by Paul Butler
I felt the sting on my earlobe again.
He seemed to read my expression. “I still have to think about money, Plato. I have just lost everything.”
I bent towards my coins. They jangled as I mounded them up and pulled the sack around them. “You tell me everything you know, Henry, and I will give you half of all I have.”
“How much?” he asked, dully.
“About seventy pounds each.”
He gazed towards the river and the burning barge, then shrugged and looked at me closely. “It’s because of Elsie,” he said. “I know where she went.”
Lucy, strapped close to me now, wriggled. Her hand struggled free.
I waited for more, knowing this mystery was like a precipice; its uncovering would be unlike any other. I felt again the cut of Harville’s stick upon my forehead, the sting of Harville’s flame upon my ear.
“Where did she go, Henry?” I heard a tremor in my words.
Henry gazed down at the floating fire again. “Same place as the others,” he said, “the Bristol infirmary.”
“She died,” I whispered, knowing this was only half the truth. But Lucy was upon me, and Lucy’s ears could hear even if her brain could not understand. I remembered Elsie the one time she talked to me. I relived her formality, her poise, and her curious detachment, the way she had talked about bringing shame upon her master’s household yet had seemed not in the least ashamed.
Henry gave something like a laugh, though I could see fresh tears had also sprouted. “When a person dies,” he said, “what happens?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “The doctor is called, the coroner summoned. The priest says a prayer and the congregation gathers. They are put into the earth. From the earth my spade reclaims them.” He paused. “But I didn’t reclaim Elsie. I received her straight away.”
“But it makes no sense.” Lucy’s hand came down hot upon my neck. “There is no reason. The girl had already acquiesced to her master’s wishes. I met her. There was no sign of emotion, no sign of sorrow. “
Henry shook his head and gazed out at the sinking flames. “I know nothing of the reasons. I just dispose of the goods.”
“But you must want to know now, Henry. He tried to kill you. He killed Rosita.”
This seemed to bring him to. His chest dropped and his shoulders heaved as though struggling with a burden. “What can we do?” he murmured. His eyes shone wet in the diminishing light.
“Confront him, Henry. He knows he can get away with anything because he knows the law will always take his side against people like us.”
“Exactly,” he responded.
“But we can bring discomfort into his home. We can question him. He can’t kill you again, can he?”
He nodded. Lucy began to snore, and I felt the tingle of oncoming justice. Socrates might be avenged at last; Lucy’s mother too. Harville was far from indomitable. If seeing Lucy, his victim’s child, made him strike with a stick, then the sight of Henry, returned from the dead, would surely make him crumble.
“Well then,” I said closing the sack of coin and securing it against me, “we’ll go to my dwelling, split the money and then go to Harville’s lodgings.”
Sticks broke under my feet as I turned. Wordless, Henry followed. The crackle and hiss of attempted murder behind us, we moved uphill together, the oddest of vagabond families.
21. MRS. SMITH
IT WAS JUST PAST MIDNIGHT when I heard the footsteps; they ascended in bursts and paused at each landing. I knew it was Nurse Rooke, of course, but the sound worried me. If she had Plato’s money, she would have been climbing with more care. If she had failed, and failure alone was the matter, her tread would have been more hesitant.
I settled myself, picked up my cross-stitch and tilted it to the candlelight. Clearly something serious was wrong and all I could do for the moment was present myself as a model of composure for whatever trials may lie ahead.
After one last thump on the landing, she burst in like the catastrophe; face flushed, tangles of hair poking out of her bonnet. “Oh Mrs. Smith!” she exclaimed. “The strangest thing has just happened.”
I looked back to my cross-stitch, pulled through a thread, then looked up at her, arranging my features into an expression of calm enquiry. “First of all, Nurse Rooke, before we get to your news, has the assigned task been completed as set out?”
Sometimes, it was a good idea to re-establish the correct formality between us. Earlier in the day, I had let down my guard and we had reverted to our old ways. It was not cruel to play the employer now; it merely helped to keep up standards. As I had hoped, the question took the wind out of her panic. “The money wasn’t there, Mrs. Smith,” she said quietly. “It was not under the floorboards.”
“You did look?”
“Yes, Mrs. Smith. Plato left his house at twenty-five minutes to midnight. I was watching. He must have taken it with him.”
“But you followed?” I drew through another thread and turned the growing pattern to the candlelight. The country cottage, complete with thatched roof and rudimentary geese outside the gate, was taking form nicely.
“At first, yes.”
“Only at first?”
“Something else happened. Really, Mrs. Smith, you should hear this.”
At odd times during this narrative, I may have given the impression that I believed Nurse Rooke lacked mental capacity. In reality, my estimation of Nurse Rooke’s intelligence was no lower than your own. The pretence was merely a game to which we had grown accustomed. For Nurse Rooke, playacting the halfwit drew me more securely into the role of commander. It gave Nurse Rooke comfort and it made both of us feel safe, particularly when times were uncertain. In the present instance, however, I could tell her intelligence was engaged and that she had something important to tell me. I laid aside my cross-stitch and nodded.
“I came across Jenny, the Harvilles’ maid, on her way to Camden Place.”
“At this time?”
“Yes,” she continued still breathless, “just minutes ago. She’d been instructed by Captain Mason to bring Miss Elliot to their lodgings. She was to tell Miss Elliot that Captain Mason had arranged a special wedding surprise for his friend and that there must be no delay in her coming to see it.”
A sinking feeling came over me. That Captain Mason was brewing something malignant was certain. Its consequences were unlikely to be desirable for either Anne or Captain Wentworth. I know you may find it strange, dear reader, that I would react this way, but my concerns had never been for myself alone. I had genuine regard and affection for these two people. Beyond the immediate context of my own business interests, I had meant to safeguard their happiness as best as I could. Stewardship was at the very heart of my profession. My business was to manage small inconveniences, to soothe those worries I helped to create. Never did I allow a client to be entirely crushed; indeed I prided myself on remaining at the happy crossroads of mutual survival. If not for Captain Mason, Captain Wentworth and I might have remained at this juncture indefinitely.
I knew the answer to the next question but I asked it anyway. “Did the girl give no other hint as to what this surprise might be?”
“No, Mrs. Smith, none at all.” Worry lines scored across Nurse Rooke’s brow, and she was restless on her feet as though preparing for action. “But she was in a dither of excitement about it. Captain Mason, it seemed, had put her in a position of rare responsibility. She was most sensible of it. She told me that she, personally, and no other, was to bring Miss Elliot to the lodgings. She was to let nothing slip about the nature of the surprise but was to emphasize the imperative nature of her following. She was to bring Miss Elliot straight up to Captain Mason’s room.”
My shoulders slumped and I felt suddenly helpless, for now, indeed, a vague sense of mischief had been given an all-too-definite form.
“What is it?” said Nurse
Rooke. “What is the matter?”
“I am afraid a most hopeful situation has been lost, Nurse Rooke. There is only one surprise I can imagine Captain Mason preparing and, if he brings it about as he hopes, it will render all my work with Captain Wentworth quite redundant.”
There was another worry, a heavier one, and although it was related to the conversation I had with Nurse Rooke earlier in the day, I did not give it voice. It concerned the knowledge that if we ceased to expand our sphere of influence, our whole enterprise would collapse. I had a vision of myself as an overstuffed Guy Fawkes on bonfire night, rags and old clothes pushing outward threatening to burst my body at the seams.
And it was worse than a mere economic collapse. I could see into the future and envision the means through which I would likely be forced to recover my position. My crimes would have to become darker, more unpalatable to me. Up to now the only danger in this project was that Captain Wentworth would realize I had used him ill. But even if this knowledge were to finally dawn on him, he could scarcely tell Anne without giving himself away. But now, with this midnight tryst and the havoc it might cause, any intelligence might spill anywhere. Anne might find out what I had done. Designing some explanation for my role in the affair would not present me with an immediate problem. I could argue, as I had successfully done to Captain Wentworth, that I had only been in the commission of a good cause — that I had been trying to protect them all from an unjust rumour and a young man with wild delusions. It would take no mean measure of persuasion though. After the business with her cousin, Mr. Elliot, I had promised never to keep anything from Anne.
She might, even so, see the extenuating circumstances in the nature of Captain Wentworth’s alleged crime. How could I have been expected to put such horrors into words? I would argue. The real danger, however, was worse by far than any such scenario. She might choose to stand by Captain Wentworth regardless of the crime and my part in covering it up. In such a circumstance, with a heavy heart and great reluctance, I would be forced to blackmail my dearest friend.
Nurse Rooke seemed to consider, her eyes alive in the candlelight. “We must stop Miss Anne from arriving,” she said.
It was a rare display of initiative, and I felt sorry to disappoint her. “How could we do that, Nurse Rooke?” I folded my hands. “What possible excuse could you or I have for stopping her? What reasonable explanation could you or I even have for being out this late?”
“I can think of something, Mrs. Smith.” She wrung her hands, still shifting on her feet as though the floor were hot coals. “I can wait outside Captain Wentworth’s lodging. When she arrives, I can tell her…” A light came into her eyes. “I can tell her you have had a seizure and she must come immediately. You know she would. And I already have an explanation as to why I knew where she was going. Jenny could confirm she had told me.”
I considered for a moment. A faint pattering noise, perhaps hail or light snow, came from the window behind me. “Yes, Nurse Rooke, but it is too late.” Her features fell. Her feet ceased to move. “Last minute plans are seldom good ones. This is how people give themselves away.”
“So we do nothing?” She looked bereft of the spirit that had animated her a moment ago. I motioned her towards the chair that faced me. She moved slowly to it.
“Interference would draw too much attention to us now, Nurse Rooke. We will find out soon enough, but for the moment we may just have to wait.”
We fell silent, the crackle of flame between us, behind me the soft tapping of ice.
22. CAPTAIN WENTWORTH
SO WHY DID I SUCCUMB to Oliver Mason? Was it a sacrament of lovers’ parting as Oliver had suggested? Or was it the opening of a new chapter of friendship and mutual support? The motivations were as nebulous as they were contradictory. But such is the way of physical love, is it not? He smelled of the road and the outdoors, but there was wine on his lips and something headier too. As we wrestled under the bedclothes, it was like entering another world, a place fiery and tempestuous, full of deep caverns, high mountains, and furious seas. I could say he led me into this wondrous, terrifying landscape, but it would be only half the truth; in fact we led each other as we had in the past. And the landscape of deep caverns, high mountains, and furious seas belonged neither to Oliver nor to me, but to the soul that was the two of us together. Denying it would have been as pointless and as immoral as denying the fathering of a child.
As my fist closed upon his hair and his front teeth nestled on my lower lip, playfully threatening, I remembered him as he had been once — innocent, waiflike. This was the same dark and delicate creature who’d first come to my captain’s table. A shyness in his eyes had bordered on fear.
I thought also of what he had become to me: an evil spirit who charmed my friends and tortured me with his letters. What did I want from him now? The question came to me even in the fever of desire. There was a spark of chastisement, retribution even, in the tremors running through me. I had a wish to control and a wish to nurture him back into that sorrowful-eyed young officer whose gaze would dart from one face to another. But I was afraid of him. I wanted to show him every kind of love in order to placate and tame him, to show him my vulnerability and my need. Look, I was saying to him, I am the same as I was.
I had another fear also: Anne.
Soon, in just a few days, I would be expected to lead her into a different sort of landscape where comfort and safety would help to unravel the affection and desire required of married couples. But Anne was more shy and delicate than I had once mistakenly imagined Oliver Mason to be. Or was she? And how could I possibly know? I had tasted of her lips but once and that had been eight years ago when our youth, the preoccupation of our chaperone, and the shady trees of Kellynch had provided the briefest of opportunities. As Oliver tugged in reciprocal passion upon the back of my hair and tilted my head to access my neck with his lips, I wondered how much I was using this as an opportunity to exercise the loss of inhibition that would be necessary on my wedding night. And then, with a twist in my heart, I realized no such loss of inhibition would be necessary when Anne and I were finally left alone with our wedding bed. We would likely be in the dark and largely clothed even during the act itself.
This wasn’t practise for what was expected; it was simple mourning. This night was about what Anne and I would likely never share. Anne would never tug at my hair or bite my lip and I would never wrestle her to submission. I would never see her naked by the fire. We would be married, but nine tenths of our passion would remain tightly locked inside our brains. Desire was infinite and unfathomable now, but marriage would parcel it in portions decorous and slow. I would have the most delightful company for as long as both of us lived. I would feel her warmth, her compassion, and her quiet yet fierce intelligence. I would see her face at breakfast and dinner, and we would laugh together and share the hours of every season. But in this one aspect of physical love, marriage would be an end, not a beginning.
A faint rattle from the front door far below merged in my thoughts with the distant chime of wedding bells. Harville, I thought, on one of his late night walks to Fanny’s grave. It was a measure of how quickly one adjusts to life on land that the presence of movement, of a waking soul in the house, made me slow my movements and attend closely. Onboard ship, I had been much freer of worry with Mason yet the spaces and demarcation lines of assured privacy had been much less secure.
Oliver sucked upon my neck close to my scapular. I was grateful initially that the mark he was undoubtedly making would be below my collar line and invisible. But then with a flash of indignation I realized it would not be invisible to Anne if our wedding night met even my most modest expectations. As I pushed his head from the spot, I heard something curious. Harville and his wife were on the bottom floor, but the footsteps had reached the middle landing where the Crofts had their rooms. And while I had imagined a solidary Harville limping with slow deliberation, it seemed t
here were two sets of footfalls, and they were skipping lightly and quickly as they approached.
My heart stopped.
The footsteps had turned upon the second handing and were ascending to where only Mason and I had rooms. Oliver, whose forelock I now clutched in the act of repelling his head from my neck, had ceased to move now also. The footsteps came closer. Oliver’s eyes blinked, taking in more calmly than myself the danger that both of us perceived. It had to be servants, I thought; I knew of no other who might be about at this time. But just as I was trying to work out why Jenny or one of the Crofts’ servants would come to either Mason or me when neither of us had rung, I heard a whisper.
“Just go straight in, Miss Elliot. They are expecting you.”
That I had heard the name correctly, there could be little doubt. My heart thundered back into life with a double clash. My mind swarmed like a fallen hive.
The handle moved and the door opened. My first brief view of Anne delayed the horror. She was looking not into the room but down the stairs to the companion — Jenny by her voice — who had shown her up and who now must be holding the candle which set the left half of Anne’s face in gold. She had on her cream muslin dress and her mauve cloak tied at the front. Her hair was down around her shoulders, still brushed from her preparations for bed. You will understand I am as unlikely to forget how she looked that night as I am to forget her attire when I had seen her the previous autumn after a seven and a half year absence.
At last she turned and I became aware, absurdly aware, of Oliver’s head partly obscuring mine. Illogical though it may seem, I found myself moving from him so that she would get a more certain view of me. It was possible the small delay in the inevitable catastrophe had simply become unbearable and that I wanted it to be over, or it might have been that I needed to better position myself in order to give her some excuse — even though I well knew the futility of any such attempt.