitted to watch from a corner of the balcony overlooking the entrance hall. She had never witnessed anything so grand, though Lord Russell’s face was tight.

‘Don’t ever become a part of that world,’ he warned. ‘Everything is plotted, like the steps of a dance.’

‘But they look like gods.’

‘Hardly. Tonight they will dance and talk. Cigars will be smoked. Port and canary drunk. The women will gossip and eye each other’s dresses and find ever more complicated ways to show how much they hate one another. Tomorrow the men will go into the woods and hunt. It’s the wrong time of year but they’ll find something to kill. They are all so afraid of being considered ordinary they make grotesqueries of their lives.’

Wasp’s gown rustles as Nightingale leads her up the steps. ‘Why so reluctant, Wasp? Isn’t this what you wanted?’

‘I’m not ready. ’

‘You have matters here that need settling. You said so yourself. So settle them, and perhaps you will be a little less haunted.’

Footmen stand on either side of the door. Village lads most likely, their faces unrecognisable in the shadows cast by the lanterns. A babble of guests fills the hall, exchanging greetings and shedding cloaks into the arms of waiting servants. Everyone is dressed to the buttons and wearing a rainbow of assorted masks. For the first time, Wasp is able to move among guests without finding herself the centre of attention. It feels curiously liberating.

Nightingale draws Wasp into a side room. She recognises it as a parlour the late Lady Russell used for entertaining. Tall French windows open onto a paved terrace. Cool air gusts around the furnishings.

‘Amuse yourself for a short while,’ the Harlequin tells her. ‘A matter needs attending to. House business.’

She disappears into the hubbub. Wasp is drawn to the windows and looks out over the gardens. Two paper lanterns on the edge of the lawn have blown out. A figure strides across the grass, taper in hand. Even at a distance, Wasp recognises the leather jerkin and hat pricked with a hawk feather. She’d wondered how she’d cope with such a moment, even rehearsing scenarios in her head. Faced with the reality of it her plans melt away, as she always suspected they would.

Gathering her skirts, Wasp crosses the terrace, slips between a pair of stone angels and sets off across the dark lawn. Walking the passages of the House has taught her silence, and her slippered feet are light on the grass. She catches him tinkering with the first of the lanterns. As he sets the taper to the wick his face illuminates in a moon of familiar shapes.

‘Still keeping to your place, I see.’

The taper slides from his fingers. The flame sputters on the grass but remains stubbornly alight. They regard each other for a few moments, lanterns washing their faces with rainbows.

‘Can I be of some service, Miss?’

Wasp slips off her mask. She hears his breath catch. ‘Don’t worry,’ she tells him. ‘I’ve not come back to bedevil you.’

‘You’re no spectre, Beth Harris. I know my own blood.’ His gaze slides over her gown, her gloves, the expensive ribbons tied into her wig. ‘Look at you. A painted whore.’

‘Better than a lunatic.’

‘Dead, that’s what I heard you were. I never believed it. Not you. I’d know inside myself if such was true.’

‘And you never tried to look for me?’

‘Why would I, Beth? You’d only cause more heartbreak.’

‘Did you know what kind of home Lord Russell placed me in? Did you even care? Look past the dress and the rouge — this is your daughter speaking.’

He shifts his feet. ‘He is the squire. I was desperate. We all were. Took your mother a long time to get her wits back. Her heart broke, then fixed, then broke again. To see you here, like this, would kill her for sure. That’s part of the reason I had to let you go. She’s all I have left. I also had my duty to the squire and to God. You were beyond rod or sermon.’

‘And George Russell?’

‘He never believed the stories about you either, despite what his papa might have told him.’

He stoops to retrieve the taper. ‘Why return now, Beth? You didn’t come here dressed like that to hunt me out.’

‘I was invited. I don’t yet know by whom.’

‘Has George Russell seen you?’

‘I’ve not yet been presented to him. I doubt he will see past my face powder.’

‘You’ve done many things I didn’t expect, but becoming a whore was the last of them. That’s what you are, isn’t it? I don’t reckon any of his lordship’s gaggle would take you as a wife. The unmarried bucks always turn up with their harlots and pass them off as sweethearts.’