Where Serpents Sleep

by C. S. Harris

  “Nothing of any significance. He was delirious. In and out of consciousness. I couldn’t even get him to tell me his name.”

  “Bloody hell,” said Sebastian again, only softly this time, for he’d remembered Miss Jarvis’s presence.

  She said, “Your arrival here is fortuitous.”

  He looked around to find her still standing in the narrow hallway. “How is that, Miss Jarvis?”

  She retied the fluttering burgundy velvet ribbons of her hat with crisp, no-nonsense movements. The woman had been born without an ounce of coquetry or flirtation, Sebastian thought, just intellect and lethal purposefulness. She said, “I’ve arranged to meet the Cyprian from the Orchard Street Academy, Tasmin Poole, at Billingsgate this morning. It is my hope that she might have discovered something else of interest.”

  “Billingsgate? Why Billingsgate?”

  She raised one eyebrow in a gesture so reminiscent of Lord Jarvis himself that Sebastian felt a chill. “You think Berkeley Square would have been more appropriate?”

  Paul Gibson made a strangling noise in his throat and turned away.

  She looked Sebastian square in the eye and said, “It occurs to me that you may have questions you’d like to ask her yourself.”

  Sebastian met Miss Jarvis’s frank gaze and saw there a faint hint of mockery lightly tinged with resentment. She obviously knew full well he was not telling her all the sordid details he was learning of Rachel Fairchild’s life, and so she’d decided to listen to the questions he asked Tasmin Poole and learn from them.

  He smiled. “I have indeed, Miss Jarvis.”

  “Good.” She turned toward the door. “We’ll take your curricle.” To her maid she said, “Jenna, you will await me in the carriage.”

  The maid’s eyes widened, but she simply dropped a meek courtesy. “Yes, miss.”

  Gibson let out a half-smothered laugh he turned into an improbable cough. Sebastian said softly to his friend, “If I should disappear, you’ll know where to tell them to search for my body,” and followed Lord Jarvis’s daughter out into the blustery afternoon.

  “You are very perceptive, aren’t you?” she said, arranging her burgundy skirts around her.

  Ignoring Tom’s fierce scowl, Sebastian hopped up beside her and gathered the reins. “I do occasionally have these rare moments of blinding insight.”

  A smile played about her lips. She opened her parasol.

  He said, “There’s no sun.”

  “It’s there. It’s just behind the clouds.”

  He hesitated a moment, his gaze on her aquiline profile, then gave his horses the office to start. “It’s your father, isn’t it?” he said when it was obvious she had no intention of answering his question. “Someone has tried to kill you twice in the past week, and so Lord Jarvis has set one of his men to watching you.”

  She turned her head to look at him. “How did you know?”

  “I know Lord Jarvis.” Sebastian deliberately swung his horses away from Billingsgate and the river. Over his shoulder, he said to Tom, “Anyone following us?”

  “Aye. There’s a cove on a neat bay.”

  “Can you lose him?” she asked.

  “Probably,” said Sebastian. “Where precisely in Billingsgate are we going?”

  “St. Magnus.”

  Sebastian gave a sharp laugh. “No wonder you wished for me to accompany you.” The church was on the edge of the rough-and-tumble fish market that had made Billingsgate famous. It wouldn’t be as boisterous now as, say, at five o’clock on a Friday morning, but it was hardly the place for a lady. He glanced down at her fine burgundy skirt. “People generally wear their oldest clothes to Billingsgate.”

  “Then we’re both overdressed, aren’t we?” She threw a quick glance over her shoulder. “How do you intend to lose him?”

  Sebastian kept his attention on his horses. “Ever visit St. Olave’s in Seething Lane?”

  “St. Olave’s?” she repeated, not understanding.

  “The wife of Samuel Pepys is buried there. I think,” said Sebastian, guiding his horses between the vast warehouses of the East India Company, “that you’ve just been seized with an overwhelming desire to visit it.”

  The church and its neglected churchyard lay in the shadow of one East India Company warehouse and across the street from another. Sebastian drew up outside a gate adorned with five skulls.

  “Cheerful,” said Miss Jarvis, eyeing the ancient, moss-covered gateway.

  “More cheerful now than when Pepys described it overflowing with the high graves of hundreds of new plague victims.” He handed the reins to Tom. “There’s a cold wind blowing, so you’d best walk them. But don’t go far.”

  “Aye, gov’nor.”

  Sebastian helped Miss Jarvis to alight, and noticed approvingly that she was careful not to let her gaze stray toward the dark-haired man reining in his bay at the end of the lane.

  “Now what?” she asked, walking beside him into the churchyard.

  “I will discourse at length on windows and corbels and the quaint gallery that once adorned the south side of the church, and you will look fascinated.”

  “I’ll try.”

  They took a tour of the overgrown graveyard with its broken, lichen-covered tombstones and leaning iron picket fence, then entered the church through a squeaky transept door. Miss Jarvis admired the organ gallery, and the altar tomb of some obscure Elizabethan knight named Sir John Radcliffe, who lay recumbent with his dutiful wife kneeling beside him for all time.

  “I wonder where she is buried,” said Miss Jarvis, eyeing that devoted spouse. “Sir John seems to have forgotten to provide for her.”

  “Perhaps she remarried some gallant courtier who didn’t expect her to spend the rest of eternity praying on her knees.”

  Miss Jarvis fixed her gaze upon him. “I’m impressed with your knowledge of London’s obscure churches, but I must confess to a certain amount of confusion. What precisely have we accomplished by coming in here?”

  “That depends upon how close a watch your shadow was ordered to keep.”

  The sound of the church door opening echoed through the nave. A gust of wind entered the church, stirring up the scent of old incense and dank stones and long-dead knights.

  Miss Jarvis’s watchdog entered the church with his hat in his hands, his head turned away as he affected an intense study of the church’s peculiar flat-topped windows. Sebastian touched Miss Jarvis’s elbow, glanced toward the door, and whispered, “Quickly.”

  Side by side, they strode through the porch and down the church’s ancient, worn stone steps. The watchdog had left the reins of his horse looped over the iron railing of the churchyard. Walking up to the bay, Sebastian reached down and slipped his knife from the sheath in his boot.

  “Good heavens,” said Miss Jarvis, watching him.

  Throwing back the stirrup leather, Sebastian calmly sliced through the bay’s cinch as the horse nickered softly and swung its head to nose at Miss Jarvis’s reticule.

  A shout arose from the church porch. “Bloody ’ell! What the bloody ’ell ye think yer doin’?”

  “I don’t like being followed,” said Sebastian as Tom drew the curricle in beside them.

  “Bloody ’ell,” said the shadow again, hopping from one foot to the other, his face a study of anger and chagrin mingling now with a touch of consternation.

  Sebastian handed Miss Jarvis into the curricle and scrambled up behind her. “Your father will hear of this,” he warned her, giving his horses the office to start.

  The chestnuts sprang forward. Miss Jarvis unfurled her parasol and held it aloft. “I can deal with my father.”

  Sebastian steadied his horses. He was beginning to acquire a measure of sympathy for the King’s powerful cousin.

  Chapter 34

  Sebastian smelled the fish market long before he could see it. As they neared the steps, an increasingly sharp odor like seaweed filled the damp air, the cries of gulls mingling with a buzz of rauc
ous voices and the shouts of white-aproned salesmen standing on their tables and roaring their prices.

  “There she is,” said Miss Jarvis, nodding to the long-necked Jamaican, who stood on the footpath. With the fingers of one hand, the Cyprian clutched together a drab cloak she wore to cover her Covent Garden finery. She glanced around nervously, her brown eyes open wide enough to show a rim of the dusky-blue whites surrounding her irises.

  “Walk ’em,” said Sebastian, handing the reins to Tom.

  The tiger threw Miss Jarvis a malevolent glare. “Aye, gov’nor.”

  “Was he really a pickpocket?” asked Miss Jarvis, accepting Sebastian’s arm to cross the raucous width of Lower Thames Street.

  “It was either that or starve,” said Sebastian.

  She released his arm the instant they reached the far footpath. “It’s a curious conceit,” she said, “hiring a pickpocket as your tiger.”

  “Tom’s good with horses.” The boy had also saved Sebastian’s life, but he saw no reason to add that.

  “I didn’t think ye was gonna come,” said Tasmin Poole as Hero walked up to her. Since the last time Sebastian had seen the Cyprian, someone had obviously worked her over with his fists, leaving her with a discolored cheek and a split lip. She threw a narrowed glance at Sebastian. “What’s he doin’ here?”

  “He is also interested in what happened to Rose.”

  The Cyprian sniffed and held out her hand, palm up, fingers crooked. “You said you’d give me five pounds, just for showing up here.”

  “With the promise of more,” said Miss Jarvis, passing the woman a small cloth purse, “if you can provide me with the information I seek.”

  The purse disappeared quickly amidst the woman’s clothes. Most whores cleared little or nothing from the long lines of customers they labored every night to service. These were earnings the girl wouldn’t need to share with her keepers. Precious indeed.

  Miss Jarvis said, “Have you learned anything more about Hannah Green?”

  “People are lookin’ at us queer,” said Tasmin, turning toward the fish market. “We need t’ keep moving.”

  Miss Jarvis plunged after her into a malodorous crowd of men in shiny corduroy jackets and greasy caps. A woman with the limp tails of codfish dangling from her apron brushed past with a sibilant hiss, her elbows clearing a path as she went. A porter bent nearly double beneath a huge dripping hamper that had soaked the shoulders and back of his canvas coat barked, “Move on, there! Move on.”

  Miss Jarvis whisked her skirts out of the way and kept going. “Have you learned more about Hannah Green?”

  Tasmin Poole said, “I got one or two ideas about where she might be, but I ain’t had time t’go there yet.”

  “Where?” asked Sebastian.

  The woman glanced over at him. “If I tell you and you find her, then she”—here Tasmin jerked her head toward Miss Jarvis—“won’t give me my money.”

  Miss Jarvis said, “You’ll be paid for any information that enables us to find Hannah Green. I’ve told you that.”

  Tasmin Poole stared out at the tangled rigging of the oyster boats moored along the wharf, each with its own black signboard and milling crowd of men and women massed around a white-aproned salesman. She bit her lip, obviously weighing the odds of being given a chance to track down the missing Hannah Green herself against the risk of divulging her information here and now. At last she said, “Hannah used t’work the Haymarket before she come to the Academy. She might have bolted back there.”

  Sebastian said, “I’ve been told Rose was in love with Ian Kane. Is that true?”

  Tasmin Poole’s laugh was a melodious peal of merriment that brought to mind palm trees swaying in a soft tropical breeze. “That’s rich, all right.”

  Miss Jarvis cast Sebastian a sharp look. He knew it was only with effort that she kept from demanding, And who is Ian Kane?

  To Tasmin, Sebastian said, “I take it Rose wasn’t particularly fond of Mr. Kane?”

  “She despised him,” said Tasmin Poole. She’d caught the eye of a red-capped fisherman in a striped jersey sitting on the side of his boat and smoking a clay pipe. The fisherman smiled, and Tasmin smiled back.

  Sebastian said, “For any particular reason?”

  Tasmin brought her gaze back to Sebastian’s face. “You mean, apart from the fact Kane’s a mean son of a bitch? Yeah. He’s hard on all his girls, but he was hardest of all on Rose. It was like he was tryin’ t’break her. Never did, though.”

  “She was afraid of him?” said Miss Jarvis.

  Tasmin threw her a scornful look. “We’re all afraid of him. But Rose—” She broke off.

  “Yes?” prompted Miss Jarvis.

  “Rose was afraid of someone else. She come to the Academy afraid.”

  “Any idea who she was afraid of?” asked Sebastian.

  The Jamaican twitched one thin shoulder. “She never was one to talk t’the rest of us.” She tipped her head to one side, her gaze thoughtful as she glanced from Miss Jarvis to Sebastian, then back. “You keep talking about Rose and Hannah, but you never ask nothin’ about Hessy.”

  Sebastian sidestepped a barrel piled high with black oyster sacks. “Who?”

  “Hessy Abrahams. She was another girl at the house. She left the same night as the other two.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about her before?” said Miss Jarvis, sounding ever so slightly aggrieved.

  Again that faint twitch of the shoulder. “I didn’t think you was interested. You only asked about Rose and Hannah.”

  “You’re certain this Hessy Abrahams left with the other two women?” asked Sebastian.

  “Well, she sure ain’t been seen since.”

  For one startled moment, Sebastian’s gaze met Miss Jarvis’s. The air filled with the cries of the fish salesmen shouting, “Ha-a-ndsome cod! All alive! Alive! Alive, oh!” and “Here! This way for a splendid skate.”

  Tasmin Poole’s fingers crept up to touch her split lip. Then she must have realized what she was doing, because her hand fluttered away and she stared off across the shed with its piles of reddish brown shrimp and white-bellied turbots gleaming like mother-of-pearl in the gloom.

  “Looks like someone worked you over pretty good,” said Sebastian.

  The Cyprian’s palm cupped her bruised cheek, her lip curling. “Bloody magistrate.”

  “Sir William?” said Sebastian.

  She lifted her brown gaze to his. “That’s right.” She spit the words out contemptuously. “He likes it rough. Sometimes he gets carried away. This is nothin’. You should’ve seen what he did t’ Sarah once. Broke two of her ribs. She couldn’t work for near a month.”

  “Did he come to the house last week?” Sebastian asked suddenly.

  “Maybe. I don’t know,” said the Jamaican warily.

  “Which night?”

  “I tell you, I don’t know.” Suddenly frightened, she gripped the folds of her cloak more tightly around her. “I need t’be gettin’ back.” She threw an avaricious glance at Miss Jarvis. “You find Hannah Green in Haymarket, I get my money.” It wasn’t a question.