A Lawless Place

by David Donachie

  Said captain’s destination was the Old Playhouse, a theatre and tavern, where he hoped to find perhaps the one person to whom he could unburden himself without engendering useless pity. He didn’t want sympathy, he wanted a way to proceed that did not involve skewering Henry Tulkington or putting a ball into his heart. That, as a solution, could not be, given he was dealing with a man, he was sure, who would refuse any challenge he issued.

  Despite that knowledge, the image of fighting the bastard filled his thoughts. So mercurial was he in conjuring up scenarios, it extended to duelling with both swords and pistols, in all of which there was a most delicious point of triumph, in which Betsey’s brother expired as they embraced above the body.

  The thought could not be held, so by the time he went through the door of the Old Playhouse he was scowling again, to find the person he sought in her tiny den-cum-office, just off the card room. She was sat with a quill in her hand and a ledger open on what passed for a desk, one piled with bits of paper in various stacks, all bills.

  Saoirse Riorden looked up at her visitor, a smile of greeting only halfway to completion when it faded; the glare with which Brazier was looking at her made that seem inappropriate, so it was replaced with one of open enquiry, added to a touch of annoyance.

  ‘Well, you look to be in cheer of the day. I’d offer you a chair except I’m in want of one spare.’

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ came out through clenched teeth.

  The woman he was addressing was not one to be trifled with, so his tone got what it deserved. ‘Well, I’ll be saying, if you do, that’s not the manner likely to get you your wish.’

  ‘It’s important, Saoirse.’

  ‘So is what I’m about, Edward. These figures will not do themselves and you know, though only the Lord knows why I trusted to let on to you, why I can’t leave them to another.’

  Brazier just shook his head, with a look in his eye that left little doubt he had no interest in her concerns, so she added, ‘Hawker will be along later today and I must have them make sense.’

  ‘If not truth?’

  The quill was put down and she turned in her chair to look up at him, green eyes showing her clearly confused. ‘Have you been at the bottle?’

  His face lost the angry look, indeed it could have been said to fall. Saoirse was not thinking that had been caused by the words she’d used, indeed she was speculating here was a man who might benefit from a stiff drink, quickly offered.

  ‘I reckon that to be the last thing I need.’

  ‘Which leaves me wondering what is it you do want for.’

  ‘Someone to talk to,’ was delivered with a weary tone, ‘who will help me make sense of what has happened, though I think it defies that commodity.’

  It was a measure of her sagacity that Saoirse did not enquire; she waited for several seconds to allow him to gather his thoughts and nor did she interrupt as he told his tale. She was not aware it was filleted out, with no mention of Hawker and the presence of a whole host of other bodies. Brazier related it without holding her eye; in fact, he seemed to be talking to the shelves full of ledgers behind her head, which did allow Saoirse to display the shock she felt without him noticing. He stopped speaking eventually and did engage her, to find a slow shaking head. When she spoke, her Irish accent was more pronounced than normal.

  ‘I can scarce believe it and, to be sure, I’ve heard some tales in my time.’ Saoirse stood and held out a hand to take his, achieved without protest. ‘We shall go upstairs.’

  ‘These?’ Brazier said, with a wave of his free hand towards the desk.

  ‘Will wait,’ was said softly.

  Brazier followed her out to recall, as he reached the stairs to the upper floor, the last time he had ascended them. Or, to be nearer the truth, was half-carried up and in real pain from several bruises and a cracked rib. The blurred memory of the reason followed: the surprise of the assault as night was falling, not many yards from the Old Playhouse door. The way he had been dragged into an alley to be punched and kicked, with his own responses feeling more feeble in reverie than they had probably been in fact.

  It was luck more than fighting ability that got him out into the street, where what was happening could be seen, even more so that the two toughs who guarded the door of the Old Playhouse came to his rescue. Had it been an act of charity on their behalf, or had Saoirse, for whom he had been idling while waiting, sent them to aid him? He’d never asked.

  ‘Harriet,’ Saoirse called before entering her parlour. ‘Fetch your cloak. Go to Mr Hawker, you know where he is to be found. He will not yet be doing his rounds. Ask him if he can call tomorrow instead of today.

  ‘I think you best sit,’ she added, once she joined Brazier inside. ‘Do you want anything to drink?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would it hurt you if I asked you to tell me a second time what happened? I’m struggling to make sense of it.’

  ‘You’re not alone.’

  Brazier sat silently for some time before speaking and, as he reprised for her what he had gone over a hundred times already in his own mind, he felt a sense of futility and confusion.

  ‘I cannot clear from my mind the interior of that damned room, Saoirse, and that bastard of a brother of hers. If you asked me now, I wish I had put a ball in his brain.’

  The frown, if he’d seen it – his eyes were cast down – would have shown Brazier that Saoirse Riorden was at one with Dutchy in her view. She said nothing more until he was done.

  ‘You’re sure of the name Spafford?’

  ‘Believe me, it is etched in my mind.’

  ‘Well, I can tell you the drunken divine − not that he’s ever sober − is called Moyle, and he is a disgrace to the cloth.’

  ‘I know of him, Betsey told me. But his habits are of no consequence. He is a priest and has the right to marry?’ Half-statement, half-question, it was acknowledged with a nod. ‘And just who is this Spafford?’

  ‘He’s the son of a local smuggler.’

  ‘Damn me, Saoirse,’ came with real vehemence, ‘is there a soul in Deal who is not?’

  ‘Rare, I will grant, but the mystery to me is, why him?’

  The look he gave her invited her to go on, which she did and what he heard affected both his anger as well as a sense of hopelessness. Had Tulkington deliberately chosen such a disreputable creature to send to him a message?

  ‘Edward, the insult will be felt by your lady more than you. If Harry Spafford is not poxed to the eyeballs, it will be a miracle.’

  ‘It must be set aside,’ he hissed, with deep if frustrated passion. ‘I need to know how it can be done.’

  ‘Then you need to talk to a priest, for only one such will know how to go about it.’ It took only a moment’s thought before she added, ‘The Reverend Benjamin, of St George’s along the way, comes across as a decent man, able to nod to a papist like me without blushing or begging forgiveness.’

  ‘Is he a discreet man, Saoirse, for this cannot be bandied about?’

  ‘And how do you reckon it to be kept secret in a place like this? Sure, have I not already told you, Deal will invent a rumour if none already exists? You cannot but see this, sad as you find it, as a juicy tale.’

  ‘Her reputation.’

  ‘Will suffer, I cannot see how it will not.’ She pursed her lips. ‘It might be best to consult a lawyer before speaking to Mr Benjamin, though he is high church enough to respect the confessional.’

  ‘Do you have a name? The man who contracted for my rental?’

  ‘I’d caution against one local, not that we are overburdened. Henry Tulkington has too many in the town in thrall to him and I have no idea if one of them is the man I employ.’ After a moment’s thought she added. ‘The matter is ecclesiastical, which minds me to say, find one in Canterbury.’

  ‘I must find a way to communicate with Betsey, Saoirse.’

  ‘There I doubt I can aid you. But I will put my mind to it.’

  Brazi
er emerged from the Old Playhouse, to be greeted by the frown of those who had followed him and were waiting outside, while Dutchy Holland was not going to allow his rank to spare him a vocal complaint.

  ‘That bastard Hawker is not going to forget how he got belted and, if I was the one who landed him one, he’ll take it out on whoever he can find. So don’t you go dashing off like that again, without you letting us know.’

  It was a meek post captain in King George’s Navy, a man that ruled like a monarch when at sea, who acknowledged the rightness of the reprimand. He did not know it, but it was that trait in his personality, the ability to admit he was not always right, which had helped to make him a popular commander. That and the obvious concern for the welfare of his men.

  No one would, of course, tell him, to his face, such a thing.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Daisy Trotter had woken up to an empty house, which was far from normal, though silence he was accustomed to. When they were not engaged in running or moving contraband, he was usually the first one abroad of a morning. He took responsibility for getting the fire going and the pots slung in the inglenook for hot water and breakfast. He took delivery of bread and milk brought from the local baker and the dairy farm, then raided the weekly stocked larder for ingredients, with the rest of the inhabitants called to attend when the food was ready.

  The Spafford gang had not just smuggled together, they lived hugger-mugger in a ramshackle farmhouse on the western edge of the village of Worth. Maybe it was Dan Spafford’s own less than happy experience with one woman, a liaison that had produced Harry, which dictated his policy of no females living in.

  There were another couple of good reasons: loyalty to the group being uppermost, and keeping quiet about what they were up to day by day. A trip across the Channel required to be planned well in advance, with those who took their goods called upon beforehand to list what they were prepared to shell out for. The actual crossing had to take account of the impending weather but could not then be overly delayed, lest impatience send those same customers looking elsewhere.

  That involved guesswork in the reading of impending conditions, based on a deep collective knowledge of the waters on which they would sail. Added to that was an ability to understand the elements, both as they were and what they would become, much of it folk memory handed down through generations of coastal sailors.

  Someone with no part in the importation and sale of contraband, or the profits from such, male or female, might gossip. If the men who followed and depended on Dan Spafford wanted comfort, they could get it in the fleshpots of Deal, where there was no shortage of places to take their ease, or whores willing to oblige their needs, many on the streets and willing to oblige for small copper.

  One or two, Daisy knew, had formed more lasting partnerships, but these were kept discreet and as such posed no problems. Harry Spafford was the opposite: since he had reached maturity, he was ever to be found in one of said burrows, running up bills for women and drink his overindulgent pa was obliged to settle.

  It was eerie padding over the cold flagstones, knowing there was no one else about: enough to bring on the creeps, and that was before he even thought more about what had happened and any way to proceed. It was easy to allow imagination to run riot, conjuring up images of what Hawker might do to the lads who, only yesterday, had bustled about the place, yawning, scratching, exchanging jesting insults, all well-worn, to be taken with mock offence and general laughter.

  ‘No laughter now, Daisy,’ he murmured, as he cleared the grate of the previous day’s ash.

  The act of laying dry kindling and small logs was carried out automatically; likewise, he supposed, the next act: lighting the taper from the oil lamp on the mantle. It was one normally never allowed to go out, being topped up as the last thing carried out at the end of the day. Not last night – he had been too preoccupied to see to it on his return. That it was so just drove home his isolation and left him looking for flint and steel to get the necessary spark, as well as some dried grass.

  The latter was doused in turpentine, so took quickly. When he got a proper flame, he stood back in contemplation and watched it spread to the kindling, then heard the cracks as the wooden logs began to heat and finally burn. A blaze going, he added thicker wood, but there was only one hanging of a pot, that for water.

  Why bother with the others, given no one was here to eat anything? So he just remained staring into the fire. His brown study was broken by the door knocker, so he went to take delivery of the bread, bringing in, as well, the large earthenware jug of milk and block of butter and fresh eggs the farmer had left on the stoop.

  Chewing bread still warm, spread with butter and a cherry preserve he had made himself, washed down with creamy milk, he literally sat and chewed the cud. The priority was to try to find out what had happened to Dan and the lads. Then, if what he feared had come to pass − indeed, regardless − he must find and have words with this Captain Brazier.

  First he had some with himself. ‘Might come to owt, Daisy, but who’s to know ’til it’s attempted?’

  Several ladles of water, now hot, were transferred to a bowl, to be taken into his room and placed under the looking glass. Gazing at the image brought little comfort, given he had a nose wider than normal, with black bruising either side. This rendered a face well off being handsome even more depressing. It brought to mind the joke often made by his mates, taken as a jest, which said he looked so rodent-like that satisfaction, if he sought it, could always be had behind the skirting boards.

  It had been possible to forget he looked even worse now, like some kind of ogre, as it had been possible to bury the cause of these afflictions, none other than Harry Spafford. His pa had dragged him home from the company of two whores and drink to be locked in a room to sober him up, as well as keep him away from further debauchery.

  The gang were about to steal some of Tulkington’s goods and Dan wanted his boy along, not that Harry showed any sign of being keen to go. No one else but his father had been allowed into the locked room, even down to taking in his meals and fetching away the empties, night soil included. It had begun to have an effect, though some of the screams that came from within on the first night spoke of the depth of Harry’s demons, which would ease as time and abstinence saw his dependence of drink exorcised.

  When Dan and the lads went off on their raid, Daisy, not seen as robust enough for the task, was left in charge. The memory of what happened triggered a whole raft of reminiscence, going back all the way to when he and Dan had been but boys. It may never have been returned in a way he would have wished, but he loved the man.

  Daisy had extended something of the same feelings to Harry, acting like a surrogate parent, a replacement for his absent mother, which saw him looking at the image of a fool in the looking glass. It had been Harry who had headbutted Daisy and given him his bruising, to then skip past him and escape.

  But it was the manner in which he had soft-soaped him beforehand, playing on his affections and suppressed desires, which hurt the most. The pricking of the eyes he tried to dismiss and fight off, but within seconds Daisy Trotter was weeping, his head in his hands, his shoulders racked, at the feeling of a life wasted.

  Edward Brazier came home to find Quebec House smelling of freshly brewed coffee and Vincent Flaherty sat in his parlour. Much as he esteemed the horse dealer – if he had few friends in Deal, Flaherty could be said to be one – he was not really in the mood for his endemically cheerful presence and it showed, which led to a hurried excuse.

  ‘Joe insisted I take coffee.’

  ‘He would.’

  This was delivered with little grace, which unsettled a guest accustomed, if you excused the odd lapse, to good humour. He didn’t respond as Dutchy and the others, with a fair amount of clatter, relieved themselves of their cutlasses and pistols. Flaherty waited ’til they had passed down the hallway and the parlour door, before posing an obvious question, with some degree of pique.

&n
bsp; ‘You’re out of sorts, I can tell. Am I to be afforded a reason?’

  ‘You do not think it might be a private matter?’

  ‘If that is what you will say it is, so be it.’

  Brazier turned to look out of the window, not that he could see much, no more than the warm brick wall and windows of the house opposite, across a street so narrow two carts would struggle to pass.

  ‘If I’m not welcome, Edward …’

  ‘Forgive me,’ was said with a back still turned. ‘I am somewhat in shock.’

  Flaherty, near to being the first person Brazier had dealings with since he arrived in Deal, had become intimate enough to know of his reason for being here. Both being men who made friends easily, he and Brazier had bonded. The Irishman had even acted as a sort of spy, seeking to find out who had been responsible for his beating, the clue being that those assaulting him had, more than once, when driving home a verbal threat to go with their blows, used the mysterious name of Daisy.

  Vincent could give him no clue to Daisy’s identity so had been despatched to roam through the taverns of the town, given everything in Deal revolved around such places. His task was to seek out the identity of this lady, someone who Brazier had so unknowingly offended. Not that information had been readily forthcoming until very recently, when Daisy had turned out not to be a woman, but a man called Jaleel Trotter. He was said to be an expert at the silent knife, a fellow who had gained his soubriquet from his sexual proclivities.

  ‘Do I sense Mrs Langridge is at the centre of this shock?’ Vincent asked softly. The turn was slow and the look on Brazier’s face enough to confirm to Flaherty he had the right of it. ‘She’s changed her mind?’

  ‘Worse, Vincent, much worse.’