An Almond for a Parrot

by Dray Wray

  ‘I have always preferred you naked,’ he said. ‘It is a gown that few ladies wear as well as you.’

  I moved my limbs so that I was open to him. He kissed away the scars on my thighs, his tongue caressed my quim and I ached for him to be inside me. He kissed the scars on my breasts and I felt him urgent for admission, the delicious velvet tip begging to enter my pleasure garden. No aggressive movements, no violation in the ease with which he came into me, I could feel him stiff, pulsating with life, penetrating the depths of me until I owned all of him. It sent me wild, his eyes shone with love, his gaze never left me. I felt myself gather tight around his quivering arrow. Then it came on me, slowly at first, but with such unbearable ecstasy that I lost myself in the lush river of desire. He moved within me and we were one, I was he and he was me, there was no separation. My skin alight with passion, I was on fire and only to be soothed in the river of longing, carried on its ebbs and flows. I was near that moment of abandonment. He urged me on until I could hold it no more and felt myself explode into him. My climax brought on his and together we tumbled from a great height, into the roaring unknown. Our cries of ecstasy drove out the demon.

  I had not before experienced such tender lovemaking, so different from anything I had known. It came from love, true love, a place to be treasured and, I suspect, rarely found.

  Such were the delights we discovered that day that we both realised we were famished for more of the same dish. I touched that sweetest, noblest part of him that knew how to delight me.

  He rose again and, taking my hand away, he said, ‘I would rather spend my seed inside you, my love.’

  And, oh, he did, he did.

  At about two o’clock, he said, reluctantly, that he had to see a lawyer and would return that evening. As I watched him dress, my only consolation was that tonight we would have possession of each other once more. When he was at the door, he turned back to the bed.

  ‘Would you marry me?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If I could, I would marry you tomorrow. But there is something I have not told you.’

  He stared at me for a moment then took out his pocket watch, my gift to him.

  He glanced at it and said, ‘I must go now. The sooner I am gone, the sooner I will be back. And tonight we will tell each other all our secrets.’

  I gazed into those blue eyes and thought I saw the future.

  ‘I love you, Mr Avery Fitzjohn,’ I said

  ‘Then I am the luckiest man in the world,’ he said as he opened the door to leave.

  ‘Who is this lawyer who is taking you from me?’ I called after him.

  ‘A Mr Quibble,’ he called back.

  I haven’t seen Avery Fitzjohn since.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  The Governor’s House, Newgate Prison

  I have been in prison for only two weeks but it feels like a lifetime. Not a letter, not a word. In my mind I go over all that you said the afternoon you left, and have near gone mad imagining what could have befallen you.

  Perhaps I misunderstood you. Perhaps you never loved me. Perhaps, perhaps, you lied to me. How lost am I. Still I refuse to believe that you would be so deceitful, for what would be the purpose in such deception? Or is love like sand, running elusively through the fingers?

  Time hangs heavier than the rope that is waiting to hug my neck.

  A Mr John Gately came to see me today, a solemn man with a face that would make a gravedigger proud. He bowed gracefully, flicked back his coat tails and sat.

  ‘We haven’t long to prepare. The case is due to be heard on fourth October.’

  ‘Please, before we begin,’ I said, ‘there is something I must know.’

  Mr Gately looked me straight in the eye. I could see that this was a man who believed in little. His disappointment with humanity oozed from every pore.

  ‘I must know if Mr Avery Fitzjohn is alive.’

  ‘Mr Avery Fitzjohn? The brother of Lord Frederick Fitzjohn?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Madam, he is dead,’ said Mr Gately.

  I could hear my blood thumping in my ears.

  I must have had turned white for Mr Gately asked, ‘Do you need assistance? Shall I call someone?’

  ‘No one would come,’ I said. ‘When…when did Mr Fitzjohn die?’

  Mr Gately had no interest in the death of Mr Avery Fitzjohn. It was an irritant, a distraction that he felt I could ill afford.

  ‘Try to concentrate on the matter in hand, madam,’ he said. ‘You are accused of murder.’

  Seeing that his words had no effect, he said, ‘Perhaps it would help if you wrote down the events of the evening that led to the shooting of your husband, Captain Spiggot. I have the statements that you gave the coroner, but I would like to hear the truth from you.’ He stood up. He had no patience with the humours of women. ‘I will be here tomorrow morning and I hope you will be more in the mood for talking.’

  ‘Wait, sir, please. What happened to Avery Fitzjohn?’

  Finally, some part of Mr Gately’s learned brain made the connection: Avery Fitzjohn mattered a great deal to this client and was the reason she was unable to concentrate. The lawyer sat down again.

  ‘You haven’t seen the newspapers?’

  ‘I do not receive the newspapers.’

  ‘Mr Fitzjohn went missing some eight weeks ago. He had an appointment with a lawyer, a Mr Quibble, but, according to Mr Quibble, he never arrived at the lawyer’s chambers. Last week a body was washed up near Tilbury Docks. It has been identified as that of Avery Fitzjohn.’

  ‘Who identified it?’

  ‘Lord Fitzjohn. Mr Fitzjohn is to be buried in the family vault.’

  The memory of Lord Frederick Fitzjohn, down in his cups, swam before me.

  ‘The damn countess would be mine if it was not for my brother. He is all that stands between me and a fortune.’

  These walls, which were used to hearing so much woe, were almost comforted by tragedy. I felt dead inside. The only thing alive in me was the baby, our baby.

  When Mr Crease showed me how to walk a tightrope, he said, ‘It looks as if you are tiptoeing through air. But to balance you need all your weight in your feet. It is weight that makes the act possible.’

  This letter to you is my only way of staying on the tightrope. It gives me gravity, where otherwise I would fly away. I can’t think of you drowned, I can’t think of you dead. Part of me is sure that if you were, I would have known.

  My lawyer wishes me to concentrate on the facts, without embellishment, just the simple truth. And as I don’t want to be tried as a witch, the facts might serve me best. I had started, this morning, to write them down when Hope and Queenie arrived. My lawyer had sent for them, concerned that his client did not realise the peril she was in or how severe were the charges against her.

  Perhaps it was because I had seen so little colour, but Hope and Queenie, standing brightly dressed in my small cell, were parrots against the grey.

  Queenie gave me a hug and pushed my hair out of my face. ‘You have to be brave, Tully,’ she said. ‘You have to.’

  Rose petals. My knees weakened. Her perfume was so evocative of the fairy house.

  ‘You can’t let yourself be hanged. You have to tell the truth.’

  ‘The truth is, I shot Captain Spiggot with Mr Crease’s pistol.’

  ‘You have to fight. You must plead not guilty.’

  ‘How is Mercy?’

  ‘She is getting stronger, day by day.’ Hope was crying; Queenie was wearing the mask of determination. ‘You’re not to give up now, gal,’ she said. ‘You are with child and for that baby alone you’d better buck up your ideas. I hear that Lord Barbeau left you a very wealthy woman. Well, you have money enough to play a man’s game. The one we play comes at a great price for when looks fade and the goods are damaged, whores are left to rot on the streets. I want justice for you and for Mercy, for Flora and for my Pretty Poppet. Hold up your head and fight like a she-cat, for if
you are hanged, Wrattan will go free.’

  ‘I will try,’ I said. ‘That’s all I can do.’

  ‘Hope, tell Mr Gately he can come in.’

  The lawyer bowed as Queenie and Hope left.

  ‘Shall we begin?’ he said.

  ‘Where shall I start?’

  ‘What made you decide to leave the fairy house dressed as a boy?’

  I told him the facts. The facts sounded logical. I left out the parts that would make a lawyer despair. Justice doesn’t like the irrational. Mr Gately stayed for about an hour and wrote everything down.

  Now I will write the true account of what happened the night I murdered my husband, for the truth is often stranger than the facts and the facts don’t always tell the truth.

  Chapter Fifty

  When Avery didn’t return that night I called for Mr Crease and asked him if he would send Ned Bird to look for him.

  ‘Some calamity must have befallen Mr Fitzjohn,’ I said, ‘otherwise he would be here, I know he would.’

  But as I spoke, I felt less sure.

  Later, Mr Crease returned, carrying a box. He told me that Ned had set off to find Mr Quibble’s chambers and make enquiries there. Mr Crease then asked if I would like to see the trick he was working on. I was about to say that I had too much on my mind to think of tricks, but Mr Crease looked straight at me with his painted eyes. Usually under such a gaze, I would turn away. It had never occurred to me to confront that stare, but, that day, I looked straight back at him and for the first time I could see into the soul of him in a way that his own eyes never allowed. I saw into the deep well of a kind man, wrapped in the crust of an ill-tempered skin.

  ‘It involves proving the impossible possible,’ he said, lifting the lid off the box.

  He moved a side table and dusted it with his handkerchief before handing me a bottle of wine.

  ‘Is there anything in this bottle apart from wine?’ he said. ‘Take your time.’

  The glass was clear, the wine was white, the seal unbroken.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He took the bottle back, sat it on the side table, then brought out a candle which he lit, placing it in front of the wine bottle. From the box he took out his pistol.

  ‘This looks most alarming, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Of course,’ replied Mr Crease. ‘Anything less would be a disappointment. The question is, do you think it’s possible that by firing this pistol I can extinguish the candle, uncork the bottle and leave the bullet in the wine?’

  ‘I would say that by all the laws of nature, no.’

  He gave me the bullet for my examination. ‘Can you see if there’s a number written on it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Nine.’

  He took the bullet back and placed it in the pistol. With measured steps, he walked to the end of the room, turned and, with outstretched arm, fired. There was a loud bang. The candle duly went out and once the smoke cleared I could see that the bottle was indeed uncorked and inside sat the bullet.

  ‘Pick it up,’ said Mr Crease. He held out a basin. ‘Pour the wine out.’

  I did, and with it came the bullet.

  ‘What is the number on it?’

  It was a nine.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ I said.

  ‘Madam, I have proved my point. As you should know by now, nothing is impossible.’

  ‘Then improbable,’ I said. ‘As improbable as Avery not returning.’

  ‘On that we are agreed,’ said Mr Crease. ‘Let us hope Ned has news for us.’

  But there was no news, not that evening, not the next day, or the day after.

  Ned said, ‘It’s as if Mr Fitzjohn has vanished with the faeries.’

  ‘If he had,’ said Mr Crease, ‘then at least we would a chance of finding him.’

  By the time two weeks had passed I was near losing my mind. But I was feeling stronger and I called for Ned and told him I was determined to search for Avery myself.

  ‘Miss Tully,’ he said, ‘that would be most unwise.’

  ‘But you will come with me? I will dress as a boy and act the part of your apprentice.’

  ‘You’re not well enough,’ he said, but seeing there was no way to dissuade me from what he considered a foolish notion, he sighed. ‘You are very stubborn, Miss Tully, and I can tell there is no argument of mine you would ever listen to.’

  Reluctantly, he went to wait for me while I changed my clothes. I knew for certain that it would be wise to have a weapon. From the landing I could hear Mr Crease talking to Ned in the hall below. Quickly, I made my way up to the long gallery where I found the box with the candle, the wine bottle and the pistol laid out on the table beside it. I picked up the pistol, checked that it was loaded and hid it in my jacket. It was then that I heard a cry. It filled the house with the sound cattle make when they are slaughtered. I rushed down the stairs and there in the hall with Ned and Mr Crease stood Mofty, her clothes covered in mud.

  ‘He will kill her,’ she was saying, ‘he has taken her and I know he will kill her.’

  ‘Taken who where?’ asked Ned, his rough voice doing nothing to soothe Mofty.

  Mr Crease said, ‘Please calm yourself, madam, and tell us what happened.’

  Mofty galloped, her words stumbled at the fences of comprehension and set off again at an even faster pace. Queenie emerged from the rookery.

  ‘Oh, my Lord, what’s happened now?’ she said.

  ‘Speak more slowly, Mrs Wrattan, I pray you,’ said Mr Crease, and at last, at a canter, we began to understand.

  I felt my heart become lead.

  ‘Lately we have been receiving threats from my husband,’ said Mofty. ‘This morning we left London for Folkestone, hoping to escape to Paris. We were stopped on the highway by the driver of another coach. He was standing in the road, waving his arms, shouting that he needed help. Mercy ordered our coachman to drive on, but he said he knew the other driver and he was an honourable man. The second we came to a halt, we were done for. From the other coach sprang Spiggot and Wrattan. They tried to pull us from our carriage. Mercy fought and fired her pistol, and with the door wide open, our horses bolted, throwing her from the carriage. Our driver clung on until he had control of the reins once more and then he refused to stop. He wouldn’t turn back but kept going until we reached a coaching inn where we raised the alarm. Wrattan will kill her, I know he will.’

  Mofty crumpled to the floor and Queenie went to her.

  Up to then all my thoughts had been of Avery, but, irrational as it may seem, I felt that somehow the fate of the two people I loved were wrapped together. I had lost Lord B, I might have lost Avery – I couldn’t lose Mercy too.

  Mr Crease picked up his cane, Ned checked his pistol. There was no discussion as to where they were going. Queenie saw that I was set to leave with them and took hold of my arm.

  ‘Tully, don’t be a fool. They will kill you if they see you again, you know that.’

  ‘I am going to find Mercy,’ I said, and pulled free. ‘And I’m not alone.’

  I followed Mr Crease and Ned Bird out of the fairy house.

  The best part of that afternoon we spent making enquiries in what felt like every tavern, coaching inn and stable yard in London. This time there was no obliging stable lad and the coach could have belonged to the devil for all the luck we had in tracing its owner.

  At seven by the bells of St Paul’s in Covent Garden, Mr Crease said he would go his own way, and suggested that Ned and me went to Molly King’s to see if there was any gossip worth hearing. I felt suddenly exhausted, and was grateful for a seat at last. I stayed in the shadows, my head down, nursing a beer at one of the long tables. Ned sat next to me and asked questions of the other customers.

  Then I saw Flora. I nudged Ned.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Flora,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t see her.’

  ‘There,’ I said, nodding in her direction.

  He looked straight at her and saw her not. S
he was a sorry sight indeed and in possession of the blackest eye that her white paint made worse. She looked desperate for a drink and was trying to get the necessary pennies together.

  ‘Oi! Miss Flora,’ he called. ‘What’s your tipple, girl?’

  Seeing who it was, she seemed about to bolt but Ned shouted to the pot boy, ‘Bring us a bottle of gin and a glass.’

  A bottle of gin with its guaranteed oblivion was the worm on the line that reeled her in. She sat next to Ned and smiled at him. Two of her front teeth had been knocked from her head.

  ‘That’s good of you, Ned,’ she said.

  Her stare followed the bottle as it made its way towards our table. Shaking, she downed one glass and then another.

  Ned put his hand on the bottle. ‘Easy, gal. We have all night and there is more where that came from.’

  Her eyes flickered this way and that round the tavern.

  ‘Who is it you’re afraid of?’ asked Ned kindly. She didn’t answer. ‘Perhaps some food might settle your nerves.’

  A dish of bread and meat was brought. She ate as dogs do when starved.

  She took a swig of the gin to drown the food and said, ‘How old do you think I am?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, Miss Flora,’ said Ned.

  ‘I am twenty-four. I look eighty.’

  There was little to say to that truth.

  ‘I have heard,’ said Ned, carefully choosing his words, ‘I have heard that Miss Mercy was taken today on the King’s high road.’

  Flora stood, ready to run, and made to grab the bottle but Ned caught hold of her wrist. ‘Where is she, Miss Flora?’

  ‘Thank you for the gin and the food, Ned, but now I must go.’

  ‘Sit, Miss Flora.’ Ned pulled her back down on to the bench. ‘Where is Miss Mercy?’

  ‘If I tell you, I am dead.’

  ‘If you don’t, you are dead anyway, by the looks of things.’

  ‘Who is the lad?’

  ‘My apprentice. He won’t say a word.’