A Nest of Vipers

by Catherine Johnson

  Mother Hopkins sat up. ‘Old Fitz never wronged anyone his whole life! You know my ways by now, Jack, and I am not to be tainted with honest money! Never! The man may be old but that does not make him a gull in my book. Old age comes to us all, and although I am sure you can’t believe that now, you will one day.’

  Cato said nothing but he smiled. It was always better to take money from those that deserved it. Poor Edgar and his broken heart still weighed heavy on his mind and had caused him to wake in the night more than once. What if a girl treated him like that? What if he gave his heart to someone like Bella, who would throw it back in his face while she smiled?

  Jack folded his arms and sighed. ‘I know you might not pay heed, but me and Sam are of the same mind on this,’ he said, shifting his weight.

  ‘And what mind is that?’ Mother Hopkins asked, her voice clipped.

  ‘We don’t like it, Ma, and that’s the truth. Sam especially so.’ Jack took a deep breath and looked at Sam for reassurance before he went on. ‘He says just the thought of having anything to do with those people makes his blood chill.’

  Mother Hopkins shifted in her chair. ‘It is, ooh, four, five years past since he worked in their household,’ she said. ‘For a woman like Elizabeth – unless she has changed character – that might as well be a lifetime. And remember, Jack, to those people servants all have but one face, and that counts as double if their skin is not white.’

  ‘Mother’s right, Jack,’ Cato said. ‘The number of times I am asked if I am so and so’s brother or if I might know a great acquaintance of theirs who just happens to have the same colour skin as me, you would not believe it.’

  ‘You forget I work with Sam. I know all that!’ Jack reminded them. ‘But Sam is well known about town and he wants no more attention drawn to himself than is possible.’

  Mother Hopkins sat back. ‘Our Sam can speak for himself,’ she said, looking straight at him.

  Sam shifted and accepted a cup of coffee from Bella. He took a sip before answering. ‘I am sorry, Mother. I know what you have done for me. All of you.’ He looked from Addy, to Bella and finally to Cato. ‘I know your bravery. And I am ashamed to admit I am scared of these people. Captain Walker is not a man to be trifled with! And they remind me that I have a mother, a real mother – begging your pardon, Mother Hopkins – who I am powerless to help.’ He looked away and Jack rested his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  Mother Hopkins blew out a cloud of blue smoke before she spoke. ‘So be it. You can stay in the background – but you’ll do any shifting though, any transport we might need, and you’ll be our eyes and ears on the street.’

  Sam nodded.

  ‘We will,’ said Jack. ‘And we’ll come to Bath. We’ve talked it through, and since the Queen is so in love with the place, there’s more nobs than ever taking the waters. We reckon we could clean up. Big fish in a small pond, me and Sam. So we’ll help. But with our heads down on this one, Mother. And you must all tread so carefully. And remember’ – he nodded at Cato – ‘you’ll not forget you’re known to that woman too.’

  ‘Miss Walker never looked at me for more than half an instant!’ Cato said. He was thinking that as Jack and Sam were backing out, there’d be a chance for him to take a lead in planning and make a role for himself that didn’t involve being sold or bought or waiting on others.

  ‘So you have made your decision already then – it’s to be the Stapletons?’ asked Sam.

  Mother Hopkins nodded. ‘One more thing, chickens,’ she said. ‘Not a word more to Ez and Sally in the bar. They know better than to ask questions, and you all should know just as well to keep your mouths shut and your tongues still. This is not their business and I would not have them without work when we leave.’

  ‘Of course not, Ma,’ Jack said, and the others agreed. ‘And we’re off to the Garden to work!’

  ‘You will be careful, won’t you, Mother?’ Sam asked before he followed Jack out.

  Mother Hopkins smiled at him, her face rosy in the glow of the fire. ‘Oh, we’ll be more than careful, Sam, you know me. I never intend setting foot in Newgate or any other place like it as long as I live and breathe.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Web Begun

  IN THE FRONT bar of The Vipers, Ezra Spinoza poured the ale into Jack’s own pewter tankard. Jack nodded his thanks and turned to Cato.

  ‘If that bloody Ivanski gets any nearer to my Bella, I’ll knock his block off and send it back to Russia in a box!’ He slumped forward on the polished wooden bar of The Vipers next to Cato. ‘Bella is mine and no one seems to have told him. Go on, ask anyone, ask ’em! I’m her true love and everyone knows it!’ He downed his ale. ‘I’ve loved her ever since I was younger than you and with no home of my own. Before Mother took me in! Before I knew how to love, I loved her!’ Jack’s grey eyes clouded over. ‘Bella kissed me, told me I was the one for her – we were barely fourteen but I knew she was my . . . my destiny.’

  Cato couldn’t help laughing. ‘That is ale talking, Jack!’ he said. ‘She is Arabella Hopkins! And I know she is soft on you, but how many times has she been married off to others?’

  ‘That was just work!’ Jack protested. ‘She’ll be wed to me as soon as I can scrape enough cash together.’

  ‘Then don’t look at her now, Jack!’

  ‘I can’t help it. It’s like one of them itches you have to scratch. I know she’s there, I know she’s smilin’ at him an’ battin’ her lashes at him, doing the cow eyes just the way she does for me.’

  ‘Come on, Jack. Come upstairs and forget her. Ez’ll keep an eye on them, won’t you?’

  The big man nodded.

  Jack sighed. ‘I wish it were that easy. Love, Cato, is a bad mistress.’ He looked once more at Bella simpering at the young man and Cato couldn’t help but look too.

  ‘You know she has to get the accent right,’ Cato said. ‘And Mother Hopkins couldn’t find any other Russians in a hurry. I suggested it – he keeps that poor bear in a stable over Southwark.’

  ‘I bet I could have found an uglier one down in Deptford,’ moaned Jack. ‘A real ugly swine with no teeth and tattoos the colour of oranges going mouldy up his arms. I mean, look at your man there!’

  Cato looked. The Russian was taller than Jack, and although no better looking – the Russian was fairer with clear blue eyes – he was obviously well-off. He was dressed in a fine sheepskin jacket and good leather boots. And it was obvious, even to Cato, that Bella was enjoying her work a little too much.

  There was a sudden blast of cold air from the street outside and Addy stood in the doorway carrying a bundle of clothes and wearing the tallest, whitest fur hat Cato had ever seen.

  ‘Come on, yer leery kinchen, give us a hand or two with these duds!’ she said.

  Cato and Jack looked at each other.

  ‘Addy, you sound more like the thimble twister you are every day!’ Jack shouted across The Vipers, and most of the regulars laughed.

  Cato went across and took some of the clothes. ‘You should watch what you say in public,’ he whispered.

  ‘They all know us here, Cato. We’re coney catchers, and the best around. And what’s more we’ve the salad here to catch those rabbits.’

  ‘Hah! The Stapletons are rather more than rabbits, Addy.’

  ‘But rabbits all the same, and this hat is the very thing in St Petersburg. Oi! Ivan,’ Addy said as she walked in front of Bella and the Russian.

  ‘This good hat, yes? This bene shappo, Ivanski?’ Addy plonked it onto Bella’s head.

  The Russian smiled. ‘Da. Is good, yes. Da. Bella real Cossack devotchka.’

  ‘There. One happy customer,’ said Addy.

  Bella smiled, but her words were cold. ‘Hold your tongue, Addy, and go away.’

  Addy pulled a face, turned on her heel and strode away. ‘Why does Bella get all the good jobs?’ she said to Cato as they went upstairs. ‘Have you seen the state of these threads? Serious splash-up stuff.�
� She held up a jacket edged with fur. ‘If this is the Russian style, I could see me in St Petersburg, sailing into town in one of these!’

  ‘I thought you hated girls’ clothes,’ said Cato.

  Addy shrugged. ‘This is different. I wouldn’t mind being a Russian girl. Just look at these boots!’

  Mother Hopkins was sitting at the table writing a letter, pen in one hand, pipe in the other.

  ‘Addeline, good, you’ve the clothes. And Cato. I must talk to you both.’

  She signed the letter and blotted it. Cato read the address on the envelope: it was to the Stapleton house but it was addressed to the housekeeper. Someone would be working inside – he was sure of it.

  Mother Hopkins looked up. ‘Bella will be going to a party on Friday night as the Russian.’

  Cato looked at Addy. He hadn’t expected things to be moving this quickly, and from the look on her face, neither had she.

  ‘This Friday? Only three days away? That’s a bit quick,’ Addy said as she warmed herself by the fire.

  ‘I’m not sure how good her accent will be by then, Mother,’ Cato warned.

  ‘Bella knows. She’ll have to nail it down or keep her mouth shut. Either way, there’s a party in Mayfair and we need her there. The Stapletons will be attending and we can’t afford to miss it. She’s to be Ekaterina, Countess of . . . of . . .’

  ‘Of St Petersburg?’ Addy suggested.

  ‘No! Too obvious.’ Mother Hopkins folded the letter and reached for the stick of red sealing wax, holding it in the candle flame till it softened. ‘Cato? Any ideas? Did you not fetch an atlas from the bookseller’s?’

  Cato was opening the bundle of clothes. There were the dresses for Bella in the Russian style, edged with fur and heavy with gold thread, and a smaller bundle of servants’ clothes . . . girls’ clothes – the stays looked too small for Bella.

  ‘An atlas!’ Cato had passed the morning in the bookseller’s in St Paul’s Churchyard. He’d spent hours poring over engravings of men with heads in their chests and women with tails like fish instead of legs. There were some truly excellent ‘Dying Words’ ballads, one by a pirate who’d sailed out of Port Royal, another by Claude Duvall, the gentleman highwayman, and he’d read a whole volume of poems by an author he’d never heard of before being thrown out for reading the goods and not buying. But he’d managed to forget the atlas.

  Mother Hopkins dolloped the melted wax on the edge of the letter. ‘Addeline, the Salters’ seal please.’

  Addy scrabbled in the dresser drawer amongst a variety of the best (and worst) London families’ seals, stolen or recreated over the years.

  Cato tried to remember the maps. He’d looked at one or two but they weren’t half as interesting as the prints of giants who dwell in the deserts of Africa.

  ‘Maybe I could talk to the Russian downstairs, get an idea of the country and the principal towns from him?’ Cato suggested.

  ‘You didn’t look, did you, Cato?’ Addy said smugly. ‘I’ll bet he was head down in some ballad mongers reading cod poetry!’

  Mother Hopkins pressed the seal hard into the melted wax. ‘This is a most important enterprise, Cato,’ she said. ‘I would have thought you understood that.’

  ‘Honestly, Mother, I do.’ Cato felt himself flush.

  ‘Even though your part in this lay will be behind the scenes, you have to know that Bella’s deception must be entirely plausible.’ Mother Hopkins sucked hard on her pipe. ‘Addeline, run down and tell Bella to question her Russian on his home town.’

  Addy was about to go when she saw the stays and servants’ clothes. ‘Who are they for?’ She curled her lip as she picked out the dark flannel stays and skirts.

  ‘Well, we need someone inside the Stapletons’ household.’ Mother Hopkins didn’t look up.

  Cato and Addy looked at each other. Cato couldn’t imagine Addy in that get-up.

  ‘Can’t he go?’ Addy pointed at Cato.

  ‘They might rumble him,’ said Mother. ‘It’s too much of a risk. And he’s playing fiddle at the party on Friday – it’s an African orchestra, the latest fashion apparently.’ She smiled.

  Cato tried not to look anxious; he had neglected his playing since Bella’s ‘wedding’.

  ‘Will we rehearse, Mother?’ he asked. ‘What if I can’t—?’

  ‘There’s never any can’t, Cato. If you don’t know the tunes, play along quietly and smile.’

  Addy folded her arms. ‘He gets to play music while I sweep up ashes! I’ll not do it. A housemaid!’

  ‘Cato.’ Mother Hopkins ignored Addy and handed Cato the envelope. ‘Here is the letter for the Stapletons recommending Addeline Hammond as maid of all work. Listen well, Addy, for Hammond is your name until our lay is done. According to this, you have worked for the Salters of Highgate for these two summers past.’ Addy made to speak but Mother Hopkins shushed her. ‘Sam has sweet-talked the Stapletons’ current kitchen maid and has already promised her a better position with Mendes in Cheapside. And, Sam told me not an hour since, she has packed her things already. We must be sure it is Addeline who fills the post, so, Cato, give the letter to Jack and Sam to take to St James’s tonight. Quick now, before dark! And, Addy, get yourself down to The Vipers to sound out the Russian.’

  Mother Hopkins looked from one to the other. ‘I’ll have no dissent, chickens. We depend on each other utterly! And if you don’t know that by now . . .’

  That Friday found Addeline squirming and uncomfortable in her new woollen maid’s uniform. Cato walked alongside her – he’d promised to go with her as far as Leicester Fields. It was a done deal: Addy was to start as the Stapletons’ kitchen maid at noon and she could no more wriggle out of the job than she could wriggle out of her newly laced stays.

  ‘Stays!’ she spat. ‘They are the devil’s own work!’

  Cato couldn’t keep a straight face.

  ‘And you’ – she poked him hard under the ribs – ‘can stop with your smug face! I hope the strings of your fiddle cause your fingers one quarter of the pain I am in on account of this infernal corsetry.’

  ‘You must not fidget so, Addy, or your new employers will assume you are ridden with fleas,’ Cato teased her.

  ‘I would rather be home to a thousand thousand fleas than wear these hateful instruments of torture all day,’ Addy protested.

  ‘You will soon be used to them. Think of the number of times I had to wear one of those damnable metal collars. And once – somewhere uncivilized up north, it was – they chained me up in their kitchen like a dog! All you have to do is wear what other women manage without complaint. I have only ever heard Bella ask for her stays to be laced tighter!’

  ‘What do you know of women? What you read in your poems? And Bella doesn’t have to fetch and carry and scrub and clean. And she gets the fancy threads and a purse stuffed so full of fake rhino she can hardly carry it!’

  ‘True.’ Cato nodded. ‘Bella always gets the good parts.’

  ‘What I wouldn’t give to be a duchess!’ Addy sighed.

  ‘Bella’s not a duchess, she’s a countess, from Pskoff,’ Cato said.

  ‘The town that sounds like a fart! I hope her Ivan didn’t make the place up out of air.’

  ‘I looked it up. It does exist. And she’s to play a wealthy young widow,’ Cato added.

  ‘I could be wealthy,’ said Addy.

  ‘You wouldn’t carry the clothes. You’d twitch and complain about the weight of silks and you’d never sit long enough for the quality.’

  Addeline humphed.

  ‘I must go, Addy. Mother says you are to St James’s straightway and no stopping. I have one hundred new dance tunes to practise before tonight. What if these musicians are no better than me and I have to carry the tune? It doesn’t bear thinking on!’

  Addeline’s face was still a mask of sulkiness.

  ‘Your things.’ Cato held out the bundle he had carried for her. ‘And smile! You make the sourest housemaid in London.’
/>   Addy smiled a fixed smile back at him.

  ‘Your cards are in there,’ said Cato. ‘I hid them – they’re wrapped in that ballad I bought for you. The one about the pirate; you liked that.’

  ‘That was different, that was a story. And thank you, Cato, for the cards. I am grateful for these old friends.’

  ‘Keep them hidden!’ Cato warned her. ‘Mother will flay us both if they’re discovered.’

  Addeline smiled properly and took the bundle. For a moment he thought she would hug him, but she just sighed. ‘I hope this damnable lay is over quick,’ she said.

  ‘You will be a most excellent maid, Addy. I know it.’

  Addy held out her skirts. ‘Sometimes I am sure I would have preferred to be a boy.’

  ‘You make a fine girl, Addy,’ Cato said, and turned away so she would not see him blushing. ‘Take care. Keep your eyes and ears open.’

  ‘I’ll miss you, Cato!’ she called.

  Cato watched until she’d turned the corner. Three weeks. He couldn’t remember a time when they’d been apart for so long.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A Merry Dance

  ‘MUSICIANS! MUSICIANS ATTEND here at once!’ The large man with rather tightly cut breeches and new wig waved a silk handkerchief above his head. Cato was standing in the ballroom of a fine house in Hanover Square in the West End. Armies of servants were busy pinning up garlands of ivy and rosemary on the walls and sweeping the polished wooden floor. There were mirrors as big as the walls at The Vipers, and a thousand candles and their reflections fluttered and danced all around.

  ‘Attention please!’ The man clapped his hands together. ‘I am Master Cowell, responsible for the auditory entertainment this evening, and it is down to my contrivance that you have been selected . . .’ He paused and looked around. Cato followed his gaze. The other musicians were two elderly African men with grey beards and only enough teeth between them to suck gruel; a young lad with a kind face and the most elaborate silver collar Cato had seen for some time; a fair-skinned Negro, almost yellow, holding a bass viol; and a tall and haughty dark-skinned young man with patterns of spirals in tiny raised scars on his cheeks. Not the pox – Cato could see that these were deliberate whorls snaking over his cheekbones.