The Widow's Fire

by Paul Butler

  Mrs. Rooke turned from me and held the door to Mrs. Smith’s rooms open. It was too late now. With a nod, part shamed, part angry, I went through into a blaze of candles — four bobbing upon the mantelpiece above the hearth, one on each side of the window, both a safe distance from the closed curtain — and a cluster of three or four in each corner of the room. The illumination drew attention to the cracks in the plaster. One of these cracks ran like a vein along the wall. My fancy that the building was the lair of some baleful creature fizzled away, replaced by an even more nightmarish one that the walls themselves were organic and alive, that the undulations of light caused by the candles were, in fact, movements, and that I had entered into the mouth of some fearful monster. Opposite the long travelling crack sat Mrs. Smith, hands on her knee, a patient, placid smile on her face. Nurse Rooke, still in the doorway, curtsied and closed the door upon us.

  I found myself doing the same as before — trying to stand as erect as I could but feeling thoroughly foolish as I did so, particularly when her eyes conveyed a kind of pity.

  “Captain,” she said leaning forward, “it touches me greatly that you have chosen to let me help quash these hideous slanders.” Her voice worked on me like a balm of compassion and I had to struggle to remember that she had, in fact, tricked me in the Assembly Room: “Because, Captain, she had said, everything that has happened since I mentioned Oliver Mason has proved that it is true.” She had lured me into a false sense of relief and had pounced on it. And she knew about Oliver and me — knew for certain. “Please sit down, Captain,” she said with a sweet smile, obviously seeing my confusion.

  Stepping forward into the room, I obeyed and lowered myself into a frayed looking armchair on the other side of the hearth.

  “Though I have seen little of the world firsthand, Captain, I think I have already intimated that, in my modest life, I play the role of confidant, protector, friend, and companion to many who are much worldlier than I.” The arrangement of candles, particularly the strong dancing flame by the curtain, had created a golden sheen behind her. With her modest tresses and white bonnet and the burning gold behind the sphere of her head, she seemed part Roman goddess, part Christian saint — Daphne just before her transformation; the Holy Virgin beholding Gabriel. She leaned towards me, her long slender neck and her calmness reminding me of a nanny who had helped to rear Sophia and who had spent some time with me also when I was an infant. “Dear Captain,” she continued. The emphasis tugged me somewhere beneath my ribs. “I have grown to know, as though I had experienced them myself, the terrible trials and temptations with which many a valiant man must contend. Do not think for one moment that any sensible person would judge a man who has felt the savage disappointment of a love denied, and has gone to sea without consolation to face dangers and hardships and years of self-denial.”

  I had to hold my expression as rigid as I could, for I could feel a breaking beneath the surface. She had spoken the very current of my thoughts. Bitter, proud, and even self-pitying as they may have seemed had I, and not another, given voice to them, these were indeed the emotions that had become my companions eight years ago. They remained as familiar to me as my own heartbeat. I ground my teeth hard and dared not speak.

  “Captain,” she continued, casting her eyes down for a moment. The candlelight burned like a sunrise over the line of her delicate shoulder. “I know full well that it is the great love you feel for Anne’s sweet nature that bestowed upon me, her close friend, the great compliment of your trust. Let me repay that trust by becoming the wall which prevents this knowledge from ever reaching the ears of your dear one.”

  At last my tongue was loosened. The promise of action had freed me from sentiment’s grip. “How, Mrs. Smith?” My right hand trembled slightly on the chair arm. Mrs. Smith looked at me, smiled, and pretended not to notice.

  “The two people you have met this evening, Captain — Nurse Rooke and Plato — are part of an army. They are two among many that I have been fortunate enough to recruit directly or indirectly for the service of all that is good. You are surprised, Captain Wentworth!”

  Something like mischief had come into her face — the secret joy of a child who has caught out an adult by unexpectedly knowing more than she should. She looked down again and, although I could not judge colour accurately while the room was so washed with candlelight, I felt she was blushing.

  “You will recall, Captain — as I believe Anne has told you something about it — that I myself am not unknown to tribulation. My own husband, dear as he was to me, was a gambler. There were many disgraces with which I had to contend both before and after his death.” She looked up at me now, quite alert and intent. “It is because of these misfortunes, Captain, that I determined to learn one vital lesson. I needed to know how one’s standing can be protected in the peculiarly covert seas of societal reputation. All women must become lieutenants in the art of gossip and innuendo, and, more importantly, in the essential skill of scotching these said evils when they threaten. Though it might seem immodest to claim it, Captain, I believe I have gone further. In protecting my husband’s memory and then putting the same abilities to use in protecting some of my closest friends, you could say I rose myself from Lieutenant, to Captain, to Admiral. Believe me, I had no choice.”

  Her placid expression had become troubled as though she was plagued by many harsh memories. Lines had appeared on her forehead and a tremulous determination showed about her mouth. Something cracked behind the grate and a log fell and sizzled in the still-vibrant flames.

  “I see,” I said quietly.

  Many of my qualms about Mrs. Smith had fallen away like autumn leaves. She was indeed exactly as she had purported and my suspicions had been unfair. How many times, I wondered, did we underestimate the steel that was necessary for a lone woman to survive in an unfriendly world? Too often we value the female for her softer qualities alone. Women, we think, provide the feather bed after the battle, the rest after the toil. But life does not work this way and I, of all people, should have known it. I had lost Anne all those years ago because of the subtle influence of her older friend, Lady Russell; this lady had managed to pry from her young friend the very kernel of true feeling and in doing so had thwarted the lives of both myself and Anne. To resist and vanquish such influences a woman would need an equal ferocity of intelligence, an equal cunning, and an equal knowledge of strategy and human emotion. These were the abilities necessary for a woman’s success; they ought to be considered virtues. I could almost suppose that my love for sweet, patient Anne to be in this regard against my reason and experience. Yet love her I did.

  I struggled to find the right words: “It is providential, Mrs. Smith, that you are the one to know about my troubles. But tell me, is it too late? Can these rumours be stopped before they ruin my reputation?”

  “I will make it my business to stop them, Captain Wentworth, you can be sure.” Again she looked at me directly, her green eyes unwavering, and I could feel her sense of certainty. But like a sick man hearing the words of his physician, I needed more detail, both of the extent of the illness and the theory behind the cure.

  “But how?”

  She smiled again and laid her hands gently together on her lap. “I will send my people to the various sources from whom the rumour has been heard. We will prepare a statement for each. Nothing specific, you understand. Just a plain note dated on the day it is signed that they know of no reason whatsoever why Captain Wentworth is not among the most honourable and law abiding of men. They will sign this before a notary. If any rumour be whispered, we will be armed for anything. You will outface the dangers in full knowledge that no one mentioned as a witness will ever be able to speak against you. You will begin your life with Anne in complete confidence.”

  I looked from Mrs. Smith to the fire. A log turned and hissed as its greener side caught the flames. “But this is so much trouble,” I said. “I want to help. I want
to face those who have said things about me.”

  “And I knew, Captain, like the true and valiant heart that you are, you would insist upon this.” She smiled at me with open and frank admiration, but I knew she had not finished. “But you cannot. You cannot be seen near any of these exchanges. It must be done without evidence you were personally involved at all. If you were there, you would be spreading the word, not confining it. Believe me, I know how this is to be done.”

  Of course, I thought, she must be right. “But there will be expense.”

  Mrs. Smith nodded. “I am afraid so — for the notaries, the travel, and for my own people. It is also customary and considered safest to give those who are to sign something for their troubles.”

  “How much, Mrs. Smith?” I reached inside my waistcoat. I had come to Bath heavily armed with paper money to a degree that a careful man like Harville would have found imprudent.

  “I think three hundred would cover us, Captain, at least initially.” She gave me an apologetic tilt of the head. “I would guess you do not have such a sum in Bath.”

  “On the contrary,” I mumbled, drawing out my wallet and opening it on my knee, “I had thought it possible I might make some quick purchases here.”

  I caught her sympathetic smile as I slid out three crisp hundred pound notes.

  “I understand, Captain Wentworth. A man in love and uncertain of his fate needs funds at the ready. You were perhaps thinking of acquiring property?”

  “Something of the sort.” I held out the notes.

  “Nurse Rooke!” she called. I turned to see that lady come through the door so quickly it was obvious she had been listening. She circled around me, curtsied, and, with a shy smile, took the notes from me. She left the room as quickly as she had come, this time disappearing through a door opposite the entrance — I had taken it to be a bedroom. She closed the door.

  “You must not mind them knowing.” Mrs. Smith smiled at my dumbfounded expression. “Captain Wentworth, this secret army of mine — you must think of us this way — is at war. But unlike the generals and admirals of our dear King’s forces, every one of our foot soldiers and cavalryman must know every detail of the battle plan, every need and potential weakness of the man for whom we fight. This easy and swift intelligence will be the strength that overcomes our enemy.”

  She saw me squirm before I was aware of it.

  “Remember, dear Captain,” she said intently, “you have done nothing wrong. We all know that.” Her eyes indicated the door behind me at the word “all.” “And each person I employ knows the true value of discretion.”

  I gave a nod, the heat of the fire stinging my face.

  “Good. Now Captain, what are your plans with regard to your marriage, the time and the place?”

  “We were to be married next month but now I thought perhaps I would delay until…”

  “Indeed you will not, Captain Wentworth!”

  “No?”

  She leaned forward for emphasis again. “Unexpected delays of any sort are an opportunity for your enemies.”

  “My enemies.” It wasn’t a question. It seemed I really did have enemies, but I could not understand why these people who wished me ill were besieging me now. Yesterday, this morning even, they had been so silent and invisible I had not been aware of them. Now I felt like a commander who has never experienced a storm and panics at the first sight of water on his deck.

  “You must show you are unafraid,” she said, “that you are not expecting trouble.”

  “Yes,” I said, lip trembling slightly. “My sister and her husband, Admiral Croft, have kindly suggested we return to Kellynch for the wedding.”

  Mrs. Smith nodded. “They are leasing, I hear, from Anne’s father.”

  “At the moment, yes.”

  She waited for more, but I remained silent. My plans for returning Anne to her beloved Kellynch Hall now seemed like hubris. I could not see beyond the moment.

  “So, Captain,” she said after a pause, hands once more on her knee. “Kellynch it is. When exactly?”

  “We were going to have the bans read directly … will have them read directly. The wedding itself could take place as early as the last week in March. Anne is in agreement it should be soon.”

  “I’m certain she is, Captain.” Mrs. Smith gave me a smile to suggest she understood why my bride might be impatient. With everything else swirling around in my head — secret enemies, capital crimes — her expression warmed me, gave me courage to anchor myself more firmly to the ground. “And your chief groomsmen,” she continued. “Who will they be?”

  “I … well there is Harville, and perhaps my brother, whoever is able to make the journey at such short notice.”

  She was silent for a moment. “Fine men all, I am sure. There is one essential person who must be present.”

  A spark flew to the grate and clung there.

  I tried to ask “who.” But it came out as a cough. A fear concerning the identity of the man referred to had gripped me.

  She looked at me searchingly. “Oliver Mason.”

  The spark against the grate went out, leaving only a smut.

  “Oliver Mason?” I held onto my chair arm, steadying myself.

  “You must be guided by me, Captain Wentworth.” She spoke with her same habitual assuredness — at once kind yet stern. I knew at once she would produce an argument too powerful to dismiss, yet the candle flames danced erratically in my vision like stars that had lost their place in the heavens. “Everyone knows you are great friends with a history of good fellowship that stretches over sea and over land. It is in the sudden breaking off of such friendships, Captain, not in their continuance, that suspicions are raised or confirmed.” She waited for a moment, clearly seeing my agitation. “Oliver Mason must not seem like a secret even for a moment. He must be hidden in plain sight.”

  I bowed, taking this in. If I agreed to Mrs. Smith’s suggestion, Oliver Mason and Anne would be at the same event. They would meet. I would have to introduce them. They would sit in the same room, walk the same corridors, and sup at the same table. In her modest way, Anne would claim from him the vicarious trust and intimacy of an old friend.

  And Oliver? What of him? Even if he were to forget the past entirely, even if he were to greet my fiancée with uncomplicated enthusiasm, turning himself, as he did so, into that trusted old friend, convincing others that this is all he ever was, I would know differently. My own memories of him would scrawl themselves over the present, overlaying the simple, timeless love story of Anne and myself with something cringing and unwholesome.

  “I … I don’t know if I can,” I spluttered.

  “Come, Captain,” she said, leaning towards me.

  I raised my eyes to her as her tone seemed to demand.

  “You have outfought the Spanish and outfaced the French. Surely a little embarrassment and social awkwardness will not defeat you?”

  A tear of shame came to my eye. I blinked it away.

  She nodded and gave me the warmest and most reassuring of smiles — my sister’s nanny again — and I felt realignment within, a determination to see this battle through to the end. Oliver Mason had been part of my life. I could not pick and choose whom to acknowledge. And it made sense that to fully deserve the happiness that was so agonizingly close, I should have to brave the kinds of social perils Mrs. Smith had laid before me.

  A small spider danced around floor near the grate and then ducked improbably underneath its iron base where it would no doubt expire from the sweltering heat before it knew what had happened.

  “Yes,” I said, at last, “of course. I will ask him to come.”

  8. PLATO

  COLLECTING LUCY FROM THE WET NURSE on Cheap Street, I strapped her to my back and took once more to the streets. As we descended the bank towards Henry’s barge, Rosita looked up expectantly, swishi
ng her tail and bobbing her head. No lights came from within. I picked up a handful of pebbles and skittered them along the deck. Nothing stirred, save the horse which began to hoof the gravel and snort.

  The water sang a melody somewhere close by, an unseen brook trickling its way home to the body of its dark, rolling mother. I wondered where one-toothed criminals went to relax after a hard week’s grave-robbing, but my imagination was not equal to summoning up a pastime depraved enough for Henry, and I knew I’d have to give up the search.

  Lucy stirred, her cheek against my shoulder, so I climbed the bank heading northwards towards the town. The next phase of our work, which would have to wait until I found Henry, was to get four of five of our informants to each sign a note attesting to Captain Wentworth’s character. Thirty sovereigns for the task were now buried under the floor of my hut; a further ten for Henry weighed down my pocket. I was surprised Mrs. Smith had persuaded Captain Wentworth that this was a sensible plan. In reality, it would be hard to imagine a more suspicious set of documents. Nothing could more clearly demonstrate belief among the Captain’s friends that his reputation would soon come under attack. I knew Mrs. Smith’s methods well enough to guess at her real intent. These notes would build relationships between us and those who knew of Wentworth’s secret. By providing a little money, and a reasonable expectation of more, we would ensure these contacts would remain malleable and within our reach.

  Captain Wentworth clearly trusted Mrs. Smith more than his own good sense. Or perhaps his good sense withered and died when he was on land. It is often so: in the unnatural development of one part of a personality, others may fall by the way. With Captain Wentworth, skills that satisfied the rigours of command, the workings of his ship, and the strategy of battle had likely been honed at the expense of a more commonplace intelligence that might have enabled him to recognize a blackmailer when she sat before him. But you had to give Mrs. Smith credit all the same. It was cunningly done.