Wasp (46 page)

‘No way home.’

‘What?’

‘I had no way home. The sedan bearers who delivered me to Cole had no instructions to pick me up again. Nothing was said about a carriage either. Someone must be fixing the Assignments.’

‘This is all very fanciful.’

‘Don’t tell me it’s not possible. The Abbess has seemingly vanished with this supposed illness. You must know what’s going on?’

‘Don’t be so harsh. I’m no Harlequin. The Abbess doesn’t confide in me. I wouldn’t set someone like Cole on you. I’m your friend. Besides, Nightingale is the one giving out Assignments these days. Perhaps you should take your questions to her.’

‘You must help me.’

‘Wasp, I’m sure I’d love to, but if this goes too far we’ll both fetch a lot more than a hot arm. Your obsession with Moth isn’t helping.’

‘You’re my friend. You just said so.’

‘Who are you, Moth’s mother? Are you seeking atonement for your sins? You won’t save your soul by saving her neck. If a path to redemption is what you want then you should pursue a more useful cause and a better means of achieving it than this.’

‘You don’t know what I’ve done or need to do. Perhaps I am Moth’s “mother”. Perhaps I feel I do owe her something, yet for a time I was ready to turn my back. I thought myself such a failure that any attempt on my part to interfere would only lead to more trouble.’

Hummingbird sighs — a long, low sound like wind gusting through an alley. ‘But you’ve interfered too much already.’

‘That’s a horrid thing to say.’

‘Bawdy houses lie in every port and back street. You can’t wish them away.’

‘How could I leave her in the Cellar after what I witnessed? Yet since that night I’ve dithered along in the hope that everything will resolve itself. Now, accident or not, someone else is dead. I have to try and help Moth
 . . . 
or lose my wits. Call that selfish if you like, but I intend to get her out of the House.’

‘Really? And afterwards?’

‘There won’t be an afterwards. I’m leaving with her. I’m done with this nest of horrors.’

Hummingbird shifts on the narrow seat. ‘Not a good idea, Sister. Our Emblems mark us out wherever we go. People only need to glance at us to know what we are. Even if you run far enough you’ll still draw attention to yourself. These coloured pictures are our manacles. One day soon they could be our weapons. Think about that.’

‘The Emblems can be removed.’

‘True, if you are determined enough.’ Hummingbird dips into the folds of her cloak and draws out a long-handled hairbrush. She flicks a catch on the base and the handle slips off. Underneath is a steel blade tapering to a vicious point. It glints in the light from the coach lantern. ‘Most girls keep a little something to get them out of trouble.’

‘No. Don’t cut me.’

‘I could heat the blade in the lantern flame. Two seconds pressed against your cheek would be enough to set you free.’

‘I’ll be scarred.’

‘Vanity or liberty, Wasp. I can’t pander to both.’

‘I’ll help Moth, then fret about the picture on my face.’

Hummingbird slides the knife back into its handle. ‘As you wish.’

A Final Choice

Nightingale is screaming inside. Her hands are fat with gloves. Three pairs. Lace, then kid, then winter leather, yet she can still imagine feeling the wooden grain of the box through the material. She listens, eyes screwed closed, as the muslin bag slops open onto the roof, spilling the dream makers into the gutter with a tiny tick-tick rattling. Can she smell them, or is it her imagination? It’s rained all evening. The air beyond the open window is thick and damp. City scents assault her. Smoke, dung, cooking meat.

But still
 . . .

She lets go of the box. It clatters down the slates and disappears over the lip of the roof. A moment later there’s a splintered crash as it hits the yard below. Nightingale’s legs fold and she slides onto the rug. She has no one left. ‘The darkie hath taken his pot of black gold and fled’ was how Leonardo put it, but no fanciful slant could change the bare fact that Kingfisher has abandoned them. The Fixer, too, has jumped from the same ship, even though he’s seemingly gone to swim in different waters. Leonardo might use rich language but he lacks the imagination to make up stories. Nightingale accepted the truth of his words even before he’d finished uttering them. He had entered the House to find her, an act almost unheard of, and broken the news in his uniquely Biblical manner. She had tried to protest but he shook his misshapen head.

‘Young bird, he had to go. Thou hast set the dogs on him.’

‘The Fixer would understand why, or he knows nothing of me.’

‘He is prepared to forgive. Thou canst go to him, but thy box of witchery cannot. Thou must settle the storm within these walls first.’

‘Where is he?’

‘The city harbour. He will take a ship bound for the colonies and sign on as surgeon. A new life for him. In time he may send for you. Both of you.’

‘Both of us?’

Astonishingly, Leonardo smiled. His teeth were perfectly white in that ugly face. She had never noticed before. He dropped a jangling purse and sealed letter onto the table. ‘Best make thy mind up,’ he said.

So ‘the witchery’ is gone. Already, if only in her imaginings, she can feel the cravings starting to bite. Week by week the Fixer had given her just enough to keep them at bay. She could almost pretend each dose was medicine. The box was never an easy solution, not even a temporary one. Once the lid was opened it was over, one way or the other. She couldn’t hope to face her daughter with such a Damoclean sword dangling above her head.

You had no right to be a mother. Look at what you did to yourself.

The addiction is not as strong as it once was but weeks of pain lie ahead. Leonardo has delivered the Fixer’s terms. He still has her on a leash, but the pull of the House is equally strong. Something has to break.

Nightingale peels off the top two layers of gloves. Outside, the passageway is empty. She hurtles down the stairs in her slippers, dodging the scraps of party litter that have escaped the Scarlet Parlour. For hours she’d stood in her mask while the revellers had fawned and preened. Most were packed off to the Cellar where special treats were apparently to be had, others slinked back to wives and mistresses.

But not everyone had gone.

She ducks behind the hall table and scrabbles through the litter in the drawers. What a rat’s nest. Rolls of parchment and piles of old calling cards tumble onto the floor. How did the Abbess ever make sense of this mess?

‘Ah, here it is.’ Her hand closes around a polished wooden stock.

So the stories are true.

A Confrontation

Wasp scurries up the front steps of the House. ‘Go straight upstairs and don’t talk to anyone,’ Hummingbird had instructed. ‘Wait in your bedchamber until I join you.’

She claimed she could get a message to Richard but wouldn’t be pressed as to how. ‘I have my methods. Give me half an hour to return the carriage.’

‘Can’t we use it to get away? Richard could meet us in Portsmouth.’

‘Pox it, Wasp, you are such a dreamer. I doubt whisking Moth out of the House is illegal but stealing a coach will put us on a prison barge. Just wait in your bedchamber and don’t do anything impulsive.’

‘Hummingbird, thank you.’

‘Just go.’

A quiet and empty hall. No lingering girls. Only half the candles in the overhead chandelier are lit. Jaundiced light throws pale shadows over the walls.

Unnerved by the silence, Wasp checks the dining room. Crumpled napkins, greasy plates lying in cracked piles, a tipped-up bottle of port bleeding red onto the carpet. At the top table, a chair lies on its side.

Where are the maids? Why has no one cleared this up?

On impulse she crosses the hall to the Scarlet Parlour. Inside, the room resembles a deserted battleground. Playing cards are scattered across the rugs and a fug of pipe smoke clings to the tapestries. Wasp’s foot catches an empty brandy decanter. It skitters across the carpet and fetches up against the wainscoting. ‘Where are you all?’ she whispers, plucking a silk neckcloth from the back of the sofa.

Abandoning the parlour, Wasp removes her shoes and pads up the thick stair carpet. Not a sound anywhere. She slips into her own room. Dark, the curtains drawn, the hearth dead and full of ashes. She sparks her tinderbox and puts a sputtering flame to the bedside candle. A soft glow fills the room, though the cold air has a musty smell to it. Her bed is still rumpled from this morning, the coverlet lying half on the floor.

Wasp pulls off one of the pillowcases and twists it between her hands. It was a trick she learned in the Comfort Home. Someone with an eye on her footwear once hit her across the side of the head with a knotted shawl. The blow sent her reeling. Fortunately a wild kick caught her assailant in the face. She lost two rotten teeth and Wasp kept her shoes.

The knotted pillowcase dangles from her fingers. In the tick-tock quiet the crude weapon makes her feel better. A half hour passes. She judges the time from the doleful chiming of the clock down the hall.

The door breezes open. Wasp’s fingers tighten on the linen club, but it’s only Hummingbird.

‘Do you mean to brain me with that thing?’ she remarks, sitting on the edge of the bed.

Wasp drops the pillowcase onto the mattress. ‘Of course not. I’m just anxious.’

Hummingbird takes her hand. ‘Well, I’ve sent a message to Richard. I’ve no guarantee he’ll act on it though.’

‘What shall we do in the meantime?’

‘You were the one with the big plan, Wasp. I suppose we’d better go and find Moth.’

‘You do know where she is, then?’

‘In the Mirror Room?’

‘How shall I slip her out? Do you have an idea about that too?’

‘Some distraction or other. We’ll think of something. Now, let’s go and hunt out your friend.’

‘Hummingbird, there’s something else.’

‘What now? Hasn’t enough happened already?’

‘Someone has been writing notes at the bottom of my Assignments. Warnings about Moth. At first I wondered if it might be you, but the last one killed that notion.’

‘I’m certainly not the type to leave clandestine messages. Why don’t you show me these notes. I might recognise the handwriting.’

‘They were etched onto the scrolls.’

‘And you burned them after reading?’

‘As I was taught.’

‘What convinced you I wasn’t the mystery author?’

‘The final one said I should ask you about the baby.’

‘The baby?’ A mongrel expression flits across Hummingbird’s face, half surprise, half anger. ‘Now there’s a question, Wasp. Of all the things you could’ve asked me it had to be about that. Tell me, do you know what brought me to the House?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘I once saw a “gentleman” beat a harlot to death because he hadn’t the coin in his purse to pay her. Nobody took him to task for it. That’s the power men can wield over us if you let them.’

‘So? My village had its share of wife beaters and tricksters.’

‘But have you ever been violated? Ever had a man take you when you didn’t want to be taken? Must be so if you spent time in a madhouse. How did you feel when their tongues were squirming inside your mouth? When they were poking you with their disease-ridden pintles? Ever seen someone die of the pox?’

Wasp grimaces. ‘Stop it, please.’

‘Do you want to know what my crime was? A simple coach journey. I was travelling with my uncle in his chaise. We pulled into an inn for the night, but it was busy. One room left, so Uncle told the landlady I was his wife, see? “’Tis separate beds, child,” Uncle explained. “You trust me, do you not?”

‘So there I was, all tucked up and my head full of dreams. But some time in the night a black urge got a hold of Uncle. I woke to find him pulling my shift up over my head. I tried to scream, but his hand was firm over my mouth and all my thrashing and squirming counted for naught. I lay rigid, staring at the ceiling. I couldn’t stop him taking his pleasure, but I could dampen his wick. Afterwards he beat me for going cold. I held my fat, bloody lip, even when I got home. When my mother remarked on my bruises, Uncle laughed and put it down to an attack of the vapours. “She went for a stroll through the woods behind the inn without telling me,” he said over his roast beef dinner. “Foolish girl managed to lose her way and plummeted headlong into some thick undergrowth. That’s where I found her. A bit the worse for wear but no real harm done.”

‘That was me, you see? Always prone to hysteria. Always fanciful and liable to burst into tears. I once saw a cat kill a mouse and bawled the whole day. I was put to bed, with some laudanum mixed with brandy, while Uncle stayed downstairs laughing and sipping port.

‘That could have been the end of it. But when my blood stopped and I felt the first stirrings inside me I knew I’d be accused of other things. So I poisoned Uncle’s breakfast. It was simple. Our local apothecary was so blind and befuddled he’d give you anything. Uncle sat, as smart as a dandy, eating the death I’d mixed into his soup. Some time later the maid, who’d gone to town with my parents, found him dead on the dining-room floor. Poor girl fainted clean away, so I heard. I was already halfway to London courtesy of Uncle’s gold pocket watch and a side of ham from the larder.’

‘And your unborn child?’

‘I gave birth screaming on the floor of a flophouse with a gypsy hag for a midwife. She wanted to buy the child. I said no. The house was owned by a man who liked to fight dogs in a pit cut out of the floor of an old coach house. I’d been thieving for him to meet the rent. Very nimble-fingered, I was, but I couldn’t do it any more because I refused to leave the baby I wouldn’t whore for him either. I said if he threw me out I’d snitch to the first constable I found. They wouldn’t hang me if I turned informant. Transported to Parts Beyond the Seas, maybe, but I could live with that.

‘I forgot about the dogs. I’d grown so used to the sound of snarling, the smell of blood and shit wafting out of the door of that coach house. The animals were kept starving to make them fight better. When I was asleep he let them out of their pens and threw my newborn into the pit. That’s what he told me, though I know now he was likely lying and the hag took the baby after all. But I went to tell the magistrates. I was in such a state I could hardly talk. The owner, when called in for questioning, said I must have done it. He was tupping the gypsy and she backed up his story. They said I’d tried to get a Wise Woman to kill the baby because I couldn’t live with the shame of its being a bastard, and ended up murdering it myself out of spite.’