“Would that be so bad?”
“You sail close to the wind. Don’t forget what I am.”
“What you’ve become, Wyre. You weren’t always a prosecutor. Moses gave us the law for our hard hearts.” He rolled his eyes at the lawyer, the affection evident. “You know perfectly well that sexual pleasure has been perverted into commandments. We err only when we yield to reason. Vere Street, now . . . Such a fuss about buggery – and all because the iron-age scriptures happen to say it’s wrong.”
“Sodomy,” Wyre corrected him. “All forms of unnatural copulation between men come under the blazon of sodomy. Buggery is the act of intercourse with beasts. And as for scripture, all civilized societies require a bedrock of morality.”
But that was the difference between William’s personal system of religion and that of other sects: he didn’t consider any form of sexual ecstasy unholy. On first making his acquaintance, Wyre had assumed his new client was an unthinking follower of Joanna Southcott, parroting her ‘end days’, rascal-multitude rhetoric. But he’d come to realize William’s credos were far stranger than that.
The portly man waved his hand as if the distinction were specious. “Sodomy, buggery . . . Don’t forget there’s an inside and an outside to truth.” He pursed his lips as if about to whistle. “Besides, don’t pretend you hold with that biblical hogwash. You’ll find more sense in those newspapers you enjoy reading so much. Opinions change, my boy, often within the space of a week. Two millennia ago the earth turned, then it stopped, and recently it has begun to turn again. What men consent to do by their own firesides . . .”
“No one can consent to be assaulted.”
“What they do in private – ”
“ – influences the well-being of the public,” Wyre interrupted.
The printer shook his head. “Desire is no fault in the young. Though it’s certainly true,” he said, pursing his lips again, “that all that wanton energy could be put to better use. By withholding the seminal fluid those young men would nourish their brains. Abstinence, though, is a priestly invention. Desire is imprinted in human nature, it can’t be criminal.”
Wyre studied his face for signs of levity, but found none. “You’re either the devil, or inspired.”
“And perhaps you’re not all unbeliever.”
“I’ve come with a warning.”
The printer tilted his head. “How am I to take that?”
“They’re preparing a prosecution against you – for indecency, this time.” Brockton hadn’t used that term, but his snigger made the likely charge clear. “Can you blame them?” He sighed. “If you will insist on printing such images – ” Wyre gestured at the lewd sketches fanned out on the table.
“I like my women glowing,” William protested.
“ – however prettily done, people will think you no safer than those lunatics who fall into ecstasies thinking they’re sucking at Christ’s wounds.” He drained his china cup; William promptly refilled it. “What’s this, for heaven’s sake?” He lifted a pencil sketch of a bare female form standing between two angels, or devils, their male parts coiling up like serpents.
“I won’t deny the sexual being.”
“You think only of your balls.”
William looked arch. “If the structure of the testicle is properly examined it will be evident it is so wonderfully constructed that anything more perfect cannot be. I see the universe in it. The testicle, you might say – ” he winked broadly “ – is a gonad of the infinite mind.”
“This sexual religion of yours is considered dangerous.” It was as hopeless as he feared. “We were lucky back then in Felpham. The trooper who accused you had a rough character.” He thought back to the tiny cottage built from ship timbers; its low ceilings used to creak as if the beams believed themselves still at sea. “Don’t mistake the present climate. If your case were examined today . . .” He left it at that.
“We all have to find our own ways of bearing witness against the beast,” came the gnomic reply.
Yes, it was pointless, but at least he’d satisfied himself he’d done all he could. In the corner of the room a butterfly dangled from a single thread of cobweb, twisting in its fruitless efforts to extricate itself.
Wyre finished a second bumper. No matter how much he drank, the china cup at his elbow was always full. Before long, the sinuously coiled forms in William’s pictures were dancing for him on the table, and the parlour’s burnished shadows themselves took on the appearance of scaly cross-hatching. He heard himself giving a lurid account of the New Bridge murder, ignoring a quieter voice telling him that details of ongoing investigations were off-limits to casual chit-chat. Leighton wouldn’t thank him for it. The investigation clearly intrigued the printer, who sat, leaning forward on his elbows, demanding Wyre recount the smallest detail of the uncanny encounter.
“There are no leads,” Wyre said, “at least, none of any value. My acquaintance at Bow Street believes there may be no solution to the case.”
“Beneath the cup always lies the half-cup.”
Wyre frowned at his glib philosophy; so much of William’s discourse tended to sound like this.
“Our problem as a species,” the printer continued, “is our quickness to see things not as they are, but as we are.”
Wyre closed one eye. “I see you clearly enough. That is, I think I do.”
“A police mission, and perhaps a Courthouse case, are not so unlike a copper plate when the artist first takes it in his hand.” William smiled mysteriously. “Both begin black as night. The work is to introduce the lights.”
“Each of your metaphors is more opaque than the last.”
“Move through the literal, Wyre, and something is sure to come.”
“I’ll be certain to pass that on to my friend,” he said, waving his hand imprecisely, “but only if you promise to take seriously what I said about your pictures. They mean to make an example of you.” (Brockton had boasted about his role in the planned action.) “Don’t give them the excuse they require.” Wyre pushed his cup to one side. It was late.
William merely fetched another murky bottle from the depths of his seemingly bottomless drinks cabinet. Something else, Wyre knew, nestled deep within. Something of his – assuming William hadn’t pawned it for engraver’s acid. He pictured the fire-piece, which he’d purchased in Sussex from a gunsmith named Egg. Rose had made him hand it over soon after they’d arrived in London, not being able to abide its presence in their tiny Southwark apartment. When would a lawyer need such a thing, she’d demanded to know. It was a fine weapon. Wyre had half a mind to ask to see it.
They talked into the early hours, roaming from faith and philosophy to the drying periods of oil. Eventually, Wyre heaved himself to his feet, steadying himself on the back of his chair.
“Next time, my boy, bring that portrait you’re trying to complete.”
Had he really mentioned the painting? When? He didn’t remember. Wyre pulled a face. “Whenever I start up again, I spoil it further.”
“Keep at it.” William’s expression was suddenly serious. “Forget convention – all you need’s contained here – ” he touched his forefingers to his eyelids “ – and here.” He tapped his head. “Everything else is sham.”
They parted on the porch. At the bottom step, Wyre turned. He had to say something.
“For goodness sake, William, put some clothes on. I never know where to look.”
23. Drill
The botanist begins the evening’s lecture by dividing the quadrupeds into five orders: anthromorpha, or those resembling the human form; ferae, wild beasts; glires, wild rats; jumenta, beasts of burden; pecora, cattle. Within the third order he is scrupulous to include the porcupine, hare, squirrel, beaver and common rat.
“Some English natural philosophers,” he says, not troubling to conceal his scorn, “would make rats and beavers parts of separate trees. They deny that the analogy between the number of teats and teeth in these animals amou
nts to kinship.” He steps out from behind the lectern. “Would it not,” he mimics, switching to English, which imparts a feyness to his speech, “be more true to say an ass is an ass, a rat a rat, rather than making a rat a squirrel, or a beaver – or, by extension, a man?” The grey locks of his periwig shake as he moves his jaws from side to side, in something resembling a human laugh.
At the rear of the auditorium an elderly gentleman rises, and moves down the central aisle with an ease that belies his age. The botanist watches him steadily from the front, the air in the theatre acquiring the charge of a great event.
“Your taxonomy, sir,” the ancient gentleman says with a clipped accent (plainly a lodger in the French language), “is a laughable delusion. A rat is not daunted by size like the squirrel or hare. It will attack even one of the lords of creation. It will, if hard-pressed and sufficiently famished, devour its own kind. Will a beaver do that?”
Someone in the audience laughs. Others join in. Soon the noise is deafening.
The sleeper opened his eyes with a start to find a figure crouched on its haunches in a corner of the room.
“What th’ fook are tha’ doing ’ere?” The safe house in Crispin Street was supposed to be just that. Tossing aside his thin blanket, he jumped out of bed, wincing at a shooting pain in his right ankle. He pulled out the leather-knife he kept under his pillow.
The intruder regarded the instrument with apparent interest, though not fear.
Definitely not fear.
The penny dropped. How had he missed that?
Fuck!
Silence. More silence. His eyes moved to his writing desk. Ransacked . . . All his painstakingly transcribed copies of command dispatches, diagrams of defence lines, escarpments, redoubts . . . Fuck! Fuck! Had the wily old fucker found his letter to the Palace? He cursed himself for not posting it earlier. His half-turned man at St James’s was his last chance of bringing his mission in this shit stain of a country to a successful conclusion. He experienced a sudden, all-consuming wave of regret. The strain of maintaining a triple identity, of lying with pox-ridden filth . . . Tout ça pour rien! All for nothing. His target – the bantam-cock, mad George’s own stinking scion – had flown the weather-coop. There’d been no sensational arrest, no morale-sapping scandal. Everything now depended on the unpromising seeds he’d planted at St James’s Palace (in that respect, at least, Vere Street had been good for something). But it was a long shot. He pictured the weak-willed, pathetic boot-licker on whom his hopes rested. A devilish long shot.
Still – he slashed the air with his blade – if they imagined he’d be easy, a man with fifteen years active service, one of Fouché’s black agents!
The ancient assassin had moved from the far wall, and without seeming to occupy any intervening space, now stood an arm’s distance away.
He didn’t feel anything being taken, but his leather-knife now lay in his opponent’s open palm. Credit where it was due. Desperately now – for he recognized a master’s talent – he attempted a parrying feint, a manoeuvre designed to keep his adversary’s blade arm out of play. He did it instinctively, the drill deeply instilled. For a moment he seemed to hear his first instructor, long ago now, praising his boyish agility – C’est bien, Vallon! – explaining how the balance must always be spread evenly between the balls of the feet . . . and knew it all to be futile.
He watched with almost detached curiosity as the knife was thrust into his live matter, given a quarter twist right, a half turn left, before being withdrawn with a prolonged sucking noise. Staggering, he grabbed at the back of the precious desk chair, upsetting it, before collapsing against the wall, slowly slumping to a sitting position.
Dark blood welled up around him. Surprising how quickly his nightshirt became sodden.
There was no pain. Absolutely no pain.
24. Intelligencer
These days, The Post was a shadow of its former self, just the odd item of news padded out with electioneering tirades and society drivel. Wyre stepped from the news-vendor’s into the steady stream of foot traffic moving down Welbeck Street, his head aching violently from the previous evening at William’s.
He opened his copy at a petition for the gelding of sodomites; it had been reprinted daily since the raid on the Vere Street Club, and had caught the eye of Parliament. Opposite it, a column proclaimed the Princess Amelia’s health had taken a turn for the worse.
Wyre plotted an unsteady route through the match-sellers, china-hawkers and plump servant girls whose faces made him think of fripperies filched at odd hours from their mistresses, the air ripe with unwashed bodies. The miasma was doing nothing to help his urge to retch.
The red cobbles of the Cavendish Square coach stand lay ahead. Wyre could ill-afford the expense, but tardiness carried its own penalties at the Courthouse, Mr Best never failing to dock pay when one of his lawyers was unpunctual. A slovenly waterman waved him over towards a superannuated four-wheeler; its original baronial insignia survived only as a collection of ghostly outlines on the rusty-hinged doors. With a strangled gee-ing sound the equally antediluvian jarvey cajoled his beasts into the nose-to-tail traffic, where they moved at scarcely walking pace. Half a crown lighter to little purpose . . . Watt had recently proposed a steam coach. Who wouldn’t prefer such a machine? Wyre imagined the city filled with them, emitting nothing more than little wreaths of silvery smoke, the streets newly paved for their silent wheels.
He mopped his brow. The handkerchief was cool, and soft – part of a silk set Rose had given him the week before she left. Tears pricking the corners of his eyes, he flicked through his paper, hoping for distraction. Another Monster Captured . . . The city was running mad for tales of Vere Street, he tutted. That, and the comings and goings of royal second cousins visiting the stricken princess. It seemed she’d made a ring for her father, the Duke of York, with a lock of her own hair wrapped inside. That was on the mawkish side of sentimental.
His eyes were pulled to a short piece on the facing page – a familiar name was picked out in tight Grub Street capitals:
Yesterday afternoon, Rivett, the Bow Street officer, arrived in town from the Isle of Wight, with an Ensign, Hepburn, belonging to a West Indian Regiment, charged, on the evidence of a Palace servant at St James’s, with a most diabolical offence with a drum-boy, White, at the Vere Street club house.
Surely it wasn’t the same juvenile who’d made the complaint against Parson Church? He assumed the misrule, after coming so close to having his neck stretched, had left the city far behind. As for the other military bum-boy, he didn’t think the name Hepburn had ever crossed his desk. At any rate, he supposed he’d be dealing with both soon enough. Or maybe not.
Wyre frowned at the column.
The prisoner underwent an examination before Mr Best, and acknowledged being at the house, and also part of the circumstances stated against him. He was committed for further examination. The boys are presently in safe custody at the Tower.
Both miscreants had already been examined . . . and by Mr Best himself. Wyre stared blankly. Wasn’t prosecuting mollies supposed to be his job?
He went back over the details. ‘Rivett, the Bow Street officer’ – Wyre had seen him giving evidence once. Barely twenty-five, the man was already running to seed. It wasn’t difficult to picture him in a Cheapside dive among the hired informers and bawds, accepting his fourth drink from some salivating news-hack on a retainer. As for this ‘Palace servant’, that was probably a reference to some cock-corrupted footman trying to wheedle his way out of a prosecution of his own. So far, so familiar. (God’s teeth, an ensign and a drummer boy: it was hard to think of a worse cliché!)
But the report felt off. Best’s role, for starters. But it was more than that. Hadn’t The Post just casually placed Vere Street next to St James’s Palace? Even if it was only in a news-rag’s column, the proximity was suggestive. He couldn’t imagine the Palace being ecstatic about that. And why had Best felt it necessary to summon the ensign out
of his regimental camp all the way down on the Isle of Wight, when he could have simply left him to the army’s own cruelties?
Perhaps it was nothing more than the desire for a public dangle. To be sure, the whole city would turn out to watch the base pair exchange a sickening last glance – or, more likely, spit and hiss at each other with a big bone in their breeches. He shuddered at the idea of those final, aching expulsions. Rose had never come to terms with the pageantry that accompanied a municipal hanging, never appreciated the two-fold necessity of deterrence coupled with civic humiliation. “But the law isn’t infallible,” she would remind him. “Imagine yourself, standing alone at the edge of eternity, deserted by all of humanity and the world, a white cap drawn over your face, the rope placed around your neck. As for humiliation,” she’d continued, waving aside his attempt to speak, “the inability to find gainful employment and provide honest bread for one’s wife and children must be a far worse source of shame for a man than anything a baying crowd might present.”
A few days before she’d vanished, she’d begged him to return to defence lawyering. Hadn’t he once saved that odd printer from a charge of treason? And hadn’t they since become firm friends? Wyre had demanded to know who’d put such nonsense in her head. Prosecuting was a cast of mind, he told her. Rose replied he didn’t know what a couple was supposed to be, that by pouring things out to him she thought life would come back to her, only to find herself empty.
Six months, now, since she left the cramped apartment they’d shared in Southwark. No forwarding address.
At the foot of the page was a diagram the size of a cartwheel tuppence, labelled A Human Tear Under the Microscope. The crosshatch engraving was a series of stark fishbones. He looked from it to the coach’s glass sliders, and beyond, and saw its repeating pattern projected onto the city.
The rest of The Post amounted to a digest of stocks, sensational accidents and electioneering harangues. If the rag were an accurate representation of the world, London was a pit of freaks. He refused to believe it, closing the pages, folding the city into itself.
The Cunning House Page 10