A Seditious Affair

by K. J. Charles

  Dominic had paced around Richard’s room like a caged animal the day before, going over and over the same ground—What do I do? What do I do?—until finally Richard had said, “Do you trust him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a simple question. Do you believe that he is, as you have said, a good man with different opinions? Not a murderer, not a Bonapartist, not a traitor?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Then if you are correct, he is not involved in a conspiracy to take London by force,” Richard had said. “In which case your warning would be not just a shameful betrayal of duty but an unnecessary one, and perhaps even an insulting one. If you trust him, Dominic, then trust him.”

  So he had. And now Silas was not here.

  Dominic waited. Waited and waited, until past midnight, feeling colder with every moment that passed, and then left. Walked back home in a state of frozen despair. Did not take a hackney to Ludgate to beat fruitlessly on the door of the bookshop, did not flee to St. James’s Street to demand what Harry knew, did not do anything. Because if there had been treason and Silas had been arrested, everything was over and it was too late. He had been a traitor by his silence as much as Silas by his act.

  He roamed his rooms, but they were full of Silas. The study in which he’d given Harry to Silas for Christmas and where, later, Silas had fucked him in front of the fire, holding the poker tight against Dominic’s throat so he had gasped for breath. The bedroom where, for the only time in their whole year and a half, they had slept and woken together. The bookshelves everywhere, all of them shaped by Silas’s voracious reading.

  Dominic did not sleep that night.

  He went into the office the next morning to get the news in the spirit of a man condemned. He felt like one. But at least he’d know; at least then he could engage Absalom, who loved a lost cause. He could fight. He would fight.

  Except there was no fight to be had.

  Nobody was talking about a conspiracy. Nobody mentioned a plot, or a revolution, or an arrest. The place was as dull as ditch water. Dominic looked around, not quite understanding what had or hadn’t happened. He asked five people, “What news?” and received yawning, uninterested answers. At last he went to Skelton.

  “Good morning. Are you busy?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I thought you might be,” Dominic said recklessly. “Was there not something on last night, in your line?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I heard talk of some outrage planned the day of his majesty’s funeral.”

  “Oh, that? No, I fear you’re rather behind the times, Mr. Frey, that didn’t come off in the end. No trouble at all.”

  Dominic blinked. “Then what did happen last night?”

  “Nothing that I know of.”

  “No,” Dominic said. “Something must have happened, something— What was it?”

  Skelton looked up at him, baffled. “I have no idea. Are you all right, Mr. Frey?”

  “Confused. I fear I have got myself in a muddle. Do excuse me.”

  He fled back to his desk, thinking frantically against the exhaustion. If nothing had happened, where the devil was Silas? Bow Street? He could go straight there, but he couldn’t ask if they had Silas in custody…

  Blast it.

  He abandoned his desk with a brief word of excuse, strode to the street, and hailed a hackney to take him to Ludgate. He meant to walk the last few hundred yards, down Paternoster Row, but in fact, once he saw the gap in the roofline, he ran.

  Theobald’s Bookshop was a blackened wreck, flour-dusted by the night’s light snowfall, the roof fallen in, the windows smashed. A breeze stirred the ashes, sending the burned ghosts of pages twisting into the air. The nearby houses were charred but still standing.

  He became aware of a couple of people watching him. “What happened?” he demanded, and his voice did not sound like his own.

  “The Hobhouse boys, that’s what happened, sir,” a woman offered. “Couple of wretches from Ave Marie Lane with a grudge against Mr. Mason on account of he thrashed their thieving brothers for ’em. Set the place lit on Monday night. Could have burned the whole street, the little—”

  “Arson?” Dominic stared at the wreckage. “Monday?”

  “Monday night, about two of the clock, when we was all abed—”

  “Where’s Mason?”

  “Ooh,” said his informant. “Well, sir, I couldn’t say—”

  “Did he get out?”

  “Aye, sir, aye,” said the woman’s companion soothingly. “No fear of that. He was fighting fire with the rest of us till past dawn. Got out with the clothes on his back, nothing more.”

  “God’s mercy he still had his skin,” the other said.

  Dominic muttered agreement. “Where is he?”

  That, it seemed, nobody knew. Silas had watched his home and place of business, with all his stock, burn to the ground, and then he had disappeared into London. Nobody had seen him since Tuesday morning. They had all been much more interested in the Hobhouse boys’ arrest. There had been a witness who had raised the alarm, it seemed; the scum would hang. As if Dominic cared.

  Silas was penniless, homeless, and he hadn’t come last night.

  Harry would know. He’ll have gone to Harry, Dominic told himself, and embraced the hurt that thought gave, because it meant Silas was safe and warm instead of lost on London’s bitter streets. Dominic didn’t allow himself to wonder why Harry would not have said anything to him. Silas had surely gone to Harry.

  It was not yet midday. He went straight to Julius’s rooms, since Harry was as likely to be there as at his nominal home with Richard, and found the pair recruiting their strength with coffee, ham, and eggs.

  “Dominic, welcome,” Julius said as he entered. “Good God, what’s wrong?”

  “Silas,” Dominic snapped at Harry. “Where is he?”

  “Silas? I’ve no idea. Has something happened?”

  Dominic stared, mouth open. “You don’t know? But…”

  “Sit down.” That was Julius at his elbow, forcing him into a chair. “Coffee. Drink that and then enlighten us. What’s going on?”

  “The bookshop burned down on Monday night. Arson, some bully’s grudge. He’s lost everything and he’s gone.”

  “Where?” Harry demanded, white-faced.

  “He doesn’t know, my love. That’s why he’s here,” Julius said. “Apply your intelligence. Has he family?”

  Harry shook his head. “A cousin. William Mason, the printer. I doubt he’d go there, though; he’s always been careful with contact. Because of the, you know, writing.”

  Julius nodded. “Other radicals then. Who?”

  “Uh…Some of the Spenceans, maybe, but they’re all poor as church mice. I’m sure they’d help if they could, but he wouldn’t want to be a burden. That’s the problem. It would need to be someone he could trust, who could afford to help, but also someone he wouldn’t taint by association.” Harry met Dominic’s eyes, his deep blue gaze full of urgent desire to be believed. “That’s the reason he wouldn’t come to you. He wouldn’t hurt you.”

  “Or, presumably, you,” Julius said. “So where would he go? Or, and I regret to be the one to say this, what if he hasn’t gone anywhere? Was he injured in the fire?”

  “Not that I could learn,” Dominic said. “But he’s alone on the streets, and it’s cold.”

  “My understanding is that this man is not an imbecile,” Julius said crisply. “Or do you both believe he’d rather freeze to death than ask for help?”

  “But his books burned,” Harry said. “His books.”

  “Yes, yes, wounded animal, I take your point. Then think of a burrow, dear boy, while Dominic drinks some more coffee, and both of you at least pretend to mental fortitude.”

  Julius’s astringency won him few friends, but it focused the mind. Harry threw out a few names, none with any great certainty, none that Dominic knew.

  “What abou
t Millay’s?” he asked after a while. “Mistress Zoë and he seemed good friends.”

  “Millay’s is the last place he’d go after leading the hounds there once already,” Harry said. “I’ll try some of the old crowd—”

  “No, you won’t,” Julius said. “No. You will not go visiting among the radicals, and that is all there is to it.”

  Harry was a cheerful, feckless, pleasure-seeking young man, but as he turned on his lover then, he resembled Richard at his most autocratic. “If Silas needs me, I will go.” His tone brooked no contradiction.

  “I’m afraid Julius is right,” Dominic said. “There’s trouble brewing, which—well, suffice to say, if you visit half a dozen radicals, there’s every chance you’ll be seen and noted doing it. Don’t.”

  “And you can?” Harry demanded hotly. “Do you think they’ll talk to you?”

  Dominic put both hands through his hair. “I’m quite sure they won’t, but he wouldn’t thank you for damning yourself on his account. If you think of anything—hear anything—”

  Harry subsided. “Of course. And if we can help, let us know.”

  —

  Dominic went to Millay’s anyway, though it was far too early to raise a house that shrouded its deeds in tactful darkness. Mistress Zoë, a yawning doorman informed him, was still abed in her own home and wasn’t to be raised nohow. He wouldn’t give the address, even with the prospect of a guinea twinkling in Dominic’s hand.

  “Very generous of you, sir, but a guinea won’t do me long if Mistress Zoë bites my leg off and beats me bloody with it. She doesn’t like to be woke,” he explained, and Dominic had perforce to accept that.

  He went back to his rooms, because there was damn all to be done. He didn’t allow himself to hope there would be a message there, and, indeed, there was none.

  Perhaps Silas was injured. Dominic placed no faith in the reports that he had “looked well enough, considering.” At some ungodly hour, with him blackened by smoke, who could be accurate? And how much did the people of Paternoster Row even care, those for whom he’d fought so long, for whom he’d gone hungry, yet who had let him disappear into London destitute. It was a perfect practical example of why the democratic idea was a utopian folly, and Dominic wished to heaven that it had been himself rather than Silas proved wrong.

  Think, Frey.

  If Silas was dead or dying in the gutters, or hidden away in some radical’s den, Dominic had no means of finding him. Therefore, Dominic had to concentrate on what he could tackle. Silas wasn’t with Harry; he might be with Mistress Zoë, and if that was the case, he would be safe. He might be with other friends, but he never mentioned other friends…

  Jon. He’d mentioned a Jon, the man who had paired them on Cyprian’s orders. And Zoë, talking of that, had muttered, I’ve got something to say to that brother of mine. Her brother was Shakespeare, partner of the club keeper Quex, and it was notorious among the Ricardians that Cyprian was thick as thieves with them both.

  Silas’s Jon was, had to be, Shakespeare from Quex’s.

  Dominic propelled himself upright and reached for his boots.

  It was not far to Quex’s. The house didn’t open until four o’clock, but he hammered on the door, and the footman who answered let him in. He was, after all, Dominic Frey.

  “I want Mr. Shakespeare, please. At once, and in private.”

  There was a certain amount of subdued panic in the footman’s response. Clearly this was more than he was paid for. The public rooms were still being swept out. The place reeked of stale smoke and sweat, and, Dominic could not but notice, it was a little shabby in the unforgiving daylight.

  He was brought to a study piled with ledgers and account books, where he waited for a few impatient minutes until Shakespeare entered, impassive as ever, with Quex limping at his heels.

  “Mr. Frey, sir. May I help you?”

  “I hope so. Do you know where Silas Mason is?”

  A fractional pause, then Quex said, in that rather high voice of his, “Who’s that, sir?”

  “Silas Mason,” Dominic said. “I am aware you know him, Mr. Shakespeare. Your sister told me of a conversation between you and her regarding Mr. Mason and myself.”

  A longer silence. Shakespeare said at last, with caution, “Is there a problem, sir?”

  “Yes. I want to know where Mr. Mason is, and you have not yet told me.”

  Quex’s smooth face tightened. In the sun that streamed through the window, his chin appeared impeccably shaved to a point of smoothness not even Cyprian could achieve, whereas Shakespeare had a day’s worth of bristle. Both the men looked different, in fact. Perhaps it was that they weren’t in livery, or the effect of daylight rather than the usual candlelight, but Dominic seemed to see them for the first time. Shakespeare’s powerful muscles, a big man who nevertheless had a touch of wariness in his eyes, as though he were used to attack. And—

  Dominic stared at “William” Quex, barely believing, and saw the second when Quex knew that he had seen. His—her?—eyes widened, and her narrow shoulders squared in a defiance all too familiar.

  Dominic could use this. Quex was a masquerading woman running a gentlemen’s club. That outrageous truth would destroy their livelihood and might see her pilloried if any offended customer chose to object. All he had to do was say he knew her secret—or, surely, their secret, the both of theirs—and he could enforce them to do whatever he wanted.

  A clumsy oaf might do that.

  Dominic cleared his throat. “My concern here is Mr. Mason. His shop has burned down; he has not been seen, as far as I can discover, since Tuesday morning. I want to find him. You know why.” He let that hang for a second. We all have secrets. “I do not know a good reason why he would not wish to see me. He may have a reason, and if he does, I would not ask his friends to go against his wishes. But I must know that he is safe, that he is well, that he is not in need. If you can tell me where he is, I beg that you will. If all you can tell me is how he is, then please, do so.”

  “Why do you think we know where he is?” asked Shakespeare.

  “But you do. Don’t you?”

  “And if we don’t,” Quex said. “What then?”

  “Then I continue looking,” Dominic said. “His well-being is my sole concern, Mr. Quex.”

  Quex shot a glance at Shakespeare, who twitched one brow in silent communication that spoke of years side by side. A question being addressed.

  Dominic had a weary certainty that Silas wouldn’t come to him for help, but he surely wouldn’t have told his friends to turn him away. So if Quex and Shakespeare were hesitating, it was for another reason. Such as that revealing Silas’s whereabouts could cause them trouble.

  “He’s here, isn’t he?”

  Quex’s face set. Shakespeare sighed. “You should play more, Mr. Frey. You’d stop Mr. Webster taking every trick. Sir, if Mr. Cyprian finds out we took him in here—”

  “He won’t from me.” The relief was a physical, dizzying thing. “Thank the stars. Thank you. Is he all right?”

  “Coughing a lot,” Quex said. “Hands got a bit burned. The rest…Well, you’ll see. You, uh, you do understand the problem with Mr. Cyprian, sir?”

  They had brought Jack Cade, seditious rogue, into the house that Lord Richard Vane used to keep his charmed circle safe. Richard’s wrath would be terrible if he found out. Dominic winced at the thought. “I understand very well. He is fortunate in his friends.”

  “Yes,” Quex said. “I was just thinking that myself, sir.”

  Quex took Dominic into the service part of the house, up the back stairs. He didn’t limp. Evidently the usual halting motion was a disguise to conceal what would otherwise be the sway of hips. Quex was nothing if not thorough.

  Dominic ought, he supposed, to be shocked, but under the circumstances, he couldn’t muster the energy.

  “All right, Mr. Frey.” Quex opened a little door in a bare, dark corridor. “Oi, Silas. You got a visitor.”

  S
ilas was lying in a low truckle bed. He looked older, his hands were bandaged, and his face was speckled red: from flying embers, no doubt. He had been staring at the ceiling, eyes blank; at Quex’s words he turned his head, then sat up so sharply he almost fell off the bed.

  “Dom?” he rasped, voice scratchier than usual. “How are you here?”

  “Silas.” Dominic was on his knees at the side of the bed, reaching for Silas’s hands before pulling his own away for fear of doing harm. “Silas, you damned fool, why did you not tell me? I’ve been running mad wondering what happened to you. I thought— You sod. How are you?”

  “What? Fine, fine.” Silas blinked. “What day is it?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Thursday?” Silas dropped his head back onto the pillow. “Hell. Sorry, Dom. I should’ve sent word to you. Been asleep, I reckon.”

  “What happened?”

  Silas shrugged. “Those young buggers who robbed Martha Charkin set fire to the shop, middle of the night. Few hours trying to put it out, everyone on the street pitched in, but…”

  “I saw it. I came to find you. It’s gone.”

  “Aye.” Silas stared at the ceiling. “Well, that’s that. I…went off after.”

  “Why did nobody help you, for heaven’s sake?” Dominic blurted. “How could they let you—”

  “Didn’t want help. Flapping round me like a set of hens, I couldn’t stand it. Did some walking. Went to see Jon…sometime yesterday, I suppose?”

  Heaven knew what loneliness, what misery that covered. Dominic put a hand to Silas’s arm. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s the books,” Silas said. “All the books, gone to ash. All that thinking, all that writing. My Blakes, the lot of them. My books. Fucking hell, Dom, I know it ain’t the same, but it feels like my boy did. Gone, and naught I can do about it.”

  His voice cracked, and Dom leaned forward, gathering him into his arms, holding his bulky brute like a child. “I know. I know.”