by Meg Keneally
‘And you are?’
‘Michael. His nephew.’ The man bowed, almost overbalancing. ‘He said I could stay here.’
‘Hm. And did he happen to mention anything about the rent?’ When Michael shrugged, Mrs Thistle moved to peer down the edge of the house. ‘Shame you let the gardenias wilt, he was proud of . . . ah! Now, what is that?’
Sarah followed her and saw the side of some sort of contraption, shiny and well cared for in this house that was being allowed to crumble.
Mrs Thistle strode down the side of the house before Michael knew what was happening. When he did, he darted out the door at a speed of which Sarah would have thought him incapable, but Ash stopped him with one hand against his chest.
Mrs Thistle was smiling back at Sarah. ‘Do you know what this is?’
Sarah looked at the large copper pot resting on a grate over a fire pit; a pipe ran from it into a wooden barrel. She shook her head.
‘It’s knowledge,’ Mrs Thistle said. ‘It’s advantage. And it may prove very useful indeed. Come on.’ She strode back to the front of the house.
‘I’ll dismantle it!’ said Michael. ‘Just don’t tell—’
Mrs Thistle held up her hand. ‘I’ve no intention of telling your uncle. Best he doesn’t know I was here, actually. And I only saw a cooking pot, nothing that needs dismantling. Are we agreed?’
Michael gaped, nodding.
‘Do not break this agreement,’ said Mrs Thistle. ‘I would hate to have to come back.’ She wrinkled her nose, nodded to him, and swept out between the gateposts. ‘Just one more errand,’ she said to Sarah as they walked away, Ash a few yards behind them.
*
The errand required a long walk. Sarah wondered why Mrs Thistle had not used her carriage, until it became clear where they were going when the more genteel buildings gave way to the familiar wattle and daub homes and slab huts of The Rocks.
Had Mrs Thistle been dishonest with her? Sometimes she worried herself to the point of nausea about whether to reveal her past; it would be unbearable if Mrs Thistle had lied to her as easily as breathing.
‘I thought you did not rent to those on the verge of penury,’ Sarah said.
‘Nor do I,’ said Mrs Thistle. She opened the paling gate of a small but neat cottage, and they walked through a scrubby, bald yard to a door, Ash following them far more closely than at the last house.
A woman opened the door. She wore her cloth cap tight against her skull and had a cautious blankness to her face with which Sarah was familiar. She was absentmindedly jiggling a baby, and a little boy peered out from behind her skirts.
Her eyes widened when she saw Ash, and Sarah feared she was about to slam the door until her mouth spread into a smile. ‘Why did you bring the lummox, missus?’
‘I have to keep him occupied, Annie, you know that. May we come in?’
They walked into the kitchen, Ash loping as the small boy was now sitting on his foot, arms around the calf, and giggling. Two other lads, a little older, were also there, and waved at Ash when they saw him. Care had been taken over the kitchen, and the small, rough table at its centre was scrubbed clean.
‘Tea, I think,’ Mrs Thistle said, settling onto a stool without invitation.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Annie. ‘I have none.’
Mrs Thistle smiled and nodded to Ash, who began to unpack his satchel. He extracted an oilcloth bundle and handed it to Annie, who opened it carefully on the table, bent over and inhaled the scent of the leaves it contained. ‘Nothing finer than Thistle tea,’ she said. ‘Archibald wouldn’t drink anything else.’
‘A man of discernment, he was,’ said Mrs Thistle softly. ‘Now, your lads – how do they fare?’
Sarah sat silently as the women chatted, while Ash pulled more bounty from his satchel: cured meat and pickled vegetables, and a small paper packet that he handed to Annie, who secreted it inside her skirts.
Afterwards, as they were walking back towards the main part of town, Mrs Thistle said to Ash, ‘Thank you for having her fence replaced.’
He nodded. ‘You were right, the one new paling on the old fence stood out – I caught her staring at it.’
‘Archibald worked in one of my warehouses,’ Mrs Thistle told Sarah. ‘He came home one day to find two soldiers in his yard. They were after a young woman who had run up to the house a little while earlier, begging Annie for shelter. When Annie had let her in and slammed the door on the soldiers, they’d remained outside shouting suggestions about the sport they would have with both women. Then they’d tried to break down the door. When Archibald told them to get about their business, they pulled palings from the fence and beat him to death with them.’
Sarah covered her mouth. Those little boys had just farewelled them on the front yard that had once contained the bloodied form of their dying father. But the story, for all its horror, sounded familiar, and she realised Keenan had spoken of it at the first meeting.
‘What happened to the killers?’ she asked.
Ash snorted. ‘They found a surgeon to say Archibald died of an excess of passion. The soldiers got a fine and a few months in gaol, then went back to their lives as though it had never happened.’
‘There are several like Annie in the colony,’ said Mrs Thistle. ‘Women whose husbands died while in my service. You remember what I told Mrs Vale about Nell’s husband falling into the harbour and drowning when unloading a ship of mine? I didn’t imagine it. Those women will be looked after until they die – and you must make sure that continues, should I follow their husbands to the afterlife too soon. So no, I don’t rent to the poor, because you cannot rent a property if you don’t charge anything.’
CHAPTER 32
In the week since Sarah had met Annie, something had settled in the pit of her stomach. A lumpen, pulsing creature that would not shift, and that became more agitated when she thought of all Mrs Thistle didn’t know. All she might find out.
Had Sarah left it too long to come forward with the truth? Questions rolled around in the back of her mind like sparring scuttlers outside a beer house. They were her only night-time companions now, although the echoes of Amelia’s presence still woke her before dawn, even after the increasingly common nights when sleep was driven away by her arguments with herself.
She knew that in failing to decide, she was making a decision. She knew she only allowed the wrestlers to keep at it because they distracted her from her commitment to dishonesty. She knew she would stay silent.
*
Sarah was walking to the market, a task she had come to dread as it was another part of her day defined by Nell’s absence. Sometimes when she passed someone on the road – a pinch-faced matron or a red-cheeked functionary – she would catch herself turning to nudge Nell so that they could indulge in some salving criticism. Or she would point to a dollop of grey fur in the trees, realising after an instant that she was not doing so for anyone’s benefit.
She also, of course, raked her eyes over any road gangs she passed, looking out for Henry’s red hair, but she had not seen him since the awful moment she had stood by helplessly as his overseer knocked him to the ground.
Abraded by all her disappointments, she told herself that today she would look only at the road. She barely glanced up as the road gang approached, and had nearly passed them before she caught the flash of red.
She waited for them to get some way into the distance, and then followed.
They eventually settled near a stand of pale trees that gave Sarah a means of concealment. She watched as the overseer removed the chains connecting the men’s leg irons together, as he shoved each of them towards a tree to cut down.
Behind the trees, she made her way to where Henry stood. He started when he saw her, but he did not slow his axe’s harassment of the trunk. He inched sideways until he was close enough to murmur to her as he worked. ‘I’ve been looking for you. I thought they might have found you. I have been dreading news of your hanging.’
&
nbsp; ‘Why? I don’t even know whether they’re still looking.’
‘They surely are.’ His words came out in small bursts between whacks of the axe. ‘They must not like being outrun by a woman. And you, to them, are a she-devil. Tourville will have told them all about you.’
The little group in the Marylebone stable had felt like a family, of sorts. Sarah would not have chosen Tourville as a companion, but the group had stopped the ground from shifting beneath her when her parents died. She’d had a place, a purpose, something to do besides keening. The certainty that this had been a chimera was almost too much to bear.
‘There’s no question Tourville was a spy, then,’ she said, in a voice that quavered more than she would have liked. ‘We did not accidentally give ourselves away.’
One side of Henry’s mouth twitched upward. ‘I was worried you would suspect me. Do not, though, think yourself safe.’ He glanced at the overseer, who was scolding another convict several yards away, and set the axe down. ‘Is there . . . anyone to protect you?’
‘A man, you mean? No, and nor would I require his protection if there was.’
Henry smiled. ‘I had hoped – but feared, as well, to be honest – that you might have found someone with sufficient influence to shield you. Tourville will have written to whoever he can think of, anywhere he thinks you might have gone, to tell them about you. You have to assume that one of those letters has arrived here. And if you are exposed, you will need more than your own strength to survive.’
‘There is someone – not a man,’ Sarah added quickly, when Henry’s face fell.
He picked up his axe again, before the overseer could notice the lack of movement. ‘I do not need to know who this woman is. But does she know the truth?’
‘No. I wanted to tell her, but I didn’t know how, not without risking both our lives.’
‘But surely she won’t help you if she first learns of your past from a newspaper or the police.’ He took a few more swings at the trunk, nudging her aside so that if it chose this moment to fall, it would not crush her. Then he laid down the axe again, and brushed a strand of hair from her face. He looked at her, silently, perhaps trying to commit her features to memory, fearful he might not see her again. She wished she had done the same with her mother as they had marched to St Peter’s Field.
Eventually she said, her voice low, ‘They made corpses out of my parents and my brother, and they made a liar of me.’
‘The government?’
‘Of course! Who else?’
‘Briardown,’ said Henry, and looked away from her. His jaw was tight, and he was clenching and unclenching his fists. ‘That man showed us his murderous path to liberty, told us it was the only one, that all we needed to do was to believe, keep faith. I do not want to take any culpability from the King and his bloated ministers, but Briardown put me here too. He helped put that rope around your brother’s neck, and may yet put one around yours.’ Henry drew in a jagged breath. ‘Do you know, I always believed – still do – that you were the bravest of us.’
‘How can you say that? I escaped! I ran away and then disguised myself to watch my brother die with more courage than a battalion of soldiers.’
‘You did not hang your brother, and as for your escape – what good would it have done to stay? When I was in Newgate, I thought you’d also been arrested. Every night when I closed my eyes, I imagined you doing the same in the women’s prison. I was convinced I would hang. I thought about it all the time, rolled it around in my head. Tried to prepare, so I wouldn’t embarrass myself on the gallows. But I knew all of that would be useless if I climbed the platform to find you there.’ He pressed his hand over his face, rubbing eyes inflamed by dust and incipient tears. ‘It’s a journey I never want you to make,’ he said. ‘Which is why you must tell this woman the truth.’
‘If she tells others, I will certainly hang!’
‘But there’s no other way! Your only choice is between taking a risk on this woman’s mercy, or waiting to be arrested.’ He took her hands. ‘Remember that you’re a rightful inheritor of the earth. You have survived worse, and you will survive this. You must.’
In the distance, the overseer began shouting for the men to gather. Henry squeezed her hands and kissed her cheek, then picked up his axe and walked into the trees.
*
As Sarah crept away from the road gang, rain started to fall – one drop, then a few, and in the next moment thick sheets of water forced her to wipe her eyes with her sleeve every few minutes. This would not be a good day for the market. Anyway, she now faced a far more difficult task than buying cauliflower in a downpour.
She began walking to the docks with the hope of finding Mrs Thistle, who was often there at this time. But would the woman make the journey on a day like this?
Sarah should, of course, have known better than to think rain would keep Mrs Thistle from doing what she pleased. There she was in a hooded cloak, standing with a ship’s captain under a canvas cloth held up by Ash and another large man as she inspected crates. She was feeling some cloth between her fingers. ‘If this silk is from China,’ she said, ‘then so am I.’
Sarah went up to her. ‘Begging your pardon, madam,’ she said, as calmly and deferentially as she could manage.
Mrs Thistle looked at her, then back to the captain standing next to her. ‘That’s all. And don’t forget to close that crate up before the men take the canvas away.’ She smiled at Sarah. ‘Well, Miss Marin, I suggest we leg it.’
They were thoroughly drenched when they threw themselves into Mrs Thistle’s covered coach, but the old woman showed no concern for the upholstery. She took off her shawl. ‘It will be humid tomorrow, and I detest humidity.’
Sarah inhaled deeply. ‘You once told me that you believe in freely given honesty.’
‘I do.’
‘I need to tell you a story. One that began on a field in Manchester.’
By the time they reached the stately house by the river bend, Sarah had told Mrs Thistle everything, from the deaths of her parents to her headlong escape in the Serpent to the meetings in The Rocks, and that there were those who wished the woman harm. Finally, Sarah spoke of the young man who currently laboured on the chain gang.
After she had finished, Sarah waited for Mrs Thistle’s reaction. But for a few minutes the woman just stared straight ahead. Perhaps her jaw was a little more set than usual.
Sarah was on the verge of saying more, when they arrived at the turreted house. The sight of it seemed to restore Mrs Thistle’s will to speak. Her voice was thick, strained. ‘My driver will take you back to the English Rose. He will return tomorrow morning to take you wherever you wish to go. He may well return during the night, to ensure you are still there. Do not make any attempt to come near me.’ She turned to Sarah. ‘Ever. Again.’ Then she stared straight ahead again, her chin lifted. ‘I will be inspecting the English Rose shortly after you leave, to make sure nothing has been taken.’
‘I would not steal from you,’ Sarah said. She was stung by the suggestion, even though she had just admitted to actions that many would view as far worse. ‘You may not understand why I acted as I did, but I have never taken what isn’t mine. I simply tried to take what is.’
‘I would not know of what you are capable, for I don’t know who you are.’
This, more than anything else Mrs Thistle had said, threatened to crush the breath out of Sarah. The only person who really did know her, she realised, had probably not yet put down the axe he had taken up as she left.
‘Will you . . . ?’ Sarah swallowed, her mouth dry. ‘You will not tell the superintendent?’
‘He can do his own work.’
‘And will you promise me to tell Mr Ash there are those who mean you harm? Have him with you at all times. Be careful.’
Mrs Thistle laughed joylessly. ‘Please do not concern yourself about that. Your friends are not the first men to fantasise about assisting me towards my eternal reward. If
anyone is talking loudly about it, you can be assured they will not actually do it.’
‘I wanted to make sure they didn’t, and I had hoped . . . You said that you would forgive almost anything for honesty.’
How have I let this happen? Sarah thought. She had handed Mrs Thistle the power to hurt her, to decide what kind of person she was, to sit in judgement. Only now did she realise how badly she wanted the woman’s approval, and how badly its withdrawal would ache.
‘And I would have forgiven you,’ Mrs Thistle said. ‘But this, now – this is not honesty. It is desperation.’
‘Please, Mrs Thistle—’
The woman whipped her head around to stare at Sarah. ‘Damn you to eternal hell for this,’ she said coldly. ‘Do you know how rare it is to find someone with any sort of facility for business here? Someone whose company you enjoy – someone you are beginning almost to regard as family. Another daughter. And that could have continued, if you had told me at the first opportunity.’
Sarah was beginning to cry, even though she knew Mrs Thistle despised signs of weakness. ‘Perhaps if I had told you straight away, we would never have reached this point together. Even if you had not organised my arrest, you surely would never have trusted me with the English Rose or brought me to the docks. You would not have been able to see beyond what I did in London – and if you would like to know, Mrs Thistle, what desperation truly is, you need only look there.’
The old woman’s mouth was puckered now, her chest rising and falling. ‘I will never forgive you. For the lie, and because it has cost us each other.’ She rapped on the coach’s wall. A servant opened the door, and she stepped out and closed it behind her.
As the coach started moving again, Sarah looked out the window towards Molly Thistle, who was walking slowly up the path to her door, staring resolutely ahead with a stiffness that suggested she was trying to prevent herself from glancing back.
*
That evening, Sarah’s mind could not latch on to anything. Still, the business of the boarding house was soothing as it left no room for thought. She and Lizzie were now practised at moving around each other in the small kitchen, cooking and cleaning.