A Nest of Vipers

by Catherine Johnson

  As the countess spun out the scheme, she explained that the prince did not realize the true value of the cargo, and that the return of their investment would be threefold. What’s more, the investors would be left master of a sea-going ship. She had investigated the Favourite, the countess said, and they would be able to sell it on in London or Bristol for a few thousand. Failing that, they could lease it to merchant venturers, and make a decent income, far above and beyond the five thousand the Prince of Bonny had requested.

  ‘It is, like ze ship itself, a watertight investment,’ the countess said, and laughed at her own joke. ‘And there is no problem, My lord, no one forces you to make money. I can only put my hand on two thousand pounds here in London, but you may have your pretty necklace back and use it to pay off all your many creditors. I vill send my man round to fetch the prince here in person, and he can return your necklace. Even though it may take a day or two, I can find another investor to take your place – someone who has enough, how you say in English, cash . . .?’

  Cato closed his eyes. Bella had gone too far. Never insult your mark. He could only hear a growling sort of noise from Stapleton and his wife’s high-pitched twittering about opportunity.

  ‘But the African, won’t he be expecting the ship back?’ the marquess asked.

  The countess laughed her tinkly Russian laugh before she spoke. ‘And how will he get it back, hmm? Rowink some kind of raft up ze Thames? I think not. Our gain is his loss. And as I said, we are all so much more deservink . . .’

  Cato knocked at Carfax a half-hour later and Jack let him in. He had a soft leather bag with the copy of the necklace Mother Hopkins had rustled up from the diamond dealer in Saffron Hill. It had cost her the last of their savings but it looked good, although he’d been warned to be careful with it because if it fell hard onto stone, the paste gems were sure to shatter.

  Jack showed him in. The new Marquess of Byfield was calmer, but he still looked grim. His wife was all nerves, hands fluttering from her throat to her face, shifting in her chair so the fabric of her black mourning dress rustled.

  Cato bowed. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am Quarmy, Prince of Bonny. Countess, your man informs me there is a problem.’

  ‘I’d have thought he couldn’t inform a cockerel to crow seeing as how the brute cannot speak,’ the marquess said.

  The countess flashed Cato a look sharper than razors, and he felt his heart speed up so fast he thought it might burst.

  ‘Your note, madam,’ he said at last, and flourished a piece of paper from his pocket. ‘I brought the jewels, and though it pains me to return them to their beautiful owner’ – he smiled at Lady Elizabeth – ‘I am sure they will look a thousand times better on you.’

  The marquess scowled, but Cato smiled on. Bella was playing it light, as if she didn’t care, and he should follow her lead.

  ‘My good friends wish to withdraw from our scheme, Prince,’ said the countess.

  ‘I am most sorry to hear this but, as they say on the coast of Bonny’ – Cato paused here as if translating African to English – ‘What is to is, must is . . .’ He nodded sagely. He knew this was not an African proverb, but one he had heard an elderly Jamaican prize fighter who frequented The Vipers use more than once. He went on, ‘I had already sent word by ship home to my father, and you were also lucky. I had found a buyer for the diamonds and was to sell them tomorrow. Ah, well. Countess, you promised me two thousand pounds – I suppose you cannot raise your stake?’

  The countess shook her head. ‘Alas, no. If only I were at home, it would be done. But I am sure we can find another partner, no?’

  Cato allowed himself to look a little troubled. ‘Speed, as I said before, is of the essence. I will leave the stones and get to the Royal Exchange at once. Good day!’ He left the leather pouch on the card table and bowed again.

  ‘If you are ever in Bonny, my lady . . .’ He kissed the countess’s hand and left.

  If the plan was to work, the marquess’s greed should get the better of him. He would call the prince back and offer the entire investment before he reached the street.

  Nothing happened. Jack opened the front door and Cato stepped out into the square.

  His heart felt empty. They had invested so much time and money into this; they owed so many favours! Cato walked down the steps. They had the diamonds, at least. They would fund a cottage in Bath and he hoped there was call for good locksmiths in the West Country.

  Cato turned the corner by the French church into Hog Lane when he heard footsteps closing behind him. He had the prince’s fine coat and hat, which would make a guinea or two. He speeded up, but couldn’t resist looking round. He relaxed when he saw it was Jack clumping down the street in his boots, red-faced.

  Cato looked past him in case he was not alone. ‘Jack! Saints preserve us!’ he said. ‘I thought I was to be skinned!’

  Jack came close and leaned against the church railings, doubled up. ‘I’ve been behind you from the square, only I couldn’t shout on account of being a bloody mute!’ He straightened up, a grin across his face wider than the Thames at Chelsea. ‘It’s only gone and bloody worked! It’s only worked!’ He thumped Cato hard on the back. ‘The marquess wants to rebuild his fortune. And he’s starting with a gold-plated investment in a ship that don’t even exist! Come on, I’ve been sent to bring you back.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Newgate Prison, Dawn, September 1712

  I DON’T KNOW how I managed to sleep, hands and feet shackled, but I suppose one can get accustomed to anything. I had thought to stay awake, given that this was to be my last night on this earth. But I had such a good dream. Addeline with her hair wild, laughing and laughing.

  Then the Ordinary kicked me in the ribs and now I was sure that I was awake and that it was morning. It wasn’t due to the light, but from the sounds of life beyond the prison walls – the handcarts and animals and horse-drawn wagons trundling along the street; not to mention a woman not too far off, inside the walls, sobbing.

  I tried to sit upright. ‘I am to hang today,’ I said aloud, half hoping he would laugh and that this room, this stench, these sounds were the dream.

  ‘Death comes to all of us,’ the Ordinary said. ‘Please, we have little time. I would have more of your tale so it may be published and quite the talk of the town before you are cut down.’

  ‘Those are hardly words to inspire me, sir,’ I said.

  ‘It is only the truth, young man.’

  Young man. I would never now be old, I thought. Not see myself with a proper beard or with a son and daughter of my own. I sighed.

  ‘On the subject of my crime I am sworn to silence,’ I said and he kicked me again. It was a small pleasure to have it within my power to cause this human bloodsucker some irritation.

  ‘The diamonds! All London is rife with rumour: where did they go? Off with the Czar of Russia’s daughter, it’s said.’

  ‘She was a countess, not a princess! Anyway, the truth may be less romantic. Have you never thought, perhaps, that the Stapleton diamonds were never the real thing in the first place?’

  He sneered. ‘I will play no more games with you, you imp!’

  ‘I will tell you how I was caught, but even then I fear we won’t reach the end of my tale,’ I said, and the church clock at St Sepulchre’s chimed six. ‘The cart will come for me at ten.’

  In the darkness of the condemned cell I heard the Ordinary sharpen his quill. I took a long breath and began. After all, I had naught else to pass the time, and my family, the friends I once had, were long gone. Living other lives in Bath.

  I was already dead to them a long time ago when I was foolish enough to be caught.

  So I spoke.

  ‘All had gone to plan – no, scratch that . . . We had, in fact, exceeded all our goals. We had enough rhino to live wherever we pleased. Bella had in mind the dresses she would have made, Jack the pair of Arabians; Sam was planning on a lighter chair design that would make his job
a great deal more comfortable. Even Quarmy, our genuine African prince, was smiling occasionally. He had decided to stay in London, and Mother, heart softened by so much goree, had promised to give him a few guineas to set him up as a music master in a charity school. The idea suited him, he said, although in truth I could not see our prince inducing sulky ten-year-olds to scratch out tunes!

  ‘See, we had more than the full five thousand in cash, on top of the diamonds. The carter had been hired, the upstairs rooms at The Vipers cleared, and the party! That Tuesday night all London – well, all London that mattered – was there. Ivan, the cove with the dancing bear (he left the bear at home); Solly the Dutchman; even Master Tunnadine, who had been pressured not to set foot in the capital ever again, had made his way to The Vipers. And, yes – write this down – I witnessed Mother Hopkins shed more than a tear or two.

  ‘All was well and in full swing. Bella had opened the proceedings with her recital of “My Lady’s Revenge”. I had played and Quarmy was to play too – he was a better player than me – and I planned to ask Addeline to dance. Oh, we had often danced near to each other – many times, in fact. But this was to be different. I was going to ask her, the way Sam asked the glove-shop girl, or Jack had once asked Bella, if you get my meaning.

  ‘So I’ve only been going over and over it in my head all day. How I’ll ask her and how she’ll answer, and I’m hoping hard she won’t just look at me with her dark grey eyes and laugh. And I’ve been so bound up with that that I don’t notice Quarmy’s not there. I’m getting myself all twisted up just thinking about it, seeing the picture of it in my head. I had spoken to him earlier and he’d promised to play the tune Addy likes best: “The Thames Flows Sweetly”. So I’m pushing through the crowd in the bar at The Vipers, only no one’s seen him since dark. I go upstairs, thinking he’s having a weep over his lost love, but he’s not there. His fine princely coat is hung up on the back of the door but there’s no sign of Quarmy.

  ‘Then all sorts of things just go rushing through my head. ’Cause there was always that distance with Quarmy, looking back on it – and I’ve had more than enough time in here to look back on it. I can see it’s more his upbringing than anything else, but I suppose . . . I suppose I was more than a little jealous of the cove. So there’s me, reckoning on how maybe he’s scarpered with the lot – the money . . . everything – and ready to round up Jack and Sam and scour the city looking for him.

  ‘But they’re well into their cups and not ready to move anywhere, and Sam says of course Quarmy’s not taken the cash because Ma’s hidden it safe, but then Jack asks if I’ve seen his Bella, which I haven’t, since she sang. So then I’m thinking they’ve only gone and run off together. Addy puts me right. She’s sitting nursing her ale in the corner, and I’m wishing I could ask her to dance anyway. I would, excepting it’s Daley the locksmith singing “The Girl I Left Behind”, which, in case you do not know, is a very mournful tune indeed. Even more so when it is sung by a locksmith who can scarce carry a tune.

  ‘I know why Addy is down: she no more wants to leave town than a cat wants to give up the seat closest to the fire. She sighs and smiles a sad smile, and for an instant I wish that The Vipers was empty except for the two of us.

  ‘“I thought you was after Quarmy?” she says. “Wasn’t he going to play? If he isn’t, then will you, ’cause I don’t reckon I can take much more of Old Man Daley’s warbling. And play something jolly to lift the spirits, for Christ’s own sake!”

  ‘So I says to her: “I think Quarmy’s vanished. Run off with Bella and all our blood and bread. Into the night.”

  ‘“You don’t mean it?” she says.

  ‘And I just shrugged. “No one else is bothered,” I says.

  ‘Old Daley stops singing and there’s cheering and applause, and suddenly Mother Hopkins is standing on the bar of The Vipers and the crowd are baying for a song.

  ‘Then I turn to Addy. No chance of a dance but I had a plan. “Let’s go and see what’s happened,” I say, and take her by the hand out into the dark London streets. The cold air stings like a bucket of frozen water. But I can feel Addy’s smiling to be out, just from the pressure of her hand in mine, and the spring in her step. I realize Bella’s probably off kissing Ivan out of sight of Jack, and Quarmy’s probably chasing his sweetheart’s shadow. But that doesn’t matter. It’s me and Addeline. Out in the dark. One last time.

  ‘It was completely black that night, as if London was wearing a cloak of pitch. I remember that well – no moon at all, and as we walked away from the noise and the light of The Vipers, it seemed like the city folded us in, like we were a part of it. Can you imagine that, Sir Ordinary? It makes me fair shiver thinking I’ll never know that feeling again.

  ‘Like I said, we was on the way down to Long Acre when a link boy runs towards us out of the blackness, his torch yellow and blinding, lighting the way.

  ‘So Addy shouts, “Oi!”

  ‘“Who’s that?” the boy shouts back. “If you want me to take you to Leicester Fields, that’ll be tuppence as it’s gone midnight!” He is tiny and his voice is high and squeaky.

  ‘“It’s Miss Addeline Hopkins, and we only want information,” Addy replies.

  ‘“Addeline Hopkins?” He’s slightly scared, and Addy is pleased, I can tell.

  ‘“Oi, little ’un! Have you been working the Garden all night?”

  ‘“What if I have?”

  ‘“You haven’t seen a young cove, darker than nibs here?” Addeline asks him.

  ‘“Patterns all on his face?” says the boy. Quarmy is hard to miss, as I’m sure you can imagine, sir.’

  The Ordinary nodded his head as he wrote.

  ‘So she says: “Yeah, the very one!”

  ‘“You ’is mates?” the boy asks. “Only he was carted off to the lock-up in St Anne’s with some red-headed piece who was swearing like a sailor. Turned the air bluer than my fingers.”

  ‘Addy and I looked at each other then. The link boy held out his hand and we did the honest thing by him, then we sped up towards St Anne’s. The red-head had to be Bella, who’d taken the precaution of washing her hair with that abominable stuff that smells of nothing but the night-soil cart so she wouldn’t be mistaken for Ekaterina.

  ‘“I can spring ’em,” I said to Addy.

  ‘“I know,” Addeline said, and squeezed my hand. And so we both fair hurtled through the dark to Soho.’

  I shifted position and made myself as comfortable as I could. The Ordinary stopped to stretch his hand.

  ‘They were there all right. Quarmy mute and inconsolable even when we turned up and whispered at them though the bars. Bella was with him, and she was fighting off the only other unlucky fool in the lock-up, some young buck with a name I don’t remember, drunk as a lord and puking up as if his stomach had no bottom to it.

  ‘Well, when Bella sees me, she knows they’re as good as out, so she stops with the yelling and tells Addy to go round the front and get her cards out. She knows as the gaoler likes a game, ’cause she tried to talk him round, but he thought himself too clever to be drawn by a prisoner.

  ‘So I ask Quarmy what happened, and he says: “Bella had walked me to Bedfordbury, to buy a new G-string for my fiddle, when we are accosted. Accosted by a sailing man with a cockaded hat.”

  ‘“A captain, Cato,” Bella adds. “And, oh, your jaw will drop. Only your friend and mine. Captain Walker of Greenwich.”

  ‘Then Quarmy says, “He grabbed me – quite ungentlemanly – tight by the elbow, and then Bella pulled on the other side and I blushed profusely on account of the names he called her.”

  ‘“At least he didn’t have me down as Russian!” Bella says.

  ‘Quarmy carries on: “He says, the captain says, ‘I know those marks. I know them!’ in such a tone as to send shivers down your spine.”

  ‘I stopped the conversation there on account of it being all the better to talk after they were free – if I had but known then that the day
would never come . . .’ I sighed and pulled off some biting insect – a louse, most likely, but I must admit I was grateful the cell was still quite dark so as I couldn’t see it and count its infernal legs.

  ‘Go on, man!’ said the Ordinary. ‘Time is running and passing – all Newgate will be up and we all have our allotted tasks and time. So, you’re saying Captain Walker, he thought Quarmy was you?’

  ‘Well, in a manner of speaking,’ I said. ‘He thought Quarmy was the cove what had swindled his son-in-law. See, Captain Walker had sailed up and down the West Coast of Africa more times than most. He’d seen markings like Quarmy’s before; he knew he was royalty – could tell he was the real thing, and he’d been on the lookout for an African ever since his daughter had confided to her mother that all was well and their fortune would soon be restored by a prince from Africa.’ I smiled to myself. ‘I’d have loved to have been a mouse in their skirting board! I can see it all: “Mama, Mama, this nice African prince has gone and sold us a ship and its cargo. Knock-down price! The money we’ll make! Maybe Papa can captain the boat?”

  ‘Thing we didn’t reckon on was that old Captain Walker knows Bonny well. We never knew this particular nugget of information. He knows the tale’s a fishy one and he works out the diamonds are cockerels’ eggs and as far from being the real thing as day is from night. He knows now that his daughter has been swindled rotten and is not about to let it lie.’

  I leaned back against the cold cell wall. Someone was awake and singing a hymn, asking God to save his soul. The Ordinary must have been listening too because he went and said that was one tune I ought to be practising myself to sing as I danced the hangman’s jig. I said nothing. I wanted my last dance to have been with Addeline.

  ‘So did you spring them, your associates?’ the Ordinary asked.

  ‘Is the Queen a lady?’ I replied.

  Outside, the sky was getting lighter. Through the barred window the sky had a blush of light that turned it brown. The city was almost completely awake. I imagined the carter brushing down his horse, the one that would pull the cart with me and my fellow unfortunates to the edge of town, where the Oxford Road gives way to fields. Where the famous, possibly world famous, triple tree would hang three of us at once and give the crowd – for there was sure to be a good crowd – a free day’s entertainment.