‘No, sir – Juvenal’s.’
‘But gelding him? What do you mean by that?’ Surely the girl knew what the word meant? She was a farmer’s daughter, after all. ‘You geld a horse or a pig or a—’
‘Or a man, sir. It is all the same.’
I took a deep breath. ‘Tell me. As far as you can.’
‘Mr Froude was in a terrible passion that day because he’d hoped for an heir. Father said squire was the proudest man in America, sir, and he could never bear to be crossed. And when he flew into a rage he’d lash out at anyone. He’d have the slaves whipped for the slightest thing.’
‘But gelding—?’
‘He said Juvenal had stolen money and must be punished to make an example. So he had the men take him down to the yard … there was a building nearby they sometimes used for the animals.’
The old scullery, I thought, that must be it. I remembered the brick floor sloping down to the central drain, the ovens, the rings fixed low on the walls with the decaying ropes still attached to them. Near the drain there had been a dented iron plate, a hammer and a pair of pincers.
I remembered too how I had spat out a fly and how I had rubbed at a spot of spittle on the plate. I remembered the tint of rust-red on my fingertip. But had it been rust or the last trace of Juvenal’s emasculation?
‘What happened then? Did Pickett see all this?’
‘I don’t know, sir. I was at the window of the housekeeper’s room. I saw the sergeant going towards the yard. And after a while squire and his men came out with him and sent him packing. That’s when they were shouting at each other.’
‘When did Pickett come back?’ I asked.
‘A night or two later, sir, with a dozen men or more. Rebel soldiers. They stole what they could take and defiled some of the women and they set fire to the house. I hid behind a mattress in the slave quarters. That’s where they had taken Juvenal – he was lying there, crying out and groaning like a madman. They’d given him opium and rum for the pain but it wasn’t enough.’
A memory stirred: something did not quite agree with what I had heard previously. I tried to pin down the anomaly but it slipped away like a retreating fish in the dark waters of a pond.
Defiled?
The implications hit me at last. ‘Where was Mrs Arabella?’
‘I don’t know.’ The child’s brittle composure was cracking. The muscles of her face worked. ‘Then Mr Froude came running, sir,’ she went on. ‘He came into the slave quarters to hide. And Juvenal reared up and stabbed him.’
Chapter Sixty-Seven
A great trouble has one advantage: it casts out a lesser one.
I had been considerably exercised in my mind about how to provide for Mehitabel in view of the possibility that Mrs Arabella might refuse to take her in. But the difficulty was trivial in comparison with the news that I was a cuckold and that I had lost the support of my patron at the American Department. So I simply ignored it.
When we reached Warren Street, I told Josiah to take the girl down to the kitchen and give her into the care of the cook. I sent up a few lines to Mrs Arabella, explaining that I had brought Mehitabel Tippet to the house at least for temporary refuge; I reminded her that Mehitabel and her mother had helped Captain Wintour and myself, and that her poor mother had paid for this with her life. In a quarter of an hour, Miriam brought me her mistress’s reply, a cold little note saying that this was quite in order.
Having settled the matter, I went out again and walked aimlessly to and fro – down to the harbour, round by the Battery and up towards Greenwich. By the time I returned home, it was growing dark. Mrs Arabella and the Judge were upstairs. I told Josiah to bring me something to eat in the parlour.
Though I was footsore and weary I knew I would not sleep for hours. I also knew that doing anything is generally preferable to doing nothing, so I fixed on the plan of writing letters to Lizzie, her aunt and Mr Rampton. I had pen and ink brought to me in the parlour, where the light was better than in my chamber, and ordered up a bottle of claret in case my sorrows needed drowning.
The immediate difficulty that faced me now was distance. Lizzie was three thousand miles away. Any letter I wrote would not reach her and her aunt for five or six weeks at the very least. In a way my problem was identical to that which, in another sphere, bedevilled Lord George Germain in London and General Clinton in New York. Communication between England and America was necessarily so slow that in many respects it was almost worse than no communication at all.
The daylight faded. I tried to write to Lizzie, to assure her that I should soon be home and that we should be together again. Knowing Augusta as I did, I did not think it likely that she would have taken our daughter away with her, though the possibility lingered to haunt my nightmares.
I had barely reached the second sentence when I heard footsteps in the hall. The door opened and Mrs Arabella entered with a book under her arm. I rose and bowed. Josiah followed her, bringing candles.
I drew out a chair for her. Josiah lit the candles and withdrew. I waited for Mrs Arabella to open her book.
She looked up, raising her chin. ‘Are you at leisure for a moment, sir?’
‘Of course.’ I laid down my pen, wondering if she intended to continue our conversation about the gold.
‘I wished to thank you for bringing Mehitabel Tippet to us.’
‘Will it inconvenience you to have her here?’
Her eyebrows rose. ‘Not in the slightest. Why should it? Besides, we have a duty to care for her – she’s the daughter of one of our tenants. We shall let her find her feet with us and by and by I shall look about for a respectable situation for her.’
Neither of us spoke for a moment. My eyes drifted down to the letter in front of me – not the one to Lizzie but Mr Rampton’s to me.
It is a great pity you did not see fit to take the foolish woman with you to New York.
‘Forgive me, sir – and I do not wish to intrude – but you do not look at all well. Are you ill?’
‘No, madam. I am quite well. It is merely that I have had distressing news from home.’
‘Your daughter?’
‘No, thank God. As far as I know, she is in good health.’ I hesitated. Then, before I could put a brake on my tongue, I heard the terrible truth spilling out of my mouth. ‘It appears that my wife has eloped with a German gentleman. Though “gentleman” is too kind a word for him.’
I did not dare look at her face but I heard her sharp intake of breath. I did not mind her disgust. But I could not support it if she showed pity for me.
‘And your daughter?’ she said again.
‘She has been living with her aunt. I hope and pray she is there still.’
Mrs Arabella gestured towards my writing materials. ‘I’m afraid I am a distraction.’
‘That is an advantage at present, madam. I’m trying to write to Lizzie, but it may be days until the next mailbag goes.’
‘Then let us play a game to occupy ourselves.’
I stared at her. ‘A game?’
She stared back at me – directly, as a man does, with no pretence of modesty. ‘Why not? You want distraction and so do I. Backgammon?’
I agreed to this and rang the bell for the servant. In theory, Mrs Arabella was in mourning so it was scarcely decent for her to play at backgammon, even in private. But hers was a strange sort of mourning. Besides, I reminded myself, this was America, where they did things differently.
Josiah brought us the board and set the chairs so we faced each other across the table with the candles burning on either side of the board. Mrs Arabella told him to bring another wine glass.
I remembered the time I had played backgammon with Jack Wintour on the occasion that he had threatened to sell Miriam to pay his debts. I opened the board and spread the counters. The shaker was there, and the pair of bone dice.
When I was done, I sat back and pushed two fingers into the pocket of my waistcoat. I felt the outlines of the two ivor
y dice: one from Pickett’s body, the other from the belvedere at the bottom of the garden; discovered in different places and eleven months apart; yet alike as peas in a pod.
‘Well, sir,’ Mrs Arabella said. ‘Do we play for love or money?’
The words were capable of more than one interpretation. There was nothing flirtatious about her demeanour. On the contrary, she sat back in her chair as she spoke and her tone was unemotional, almost uninterested.
‘For love perhaps.’ I did not look at her as I spoke. I drew out the two ivory dice from my pocket and dropped them on the open board: a pair of sixes. ‘Will you indulge me, madam? These are my lucky dice.’
I raised my eyes. Did a flicker of emotion cross her face when she saw them? It might so easily have been merely the shifting of light and shadow on her cheeks, caused by the swaying candle flames.
‘Why not?’ She picked up the wooden dice and set them to one side. ‘But I had not put you down as a gambler, sir.’
‘Not from choice.’
I set the pieces in their places. Mrs Arabella sipped her wine. She rarely took wine, even with dinner. Like so many of the American ladies I met in New York, there was something of the puritan about her. I felt a contradictory surge of desire for her, as shameful as it was inconvenient.
We played the first game. I won, though the victory could have gone either way until the last throw.
‘Your dice have brought you good luck,’ Mrs Arabella said.
‘Then perhaps we should use the other pair for the next game.’
‘I think not. These may bring me luck this time.’
My attention wandered from the game and returned to Mr Rampton’s letter and its implications. Augusta had eloped with her German lover. By law, her adultery was grounds for divorce. But I knew that in practice a divorce decree required a private member’s bill in Parliament, which was both expensive and time-consuming; divorce was not a luxury that was open to a person in the middling rank of society. I could not allow myself to hope for Augusta’s death. Yet unless she died, I should never be free to marry again. My future seemed bleak indeed.
I looked up and found Mrs Arabella staring at me.
‘You are wool-gathering, sir,’ she said with an affectation of severity. ‘I’ve nearly gammoned you and you haven’t noticed. You see I was right about your lucky dice. They are as fickle as fate.’
With an effort, I smiled at her. ‘Shall we make it the best of three games?’
We set the board for the third time. This time I concentrated on the game. It was another close-run affair but fortune was unkind to Mrs Arabella in the closing stage of the game and I won comfortably.
‘It was not very gallant of you, sir,’ she said. ‘But I shall be forgiving and blame it on your dice. How glad I am that we were not playing for money.’
She rose to her feet as she was speaking. We said goodnight and I opened the door for her. I sat down again at the table. I noticed that she had barely touched her wine.
I slipped the ivory dice into my pocket, placed the backgammon counters on the board and closed the box.
As I took up my glass, her words recurred to me: How glad I am that we were not playing for money. But now I saw the possibility – the hope? – of a double entendre.
We had agreed not to play for money. We had agreed to play for love.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
In the middle of war, New York slumbered in its own dreary peace.
We did not forget the dead. Jack Wintour’s absence left a wound in the Warren Street house that affected all of us. But in a week or two the wound began to scab over. It itched and ached but it no longer bled unless we could not resist the temptation to scratch it.
Early in October, I received another letter from Mr Rampton, as chilly in tone as its predecessor. He had received a report confirming that Augusta was now in Munich. He also eased my mind, perhaps unintentionally, by enclosing letters from my sister and my daughter, who were still in Shepperton.
I felt a sadness for my poor wife. Augusta could never be received in polite society again. Respectable people would close their doors to her. She was in all probability condemned to a half-life on the Continent. I knew I could not quite abandon her for she was still the mother of my child. I must discover whether she was in actual want and, if necessary, send her money.
Mr Rampton wrote that the elopement continued to delight the gossips in London and cause distress and inconvenience to himself. More to the point, Lord George had intimated that he did not at all like the notion that the American Department was connected with such a disagreeable scandal. Worse still, Mr Rampton hinted, news of my wife’s behaviour had reached the ear of the King himself, who was not pleased. The royal marriage was notably happy and His Majesty did not see why the marriages of his subjects should be any different.
That being so, Mr Rampton continued, it had been found necessary to review my employment at the Department. His Lordship had reluctantly concluded that it would not be in the Department’s best interests for me to remain in my clerkship. Though I was not of course directly to blame for Augusta’s behaviour, I must accept some of the responsibility for it for a man should direct his wife in all things. Another clerk would be sent out to replace me in the spring; I should return as soon as possible after his arrival.
Rampton made no mention of finding me a post in a different department, though I knew such a transfer would be a simple matter for a man of his influence. He had never liked his niece and had helped me only reluctantly into a place. Now her behaviour gave him all the reason he needed to sever connections with both of us.
He did not actually say that in so many words. He was too wily a man to commit to anything unless there was a clear advantage to himself in doing so. That was one reason why he was an under secretary.
The weeks passed and autumn slipped away. Mehitabel settled in the household, though I rarely saw her. Mrs Arabella told me that the girl was competent with her needle and was making herself useful.
In November, I heard again from Mr Rampton. This time there was no mention of my unhappy wife for he had received my report of the Mount George expedition and of Captain Wintour’s as-yet unsolved murder. This would have set the seal on my disgrace if the seal had not been set on it already.
It was at about this time that I began to notice that I was no longer received so warmly at Headquarters as I had been. Even the provincial and city officials grew cool towards me.
Nobody said anything directly. Gradually, however, I realized that I had ceased to be considered the coming man whose friendship it might be useful to cultivate. The news that I was to be recalled in the spring had become widely known. To make matters worse, my wife’s elopement conferred a vicarious taint on me. The flow of invitations to concerts, supper-parties and dinners diminished to a trickle and then stopped altogether.
I still saw Noak, who continued occasionally to act as Judge Wintour’s secretary and sometimes came to Warren Street. But he avoided unnecessary conversation. As for his master, Townley confined our intercourse to the bare minimum required by his responsibilities and mine.
On the whole my unpopularity did not distress me unduly: I knew that my time in New York was coming to an end and that, in all probability, I should never meet my acquaintance here again. I consoled myself with the thought that at least I should see Lizzie soon. As for the loss of my employment, I hoped there would be an opening for an honest man in the prime of life who could cast accounts and write a fair hand. While I found my feet again in England, my sister would not allow Lizzie or me to starve.
It was the change in Major Marryot’s manner that surprised me most and, I own, made me a little unhappy. During the last twelve months, I had come to believe that he and I had put aside the coldness of our early relations in favour of something warmer that was, if not quite friendship, at least mutual esteem.
He and I were still obliged to work together but there was no longer any hint of our former intimac
y. I encountered him once or twice in Mrs Arabella’s drawing room and was tempted to smile at the quandary that his emotions placed him in: he was drawn to her like an iron filing to the positive pole of a magnet; and yet I took the part of the negative pole and repelled him.
On one occasion at Headquarters, Marryot and I happened to pass in the crowded passage outside the Post Room. He jostled against me, pushing me at the wall. He paused and, for a moment, our eyes met.
He stared at me, daring me to make something of his rudeness, even hoping that I would, so it would give him an opportunity to vent his hostility against me more effectively. Duels were officially frowned upon in New York but they were not unknown.
Neither of us spoke. I held his gaze for a moment but refused to allow him to provoke me. I turned on my heel and walked away.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Towards the end of the month I had occasion to go across to Long Island, where a gang of irregulars from the mainland had murdered a Loyalist refugee from Connecticut in front of his family for the sake of a few guineas. I took depositions from witnesses and did what I could for the victim’s widow and children.
Afterwards, I had an hour or two in hand. The day was fine, though very cold. En route back to the Brooklyn ferry I made a detour to the south that took me a mile or so out of my way. The distillery was here beside its own jetty, with a stumpy mole poking out to sea in the direction of Nutten Island.
I enquired of a fisherman where I might find Mr Townley’s warehouse. He directed me to a large low building a couple of hundred yards back from the coast. Here I found Mr Ingham, the manager, in an office that overlooked the grey waters of the bay.
He was a stooped man a few years older than myself. His features were mobile and not without charm, though the vertical lines that scored his forehead hinted at habitual anxiety. The warmth of his welcome suggested that he seldom saw company in this place. He knew of me by reputation, but seemed unaware of my recent fall from grace.
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