A Broom at the Masthead (The Drowned Books Book 1) (23 page)

"Then
be
honest!" she said ardently, "tell them!"

"Tell them
what
? That
I am answering a case that has never been put to me - oh, aye, and then they
will say there's no smoke without fire, and what is my guilt that I must
protest my innocence so much - Thomazine, love, I cannot defend myself against
an enemy I cannot see!"

"I am not just going to let
you be accused of - it's ridiculous, Thankful, you wouldn't murder
anyone
,
never mind go about London knocking people on the head left and right, it’s
comical, you can't just -"

"But they
want
to
blame someone, dear. Dolling said as much, did he not? I should have known. I
should have
known
he was trying to warn me - what they were already
saying -" He closed his eyes again, and his mouth set in a straight line.
"Well. We do not, God be thanked, want for money. We can go back to Four
Ashes, and -"

"And what, Thankful? Run
away?"

"No!"

"What else would you call
it? You
know
you did nothing, but you would rather hide away than
-"

"Than be stared at? And
whispered about? Yes! Yes, tibber, I would! I loathe it! You have
no idea
how
I loathe it - and I pray God you never will, wife, for it is a horrible,
horrible feeling, that you walk into a room and everyone go silent, or look at
you out of the tail of their eye - that you are the subject of every idle
conjecture, every -"

"So bad?"

He tossed his hair out of his
eyes, and he was panting with the force of his emotion, vibrating with it.
"Thomazine, when I - when it became common knowledge that I was to marry -
people asked, you know, they wondered in my hearing, what manner of girl might
- might- choose to bed a man such as I. What might be - made amiss - in you,
that you would love me: if you pitied me, or if you were one of those perverse
women who came into heat at, at the thought of being bedded by a monster
-"

"Oh Russell, you are
not
a
monster!"

"I
am
, Thomazine!
Marred and bloody mad, and
I
do not know what you love in me, and it
frightens me - it scares me out of what bloody scattered wits I have left, that
one day you will wake up and wonder why you have shackled yourself to this,
this
thing,
this horrible,
ruined,
thing
-"

She wondered if he knew he had
done it, that he had backed himself, almost imperceptibly, against the wall,
and that he had turned his face aside so that the scars on his cheek stood out
in stark relief in the unkind candlelight. Wondered if he forgot, too, that she
had known him all her life, and that it did not matter how plain he made his
scars, for she had never known him any other way, and he had always been so –
always thrown down his disfigurement as a challenge,
this is how I am, you
may take as you find
-

"That does not make you a
murderer, Thankful," she said calmly.

He closed his eyes. "It does
not, love. But it makes me afraid. I care nothing for other people's opinion of
me - save yours, my tibber, and if you decided I was not worth the trouble, I -
I don't know what I should do."

"Are you not angry? That
someone can say such things, and go unpunished?"

He shook his head. "No. Not
angry. Frightened. I -please, Thomazine. In most things I count myself to have
sufficient courage, but not - I am not brave enough for this. I am sorry. I
cannot.
"

And she believed him. He was -
oh, sufficient courage be damned, he was one of the bravest men she knew, he
had suffered hurt and privation and fear and misery and he had done most of it
as lonely as a man could ever fear to be in this life. He did not fear pain.
But he feared other people, and what they might make of him. And that was a
terrible thing.

She held her hands out to him,
palm up, and he looked at her warily and then took a step away from the wall.
And another, until he stood in front of her, and then knelt on the bare boards
to take her hands.

"Do we need money?" she
said again, and he shook his head and would not meet her eye.

"The
Perse
-"

"I will
not
go back
and hide at Four Ashes, Thankful. I won't run away. I'm not made like that. But
nor, if you wish it, will I make you a public spectacle." He put his head
in her lap, with a sigh. It might have been relief. It might have been because
it was just past dawn and he was tired. Her fingers found the stiff knots of
muscle across his shoulders, and worked at them. "But I cannot promise you
that I will not speak, if I hear someone repeat that lie in my hearing." 

"What. What do you mean,
that we should do?" he said, and he sounded like a little boy, frightened
and hopeful and shy all at once, that he could put a problem that he could not
bear into her lap so that she might take it up and share it with him.
(That was what marriage was, you dear, foolish man. Thomazine at twenty,
knew that better than Russell, at forty-two. A friend loveth at all times, but
a brother is born for adversity.)
 

"Carry on living," she
said gently. "That is our best revenge, I think. To live - and be happy -
and not to be frightened. Face them down. We can do that." And her hand
slipped over his shoulder, her fingers tracing the ridges and rags of his
ruined cheek. "Will you trust me that far?" 

"To the ends of the
earth," he said, and she felt his shaky indrawn breath. "When - when
do we start, tibber?"

"When are we next engaged to
dine, then?"

"Tomorrow? With the Talbots
- provided they do not choose to cut our acquaintance, as well."

She ignored that. "Would you
like to attend the theatre tonight, husband?"

The look on his face was a joy.
"Thomazine, I am supposed to be disgraced, I-"

"Am no such thing. Master
Dryden has written a new play, I believe.
The Indian Empereur
- Master
Fairmantle saw it on its opening night, he says it is very edifying, and
most
educational."

Which cheered him up a little.

"Does he, indeed. And how
many ladies in dubious states of undress does it contain, dear? Master
Fairmantle not being
known
as a patron of the arts?"

"He said it was very
suitable for me," she said primly, and he raised his eyebrows.

"Did he.
Did
he, now.
Do you think people would be
very
shocked, were I to attend?"

"Horrified, darling.
Especially
if you were to enjoy it. Perhaps we ought to see if we can find
a rather more spectacular waistcoat for you, too?"

"I think that might be going
a little bit
too
far, my tibber."

But he was smiling as he said it,
no matter how faint and tremulous that smile, and she thought that possibly -
just possibly - whoever it was that had thought they could make malicious sport
of her man, might have underestimated him.

And that she had promised him she
would do nothing to make him a public spectacle, and she would not.

She was perfectly capable of
discretion.

41

But
he forgot, the next morning, and that made her cry, later, so he didn’t know.
Forgot that he had been turned off, and was up at dawn, hunting about the room
for clean stockings with that dear, annoying atonal humming, like a bee in a
bottle. And then he stopped as if he had been slapped, and sat upright with a
loose stocking hanging in his hand. She thought he was going to faint. He was,
instead, very sick in the pisspot.

He had remembered, then. And she
put her arms round him, and sat on the bed with his head against her breasts.
He did not want to be held, at first. He wanted to seem proud and stiff and
unconcerned, and she thought had she not been awake, he would have slipped out
and pretended he had gone to his business, and spent a second day drinking
himself vicious and walking himself sober again.

Twenty years ago, my darling,
perhaps. But there’s two of us, now.

“I have been thinking,” she said
firmly, and kissed the top of his head.

“Oh God, Thomazine, can you not
leave well alone -”

“No, my Apple, I cannot.”

He groaned, and she kissed him
again. “Dear.
You
know you didn’t murder Thomas Jephcott-”

“Stop saying that!”

“
I
know you didn’t,
because I was here with you all along. So really, since we both know you are
nothing of the kind as a - well, one of those, then - the easy part is telling
people the truth, isn’t it?”

“But no one has said anything,
wife.” He gave her a horrible bleak smile. “To me, at any rate. We had this
discussion yesterday. We can do nothing, my tibber, and that's the worst of it
- we can only stand by and lead as blameless a life as possible, until they
move on to the next scandal -”

“Caesar’s wife?” she said, and
felt him laugh.

“I don’t know about Caesar's
wife, but
Caesar
is feeling particularly hard done-to this morning.”

“What did my father always used
to say, when you served with him?”

“A number of very unhelpful
things. Which, particularly?”

“Regroup, and come about, and
re-engage the enemy in a rearguard action,” she said primly, and he gave a bark
of startled laughter.

“Doubtless useful, but -”

“Carry the war into the enemy’s
camp, o my beloved. And take them up the arse.”

And that did make him laugh,
properly, and then he gently disengaged himself from her and lay back in the
rumpled blankets with his arm over his eyes and said he didn’t even know who
the bloody enemy was. (And that was swearing, from Russell.)

But that didn’t matter, not
really, because they had the wonderful, gossipy, unstoppable force of
scandal-broth that was Charles Fairmantle in their armoury, on his perpetual
busy quest to find a lovely scurrilous new bone to take to his master Wilmot,
in the hope that that gang of reprobates would pat him on the head and call him
a good boy. She said as much to Russell.

“Thomazine, what have you got in
mind?” he said suspiciously, and she laughed and smoothed his hair into a tail
between his shoulders.

“If the world wants scandal,
Apple, scandal we shall give them.”

“But -”

“But, my sweet, nothing. It
is
a scandal, that people can say such horrible things about you and go
unpunished. You
are
innocent, and let us prove it. And shout it from the
bloody rooftops, Russell. Get the King himself to own it, if we have to. Let us
make your poor injured innocence the talk of the town, instead.”

He swung his head and looked at
her, saying nothing. There was a little, a very little, colour back in his lips
and his cheeks, though, and his eyes were not so blank.

“You don’t mind,” he said,
sounding as if he did not quite believe it. “This is an adventure to you, isn’t
it? If I was spat on by every man at court, it would trouble you not at all.”

“If every man at court is stupid
enough to believe you capable of a thing you plainly did not do, love, based on
the evidence of you not having your nose wedged up His Majesty’s bum, then
really! The opinion of stupid people is of no importance to me.”

“But it's twice now,” he said.
(He had always been stupidly honest. Always. Even when it did him no favours.
What a splendidly awful murderer he would make, bless him.) “They said - at
Four Ashes - there was the same rumour there, too, and it has followed me here.
Perhaps it’s
me
, tibber. Perhaps I am cursed. Perhaps -”

“And perhaps, Thankful, the same
person - people - is behind both rumours here, have you thought of that? I
mean, you did say – I am sorry, love, you
did
-  you said yourself you
made a lovely scapegoat, for you would not dignify gossip with a reply. How
many people here knew of your sister's death? How did
you
hear of it, if
you had not seen her in years?”

“Chas Fairmantle told me, in the
middle of a crowded room,” he said gloomily. “I was so surprised I bit through
my wine glass, bled all over His Majesty’s carpet, and bloody Fairmantle must
have apologised to every footman in Whitehall for being the cause of it. That
man is a bloody fool, he really is. He has no more wit than one of the King’s
spaniels. He just opens his mouth and out it comes - Thomazine, what
have
you got in mind?”

“So pretty much everyone at court
knew - but how many of them knew her?”

“None, I thank God! She was not a
woman who would stoop to mixing with degenerates like the present crop -”

"Then people could say
anything they liked about her, lamb, and no one would have known any different.
There would be none to say - this could not have happened, or, she would not
have done such a thing. People always talk, don't they?"

"They have no right to
-!"

"No. But they do. And people
make up what they don't know. And you - being gorgeous and mysterious and, oh,
all those things - you're
interesting
."

"I am no such thing, tibber!
I am a plain man who likes his supper and his bed and his wife - " she
growled at him, and he amended, hastily, "in reverse order. I am not
interesting! In any capacity!"

"Poor Apple," she said,
and kissed the top of his head again. "You're interesting to
me
,
sweet."

"You're enjoying this,"
he muttered darkly, and she squeezed him gently about the middle.

"I have a brain in my head,
husband. Which I have not been permitted to use this three months and more, in
case it scares the horses. Well. It seems to me, o best beloved of men, that
you make a
lovely
subject for gossip because unlike some people, it is
impossible to get you to either confirm or deny a rumour. And if one was in the
market for scandal, what better as the subject for your tattle than a few juicy
unsolved murders?”

“Couldn’t I just be a plain
regicide and be done with it?” he said in a rather forlorn little voice.

“Someone evidently thinks not,
sweet. Oh well. A friend loveth at all times -"

"And a wife is born for
adversity," he said wryly. "So you keep telling me."

42

It
was not, precisely, that she didn't take him seriously.

Just that he could be - well, he
did have a tendency to take offence, to be overly sensitive to an ill-chosen
word, to brood. Which was what came of being shy of people, she supposed: you
didn’t always know what they meant. And that was all right, because Thomazine
was not prone to saying or doing that which she did not mean, and he was happy
with that, for if she said a thing was so, she intended it as it sounded.

He must have misunderstood, she
thought. He was as hurt and angry and frightened as if he truly was being
painted as a murderer twice over, but it could not be so, because that would be
ludicrous.

But it seemed it was so.

The play was doubtless as
edifying as Fairmantle had promised. She wouldn’t know: she watched it through
a haze of tears, and Thankful at her side never took his eyes from Lord Egmont
up in his box

They were not intimates of
respectable Lord and Lady Egmont, nothing so close - but on nodding terms,
almost beginning to edge away from the tarnish of an acquaintance with the Merry
Gang. It would not have been long before they’d have been asked to some large,
impersonal social occasion, some courtly supper or masque, something where they
would be on trial. Fit, or not, to be allowed more confidence in polite
society.

Well. Not now.

She had inclined her head
respectfully to the older woman, smiling, and her husband had bowed. Nothing
exceptionable. Nothing to provoke Lady Egmont’s outraged stare, pulling away
her sweeping swagged skirts as though Thomazine had spat on her. Certainly
nothing to provoke His Lordship’s stiff, glowering fury, sweeping past them on
the steps of the theatre so close that they had to step aside in haste or be
knocked down.

It might not have been so bad if
someone had not laughed. If Lady Egmont’s little black page had not turned back
to pick up Thomazine’s spilled gloves, with a look on his face that was both
sympathetic and sad at once. If the lady had not said, loudly, “Nero, boy! Put
those down!” - and then, when he would have handed them back to her, “Where you
found
them, boy!”

People were beginning to stare,
the orange-sellers falling quiet to gawk around them. Lady Egmont twitched her
head aside, so even her eyes were not sullied by their appearance. (She had had
a patch, hard by her rouged mouth, under the edges of her vizard-mask: a little
crescent moon. Thomazine did not think she would ever forget that.)

His Lordship turned his head very
slowly, changing his course so that he brushed by them so close that she could
see a louse crawling in the curls of his wig.

He meant that they should step
aside from his path. No gentleman would allow himself to be thrust aside so
rudely, as if he were a person of no account -

He did not know Russell very
well, then, for her husband straightened his back and stopped dead on the
steps, so that Lord Egmont must himself turn aside first.

He stopped, and he said nothing,
though he was white to the lips, and two furious spots of colour glared on his
cheekbones.

“Out of my way,” Egmont said
icily. *And take your
accomplice
with you.”

She heard her husband’s sharp
indrawn breath. Under her hand, his arm was vibrating like a plucked
lute-string.

“Thankful,” she murmured, “be -”

Careful, she meant to say.

“You will apologise for that,” he
said, and it was so silent, in that little space around them, that she heard
the bone-rattle of his back teeth.

“I don’t think so,” Egmont said
pleasantly, and Russell’s hand dropped onto the hilt of his sword, quite reflexively.

She remembered that, too. That
her husband did not wear an elegantly-chased French rapier at his hip, like a
fashionable gentleman, but instead wore his old worn, munitions-quality
backsword with its plain, worn, blue-black metal guard. Not a weapon for grace,
but a declaration that he had been a soldier once, and he was yet a man who
knew the business of steel. It had not glinted in the torchlight outside the
theatre, but had seemed to suck in the light instead.  

“Intending to murder me, too, Major?
I don’t think so. Even your little accessory couldn’t deny it before so many
witnesses.” Egmont smiled, showing all his teeth- showing all someone’s teeth,
at any rate, though possibly not his own - and made to pass them.

That was when someone laughed: a
nasty laugh, the sound of someone enjoying watching a good man’s overdue
come-uppance. And Thomazine's husband, who was, who had been, a good man,
stiffened, and tossed his head as if he did not care that he was being laughed
at. Had been insulted, and his wife insulted, by a man who was even now looking
about him to see what acclaim he might gain from a fashionable audience - look
at me, gentlemen, baiting this most vicious criminal -

“Sir,” Thomazine said
plaintively, and her voice trembled with a thing that if you did not know her
well you might take for a most becoming timidity, instead of a roaring fury -
“will you not listen to me? A moment only, sir, I beg you?”

He stopped again, and his eyes
raked her with utter contempt. “Say on, then, if you must.”

She blinked, clutching her gloves
to her bosom, imagining them to be his scrawny chicken’s neck. ”Sir - my lord,”
- little accessory, and kiss my arse. Might as well be hung as a sheep, as a
lamb - “Your wife, sir, is a poxed whore, and sleeping with my lord Dorset -
check your privy member for sores, sir, were I you, for ‘tis common knowledge
Dorset won her from Wilmot in a card game, and everyone knows he has it.”

And leaving him gaping, and Her
Ladyship - who
was
sleeping with both Dorset and Wilmot, though it
wasn’t common knowledge, and she had Chas Fairmantle’s word of honour on it -
scarlet-faced with mortification, Thomazine made her obeisances, took her
husband’s arm, and went to see the play.