by Robin Blake
One of the group shouted to O’Rorke a question about a fighting bantam he’d once put out against a full-size gamecock, and the bantam had won. With relish the whole story was told and Fidelis had no more chance to question him about his amorous life.
The evening continued increasingly boisterous until, towards midnight, Fidelis found himself contesting a drunken game of two-yard Card-in-the-Hat with Mr Fairbrother, a boastful farmer from the Yorkshire up-country at Scrafton. Fairbrother had come a laborious journey to Preston with his prize bird, the Sultan of Scrafton, to take on Lancashire’s finest at the Michaelmas Main of Cocks. He was unshakeably confident of victory. He claimed that anyone from, as he called it, Lancastershire would be bested by anyone from Yorkshire without breaking sweat – or wind. And what was true of a cock-fight was even truer of two-yard Card-in-the-Hat.
The rules of two-yard Card-in-the-Hat are the essence of simplicity. An ordinary tri-corn hat is placed on the floor and a circle is drawn around it with chalk on the end of a taut string two yards in length, that detail being what distinguished the game from three-yard Card-in-the-Hat. The players take it in turns to draw a playing card and according to the suit and denomination must challenge their opponent to flip a minimum number of cards from a stance outside the circle and into the hat. He must then match or over match the score his opponent achieved. Fairbrother considered he was an expert and was backing himself against Fidelis with increasing sums of money.
He lost every rubber they played.
‘Come on, come on, young man,’ he laughed as his ace of spades veered through the air and landed six foot wide of the target. ‘Don’t you know I’m toying with thee? We’ll double up again and I’ll take thee this time, no danger. No danger of that not happening!’
This time Fairbrother failed to land a single card in the hat. Obliged yet again to open his purse and pay the bet, he found he had insufficient money left. Flicking a glance at the men of Lancashire that had gathered on all sides to watch the game, he addressed Fidelis, for the first time, with a measure of caution.
‘I find I am a little short, young man. You’ll take my note, no doubt.’
He glanced around, like a man standing at a fork in the road with no signpost. The onlookers growled. They had grown sick of hearing him sing the praises of Yorkshire, and the excellence of its puddings, cheeses, horseflesh and woollens. Fidelis was no less surfeited with the Yorkshireman’s boasting and in drink had himself grown as truculent as any in the room.
‘Your poxy note won’t serve, Fairbrother,’ he said with spirit. ‘I’m calling in the bet and I’ll be obliged if you’d pay instanter and in specie.’
‘Well I’ve not enough coin with me.’
‘Then you must furnish me some thing of equivalent value.’
For the first time Fairbrother’s bluster faltered. Through the mists of strong ale he had become dimly aware of where their discussion was leading.
‘But my note is equivalent, Sir. My note is—’
‘He’ll not take your note, Mr Fairbrother.’
This was landlord Foster, taking a burly, belligerent stance almost nose to nose with the Yorkshireman. Fairbrother took a step back and lifted his arms away from his sides.
‘But I’ve nothing else just to hand, you see. Nothing of equivalence.’
‘I say you do,’ replied Foster jerking his thumb towards the inn’s rear door. ‘It’s out in the cockyard, and it’s covered in feathers.’
Fairbrother’s mouth fell open.
‘You don’t mean—?’
‘Yes I do, and so does the doctor: the Sultan of Scrafton.’
* * *
Half an hour later Dr Fidelis stumbled out of the Pride of the Pit Inn carrying a wicker basket, whose occupant squawked and scrabbled, being angry at having been disturbed in his roost. Immediately behind them emerged Captain Strawboy, with one of the barmaids on his arm. They were both flushed with wine and laughter. The captain, in great good humour, hailed Fidelis.
‘Doctor! Doctor! Do you realize what a prize you have won here tonight?’
‘I do, Captain,’ replied Fidelis, rapping on the basket. ‘I’ve won what I have been told ad nauseam is a remarkably fine fighting bird, bred from champion stock. The egg that enclosed him as a chick was hard as china, yet he shattered it easily when the time came to make his triumphant entry into the world.’
‘You take the word of a Yorkshireman on that?’
Fidelis laughed.
‘Well, I’ll indulge you on the question of the egg, but I need not take the word of a Yorkshireman that he is a champion. I use my own judgement. This cock looks a good fighter. How good must remain to be seen in the pit. But he has fire in his eye, as anyone can see.’
The captain was swaying a little from side to side but his own eyes, far from being dulled by drink, sparkled and his handsome mouth smirked. As a soldier, nothing more invigorated him in drink than a difference of opinion in a sporting matter.
‘I fear you must think again, Sir,’ he said. ‘For I have to tell you that my own bird Dr Faustus has been matched against yours in the Main next Saturday. And Faustus is a champion supreme, is he not my pretty Doll?’
He had turned to the girl, who pouted.
‘I don’t know owt about that, Captain. But my name is Moll, you know.’
Strawboy patted her bottom fondly.
‘So it is, so it is. Now, Doctor, we must have a side-bet. I know as a gentleman you will not be satisfied by merely losing the prize. You must make it more interesting by losing your own money. Shall you back your Sultan, then, in his hopeless cause against me and Faustus? Shall we say an even five hundred to settle the matter?’
‘Five hundred crowns, Captain? I would be honoured.’
Fidelis had not completed his bow of assent when he heard the captain spluttering.
‘Crowns, Sir? You are joking. Crowns are for corn millers and oyster farmers. I deal in the gentleman’s unit of account. I will bet only in guineas.’
‘Very well,’ said Fidelis without pause. ‘Five hundred guineas it is that my Sultan will win the pit against your Faustus.’
Sober, Fidelis would have been astonished at his own bravado. Instead, astonishment was left to the girl. Her eyes had widened. Five hundred guineas was more money than she was likely to see in her whole life.
She looked from the doctor to the captain, then hooked her arm into the latter’s arm.
‘Well, Captain Strawboy, what a demon of gambling you are! If I could have just one of those guineas I’d be in clover.’
‘Then clover shall cover you as an eiderdown, my pretty Polly, if you will just lead me to your chamber and show me the bed.’
As they set off down Fisher Gate, giggling together like children, her voice was heard telling him,
‘Only it’s Molly, Captain. My name’s Molly.’
Chapter 18
THE SATURDAY OF the Assembly dawned cloudy, but the sky did not lour as oppressively as on the morning before. I do not know if this reflected, or infected, my mood, but feeling some of the previous day’s gloom had dispersed I came down to breakfast with a faint spring in my step. Elizabeth had told me the previous evening that she planned to spend the morning with Matty mending and enhancing her best silk dress, which she had not worn since the celebration of the Guild Merchant a year previously. They would be similarly overhauling my own pale blue damask coat, which had not seen the light since I wore it for the present Lord Derby’s inauguration as Lord Lieutenant two years earlier. I had wondered if I was not really too old for such fancy cloth. I even questioned, since I stood in such disgrace, if we should go to the Assembly at all this year.
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Of course we must go.’
‘But how will you feel if someone chooses to insult me in public – or insult you?’
‘Pooh to that!’ Elizabeth said. ‘We shall shine tomorrow night, my love, and that is why I have the damask coat in hand. This is the moment
to show spirit, not skulk at home. These bloodhounds that are trying to run you down will all be there. You must outface them. You must go bravely suited and outface them.’
My wife was right, of course, as I could see clearly in my braver frame of mind this morning. To dodge the Assembly would show weakness at exactly the wrong moment – apart from being a great betrayal of the faith Elizabeth placed in me. And, besides, I needed to speak to Lord Derby.
This morning she had the coat waiting for me, draped over my breakfast chair, and I consented to try it on even before the food was put before me.
‘You are fatter than when you last wore it. The arms are all right but we shall have to do some tailoring to let it out. Yes, if we can just let it out down the seam of the back it will do very well.’
She took the coat off me and felt along the seam.
‘There’s plenty of spare cloth. It will let out an inch, I am sure, which will make the coat much more comfortable, and less liable to split during the dance.’
‘You even expect me to dance?’
‘Of course I expect you to dance, Titus. And to enjoy yourself thoroughly.’
After breakfast I went through to the office braced for a waspish exchange with Furzey (who was working his Saturday half-day) over his attempt to turn my dismissal into a political debate. But I found him unexpectedly rueful.
‘Mr Cragg, I must tender an apology over my action yesterday. I have thought it out and you are right – it was rash and premature to try to stir up public outrage over our dismissal. Not at this stage. We must certainly speak to his Lordship at the first opportunity, and why not just mention the possibility of a petition on our behalf? Public feeling can sometimes strongly sway politicians.’
Furzey used the words ‘we’ and ‘our’, just as Elizabeth had last night. Then I had thought his support merely self-interested but now I was unexpectedly moved by this third-person plural. Furzey had held his position as Coroner’s clerk since my father’s day but, as I fell from grace, so fell he, and if he chose he could have held me responsible and turned dead against me. Yes, he had a stake in me and my standing – so had Elizabeth, yet I did not call her support self-interest, I called it love. What, then, of Furzey? Had I come so far under the cynical influence of the author of The Fable of the Bees that I could no longer distinguish self-interest from love?
Feeling privately abashed, I accepted his apology, whereupon he picked up a thick ribbon-tied bundle of documents and let it fall again with a thump.
‘Here’s all the papers in the baby inquest, Mr Cragg. The Recorder’s sent for them. What shall we do: accede or obstruct? We could easily mislay this bundle – d’you follow me? It could have dropped out of a saddlebag, or been mistaken for some other bundle and accidentally sent up to Lancaster Castle. We could elaborate a story.’
The papers included all the statements we had assembled and would be essential for the self-appointed Coroner Thwaite to complete the interrupted inquest quickly. No doubt his legal adviser, the Recorder, had told him that unless he had them he would have to start again from the beginning.
‘No, Furzey, we won’t obstruct. It would be futile. The Mayor will conduct his inquest one way or another. It will be a travesty, of course, but I don’t want to be seen standing in his way. Remember there is a dead child still unburied.’
‘I’ll send it over, then.’
‘No, Furzey. Let me take the papers to the Recorder myself. I should like to have a word with him.’
* * *
Matthew Thorneley had held the office of Recorder of Preston continuously for twenty years. The Mayor and bailiffs whom he served took office for just twelve months at a time, before being jostled out by the next man in the queue. The great advantage of the recordership, therefore, was its permanence. Thorneley himself had no principles beyond furthering his own advancement through assiduous service, but he understood the intricacies of the law as a rat knows the hidden cavities of your house.
Calling in at the Recorder’s place of business, which stood opposite Moot Hall at the junction of Church Gate and Fisher Gate, I was told he had spent the morning at home. Declining to leave the inquest papers in his clerk’s hands, I carried them instead to Thorneley’s house, near the gates of Avenham Walk. The Recorder cultivated a dull, homespun image in his dress and demeanour, but the house, which stood surrounded by its own ground, with stables, lawns, a parterre and a walled kitchen garden, was sizeable and luxuriously appointed. The place had belonged to the Langtons, an old and once powerful merchant family who’d invested all they had and more in the South Sea Company two decades before. As the bubble burst they had lost the lot, enabling Thorneley to get the house for a pittance. It had unusual features, including a large double-height entrance hall in the classical style, with wall- and ceiling-paintings commissioned by old Absalom Langton at the height of his prosperity.
Left by the servant alone in this hall to await Thorneley, I placed the inquest papers on a broad table on which also stood the family mailbox. Another bundle of documents, thinner than mine, was already waiting there. It tweaked my interest, as it was labelled ‘Private Instructions re: P.M. – Mr Kay’, but I did not want to be caught looking more closely, and so glanced up instead at the domed ceiling. It presented the artist’s idea of the fall of Phaeton in highly colourful style – the chariot spinning down from the sky, the crazed team of horses and the desperate, overreaching boy hauling ineffectually on the reins. I couldn’t help smiling at this image of a son’s reckless disobedience. Thorneley’s only heir had become notorious for dissipation at Cambridge, and was now confined to a madhouse near Manchester.
Thorneley kept me waiting for a carefully judged interval. When he appeared, I pointed up at the dome.
‘Who was the artist?’
‘Oh, a fellow called Parmentier. A Frenchman who came over from York in the last days of Queen Anne, I have been told. I don’t know what to make of the decorations myself but my wife can explain them all. Now, what can I do for you, Cragg?’
I indicated the bundle on the hall table.
‘The papers you wanted in the inquest on the child found dead at the skin-yard. As Coroner it is my only inquiry in progress.’
Thorneley crossed to the table and unlooped the bundle’s ribbons.
‘And all the witness statements are here, and clerk’s notes from the hearing up to the point of being unfortunately interrupted?’
‘They are.’
I waited while he leafed through the pages. Thorneley had always seemed to me an ill-dressed toad, who existed cravenly to give the Corporation the sort of legal advice they needed to pursue their own ends. But now, standing in his house for the first time (Elizabeth and I had never been on visiting terms with the Thorneleys), I began to see that this servile, slovenly image was largely a pretence – a cover, perhaps, for the lavish scale on which the Recorder had feathered his own nest. Despite his plain woollen coat and down-at-heel shoes, he had grown much richer than most of the burgesses whose actions and decisions he underwrote with his legal advice.
Putting the bundle down, Thorneley efficiently re-tied it.
‘Good. Then I need detain you no longer, Cragg. I am sure you have much re-ordering to do, since yesterday’s sudden alteration in your life.’
There had been a certain sneer in his tone, which required a counter-thrust.
‘You must see that this whole business of transferring the coronership to the Mayor ex officio is nonsense, Thorneley. He is, of course, egged on by Scroop and Grimshaw. They have made him actually believe he should be Coroner by historical right and, since he is vain enough, he does now want to be Coroner. But you know, as well as I know, that Thwaite couldn’t conduct an inquest any more than he could conduct an orchestra.’
‘The Mayor will be advised by me. There will be no difficulty, I assure you.’
‘That is my point. You, as legal officer, will be the de facto Coroner of this town, Thorneley: do you really want all that
extra work? There’s little or nothing in it of remuneration.’
Thorneley looked at me for a moment, and I sensed he was tempted to make an admission. Then he hardened again, shaking his finger at me.
‘It nevertheless seems you want to keep the job, Cragg. Is there not something in it for you?’
‘Oh, that is only my pride, Thorneley. Like Mayor Thwaite I enjoy the social standing, you know: the sense of importance. But you cannot benefit from that, as you will be only an elevated sort of clerk, will you not?’
‘By heavens, Cragg, I’ll have you know I am no clerk!’
‘No, that is my point, Thorneley. Can a mere clerk call all of this his own?’
It was mischief, I suppose, that made me indicate the house and all its fine fittings. It was the wrong play, however. The Recorder was furious at my jibe about his being a clerk; nor did he like my implication that he was more interested in his own enrichment than the public good. He now stepped smartly towards the door and grasped the knob to open it for my departure. But I still lingered by the post table.
‘By the way,’ I continued casually, ‘I have met your ingenious Mr Kay.’ I tapped the file of documents labelled Private Instructions. ‘Important work he’s engaged in, I imagine. I have seen his remarkable equipment.’
It had been a shot at random but it hit a sensitive spot. Thorneley left the door and moved straight back to the post-table where he took up the papers and clapped them to his chest. It was as if he were afraid I might seize them and run away.
‘I know nothing of the instrument you refer to, Cragg. However, if there be a Mr Kay in this town, and if he do have any work here – which I do not say he has – it is confidential, private. You will be in serious trouble if you reveal anything you may know.’