The Raven's Seal

by Andrei Baltakmens

  “He was especially attentive to Miranda,” added the aunt, unmoved by this reproof.

  “I’m not sure I care for his boasting,” said Miss Pears. “But he is determined to make himself most eligible.” She glanced at Grainger from under her lashes.

  Grainger shifted and raised himself to go and stand by the mantle­piece. “I am sure he esteems you highly, as I do.”

  Miss Pears brushed the keys with her hand. A small, calm smile touched her lips.

  Yet Grainger was discomposed by this last exchange, as though trumped in a game with cards he could but half read. He suggested another song, and stood behind Miss Pears to turn the sheets of music, before he made ready to take his leave.

  At the gate, he happened to glance left. He saw Piers Massingham coming up from the end of the street riding a fine roan gelding. Grainger frowned with irritation and dislike, and turned quickly to his right. Should I yield my place in Miss Pears’ affections to this vaunting fellow, he thought angrily, or cast myself into an alliance which all sides agree has many advantages, except that I find nothing stirring in the prospect? He slapped his gloved hands together, once or twice, as he walked, and did not recover his usual lightness of temper until near the bottom of the hill.

  AT THE END of Sessions Lane, an old water-pump squatted on a capped well. Early one morning the water-pump was in its usual tumult. Any number of persons were gathered to draw water: the women pausing to wash hands and faces, shivering all the while, and the small children running and squirming and gasping at the cold. The poor light of the horizon had not yet cast itself up above the chaotic row of houses gathered about the end of the lane, and there was ice on the slimy stones and in the shallow trough.

  Cassie Redruth strode across the yard, and her brother followed with heavier steps. Toby’s face was closed and sullen. He was a dark-haired boy with watchful black eyes, well-knit, though not yet come to the full height of manhood. He carried two pails with a negligent air, as though struggling to affect a swagger among the crowd and conscious of the ridiculousness of it.

  His sister came to the line at the pump and turned back, waiting. While the boy tarried, she hastened back and took one more tin pail from his hands and returned to set it on the ground.

  “You were out again last night,” she said in a conversational tone.

  “Don’t have to account of my movements to you,” growled the boy.

  “No indeed,” said his sister calmly. “Your affairs are your own.”

  “That’s right.”

  The boy scowled, and the line moved in a ragged fashion, shuffling and halting, while the women made their good-mornings and Cassie Redruth returned them. They came at last to the pump. Cassie set her weight to the pump handle, which moved reluctantly, and there issued a little trickle of brown water. “Here,” she gestured to her brother. “You get it going.”

  With a sour shrug, the boy stepped up to the pump, but he set his strength to it after a moment’s pause, and then the trickle became a rush.

  As the water spilled into the pail, the girl put her head next to her brother’s.

  “Tobias Redruth,” she hissed, “you have taken a wrong turn.”

  “I don’t know what you’re about!” retorted the boy.

  “Dirk Tallow’s crew is what I’m about,” said the girl. The boy released the pump-handle. The girl stepped in, changing one full pail for the other. “Creeping out at all hours with never a word to say. Keeping things to yourself. Holding yourself hard and proud with Father, and Mother, too.”

  “There ain’t nothing in it. I know a few lads, is all.”

  “A few lads!”

  “Canny lads, is all.”

  The second pail also was filled. The girl looked darkly at her brother, who quailed somewhat under her gaze.

  “What is it?” he asked, of the air in general. “What ’ave I done?”

  An old woman nearby cackled and said, “It ain’t what’s been done, but what’s doing leads to trouble.”

  “You be quiet!” retorted the boy.

  “Manners!”

  “Sorry, Mrs. Poole. You’ve done nothing, I’m sure,” said Cassie turning to her brother. “Nothing shameful.”

  Toby drew a deep breath. “Nothing. I swear.”

  A third pail was readied for filling. There was a restive mutter behind the brother and sister.

  The pump was worked again. “You had money t’other day,” said Cassie. “A whole shilling, I reckon.”

  “It was mine. I earned it.”

  “How, indeed?”

  The boy shrugged. “I got it doing an errand, is all.”

  “For who?”

  “Hoi,” called a voice, “move on down there.”

  “Harper Toakes, if you must know.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Friend of Nick Paine’s.”

  “And who’s he a friend of?”

  “Won’t you leave off!”

  “I never leave off when there’s a thing to be known.”

  They had filled the last of their water-pails.

  “You be good to yer mother!” came the farewell, as they stepped aside.

  “What other errands have you done?” said Cassie, as she took up the heavier load.

  “Nothing.”

  “You know better than that.”

  “Look,” began Toby. “I carry a note to someone, or maybe a little package. And I go about it handy and quick. This gets noticed. So I get asked to keep an eye on a cully and say where he’s going and who he speaks to, for an hour or so. Nothing as is any harm.”

  “What sort of cully?” said Cassie.

  “Gent,” said the boy, looking down, “as owes money and don’t want to pay. But he has enough money for others, he has. I’ve seen that, too!” Under the weight of water, they stumbled along Sessions Lane, picking their way over the cracked cobbles and loose stones and filth that dotted the way.

  “That’s a bad start,” resumed the girl. “Sneaking and spying. What good are you to us, to Mother and Father, if you get into trouble?”

  “What good am I?” the boy repeated. “What good is it to be the son of the only honest man in The Steps, if all we get by that is misery and labour and want? What good is it to work at every man’s trade and profit by none! I don’t see Dirk Tallow fetching and hauling for nobody.”

  “Toby!”

  But they had come to the gate of Porlock Yard and passed under the old arch, where a trickle of waste water and refuse ran. The girl turned around, let her load down, and stretched her back, forcing her brother to halt. She waited until he became restless. Then she addressed him again.

  “Going to see these men today?”

  “No.”

  “Look at me. Tonight then?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What’s the next little errand, then?”

  The boy rested his back against the stones of the arch. “It’s only—I am to stand in a certain place and make a noise if anyone comes by. That’s all.”

  “That’s all!” exclaimed Cassie. “That’s all to put you in the path of the Bells!”

  Neither had to glance beyond the shabby roofs of Porlock Yard, to where the gaol held the approach over every daily task, even now blocking the morning sun, as if to show its dark mantle beneath a crown of beaten silver.

  “Just promise me you won’t do anything to bring shame on Father.”

  “They’re frightful men,” whined the boy. “There’s no crossing them.”

  “Toby! You think on Mother, too. Would you break her heart, with all she has to carry?”

  “These things are heavy,” said the boy, raising one of the slopping buckets. “Get going, will you?”

  The girl held steady. “Toby Redruth.”

  “I promise,” he said. “I’ll stay clear of it. Let’s get these things within.”

  They crossed Porlock Yard, and their own door was before them. Inside was the clatter of the stove and the din of the children, sometimes ans
wered by a gruff roar. Brother and sister went within, to find Mrs. Redruth calling for water, for the children must be washed and Father’s shaving water heated, while a great mass of gruel was heating on the stove, and Mr. Redruth was cutting slices of hard bread and cold mutton (very thin), in preparation for his breakfast. The younger children were running around the table, or had got under it, or were taking up the bedclothes, or taking down the curtain that screened the elder from the younger, and putting each other’s stockings and shoes on, getting laces and ties tangled, and beginning all over again.

  “Cassie—Cassie dear,” called Mrs. Redruth from the fire, and the girl ran to assist her.

  Silas Redruth hailed them. “You had a merry time of it, no doubt.”

  “We went as fast as we could,” said Cassie.

  “Well, you missed a caller,” said the old man darkly.

  Cassie looked to her mother, but the older woman applied herself to the bubbling pot and the child clutching her skirt equally and made no sign.

  “A caller,” repeated Silas Redruth, with a sharp look towards Toby.

  “What sort of caller?” asked the boy.

  “An ugly sort, with a broke nose and a black brow and a great knotted stick, and a foul manner. Asking after my son. His sort, darkening the door of an honest man’s abode.”

  “Now, Silas,” said Mrs. Redruth, “we don’t know who he was, nor his business.”

  “You always take the boy’s part,” said her husband.

  “Should I not?” demanded his wife. She drew Cassie close to her and gave her a disordered kiss on the brow, which the girl returned with a squeeze of the waist. “These are our eldest. Look you. Our first boy and our lovely grown girl. You remember the days in the camps when these were our only two.”

  Silas Redruth had been a corporal of the grenadiers, and Meg Redruth a camp follower, before they had been bound as man and wife, and there was always with her a sort of warm remembrance for the bustling, roaming life of the camps. For there was nothing naturally submissive in her manner, but that she had been submerged, by degrees, in children, and had no more strength to give resisting her husband.

  But Silas was not placated. “Look to him! The lad knows.”

  There was something restrained in the boy’s manner, as he fingered the corner of the table.

  “Oh, the boy knows,” said Silas Redruth, “but he’s afraid to say to us, his own family.”

  Another child began to bawl under the table: he had knocked his head against the leg while chasing his little sister. Mrs. Redruth bent to haul him out and hush him.

  “He’s only a friend of mine,” said Toby.

  The old man rose from the table and hopped along the edge of it, forgetting his stick in his haste. The leg he lacked from the knee down was a wound he had got as a soldier and for which he was pensioned out. And so he drew himself along the side of the table, to where his son stood.

  “You’ll not have anything more to do with this man. If he comes again, you don’t know him. And you won’t go out to meet with him, neither. Not while I am master of this house.”

  “Yes, Father,” said the boy, labouring against another impulse. “As long as you are master here.”

  The former grenadier nodded ponderously, though this acquiescence made no alteration in his mood, and by the same means as before, brought himself back to the head of the table. But Cassie Redruth had also taken notice of her brother’s words, and a little while later, after the table had been laid and cleared, among the chaos of brushing the children’s hair and unknotting their laces and scouring the pots, she saw that he had gone.

  IT WAS A BITTER night, and the sky was torn between rain and wind. When it rained, long sheets of it scourged the Pentlow and made the black waters hiss and seethe. The Saracen submitted to these lashings, though the piles creaked and the overcharged gutters gurgled. There was a good crowd in the Saracen, though somewhat dampened. While three fiddlers made their set, there were many calls for hot grog and flip, so the fires and the irons were much at work.

  At one side of the second fire-nook, Mr. Grainger and Mr. Quillby took their ease. Grainger, in particular, had made the Saracen a favourite of late, and he had his boots on the fire-iron, where they steamed visibly, adding to the general haze of pipe-smoke and fragrant vapours. He was conversing in a desultory way with William Quillby, who from time to time sketched a point with his finger before the flames, and such was his calm that it would be difficult to detect that not long ago the two of them had been unsettled in words with Piers Massingham.

  Massingham had entered with six or seven of his cronies and two highly coloured, chattering women; the whole party cried out for several things at once and sent the servants running. They made for the centre of the commons-room and freed themselves a table by clearing away the two or three quieter souls who were there at present.

  Then Massingham noticed Grainger, who was rising also. “Ahh, Mr. Grainger is here, and his friend the scribbler.” He turned to address Grainger. “At your ease, I perceive. I trust we don’t disturb you.”

  Grainger sketched his usual negligent bow. “Hardly. Mr. Quillby and I were enjoying the fire and some respite from the wind.”

  There was something hectic and disordered about Massingham: a sense of elation barely contained. His dark eyes flashed, moved, and would not settle.

  “It is a humble sort of place, but it serves. A little rough, somewhat dishonest, but I expect the company suits you, hey?” said Massingham.

  Grainger glanced at the women. “You have been to the theatre,” he observed, ignoring this thrust.

  “It was tolerable. Tolerable. Miss Pears was asking after you. I said, I daresay you are very much occupied and have no time for the dull claims of society.”

  “Not at all. I am honoured that she remembers me,” said Grainger, with a cold frown.

  “Handsomely said. But you always had a handsome way with words, Grainger. Here, let’s call a toast to Miss Pears.”

  The bottles were by now standing on the tables, and the glasses made their way around.

  “I have the greatest respect for Miss Pears, but I am content.” Grainger made a half turn towards his own seat.

  “You won’t drink with us?”

  “Indeed, by your leave. I don’t think you lack for compliant company.”

  One of the women loosed a shrieking laugh, which was carried along the table. Massingham was distracted, a filled glass was thrust into his hand, and by then Grainger had turned his back.

  The rain had renewed its beating on the roof, and the river lapped at the piles. The fiddlers took up a new air but were shouted down by Mr. Harton, who wanted no maudlin stuff, and threw a sovereign at them, should they only play something damned cheerful. The women were giggling and pouring freely from the bottle, and one of them had got herself in young Mr. Palliser’s lap and played with his hair, with his hat perched on her own red locks.

  “I don’t take to this new mood of Massingham’s,” confided Quillby.

  “I prefer his bullying and insinuations to this novel mode of sarcasm. Did you hear what he called you?”

  Quillby smiled and drew his pewter-pot nearer. “I did. But there is no offence in it. I am a scribbler. If I am known for it, I am pleased. If I get my living by it, so much the better!”

  “He meant no compliment,” said his friend.

  Quillby shook his head. “Aye, for the moment, I am condemned to obscurity and ill-favour. Where lies the difficulty, I conclude. Better to be recognised for my words, even in scorn, than ignored.”

  There was another raucous shout from the centre table, and it was harder to say whether the bellowing men or the screams of their feminine company were louder.

  “Come,” said Quillby, wincing. He drained his cup. “Let us go.”

  “Nay.” Grainger stretched out his legs and set one boot-heel on the fender. “We are well placed here, and I have no desire to brave the night again. Certainly not to satisfy Mr. M
assingham’s ill-humour.”

  “I wonder,” said Quillby, “if you tarry with another purpose.”

  Grainger made a circling gesture, as though setting the thought aloft.

  The strife of wind and rain did not abate, and the old shield above the door worked to and fro on its creaking chains. The crowd—riversiders, labourers, clerks, shopkeepers, horse dealers, and the looser sorts—made light of the squall, like a ship’s company got into bad weathers and determined to ride out the trouble.

  In all the din, it was difficult to say if the last hour of the day had sounded, or if it was only a coal-lighter on the river, knocking against its mooring. The door of the Saracen was opened and shut often, as many a body passed in or out. A boy was posted at the threshold with a brush, to clear the foul muck of the river-side, but in his frantic sweeping he did little else but smear it thoroughly around. Thus, Cassie Redruth got in without being noticed.

  The hems of her skirts were heavy with wet and leaves and the sludge of the streets. She set back her hood and peered into the smoke and fug of the room. There was no one there she knew, save for the landlord, Tom Garrety, keeping his station before his row of casks and barrels.

  “Mr. Garrety! Is my brother here?”

  The host had his hands deep in his apron pockets, and his attention roamed behind and aside her as he replied, “No, lass, he is not.”

  “Or any one of his crew? I know they are often here. Perhaps in a room.”

  “What crew?”

  “Tallow’s men.”

  Old Garrety fixed all his care on her then. “They are not here, girl. I know nothing else ’sides that.”

  “I must find my brother, Mr. Garrety. I have been out these two hours or more.”

  The host’s glance softened. He put a hand to her arm in a friendly fashion. “Go home, then, and he will be there soon enough. There’s nothing else—” And that was all. There was another glass to be filled, and a lounging boy to be roused.

  She was left alone, frustrated. The room had closed about her, and when she turned to go she found only milling men, shining tables, stools, benches, lamps, servants, backs, wet coats, shoulders, and tankards between her and the doors.