Lydia’s voice wavered. “Yes, I do . . . I . . .”
Sir Montagu cut her short.
“You always make me feel most welcome, my dear,” he replied, sweeping his way past her into the entrance hall.
Lydia cast a disapproving look at Lupton, whose mouth remained set in a strange sort of sneer, and accompanied the mismatched party through the hallway and into the drawing room.
Fairweather and Lupton settled themselves on chairs behind the sofa where Sir Montagu spread his tall frame. Lydia sat on a sofa opposite him and asked Howard to bring tea. But Sir Montagu shook his head.
“I would prefer it if we were not disturbed, my dear,” he told her in front of the butler.
Lydia’s smile shriveled. “As you wish, sir,” she replied and she waved Howard out of the room.
“I shall come to the point quickly,” Sir Montagu began as soon as the door was shut. “You are acquainted with Mr. Lupton here?”
Lydia frowned. “Of course I am, sir. He departed from my employ only last week and took off without so much as a farewell.” Her anger had resurfaced.
“Calm yourself, my dear,” said the lawyer, switching his gaze to Dr. Fairweather, seated to his right. “You see. There is distinct agitation there,” he mumbled, only his pitch was sufficiently loud so that Lydia could hear his words.
“Sir, I . . .” She opened her mouth to protest, but Sir Montagu’s large palm presented itself to her.
“Please listen to what I am about to say,” he told her, adopting the tone of a tutor.
“You see, my dear, Mr. Lupton was actually in my employ, too.”
Lydia felt her jaw drop in amazement. She looked askance first at Sir Montagu, then at Lupton, who sat impassively to his left.
“I’m afraid I don’t . . .” Her words remained stuck in her mouth, yet she managed to direct her glower at the former estate manager.
“Mr. Lupton’s full title is the Right Honorable Nicholas Henry Pierpoint Lupton, the second son of the fourth Earl of Farley.”
Lydia felt her breath judder inside her chest.
Sir Montagu continued: “I sent him both to spy on you and to seduce you.” His delivery was unembellished, doing nothing to disguise his utterly brazen motives. “You see, my dear, I know it all. I know that Silkstone broke his court order by coming here and that you lay with him again, going against Chancery’s express orders. And you know what that means.” His tone had suddenly become threatening and he glared at her.
Lydia’s eyes widened and she shot up from her seat. “No!” she shouted at Lupton. She marched over to him and in a fit of rage slapped her erstwhile estate manager on the cheek. “How dare you?!” she cried. “I treated you well. You wormed your way into my son’s affections and this is how I am repaid?” She flew over to the window and looked out, her fists clenched, leaving Lupton to rub his reddened cheek.
“You see, Fairweather,” said Sir Montagu. “Another demonstration of her irascibility.”
Lydia pivoted. “What is this? What are you saying? What are you trying to do?” Her anger had turned to tears. Her eyes were watery and her cheeks flushed. Suddenly she hurried over to Sir Montagu and sat by his side.
Taking his hand in hers she said, “Do you not remember what you told me when you were ill, when you thought you were going to die?” She smiled through her tears, willing him to divulge the secret they shared. “Surely we can tell everyone now, can we not?”
Sir Montagu looked at her, his great brows meeting in a frown.
“What are you saying, dear Lydia?”
“Tell them,” she urged him. “Tell them what you told me, please!” She tugged at his hand, but he pulled it away from her. “Tell them I am your daughter, sir!” she cried.
“There we have it. She is mad, Fairweather! Hysterical!” exclaimed Sir Montagu, pointing at Lydia, kneeling at his feet. “You have seen it with your own eyes. This is precisely the kind of madness I was telling you about. The poor child is not only violent, she is also deluded.”
Fairweather, remaining solemn throughout the exchange, now nodded.
“I see your fears, sir,” he said slowly. “A case of hysteria, I would say, brought on by a voracious sexual appetite.”
Lydia’s head shot from one man to the other. “What?” she gasped. “What are you saying?”
“What Dr. Fairweather is saying, my dear, is that you are mentally unstable.”
Lydia shot to her feet. “You have no right . . . you cannot . . . I . . .” Her anguish was tying her tongue so that her words were held captive.
“I am afraid we have no choice,” said Sir Montagu, rising from his seat. The other men did likewise.
“No choice but to do what?” pleaded Lydia, suddenly finding her voice.
“You have broken the terms of the court order by seeing Silkstone and your mental faculties are most gravely impaired. I have no choice but to have you committed for your own safety and that of your son,” he told her.
Her breath snagged in her throat. “Richard!” she said, then, when it dawned on her what the lawyer was saying, she repeated it in a scream: “Ri . . . chard!”
Lupton and Fairweather stepped forward and, grasping her firmly by both arms, Sir Montagu read out an official document to her. She did not hear his words as they buffeted the air with their cruel insinuations. She was struggling and crying out and when Howard came to see the cause of the commotion, he found her being dragged toward the door.
“Sir, please tell me what is going on?” he cried to Sir Montagu.
The lawyer brandished the legal document and placed it in Howard’s hands.
“You can tell Dr. Silkstone, when he comes to call, that we have taken her ladyship away for her own good.”
Howard looked horrified. “But sir . . .” he protested. “Where, sir? Where are you taking her ladyship?” But his pleas went unanswered as his voice was drowned out by Lydia’s screams that splintered through the hall and out into the open air.
The coach for Oxford left at first light. Thomas had spent an enjoyable evening in the company of Dr. Welton and his family. The veil of secrecy that had lain over the whole expedition had been lifted and Thomas had heard tales of the remarkable creatures encountered and the extraordinary adventures the men had experienced. Dr. Welton had even given him a sheaf of his own notes detailing various specimens to assist Thomas in his cataloguing.
Even though it was still winter, the countryside, as Thomas looked out of the coach window, seemed to be waking from its long sleep. The snow on the hilltops had entirely disappeared and in the poplar trees that lined the riverbank, the birds were nesting.
Leaving the coach at Oxford, Thomas hired a carriage to take him out to Boughton. It was late afternoon before he finally saw the needle of the chapel and allowed himself to feel he was at journey’s end. The carriage set him down in front of the house as usual and Will Lovelock sprang from nowhere to help with the baggage.
“Will! Good to see you!” Thomas greeted him. The boy managed a weak smile but no more.
Striding up the steps, two at a time, Thomas half expected the doors to be thrown open at any moment. Howard answered his ring.
“Dr. Silkstone,” said the butler. His face betrayed his surprise.
“Is all well, Howard? Where is her ladyship?” Thomas walked in, taking his gloves off as he spoke, glancing at each of the doors that led from the hallway, anticipating one to open suddenly. He pivoted on his heel. “And the young master, where is he, Howard?”
The butler’s expression checked Thomas’s exuberance.
“Oh sir, I cannot begin to tell you . . .”
“What has happened? Where are they? Tell me, man, for god’s sake.” He was growing more anxious and impatient with each passing second.
Howard set his face, drained of all its color, to meet Thomas’s square on.
“Sir Montagu was here yesterday, sir.”
Thomas looked puzzled. He was not due until later in the week. “
Go on.”
“He came with Mr. Lupton and Dr. Fairweather.”
At the mention of Lupton’s name Thomas’s expression changed from anxiety to rage. “I knew he was Malthus’s lackey!” he cried. “What did they do? Where have they taken her?”
“Sir Montagu brought with him papers,” said Howard, trying to remain composed.
“What sort of papers?”
“These sort, sir,” said Eliza, emerging from a doorway. She had been watching the exchange through the half-closed door and hurried out to hand Thomas a scroll of parchment. He could tell from her eyes that she had been crying.
“They said she was mad, sir,” she blurted. “They have taken her away, and the young master, too.” The maid began to sob again and Howard motioned her to leave.
“What does she mean, Howard? Where have they taken her?”
Howard, himself fighting back the tears, cleared his throat. “Sir Montagu took his lordship back with him to Draycott House, but her ladyship . . .”
“Well? What have they done with her, for god’s sake?” Thomas could not suppress his impatience. Suddenly he felt the air, full of recriminations and doubt, stifle his breath and close in on him.
The butler steeled himself to deliver the rest of his news, as if it was too awful for him to speak. His mouth opened, but no words came forth.
“Where?” urged Thomas once more, grabbing hold of the butler’s arm.
“Oh, sir,” he wailed, unable to rein in his anguish any longer. “They have taken her to Bedlam.”
Postscript
In 1783 a lobby group was formed by six Quakers to campaign against slavery. Four years later it had grown into the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. By the end of the eighteenth century public opinion was swinging in favor of the abolition movement in Great Britain. Thanks to the largely forgotten efforts of Granville Sharp and, more famously, William Wilberforce, the Slave Trade Act was passed in 1807. While the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire, slavery itself was not actually outlawed until 1833.
Granville Sharp went on to campaign for worldwide abolition and was behind the plan to settle freed slaves from North America and the Caribbean in the territory of Sierra Leone, West Africa. The aptly named Freetown was its capital.
The scourge of slavery continues to this day. At a conservative estimate, the campaign group Free the Slaves puts the number of modern-day slaves, i.e., “People held against their will, forced to work and paid nothing,” at between 21 and 30 million globally.
Glossary
Chapter 1
magic man: There are several contemporary accounts of this ritual. One of them comes from Stephen Fuller (1716–1808), who was the British agent on Jamaica. Matthew Lewis also produced an account in The Journal of a residence among the negroes in the West Indies, written between 1815 and 1817.
Maroons: Escaped slaves in the West Indies. The word comes from the Spanish cimarron, meaning fugitive.
Obeah: There seem to be several ways to write this, including Obi or Obia; its definition is a folk religion of African origin that uses the tradition of sorcery.
myal: A form of an African religion.
conch shell: Used by slaves either as a musical instrument or to sound an alarm.
branched calalue: The herb, a member of the Solanum genus (possibly black nightshade, Solanum nigrum), was known to have high concentrations of the hallucinogens atropine and scopolamine.
bloody flux: Now known as amoebic dysentery, this was one of the most lethal diseases that could break out aboard a ship.
Royal Society: This learned society for science was founded in 1660. yellow fever: The disease, spread by mosquitoes, affected mainly those of European origin.
Chapter 2
Brewer Street: The school of the famous anatomist Dr. William Hunter was in neighboring Great Windmill Street, Soho, London.
The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus: Published in 1774, this was a remarkable book, featuring engravings by Rymsdyk, which were modeled on Leonardo Da Vinci’s sketches.
Monsieur Desnoues: French physician Guillaume Desnoues (or Denoue) created very lifelike wax anatomical models in breach of medical ethics. These were displayed in London and Paris and proved extremely popular until his death in 1735.
drinking concoctions: Many enslaved women chose to abort their fetuses by taking herbal potions.
Rousseau: The French philosopher’s treatise, The Social Contract, published in 1762, helped inspire political reforms or revolutions in Europe, especially in France, and arguably in America.
Chapter 3
as cold a November: The winter of 1783–84 was one of the coldest on record, and the River Thames froze over for a time. Some experts attribute the severity of the weather to the effect of the Laki fissure eruption in Iceland in June of 1783.
Coromantee: Derived from the name of the Ghanaian coastal town Kormantse, the terms “Coromantins,” “Coromanti,” or “Kormantine” were also used as the English names given to Akan slaves from the Gold Coast or modern-day Ghana.
Ashanti: A nation and ethnic group, also known as Asante, living mainly in Ghana and Ivory Coast. European slavers regarded them as the most warlike tribe.
Mansu: The great slave market where Gold Coast Negroes were sold to Europeans.
a hat modeled on a ship: Joseph Johnson was a London beggar, famous for his “ship” hat. His story appeared in Vagabondiana, or anecdotes of mendicant wanderers, printed in 1817.
Lord Mayor’s edict: In 1731, black people were banned from taking up a trade, a law which led many into poverty.
yaws: A neglected, and potentially disfiguring, tropical disease still prevalent in several tropical countries that affects the skin, cartilage, and bone.
Ob: Or Oub, was the name of the royal serpent and oracle worshipped by some Africans.
Chapter 4
Somerset House: Built in 1775, this famous London building was home to the Navy Board, as well as the Royal Academy of Arts, the Society of Antiquaries, and the Royal Society.
Endeavour: HMS Endeavour first set sail for Australia and New Zealand in 1769.
Captain Cook: Captain James Cook was killed in 1779 by Hawaiians during his third exploratory voyage in the Pacific.
the Great Fogg: For several weeks during the summer of 1783, a dry fog covered the eastern half of England and some of northern Europe, blocking out the sun and causing many respiratory diseases in livestock and humans.
Treaty of Paris: Signed on September 3, 1783, the treaty ended the American War of Independence with Britain, but was not ratified until January 14 the following year.
Daniel Solander: A Swedish naturalist and friend of Sir Joseph Banks, who accompanied him on several expeditions.
Sydney Parkinson: The artist employed by Sir Joseph Banks to accompany him on James Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific in 1768. He produced thousands of drawings, but died of dysentery before returning home.
the Lizard: A peninsula in Cornwall, near the most southerly point of the British mainland.
Chapter 6
Court of Chancery: The Court of England and Wales that had responsibility for wards of court and lunatics.
caves in West Wycombe: Known as the Hellfire Caves, they were excavated from an old quarry by Sir Francis Dashwood in the 1750s.
Chapter 7
red coral: This was believed to prevent hemorrhaging.
the purchase of slaves: According to the eighteenth-century explorer John Atkins, “the Commanders, with their Surgeons (as skilled in the Choice of Slaves) attend the whole time on shore, where they purchase, in what they call a fair open Market.” Source: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/resources-rx/files/chapter-6-resistance-19110.pdf
Chapter 9
how would the dead eat? The famous physician and naturalist Hans Sloane observed in 1688 that at funerals some Africans threw “Rum and Victuals into their Graves, to serve them in the other world. Sometimes they bury it in gourds, at other times
spill it on the Graves.”
Source: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/resources-rx/files/chapter-6-resistance-19110.pdf
cages over the graves: Mortsafes.
Chapter 10
Oxford Street: Sophie von la Roche, a German visitor to London in 1786, wrote of fashionable Oxford Street: “First one passes a watchmaker’s, then a silk or fan store, now a silversmith’s, a china or glass shop.”
Blackheath Golf Club: The first official golfing club in Great Britain, it was also a London meeting place for several slave traders and plantation owners.
The round was enjoyable enough: The club’s first course consisted of just five holes on Blackheath itself, with three circuits, i.e., 15 holes, constituting a round.
Chapter 11
Legal Quays: The area known as Billingsgate on the south side of the City of London was where all imported cargoes had to be delivered for inspection and assessment by Customs Officers.
The Lazarus Curse (Dr. Thomas Silkstone Mystery) Page 31