by C. S. Harris
Sebastian was acutely aware of the shop’s collection of case and mantel clocks, all ticking at once. The Royal House of Hanover had a number of bastard branches. Most were unacknowledged, but some were. Sir Francis Rowe was one of the privileged few who were not only acknowledged but—thanks in no small part to his extreme personal wealth—actively courted.
Sir Francis’s wealth came from his father, a once minor Highland baronet who had remained loyal to the House of Hanover and thus benefited handsomely from the confiscations and grand-scale thefts that followed the Jacobite defeat at Culloden. He had also benefited from his marriage to Maria Cumberland, the illegitimate daughter of the Butcher of Culloden himself: Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and third son of King George II. Sebastian did some quick calculations and figured Sir Francis’s mother and the current King were first cousins. He was a bit hazier on Rowe’s exact relationship to Jarvis and Hero, but there was no doubt it existed.
“I take it you know him?” said Cantrell, watching Sebastian with unblinking dark eyes.
“Not well.”
“In that, you are fortunate.” The Professor slid off his stool. “Did you hear about the boy Rowe caught trying to steal his pocket handkerchief on the Strand last month? Broke the child’s neck the way you or I might snap a length of kindling. The lad was barely six years old. And in case you might be thinking it an accident, let me hasten to assure you that it was not. Rowe deliberately killed him, then simply tossed the child’s body aside like so much rubbish.”
Sebastian said, “There’s a world of difference between killing a young thief in a fit of rage—as reprehensible as that may be—and what was done to Benji Thatcher.”
“One was undoubtedly quicker. But then, it only involved a pocket handkerchief.”
Sebastian studied the old man’s hooded eyes. “What is it you’re not telling me?”
“Someone recently relieved Sir Francis Rowe of his favorite snuffbox—a pretty little gold trinket with a miniature by Fragonard set beneath a domed crystal lid. Word is he vowed to catch the young thief responsible and make him rue the day he was born.”
“You’re suggesting that thief was Benji?”
The Professor blinked. “How would I know?”
Sebastian suspected the old man knew exactly who had stolen the royal cousin’s painted snuffbox. He said, “I’ve never heard Rowe accused of an interest in boys.”
“You think that’s significant?” The weary lines on the Professor’s face crumpled in a way that made him look much closer to seventy than fifty. “You and I both know that for a certain kind of man, rape is just another way to punish and control those they hate. And men like Sir Francis Rowe hate the world.”
Chapter 20
Before Sebastian left Clerkenwell, he tracked down Mott Gowan again and asked the constable to make inquiries around Hockley-in-the-Hole on the off chance someone else had seen the boy there on Friday evening.
“For all we know he could have been snatched not long after you saw him,” said Sebastian. “And I suspect you’ll get more cooperation out of the locals than I would.”
The constable nodded. “I’ll look into it right away, my lord.”
“You might also ask if they noticed anyone unfamiliar hanging around at the same time. Presumably someone dressed as a gentleman.”
“Aye, my lord.” Gowan scrubbed a hand across his lower face. His eyes were bloodshot. “Still no sign of what’s happened to Sybil, my lord?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry.”
The constable shook his big, rawboned head. “The poor wee lass. It’s troublesome, it is, thinking about what she might be going through.”
“Perhaps we’ll get lucky and someone will remember having seen something,” said Sebastian, although he doubted it.
He returned then to Clerkenwell Green, where he’d left Tom waiting with the curricle. “Go ahead and take the chestnuts home,” said Sebastian. “I need to walk.”
The tiger’s features went slack with horror. “Walk?”
“Walk,” said Sebastian, slapping the near gelding’s rump. “Off you go, then.”
He wandered the streets of the city, gradually winding his way westward, his troubled thoughts on the past. Any man who has ever gone to war understands only too well the worst of what his fellow men are capable. Rape, sodomy, murder, torture, mutilation, senseless destruction—Sebastian had seen it all. He’d watched men—comrades he thought he knew and respected—laughingly slice the ears off their dead enemies to make bloody necklaces. He’d ridden through villages where passing soldiers—he’d learned quickly it made little difference whether they were British, French, or Spanish—had slaughtered every living thing, from the sheep and cattle in the fields to aged grandmothers and the tiniest babes in arms. It had come to him eventually that such things were not aberrations; nor were they, as most would like to believe, “inhuman.” He’d reached the conclusion that this capacity for barbarity actually forms a fundamental and inescapable part of whatever it means to be human, however much we might want to deny it—and however much we might want to deny those instincts within ourselves. Nor was he so delusional as to except himself: Hadn’t he once, somewhere in the mountains of Portugal, beaten a French major to death with his own bare hands in a bloody blur of vengeful rage?
Yet Sebastian knew too that war has a way of bringing out the worst in some men, just as it could bring out the best in others. Normally, in the course of their daily lives, most kept such savage impulses so deeply buried as to remain unrecognized and unacknowledged. So what had driven the monster who brutalized Benji Thatcher? Anger over the loss of a favorite snuffbox? Was that really all it could take?
Looking up, Sebastian realized he’d reached St. James’s Street. But he still had no answer to his troubling questions.
• • •
He found Sir Francis Rowe perusing the daily papers in the reading room of White’s.
“Good afternoon,” said Sebastian, pausing beside him. “Mind if I join you?”
Sir Francis looked up, eyebrows arching with the merest hint of the surprise he was too well-bred to otherwise betray. “Of course not.”
He was perhaps thirty-four or thirty-five years of age, although he looked older thanks to the straight, light brown hair that was already receding rapidly from his high forehead. He was known as a natty dresser, without carrying the tendency far enough to be considered a dandy. His kinship to the Prince Regent could be easily traced in the long nose, protuberant lips, and thick Hanoverian build he had inherited from his infamous royal grandfather. He also shared with his princely cousin a similar faintly contemptuous and smirking smile.
“I was just hearing an interesting story about you,” said Sebastian, settling into a nearby chair.
“Oh?” Rowe lowered his paper but did not fold it or set it aside.
“About how you summarily dispatched a young thief caught trying to pick your pocket last month. ‘Snapped his neck like a stick of kindling’ is the way it was described to me.”
One of the Baronet’s eyebrows arched even higher. “You say that as if you find my actions disturbing.”
“I’m told the child was six years old.”
“Something like that.”
“It is generally considered customary to summon the constables in such situations.”
“So I saved the Crown the cost of a hanging.” Rowe gave a dismissive shrug. “Both the coroner and the jury at the decidedly tiresome inquest I was required to attend commended my actions. Perhaps if more gentlemen responded thus we’d be plagued with less theft. Certainly with fewer thieves, hmmm?”
“I also heard you’ve recently lost a favorite snuffbox.”
The Baronet’s vague smile tightened. “Not precisely. ‘Lost’ implies a certain negligence on my part. In point of fact, the snuffbox was stolen.”
“In Clerkenwell?”
“Mmm. I had reason to attend the Sessions House, which is how I came to be on the green. Believe me, I sincerely regret not simply dispatching my secretary in my place. Why do you ask?”
“A young pickpocket was recently found murdered in Clerkenwell.”
“And you’re suggesting what, precisely? I haven’t made it my personal mission to clear the streets of thieves, if that’s what you’re implying. Most of us have better things to do with our time than concern ourselves with activities best left to those officials we pay to deal with such unpleasantness.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “Don’t tell me you’ve now sunk to investigating random murders amongst the city’s unwashed rabble? That will keep you busy. I fear the death houses are overflowing with the noisome wretches.”
Sebastian said, “Where were you last Friday evening between five and seven?”
Sir Francis gave a halfhearted huff of amusement. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am, actually. Very.”
“Good God. Are you accusing me of killing this nasty urchin you’ve become obsessed with?” At that, Rowe threw back his head and laughed out loud.
Sebastian waited until the Baronet’s mirth had subsided. Then he said, “So where were you?”
A muscle jumped along Rowe’s jowl. He was obviously no longer amused. “I see no reason to indulge this ridiculous conversation any further.” The Baronet gave his newspaper an ostentatious shake and raised it to cover his face. “Now, if you will excuse me?”
“What about early Monday morning at half past one? Where were you then?”
The Baronet’s fingers spasmed, once, at the edges of his paper. But he didn’t lower it and he made no response.
For one long moment, Sebastian stayed where he was, his gaze on the arrogant, complacent man before him.
After the last Scottish uprising, the proud citizens of London had erected a grand equestrian statue of this man’s infamous grandfather in Cavendish Square. Serenely untroubled by the methods Cumberland had used to suppress their rebellious northern neighbors, they even nicknamed him “Sweet William.” It was the Scots who dubbed the Duke “the Butcher of Culloden.” After Culloden, Cumberland ordered his soldiers to give no quarter to the Highlanders lying wounded on the battlefield or attempting to surrender, while what was done to the people of the area would forever remain a dark stain on England’s soul. Untold numbers of women and children were herded into churches and crofts to be burned alive, with the survivors sent by the tens of thousands to the Colonies as slaves. So thorough was Cumberland’s desecration of the region that he afterward bragged that a man riding through the Highlands could now go for days without seeing an unburned village or a living soul.
Sebastian pushed to his feet. There was no denying that war brought out the worst in some men, and Sebastian had never believed in attributing the sins of the fathers to their sons. But it was also true that a raging temper and a capacity for violence and cruelty could be inherited as easily as blue eyes or a tendency toward corpulence.
Which was a disturbing thought for a man to whom the identity of his own father remained a dark and troubling mystery.
Chapter 21
Shortly after midday, Hero ordered her carriage brought round and set out for the church of St. James’s, Clerkenwell.
She had sent a message earlier that morning to Reverend Filby, requesting his assistance in arranging interviews with some of the street children of the area. His reply had been both courteous and encouraging, and when he met her at the church’s porch he was practically quivering with enthusiasm.
“My dear Lady Devlin,” he said, bowing low. “I can’t tell you what an honor this is. A great honor! I have followed your series of articles on the city’s poor with tremendous interest. It’s a fine thing you’re proposing to do, drawing attention to the plight of the children left behind when their mothers are transported. A very fine thing.”
“Thank you,” said Hero. “Are the two children who agreed to speak with me this afternoon here?”
“Yes, yes; they’re waiting in the churchyard. And if your ladyship should wish it, I can arrange for others to come tomorrow or later in the week.”
“That would be excellent, thank you.” They turned to walk toward the churchyard. “Have you many such children in the area?”
Reverend Filby nodded sadly. “Dozens, I’m afraid. In addition to our own three prisons, we are so very close to Newgate. The mothers are generally allowed to keep their children with them in prison, you know. But when the women are sent to the ships, the little ones are simply turned into the streets. How the governors of the prisons can live with themselves, I do not know.”
“It might be interesting to ask them that question.”
The reverend gave a nervous laugh and looked away, toward the base of the churchyard where the two children waited. One, a ragged, incredibly grubby boy, was chasing a butterfly through the weathered tombstones. But the girl simply sat with her hands clasped in her lap, her gaze fixed on something in the distance that only she could see.
• • •
The boy was introduced to Hero as Israel Barnes, although he confided after the reverend left that everyone called him Izzy. He was a short but sturdy lad with a plain, snub-nosed face, a surprisingly ready laugh, and hair so dirty and matted it looked like the hide of a dog that’d been dead a year.
He said he thought he was probably thirteen years old and had been on the streets alone since, as he put it, “the year the ole King went daft as a daisy and ’is son took o’er.”
Hero was impressed that the lad even knew such an event had occurred.
Izzy laughed. “That’s ’cuz me mum took me to see the grand spread ’e put on.”
“You mean the fete at Carlton House to celebrate the Prince’s elevation to the regency?” The common people had lined up for days afterward for the privilege of traipsing through the palace and gazing in wonder at the remains of their betters’ magnificent feast.
“Aye; that were it. Me mum thought it was right peculiar, a son throwing such a bash to celebrate his da being nicked in the nob. I remember it weery well, ye see, because it were the weery next day that she kilt me da.”
Hero almost dropped the pencil she was using to take notes. “Your mother was transported for murdering your father?”
“Aye.”
Hero was envisioning some poor, abused woman defending herself against a drunken, brutish husband when Izzy said, “’It ’im in the ’ead with a fryin’ pan, she did. Come ’ome from the grog shops more’n half-sprung, and there ’e was layin’ in bed like ’e ’ad been ever since ’e broke ’is leg and couldn’t work, and she said she was tired of ’im eatin’ up all the food she brung, so she give ’im a good wallop. Claimed she didn’t mean to ’it ’im ’ard enough to kill ’im, but I never believed it. She was always ornery as all get-out when she ’ad the drink in ’er. Reckon the magistrates didn’t believe her neither, ’cause they sentenced ’er fer Botany Bay.”
Hero studied the ragged boy before her. His shoes were so old that most of his dirty toes poked through the broken leather; his breeches were greasy and ripped; his shirt hung in tatters. From the looks of things, he hadn’t bathed in years—if ever. She cleared her throat and consulted the list of questions she’d prepared. “Before your father was hurt, what did he do?”
“’E was a bricklayer, ma’am, till ’e fell off a scaffold. That’s what did ’im in.” Izzy watched with interest as Hero recorded his answer, then volunteered, “Me mum, now, she was a charwoman.”
“And what do you do?”
“Well, when me mum and da was alive, I used t’ mainly go out beggin’. I was pretty little then, ye see, and I’d sit on the corner by St. John’s Gate and go”—the boy held up cupped hands and pitched his voice into a plaintive whine—“Kind sir, pity the poor orphan.”
He laughed, then continued in his normal tone. “Only, I lost me corner when we was in Newgate, and the take never was weery good. So now I’m on me own hook fer real, I mainly sticks to fiddlin’.”
“Fiddling?”
“Aye. Ye know: ’oldin’ ’orses fer the swells and doin’ odd jobs. I’m gettin’ big enough now I can even tote trunks and such, if they ain’t too ’eavy.”
“Did you ever go to school?”
“Nah. Never.”
“Would you like to go?”
“What fer?”
“To learn to read and write.”
The boy laughed. “What’d be the use in that?”
Hero smiled. The boy might be dirty, ignorant, and growing up wild with no care or moral guidance, but there was nothing wrong with his spirit. “So what do you envision yourself doing in ten years?”
“What ye mean?”
“What sort of work would you like to do when you’re a man grown?”
The boy rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “I dunno. I get a bit bigger, I reckon I could get on as a navvy, or maybe a bricklayer like me da.”
“Would you like that?”
He rolled his shoulders again. “It’s more regular than fiddlin’. There’s ever so much buildin’ goin’ on, so I reckon I’d be set—as long as I don’t fall and hurt meself like me da.”
Or marry a woman with a taste for gin, thought Hero.
Gin, and frying pans.
• • •
Hero next interviewed the little girl, whose name was Thisbe Cartwright. A fey, fragile-looking thing the size of a six-year-old, she said she was ten. She was a painfully serious child, with brown hair and a pale, surprisingly clean face. Her dress was ragged but also clean enough that Hero wondered how she managed it. She said her mother had been transported eighteen months before, for stealing sawney.
“What is ‘sawney’?” asked Hero.
The little girl looked surprised. “Don’t you know, m’lady? It’s bacon.”
“Ah. And what happened to your father?”