The Masters of Bow Street (64 page)

When it was certain that he was dead, Mary allowed herself to be led to another bedroom and took a spoonful of laudanum to help her rest. As the children and grandchildren came, too late to see James Marshall alive but hoping to console Mary, she slept, staying in the small bedroom overlooking the orchard for so long that when the doctor arrived to attend her the family was waiting anxiously for him.

Richard and the housekeeper went in with the doctor, who spent only a few minutes examining her, then straightened up and said, ‘She has been tired to a point of exhaustion for a long time. Now that her husband is dead she has no desire for life. It is doubtful even whether she will become conscious again.’

Mary did not regain consciousness, and on the third day the two people who had loved each other so dearly were buried in the same grave in a tiny churchyard in Chelsea. Among those who stood by the graveside on that chilly autumn morning were Timothy McCampbell-Furnival and Simon; and there was Benedict Sly, the oldest of them all, who had printed almost everything that James had said, and who had conveyed some degree of his passion in an obituary which took up more than half a page of
The Daily Clarion.
It was the last action Benedict carried out as editor of the newspaper; a week later he was taken ill with jaundice and at the year’s end he died also.

Within two weeks of Benedict Sly’s death, Richard sensed a change in the character of
The Daily Clarion.
Gone was the forthrightness and the fearless challenge to authority; in its place was a loud beating of drums, as it were, in praise of the manner in which London was managed and governed; the City of London, its Lord Mayor and aldermen, its leading citizens, wealthy bankers and merchants, could do no wrong. Now and again the editorials urged the government to some action, but there was no breath of the old reforming zeal. Troubled by this, for Benedict Sly’s newspaper had been of great value to all reform movements and an unceasing champion of the campaign for a police force, Richard went to the coffee house in Wine Court, where his grandfather and Benedict Sly had so often met and he himself had joined them; hoping to see Benedict’s surviving partner. He was not there, but a bearded man whose breath whistled through his nostrils and rattled through his chest joined him at a table which needed washing. The heavy crockery was cracked and unappetising; the place had obviously fallen on bad times.

‘You don’t recognise me,’ the bearded man said. ‘I am Neil, once of
The Times,
and a great admirer of your grandfather.’ The red-veined eyes held shrewdness. ‘Have you come hoping to find out what has happened to
The Daily Clarion?’

‘That, and Benedict’s partner,’ Richard answered.

‘He inherited
The Daily Clarion
and also its debts,’ declared the
ex-Times
reporter. ‘Benedict had been running the newspaper at a loss for ten years because there had been too much competition. His partner was compelled to get what he could, which was not much, Mr. Marshall. A syndicate of City men and Members of Parliament bought the good will and changed the policy of the paper overnight. It is now little more than a scandal and gossip sheet, but the syndicate uses it as a political front, too, relying on its past reputation to mislead its readers.’

‘Do you know any members of the syndicate?’ asked Richard, more heavyhearted than ever.

‘I know them all, especially the chairman - Sir Douglas Rackham,’ Neil answered. ‘Any man who can escape with only a reprimand from the Solicitor General for what he did at Great Furnival Square must surely have the devil on his side.’

There was now no possible doubt; all support from
The Daily Clarion
had died with Benedict Sly, and the task of overcoming the opposition, both in Parliament and among the people, would become more difficult than ever.

And Simon was busy with the House of Furnival and his personal affairs.

Hermina Morgan watched Simon as he moved towards her. She felt her heart beating very fast, faster than it had ever beaten at the approach of a man. She was aware of the intensity of his gaze and knew that he felt raw, naked desire for her. She did not move.

She wondered, fleetingly and with only part of her mind, why she had allowed this meeting to come about. Why, with this man, she lost her inner composure. She had been taught and had come to believe that men were her servants and suitors, who always came a-begging for her favours, and so it had been throughout her years of maturing.

Now, as Simon came towards her, she felt for the first time in her life that she was not in control of her emotions.

They were in a cottage by the river at Putney, not far from the wooden bridge. A waterman sent by Simon had brought her to Westminster Steps on this warm autumn day in the first year of the new century, about a year after they had first dined together. Simon had behaved punctiliously but she had a sense of great power, even of danger, in him. On either side the old vineyards, now run wild, stretched down to grassy banks, the fields were dotted with tall beech and oak, hedges had sprung up since the Enclosure Act, and small farmhouses stood in a dozen places, each with its barns and outhouses, each with its cattle and free-running sheep, fowls and pigs, many with a path leading down to the river where dinghies and small boats were tied to rickety-looking jetties. A few people crossed the bridge, and children ran over it, making it swing and shake and causing nervous women to call out: ‘Don’t run, don’t run!’

But few heeded their pleas.

Simon had sent Hermina a dozen deep-red roses and inside the accompanying missive, a key; the note said that she would find a waterman waiting for her at Westminster Steps and that the man would wear the livery of the House of Furnival. She had told herself that she would not go, that nothing would make her.

The waterman had been waiting, ready to help her into the slender craft. At the jetty close to the cottage he had secured the boat and then had accompanied her part of the way. Was he accustomed to carrying out these preliminaries? she wondered. If this were so, he revealed it neither by word nor expression. He had left her when she reached a stile in a beech and hawthorn hedge, and she had walked in the seclusion of the garden to the weathered oak door, looking at the thatched roof and the leaded panes of glass and the pink and white ramblers still smothering the porch. The small fawn had been freshly scythed and the scent of flowers and newly cut grass went to her head like wine.

Before going inside she had fought a battle with herself. This
must
be the place where Simon Rattray-Furnival took his women, and by being here she was little better than a whore; she should not and need not stay.

She had felt hand and body quivering as she had opened the door.

She had waited for no more than five minutes in the front room, with its dark oak rafters and heavy beams. All was beautifully kept. The furniture had the lustre of wood constantly polished over the long years, the brick floor had been newly painted, the grass of the fire irons in the inglenook fireplace gleamed brightly. A fire burned, low but welcome, for once out of the direct rays of the sun it was cool.

Now Simon approached. She had seen him rowing himself, not at speed but with calm assurance; he had moored alongside the other boat. For a few minutes he had been hidden from her by the hedge but now he was halfway up the flagged path leading to the front door. If he had any thought that she was at the window he gave not the slightest indication, and Hermina moved quickly back. Nothing she could do, however, could take the hot stinging flush out of her cheeks.

He opened the door and stepped inside, closed the door and deliberately shot the bolt. He turned and looked at her; it was as if he were stripping her naked with his eyes.

He smiled with swift, reckless gaiety and said, ‘You are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen.’

‘You are most gallant, sir,’ she managed to say.

He drew nearer, saying, ‘I have wanted you from the moment I first saw you.’ .

‘To add to your conquests?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘To marry and bear my children.’

She caught her breath as he stood in front of her. His eyes seemed to burn into hers and when he took her by the shoulders her flesh tingled beneath his fingers.

‘Do you understand me?’ he demanded.

‘I - I understand full well.’

‘Since you are a woman of spirit I little doubt that you will make your own decision whom you will marry, and that you will have no difficulty obtaining your father’s approval,’ Simon said. ‘You know that no matter how much wealth and how many possessions you have, I have more, so I cannot want you for your money.’ There was laughter in his voice but none in his eyes, and the pressure of his fingers became greater. ‘For your body and your childbearing - is that enough?’

She said, with sudden confidence, ‘I can promise you my body but I cannot promise you children.’

‘Have you reason for saying that?’ he demanded sharply.

‘None, except that some women
are
barren.’

‘Not you,’ declared Simon Rattray-Furnival with overwhelming confidence. ‘Not you, my sweet.’ His expression changed to a frown and he went on: ‘I’ll have you know one thing. Once you are mine, you are mine, and I’ll kill any other man who touched you. Do you understand
that?
’

‘I’ve no wish to watch my husband die on the gallows,’ she retorted.

‘You’ll never see me die,’ he declared as if there could be no possibility of doubt. ‘But the choice is yours, Hermina Morgan. Marry me and I am the only man you will know for the rest of your life. Refuse to marry me and your life will be your own. How is it to be?’

He released her shoulders, lowering his hands to the small of her back, and pressed her close.

‘Say no, and I’ll go away,’ he told her. ‘The waterman will come and take you wherever you will. Say yes. . .’ He paused. ‘Which is it to be, Hermina? Yes or no?’

She found her breath coming in shallow gasps.

She found thoughts flashing through her mind: that she could ask for time; that it was ludicrous that any man should propose in this aggressive way; that now his body set fire to hers; that if she delayed he might turn on his heel and stride out, and if he did, he might never come back. The pressure of his body grew more relentless, and now his eyes seemed to burn right through her.

‘I’ll ask you just once more,’ he said. ‘Which is it to be? Yes or no?’

She made herself say, ‘What if I cannot give you a child?’

‘Yes - or - no?’ he ground out between his teeth.

‘Oh, dear God, save me,’ she cried, and suddenly her body went limp. ‘Yes, yes, yes,
yes!’

Never had there been such triumph in a man’s eyes as that which shone in his as he picked her up and carried her into the room beyond.

There was a moon when he rowed her back to Westminster Steps; a moon and brilliant stars, quiet lapping of the water, only a few other boats, the lights of London gaining in brightness, the flares at the foot of the steps. He left the boat with a Furnival waterman and they walked to the embankment where a coach waited and they were driven to her home, in Lancaster Square.

At the doors, Simon said with a droll kind of humour, ‘The quicker we arrange the marriage date, Hermina, no doubt the better.’

‘It cannot be too soon for me,’ she said.

‘One month?’

‘One month, and I can have all the clothes I need, every invitation out and answered.’

She looked into his eyes. He did not stoop to kiss her and she did not show any outward sign of affection, but when she went to her bedroom she looked at herself in the mirror and pictured him beside her.

Every newspaper, every journal, every announcement, called this the most spectacular wedding of the decade. There were more peers of the realm, more Members of Parliament, more food, more finery, more magnificence than at any but a royal wedding.

Standing in close attendance, hiding both thoughts and feelings, was Richard Marshall. Even on this day Hermina’s beauty could stab right through him.

A year almost to the day after the wedding, in October 1801, their first child was born. They named their daughter Grace.

Three years later, on October 28, their second child was born and to Simon’s joy this was a boy. He was christened Marriott, and he took after his mother in both looks and colouring.

At the time of Marriott’s birth London was undergoing one of the periods of panic which danger from the French and Spaniards could bring. For Napoleon, with much of Europe at his feet, was known to be mustering a huge army across the Channel, and a fleet of flatbottomed boats to bring men and horses and cannon for the invasion which had been talked of for so long. Not only London but the whole of Britain was in the grip of fear, for if Napoleon once got a foothold on the Channel coast, what chance would there be of forcing the French Army back?

On the twenty-ninth of October of the following year, the Rattray-Furnivals’ third child and second son was born, and not only to their own rejoicing. Out in London’s streets and public places the people had gone wild. Church bells rang and rattles clattered, whistles blew and bands played, for Nelson’s smaller fleet had smashed both the French and the Spaniards at Trafalgar, destroying any hope Napoleon might ever have of coming back to the Channel coast and launching his attack on England.

By the time the news came through of Nelson’s death the gin and beer and joy of victory had carried the people beyond sadness. London and all Britain rejoiced, while Simon looked down at his second son, the shape of whose head and face made him quite unmistakably a Furnival in the grand tradition.

He was christened John.

Timothy McCampbell-Furnival felt tired but happy, relaxed and well fed. For a man of seventy-seven he was in remarkably fine fettle. As he stood on the terrace of Furnival Tower House and looked across at the lights and the bustle at Furnival Docks, heard the shouting and the squealing of winches and hoists, the lapping of the Thames in a stiff breeze, he felt not only contented but had a stirring of interest in having company in bed that night. It was only a passing thought and indicated fancy more than active desire. He did not feel seventy-seven; he had not felt sixty-seven ten years ago.