Ace, King, Knave

by Maria McCann

  She giggles. ‘You mean like buggerantoes?’

  ‘That’s peculiar, all right. But I was speaking of food.’ He takes another bite, munches it. ‘Females, they’re worse. I’ve known females eat the strangest victuals.’

  ‘In the family way.’

  Sam shakes his head. ‘I knew one never had a kinchin in her life, and you’ll never guess what she was most particularly fond of.’

  ‘Raw onion? I heard of ―’

  ‘Haddocks.’

  He opens those blue eyes as wide as they will go, mimicking astonishment, and it’s as if she’s glimpsed a dagger under the table. She shrugs and says, ‘Nothing so strange there. Though I can’t say I care for ’em.’

  ‘No?’ says Sam. ‘I expect you’re more for oysters, or sparrowgrass, are you? Spice you up?’

  ‘Why would ―’

  ‘I heard all Mother Hartry’s chickens were fed provocatives. Regular feeding, to keep ’em in a state of heat.’

  She can’t tell whether he’s backing off or merely circling round to come at her another way. Her mouth dry, she offers: ‘That’s all play-acting, provocatives.’

  He guffaws. ‘Why have ’em, then?’

  ‘The culls believe in it. And they like to see.’ She takes a little nantz to help her parched tongue. ‘We had one fellow paid a guinea just to watch a girl eat sparrowgrass.’

  ‘Good eating, boiled and buttered.’ He clicks his tongue in appreciation.

  ‘Practically raw, it was, so it didn’t fall apart. You had to suck and suck till you was fair put off your supper.’

  Sam smiles slyly. Betsy-Ann could wish she had a plate of sparrowgrass in front of her now, not the beef which has turned to pap in her mouth. The more she chews on it, the stringier it becomes.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me?’ Sam says.

  She forces a swallow, the compressed wad of meat scraping her gullet all the way down.

  ‘Ask you what?’

  ‘Oh, nothing in particular. If you can’t notice a thing, you can’t.’

  She tries to look pleased. ‘Course I noticed. You didn’t go boozing, then?’

  ‘No.’ He never takes his eyes off her face. ‘We got word the traps were out, so Harry passed the night here for once. Left this morning.’

  She says, ‘Least you got a night’s kip, eh? I didn’t hardly get a wink, what with Lina coughing. Like a broken-winded nag, she is.’

  ‘Harry was vexed not to see his sis. I wonder where she can be, he said. How is it she’s roaming when you’ve got this snug little ken, he said. And I had to say to him, I don’t know, my friend, I don’t know indeed.’

  ‘He wants to visit more often,’ Betsy-Ann observes tartly, even though Harry’s visits fill her with dread.

  ‘We was both vexed,’ persists Sam. ‘And I thought to myself, where would she be?’

  ‘Well, now you know,’ says Betsy-Ann, wondering how much truth is in those words, and which of the two purposely spoiled her gown. Sam’s got more cause, all said and done; but it’s more in Harry’s line.

  32

  Turning over the pages of her letter, Sophia paces the bedchamber. This morning she went so far as to risk the journey to the Receiving House unaccompanied, lest Titus take notice, and was rewarded by the sight of Mama’s familiar hand. As she broke the seal, her pulse quickened, but as she peruses the contents, it seems her excitement was premature.

  You must not let your fancy run away with you, Mama scolds.

  I confess I did not expect such a message, and am distressed not because I am inclined to regard Edmund as a monster, but because I find my daughter so lacking in judgement.

  Let me speak frankly, as one married lady to another. No husband is perfect and yours has his faults like the rest: he is careless in conducting his affairs. I am puzzled why, if Edmund does not like to take things into his own hands, he should not follow the usual course and employ some trusted person.

  Quite.

  He has now, however, sent a receipt to Papa so you may cease to fret about that, at least.

  He sent the receipt only because he opened Papa’s letter, thinks Sophia, and saw the thing would not do.

  You may also set your mind at rest as regards Ranelagh. Papa got into a muddle, that is all. One of his correspondents mentioned a visit there and he thought he had heard it from you – quite the usual thing with him, so we need not suppose any villainy. My love, you will never be happily married if you are given to fanciful imaginings, and in particular to suspicion. Do you remember when you and Hetty read Othello together? There are lessons in that play which might benefit any young person recently wed.

  As for your reading his letters, for it is clear that you have done so: my dear Sophy, what can I say? If Edmund is guilty of meddling in your private affairs, are not you equally to blame? I believe I impressed upon you before your nuptials that men and women are differently constituted. I take it your spying has turned up some keepsake or billet-doux of a warmer nature than you anticipated. You must remember that it was never Edmund’s intention that you should be thus offended. You are to blame – you are, Sophy! – for officiously seeking it out.

  A wife should consider her husband’s past a sealed tomb, as indeed it is. I will not deny that it takes more than a month of honeymoon, or even six months, to bind two people into one flesh. I know whereof I speak; I positively hated your papa, at first! But one shakes down, child. One shakes down. These days, Papa and I jog along very well together.

  And now I must make myself plainer still. You write, Sophy, as if you contemplated a separation. Let us assume Edmund has indeed some sort of hole-and-corner ‘friend’ – my dear girl, a separation on such grounds is unthinkable. You cannot imagine the sea of troubles in which you would be plunged. No, the surest policy for a deceived wife (which I sincerely believe is not your case) is to please. Remain resolutely obliging and cheerful – in other words, feign ignorance. To nag, whimper or reproach him is a shocking blunder and will only benefit your rival. She will endeavour at all times to be delightful company, on that you may depend, and a man who feels himself caged is liable to roar.

  To cage Edmund was never Sophia’s intention, nor can she think him lacking in liberty. Mama’s meaning, with the sugar and vinegar taken out, would appear to be this: Woman’s sway is pitifully brief, the marriage vows do not apply to Man and a wife goes most safely through the world bound and blindfolded.

  I send this via the Receiving House, her mother concludes, not out of suspicion of my son-in-law but that you may be convinced of its authenticity.

  I hope, my dear, that you and Edmund may soon reach a more comfortable understanding, and pray it will not be too long before a certain desirable event occurs. My girl will then find herself too much occupied in tender duties for such fanciful notions.

  We could join you in London for the rest of the season, or – should Edmund be entirely set upon neglecting the Town for domestic pleasures – at Wixham. Pray write and let us know which it is to be.

  Intolerable! Sophia crumples the letter in her fist. To have so opened her heart, so appealed to her natural allies, only for this! Seeing that Mama ranges herself – along with the rest of society – on the side of Mr Zedland, of what use is a visit? And what of Papa? Has he nothing to say on the subject? He concurs, then, in the diagnosis of hysteria, and believes that the fittest person to minister to such feminine distress is a mother.

  Concerning the sunflower seal and the forged signatures, Mama can hardly argue Edmund’s innocence. She therefore declines to address those subjects at all. The message is clear: you have made your bed, and must lie on it. Though your bargain be dreadful, it is for life. A horrifying thought strikes Sophia: are mothers always so treacherous? Is it possible, for example, that in secret Hetty is equally miserable with her Mr Letcher, and that the whole thing has been thus smoothed over?

  Evidently Mama thinks she should be grateful to be married at all. Was she not nicely palmed off with no me
ntion of ‘the weakness’? Now the mother’s work is done, no matter how botched, it cannot be unpicked. Doubtless Mama had the same reply from her own mother, before she and Papa ‘shook down’.

  Never has Sophia felt such rage. She flings the crumpled letter into the fire and pokes at it until the thing is consumed. One thing, at least, she has learned from Edmund: the importance of destroying evidence.

  33

  A fiery smell, one Fortunate has learnt to recognise, lingers in the kitchen. Mrs Launey keeps a bottle corked up on the top shelf of the pantry: whenever that bottle is brought down and the smell let out, the cook becomes friendly and calls him her little hobgoblin. The first time he saw her in this condition, with her face all scorched, she reminded him of the red-faced devils at James Island. The second time, he thought she must have stood too close to the spit. Now he knows that the scorching comes from inside, from the contents of the bottle: she cannot drink without burning her face.

  The usual thing is for Mrs Launey to pass from friendly to prickly, from prickly to tired, then fold over the table, head across her arms like a sleeping dog. Sometimes the table is floury from baking and when she at last snores and pulls herself up, it is as if someone has painted white breasts on her clothing. The other women can’t see that without laughing, though they are careful to conceal their laughter from the cook.

  This morning Mrs Launey’s bottle was again in play. The maids kept nudging each other behind her back, but once she slept they took up the bottle, which Mrs Launey had forgotten to return to the shelf. Fan fetched cups from the dresser and poured a little into each, then took the bottle to the bird’s-head tap and added water.

  ‘She’ll never know. It’s strong as horse-liniment.’

  ‘Medicine for horses,’ Eliza explained, seeing his confusion. ‘Come on, Titus, give us the toast.’

  ‘Must be burnt toast, if he gives it,’ said Fan. The two of them laughed. Eliza is kinder than Fan, yet she always joins in a joke against him.

  In his best English he said, ‘Thank you, I take tea and beer.’

  ‘Do you a world of good, provided you’re not like that.’ Fan jerked a thumb towards the cook. Eliza held out a cup to Fortunate, who shook his head.

  ‘Go on, Titus.’

  ‘With us, for luck.’

  ‘No, I thank you.’

  At last the maids shared out the extra cupful between them and Eliza stood on a chair to put the bottle back in its place.

  He does not like to drink. This was not the first time they have behaved so wickedly: once, when the master and the mistress and Mrs Launey were away, Fan and Eliza let a young man in by the kitchen door. The man had brought a bottle of the same fiery drink that burns up Mrs Launey, which he handed to Fortunate saying, ‘Here, Blackbird.’ Fortunate disliked Blackbird, and disliked even more drinking after a man with grey stumps for teeth, whose unclean spittle he could see on the bottle-neck, but the man was insistent. The drink stung like scorpions; he spat and the women rocked up and down, laughing. Afterwards they danced with the young man and then quarrelled. There was shouting and sobbing. The man lifted the latch and was gone. Fortunate was certain that beatings would come of it, but when the cook came back she only looked round her and sniffed. He realised later that she did not dare complain to the Wife.

  Now they are busy with this other bottle, nobody to stop them but burnt and snoring Mrs Launey. He wonders if they will bring back the man with the rotten mouth.

  For himself he has other plans. Noiselessly he mounts the stairs. Moving with such care is like tracking, and for a moment he sees again his yellow dog with its shining eyes. The dog will be dead now. He does not like to think of it creeping broken around the village, stoned away from the hut doors. Surely it is dead.

  Though the master is out, Fortunate’s heart pounds as he approaches the study and silently eases open the door.

  The first thing he sees is the marble-topped table and after that the shelves. He moves on soft feet, in case someone should be in the room below, and with trembling fingers catches up a box from the middle shelf. The lid has been pushed down tight but not locked. With some little effort, he is able to ease it up.

  They are stretched out like dead men laid head to toe. He knows what they are: once, in Maryland, he was taken by Mr Watson to hold coats while two white men shot at one another. It was a quarrel, and the younger man so sick and faint that Fortunate could see at once he was the fated one. It was a strange way to fight: this faint, sick man was also the taller and heavier of the two. Had they met with cudgels, or swords, or simply wrestled, he might have lived. As it was, his strength was no help to him.

  Later, when he felt able to speak with Dog Eye, he struggled with the English words to convey his sense of injustice: ‘The man does nothing.’

  Dog Eye said it wasn’t as simple as that. Firing a pistol was like riding a horse. You had to learn how. That was why the man was afraid: he had not enough knowledge, and his fear took away the little knowledge he had.

  Fortunate understood. It was the same with any weapon: you had to have the understanding of it.

  He takes a pistol from the box and goes over to the window. He likes this window; from it he can observe people who never think to look up so high and see him. Fortunate gazes down to the pavement below, searching the street for a Bad Spirit which sometimes stands opposite the house. That is its favourite place, but Fortunate has seen it right up against the windows, staring into the rooms. Most of the time, though, the shutters are closed so the Spirit cannot be seen. It fills Fortunate with dread, the more so in that it only appears when he is alone in the room. Nobody else ever speaks of it or seems to see it, which suggests it has come only for him, to do him harm. Even from across the road the boy can see its power: it is in the shape of a man but taller, as tall as a warrior in his own country, its hands enormous and its face eager for cruelty. Once, when Fortunate went out behind the Wife, he became aware of a fearful smell that he knew from his time on the slave ship: the smell of dead flesh. He looked up and saw the Spirit beside him. It grinned down and drew a finger across its neck, as if to say Fortunate’s throat would be cut. He thought it meant to kill him there and then, and closed his eyes.

  ‘Titus!’ The mistress was prodding him. He looked up, stupid with terror, to find the Spirit gone: it had been mocking him. Useless to tell the woman. She would say, ‘Some fool,’ as if the thing were gone like a passing bird, never to return.

  Could a weapon like this frighten such a creature away? Dog Eye said pistols and rifles were like spears: unable to work by themselves, even to choose whom to fire at. So it was the man who fought, and not the gun as Fortunate had first imagined. He knows very well by now that guns are not magical, but he has nothing else.

  Bringing up his hand, he trains the pistol on a chimney-pot opposite. He has learnt a great deal since his first conversation with Dog Eye. He knows how to aim and fire because, in the happy days before the Pinched Wife, Dog Eye taught him; he said he had a hankering to instruct a black and perhaps write up the experiment, like the accounts of children raised by beasts but brought with much trouble and expense to eat human food. Fortunate understood enough of this to feel such offence that for once he could not conceal it. ‘You needn’t sulk,’ Dog Eye said, seemingly surprised. ‘I find a deal of capacity in you.’

  He took Fortunate over to the common, where they spent time shooting at a paper pinned upon a tree, and Dog Eye said he did it all ‘quite natural’. Fortunate was at first ashamed because he knew that natural meant fool, but it seemed the very same word could also signify a man of great ability and he rejoiced, even as he despaired of the English language.

  That was a happy time. Life was easy-going, for Dog Eye was strange but often kind and men understand one another. At times Dog Eye would say little, merely holding out his glass for more wine, or pointing to his coat. It was all that was needful, though women must always be chattering. Dog Eye often dined in company, but the days Fort
unate liked best were those with none, when master and servant ate at the same table. On these days Dog Eye grew talkative; instead of pointing, he would question Fortunate about his childhood, which he pronounced most curious. Once he said, ‘You were raised in Arcadia, I do believe,’ and another time, ‘We are outside the circle, you and I.’ Fortunate could never understand what his master meant by this: was he not an Englishman in England?

  He said, ‘You are a rich man, Sir.’

  Dog Eye laughed and offered to teach him a song, but Fortunate could not pronounce all the words. Such doings would greatly surprise the mistress, were she to hear of them.

  It comes to him that he has perhaps been tricked, and was not truly a friend. He was brought here to take orders and nobody – not even Dog Eye – cares to hear him speak.

  No, it is the Wife’s fault. You have only to look at her cold face. He steps back from the window and beds down the pistol next to its mate. Suppose the mistress came into the room now, while he is putting the lid on the box. She would scream to think he had touched them, foam at the mouth if she knew her husband had taught him to shoot. He smiles, picturing it, and remembers something else Dog Eye told him.

  ‘These aren’t like a knife or a rope,’ Dog Eye said. ‘They’re made for only one thing.’

  The smell of that thing is on them: metallic and corrupt, a foretaste of darkness and pain. It sticks to his fingers. He snuffs it up, intoxicated for an instant with its bitter power.

  34

  Nothing more has been said about haddock or provocatives, but Sam Shiner is a changed man. Though Liz hovers on the stairs, peering up though dulled eyes, she gets little by it: all he sends out for is the occasional jug of small beer. Sam’s given up nantz entirely. He’s returned to his old particular habits, washing his hands and face in a bowl of warm water and donning his nightshirt, neat as a nun, before bed.

  ‘You never thought I could, eh?’ he says to Betsy-Ann as she turns back the sheets.