“Yes. Yes. But enough!” She held up a hand. Addison recognized the pale grey gloves with little silver stitched holes above each knuckle, just as Crittenden, the cross-channel ferry purser, had described them. “Let’s not spoil our luck by congratulating ourselves.”
A servant of the owner came in to announce Mr. Henry James.
“A new but good friend, from Venice,” she said to Addison. “Do you mind my meeting him alone? I know you both must have so much to say to each other.”
Luca’s gesticulations from the corridor meant he knew the new guest, and as they exited the room, he whispered to Addison. “That is the man in brown of whom I told you.” He gestured toward his trouser front.
“Indeed. Stay near this room, Luca. If anyone tries to pass in—not from this house—call us immediately.”
“Now in sun I see it,” Luca said, looking from him to Davey and back before he left. “You two are brothers.”
“We do have much to talk about,” Addison said, once they were settled in the next parlour with tea before them. “You first, if you please.”
Davey began. He well recalled bringing Addison from his mother’s dying arms into that house and little school a few doors away. He had looked in on Addison later, when Addison was all unaware, and had rejoiced at his younger brother’s good fortune in finding meat and affection, since he knew he could not himself keep him. Soon, their mother did indeed pass away, and Davey and Tom with only a single kind neighbour woman followed the one-horse dray with her body to a pauper’s grave. Tom had gone to work in the pig market, and Davey sweeping the crossroads. They lived poorer than poor.
Once it was understood their father was gone for good, the boys were evicted from their lodging. Tom went to sea, just as Addison had been told when he first searched for him. There he’d been taken up or adopted by a sailor man who’d taken a fancy to him. All Davey knew was the fellow was known as James Wyatt, and the ship had sailed from Margate, but he didn’t know its name nor its captain’s name. Addison had not heard word nor tale of Tom for a decade after the news of him at sea, and he hoped he had flourished. At times he fancied Tom among South Pacific atolls and brown-skinned ladies he’d read about in half-shilling books.
But one time before he’d left off working for Tiger Jukes and was closer than before to the southern London docks, he heard two mariners talking about Lieutenant James Wyatt, and he’d closely queried them. If it was the same fellow, he’d been told, he’d certainly been lost with all hands in a commercial steamer during a giant of a tai-phoon somewhere off the Marquesas. Davey had also come upon that information, never confirmed, but he still declared himself happy for Tom, whose great wish had been to go to sea and to voyage widely and see the world’s sights. He’d had over a decade of that life.
As for himself, Davey had joined the crew of sweeps of cross roads half times, and the other half at high house gutter cleaning and chimney sweeping. He might have grown and might have feebly prospered at both had not he one day given his one piece of corn-cake midday meal to his friend Charlie, who lay ill in a back alley, and needed it more. Weakened with hunger, Davey had that afternoon swept the crossroads as usual, but he’d gone faint and fallen in front of a passing carriage and almost been run down and run out of this life!
The chance that any Londoner would stop for a dazed lad was all but nil. The passenger of this vehicle, however, was a man from out of County Hampshire. Seeing the lad so ill-used and so poorly fed, he asked my brother’s name and family and could barely make out through his own Christian pity and tears the answer, “None left, sir! All of them gone!”
He brought Davey to the townhouse he had taken in Poland Street and had him carried to bathe and then to bed, and he did not allow him up until the lad had the right colour in his cheeks and a mite of flesh upon his bones. That required three weeks’ time, upon which Mr. Enos Walter Undershot Esq., his London business completed, quitted London-town, taking with him my brother Davey.
At Nine Oaks, the home Enos Walter shared with Delilah Jonathan, his widowed sister, Davey said he believed he had entered Eden. There he grew and prospered. He was tutored, fed, and taught to ride, fence, and sing.
There too, at Oldham, the town nearest to those lands, Davey was, at the age of eight years old, legally adopted by Mr. Enos Walter Undershot and soon made heir of his and his sister’s all. He took the name of their beloved middle brother, killed in war abroad, Stephen Raglan Undershot.
Davey forgot much of his youthful past before that happiness, so dim, so dark, so full of foreboding and pain. He and his brothers always hungry and fearful, abandoned to poverty and violence. He revelled in being the son and heir of such generously high-spirited people, and he repaid them with love and many kindnesses.
Upon his twelfth birthday, the newly named Stephen joined his new father back in London-town, where his elder went again for business. He at last told Enos Walter that a younger brother existed, placed in good keeping with Mr. and Mrs. Gillip, and doubtless grown large, healthy, and wise by now—Addison.
Father and adopted son agreed to find the brother and perhaps take him for a day’s drive into the country-side.
You may imagine then their shock and horror hearing Addison had been cast aside by those into whose care he had been so deeply entrusted. In vain, father and son searched the neighbouring streets and lanes, houses, and then hospitals and morgues for any word or sign. None was ever found but tantalizing hints: that a boy had sought Davey at the crossroads—by then, alas, gone, or that a lad had been to the great market seeking Tom, also by then gone. These traces had only made their search all the more agonizing. At last they concluded Addison had vanished into air or, more likely, passed into the earth itself. Perished. They must quit their useless quest and return to Hampshire.
So, now a serpent had entered Davey’s Eden. Davey upbraided himself for not telling Enos of Addison’s existence for so long and for not retrieving him sooner, for not saving his brother from the unreasoning wrath of his torturers. Although the truth was, Addison repeated, Davey could not have known of such things as they were occurring.
Outwardly, Davey was the very essence of a Walter Undershot son and nephew. How could he not be, they had been so kind? Inwardly, his torment never left him for a day. Whatever commercial newspapers fell into his hands, he perused for word of Addison. He haunted the lending library in Oldham for the same reason, and in coffee shops, he read those weekly gazettes of crime and scandal, searching for an unclaimed body. He imagined every horror come to his baby brother, and with every new horror he read of, he imagined Addison within its tentacled grip.
Soon, despite these secret fears, Stephen had become a young man, and he reached an understanding to wed a young woman of good family in the future. Still, his father and aunt both wished him to know something of the world before he retreated from it altogether. So it was that Enos Walter took Stephen abroad, first to France and Belgium, and then to Germany and Switzerland. Italy he took him to last, and Enos Walter was so ailing by that time they had to turn around rapidly; Undershot Sr. was quite ill indeed when they reached home at Nine Oaks at last.
There the old man quietly died of an evening, after dinner. His sister fretted and wished much company around herself after. Deeply grieving, Stephen wished no company. So, he went off to Heidelberg University where he was already enrolled, and he passed five long years abroad, writing back to Nine Oaks less and less frequently. He returned to witness his Aunt Delilah’s illness, only to find the estate in the possession of strangers of her choosing, and his inheritance legally encumbered all about until he had attained the age of thirty years and, it was hoped, some semblance of maturity.
Nor was he surprised, for while in Germany he had allowed all his worst traits to come to fruition. He had gambled. He had drunk to excess. “Worse than our father, believe me, dearest Addison, how I regretted it!” He had duelled with rapiers, sabers, and even pistols, wounding but luckily never killing an opponent.
All out of sheer rage at what he understood to be Addison’s death and his uncaring part in it. In Prague, he found surcease from sorrows in that river of forgetfulness—opium. No doubt reports of all this had been made by one or another Englishman back to Nine Oaks.
Stephen returned, unchastened and unrepentant, to bury his Aunt Delilah and to in turn legally encumber all others but himself from retaining any part in Nine Oaks until he had attained the prescribed age. Only servants, faithful to him for the most part, would live there until he might legally return. And so, Stephen returned to London-town with a secured income and real prospects, but labouring when and where he would for periods of time as a Commercial Factor, buying and even sometimes selling portions of ship’s cargos not otherwise accounted for to investors. Or as an investigator for one or another of his father’s friends and business partners. He never failed the latter, but he also never allowed any of them intimacy nor closer looks into his life.
In time, the country lass he had once hope to affiance married another. The country friends died or retired. He found himself a free man, bound to none, responsible only to himself, but with a breadth of experience and knowledge of a man twice his age for all the wide variety of his sundry occupations. Among his acquaintance were by that time the highest to the lowest born.
It was as a man of the world, with a knowledge of Europe, that he had been approached by the friend of a friend of his long-dead stepfather’s one afternoon at an office of law in Holborn. His mission was to go to Lancaster town and there meet with a lady. Once he had met her, his work had been outlined for him. He was to aid in her non-marital elopement from a manor, under the eyes of a hundred and twenty-five guests. He was to help her escape throughout Europe, and he was to place her into the hands of Her Friend, in Italy. The job would be of several months’ duration and require all of his varied skills and abilities. The lady would undoubtedly be trailed, so he must deal daily with her potential captors.
So had two brothers found themselves at two very different ends of this affair.
✥ ✥ ✥
Addison walked across the street to meet with his brother in the palazzo. He’d had his bags sent over earlier and had only his hand-held travel portmanteau stuffed full and ready to come with him. He had sought in vain for Luca, who had vanished before he’d awakened. He hadn’t seen McIlhenny since the aborted crime at the opium den the previous night. Addison hoped Luca had found a new position, or at the very least, those relations he claimed he had in Florence. If not, he would ask Luca to accompany him and Davey and “Mrs. Smith.” And if he would not come, then Addison would return him to Venice with sufficient money. Of their third confederate, he did not know even where to begin to look. Lobster Tail came and went as though invisible at times. Perhaps he and Luca… But in the end, he was of no real importance.
Davey was outside the building when Addison arrived, and his and the lady’s luggage and trunks were being placed around the back and top of a good-sized coach and four. They embraced again, and then went upstairs to get the lady. She was ready to leave and had said her goodbyes to the owners of her recent lodging. Addison picked up one of her smaller bags and Davey the other, and they went down those narrow stairs into the street. There stood Luca and MacIlhenny.
Addison spoke to Luca, making him understand by his better command of Italian and by gestures that he was welcome to come along and be a fourth in the coach. Luca agreed and went inside the albergo across the street to get his own smaller travel pack.
“And what of His Lordship’s mission?” MacIlhenny said petulantly.
“I have written to His Lordship,” Addison said. He flourished the letter in his hand.
“Saying what? That this one lives and that you are turned traitor?”
“What business is it of yours, Lobs? I hired you. Not His Lordship.”
“So say you. He hired me in London. Sent me after you weeks ago.”
“What do you mean?” Davey said.
“He knew to have the job done, he needed meself,” MacIlhenny said, as they stood there in front of Her Ladyship’s palazzo, awaiting her. Suddenly he unsheathed one of those Italian stilettos he kept and rushed at Davey.
Davey was able to step aside and received only a slash of his jacket sleeve and not even a cut to the arm, but Addison was incensed. He withdrew his own knife and the two went at each other. A small crowd quickly gathered, for these Italians liked nothing better than to see blood flow in the street, pushing Davey outside of their gathering so he could not interfere.
He rushed to the albergo to call for help. Luca leapt down the stairs three at time and they got to the street in time to push through and see Addison, who’d been holding his own in feints and jabs, stumble over some stone or kerb and fall backward.
MacIlhenny was upon him in a flash, stabbing him in the torso. Addison felt only pinpricks of pain but knew the next one could be fatal. He crossed his arms, presenting his forearms as targets.
His attacker swore at that but was suddenly pulled back almost up to his feet. Addison rolled away from the attack as quickly as he could and then began to feel the pain of the stab wounds as they spurted blood. When he next looked at the two, Luca had grabbed the fallen stiletto, pulled back MacIlhenny’s head, and slashed at his throat so that blood gouted out upon Addison and the nearby onlookers.
Released, MacIlhenny grabbed at his throat and gurgled, reddened eyes staring at Addison as he stumbled to the ground only inches from him. The enraged Luca now plunged his stiletto into the Englishman’s back once, twice, three times. Oh my darling lad!, Addison thought. How good you are for me.
“Come. Away with you!” Davey shouted and grabbed at Luca, pulled him out of the circle as if getting him free of the crowd and away from the carabinieri. Oh, my darling brother. How clever you are for us.
But his eyes were beginning to cloud over, and he wondered if indeed these would be his last thoughts ever, when suddenly the lady herself had dropped onto her knees before him. She was ripping out a section of her petticoat, using the cloth to stanch his wounds.
“Medico! Pronto!” She commanded the crowd like a queen. “Aiuto! Pronto! Hai molto lire per lei a salvati!”
“Sono un medico,” they both heard. A doctor was suddenly next to her. He was young and had a gorgeous moustache. Addison knew he was losing consciousness, but he wanted to kiss the fellow if only to feel that astonishing moustache against his lips.
Now women from her last residence were there with clean cloths, and the doctor had men lifting Addison and taking him up several steps and inside the cool darkness of the little palazzo. They were placing him on a divan, and the doctor was giving him something strong to smell under his nose and was asking him to move his eyes this way and that, and cutting off Addison’s vest coat and shirt. He applied some kind of bandages, and now Davey was there.
“The lad is gotten to safety. But you! Oh, my Addison!” He wept. “We are so recently met. You must not leave me!” And he was taken away as Addison was lifted off the divan and tightly swaddled, and the doctor with the gorgeous moustache was saying something to the lady which sounded like he was to be watched all day and night. Addison could make that out very clearly. Then she was calming Davey, who seemed to be weeping inconsolably.
The lady was kneeling again by him. “You were heroic in defence of your brother, Mr. Grimmins. I see the black, withered hand of Lord R. has reached out many miles to do this deed. Only the most recent of many black deeds. But rest assured, no matter how you get on, and I’m am hoping for the best, your brother shall not be lacking sympathy, nor will he ever be lacking powerful friends in Italy.”
Was he so very badly done in that they were all carrying on so, Addison had to wonder. He began to speak and she bent to listen, but all either heard were croaking sounds.
“Rest now,” she said. “Be at rest. Here, drink at this,” she said, holding a saucer with white powder in water. “You will explain it to me later on.”
He
sipped the liquid which he knew offered surcease of pain and, who knew, perhaps the surcease of all earthly sorrows as well. He managed to get out, “I…have…writ-ten pap—!”
“I will ensure that your brother gets your papers,” she said very clearly and looked halo-ed, angelic, as she said so. “Never fear.” Until about him it was all haloes now, no faces at all, and then…
3. Addison’s Papers
The Writings of Addison Undershot aka Grimmins
Once, in the days of the Old Cavaliers, this befogged vicinity had been a sort of foreign traders’ closed market. Not far away, a Synagogue squatted almost hidden behind its grimed walls. Both paid homage to some kind of Hebraic history of the place, and the squalid little demi-square our lodging looked out upon was known as Villas Sheen in honour of that past.
Like most of their ilk, my parents had wed young, and only after my mother had been “surprised with child.” My father worked at odd jobs, never having a trade to speak of. Yet he was a tall and strong man and, when he was sober, he might well support a family of four. By the time I was born, he had a family of five, and he lost himself in labour much of the week and in gin the rest.
My mother was a good enough looking woman, or so I am told, cheerful, friendly, never a slattern. I recall her as an angel, naturally. But then, she died when I was less than five years old, so what could I know? She was not a drinker, yet she was unlearned and could never herself rise in fortune but must depend upon a man—and my sire saw to that only poorly. Four boys were born to them. Two lived, two died. I was fifth, and you know what they say of late children: loved the most or ignored the most.
By the time the two older were of schooling age, our father was more to be found unemployed than not, when he was to be found at all. For he had taken up, we’d heard, in another part of London, south of the River past Westminster, and we saw him seldom enough. As I dandled and nursed in what comfort I might take of my Ma, and as much affection as a child in such miserable condition could wish for, it was naught but toil for my siblings, albeit at not much pence per day.
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