Point of Honour (Sarah Tolerance)

by Madeleine E. Robins

  He shook his head. “None so far. I’m unwanted. If this keeps up, your aunt will decide she cannot afford to keep me—”

  “Unlikely. At worst, she’ll keep you as an ornament to the establishment. You’re such a pretty fellow.” In fact, the gray and purple shadows that filled the cottage did not become him; he appeared haggard and ghostly. Miss Tolerance hurried to light a lamp.

  “I shall wind up in the stews in Cheapside, drinking Blue Ruin, my looks quite destroyed,” he continued, as if she had not spoken. “In the end I’ll probably hang myself with my last remaining silk stocking and be buried at the crossroads.” He dropped onto the settle in a theatrical attitude of dejection.

  Miss Tolerance laughed.

  “Idiot! With your turn for drama, you should be in Covent Garden rehearsing with Mrs. Jordan. I’ll wager you anything you like that within an hour someone from my aunt’s will be here to announce that you’ve a visitor. Or more than one. And if you have no taste for gin now, why would you start? Furthermore, you have far too much amour-propre to allow yourself to be disfigured by hanging. Your face would turn purple, your eyes swell up, and I understand that at the moment of death—”

  “For God’s sake, enough! I know hangings—used to be as good as a festival day where I came from. You’re right, I won’t hang myself. As for the rest … what would you wager? I’m feeling forlorn tonight. Perhaps a wager will cheer me up.”

  “A pair of silk stockings against …” She thought for a moment. “A favor. I may have need of someone to run an errand for me in the course of this current business.”

  “Nothing more intimate than running an errand?” He feigned disappointment. “I’ll do it, though it’s a grossly unfavorable wager; for what your aunt gets for an hour of my time …” He settled onto the bench by the fireplace, poking desultorily at the coals until the fire lit, then put the kettle on. Miss Tolerance, in the meanwhile, had taken up her writing desk and was reviewing notes she had made.

  “You’re muttering to yourself, Sarey. What is fretting you?” He stretched one arm across to her, plucked the penknife from the writing desk, and began to clean his nails with it.

  Miss Tolerance shook her head. “You know I cannot tell you.”

  “Spoilsport. You could let me know in the most general way. You’ve talked about your cases before.”

  It was on the tip of Miss Tolerance’s tongue to note that this was the first time she had ever suspicioned betrayal from within her aunt’s household. She bit hard on the sentiment and said mildly, “It is only a puzzle I must unravel, nothing more. I’m on the track of what appears to be an unexeceptionable object, only it seems that several people are in pursuit of that same prize. I should like to know why.”

  “D’you need to know?”

  “To find the prize? I don’t think so. But to play the game that seems to be springing up around the prize, I may.” She looked down at the papers on her desk quizzically, then drew a fresh sheet of paper, inked her pen, and began to write a report for Versellion. For some little while the room was silent except for the pleasant sounds of pen scratching on paper, and cups and kettle rattling as Matt made tea for them both. Miss Tolerance had finished the note and was blotting it when someone knocked at the door.

  “Come,” Matt called out before Miss Tolerance could say anything.

  Cole entered with a summons for Matt: a Mr. Blethersfield was inquiring for him.

  “Ah, dear David!” Matt said with unfeigned affection. “I am saved from Blackbottle’s for one more day.” He rose at once from the settle.

  Miss Tolerance looked up sharply. “What did you say?”

  Matt grinned. “You won your bet, Sarey. I owe you an hour of my time, although I’m sure I could think of a better way to while it than on errands.” He waggled his eyebrows at her meaningfully.

  “Be serious, Matt. What did you just say?”

  “That I was saved from the Cheapside stews once again. Mr. Blethersfield wants me, your aunt will continue to employ me, and I needn’t consider taking sailors at—”

  “Blackbottle! Good God, of course I knew the name.” She locked the note in her desk, thinking to send it later, and rose up. “Go along, Matt. Don’t keep your beau ami waiting. I have just recalled some business I must attend to.” She took up her hat, coat, and sword, pushed her friend out the door before her, and locked it up again. Then, following Matt into her aunt’s establishment, she desired Cole to fetch a hackney for her. The address she gave was Bow Lane, Cheapside. Cole raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

  Passing through the airy avenues of Mayfair, where the last blush of sunset cast rosy light on the faces of the great houses, Miss Tolerance watched as the streets became progressively darker, narrower, and meaner. The driver pointed the carriage toward Covent Garden (doubtless to avoid the dangerous neighborhood of Seven Dials, some streets to the north). The Garden was bright enough: the theaters and opera waited to be filled, and a well-behaved throng of farmers turning homeward from the market crossed paths with flower girls and prostitutes awaiting the arrival of the night’s audiences, and beggars preparing their piteous lies for the benefit of the soft-hearted. But as the hackney crossed Drury Lane and continued east toward the city, the character of the neighborhood around them changed swiftly. Now and again the driver was forced to pull up to let a knot of people brawl across the thoroughfare; voices grew louder, more quarrelsome. Past the counting houses and courts of the city, still busy at this hour, then through the august shadows of St. Paul’s, they continued until the hackney drew up on Cheapside, at the entrance to Bow Lane.

  Miss Tolerance was no stranger to these streets, yet she found them uncongenial. She took comfort in the sword at her side and the small pistol, primed and ready, in the pocket of her Gunnard coat. The driver was duly paid and sped away. Miss Tolerance turned to view the narrow, ancient lane, off of which struck even narrower, less savory alleys. The homely smell of horse piss and manure mingled with the smells of sweat and of the effluvia of slops jars in the gutter, and wafts of hops and gin which issued from the open doors of the public houses.

  Miss Tolerance asked the first person she saw—a woman much younger on close inspection than her dress implied—the way to Blackbottle’s establishment. In the dusk and shadows of Bow Lane, the girl clearly saw only Miss Tolerance’s clothes and not the woman who wore them: she offered to supply “the gentleman” with anything that Blackbottle’s could provide, at half the cost.

  Miss Tolerance politely refused the offer; her business was with Blackbottle himself and no other.

  The girl grimaced. The lace on her bodice was shoddy stuff, grimy and torn, and the spray of flowers in her bonnet was sadly worn. Her face and the expanse of flesh revealed by her décolleté had been washed, but her neck was grimy and there was dirt under her fingernails. She took a step closer, moving in a cloud of gin.

  “You don’t want to go messin’ with Blackbottle’s, darling,” she told Miss Tolerance in slurred northern tones. “All them girls got the pox, and likely Blackbottle with ’em. I never heard he fancies boys, but you’re a pretty one … .” She reached a hand toward the front of Miss Tolerance’s trousers, obviously hoping to distract her from her purpose. Then she reared back.

  “Christ! What are you?”

  Miss Tolerance pushed the groping hand aside. “If you could show me the way, I can give you a shilling,”

  After a beat of hesitation, the hand stretched out again, palm up this time, to receive the offered tip. “Zis somethin’ new at Blackbottle’s, then? Girls tarted up to look like boys?” She closed her fist around the coin Miss Tolerance gave her and turned on her heel, steps still wobbly with gin, but all the seductive purpose gone from her movements.

  “I don’t work for Blackbottle,” Miss Tolerance told her, picking her way around the trash and dung that littered the street. “I need to talk to him.”

  “Talk!” The girl laughed. “They do precious little talking there, my girl. You’
ll need that pigsticker ere you’re done!” She stopped abruptly before an undistinguished door. “Zis’ll be it, then.” She backed away and Miss Tolerance looked up to see a big man framed against the light from the house.

  “That you, Callie?” he asked, not unkindly, but with a tone of warning. “Better clear out before Mrs. Virtue hears you’re out here.”

  “I’m going, Joe, I’m going. Brung you a caller, ’z all.” The girl smiled again. “Good luck, dearie. Come tell me how you fare.” She turned away and in a moment was lost to sight in the darkness of the street. Miss Tolerance turned back to the man in the doorway and asked to see Mr. Blackbottle. What it had taken the departed Callie several minutes to realize, Joe apprehended at once.

  “What, you come looking for work tricked out like that? Mr. Blackbottle won’t have none of that in this house, no more will Mrs. Virtue. Side of which, Mr. Blackbottle don’t hire hisself, he leaves that to Mrs. Virtue—”

  “Who is the manager of the establishment, I take it?” Miss Tolerance used her quietest, most polite tone, as if she were speaking to a clerk in a circulating library. “I am not here looking for work. Nor am I looking for … companionship,” she added, as Joe opened his mouth to speak. “I merely need to speak to Mr. Blackbottle on a matter of business. You may tell him that there is the chance of an easy profit in it for him. But I must speak to him and no other.”

  The doorkeeper nodded, thought it over, then paused to greet and admit a heavyset man with a kerchief tied under his ear, who shouldered past Miss Tolerance with the assurance of a longtime customer. Joe turned to follow the customer, closing the door firmly in Miss Tolerance’s face with one growled word: “Wait.”

  It took a good ten minutes for the doorkeeper to reappear. Miss Tolerance was joined several times by men of differing quality and degrees of inebriation, all desiring admission to the house and none discerning enough to discover Miss Tolerance’s gender. When Joe did return, he admitted the men, who could be seen disappearing into a room to the right of the stairway. The doorman turned to Miss Tolerance, his brows drawn up in a frown.

  “You wait there,” he said grudgingly, indicating with a nod of his head the chamber into which the others had vanished. This proved to be a small salon ringed around with chairs and sofas, on which sat a number of women, waiting. Despite the garish use of rouge and powder, and clothes which varied from full dress to little more than corset and garters, the waiting whores put Miss Tolerance strongly in mind of those young women at parties who, blessed with a squint, a stammer, or a lack of dowry, sat waiting hopelessly to dance. The men who had entered before her chose their partners and left with them. The remaining women stared at Miss Tolerance, murmured among themselves, tittered, and ignored her. They had no occupation other than waiting. Each time the front door opened, each one looked up hopefully; when one man familiar to all entered the room, they greeted him effusively as an old friend. On his part, the man crooked at finger at one of the girls and started up the stairs without waiting to see if she followed.

  After another ten minutes or more, Joe the doorman reappeared and muttered that the lady was to proceed to the room at the top of the stairs. Out of habit, much as she did at her aunt’s house, Miss Tolerance moved through Blackbottle’s establishment with her eyes down, seemingly unaware of her surroundings. Still, by the time she gained the first floor, she was convinced that this brothel was like most others of its kind: most of the doors were ajar, the smell of sex was pervasive, and cries of manufactured passion mingled with the howl of a dog on the street. A woman laughed loudly on the floor above, and a man growled an unintelligible command.

  At the top of the stairs Miss Tolerance knocked on the door and entered a room filled with the superficial trappings of luxury, startling after the sordid appearance of the ground floor. There were many candles in branches around the room, hangings of a rich, dark red, a Turkish carpet, and a sofa and chairs in the Egyptian style lately in vogue. A second glance showed Miss Tolerance that the carpet was grimy, the hangings of insubstantial material, and the gilded furniture cheaply made. The scent of rose attar hung on the air, mingled with another smell, sweet and familiar, which Miss Tolerance did not immediately place.

  “How may I help you?”

  The voice was low-pitched, beautiful, with a musical trace of foreign accent. The English, though very formal, was quite correct. Miss Tolerance turned to see its owner.

  “Mrs. Virtue? I was hoping to speak to Mr. Blackbottle.”

  “So Joe told me. You will sit down, perhaps, and take some refreshment?”

  The woman at first gave the impression that she was much the same in age as Miss Tolerance. She was tall, fleshy, and well-corseted; her red hair was piled atop her head in a tousled but pleasing arrangement that suggested she had lately arisen from a couch of pleasure. Her robe was made of velvet in a tawny shade of gold, an unusual color that conferred an air of the exotic. But like the room, a second glance undid the impression of the first: Miss Tolerance realized that the woman was probably her senior by a score of years, although a good deal of skill had gone into disguising the fact. She looked, certainly, far superior to her surroundings, and Miss Tolerance found herself wondering how this woman had come to be the mistress of so disreputable an establishment.

  “You’re very kind, ma’am,” Miss Tolerance said. She avoided the first chair offered, which had one leg askew and looked ready to fall under its own weight, took the second, and settled gingerly into it.

  “I fear that some of my chairs show their age, as you see,” Mrs. Virtue said. “You will drink some wine?” Her smile was warm and just slightly curious. Her teeth were even and very white.

  Miss Tolerance refused the wine. She did not wish to linger here, nor did she wholly trust the wine in an establishment like this to be undrugged. “I do not mean to take up your time, ma’am. I am in hopes to locate Mr. Blackbottle on a matter of business—”

  “For which you come armed. I will need some reassurance, before I send you on to my employer, that I am not sending him an assassin.” Mrs. Virtue smiled and poured a glass of wine for herself.

  “Assassin?” Miss Tolerance blinked, startled by the thought. “Is Mr. Blackbottle likely to be assassinated, ma’am?”

  “Probably not—but then, the appearance of a woman in men’s clothes, armed, at the door, is not so likely, either, is it?”

  “Mrs. Virtue, my weapons are merely prudent for a woman like myself in a neighborhood to which she is a stranger and which is, if you will pardon me, not of the best. I am the agent of a gentleman who wishes to reclaim an item sold to Mr. Blackbottle many years ago: the bauble has sentimental value to his family. Far from wishing your employer harm, I have it in my power to reward him generously for return of the item.”

  “But you cannot tell me what the item is?”

  “No, ma’am, I cannot. My client’s privacy—”

  “A delicate thing, I’m sure.” Mrs. Virtue’s smile was faintly malicious. “Well, I must tell you that my employer’s privacy is also delicate.” The smile became a grin. “And I must think twice about letting a woman in trousers force herself upon his notice after telling me a story of the cock and the bull and her client. Even if the lady is one of great virtue.” She inclined her head with mock graciousness, and her red curls bobbed.

  “You have nothing to fear from me, ma’am. My virtue is exactly what you think it, but my profession is different from yours, and I have no ambition to change it. I am precisely what I say: the agent of a man who wishes to buy something Mr. Blackbottle may possess.”

  “And you are not going to run Sir Humphrey through with that sword, or entice him to hire you—you’re not one to whore yourself, you’d want the running of an establishment, I think. But you wish only to find a piece of jewelry, a bauble.” Mrs. Virtue drained the wine from her glass and set it down without taking her eyes from her visitor’s face.

  Miss Tolerance nodded. The room was very close, and the longer s
he sat there, the more the unpleasant whorehouse smells became evident to her, despite the scenting of this room. She wanted to leave, but could not in good conscience without pressing a little further.

  “I would certainly make your assistance worth the time it took, ma’am.” She met Mrs. Virtue’s gaze with one of cool politeness.

  The mention of money banished any apprehension Mrs. Virtue had had for her employer’s privacy or safety. She turned, poured another glass of wine, and drank deeply. Refreshed, she smiled. “One cannot be too careful.” The musical inflection of her words seemed stronger now. “It is hard to be sure who is to be trusted and who not.”

  As if to illustrate the point, Mrs. Virtue’s words were interrupted by an uproar from a room upstairs: a woman’s scream, of pain or terror Miss Tolerance could not tell, and a man’s voice swearing. The scream brought Miss Tolerance to her feet, hand on the hilt of her sword, but Mrs. Virtue did not stir from her chair. The tumult continued above their heads, joined by the sound of boots upon the uncarpeted stairway.

  “Miss … I forget the name? Sit, I beg. Your concern does you credit, but Joseph will have matters in hand in a moment.”

  And in fact, the screaming and the swearing had stopped, although Miss Tolerance thought she could hear weeping now. She sat again.

  “Mrs. Virtue, may I have Mr. Blackbottle’s direction?” She slid her hand into her coat to remove her pocketbook, and drew a five-pound note from it. “I hope this will be an adequate expression of my gratitude for your assistance?”

  Mrs. Virtue took the note and examined it. “You know, there was a time when I would have given this as vails to my maid. But life, it changes, yes?” She tilted her head and regarded Miss Tolerance with some curiosity. “You truly are not this client’s mistress? You will come to it, soon or late.”