Wasp (45 page)

‘Flog yourself later, John. You’ll have time enough, I suspect.’

‘What shall we do?’

‘I’m off downstairs for another serving of canary. You are going to run. I’ll make sure you get away, but you’ll owe me.’

‘What is it you want?’

Crabbe emptied his glass. ‘Everything.’

And he had taken just that. Even the job tarring slaves at the docks had been secured through Crabbe’s contacts. The Fixer thought himself safe until the night spat out another pregnant girl. A decision had been made there too.

You’re not fit to be a mother,
he’d told her.

The skies open. Wind-driven rain cuts his cheeks and plasters his shirt against his broken chest.

‘Anna,’ he mutters through bloodied lips, ‘what have you done?’

‘Where is Kingfisher?’

Leonardo puts down his clay pipe and regards the Fixer over the top of the flickering lantern.

‘He hath taken his little African bird and flown. I suspect thou knowest that already.’

‘But all those trinkets he’s garnered over the years are still in his quarters. They were precious to him.’

Leonardo shrugs. ‘He hath found a trinket that breathes.’

‘Why would he leave without telling me? Damn it, I freed him from a
cage
.’

‘In here,’ Leonardo taps his chest, ‘he doth not believe thou canst save him. Through this girl he will find his soul again.’

The Fixer imagines Kingfisher standing in front of him. That look on his face. That
voice.
‘You pulled me out of slavery. Would you not expect me to do the same? Do you really see me as a man, John Cannon, or something you saved to salve your conscience? Or suit your purposes? That is what my countrymen and women do, is it not? Suit the white man’s purpose?’

The girl was the only thing he was ever secretive about. I should have foreseen this.

He’d tried to be sympathetic. Was Kingfisher not simply doing what the Fixer himself had done with Anna? So, a blind eye had been turned, again and again, as she was tucked away in Kingfisher’s quarters. He fed her with food from his own plate, took out her pot, bribed the washerwoman for some fresh clothes. He’d never have managed it if the Abbess hadn’t fallen sick, and the nature of that illness was a mystery in itself. The Fixer had gently probed but been waved away at every turn. It was Hummingbird’s doing. She seemed to have set herself up as the old woman’s keeper and now everything was falling apart. Stumbling into Kingfisher’s quarters had left the Fixer in no doubt. The bed, the dresser, the fireside table with a cup of the fruit juice Kingfisher preferred. Orange. Another expensive whim the Abbess indulged. All were untouched. But there, sitting amidst everything, the bracelet made of hair. His wife’s hair. In that instant the Fixer realised things had irrevocably changed.

Leonardo picks up his pipe. ‘He is a clever man, that darkie. Can squeeze coin out of a kerbstone if need be. He’ll not go hungry or be in want of a roof.’

‘So that’s it? He left no message?’

‘Only that you must give her back the child.’

‘I see. It seems he was a better friend than I imagined.’

The coachman gestures at the Fixer’s injuries. ‘From the look of thee, doctor man, thou hast more troublesome things to consider.’

He nods. ‘My past is catching up right enough.’

‘Not just
thy
past, I think.’

‘No, not just mine. At least this time they didn’t have swords.’

Leonardo shakes his head. ‘No refuge is to be found here, doctor man. Trouble is brewing inside the House as well as out. I drive these girls in their coaches. I work the yard while they take the air. I serve and pamper them, and overhear every word they utter. Thou art best gone before the wolves descend on us all.’

‘If I leave a note will you pass it to Nightingale?’

‘I shall.’

Unexpected Choices

‘Sir? Mister Cole?’

The merchant isn’t going to answer, now or ever. He’s fetched up against the bottom leg of the bed, his dead eyes staring at the ceiling. His left arm is curled tight, the fingers clenched; his right has fallen across his chest. The rug is half wrapped around him, concealing most of his lower body. Two seconds ago he’d been thrashing around on the floor like a landed trout.

‘I was told to—’ Those were his last words. Nothing profound. Not even a proper sentence. She thought someone might come running to investigate the racket but five minutes have passed without so much as a footstep in the lane. The room has no other door.

She slides the key out of Cole’s coat pocket and checks outside. The sky is a massive bruise. The wind has fallen to irregular gusts but the sheeting rain is far from spent. Wasp peers up the lane. If lucky she might catch a chair. Some diehards work the roads whatever the weather.

Nothing moves in the visible oblong of street. No, there, tucked into a doorway near the corner, a shivering linkboy, torch sputtering in his hand. Early for him to be out, but the weather has brought a premature dusk. Wasp runs up the alley, raindrops stinging her face. She grabs the boy by the shoulder. He gawps like a frightened rabbit, the torch nearly slipping from his fingers.

‘Do you know Crown Square?’ Rain streams down Wasp’s hair and into her eyes. Everything is a watery blur.

‘’Course I do,’ he says, pulling free of her grasp.

‘Go to the house with the polished black door. Knock and ask for Hummingbird. Bring her here. Tell her Wasp sent you.’

He shook his head. ‘That’s the whores’ palace. I’ll get a beating if I go there.’

‘You’ll fetch worse from me if you don’t.’

The boy squirms. ‘My da won’t like it.’

‘He won’t have to know, will he? Go now and you’ll get a shilling when you return.’

‘I’ll have the shilling now.’

‘No, you won’t, you little tinker. I’m not having you disappearing into the murk. A shilling in your hand when you get back — that’s a promise.’

The boy leaves at a fast trot, torch fading into the murk. Wasp returns to the room. She fetches a chair from the corner, sets it beside the hearth and sits down to wait in the mottled firelight.

‘So you killed him?’ Hummingbird nudges the rug off Cole’s corpse with her foot.

‘He kept asking me things. I’m hired out to entertain, not to be interrogated. All I did was slap him. He had some sort of seizure and there wasn’t anything I could do.’

‘We’ll have to dump his carcass.’

‘Dump him?’

‘We can’t afford to get caught up in this. Now, help me. Empty his purse to make it look like a robbery.’

‘What?’

‘Come on. This is no time to turn sweet.’

‘How are we going to move him? Didn’t you bring Leonardo?’

‘That little Bible spouter? I’m not getting him involved. I have a chaise outside and before you ask I drove it here myself. You were lucky I got your message, though why promise that brat a shilling? It cost a good pair of earrings to entice him to talk, and those were a gift from one of my best clients.’

‘Where is the boy?’

‘Scampered back into the same gutter he came from, I expect. Now, grab the cully’s legs.’

‘Hummingbird, what if someone sees us?’

‘Then we say he passed out over too much wine and we’re helping him back to his coach. Stop fussing.’

Hummingbird slides back into her voluminous cloak and draws up the hood. She hooks both hands under Cole’s armpits while Wasp takes his ankles.

‘He’s too heavy.’

‘Then we’ll drag him.’ She nudges the door open and together the girls bundle the corpse outside. The carriage is backed into the lane. Hummingbird climbs inside and they manoeuvre Cole up the steps. It seems to take forever. Wasp’s muscles ache and she can see her companion struggling. By the time they have him inside both are gasping.

‘Right,’ Hummingbird says, catching her breath. ‘Empty his pockets like I told you. I’ll drive us to a place where we can safely ditch him.’

‘He’ll be missed, won’t he?’

‘Cullies disappear in this city every day.’

‘I can’t believe this has happened. If we’re caught everyone will think I murdered him.’

‘Well, you did, more or less.’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘No time to argue. We’ll have time to talk when we return to the House.’

‘It’s just—’ Wasp shakes her head.

‘Another problem, Sister? Bigger than the one you already have on your hands?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘All right, but let’s ditch the cully first.’

‘Where did you get the chaise?’

‘A favour from a client. Every so often we clop around in it. He taught me to drive as a novelty, I suspect. Unlike your friend here, he’s not one for asking questions.’ Hummingbird draws up her hood, climbs back onto the driver’s perch and clicks the horse forward.

Wasp rifles Steven Cole’s corpse. His eyes are cracked open, his cooling face frosted with raindrops. There’s nothing much to take. A purse with sixpence in it and a fob watch with the hands missing. She drops them into her reticule and straightens. Her hair is sticking to her cheeks and her gown smells of stale rainwater but there’s more to worry about than the House’s precious chattels.

Ten minutes later Hummingbird stops the carriage. ‘Let’s get this business done.’

The chaise is sitting at the mouth of an alley crammed between two rows of terraced houses. The rain has eased but the streets remain blessedly quiet. Between them they drag Cole’s body down the carriage steps and into the gutter. One of his shoes flips off.

‘Are you going to leave him like that?’ Wasp asks.

‘What do you expect me to do? Say a prayer? Dig a grave and erect a headstone? I’ll wager in half an hour his jacket is gone. A half hour after that, his shirt and breeches too. Nobody will know or care who he is. You ought to be thankful.’

‘Suppose someone enquires at the House? Finds out who he was with?’

‘People don’t make those sorts of enquiries, not if they have a shred of sense. Now get back inside.’

As they drive off, Wasp leans out and peers back into the murk. Cole resembles a pile of rags. She draws her head back and rubs the rain out of her eyes. There it was again. Death. Everywhere. Even skulking through the sunniest summer lanes of her village, when Tommy Button, the washerwoman’s toddler, chased a butterfly down a well and drowned for it. It had been Wasp’s own father who pulled him, dripping and soulless, from the dark water, while everyone except his hysterical mother shook their heads and declared ‘The Lord gives and the Lord takes’. And in the Comfort Home the Lord cut his harvest there too: Jenny Brewster, barely more than sixteen years old and disowned because she threw fits, screamed and uttered the foulest language for no good reason so that her parents believed her possessed. She’d taken to her mattress with a fever and was found the next day staring dead-eyed at the floor with blood around her nose. No eulogy-spouting cleric for her, but corn sacks for her shroud and two hefty labourers bearing shovels and a barrel of quicklime. Wasp had watched her carted out of the front door like so many potatoes.

Death. Can it ever be cheated?

Wasp reaches over and tugs Hummingbird’s arm. ‘I need to talk to you. Now. Before we get back to the House.’

‘Can’t it wait?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, very well, but it’s hardly the best time.’ Hummingbird pulls into the lee of a bridge spanning a sluggish, muddy river. ‘Horse is getting skittish. He wants feeding. I hope this won’t take long.’

The chaise is wretchedly small and their legs press together. The stink of the river invades the confined space. Hummingbird’s cloak is slick with water. Drops run down her nose and chin.

‘What was I doing with that man?’ Wasp begins.

Hummingbird raises her eyebrows.

‘Yes, I was on Assignment, at least that’s what I was supposed to think. But then he started asking questions about Nightingale.’

‘Nightingale?’

‘Yes, and someone called John Cannon. I think he meant the Fixer. Some business ties them both together and this fellow, Cole, talked about getting a fee. Where do you suppose he came from?’

‘There are all kinds of men whose services may be hired. In a sense they are harlots too. They breed in the same gutters as the cheapest whores.’