Ace, King, Knave

by Maria McCann

  The beef is tender, rich and savoury. Harry would as soon think of flying as of giving her a word of praise, but he can’t hide the satisfaction in his face. Sam’s winking and smacking of his lips doesn’t count, since it’s only done to cry up the food for Harry’s benefit. She’s been busy all day and could really go at her portion, could tear at it, but for the fact that every so often she becomes aware of the hogo in the room. When Blore arrived she made sure that the fire was up and the place snug, and asked him to take his coat off. She laid the coat in the corner of the room, as far from herself as could be, but even there it makes itself known. Then there’s the foulness of their shirts and trousers, and even their skin. She doesn’t notice it as much as she used to, and that bothers her: does it mean she’s begun to stink likewise? Sam and Betsy, a pair of corpses lying side by side.

  So far, however, this looks like a good night, even allowing for Harry. Sam’s taking just the right amount of drink: with luck he’ll get to bed peaceable but limp, which is how she likes him best.

  In fairness, she thinks, Sam was never Mr Lushington, no more than Ned Hartry. No sharp can afford to be. It’s the resurrection business that’s turned him lushy. At moments like this she feels sorry for Sam. Things haven’t turned out right for him, either. But then, happening to look up, she sees the greasy blond hair stuck to his skull – the fashion of leaving off the periwig doesn’t suit him – and remembers how stubborn he can be, about her learning to write, and about more important things. She offered to stand banker, but he would go in with Harry. Ned would’ve shaken hands on it. He understood what she was capable of, what she was worth.

  ‘Sing us a song, our Betsy,’ says Harry Blore. ‘Sing The Merry Maiden.’

  Betsy-Ann is startled. The drink’s surely knocked him back; he said ‘Our Betsy’ just as he used to when they were kinchins. As for The Merry Maiden, it’s not worth singing.

  ‘Go on, Betsy-Ann,’ says Sam, nodding.

  If Harry said, ‘Down on your back, Sis, and throw your gown over your head,’ Sam’d probably nod in just that way. And hold her arms while he was at it.

  ‘I forget the words.’

  ‘Go on, it’ll come to you.’

  Betsy-Anne clears her throat.

  It was a merry maiden,

  A maiden, a maiden,

  It was a merry maiden,

  In a garden so fine.

  Now which of you young men,

  You young men, you young men,

  Now which of you young men,

  Will take me for his own?

  O shall it be the sailor,

  The sailor, the sailor,

  O shall it be the sailor,

  With his eyes so blue?

  Or shall it be the soldier,

  The soldier, the soldier,

  O shall it be the soldier,

  Whose heart is so true?

  My father is . . .

  ‘Lord! What was the father at . . . ?’

  Blore says, ‘A-reaping.’

  My father is a-reaping,

  A-reaping, a-reaping,

  My father is a-reaping,

  To bring in the wheat.

  My mother is a-spinning,

  a-spinning, a-spinning,

  My mother is a-spinning,

  So fine and so neat.

  Up steps a bold young lover

  A lover, a lover,

  Up steps a bold young lover,

  And his heart was on fire.

  ‘Sweet maiden I must have you,

  Must have you, must have you,

  Sweet maiden I must have you,

  To be my valentine.’

  ‘Then I am yours forever,

  Forever, forever,

  Then I am yours forever,

  My lover so dear.

  And we will be a-wedded,

  A-wedded, a-wedded,

  And we will be a-wedded

  All in the coming year.’

  ‘Well,’ says Sam, ‘what a bite for the soldier and the sailor!’ and they all laugh, even Blore.

  ‘That’s bold young lovers for you,’ says Betsy-Ann. She’s always detested this feeble-minded song, which is only fit for simpkins. That Harry Blore can relish it is the eighth wonder of the world.

  Blore looks pleased with himself. ‘Aye, he’d be one of the canting crew, that spark.’

  Betsy-Ann very nearly says, ‘Not a resurrectionist, at any rate,’ but stops herself in time. ‘Always glad to oblige you, Brother. Will you have some more drink?’

  Naturally he will. Betsy-Ann pours for all of them, and sets the almond pudding on the table. She’s concocting a wicked little ditty in her head:

  Oh I am a grave-robber,

  grave-robber, grave-robber,

  Oh I am a grave-robber,

  I stink the livelong day.

  And when I take my coat off,

  my coat off, my coat off,

  And when I take my coat off,

  The girls all run away . . .

  ‘What’s that?’ says Sam as she sits down again. He’s pointing at her precious coral heart.

  ‘You can see what it is,’ says Betsy-Ann.

  ‘I mean, where’d you get it?’

  ‘Where d’you think? Here, Harry.’ She passes her brother the biggest share of pudding and serves Sam, too, before continuing, ‘Why shouldn’t I keep something back for myself? It’s only the once.’

  ‘But if somebody ―’

  ‘It was taken in the country. I’m not so green as all that.’

  Nor is Sam, it seems. ‘Let’s have a look, then.’

  She extends her hand over the table but that’s not enough; he pulls the fawney off her finger so he can see inside the band. Betsy-Ann fidgets. Blore, already halfway through his portion, is eyeing what remains in the dish.

  Sam hands it back. ‘Too fine for a bitch booby.’

  Betsy-Ann forces a laugh. ‘Watch your tongue, Sam Shiner.’

  ‘You was never a bitch booby,’ Harry growls. ‘Different-blooded.’

  ‘A daisy, then.’

  ‘’Twas I that made you, eh? Brought you to Romeville, set you on your feet.’

  ‘Me and Keshlie,’ hints Betsy-Ann. She’s already on dangerous ground with Sam and now she’s asking for trouble with Harry, yet she can’t stop; she feels compelled to go on, see how many lies he’ll come out with.

  ‘Aye, Keshlie too.’

  ‘And Mam,’ says Betsy-Ann, a woman bent on self-destruction.

  Harry doesn’t answer this, but he half-closes his eyes in a maudlin smile as if to say, Bless ’em.

  Christ, what a liar he is! He’s come to believe his own lies. Betsy-Ann sees herself catch hold of the frying pan and bring it down on the back of his neck, knowing all the time she would never dare. Supposing she came at him from behind and gave it all her strength, it still might not finish him, and if he got on his feet again, that’d be the end of Betsy-Ann Blore.

  ‘What was Keshlie’s proper name?’ she asks. ‘Was it Catharine?’

  ‘Just Keshlie.’ She can tell that he’s surprised, and not sure of himself. But a man always has an answer for a woman, so as not to be put down.

  The pudding dish is empty and the wine all drunk up. They are about to start again on the lightning when Sam says, ‘Now, girl, Harry and me have got private business.’

  Betsy-Ann starts. ‘Private from me?’

  ‘From you. Here,’ he pulls out a handful of coins, ‘go to Laxey’s and I’ll come for you later.’

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ says Betsy-Ann, taking the money and rising from her place so abruptly that the chair scrapes along the floor. ‘I’ll go to the fair, see what pleasure and pastime is there.’

  ‘There’s no fair now,’ says Blore, his speech slurring.

  ‘Anywhere there’s a fire, then,’ says Betsy-Ann. ‘Seeing as I’m not allowed to sit by my own.’

  Once there was a skylight at the top of the stairwell, until a prigger let himself in by it. Since then
it’s been boarded up, and the lodgers have to feel their way along the stairs. Betsy-Ann runs her palm along the banister, seeking the join in the wood that signals her arrival at the first floor. She steps off the last stair, turns to take the second flight, and shrieks as something brushes her shoulder. It’s only Liz, lurking as usual, wanting company, complaining of how the house-painter’s wife in the downstairs back has bilked her of a penny, but Betsy-Ann hasn’t the stomach for it now. She continues downstairs and steps out into the street.

  After the companionable fug indoors, the night wind bites at her neck and ankles. Pulling her cloak more tightly about her, she crosses the street towards the alleyway opposite, the one leading into the courtyard of Laxey’s. They will be on the watch to see her depart, so Betsy-Ann obligingly disappears into its shadows.

  Once inside the alleyway, she counts to twenty before turning back to study the upstairs window.

  Shiner and Blore are still at table, Blore’s hard, florid face appearing almost soft in the candlelight. She watches, fascinated, as Sam holds up clenched fists. Her brother’s laughing now, well on his way to the quarrelsome stage. But what’s the joke? None of it makes sense.

  The window is inviting: like a jewel hanging there in the dark, with the gleam of fire and candle behind it. Not as fine as some places she’s peeped inside, but cosy. By rights she should be up there with them. He’s never told her to quit the ken before. It wasn’t sporting of you, Sammy. Not sporting at all.

  No sooner is she through the door of Laxey’s than she hears a woman cry, ‘Betsy, girl!’ from a corner.

  She sees nothing at first but a bonnet and shawl. Coming closer, she can make out a meagre figure and, under the bonnet, hair the colour of carrots.

  ‘Selina? Is that you, my dear?’

  ‘Who else? And Betsy-Ann Blore, as I live and breathe!’

  ‘I’m Mrs Shiner now,’ says Betsy-Ann, smiling.

  Selina raises her glass. ‘To the well wearing of your muff. You’ll take a flash with me?’

  ‘With pleasure. How’s your luck these days?’

  ‘Not so very good, if truth be told,’ says Selina, moving along the bench to make room. She lifts a candle from the table, holds it to her face and opens wide to show a mouth full of black saliva.

  ‘You’ve been in the Lock again?’ asks Betsy-Ann, keeping her voice down.

  Selina shakes her head. ‘I tried.’

  ‘They won’t have you?’

  ‘The one on the door knew me from last time. She says, You know the rules. So that was that.’

  ‘Who’s treating you, then?’

  ‘A prentice. He’s put me in a terrible sal. Spitting coal.’ Betsy-Ann shudders. ‘And Kitty’s let me go. Till I’m cured, she says, but she won’t take me back. She wants young ones.’

  Selina’s gin is almost finished so Betsy-Ann calls for more.

  ‘Did Kitty pay for the sweating, Lina?’

  Selina shakes her head. ‘A thankless bitch is Kitty.’

  ‘You’ve been worth a fortune to her. A mort like you.’

  ‘Not everybody had my abilities.’

  ‘She should get you a proper doctor, not some boy who don’t know his business. He’s given you too much.’

  ‘That’s my opinion, but what can I do?’ She bends towards Betsy-Ann and whispers. ‘When I was sweated, it came out at my fingertips.’

  Betsy-Ann makes a disgusted noise.

  ‘You were lucky that way, never got poxed,’ her friend says.

  ‘Oh, but I did.’

  ‘Your little friend was very bad with it, as I recall. Katy.’

  ‘Aye, well,’ says Betsy-Ann, not bothering to correct her since Lina’s version is more bearable than the truth.

  ‘Poor lamb. What became of her?’

  ‘Died, Lina. Died.’

  The gin is brought. They fill their cups, Betsy-Ann downing hers in one. The circles of candlelight dotted here and there glow sweetly and a woman sitting nearby, who keeps flinging her head back in shrill laughter, seems the type of innocent enjoyment, angelic, as the wine and gin Betsy-Ann has downed mingle in her guts, combining against her. She slides the coral ring off her hand.

  ‘Here, Lina. Look at this.’

  Selina takes it, tries it. ‘Lord! Big fingers you got.’

  ‘The inside.’ She pushes the candle towards her friend. ‘Look there, hold it in the light. Pamphile to his prodigy, it says.’

  ‘Can you read, then?’

  ‘I was told. Pamphile to his prodigy.’

  Selina giggles. ‘What’s his prodigy?’

  ‘Not what you think. A marvel.’

  ‘Pamphile? Like the card?’

  ‘It means loved by everybody. He said it was Greek.’

  ‘Oh, a student, is it? I never cared for students.’

  ‘Not even Ned Hartry?’

  ‘It’s from Ned?’ Selina’s laughter sprays over the table. ‘Loved by everybody? Isn’t that just his cheek! Not that it isn’t a rum piece,’ she adds hastily, seeing Betsy-Ann’s expression, ‘what with the little heart ―’

  ‘I’ve been stupid, Lina. I had this fawney shut up in a box. The other day I take it out and put it on, and straight away my old man asks to look at it.’

  ‘What old man?’

  ‘Sam Shiner. He and Ned were trusties, once.’

  ‘And you’re wearing Ned’s ring!’ cries Selina. ‘What’s got into your head?’

  ‘Maggots,’ says Betsy-Ann.

  A fiddler nearby starts up a skirling, screeching reel and folk dance about the floor. There’s a black, a freed slave she supposes, jigging away opposite a pale, bedraggled mort, the two of them fairly eating each other up with their eyes. They say that touching a blackbird brings good luck. If Betsy-Ann is any judge of dancing, that mort’ll be fairly showered with it before long.

  It is two hours before he comes, but when he does, Sam is brisk. Nodding to Selina, he pulls Betsy-Ann up by her elbow as if she were too lushy to rise on her own feet. She shakes him off, glaring, and straightens her clothes before following him out into the street where the cold again attacks her, so that she misses the foul-smelling warmth of the public house.

  ‘Nice to know I’m to be let home,’ sniffs Betsy-Ann, ‘now you’ve finished that important business of yours. Perhaps you’re planning on overthrowing the House of Hanover, or was it the Pope of Rome?’

  ‘Easy, girl. You’ve had enough.’

  ‘On what you gave me? I could drink it again.’

  Sam laughs. He’s sobered up since she last saw him: not so good at bedtime.

  ‘Still keeping your shitty little secret, eh, Sammy?’

  ‘You’ll find out in good time.’

  ‘O, no! I’m not trusty.’

  ‘Course you are. Only I’ve sworn not to tell.’

  Is it revenge, paying her out for the coral heart? Any gamester knows Pamphile. Not so hard, after that, to guess who Pamphile might be.

  It’s not a name you’d ever call Sam. As she glances across at him now, even ‘Shiner’ seems too good for his dim, perspiring presence. Nevertheless, when he and the Corinthian played out their game, it was Sam that won in the end. He has a long memory, has Sam, and very sharp eyes.

  18

  The house is not at all what Sophia expected. True, it is tolerably papered throughout, the windows are snug and the chimneys, if the cook is to be believed, recently brushed, but the rooms have a frowzy, dingy air. Still, scrubbing the place down should not be too onerous – there is a cistern which, she is assured, receives a regular supply of piped water – and the sour-smelling kitchen is at least spacious, with an ‘area’ below the front pavement. Sophia is puzzled by a round metal plate in this pavement, just outside the front door.

  ‘It’s the entrance to the dungeon,’ says Edmund.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The coal hole, my love. The coal merchant tips his wares directly into the cellar instead of carrying them through the hous
e.’

  Sophia is quite charmed by this contrivance. ‘How convenient!’

  He laughs. ‘Especially for the merchant, who can thus cheat us with impunity.’

  There is a necessary house at the end of a small flagstoned yard and the yard, strangely enough, not unpleasant, for which mercy Sophia is thankful. In Bath she heard a great deal from Mrs Chase, before that false friend was unmasked by Edmund, about certain disagreeables inseparable from London life.

  Now she looks forlornly around the dining room. They left Bath at such short notice that there was no opportunity to notify the servants. As a result, there is dust on the furniture though not, Sophia notices, any lack of warmth in the principal rooms. Evidently the staff did not stint themselves during their master’s absence. Papa and Mama would have remarked upon this at once and called those responsible to account, but despite his joke about the coal merchant Edmund seems not to perceive, or perhaps not to resent it.

  Even the best servants take advantage, unless the Mistress exerts herself.

  Just for tonight one of the maids, accompanied by Titus, is despatched to fetch dinner from a neighbouring inn. It is a slack and wasteful way of proceeding. Sophia will be up and about early tomorrow morning, eager to talk with the cook and put things upon an orderly footing.

  The boiled beef brought back by Eliza is tainted with something like the essence of old chimneys. Sophia fancies that if she had ever taken it upon herself to chew cinders, they might have something of this flavour.

  ‘The beef smells most peculiar, Edmund,’ she says. ‘Burnt.’

  ‘Burnt? Do you think so?’ murmurs Edmund, eating with relish.