A Broom at the Masthead (The Drowned Books Book 1)

by M. J. Logue

  "Thank you, my lord, I would prefer not to trespass on your time. Or, indeed, to tarnish your reputation further," she added, with a glower she couldn't quite help.

  "Oh, don't take it to heart so, dear! Only think, madam. I am a respectable member of London society, an eminent public figure with a seat in Parliament. Do be sensible. How might it look, if I am known to be intimate with a wife of an intelligencer for the enemy?"

  "He isn't," she said flatly, and he nodded and smiled.

  "Well, you would say so, dear. Commendably loyal, I'm sure. But the problem is, you say so, but no one else of note will. He is disgraced - removed from his position: it's common knowledge that he is not wholly to be trusted, madam, and I am very much afraid that the authority of a young lady - a very young lady, if I might say so - of a somewhat dubiously republican family herself, will do very little to retrieve it."

  "I am not here to have this conversation with you."

  He inclined his head graciously. "You see sense, then?"

  "No, my lord. I am here to tell you that my husband is not, and cannot be, a murderer. And that I can prove it. So, if you choose to persist in what I can only call a blackmail attempt, my lord, you may take your allegation and stick it - as my dubiously republican father would say - where the Lord's grace does not shine. I'm calling you on it, my lord."

  His face went as blank as a doll's, for a second. "You cannot mean - Mistress Russell, you cannot intend -"

  "On the contrary, sir. Be my guest. Go to the authorities with what evidence you have. My husband went yesterday, and laid his case before the Justice - that his name is being unjustly maligned by someone for their own ends. I believe it is slander, my lord, the very least it is, is slander, and defamation of his character. I imagine that if he were to bring a suit against the person who is behind it, that person would be. Well. Very awkwardly placed, indeed, given my husband's friendship with Prince Rupert."

  "Oh, madam, don't be ridiculous! I can prove that he -"

  "And I can prove he is not, sir. And so can Doctor Willis."

  "How?" Fairmantle demanded. She had the distinct impression he didn't like it, being challenged. "How might Doctor Willis, who has no intimate knowledge of your husband's family, prove anything?"

  And she sat back in her chair, and folded her arms. "My lord, it is not necessary to have intimate knowledge of the living, to defend a man."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning that my husband could not set a fire to save his life. He's terrified of it, sir. She made him so. And you could set him in front of any courtroom in the land and he would still shy off, were you to put a naked flame before him. So he could not have killed his sister, my lord Birstall - or rather, he could have, but he would not have chosen fire to do it. And if he could not have burned her, no more could he have set a fire at Wapping docks. So that bird will not fly, sir. If he did not do those things, your evidence is no more than a cobweb."

  "People still talk, madam!"

  She raised her head - he scenteth the battle afar off, and he heareth the trumpets - "Then let them, sir. Let them prattle. If he had killed that man at the dockside, he would have shown the marks of a struggle on his body. That poor man would have shown marks on his body, and they would show the nature of his murderer - of what shape and size he was. There are no marks of a struggle on my husband's hands, sir, I may assure you. So. No, we will not be flying to his friends - his decent, godly, respectable merchant friends, who are good people, who sent us wedding gifts and ask after our welfare, which is more than you and your cronies have ever done - in Amsterdam for refuge. Be my guest, my lord. Take your paltry evidence to the authorities, and may the Devil fly away with it, and you!"

  He stood up, and took a deep breath, and shook out the skirts of his coat. He was angry: his face had mottled an unhealthy rose, and his lips had tightened out of that customary friendly smile. But he was trying to hide it, and doing a good job of it, as he came and stood beside her, setting his hand on her shoulder in what she thought he imagined was a friendly, pacifying gesture.

  She looked down at it in contempt.

  At the yellowing bruises on his white wrists, and the half-healed, black gouges of a dying man's desperate scrabbles as those sturdy white fingers choked off his life.

  She did not speak, she dared not lest her voice betray her, but she could not stop her eyes from widening in fear.

  "Oh, Thomazine," Charles Fairmantle said gently, and he stroked her throat with his knuckle, and she felt the rough drag of torn skin where Thomas Jephcott's fingernails had torn his skin.

  And it had availed him naught, in the end, and he had still died.

  "Why could you not have gone when I asked?" he said, and that was the frightening thing, that he still sounded like himself, still sounded kind and cheerful even as his hands closed around her neck. "It would have been so much easier if you had gone, dear."

  65

  Deb sat, and waited, and looked at her feet, and waited.

  She could hear voices - Thomazine's voice raised, like a hoyden, and she winced, because if her mistress wanted to pass without comment in the city she should not act the country maid. A long silence.

  The bell, tinkling faintly in the echoing stillness of the house. An early fly, bumping against the kitchen glass.

  It was a quiet house, not full of noise and bustle like the house in Essex, or the sounds of the construction site like Four Ashes. A formal house, where everyone knew their place and pleasant country maid Deb was neither fish nor fowl, neither a proper ladies' maid nor a menial kitchen-hand but somewhere in between, a woman who was to be placed in the kitchen and left there until such time as she was needed.

  She waited.

  It seemed that Lord Birstall was dining out this evening. It was a source of great irritation to the cook, who was a volatile gentleman at the best of times it seemed, but His Lordship had decided that he needed to attend to some official business and would not be at home. Maybe he was due to speak in the House shortly, for he'd called his carriage, though his secretary was almost sure he had no appointments.

  Which was a vexation, as they had just sent a maid out marketing for what had been meant as something of an elaborate little private feast, and now all would go to waste. He did this, it would appear. Capricious. One minute, there wasn't a soul at Birstall House for weeks, and the next he'd be inviting half of His Majesty's court to some great epic festival, and even then only the half of the ones who said they'd come ever turned up and most of the work was wasted. It would make you weep to see what was thrown away, or left to spoil, truly it would.

  Which, really, left Deb none the wiser, and so she waited some more, watching the sunlight creep across the kitchen floor.

  A clock was chiming. And that meant she had been here almost two hours. And that was not like Thomazine, to be so forgetful of the maid who had served her since she was a little girl.

  66

  It had fairly spoiled his temper, being kept waiting, and then he thought he would pay her back in her own coin and he went back to his office with a toss of his head, as if he did not care.

  But he did care - very much he cared. He tried to think that she was just delayed, a press of traffic, an interesting thing in the market. He watched the sun sparkling on the leaden water, and listened to the gulls, and threw them the crusts of the bread and cheese they would have shared for their midday meal. It was fresh bread. It had been warm, when the shadows stood at noon, for he had gone out of his way to slip out and buy it fresh, straight from the peel, still warm and dusty with wood-ash from the big ovens.

  And then he tried to think of petty, unkind things, because he wanted to believe that his wife preferred to buy ribbons than to meet him, or that she had a lover, or that he was of so little account to her that she had just forgotten.

  If he did not believe those things, he might instead start to think of a racing carriage, rocking across the cobbles at a horrible breakneck speed, or of an embroider
ed ribbon wrapped choking around a man's throat, and the smell of burning silk -

  Russell inhaled sharply through his nose, snuffing the bitterness of ink and tar instead, and bent to his ledger again.

  Thinking - absently - of the Kingdom of Cochin, and Master Brouwer's recent letter with his consideration of the new Dutch regime there, twelve months in, and what that might mean for one small merchant in landlocked Buckinghamshire. (One sandalwood fan from the forests of Mysore, in the kingdom of Cochin, that the same merchant might pass it to his schatje, in token of Mijnheer Brouwer's friendship.) He wondered if one day he might have a big enough ship to see Cochin for himself. The Perse was fit to make the crossing of the North Sea, wallowing like a laden cart between here and the Hook of Holland, she was solid and sure as a market-day mule, but -

  One day. Maybe. To see the forests, and the wonders - to walk in the Indies, or Cathay, and see the things the sailors spoke of, the unicorns and the great whales and the strange and fantastic things from the bestiaries -

  The Perse needed to be outfitted, he would have her go out again before the summer. He needed to think about that. He thought the wool trade was picking up again in Europe, and he thought maybe the Admiralty needed to know about that, because he wondered if it might make more sense if he were to be shipping fleece out, soon. His own, likely, from Four Ashes, but he didn't think Master Pepys needed to know that. He was possibly the least inconspicuous smuggler in the south of England, and it made him laugh that they let him do it. It would make her laugh, too, he suspected: she'd called him a pirate more than once, and he thought she was quite coming round to the idea. But he needed to not think about Thomazine. About where she was. He would not give in to it, he would not go home, hours early, at two of the clock, because then she would know - )

  He had added up the same column three times and come to a different total each time.

  Time to surrender, he thought.

  67

  She wasn't there. She hadn't been there. Deb said they had gone to Birstall House, but that they said that Master Fairmantle had taken her up in his carriage.

  To which Russell had replied, rather tartly, that he had not seen fit to put her down, then, had he? - which had made the homely little Essex maid weep, because she was worried sick, and the fact of placid and competent Deb in tears with worry made him more frightened than possibly anything else had ever in his life.

  He had smiled - which probably hadn't reassured anyone, he thought afterwards - and gone upstairs and changed from his plain working-clothes into something more sensible for visiting Master Fairmantle.

  A brace of pistols, a well-work cavalry backsword, and palpable bad temper.

  "If she comes home in my absence," he said sweetly, "Mistress Bartholomew, you are to lock her in her chamber, and feed her nothing but bread and water."

  What wrung his heart was that it was meant in humour, a not very funny thing to try and lighten the mood in that desperate kitchen. And they thought he meant it. Both Deb and the Widow were sufficient worried that they were paying him no mind whatsoever. "I believe she may have flown to the Americas," he said, by way of an experiment, and the Widow nodded at him absently.

  "I'll send a boy to ask," she said. "But Major - only go!"

  She was bustling, purposelessly, like a bee in a bottle, and that was going to drive him mad if he did not get out.

  It was not in play, and she was gone, and he thought he might be sick with fear. It had been a long time since he had done this. Felt this, fear and black murderous rage and superstitious wretched dread all boiling together in his belly. He shut his eyes, and prayed, very quick and very fierce. And then he thought of her, of her dear not-quite-pretty face, her level eyes all bright with love and humour and aliveness: he summoned her, in his head, the look and the feel and the smell of her.

  "Hold fast, tibber," he said aloud. "Hold fast, dear love. I'm coming for you."

  68

  And if she was not at Birstall House, there was only one other place she was likely to be – with Fairmantle, while he was buzzing round the Earl of Rochester like a fly round a turd, craving Wilmot’s notice.

  (And why the infernal man had taken Russell’s wife with him he would never know, but it was the sort of brainless idea that cork-brained rattle-bag would come up with, and she would have gone because she still thought he was helpful. An idea which he was very shortly going to disabuse her of, at length, and with feeling. When he caught up with her -)

  To give Wilmot credit, he never turned a hair, disturbed at his breakfast. At three of the clock, the depraved young wastrel. He looked up, with his glass in his hand, and he said, quite sweetly, “I’m sure I don’t know, Caliban. Where did you last have her?”

  “She was with you!”

  “No, she isn’t.” He would have set the glass down untasted, and that was a sure sign of disquiet in one of that company. “Why d’you think she’s here?”

  “She left to meet bloody Fairmantle! And he’s not at home, so -”

  “Language, dear, language,” Wilmot said, and twirled his wine glass by the stem. “You won’t catch me using foul language in polite company.”

  “I am likely to become considerably less polite company, sir, if you do not stop fencing with me!”

  Two pairs of dark, level eyes met, and neither dropped.

  “So you believe me to be abetting your wife in some sort of liaison with Charles Fairmantle, sir?” He sounded amused. “I quit your lady of so shameful a lack of personal taste, Caliban. A lack of discretion, perchance, and surely a lack of common sense, or I’m sure she’d never have married you, but –“

  Russell was proud of himself, at that moment. Twenty years ago he’d probably just have punched the Earl of Rochester in the head, repeatedly. He was an older and wiser man, with responsibilities – with a family, God willing - and instead he just drew his sword and rested the tip of it on the table, so that the shadow of it fell in a purposeful straight line across the frigid linen, pointing like an arrowhead at Wilmot’s groin. “Don’t piss me about,” he said. “I’m not in the mood. Where’s Thomazine?”

  Wilmot glanced down, and cocked an eyebrow. “On grounds that I’d not miss the heart, but the lack of that might cause me some inconvenience? Well, I swear to you, major. On whatever you choose, since I doubt you’d believe me if I swore in God’s name – I swear to you, may my sceptre never serve me again if I lie. I have not seen the girl.” He stood up, and straightened his cuffs. “Despite what Master Fairmantle would like you to think, he is not a permanent resident in my establishment. For which I am more grateful than you will ever know, sir. So, assuming that he has not crawled into my privy and is even now locked in adoring contemplation of the contents, where is the creature?”

  “Not at home.”

  “Master Fairmantle is very often not at home, major – or claiming not to be, in the hope of feigning popularity. Are you sure he was not there?”

  “Unless he was hiding under the bed, my lord, yes!”

  “Now you’re being silly,” Wilmot said reprovingly. “Why on earth would a wench of some good sense – save in one particular matter only –“

  “Shut up.”

  “Why would she choose to spend time with that dreadful, witless man? When she could be at home with another dreadful –“

  Russell was not going to bite, this time. “She thought he might be of service.”

  “Well, I imagine there’s a first time for everything!”

  “She thought he might be in a position to gossip -”

  “Charles Fairmantle, gossip? Surely not, major!”

  Russell took a deep breath. “Gossip that we directed, sir, rather than whatever malevolent imp of mischief has been slinking around London telling the world that I have a habit of murdering my relatives!”

  “My dear man,” Wilmot said coolly, “that rumour began with Master Fairmantle. He is your next door neighbour, sir, he ought to know.”

  For a mi
nute he could not speak. “He said I had most foully murdered my own sister?”

  “Has been saying it for months, sir. Not that anyone believed him, of course. I imagine I should get my coat, shouldn’t I? You might want to leave yours here, major. You’ll only get blood on the cuffs and I believe it is the very devil to remove from brocade.”

  “Why would he? Why would he do that?”

  “Well, I’m buggered if I know, Caliban. It makes a better story, possibly, and we might pay him some notice – is my guess. Why don’t we go back round to his house and ask him? Bring your sword – I imagine you’ll be wanting that. Paddle his flabby white arse, if nothing more gentlemanly.”

  But Russell had a horrible feeling he did know. He didn’t know why, but he thought he had an idea.

  He wanted to weep, and he wanted to run away, but most of all he wished to God he was the man that Charles Fairmantle had told people he was. Because when he got his hands on that slanderous gossip-monger – that duplicitous, sneaking, spineless lickspittle – he was going to commit murder.

  69

  “The Earl is not at home,” the butler intoned, and Russell did not trouble to reply, but walked in anyway. Ignoring the man’s protests, because he had his sword in his hand and he wasn’t in the mood to listen to some squawking lackey, but he had Wilmot cheerfully ambling behind him, and he was armed to the teeth as well.

  “What d’you think, then, Caliban? Shall we look under the beds?”

  The Earl was quartering the parlour like a hunting-dog, busily moving the chairs and disarranging the drapery. Lifting the lid of a great ornate tobacco-jar and peering inside, sniffing – “How very nasty,” he said , and dropped the lid onto the hearth, where it burst like an eggshell. And then smiled his lovely, angelic smile. “Dear me, I am clumsy, aren’t I?”