The Birth of Blue Satan

by Patricia Wynn

  She could not, although her daily life had never contained so many comforts as it did at the Abbey. How could she enjoy herself, when her mind refused to let go of his misfortunes?

  If she were a man, she might have found a way to assist him that was more helpful. She could confront suspects and question them. But the only role open to her had been as an observer of the things he could not see, the little happenings in her limited circle that might have pointed him to his father’s murderer.

  And had not.

  It was unlike her to mope. The very least she could do for him would be to discourage her aunt and the others from wasting his inheritance before he could resume his position. She obviously would not be able to keep them from spending a great deal, but she vowed to restrain them in every possible way.

  With so many servants available for the menial tasks, her aunt was finding different employment for her. Instead of sending her on errands, she had begun to use Hester for her eyes and ears in this household, which had been run by men. Spying was not an unusual job for a waiting woman, but Hester planned to use her position to manage her aunt as well.

  Gideon got up early Friday morning, eager to ride to Smarden again. He had given the Duke another few days, but he felt impatient. He could not wait any longer.

  Tom had not returned, so Avis saddled Penny for him as he went back in for his breakfast of beef and beer.

  “Yer up early this mornin’,” Lade complained as he plopped Gideon’s brimming mug down on the table. “Yer not gettin’ ready to pike, are ye, afore ye tip me my earnest?”

  Gideon looked down his nose. He was not in any mood to cater to Lade’s impertinence. “I am going out on business—not that it is any business of yours. I thought I had made it clear that I intend to reside here for some time. If I did not, I would hardly have spent the money I have on improving this fleas’ nest of yours. Rest assured that I shall inform you if my wishes should change.”

  He dug into his beef, trying to ignore the slow grin that spread over Lade’s features. “Ay, but ye’re a rum cove, an’t ye. Always soundin’ so pretty-like. But you can stow it around me. Thinks I don’t know that yer a knight of the road? But that’s Bob with me, so long as ye tip me my gelt.”

  His boldness prompted Gideon to try to put a damper on him. “A knight of the road? I presume you to mean a highwayman. Whatever gave you that idea, my good fool?”

  Rather than being insulted, Lade appeared even more delighted than he had before. “Ay, you like to stick that gig of yours up in the air, don’t ye? And them oglers of yers could fool the nubbing-cove that you was a gentry-cove. But ‘tis all boman. I knows that yer a sneakin’ budge. You and that other rum padder of yers, ye like to go it alone. But I don’t mean to get in your way. I’m an honest bluffer.”

  “Any statement including you and the word honest in the same breath is patently false. I assume you to mean something by it, however, so you might as well out with it so I can finish my breakfast in peace.”

  His demand provoked Lade to lean closer and whisper, even though there was no one else in the house. “I heard that there’s a new pair o’ rummer pads workin’ the highway near Cranbrook. I also heard that one of ‘em must a’ nimmed a togeman, on account a’ it’s silk, which no rummer pad has had in this neighbourhood before.”

  “Which I’m sure you would know. But what does this silk cloak have to do with me?”

  Lade shrugged, and there was a world of knowledge in his gesture. “Well, I don’t say nothin’ about his togeman or his shappo, but I can say a thing or two about his horse, and it seems that he’s got a fine little prancer.”

  “Oh, he does, does he? And is he the only person in Kent to have a fine horse?”

  “No, but as sure as I’m an honest bluffer, I’m a sharp bluffer, too. And I say that a gentry sort o’ cove turned up on my doorstep just about the same time that this Blue Satan bites a loge off a cully not too far from here. That’s two and two in my book, that is.”

  Gideon smiled sweetly, and saw that his expression unsettled his host. “I suppose I am to be obliged to you for this useless piece of information?”

  Lade straightened himself with a frown. “Ye might tip me a borde for it, seein’ as how yer so well equipt.”

  Hiding his impatience beneath an indifferent look, Gideon reached in his pocket and pulled out a crown. “There,” he said, slapping it into Lade’s outstretched palm. “There’s a crown for you, or a bull’s-eye as you call it. You may have it, if you let me finish my breakfast in peace. But if you hear any more news of this highwayman, I hope you will bring it to me. I should hate to be his next victim. And, as you have remarked, I spend a great deal of time on the road.”

  Lade took the crown gratefully, but Gideon could see that his reaction had puzzled the man. If he heard any more of Blue Satan, he would certainly be back, and Gideon doubted that all of Lade’s suspicions had been put to rest.

  But he could not worry about Lade this morning. He was already annoyed by the delay.

  As before, he wore a modest brown coat and a soft felt hat pulled low to conceal his face when he rode into Smarden. Before approaching the post office, he circled through the tiny village, making sure that no King’s Messengers were lurking about.

  Satisfied that the Duke had not turned his letter over to the Crown, he finally rode up to the tiny inn, tethered Penny to a post, and walked inside to ask for his letters.

  The postmaster remembered him and eagerly brought forth an elegantly sealed letter, evidently much impressed to be speaking to a gentleman who had received a message embossed by a ducal coronet. Gideon thanked him and tipped him extra for holding it for him, mindful that he might need the man’s services in future. Then he walked back outside, restraining his impatience to open the message until he was safely out of the village and had turned off the main road onto a path through the Weald.

  In the deep, cool shade of the towering oaks and beeches, coming into leaf, he tore open the seal, fighting a quiver in his hands.

  His Grace of Bournemouth did know the name of the financier that Gideon’s father had approached.

  In the same way that Gideon had concealed his query in a request for information about a horse, the Duke had framed his reply as if giving the name of the owner.

  But Gideon hardly noticed the Duke’s verbal subterfuge. His eyes travelled instantly to the name on the page.

  And with a sudden grip in his stomach, he knew he was gazing on the name of the man who had killed his father.

  That afternoon, as Hester was reading The Daily Courant to her companions, she skimmed down to the notices to see if anything more had been written about the eclipse.

  The mapsellers and printsellers of London and Westminster had been selling an instrument that would show the course of the event in every instant of its duration. But aside from the eclipsometer, as it was called, there seemed nothing of interest.

  Mrs. Mayfield interrupted her perusings, demanding to be read again the story of the two houses near St. James’s market that had fallen, killing six people. While she, Harrowby and Isabella argued over which two houses they were likely to be, Hester resumed her place further down on the page.

  The usual articles informing the public of the ships that had sailed or come in was preceded by news from abroad. The advertisements were mostly about the publication of religious treatises, which held little interest for her. Having grown up as the daughter of a clergyman, even a very poor one, she had read enough of such things. The papers were always full of them. Either of them or of miraculous cures performed by medical men.

  She was beginning to smile at a combination of the two when the name of the clergyman in question leapt out at her. With a growing sense of excitement, she read,

  “Mr. Vickers, the Clergyman, who hath cured several People of the King’s Evil, livith in Sherbourne Lane near Lombard-Street.”

  The name Vickers and Lombard Street brought back her encounter with Mr. Letchworth in
the City. Now that she remembered it, she had been trying to cross Sherbourne Lane on her way to the hackney coach that was waiting for her in Wool Church Market. The gentleman who had interfered and who had known Mr. Letchworth had certainly been a Mr. Vickers. He had given her his name. She had not taken him for a clergyman, but he had said that Mr. Letchworth had been to see him.

  And he had spoken of Mr. Letchworth’s burden.

  Now she understood why he always wore such thick paint upon his face. She had noticed the greyish tint to his skin and the bumps on his neck that bulged whenever he was angry.

  The thick paint was not to hide his scarring from the smallpox, but the gradual corrosion of his skin.

  Mr. Letchworth had been to see Mr. Vickers for a cure for the King’s Evil.

  As the others’ conversation took a louder turn, Hester sat back in her chair, her mind in a roil. It was a shock to discover that Isabella’s suitor had been dying and selfish enough not to have been truthful about it. Mr. Letchworth had tried to conceal his illness, while demanding to have his addresses received by a young girl.

  His enormous wealth might have persuaded Isabella to take him, if Harrowby had not usurped St. Mars’s title. A shudder escaped Hester when she thought that her cousin might have been forced into such a marriage, if not for St. Mars’s misfortune.

  Then, a light flickered inside her head. She recalled the medal that St. Mars had found among his father’s belongings. The token which might have been intended for a financier. A financier who must need a strong inducement to commit himself to treason. And the fact that the Stuarts practiced the King’s Touch.

  There could be no greater boon than the promise of a cure from death, especially when a man wanted to marry a woman. As much as Mr. Letchworth had wanted to marry Isabella.

  She broke abruptly into the conversation, “Isabella, do you still have Mr. Letchworth’s letter? May I see it?”

  Three faces turned to stare.

  “I think I have it, but why do you want it?” Isabella said. “Mama said that it is nothing but nonsense.”

  “And so it is, I am sure. But if you still have it, there is a point I would like to examine in it.”

  “What can you be thinking of, Hester?” Mrs. Mayfield said sharply. “I won’t have Isabella upset just to soothe your curiosity.”

  “It’s all right, Mama.” Isabella stood and said, “Come with me, Hester, and I’ll see if I can find it.”

  Hester followed her eagerly, but Mrs. Mayfield said, “If Hester wants that foolish letter, she can find it for herself. You do not need to be running errands for her. How will that look?”

  “I am going up to use my close-stool, Mama. It’s either that or call for a chamber pot in here.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Mayfield subsided, but she mumbled, “I should have burned that foolish letter the moment she received it—it’s the most impertinent piece of rubbish I have ever seen. But you gentlemen,” Hester heard her say to poor Harrowby, as they left the room, “you are all mad as dogs when it comes to my Isabella.”

  If anything could have strengthened Hester’s urgency to see the letter, her aunt’s words did. She followed Isabella up to her room where a basket overflowing with papers littered her dressing table. Isabella waved at it, and turned to disappear into her closet. “I believe you will find it in there.”

  With a sense of great anticipation, Hester flipped through the pile of bills, letters from friends, and invitations for the new Countess of Hawkhurst. Not far from the top she spied one with Isabella’s name scrawled in a man’s crude scrawl.

  She opened it, and her heart stood still as she read the threats he had made to Harrowby.

  I shall marry you, dearest. No one will stop me. I will kill any man who gets in my way.

  So this, according to her aunt, was the violent language of a man in love. To Hester it was proof of Mr. Letchworth’s madness and St. Mars’s innocence.

  “Did you find the letter?” Isabella asked, stepping back into the room as she smoothed her skirts back into place. “Why, Hester,” she said, gazing at her cousin with concern, “you have gone all white. Is something wrong?”

  “No, there is nothing wrong. And something is about to become very right. Bella, did you never suspect that Mr. Letchworth might have killed Lord Hawkhurst?”

  Isabella looked astonished. “But St. Mars is the one who killed him.”

  “No, he didn’t. But listen to this letter. Mr. Letchworth says right here that he will kill anyone who tries to come between you.”

  Isabella laughed. “Don’t be silly, Hester. Mama says that all men talk such nonsense when they are in love.”

  “No, they don’t. Harrowby did not. And neither did St. Mars, and he loved you very much. Words like this only come from a person with too much violence in him, Bella. Mr. Letchworth threatened Harrowby, remember? I believe that he murdered Lord Hawkhurst in order to cast blame on St. Mars in order to remove him from your list of suitors.”

  And St. Mars must be told—as soon as possible, Hester thought, as Isabella puzzled over what she had said. She could not tell her cousin her other reasons for believing Mr. Letchworth guilty, of the Jacobite conspirators who had promised him a cure for his affliction in exchange for money to pay for troops, of Mr. Vickers who had promised him the same without the risk of treason, and of St. Mars’s quarrel with his father, which had given Mr. Letchworth a reason to kill.

  He was the one who had been wounded by Lord Hawkhurst. That was why he had not danced with Isabella at the ball.

  Hester remembered thinking that his colour was even greyer than usual that night. He had obviously come in order to give the appearance that all was well, then retired immediately to nurse his wound. And he had not called on her cousin for several days afterwards.

  “But I did not truly want to marry St. Mars,” Isabella protested, still unconvinced.

  “No, dear. But Mr. Letchworth could not know that. How could he, when even I did not understand your preferences until later. To the rest of us St. Mars seemed the man you would most likely choose if the Duke failed to offer for you, and your mother would have chosen St. Mars for you if he had not been arrested.

  “I must go,” she said, feeling even more pressed. She must take a letter for St. Mars into Hawkhurst in time to catch the evening post. She turned to leave the room, then thought of the precious evidence in her hand and how she must not lose it. Unwilling to waste the time to go to her own room, she said, “I will leave this in the top drawer of your dressing table, Bella, but it must be kept. It can prove St. Mars is innocent.”

  “If he is, will he want to come back here?”

  Her anxious question brought Hester up short. She spun around in time to see worry forming on her cousin’s brow.

  She really had no time to reconcile Isabella to the loss of her new position. Mr. Letchworth must be found and stopped before he could kill anyone else.

  Hester thought of the announcement of Isabella’s wedding in The Daily Courant. If Mr. Letchworth had seen it—and certainly he had—he might become so enraged as to try to kill Harrowby. She did not want to alarm Isabella, but surely she would choose to protect her husband over keeping a position to which she had never had a right.

  “You mustn’t worry about Lord St. Mars, Bella. He is a very generous man. I’m quite sure that he will provide for you and Harrowby both, once his rights are restored.

  “But I must go quickly. Someone must be notified of what we have found.”

  She left Isabella with the impression, she hoped, that she meant to fetch Sir Joshua, and walked quickly to the small withdrawing room where she kept a pen and paper to write letters for her aunt. Without bothering to sharpen the quill, she scratched out a note and addressed it to Mr. Brown at the inn St. Mars had named. She sealed it with a wafer, then tucked it deeply into the pocket of her gown before running downstairs and out by a side door.

  She wanted to avoid being seen by her aunt, who would demand to know where she w
as going. Hester walked as fast she could across the open ground not worrying about the light coat of dampness soaking into her shoes. A strange dull light seemed to still all movement around her as she broke into a run.

  He saw, he wished, and to the prize aspired.

  Resolved to win, he meditates the way,

  By force to ravish, or by fraud betray;

  For when success a Lover’s toil attends,

  Few ask, if fraud or force attained his ends.

  He springs to vengeance with an eager pace,

  And falls like thunder on the prostrate Ace.

  CHAPTER 20

  The village of Hawkhurst lay no more than two miles to the south of the Abbey by way of the road. By taking a shortcut through the woods, she could be there in less than half an hour. As soon as she came to the trees, she turned onto a wide footpath.

  She had gone no more than a few yards along it before she heard the soft thunder of horses galloping towards her with a speed that made her step quickly aside to avoid being trampled. As the two approaching riders burst out of the shadows into her vision, she gasped to recognize St. Mars.

  He had donned his blue satin cloak and mask, she guessed, to keep from being known this close to home. She had no sooner seen him than he must have spied her, for he halted his horse sharply and started to turn it deeper into the woods.

  “My lord!” She cried out to stop him, even as he seemed to recognize her, too. She gasped with relief as he walked Penny towards her, his servant Tom bringing up the rear.

  “Mrs. Kean!” he called out before they reached her. “What is the matter? Has something occurred?”

  The tenseness in his voice surprised her. But he must have suspected danger, or he would not be abroad in the light.

  “Not yet.” She waited for Penny to come to a perspiring halt. The state his horse was in told her that they had ridden fast, and she wondered what had brought them.