A Broom at the Masthead (The Drowned Books Book 1) (36 page)

It
was not, at all, what she had grown accustomed to, these last months. It was
not clever or witty or elaborate, but the company was sweet, and the kitchen
was warm, and on a chilly evening in late spring it was the finest thing in the
world to sit and talk and laugh with friends, to hold a wriggling baby or a cat
in your lap, to hold your husband's hand between your own.

And
not to be afraid. For once, not to mind what you said. To talk of things that
mattered
- real things, that were comfortable, that you could pick up and hold. The
price of salt fish. Whether the baker in Pudding Lane gave better quality than
the baker in the market at Leadenhall. How much rain they were having, and how
awkward it was to get clothes dry in such weather.

How
much notice the Widow would require, to pack her things, and come to
Buckinghamshire with them, when this was all done. Keep their house, and run it
with the same fearsome efficiency with which she ran this one.

If
there were any decent -
decent
, Major, I'll not have this house turned
into a house of ill repute - families of his acquaintance of the captains and
ships' masters of his acquaintance at Wapping, who might wish to rent the house
on Fenchurch Street. On a long lease, of course. Possibly not an elegant enough
residence for any of his mercantile acquaintances, but it was a good, stout,
well-appointed house, and did he wish that the furnishings should come to Four
Ashes with her, or might they stay with the house?

And
he said he would ask questions in the morning, and what did it mean when the
child made such ferociously intent grunting noises, did the boy ail, what
should Russell do to ease him: and Thomazine sniffed, delicately, and suggested
that the young gentleman in question might benefit from a change of his linen.
- To which Thomazine's beloved held the young gentleman in question at arm's
length with an expression of some resignation, and suggested that he might
himself benefit from a change of linen, feeling somewhat damp about the breast.

It
was a happy, ordinary, uncomplicated evening, and as close as she had been to
home since she had left Essex. And looking at Russell, his fair head bent over
the child's feathery dark one, she thought he might feel the same way.

It
was a promise of spring. And she forgot, in the warmth of that promise, what
business she should have tended to, pushing it to the back of her mind.

He
slept badly that night, whimpering and twitching in his sleep, coming awake
blank with nightmares of burning.

That
was when Thomazine remembered.

He
could no more have burned that woman than he could have flown to the moon. Oh,
she would have believed he might have killed her - and she imagined there were
a number of people who might have held his coat while he did it, too.
Thomazine's head was tight with rage at just the
thought
of what the
godly bitch had put that poor long-ago little boy through.

Fly-Fornication
Coventry had stolen much from her little brother: his hope, his joy, his
childhood, his faith.

And
his ability to bear uncontrolled fire.

He
could not have burned her: he probably would have loved to, if he could, but he
couldn't.
Physically
, he could not. He was too afraid of fire, she had
seen it tonight, he would have been sick and shaking with it.

And
if Master
bloody
Fairmantle wanted to try and blame him for that one, he
could whistle. He was wrong. Utterly, utterly wrong, and she could prove it,
and Charles Fairmantle could tattle to whoever he liked, and she would tell him
so, because fire was not her husband's weapon of choice. Cold steel was
Russell's particular weapon; either in his hand, or in his backbone, and Master
Fairmantle was going to find that one out, if he persisted in his misguided
beliefs.

She
smiled into his chest, and wriggled a little for joy.

64

And
so she smiled in the morning, and sang, and promised him good things for
supper, and that she would come to his offices at the dock at noon that they
might spend an hour in idle marketings like any country goodwife and her man.

And
he went to his work with a rather dazed look of happiness, whistling a
very
reproachable
little tune he'd picked up in the streets somewhere.

And
then she sat down in the kitchen - if that overstuffed ninny wanted formality
she would give him formality and be damned to him - and she wrote a very curt
little note to Master Fairmantle requesting a few moments of his time at a
convenient hour this morning on a matter of some import. His obedient - his
obedient, by God, she would give that man
obedient
, oh yes, obedient
like one of her father's unstoppable cavalry charges, they were obedient.
Unstoppable, but they did as they were bid. Damn it.

"You
do not mean to," Deb said.

"Oh,
I do."

"Mistress
Russell, you cannot intend -!"

"Very
much I do, Deb. If he thinks I - if he thinks
we
- are to be intimidated
by his, his utterly misinformed blabber, he has got another think coming!"

"Should
you not at least tell Major Russell where we mean to be?"

"No,"
Thomazine said, "- because he will not like it."

"Then
-"

"He
will not like it, Deb - not because he thinks I am unladylike, or unmanageable,
but because if he thinks that Lord Birstall - a man I believe he has never been
especially fond of, which tells your more about my husband's judge of character
than it does mine - if he thinks that man is trying to frighten me, I imagine
he will be very cross indeed."

She
paused, thinking of Russell squaring up to Lord Egmont outside the theatre. And
Francis Talbot. And Prince Rupert.

"He
can be quite," she paused, seeking for the right word.

"Fiery?"
Deb suggested. Which was, possibly, the least appropriate description ever, but
which sort of fitted, this time.

So
Thomazine sent her note, asking the boy from two doors up whom the Widow often
asked to run errands, and she asked him to wait for a reply from Birstall House
- on promise of an extra penny for his time - and to run all the way home with
it.
And then she waited.

"Well,
madam?"

He
was beaming at her, as if yesterday afternoon had never happened, and she
longed to slap his beefy, stupid face for him. "May I offer you a dish of
tea, Mistress Russell? See - we can retain the elegancies of friendship,
without laying ourselves quite so open to unwarranted intrusion, as
previous."

"Thank
you, my lord, I would prefer not to trespass on your time. Or, indeed, to
tarnish your reputation further," she added, with a glower she couldn't
quite help.

"Oh,
don't take it to heart so, dear! Only think, madam. I am a respectable member
of London society, an eminent public figure with a seat in Parliament. Do be
sensible. How might it look, if I am known to be intimate with a wife of an
intelligencer for the enemy?"

"He
isn't," she said flatly, and he nodded and smiled.

"Well,
you would say so, dear. Commendably loyal, I'm sure. But the problem is,
you
say so, but no one else of note will. He is disgraced - removed from his
position: it's common knowledge that he is not wholly to be trusted, madam, and
I am very much afraid that the authority of a young lady - a
very
young
lady, if I might say so - of a somewhat dubiously republican family herself,
will do very little to retrieve it."

"I
am not here to have this conversation with you."

He
inclined his head graciously. "You see sense, then?"

"No,
my lord. I am here to tell you that my husband is not, and cannot be, a
murderer. And that I can prove it. So, if you choose to persist in what I can
only call a blackmail attempt, my lord, you may take your allegation and stick
it - as my
dubiously republican
father would say - where the Lord's
grace does not shine. I'm calling you on it, my lord."

His
face went as blank as a doll's, for a second. "You cannot mean - Mistress
Russell, you cannot intend -"

"On
the contrary, sir. Be my guest. Go to the authorities with what evidence you
have. My husband went yesterday, and laid his case before the Justice - that
his name is being unjustly maligned by someone for their own ends. I believe it
is slander, my lord, the very least it is, is slander, and defamation of his
character. I imagine that if he were to bring a suit against the person who is
behind it, that person would be. Well. Very awkwardly placed, indeed, given my
husband's friendship with Prince Rupert."

"Oh,
madam, don't be ridiculous! I can prove that he -"

"And
I can prove he is not, sir. And so can Doctor Willis."

"How?"
Fairmantle demanded. She had the distinct impression he didn't like it, being
challenged. "How might Doctor Willis, who has no intimate knowledge of your
husband's family, prove
anything
?"

And
she sat back in her chair, and folded her arms. "My lord, it is not
necessary to have intimate knowledge of the
living,
to defend a
man."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning
that my husband could not set a fire to save his life. He's terrified of it,
sir. She made him so. And you could set him in front of any courtroom in the
land and he would
still
shy off, were you to put a naked flame before
him. So he could not have killed his sister, my lord Birstall - or rather, he
could
have, but he would not have chosen fire to do it. And if he could not have
burned her, no more could he have set a fire at Wapping docks. So that bird
will not fly, sir. If he did not do those things, your
evidence
is no
more than a cobweb."

"People
still talk, madam!"

She
raised her head -
he scenteth the battle afar off, and he heareth the
trumpets
- "Then
let them
, sir. Let them prattle. If he had
killed that man at the dockside, he would have shown the marks of a struggle on
his body.
That poor man
would have shown marks on his body, and they
would show the nature of his murderer - of what shape and size he was. There
are no marks of a struggle on my husband's hands, sir, I may assure you. So.
No, we will not be flying to his friends - his decent, godly,
respectable
merchant friends, who are good people, who sent us wedding gifts and ask after
our welfare, which is more than you and your cronies have ever done - in
Amsterdam for refuge. Be my guest, my lord. Take your paltry evidence to the
authorities, and may the Devil fly away with it, and you!"

He
stood up, and took a deep breath, and shook out the skirts of his coat. He was
angry: his face had mottled an unhealthy rose, and his lips had tightened out
of that customary friendly smile. But he was trying to hide it, and doing a
good job of it, as he came and stood beside her, setting his hand on her
shoulder in what she thought he imagined was a friendly, pacifying gesture.

She
looked down at it in contempt.

At
the yellowing bruises on his white wrists, and the half-healed, black gouges of
a dying man's desperate scrabbles as those sturdy white fingers choked off his
life.

She
did not speak, she dared not lest her voice betray her, but she could not stop
her eyes from widening in fear.

"Oh,
Thomazine," Charles Fairmantle said gently, and he stroked her throat with
his knuckle, and she felt the rough drag of torn skin where Thomas Jephcott's
fingernails had torn his skin.

And
it had availed him naught, in the end, and he had still died.

"Why
could you not have gone when I asked?" he said, and that was the
frightening thing, that he still sounded like himself, still sounded kind and
cheerful even as his hands closed around her neck. "It would have been so
much easier if you had
gone
, dear."

65

Deb
sat, and waited, and looked at her feet, and waited.

She
could hear voices - Thomazine's voice raised, like a hoyden, and she winced,
because if her mistress wanted to pass without comment in the city she should
not act the country maid. A long silence.

The
bell, tinkling faintly in the echoing stillness of the house. An early fly,
bumping against the kitchen glass.

It
was a quiet house, not full of noise and bustle like the house in Essex, or the
sounds of the construction site like Four Ashes. A formal house, where everyone
knew their place and pleasant country maid Deb was neither fish nor fowl,
neither a proper ladies' maid nor a menial kitchen-hand but somewhere in
between, a woman who was to be placed in the kitchen and left there until such
time as she was needed.

She
waited.

It
seemed that Lord Birstall was dining out this evening. It was a source of great
irritation to the cook, who was a volatile gentleman at the best of times it
seemed, but His Lordship had decided that he needed to attend to some official
business and would not be at home. Maybe he was due to speak in the House
shortly, for he'd called his carriage, though his secretary was almost sure he
had no appointments.