Ace, King, Knave

by Maria McCann

  Later, as the shrieks started and the charging about, she saw a flash hang in the tree like a star. That’d be the second shot, the one that dropped Harry. If the boy was up there, he’d have leaped from the branches and been away almost before the star faded.

  Ned said the boy was entirely his. Why, then? Unless it was Harry he wanted dead. Harry was known at the house. It comes to her that the boy meant to defend Ned, and his first shot was a bungle. If anyone has him strung up for that, it won’t be Betsy-Ann Blore.

  His master’s just as dead, though. O Ned, clever Ned! To die of a bungle!

  Can’t you forgive him, Mrs Zedland said.

  No, she can’t. She loved him to the bone. Can’t hang over him like you do, repent, repent. She peached on him, couldn’t sit forgiving him for very shame, though you’re no better, sitting there blubbering with your Mr Gingumbob primed and ready to go off, shame indeed, do you know the meaning of the word?

  What sort of funeral will they give for Dimber Ned? She won’t be invited. Suppose Kitty Hartry turns up? Rum doings, if she does! Good as a hanging! She manages half a smile before the pains start up inside her throat, and the tears.

  *

  ‘I told her you’d be trouble,’ says Clem.

  Fortunate stands grey and forlorn, bent and aching from the hours passed in the porch of the Spyglass.

  ‘Where you been, then?’

  ‘In Town.’

  ‘Don’t give me your lip. In Town!’

  ‘I can’t say the place.’

  ‘Don’t suppose you saw much of it,’ says Clem. ‘I hear you got a gentleman friend. Well, whatever else your friend pays for, he don’t pay your wages here.’

  ‘I will stay now. Stay inside.’

  ‘If you’re allowed to, which I sincerely hope you ain’t. I got my eye on you.’ At last Clem moves aside to allow Fortunate to enter, though his voice pursues him along the passageway: ‘Beats anything for impudence. One day in the house ―’

  Dog Eye falls.

  Fortunate runs up the stairs to his chamber, stumbling, crying out as he bangs his knees on the steps.

  Alone, he wets the comb and applies it to his head, persisting this time though it pulls out his hair by the roots. He rubs water over his face. His eyes are swollen: he bathes them, begins to weep again, rubs them on his sleeve, weeps. Dog Eye falls.

  Dog Eye falls.

  *

  Papa and Mama have travelled with Rixam, who is despatched the following morning to Cosgrove’s to reassure the proprietor that he will not be left with a dead man on his hands, while Papa accompanies Sophia to the nearest church. Should the funeral be that of Mr Zedland or Mr Hartry? Mama thinks Zedland less mortifying for Sophia, though Papa, with his strong legal brain, points out that if the marriage is to be proved void, it would be as well to bury a Hartry. Sophia, for her part, is nervous that an interment under that name may attract the K. Hartry whose letter remains engraved on her memory as the quintessence of filth. She wonders how many other names Edmund has gone by, and for what ends.

  The minister is not eager to have Edmund, whether Hartry or Zedland, interred in his churchyard. He begins to explain about parish settlements but Papa, though not a native of London, carries a panacea in his pocket. Soon the man is in possession of a generous donation and of his Christian charity prepared to preside over the burial of a murdered stranger.

  ‘After which,’ says Mama when they are all together again, ‘you shall come home to Buller and endeavour to be cheerful. Hetty is to visit, and we plan an excursion when the weather improves.’

  Sophia cannot exert herself sufficiently to feign gratitude. Her feelings, raw, ragged and muddied, absorb her entirely. At times she experiences a dreadful, corrosive pleasure of which she had not thought herself capable: he is dead, I am free. At others she is choked with grief for her early love, for the time on the lake that can never come again. Self-torturing, she recalls every seductive smile, every affectionate gesture: there is no coldness, no cruelty in the Edmund whose charmed ghost stalks her memories, only misunderstanding. She wrings her hands to think that he has gone before his Maker with so stained a soul, and prays the Lord to have mercy on him. Though what use is that? God does not revise his judgments to please the living.

  Lastly comes the most terrifying suspicion of all: a sense that with all its misery and wickedness, this episode may yet prove the most vital and engrossing chapter of her life, to which the rest will prove mere epilogue.

  *

  With care, Betsy-Ann unwinds the silk wiper from the Tarocco.

  She had a pain this morning, a visit from her red-headed friend. First time she’s ever been sorry. Mrs Ned has at least that much of him: there, she holds all the aces. What if it’s a boy, though, and the boy grows up a Hartry, with his papa’s pleasures and pastimes!

  How will Mrs Ned like that?

  Strange to sit here, doing nothing. Having been bounced, all her life, from one beating to another – bounced by hunger, by lust, by hopes that were nothing but chaff, in the end – she finds herself with no one to fear or depend on. Outside the window the very air is blank, white with frozen mist.

  In fact, she’s not precisely doing nothing. She’s thinking. Not about Sam, or Harry, or Mrs Ned or even Ned himself – though he breaks in all the time, can’t be helped – but about Betsy-Ann Blore, with no support but her own two legs. What’s to become of her? Fancy – from the wagon to Denman’s Buildings, all that long, long road just to find this shabby stopping-place! Though it’s quiet enough, and the window frames snug. She can dig in here awhile, alongside of Mrs Sutton, or she can go elsewhere.

  She’ll be the one to decide. There’s no part for her to play, now: her life is as unshaped as all that whiteness hanging in the air. This must be how it feels to be rich. Though even the rich play parts, and fall into traps. Some of them fairly fling themselves in.

  Most of her stash is still sewn into her petticoats. Suppose she took the mail coach to Bristol, where the cousins lay up over winter? She’d have her own people around her – and once they’d got their hands on the gold, there’d be precious little meat in the pot, and everyone’s nose poked into her business. She hasn’t crawled out from under Kitty and Sam, only to be pushed around by the likes of Ben and Davey. You can starve in Bristol, same as here. She’s seen them propped against walls, too weak to beg.

  Shuffle. A straight shuffle, so the cards tell true.

  Her gold won’t last forever. If she could only settle the business – get behind the counter of a pretty little shop, say – she’d be made. Queen of her premises, showing folk the door, should she choose.

  There’s no Knave of Hearts in this pack, no Pam neither. Where’s he now, Dimber Ned?

  Seven-card horseshoe. First up: King of Cups, reversed. One who takes good care of himself, leaving others to sink or swim. Not much to puzzle her there. Next, Five of Batons, also reversed. Lawing, cheating, trickery. No surprise there, either.

  She hopes there won’t be too many of these reversed cards. They are always unlucky. Still, it’s only Past and Present: what matters is Future. She slides her finger under the Future card and turns up . . . two. Two of them! Never in her life has she fumbled the Tarocco like that: is there some special meaning in it? Three of Cups, upright; Four of Cups, reversed. So close together, Three and Four! Had it been Cups and Swords, now, she’d try to read them together, but these might just be a slip of the fingers, two cards stuck together through all the shuffling and come out here. The question is, which is the true card? Not the Three, surely. That means kinchins, and here she sits with her rags on.

  So: Four of Cups, Reversed. Too much of a good thing, leading to sickness, weakness, punishment. Blushing like port wine, says a sly voice in her head. But this is the future. Ned has no future. It’s the first time she’s had that thought. She sits motionless a while, taking it in.

  Suppose it should be her own sickness, and she like Lina Burch, headed for the Lock? She
shudders. Come spring, Lina will be walking carrion, earning her bread by frightening off cullies until some furious whore throws her a shilling. Four of Cups is Lina’s card. Though it won’t be Betsy-Ann’s, not in that way, because she’d kill herself first.

  Having two cards queers the reading. She’s begun to wish she’d never opened the pack: the future seems shrunken now, gelded of the magic she sensed when looking out of the window.

  Never mind, on we go: Five of Coins, ruin but with hope. To hell with hope, better have no ruin, then you don’t need the hope. Should she just stop reading – no, get it out, know the worst. Six of Coins, a giver. Last card. Seven of Cups. Chance of great fortune, easily missed. And how in Christ’s name is a poor mort to know it when it comes? As if she hasn’t spent her life trying. Everyone in Romeville, from Cosgrove to the man with the talking dog, they’re all watching for the Great Chance. The Blores came here in search of theirs, and look at them now: she’s the only one left above ground.

  There was the night at Haddock’s. That seemed like it, at the time. Perhaps her chance wasn’t Ned but Mrs Ned, all along. Either way, she’s missed it. The wind’s changed, Mrs Ned won’t pay. She heard it in the noise of the carriage, rattling off.

  Four of hers have died here: Mam, Keshlie, ugly Harry and Dimber Ned. Shouldn’t such things, as much as your birthplace, count as a parish settlement? She’s heard that carters pick up young runaways trudging the roads and fetch them into Romeville. The fee is the usual thing, after which the chit is said to be ‘made free of the cart’. When you’ve seen as much as she has, and lain with as many men, you’re surely made free of the Town.

  Lord, what care my mother takes! Could she but procure herself a Hottentot.

  He was Kitty’s son, yet he was more besides. He had his moments of kindness, it’s only right they should be remembered. Does The Cunt in the Wall now boast a Hottentot? That Betsy-Ann doesn’t know the answer, that she herself escaped the place and will never go back, is owing to him.

  She sets down her Tarocco and takes up the deck with the soldiers and the dancing ladies, flicking through until she finds Pamphile. There he is, the little devil, with his melancholy, lascivious phiz. She sets him aside to look at awhile. Then she places him back in the deck and practises shuffling, again and again, turning him this way and that, keeping him always under her eye.

  Glossary

  This glossary includes cant, slang, archaic words and the French with which elegant speakers peppered their conversation. Expressions still current, such as memento mori and frisson, have not been glossed.

  The primary source is Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue but many of the expressions used were current much earlier; some, such as cove and dimber, date back to the seventeenth century or before.

  à la mode   in the fashion

  Abbess   bawd

  active citizens   body lice

  au fait    knowledgeable

  autem bawler   parson

  autem mort   1) wife 2) female beggar impersonating a desperate wife with small children autem   church

  bagnio   a cross between a Turkish bath and a sex hotel, extremely

  expensive

  bantling   child

  baubles   testicles

  bel canto   Italian style of singing bibelot   ornament

  bilk   cheat

  billet-doux   love letter

  bing avast   steal away, clear off

  bishop   hot drink made from wine, fruit and spices bitch booby   female bumpkin

  bite (noun/verb)   a theft or trick; to steal or trick blood   riotous disorderly fellow

  blowen   disreputable girl; whore; thief’s mistress blunt   money

  bob   trick, criminal racket

  bonnet   a decoy who distracts attention away from his cheating partner books   playing cards

  boozing-ken   drinking den

  bubbies   breasts

  bubble   cheat

  bubble and squeak   beef and cabbage, fried up together buck   notable debauchee

  buggeranto   sodomist

  bullybacks   ‘bouncers’ in places of entertainment bunter   1) a rag picker 2) the lowest and most desperate kind of prostitute buttock ball   sexual intercourse

  cackler   preacher

  candid   generous, ready to think the best of others cant   criminal slang

  canting crew   criminal fraternity

  chaunter cull   composer of songs for street musicians cheese it   shut up, keep mum

  chivvy   cut

  clog   burden, impediment

  closet   private space within a bedchamber comfits   sweets

  comme il faut   as it should be, as one must Corinth   brothel

  Corinthian   debauchee

  cove   bloke

  Covent Garden Ague   syphilis

  cracksman   safebreaker

  crew   gang

  crib   grave, graveyard

  cull(y)   a prostitute’s client, or a woman’s dupe cundum   condom

  Curse of Scotland   the nine of diamonds Cyprian   prostitute

  dairyworks   breasts

  daisy   naïve person

  damper   snack

  darby   money, cash

  darkmans   night

  dell   girl, young woman

  déshabille   undress/casual dress de trop   superfluous

  deuce   in cards, the Two of any suit.

  Deuce, the   the Devil

  dimber   beautiful/handsome

  dinner   the time of this varied, but was generally much earlier than our modern ‘dinner’ (see ‘supper’) doe   mistress

  done brown   cheated

  drab   prostitute

  drug   drag, hindrance

  duddering rake   lewd, filthy, extreme rake duds   clothes

  dummee   pocket book, wallet

  dun (noun/verb)   person who collects debts; to collect a debt

  enceinte   pregnant

  ensemble   (here) overall effect

  entre nous   between ourselves ergo   therefore

  fam   hand

  Farmer George   George III

  fawney   ring

  faytour   counterfeiter, forger

  fingerpost   parson

  fire priggers   thieves preying on victims of domestic fires flash   1) knowing (the opposite of ‘flat’). ‘To patter flash’ = to speak the slang of criminals, the ‘cant’

  2) a glass of gin (‘lightning’) flash house   a gathering place for criminals, especially thieves flash kiddey   young thief, often with the sense of ostentatious style flat   naïve person, fool

  flesh-hound   man in search of sex

  flowers   menstrual period

  fly   knowing

  flyer   ‘knee-trembler’

  follower   servant’s suitor

  foyster   pickpocket

  frig   masturbate

  frisk   search (a till or a person being robbed) funk   panic

  gammon   nonsense, rubbish

  garden thrash   contemptuous term for vegetables gentry-cove   gentleman

  gentry-mort   gentlewoman

  gingumbob   thingummy

  glim   partially concealed lantern, ‘dark lantern’

  Grand Tour   European trip, part of the education of young gentlemen guinea   gold coin worth £1.05

  Harris’s (List)   a catalogue of prostitutes, with their prices and specialities, anonymously edited by Sam Derrick. From 176
1 he took up the ‘day job’ of Master of Ceremonies at Bath and Tunbridge Wells while continuing to edit Harris’s, something that only became public knowledge after his death.

  hartshorn   ammonia used as smelling salts high toby/toby man   highwayman

  hogo   stink

  hollow leg   man with huge capacity for drinking

  in keeping   (of a woman) financially supported by a lover in the straw   pregnant

  Jack Ketch   traditional nickname for the hangman jerry   chamber pot

  keeper   man supporting a mistress

  keeping cully   dupe supporting an unfaithful mistress ken   house, dwelling

  kiddey   see flash kiddey

  kidney   disposition, principles or humour kinchin   child

  knotting-bag   a workbag, used by some women as a handbag

  large, a   the corpse of an adult

  lay   enterprise, pursuit or attempt

  les domestiques   the servants letch   kink, perversion, particular attraction lift   pickpocket

  lightning   gin

  link-boy   boy carrying a torch, or ‘link’, who could be hired to guide pedestrians Lock Hospital   hospital for the treatment of sexually transmitted disease loobies   bumpkins

  lush (noun/verb)   a drinker; to drink lushy   fond of drinking

  ma femme   my wife

  Magdalene House   charity which rescued prostitutes make someone easy   kill someone

  man of honour   libertine

  man of spirit   debauchee

  mantua-maker   dressmaker

  marrowbones   knees

  middling sort   middle class

  mill   beat

  Miss Laycock   a woman’s sexual organs monosyllable, the   a woman’s sexual organs mort   woman