by Jan Needle
“It seemed the safest way, sir,” he said. “It is Sir Peter Maybold. A fat man whose main problem is his wife. He loves her, sir, and she despises him. He comes to see the master here, but is discreet. Sir A will never know of the involvement, or that the maid went off with him. And I, sir; well, I cannot keep an eye on her, exactly, but I will hear intelligence. Thus might be in position, sir, to catch her if she falls.”
Not long after this they took their leave. They conferred often on the way, wondering where they should go to find out Deb, or what to do, but knew in both their hearts the thing was useless. They knew Sir Peter Maybold’s name, as surveyor general of the riding officers, but knew not where he lived, or what to do if they had had that information. The more they rode, the more Holt felt that Tony’s solution had been the best one to be hoped for. Except he dared not say so to his friend.
But Will could see it too, and worked at it, through the hours. By the time they put their horses into livery at the Bear’s Paw, in Southwark, where Sir Arthur’s men could swap them for the hacks, he felt that he had come to terms with it, could face the information squarely.
“She is not dead, nor is she like to be,” he said to Sam, as they waited for a wherry that would take them to the Biter. “She will be safe; she will not starve.”
“Aye,” said Sam. He quoted from a sailors’ song: “And she will be safe, and be loyal and constant. Well, not that exactly! Oh God, there goes my tact again. She will be constant, in her lights, Will. I’m sure she will be constant. In her way.”
A wherry nosed into the jetty, and they settled in the sternsheets for the long pull back to Deptford. As they left the lights of London town, Will felt a grinding loss. Next day or the day after, they were due to drop down the murky Thames and set course for the far West Indies. Three months, six months, a year or more? Would Deb still be alive when he came back again? Or if, indeed. Or if.
The thought chilled him, but he knew the Indies and their reputation. More men died there out of illness than ever fell to war. He realised that Sam was singing. Quiet, absentminded, his voice surprising sweet.
And you must be safe, and be loyal and constant —
For I shall return, in the spring as you know.
The black, sleek water carried them along.
FOURTEEN
When Tilley reached the deck in search of help to save Black Bob, he found the fabric of the Biter truly on the rend. The blackness of the evening was near complete, with only flares from furnaces on shore flashing through the dark from time to time. The men, safe in obscurity, had let the drink course freely through their veins, and the excitement of the yells and whoops above, mingled with the smell of blood and fear from Ashdown’s torture down below, had knocked them rapidly beyond control by normal discipline. As Tilley spoke of Bob to Boatswain Taylor, the first concerted move along the pitch-dark deck began. Its target was the ship’s boats at the boom, and had it succeeded, Biter would have lost her people, certainly.
Tom Hugg saw it first, and yelled to Taylor, who bellowed what amounted to an order to the pale child-officer of marines.
“The boom! The boom, sir! Captain Kaye will kill you this time! Man the boom!”
Savary, whose courage had come back under duress, and the weight of a shiny cutlass in his hand, perhaps, scurried for the ship’s side as if completely fearless. There were men in tumult clambering on the bulwarks, and he swung his army sword and caught one of them a smacking blow across his shirted back. The man, more shocked than frightened, swung round, then swore in anger as if to jump down on the officer and tear him limb from limb. But other men climbed over him to his place, using him as a ladder and a handhold. Then Groat appeared, also sword in hand, and shouted, “Soldiers! Soldiers! Shoot the first man that sets his foot on there!”
The marines, including Simms, who’d had a bottle in his face but was recovered, were mindful of the last disaster and the dressing down they’d got from Captain Kaye. All three had their muskets ready now, with long bayonets glittering in two of them, and they moved up smartly with the blank looks of men quite prepared to use them. The sailors, whose hatred of the redcoats sprang from the soldiers’ perceived indifference to the brotherhood of degradation shared, remained defiant and noisy and obscene, but made no more moves to cross the Rubicon and catch a hot lead ball. In a sudden mass, they jumped down to the well and lashed out at each other, not the soldiery. For some of them, at least, the mood had changed to liquor-fired joy and jollity, as in a good-time shoreside fight. Fists flew, and blood began to flow.
Not all the men were mollified by this free-for-all, though. Some, maybe drunker than the rest, maybe more disaffected by Navy life or the sight of the riverside at tantalising distance, retained their steel-bright fury. From down below the screams and shouts of hunters and prey were overlaid by the thundering and clamouring of the Gunning men and others held in irons, some fearful of what might be happening, others insanely jealous of the feast of havoc that they were prevented from enjoying. And others yet, blinded to all reason, were moving inexorably on the roundhouse and its enticing stock of weaponry. Rex Shilling and the soldier Simms spotted this danger, and they were within a breath of being just too late. A crowd had gathered with a long crowbar, and enough heaving bodies to obscure their intent. Which was to get beneath the new poop deck and force entry into the armoured house, also newly built, that was approachable from every side. It had one door only, though, and Shilling got there first, while Simms slashed furiously with his unsheathed bayonet to keep back the interlopers and to protect the young gentleman.
At the last instant, out of nowhere, Grundy the surgeon appeared, clutching his box of medicines like a favourite dolly, and begged entry, too, his white face streaked with tears. As if bemused, the seamen cleared a path for him while Shilling, not bemused, seized his skinny arm and jerked him in and slammed the roundhouse door and pulled a bolt across. Outside, the cheated seamen awoke in fury and made a concerted rush, kicking at the stout woodwork, beating at it with anything to hand. Shortly, the long iron clawbar came into play, and the dark compartment shook and vibrated to the onslaught.
Tilley and Taylor, alerted by the purposeful din, ran through the fighting men on deck with Tommy Hugg, while Savary and his two other soldiers made to cover them. As they arrived, though, Simms thrust out his musket from a defensive port, took swift aim, and without an uttered warning, pulled the trigger. Taylor saw the gush of smoke and flame envelope a pig-tailed head at point-blank range, and saw the man go down before it. The iron bar went flying, and the howling, roaring mob, as the smoke and stink dispersed, fell almost silent. In the midst of them, the shot man clambered half upright, clutching his smoke-blacked face most comically. There was blood pouring from his scalp, his hair was parted, and his mouth was one large gape. Outside on the open deck, Hugg shouted triumphantly, “Now move, you bastards! Move! Oh Christ, I’m going to break some heads, boys! Move!”
Men milled about, men rushed here and yon wild-eyed, but the desperate mood was broken. Lieutenant Savary seemed to puff with pride, delighted with Simms’s brainpan-dividing shot, while Hugg and Tilley quickly gathered up some trusty men — newly trusty, now they saw which way the wind was blowing — and moved like tornadoes into the fray. Taylor, his mind more full of Black Bob than easy triumphs, approached the soft-faced army man, circumspectly and polite.
“Sir,” he said. “I need my mates here to go below and rescue the little nigger boy, if he still lives. Might I ask that you instruct your stalwarts to keep order here when we have dinned it in these beasts? It will be hot work down below, and we need safety up above, if it should please you, sir.”
Savary, who might have taken offence, was startled at the thought of poor Black Bob.
“My God,” he said. “The nigger boy. We must come too. We’ve muskets, bayonets, swords. And you have…”
Taylor laughed.
“Handspikes, belaying pins, a fid or so. It will be less easy than this mill-
match here, but a sight more fun, I’ll wager. We’ll clap some in irons, maybe cripple one or two. Most are much too drunk to fight like real men now, and we have some real hard cases here, I promise you. Just make sure this lot stay subdued and do not run the roundhouse door again, or try to steal a boat from off the boom.”
The officer stood still a minute, pondering. Taylor, from his knowledge of the breed, knew that he might well be overruled. He could swallow that, he would do if he had to. But the black boy’s chance of life was very small.
And then Bob screamed. Through solid oak, and several decks, through bulkheads, God knew what. The thin scream wavered, sharper than a surgeon’s knife. Bob, in the dark below, his long, desperate game of cat and mouse with the Scots brothers lost at last, had felt a hand lock on his ankle in a tight hole in the forepeak. And begin to pull.
Savary heard it, and turned pale.
“Go quick,” he said. “Go quick.”
*
Tony, although he did not spell it out, had moved a mountain to try and save Deb’s life. It had fallen upon him to shift her out of Langham Lodge, and he had taken it upon himself to do it with humanity. He had worked for Sir Arthur since a child, and within the normal lights of master-servant would have said, if pressed, he loved — at least, revered — him. Sir A, over this maid, was in an awful, searing bind, and Mrs Houghton, for once, had hardened her heart, lost for alternative. Tony knew his task was to get rid, to remove a present danger. Tales of murder, prostitution, Shitty Corner ale-dives, accosting smugglers on lonely beaches, were all too close for comfort. Neither Bentley’s father nor Sir A would escape with unscathed reputation, Tony knew, if push should turn to shove.
He had approached her when she’d been at the house a week, and he had made his inquiries and his preparations. Deborah was not a fool in any way, and he knew within a minute that she’d been expecting something dire from him. He had passed a message down from Mrs Houghton through the girls about this meeting, but so subtly that they had no suspicion what his true reasons were. They, romantic creatures, guessed it was about her “lovely Navy boy,” whom they said for certain loved her still, was well, and would be back some day, most likely soon. Deb, whose mind had grown out of all proportion to her age since gaily leaving home with Cecily, was convinced that she knew better, despite she sometimes screamed with inward pain for facing it. Sir A and Mrs Houghton, so kind to her the year before, had made it plain her presence was a trouble to them, but a trouble they could neither admit to nor explain. They did not know where Sam was, they said; they had no inkling about Will Bentley. True or false, the upshot was the same: she was a refugee, but Langham Lodge could not be her place of refuge.
Tony, once they had cleared the air, was visibly relieved at her grasp of the realities. She had come in hope, they both knew, and the hopes had failed. Sir A had moved her up to London one time previously to protect her, but it had ended in disaster, and she was now, to all intents, liable to tracking down as accessory to a killing. At Langham she was also in a current, constant danger from Sir Arthur’s neighbour, Chester Wimbarton, and his predatory cohorts, who would hear, inevitably, of her presence there. Servant maids and men, even those who said they were her friends, were incorrigible gossips.
“You must go, maid,” said Tony gently. “You cannot stay. Sir Arthur is frail and ill now. Despite her sympathy, Mistress Houghton, I can promise you, will turn against you soon.”
They were sitting in his quarters, which were small but neatly furnished, very comfortable. Deb had a flash of longing for an apartment such as this, an ordered life, a person she could depend upon. To her amusement, if not her shame, she wondered for a moment if she should offer something for the privilege to this stable, kindly man. He was old but not decrepit, forty-fiftyish, and strong and spry and healthy. She gave a little laugh. It trickled out, and when he asked her why, she told him. Tony, unembarrassed, unexcited, only smiled.
“I’m glad you have not lost your humour, maid,” he said. “These days I do but little in that line, and what I do is not worth sharing.” He stopped, and twinkled at her until his answer had sunk in. Then both gave out a belly laugh; which ended, for Deb Tomelty, in a sigh.
“Ah, Mr Tony,” she said, wistfully. “What can I do? It is the only asset that I have, but truly you are too kind a man to waste your time on that with me. I mean…”
She laughed again. Strangely, he knew just what she meant, even if Deb was not so sure herself.
“You love your sailor boy,” he said. “I know that, maid. If you have to use your person for a bargain, you must do better far than me. The pity of it is Sir A is not himself inclined. He is a widower of the most truest kind. He mourns his wife.”
He noticed her slight shiver, and he gave a tut. The face Deb made was rueful in return.
“Too like my father,” she said. “Well, older and more richer, but you know the way I mean. If he offered, even, I would have to run. For a man like that, I could bring only misery.”
“You are in love,” said Tony. Again Deb did not reply. She made another face, though. It spoke of pain, but Tony, who had been pondering for days, assessed the time, sadly, as ripe as it would ever be.
“There is another way,” he said. “At least, I think there is. It is a sort of whoring, but it would save your young man from destruction, which is what Sir Arthur fears, and it would not be like a death with Wimbarton or genteel filth as Dr Marigold purveys. You love your sailor boy, but you will not destroy yourself, I know. Will you consider anything within these lights?”
Her clear brown eyes were frank and calm.
“I am a lost girl, Mr Tony,” she replied. “I have got to live, and what has love to do with that? My body is my own, whoever lies beside it. Even after Wimbarton I knew I was myself. Like a death, perhaps, but I was still alive.”
The steward’s face was sombre; he did not try to smile.
“I know a man who wants you, maid,” he said, “and I would ask you to consider him. He is a rich man, quite a kindly man, who would not do you harm, I’m almost sure of it. It is a man who’s noticed you before. Has made inquiries, in a discreet and quiet way. Do you allow it’s worth considering?”
Deb, sitting on a leather-covered chair, looked young and lonely and forlorn. Which was, indeed, just how she felt. She wondered vaguely who this man might be, and her stomach hollowed slowly, by degrees. She did not know him. She did not want to, ever.
“I am lost,” she said, almost inaudibly. “So what have I to do with it? And I have almost been a Spithead Nymph.”
Tony, quite suddenly, was brisk.
“I know a man who wants,” he said, “but even better, maid, I know a man who maybe won’t be able. He’ll try; I’d wager gold on that, but the chances he will get it up aren’t worth a silver shilling! Nay, it is not a joke, I know, but there are good sides, even to pandering. When he first mooted it, he hinted that there might be money in the scheme as well, and I made a haughty face. But to be a harlot from necessity, as you must be, is honourable, and the cash could come to you! Five guineas as an introduction fee, reverse!”
His tries to make a jest of it were laudable, but only made Deb cry. She pulled the kerchief from between her breasts with unconscious grace, and dabbed her eyes and cheeks.
“He loves his wife,” he said. “But is in desperate need of some affection. There are other safeguards, though, if you agree to let me move ahead. I am always here, and he knows it, and he knows Sir A has tried before to see you are protected. I do not think, girl, it will fall adrift.”
She nodded. She tucked her kerchief back and covered up her breasts, again unconsciously.
“I do it for I have no other way,” she said. She smiled, wet eyes glistening. “I do it for another, Mr Tony, although the chances are that he will never know. No, I will not say that; I’ll be damned before I do! If I sleep beside a hundred men, I…” The thought was bleak. The kindly face in front of her might break her heart.
; “I am prepared,” she said.
It was two days hence from then, the final step, and Deborah was required to do little, except think and wait. After her interview with Tony, she was escorted back to the room she had been sharing with a girl, and told to collect her things together and to keep her movements very mum. The other maids guessed that something was up, but Deb was expert at dissembling, and they soon gave up the asks. She met with Mrs Houghton twice, alone in that dame’s chambers, who spoke to her with kindness, very frank. It was a step up for the girl, she urged, and if she played her hand right she could be set up for life. A rich man’s mistress was every young girl’s dream in her opinion. Deb held her peace.
The switch came in the evening, after Sir Peter Maybold and Sir A had had a supper tête-à-tête. Deb, forewarned, had dressed to travel clandestinely from the household maidens, and been hidden by Tony in his quarters. He had given her a pepper talk, some money in a purse, a small bundle of fine underlinen he had got from who knew where, and a travel-flask of brandy, just in case. At a certain time, arranged beforehand clearly with the Customs man, he escorted her outside into the gathered dusk and stood with her a good way down the drive to await the coach. Sir Peter’s man was looking out for them, and pulled the rig to a standstill smartly behind a clump of trees. There was a dim light in the coach, and as Deb was propelled forward by Tony’s gentle hand, it illuminated Maybold’s face. Eager, concerned, congested, red. He was smiling nervously, and on his bulbous purple lips there was a dew. Deb breathed in and held her breath, and felt the chasm yawn within her.
“Ha,” said Sir Peter Maybold, awkwardly. “By George, you are a pretty one indeed! You are beautiful.”
She looked at him. She stared.
And you, thought Deborah Tomelty, are most exceeding fat.
FIFTEEN
As Holt and Bentley dropped down on the Biter in a wherry, there was an air about her that had both of them, on the sudden, keen and tense. There was no noise that they could hear unusual, there were no people visible, but something was wrong. It was a pitch black night right down the river, and the furnaces and kilns along the Deptford shore were belching flame and filth like hell a half a mile removed. Then they saw lanterns moving on the deck.