London

by Edward Rutherfurd

  “Give me a gentleman whom his creditors have fleeced,” he would tell his children, “and I’ll show you how to skin him.”

  So when Captain Meredith informed him that he had no money at present, serviceable Ebenezer was not put off at all; Meredith had no sooner turned out his pockets than the helpful keeper spied a metal disc. A theatre token, allowing the bearer access to the Covent Garden theatre for the rest of the season. “Why I could get a few pounds for that, sir,” he declared, “and you’ll hardly be needing it now.” And he took it in a trice.

  Would the gentleman, he asked, be wishing to communicate with his friends?

  Jack Meredith sighed. He had been wrestling with that problem for the last hour. As soon as he did so, all London would know. His humiliation would be public. His chance of a game of cards would vanish over the horizon. Soon, he supposed, people would know anyway; but he’d like another day to collect his thoughts.

  One letter however, in common courtesy, was due. He must at least explain his failure to appear to the Countess of St James. The question was, how much should he tell her? Could he trust her? He was not sure.

  “Can you arrange,” he demanded at last, “for a letter to be delivered with discretion?”

  Eleven o’clock had just struck when the man, who had been waiting for Lord St James to go out, approached the door of number seventeen, Hanover Square and, shortly afterwards, was admitted to the chamber of her ladyship to whom he now handed the letter. Respectfully he waited to know if there was a reply. He noticed that her ladyship looked pale.

  Lady St James was sitting on the chaise. She had propped herself up with a pillow behind her. Spread over her legs was a shawl. There were great, dark rings under her eyes. She had not slept.

  When her husband had left her the previous night, and she had risen, shakily from her bed, she had not called her maid. All alone, she had filled a basin of water from the pitcher on the night stand and, as best she could, straddled over the basin, and tried to wash all trace of her husband away. Then she had sat down on the chaise, covered herself, and remained there for the rest of the night.

  Once, very quietly, she had wept. Several times she had suffered little fits of shaking. She was aching. She felt bruised in body and in mind. For hours she just sat, staring ahead of her. But gradually, before dawn broke, she began to recover herself.

  If her husband thought she would submit, she would not. She had managed to have her own way so far and she would do so again. Tonight, he had merely made himself repulsive, untouchable, for ever. But what could she do? Run away and leave him? She’d have almost no money. Find a rich protector, a lover presumably? Easier said than done even for a society beauty. I should probably have to go abroad, she thought. Would Captain Meredith flee with her? She supposed he could afford to, but was not sure he would. Whatever the solution, she knew one thing: she refused to be helpless. Her shivers subsided and ceased. Her shock and hurt were slowly converted to a silent, burning rage. If Lord St James thought she was weak, and that she could be humiliated, he would learn better. A serpent, too, may be stamped upon, she thought. But take care when the serpent slips away and then rises. By the light of the morning, her anger was controlled, hard, and deadly.

  “I will strike him,” she vowed, “like a snake.” And she wondered, hour after hour, how she would do it.

  Now the letter from Captain Jack Meredith gave her an idea.

  “Tell him,” she told the messenger from the Clink, “to be patient a few hours. I may be able to help him in his troubles.”

  Sam Dogget also had an idea.

  The start of May was a jolly time. On the May Day holiday, the maypoles were erected. Apprentices dressed in their best clothes, milkmaids wore garlands, and pipes, drums and hurdy-gurdies were heard in the streets. Since time out of mind, a big fair had been held in the area north of St James so that even now, when the elegant streets and squares above Piccadilly were filling up the area, it still kept the old name of Mayfair.

  And – a more modern but charming touch – the chimney-sweeps, of whom, thanks to all the fine new houses, there was now a veritable tribe, had their own procession through the streets.

  Sam and Sep were standing in Grosvenor Square watching the sweeps go by, when Sam thought of it.

  The sweeps were a cheerful enough crowd: grimy and soot-covered on working days, they were scrubbed clean and dressed in sparkling white shirts and breeches for May Day. But what really caught Sam’s attention were their assistants. Each sweep had one or two of these – small boys, some as young as five or six. These were the little sweeps who were sent up the chimney itself when the long-handled brush could not negotiate a corner. Their job was filthy: half-choked with soot, they might have to climb thirty feet up the blackened tunnel. And their lot was often very hard. If the sweep was their father, they were probably all right; but if they were orphans, or sent out to work by their poor family, their treatment might be harsh. It was quite common, however, for a householder, or even one of the servants, to take pity on these little fellows and slip them some money or a present of food. If you were clever, Sam had heard, you could make some money. Something else had occurred to him, too.

  These sweeps got into the grand Mayfair houses. They visited every room. His face broke into a grin.

  “Sep, I think I know how we can make some money.”

  The Clink’s best room was certainly a great improvement. It had a decent bed, a writing table, a rug on the floor and a narrow medieval window with a view of an overgrown little garden. Jack Meredith felt more himself as soon as he was installed. The message from Lady St James, if unclear, had been encouraging and he had decided to take no further action until he heard from her again.

  At noon, Silversleeves brought him a meal: a chicken, a pastry and a bottle of claret. Also a journal to read.

  “Most of my gentlemen take the Spectator,” he observed.

  After his meal, Meredith contented himself with that periodical for an hour before there was a knock at the door and a visitor was announced. Though he was half expecting Lady St James, the visitor’s face was so entirely hidden under a hat and a silken scarf that for a moment he was not quite sure if it was she. Only when the door was closed did she remove the wrap; and Meredith received a shock.

  Lady St James had taken great care over her appearance. The cheek which her husband had struck had been carefully slapped by her maid with a wet towel for an hour before she left, so that the entire side of her face was now horribly swollen and puffy. Further, her ladyship had even knelt down and bumped the other side of her face against the bedpost so that she had a black eye too. She did not lack courage.

  The captain, who had risen to his feet, gazed at her in horror.

  “Who has done this to you?”

  “Who do you think?”

  “St James? My God! How? Why?”

  She shrugged, indicated that she needed to sit down. Then slowly, letting him coax it from her, she told him about her husband’s assault.

  Lady St James did not exactly lie. There was no need. After all, she had been assaulted and considerably hurt. But by the time she had related all to Jack, the scale of the violence had mounted to match and even surpass the injuries she now displayed. Cynical man of the world though he was, Meredith was appalled.

  “He must be stopped,” he cried. “The blackguard!”

  She made a sad little face. “How?”

  “By God, I’ll stop him,” he declared.

  “You are in prison,” she reminded him. “You can do nothing.” She paused. Then gently: “Would you really be my protector, Jack?”

  He looked at her, remembered her message and in the back of his worldly mind guessed that there was some artifice here; but even so he could not fail to experience a great rush of protective feeling towards her. She, watching his thoughts, now quietly interposed:

  “Jack, if you don’t save me, I’m condemned to a lifetime of this, and I don’t know what I shall do.” />
  “That mustn’t be.” His voice was low, manly.

  “Well, Jack, there may be a way to save us both. But there’s a price.” She smiled a little wanly. “And as I don’t know if you really love me, I don’t know if you’d be prepared to pay it.”

  “What is it?”

  She gazed at him. Then, suddenly it seemed as if she might dissolve into tears. “You can’t guess?”

  He did not speak.

  She sighed. “I’m at the end of the road, Jack. I can’t face all this alone. I don’t want to.” She looked down, so as not to meet his eye. “If I’m to live, I only want it to be with you.”

  Jack Meredith paused, thought, and made his decision. He understood that she had come to bargain. But she was a beautiful woman in distress and, God knows, he had nowhere else to go.

  “I am yours,” he said, “for ever.”

  Then she told him her plan.

  Fleming stared at the surface of Fleet Street and shook his head. He had forgotten about the paving.

  The quality of the London streets was remarkably uneven. There was no public roadbuilding in the city – the residents and tradesmen were responsible for paving their own streets, each paying for his own frontage. In poor quarters therefore, the lanes and alleys were like middens; but in big thoroughfares the residents often insisted on the finest paving. Now, in Fleet Street, they had decided upon resurfacing with the finest cobbles. And poor Fleming had just been informed how much he must pay.

  “Fifty pounds!” He glanced miserably at where his new bow window was to have been. “That’ll have to be delayed,” he sighed. “This isn’t much of a May Day, I must say. And the trouble is,” he added, “I haven’t got the money.”

  “You’ll have to go to Lady St James,” his wife said. “She owes you thirty.”

  “I suppose,” he agreed, “I shall.” He did not like to bother a great lady like that, and was afraid it might offend her.

  “You’ve no choice,” his wife said gently.

  It was four o’clock when he came to Hanover Square. He was wearing his best brown coat, which was too hot for the day, and he was sweating under his hat. With trepidation he approached the big door fronting the square, noticed briefly that the house was protected by the Sun Insurance Company and rang the bell. A footman answered. But before he could even ask if his lordship or her ladyship were at home, that liveried personage, seeing at once that he was a tradesman, told him to go to the back entrance of the house and slammed the door in his face.

  Fleming might have been less discouraged had he understood that in aristocratic houses even a gentleman personally acquainted with the owner, especially if that were so august a person as an earl, would be highly unlikely to secure an interview with anyone beyond the butler, or his lordship’s secretary, unless he was expected. To the mews behind he went therefore, getting his best coat muddy along the way, and approached the entrance near the kitchens.

  But there, more amiably, they told him that both Lord and Lady St James were out; his suggestion that either, when he or she returned, might grant him an interview was treated with a scornful laugh.

  “Leave your account,” they advised, “and go your way.”

  But this was not what he had come to do. So instead, he returned to the square and, taking up his position near a post where some sedan chairs were waiting, he kept watch on number seventeen. Half an hour later, it seemed that his patience was rewarded when a smart carriage, bearing the arms of the de Quettes, drew up before the door. He started forward.

  The groom was already at the carriage door. He had placed a step before it and was holding out his arm to help the occupant down. Fleming could not see the face of the lady because she held a silk scarf against it, but he was certain it was Lady St James. Placing himself a little before her he made his best bow.

  “Lady St James? It’s Fleming, my lady, the baker.” He smiled hopefully. The lady with the covered face gave no sign of recognition. It seemed to him that she made to move past; but without realizing it, he was blocking her way. “My lady was kind enough,” he began, before the groom turned on him, with a peremptory wave of his arm.

  “Move away, there.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Fleming was aware of the coachman getting down.

  “It’s Fleming, my lady,” he tried to begin again, then, getting confused, he held out his bill.

  He had copied it out again that morning in his best copperplate; now, however, he suddenly saw that, while he was standing, holding it in his hand, his sweating palms had made the ink run and so it was a poor, soggy thing that he now proffered in his inky fingers. Lady St James instantly recoiled.

  “Please, my lady,” he blurted out, and took a step towards her.

  The coachman’s whip cracked just beside his ear. It did not actually touch him. The coachman could have flicked a fly off his nose without leaving a mark if he’d wanted to. But it sounded like a pistol, and it gave him such a fright that he lurched forward, slipped on the cobbles, and began to fall. Reaching up, without thinking what he was doing, his inky hand closed on something soft which came away in his fingers as he went down.

  It was the end of Lady St James’s silk scarf. A second later he found himself looking up into her uncovered face, and gasped.

  Lady St James, finding herself exposed, did not try to cover her bruised and swollen face. She scorned even to run past the baker. Instead she decided to give him a piece of her mind.

  “How dare you accost me, you vulgar little tradesman? Are you trying to dun me in the street? You rogue. Your bill is infamous anyway. No one of my party would touch your cakes. You may be sure you will never sell them to anyone in society again. As for your conduct here, if I even hear from you once more I’ll have you arrested for assault. I have witnesses.” She indicated the footman, who nodded vigorously. “I think,” she called back to the coachman, as she sailed forward into the house, “that he may have blacked my eye.” At which the coachman grinned, and gave Fleming a cut across the legs with his whip that made the poor baker howl.

  Sadly he stumbled down to Piccadilly. He had been whipped and humiliated. His custom was destroyed, his hopes of a bow window dashed. And he was down thirty pounds. As he dragged himself past the great houses and elegant shops of Piccadilly, the whole fashionable world seemed to be mocking him. By Fortnum and Mason he sat down and wept.

  And how the devil was he going to pay for those cobblestones?

  A starlight night on the water. It might have been Venice. Like a gondola, the boat passed softly up the darkened Thames. The only sounds were the faint splash of the boatman’s oars dipping in the water, and the tiny rattle of glass in the lamp that swung over the prow.

  But who was the tall figure who lay back so elegantly in the passenger seat? He wore a three-cornered hat, a domino – the black hooded cloak in the Italian fashion – and a white mask over his face which, in the darkness, gave him a phantom-like appearance, blank and mysterious. A gentleman going to a Venetian ball? A lover on his way to some secret assignation? An assassin? A figure of death? Perhaps all these.

  It was much in fashion, and had been for a generation, this Venetian masquerade. Half the parties in London seemed to demand a disguise, from the great balls where fantastic costumes were de rigueur, to the ordinary nights at the theatre where, scanning the boxes, one might see a score of ladies and gentlemen wearing masks. For what was life, to the fashionable world, without theatre and artifice and, best of all, a frisson of mystery?

  Leaving the houses of Bankside behind, the boat passed slowly round the great curve of the river. On the right, the familiar old buildings of Whitehall Palace loomed along the bank. As Westminster itself came in sight, however, a less familiar shape appeared.

  During the last sixteen hundred years, London had always had to make do with a single, crowded old bridge as its only road across the river. Recently, however, spanning the Thames in a few graceful arches, another had appeared. It had only been com
pleted this year – to the fury of the Westminster watermen and the owner of the old horseferry – and the costs had so far overrun the estimates that the city had held a lottery to raise the extra money. But now, here it was, crossing sedately from Westminster to the Lambeth bank not far from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s gardens. As the boat slipped under it, the passenger slowly sat up, scanning the river in front, and began to prepare himself for what lay ahead.

  As he thought about what he must do that night, Jack Meredith kept a cool head. So far everything had been straightforward. Officially, he was still in the Clink; but for a fee, Silversleeves was always happy to allow his gentlemen a brief exeat, as long as they promised to return, and Lady St James had given him five guineas. As for the morality of the business, Meredith had few scruples. He despised St James. Besides, he was going to play by the rules, cruel though they were.

  Soon, beyond Lambeth Palace on the southern bank he saw, like a string of pearls glimmering along the waterfront, the lights of his destination. Five minutes later he was stepping out at the pleasure gardens of Vauxhall.

  Since the old, medieval days when it was Vaux’s Hall, the little estate had undergone several transformations; but nothing to compare with the most recent. An entrepreneur named Tyers, with help from his friend, the painter Hogarth, had laid out a spectacular garden for entertainments and social rendezvous. Like their rivals at Ranelagh across the river, the Spring Gardens at Vauxhall, as they were called, were a huge success. The Prince of Wales was a regular patron, and entrance, except when the place was taken for a private party, was a shilling or two. Perhaps the place’s greatest triumph, so far, had been the previous spring, when the first public rehearsal of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks drew a crowd of twelve thousand.

  Meredith went in. The entrance to the gardens was through the doorway of a large Georgian building; but immediately afterwards he was gazing down a long, tree-lined walk, illuminated by hundreds of lamps. To the right of this avenue he could see the outlines of the bandstand; to his left was a splendid, sixteen-sided rotunda building in whose lavish interior dances and assemblies were held. Nearby were the boxes where patrons could listen to concerts. Decorated with charming painted panels by Hogarth, young Gainsborough and others, these boxes were Meredith’s favourite spot. He did not pause by them this evening, however, but went in search of his quarry.