by Jaima Fixsen
“We’ll get a new housemaid,” Papa told her. “I know you liked her.” He rubbed the edge of his beard. “I suppose, given what’s been going on without me knowing, it’s understandable you’d want a beau of your own. But not like that, Mary. No secrets.”
He looked so tired and spoke so kindly Mary’s tears only came faster, hurrying her father up the stairs. He set his hands on her shoulders.
“What’s wrong? Is it Mr. Murray? Is that why you’ve come? Your aunt said he left Bath.”
“It’s not Mr. Murray!”
The force of her denial pushed him down a step. “Then—”
“I’m not to have any secrets? What about yours?” She took a step down, hot with anger, crisping about the edges, almost certain she smelled smoke.
“What do you mean?”
Mary’s hands curled into fists. “I met my mother this morning.”
He went blue as skimmed milk. “Mary—”
“Why did you tell me she was dead?”
“I didn’t—you thought it yourself. It was easier—kinder—letting you think she was dead than knowing the truth.” His face sharpened. “How did she find you?”
“A friend of hers recognized Aunt Yates in Bath.”
“Margaret Hopkins. Yes. She told me. Wretched, interfering woman.” He stuck his hands in his jacket pockets. “So she came to see you, did she? No doubt she gave you quite a tale. Lydia always knew how to play on people’s sympathies.”
Mary stiffened. “I hoped what she claimed wasn’t true, but she knows my name. My middle name, and she said that she chose it.”
“We argued about that. Why anyone would choose such a frivolous—” He broke off, catching Mary’s eye.
“Then she’s not an imposter.”
He shrugged, like his coat no longer fit. “You know she isn’t. That’s why you’ve come.”
“Did you never think of telling me?”
“No. As you have ably proved, I thought the knowledge would make you unhappy. And there were other reasons—I wanted to protect you.” He glanced up the stairs. “This isn’t the place to speak of it. Come and sit down.”
Mary didn’t move.
“I will tell you.” His voice sharpened with the habitual impatient edge. “But not on the stairs.”
She followed him into the library. Papa moved behind his desk, shifting a book, setting aside a sheaf of papers, vainly rearranging the order like it could set the world to rights. “Mary—”
“Do you know how it felt, having the truth flung at me by a perfect stranger?”
“I don’t suppose it was pleasant. Truth usually isn’t. It was easier, letting you and everyone else assume she was dead. I wish she was. You can’t imagine I like being known as a cuckold. After she left, I couldn’t stay in Edinburgh. We moved to London. You were only two years old.”
“Why did she go?”
He leaned back in his chair, tapping his forefinger on the blotter. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“I deserve to.”
He pressed his lips together. “She began an affair with a colleague of mine when you were little more than an infant. I was quite unaware until she asked me for a divorce. When I refused, she and her lover left for France. I understand they passed themselves off as a married couple there.”
“Passed off?”
“Yes. In the eyes of the law she is still my wife.”
“I don’t understand.” Divorce was expensive, difficult and scandalous, but within her father’s rights. The shame would have belonged to her mother. “She called herself Mrs. Charles Wilton.”
“She pretends to be.” All was still, but for the faint ticking of the clock. It had marked seconds and days and hours, years in which she hadn’t known, and would tick through years to come. Nothing changed to a clock.
“Why didn’t you divorce her?” Mary feared the answer but had to ask. She must know, no matter how ugly it was.
Her father leaned forward. His eyes impaled her, unfaltering and merciless. “Because I wanted his child to be born a bastard.”
Mary’s breath left her without a sound.
“I offered to keep it, you know. If she left him. She wouldn’t. Not even to give the child legitimacy. That’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t think you’d wish to know she chose her lover and his child over you and me.”
Sixteen years, and his hate hadn’t even grown stale. Mary looked away. The curtains were drawn, but anything was better than Papa’s implacable face.
“I expect she filled your ears with some heartrending tale—a hasty journey to seek you out, years of unanswered letters.”
Mary’s throat tightened.
“Don’t delude yourself. She wrote five times. The first letter didn’t come until you were six. She wasn’t suffering with anxiety on your behalf—just mildly curious, trying to appease her guilt. Assuming she feels any at all.”
“You can’t know that,” Mary muttered. But neither can I.
It was an appealing story. Anyone would want to believe in the unfailing love of a long-lost mother, but Mary had been made a fool more than once already.
“You should have told me. I should have seen the letters.”
“I was protecting you from shame.”
Mary stared at him. “Hers? Or yours?” His lips disappeared in the thicket of beard and Mary had another, worse idea. “Mine? You think—you think I might be like her? That’s why—”
“No. No, Mary.”
She ignored his protesting hands, the insincere reassurances. “That’s why you sent me away to Bath.”
He got up from the desk. “I’m sorry. You—”
Mary’s laugh rang out wildly, a discordant jangle. “I wasn’t writing Samuel Brown love letters. I let you think that because I thought you’d look kindlier on that than the truth.”
“What is the truth, then?”
He was too close. Mary stepped further away, folding her arms in front of her. “I’d have written a hundred love letters if he ever sent me one. He never has. Not once, Papa. I work with him. For the Times. I draw cartoons.”
It was a moment before he could speak. “Cartoons?”
Mary nodded impatiently. “Most weeks they print at least one. The one of Queen Adelaide as a greyhound is mine and the Lords weighting the scales and…I’ve been well paid, Papa. They haven’t taken advantage. Mr. Brown looked out for me.”
A tide of scarlet rose above his beard. “Not one love letter?”
Mary shook her head. “He’s a widower, Papa. Have done. Look.” He still hadn’t moved, or gone back to his natural colour, so Mary picked up a pen and started sketching Lord Grey on the blotter.
“I saw one with him like that—odiously captioned…” Papa murmured.
“Yes, well—”
“Mary, are you telling me you’ve become a radical?”
She looked up. “Yes.”
Weaving drunkenly, he found an armchair by the empty fireplace. “I ought to be furious,” he said at last.
Maybe this charge had a longer than usual fuse. Mary waited, but there was no explosion. Papa took a deep breath and passed a hand over his eyes. “You are not what I expected, Mary.”
“Just as well,” she retorted. “You expected a brainless tart.”
He flicked a glance up at her and, surprisingly, something like a smile.
“Don’t think I’ll forgive you,” Mary told him.
“I wouldn’t expect it. Sit down.” Papa sat again and waved her to the opposite chair. Mary hesitated, but took it and tucked her feet up beneath her so Papa would know that even though she might listen, she would do things the way she pleased. He passed her a lap rug.
“I’m sorry there’s no fire.”
“Your fault for sacking Annie.”
His face darkened at the mention of the housemaid, but he refused to be distracted. “There’s something I must tell you. Clearly you don’t know. It’s why I was so alarmed you’ve returned from Bath.”
/> Mary waited, wondering what it was he found so difficult to say. After all the ground they had covered so far it seemed impossible that anything shouldn’t come out easily. She felt curiously unstrung in the joints, lax and a little giddy.
“You’ve lost,” he said. “The Lords voted down the bill today.”
Thirty-Three
London seethed. There were bonfires on half the street corners. Neil and Samuel avoided these, creeping about in the dark.
“Grey must resign. He’s already had notice from most of his cabinet and from Lord Althorp in the Commons. They’ve staked their honour on this bill,” Samuel whispered.
Neil nodded, though Samuel wouldn’t see it in this inky black. It wasn’t a new argument. Neil had heard it spoken dozens of times already. His head still rang from the babel at the Crown and Anchor where reformers had gathered all evening, stunned by the news.
“The Lords are destroying the government.” Samuel stopped at a lamppost and looked a question at Neil.
Neil peered into the dark. It looked like they were alone. “Good a place as any.”
Samuel stirred the glue pot in his hands and stepped into the glow of light. Quickly, he slapped on a dripping layer. Neil took the top sheet from the sheaf of bills draped over his left arm and stuck it on, pressing the paper around the iron post. Where his fingers weren’t sticky, they were crusted with dry glue.
“Let’s go.” Samuel dissolved into the shadows. Neil followed. The giant red type on the sign they left behind urged: Stop the Duke! Go for Gold!
They didn’t pause until they were safely around the corner. “Here?” Samuel asked, motioning to a blank expanse of brick.
“Might as well.” They left another, taking a little more care to keep the words straight, since they didn’t have to worry about being seen.
“Twenty pounds says we’ll have Wellington as prime minister again whether we like it or not,” Neil said.
“I don’t think he’ll accept,” Samuel said. “The last election was a clear mandate for reform. He can’t ignore that.”
“He’s loyal to the king,” Neil said. “He’ll do whatever he’s asked even if he doesn’t want to.”
“Yes, but will the people accept it? A government both unwilling and unwanted—”
Neil shifted his stack of papers. They must have pasted fifty of the things already, but the pile was heavy still and his arms sore. “We’re on the brink.” He smelled smoke. One of the bonfires must be close. “And we’re inciting a run on the banks.”
“We’ve got to show them they must listen. That we won’t stand for tyranny.”
“By precipitating a financial crisis?” The late hour had him questioning this course.
“Better than rioting.” It was the same debate they’d heard all afternoon and evening. Samuel and his friends might argue the merits and dangers of lawful protest, but Neil was afraid. This was like trying to temper gunpowder. Word of the defeated bill was spreading across the kingdom, and no one could say what would come in the morning. Wellington wasn’t known for compromise. If he formed a new government, that could be the spark to set everything off. Or not. Sparks were flying already.
Mary sat at her window waiting for dawn. Samuel’s house was dark. Was he out commiserating at the Crown and Anchor and plotting the reformers’ next move? Or was he disheartened and brooding at home without any lights? She couldn’t believe that the bill, nurtured along through sittings, debates, committees and successive governments, was finished.
All the downstairs windows were shuttered and Papa sat in the front hall guarding the door with a coal shovel. It should be funny, but wasn’t. Mary was too aware now of noises in the night swelling and fading away, and the lingering smell of smoke. At three in the morning a band of men marched by carrying a burning effigy of Wellington. The tumult brought Mary downstairs, but Papa ordered her to hide. He hadn’t planned to have her and Aunt with him in London and wished he’d laid in more stores.
Mary tried reasoning with him, but he wouldn’t change his mind about Annie. When the sky turned grey Mary went down to help Cook with breakfast.
“The milk didn’t come,” Cook told her.
“Have we enough food?” Mary asked.
“For a couple days, if no one minds what they’re eating. Plenty of coffee, sugar, and tea.”
Mary smiled. “Then we’re stocked with the essentials.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Have you seen Ben?”
Cook shook her head, so Mary bided her time through breakfast. Then, with Papa confidently guarding the front door, she left through the windows of the library.
It was early, and though the glass house wasn’t locked it was eerily quiet. Mary walked past pots of sleeping crocus and early blooming roses, startling an unfamiliar servant with a watering can.
“Forgive me. I’m Mary Buchanan. I live across the garden,” Mary explained. “Mrs. Chin said—actually, I must speak with her. Will you tell her I’ve come?”
The girl nodded and started to go, but Mary stopped her with another question. “Where’s Ben Pickett?”
The girl’s eyes fell to the floor. “Not my place to say, miss.” She whipped into the salon with the speed of a startled mouse.
That didn’t bode well. Mary didn’t sit, just paced round the glass house. Mrs. Chin was probably still in bed. How could she sack him?
You don’t know that, Mary reminded herself, but it upset her that the glass house, among Ben’s usual responsibilities, had been handed over to a raw-looking girl she didn’t recognize. Any minute Papa would realize she was missing, and—nothing for it but to wait. She had to discover if Ben had kept his job. Problems abounded, and she held no sway with the king or the Houses of Parliament. Samuel and his despair could wait until she fixed this one. If Mrs. Chin would only hurry!
As if she’d been summoned by Mary’s thoughts, the lady in question appeared in the doorway. “I’ve missed you,” Mrs. Chin said. “How was Bath? Mr. Murray told me you were well, but gave no details. He’s very somber lately. Have you been unkind to him?”
“No—I mean, Bath was—it was fine. Forgive me. I came to ask you about Benjamin.”
Mrs. Chin came closer and sat down. “Did your father tell you? He was most displeased. He called, all fury and indignation, representing the evils of the situation.”
“But—”
“He’s very forceful with his opinions,” Mrs. Chin said.
Wasn’t he just. Mary’s shoulders slumped.
“Benjamin is an excellent footman, but I can’t have him making trouble with my neighbours. You know how difficult it is for me.”
Mary thought it a cowardly stance, but couldn’t argue with it. “He and Annie. They want to marry, and Annie’s been sacked. If you’ve turned off Benjamin too…couldn’t you bring him back?”
Mrs. Chin studied the nearby blossoms. “Young romantics. So focused on feelings and blind to everything else.”
“They deserve to be happy,” Mary retorted.
“You must trust me, Mary. I studied the situation and made the best choice.” Her level voice reminded Mary she had no business interfering with other people’s servants.
“But—”
“I’ve made my decision.” This time Mary couldn’t ignore the reproof.
“Forgive me. I shouldn’t have spoken.”
Mrs. Chin nodded. Mary took it as dismissal and went for the door—not to the garden, but into the house. She sped through the salon and the corridor and came out, breathless, into the wide street.
Thirty-Four
They were on their second batch of notices and making their way back to the Times printing floor on Fleet Street.
“Put another one here,” Samuel said. “The first batch are torn down.”
You could see beside the storefront where the old notices had been before someone ripped them away. Neil wielded the glue pot now. They would probably switch again soon, though it was too late to relieve his aching arms. Jolts fired
in his shoulders like someone was at him with a pair of pincers.
Samuel smoothed down the notice and they went on, slow because of the press of people crowding the street.
“I think it’s working.” Hoare’s was further down the street, almost obscured by a crowd of people trying to force their way to the doors. Policemen argued, trying to turn people away. Everywhere he looked Neil saw set faces, pushing bodies, and arms waving. A man in a claret coat stood on a barrel with a speaking trumpet, warning people away, calling on them to support the king and stand firm against traitorous agitators. Men hooted derisively as they passed, but more than one spat. Dark blotches marred the man’s coat. It didn’t silence him.
“The fool’s going to get himself killed,” Neil muttered.
“I’d kill for a cup of coffee,” Samuel said.
“You’d fall asleep before you could drink it,” Neil told him. Covering the sessions at the House and attending ‘secret’ meetings in the weeks leading up to the vote had taken a toll even before their sleepless night tramping across the city.
“You there! I don’t want your notices next to my shop!”
An irate man in a vest and apron bore down on them and ripped the last few sheets from Samuel’s hands. They scattered into the street.
“I don’t want none of this here,” he told them.
“Just leave us be,” Neil warned in a low voice. It was risky in this crowd to draw attention.
“You don’t own this street,” Samuel said quietly. “You can’t stop men from doing what’s right.”
“Twice I’ve had my glass broken by you vandals,” the man spat. “Stay away.”
Samuel looked ready to argue, so Neil took his arm, trying to edge back. He trod on the foot of someone behind him. The small space that had cleared round them was closing.
“You there! Taking issue with these gents?” A fellow built like a bricklayer challenged the shopkeeper and cut off his retreat.
“I take issue with any disorderly rabble! We’ve got laws and a king, and I say we hold to ’em!”
A rumble went through the crowd.