The Covert Captain, page 10
“And you are a jealous bitch, St. Clair.” Mary snorted.
“Maybe, but not a fool. I do, drunk as I am. Wish you happy.” St. Clair blinked the careful blink of the foxed, and rubbed at her nut-brown hair so that it spiked. “I was not to have her, not after Waterloo; and you seem to have some sense. God knows you are beauty enough.”
“O’the contrary, madam, I should say she was not Fleming’s sort.”
“…What?” Harriet was two sips of claret too deep for banter, and grit her teeth at the poor showing she made. “What on earth?”
“A wit would answer, you have not hooves and a tail.” St. Clair trailed off a moment into tipsy harmony, slumped into Harriet, and then held herself, over-careful, to the arm of the settee. “Dear Mary thinks Fleming has overshot her mark, and ought to keep her eyes lower in the world.”
“She is exceeding private, is our Fleming, even among the company. If we fancy a—ah, I’ll spare ye, madam—if we fancy one another, it goes on all in the open. Fleming is too good for it.” Mary seemed not the least perturbed to gossip so. “The captain—and the captain hath not overmuch blunt—keeps a room here, at Mother Hannaford’s price. The better to beguile game girls in private!”
“Merrifield, you clapped-up cull, you know that is not so.” St. Clair stabbed him with her nib. “She keeps a chamber, yes, but I never saw her lay a fingertip to a game girl; it is for our comfort, not the captain’s.”
“I am afraid I miss your import,” said Harriet.
“She dreams,” said St. Clair, with a sad twist of her smile.
The room at the top of Mrs. Hannaford’s house was meant for an upstairs girl, or a minor footman; the bed dropped down from the wall, and scraped the door and the clothes-press. Someone had aired the pillows and turned the linen back; the piled quilts were old and ugly and clean. The washstand was hard against the fender, and the window slanted half into the ceiling, but there were two burning candles upon the chimney-piece, and the fire was made lively.
“Our accommodation, madam.” Fleming bowed as far as she might, and let the latch fall behind them.
She knew, very suddenly, that Harriet tasted of claret punch; her touch along Eleanor’s waistcoat was soft, searching.
“All right, Harry?”
“I am bored of you being everyone else’s,” she answered, one hand tucked under Nora’s breeches front to worry the buttons. “And in your shirtsleeves all the while!”
“No one else’s, upon my word.”
“A gentleman,” Harriet said, indistinct against Eleanor’s shirt, “is never without his coat. And I mind how you sang to that St. Clair!”
Eleanor laughed. “That St. Clair, is it? She had one song of me; you had the other six.”
“I don’t care.” Harriet ducked out of her shift, when Eleanor raised it, unbalanced and landed all on one elbow upon the bed.
“You are not too wrecked to remark, I hope, that I danced only with you?”
“Not wrecked in the least,” Harriet lied.
“God’s sake, woman, why must you favor these drawer-things!”
“And you attempt to call me tipsy, Captain?” Harriet went headlong into giggles. “A cav’ryman who cannot handle the ribbons!” She rolled aside, gasping mirth into the pillows, until she knew Eleanor no longer touched her.
In the brightness of the room, too small by far for shadows, Eleanor stared at Harriet’s naked back. The gown she had just unbuttoned fell off the bed to pool in the dust of the floor.
“Oh, these I have had from a child.” Harriet looked over her shoulder, fingered what scars she could reach, and shrugged. “I gave when first I met you that Pater could not abide cleverness.”
“I thought your father was an invalid.”
“He had the arm gone, when I was above twelve or fourteen,” Harriet agreed. “He had Alfred to do it, and there was no stinting.”
“He gave his man to beat you, the—”
Harriet laughed. “I s’d give a sackful of guineas to see Alfred while you called him Pater’s servant! He was my brother.”
“Your brother!”
“Sherry is not an elder son. Surely he spoke—or perhaps not.” Harriet eluded the press of Eleanor’s hand, lay on her back and gazed up to the plaster. “I am foxed enough to be talking of this, madam; were I you, I should turn to a different advantage.”
“Harry…”
“Enough, Nora. I am abed with you in a mad-house, in my skin. If you should rather talk over unpleasantness, I will see if Miss St. Clair is waking.”
“Upon my word, you would fall down.” Eleanor’s kiss was half a smile. “And she knows nothing I don’t know.”
Harriet woke warm, with a quilt against her skin and midday sunlight lancing in her eye. She reached for Eleanor and curled forward, out of the brightness.
Her hand closed upon bed-linen. She sat up with a shock.
“Nora?” Hoarse with sleep, Harriet called to her, though from its silence the tiny room must be empty. The fire was banked, and water stood by, not cold yet; Eleanor’s boots and her sabre on its strap were gone. She was quite alone, in the strangest house she had ever visited. No creak of floor or ceiling gave out the presence of women, men, or otherwise, and fiddle and pianoforte no longer sounded from below. Harriet might have passed the night in a fairy-ring, but the fair folk had left Castile soap and an empty chamber pot.
She would have given much for a brush and a handful of hairpins—hers were hopelessly gone in the bed, or in Nora’s pocket—but Harriet managed to put her curls up decent presentably, and to fasten her smoke-smelling gown. She took her wraps and reticule, kept her slippers in her hand, and stole into the corridor.
No maids, no mollies, no footmen, waistcoated women, or ghosts watched Harriet down the staircase. All was still and quiet as any grave. When Harriet came to the downstairs withdrawing-room and found a fire, and coffee, and breakfast, she could scarce believe it real.
“You’ve come down late,” said Mrs. Hannaford, from behind the chocolate-pot.
Harriet, inelegant, yelled.
The house’s owner wore morning weeds and a white cap starched high as any dowager’s. Set between her teeth was a pearl-stemmed pipe. “Give you good morning, Missis Fleming. Your captain is away to the steeplechase.”
“With what money?” Harriet’s reticule chimed with coin when she shook it.
“Oh, not to wager, duckling. To race. I believe she was spoiling for a ride.” Mrs. Hannaford looked Harriet up and down, grinned around her pipe-stem, and went on. “Do sit to breakfast. She enjoined me most strictly to your care. She will be back,” the matron said, when Harriet hesitated. “With a prize, I dare say. I will not bite you, dear dark duckling. I do not care for ’em so young.”
Harriet sat, as if the chair’s brocade were gilt with hellfire. She could not regard the sausages in their jackets without picturing the molly-men and blushing; she took a spoon of eggs instead, and undertook pushing them about her plate with a forkful of mushrooms.
“You are shocked at my house, are you not? Had you not heard of the femmes déguisées?”
“I—I did not know there were more of them.”
“Oh, my, many, yes. Some even carry it off deliciously as our Fleming.”
“You have known her long, then?” Harriet asked.
“I have never known her, dear lady, pray put those daggers away; she has to now conducted herself most tiresome chaste. But I have had her acquaintance upward of ten year. I know most of us in Town, toms and molls alike.”
Harriet tried the word, against her teeth and silent. She took a cup of ale, to wet her lips; made attempt again, and failed.
“My dear?”
“Is a…is that what I am?”
“I don’t know, to be sure. The captain has never brought a lady here before—or a woman at all. You are most welcome, most welcome.”
Chapter 13
Fleming! Deuce take you, giddap, Fleming!”
Eleanor groaned. Harriet, beside her upon the carpet, was quicker; she threw Eleanor’s frock coat down from the sofa, stood up and just as quickly ducked again. Sherbourne was teetering on the front steps, peering round to the nearest window in the morning dark.
“Oh,” Eleanor said. “Oh. What’s o’clock?”
“Half six,” Harriet answered. “Pray lace me, before Sherbourne rouses the street!”
“Sherbourne!” Mr. Galvani might have shaken Eleanor’s hand. She fumbled Harriet’s knots and crosses, tugging until there was enough cord to tie somewhat, and smoothing the worst creases from Harriet’s shift before buttoning her up the back; she had gone on to stuff her own shirt into her breeches before she saw Harriet’s buttons all hindside before.
The knocking had turned to thumps of Sherbourne’s fist.
“Remind me, madam, to refrain from seducing you ’pon hearthrugs! “ Harriet felt over the mess with one hand, threw her cloak over all, and kicked under the sofa for Eleanor’s boots.
“One never gets callers when it happens in the dreadfuls,” Eleanor countered, and went down the corridor still jumping and pulling at her heels. “Stay there! Stay there, I’ll keep him in the passage.”
Sherbourne and a cloud of stale snow filled the narrow entry. In taking off his hat he knocked over the umbrella-stand; he tripped over the bootjack and half subsumed Fleming in his cloak.
“Major!” Eleanor staggered.
“I am treading near to drunk,” Sherbourne said, enunciating to a nicety. “Good, you’re dressed. Allons-y, mignon.”
“Where, upon my word?”
“Newgate.”
“God, Sherry, you know I can’t watch such things.”
“You want to come to this one,” replied Sherbourne. He pushed past Eleanor and into the firelit parlour. “It’s young Carver.”
Harriet heard that last; she watched Eleanor’s countenance slacken, and in Sherbourne’s shadow she thought Nora’s hand went to the wall.
She sat exceeding still, for her part, cloaked, gloved, reticule upon her lap, curls arranged with spit and coal-dust.
“Jesus, Harry, you’re calling early. You’re only promised, you needn’t fix his breakfast. Don’t give him breakfast, he’ll only cast it up.”
“Give you good morning, brother,” she said, and rose, and kissed his stubbled cheek. “You are awake passing early.”
“I am awake late,” he told her. “I want Captain Fleming upon—upon a matter. Go home, Harry, won’t you?”
“Without an escort!”
“Lord God, don’t be intractable, sister.”
“I shall not be intractable. I shall go with you.”
“No!” Sherbourne and Fleming spoke together.
There was a throng from Debtor’s Door to St. Sepulchre, and near an hour still to wait. Harriet was braced between Sherbourne and Eleanor, nearer the scaffold than shifted well, and kept from the cold by Sherbourne’s fur-lined cloak and Eleanor’s arm hidden round her waist beneath it. Under their feet a layer of rotten ice was melting; day dawned and the crowd became a crush.
Eight nooses were strung to the whitewashed gibbet, swaying gently.
“Who is Carver? What has he done?”
“Uttered false banknotes,” said Sherbourne.
“My drummer,” said Eleanor.
“Had his leg blown off in his first action, poor devil,” Sherbourne went on. “Shrapnel struck the drum. Never mind his leg, had to pull him out of his horse. Bloody boy was twelve, upon my word.”
“Seventeen.” Fleming’s arm tightened round Harriet’s waist.
“He was nigh me in that Christ-forsaken field tent,” said Sherbourne, no longer answering Harriet. He gazed ahead, above the crowd, and fixed his eyes on the gibbet. “By God, Spaniel, have you not a flask?”
“Captain,” Harriet remembered to say, though Nora was at her lips. “If he was wounded out, he surely had a pension? Why then—how then comes he here for uttering notes?”
“Took to the poppy,” Sherbourne said. Fleming was silent. “If Carver did put his mark on the notes, he was not in his mind; it is as likely he is a dupe, and taking the fall.”
“Taking the fall!”
“Hush, Harry.”
“But he may be innocent!”
“He has put his mark to a confession,” Sherbourne told her. “And he was only a ’listed man, and the Crown will not care. Captain Fleming! Have you swallowed your tongue?”
“He is not innocent,” Eleanor said, slow. “He did not forge a note. He is in pain, and a boy—only a boy. I believe he could not do it himself.”
Sherbourne put his heel down sharply, cracking ice. Fleming pressed her hand over her mouth.
“Then he is—”
“He is a criminal, and dying shriven, as criminals die.” Sherbourne had never struck her, but Harriet flinched.
By now the crowd was beginning to surge and murmur. Seven of the eight sufferers had mounted the scaffold from the yard; Eleanor began to shift nervously back and to. Sherbourne scrutinized each stricken face as it vanished under the rope and the hood, more and more uncertain.
“Spaniel, d’ye think…“
The eighth man was slim and spare of height, as a cavalryman must be; the ordinary and the guard who bore his arms across their shoulders seemed not to feel his weight. He came up the scaffolding steps between them on one leg, his tattered breeches swinging over a broken wooden peg. His face was pale and from his look it seemed, to Harriet, that more than his leg had been mangled. His eyes were quite as blue as Fleming’s, ancient, empty.
“God have mercy.”
“Steady on, Spaniel. He shan’t care in a moment.”
“Hats off!”
Fleming stood to attention. At the last, when the spectators sucked in their breath, she pulled Harriet tight against her side.
Harriet saw only the black of Eleanor’s frock-coat, but she felt the drop shudder every sinew of Eleanor’s body. Against her ear her lover’s heartbeat skipped and raced.
Sherbourne gave a terrible groan. “See to my sister, you Methodist fool. I mean to go get wrecked.”
It was a long time before Eleanor stirred. When Harriet lifted her head, the ropes had all gone still, the trap yawned black and the crowd was moving; Sherbourne was nowhere in sight. “H-how is it with you, Nora?”
“Bear me company, I beg you,” she replied. “I have an errand that will not wait.”
Fleming’s errand took them to a narrow cookshop on Thrawl Street. She did not make a courtesy or pretend interest in the gray-edged pies; she kept Harriet’s elbow most tightly, and had kept Harriet’s pocket since they passed the Bishopsgate. If Harriet felt strange at finding herself so in Whitechapel twice in the week, she did not remark upon it.
“I am here to call upon Mrs. Carver,” said the captain to the proprietress, “Mrs. Tom—Elizabeth Carver?”
“Upstairs,” said the woman behind the counter. She said nothing else, for fear perhaps that the flies might find a way through the indifferent fence of her teeth. The stairs were narrow as the shop, looped and carpeted with dust as though no one had come below in a very long time. Harriet saw Eleanor’s hand drop across for her sabre, then fall away. Faced with the silence, the closeness, and the vinegar-sulphur smell, Harriet chose to follow Fleming up the stairs.
No one had made a light in the slant-ceilinged upper room, though the day was clouded and cold, and it was not clean. It was bare. By the hearth there was a ragged bedroll, and a stove-in crate that might have been for kindling, if it had not had such a nest of scraps and rags piled in it. A handful of pegs in the plaster of the wall held a cloak, a night-rail and cap, and a bucket; that was all. The window was clean, its gaps stuffed full of grimy, raveled yarn. There was one chair; a woman was sitting in it.
Elizabeth Carver was older than her husband had been. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and her costume was all dyed cheaply black. She wore her glory of red-gold hair tightly drawn, but it had begun to fall where the black crape band had slipped. Her dress fit secondhand, and her bosom was the more ample for nursing a child; she did not cover her breast with her black woolen shawl when they came in. She pushed a handkerchief across her nose, when she saw them in the open doorway, and fixed on Eleanor an amber-green gaze most shocking familiar.
“You may turn around the way you came,” said Carver’s widow. “I want nothing to do with the saucy Seventh, and least of all you.”
“Tom wrote me that you had been safely delivered,” said Fleming. “I was most glad to hear it.”
“Oh, stuff your gladness in a nine-pound gun!”
“He was exceeding proud in his son, madam.”
“How nice of the opium-eating son of a—”
“Lib, I’m sorry it went hard with him.”
“And you may address me Mrs. Carver, Captain!”
“Mrs. Carver, I will not intrude upon your grief. I came only upon business—to bring a token from the regiment.” Eleanor set coins upon the windowsill; from the sound of their fall, but few. After a long moment she added something Harriet could see, nearly: round, heavy, silver, on a ribbon of crimson and blue. Mrs. Carver closed her hand over the lot.
“One pound eight and sixpence!” She laughed, waking the baby at her breast. “That is a rich gift, for a young man’s leg, for his life! And they sent you to bring it me, you charmed bastard, you who came back perfect! I wish—I wish he came never back!”
Eleanor had frozen. She did not raise a hand or retreat when Mrs. Carver struck her, with a fist still full of coin; she did not look up when Harriet cried out. It was Harriet, pulling and dragging at Eleanor’s shoulders, who got them down the stairs.
Something whipped past Harriet’s cheek and fell on the shop floor: Eleanor’s Waterloo medal. She stooped, and clasped it in her glove, and had to run, suddenly, to keep up with Fleming. Square-toed boot prints were wide in the dust.
“Nora,” Harriet risked shouting after her. She did not think the broadsheets came to Flower and Dean Street. Eleanor stopped, half in the gutter, and when Harriet reached her, Eleanor’s face was wet and bruising.
