by Katy Moran
‘Quickly,’ he said, ‘get up and come with me.’
‘Indeed I’m not going to the gallows like this. Wait for me to shave, and I’ll have a clean shirt, at least.’
Vansittart sighed. ‘Much as you were born to be hanged, Jack, and much as I believe you would actually welcome the prospect of extinction, I’m afraid I must disappoint you. Castlereagh has beaten you to it.’
Crow didn’t move, allowing himself to feel nothing at all. ‘What?’
‘It’s only fortunate for you and Captain Helford that your whereabouts can be unequivocally attested – yours in particular, boy.’ Vansittart walked to the table, surprisingly limber for a man of such advanced years, taking Crow’s jacket from the back of the chair with an impatient twitch of his spare, fleshless fingers. ‘Put this on, and don’t waste any more time. Castlereagh was stabbed last night. I’ve no desire to learn what in God’s name Sidmouth holds over Castlereagh’s doctor, but so far he has the damned fellow swearing on a heap of bibles that the man was insane, and took his own life. This country is volatile enough without more murder at the highest level of government.’
Crow got up then and took his jacket, fighting the bizarre sense that this was some kind of waking dream, as though he had smoked opium. ‘But then who did kill him?’
‘I haven’t the smallest notion, and in any case it’s a matter of complete irrelevance – the very streets of London are hot with unrest as though we were some damned republic. To be frank I call it good riddance, and I am not the only one. Jack, the Cabinet is united behind this course of action: with Castlereagh dead, we’re free to clear the way for public acceptance of Miss Kurakina as Queen Sophia. It’s long since time that you went home to Cornwall and stayed there for a very considerable period, I feel.’
‘Your pretty young figurehead with all that Hanoverian blood,’ Crow said, shrugging on his jacket; privately certain that once she had been invested with the crown, Nadezhda was going to give these men a lot more trouble than they predicted.
The journey from the Tower to Mayfair was undertaken in a closed carriage, as fast as it could be managed on a clamouring, noisome London afternoon. Crow sat opposite a fastidiously cross-legged Lord Vansittart, accompanied by an armed guard consisting of two leather-clad thugs from the Tower with clubs and pistols.
‘Such company for a free man, sir?’ Crow leaned back in the seat, grateful that they had found him a clean shirt and let him shave after all.
Vansittart only pursed his lips. ‘I knew your father, and I’ve known you long enough to be quite certain that you have absolutely no idea what’s good for you. I’ll get you to Dorothea even if I must have you marched in with a pistol to your kidney – the woman might be a scheming hussy, but if anyone knows how to smooth over a mess of this magnitude it’s her.’
On reaching the quieter environs of Mayfair, Crow found himself walking up the front steps to the Lievens’ front door, Vansittart at his side, passing serried pots of lavender on every marble step; he had come here for some damned musical recital in the Little Season with an unwilling Hester on his arm, and he longed with a breathless physical ache to see her, if only she would consent to receive him.
The Lievens’ butler admitted them with a complete lack of surprise or emotion impressive even in the most top-ranking of London society’s upper servants. ‘If you will come this way, my lords. His lordship and her ladyship have just returned from their customary ride in Hyde Park; Captain Helford and the young Russian lady accompanied them.’
Crow was just conscious of Lord Vansittart’s name announced at the drawing-room door followed by his own – something he’d thought never to hear again. Now here was Dorothea crying out at the sight of him, pressing both hands to her mouth, Vansittart rocking backwards and forwards on the balls of his feet and Lieven smiling into his brandy; even Nadezhda looked pleased to see him, so gamine in a muslin gown she clearly despised with all her mountebank’s heart. Dorothea kept repeating that Hester was indisposed in her bedchamber, ringing the bell for a footman to send her maid to Lady Lamorna’s room at once. Moving like a school of fish, the three of them stepped forwards as one to reveal Kitto, who stood at the hearth watching the fire, almost a stranger in buckskins, top boots and an exquisitely cut jacket. Dorothea must have moved heaven and earth to render the boy decent in such short order: she was, after all, a master manipulator, and understood the importance of appearance. Even so, there was still so much of their mother about him, and Crow could never be sure if it was the set of his eyes, or his mouth.
Turning to look up only cautiously, as though he mistrusted the evidence of his own ears, Kitto saw Crow at Vansittart’s side and immediately dropped his glass of Rhenish. It smashed on the hearthstone in a bright explosion, stem flying away from the bowl, flames caught in the broken glass. And then, as Crow watched, his young brother extinguished every last pulse of violent, fleeting and conflicted emotion from his expression. He turned away then to look at Nadezhda standing in her gown and shawl at Dorothea’s side, and Crow knew in that moment Kitto had understood it all for the first time. Kitto didn’t voice his outrage or slam the door, as he would once have done. He only stood and allowed his cold grey gaze to travel from Crow to Nadezhda and back again, with all of that devastating and wholly well-bred control.
‘I know what you’re thinking, and it wasn’t like that, not entirely,’ Nadezhda said, quickly. ‘Kitto—’
‘I beg that you will excuse me, sir,’ Kitto said to Crow. ‘Now that you’ve all got what you wanted from me, my presence in this house is scarcely necessary.’ He turned to Dorothea and the count, bowing. ‘My sincere thanks for your kind hospitality.’ Then he walked straight past Crow and went out, leaving sunlight to stream into the room casting diamond shapes on to the Maratha carpet where he had been standing.
There was a moment’s roaring silence in which no one seemed able to move, let alone speak, and then Nadezhda shrugged Dorothea’s hand from her arm and ran to Crow, crashing into his chest. ‘Stop him!’ Her voice was thick with tears and he held her as he hoped he would once have had the kindness to hold his own daughter in forgiveness if she’d lived long enough to disappoint him. Encircled in his arms Nadezhda shook, this girl who could ride wild horses, and who killed anyone who got in her way. ‘Oh, please—’ Nadezhda broke off, unable to speak the truth before the Lievens which, Crow suspected, was that she had run away with Kitto really wanting only to be with him, to no longer serve her father the tsar. He would probably never know who had recovered a sense of duty first, Kitto or Nadezhda herself. ‘I never wanted to lie to him,’ she said, soaking Crow’s jacket with her tears as he absent-mindedly smoothed the curls at the nape of her neck with the edge of his thumb. ‘I just wanted to stay with him.’
‘I know,’ Crow said, ‘but it was a fairy tale that couldn’t be sustained, was it not? Get her something decent to drink.’ Flinging the order over his shoulder to the silent Dorothea and her count, he set Nadezhda to one side with all the gentleness he could summon, which was not much at that point, and left them. Kitto could not be ignored, but he still had not seen Hester – why had she not come? Surely she must know by now that he was here?
Kitto was already out in the street. Professionally ignored by the Lievens’ butler, who closed the door after them, Crow ran to catch up and fell into step at his brother’s side, fighting a barrage of exasperation and acute guilt.
‘I’m sorry,’ Crow said. ‘I really am. Sometimes I wonder what I’ve become.’
‘Oh, don’t bother,’ Kitto replied, determinedly not looking at him; he was pale, only the ridge of his cheekbone stained with colour, another trait he had inherited from their mother. ‘Really – go to the devil, Jack. I don’t want to listen to it.’
‘What a shame.’ Crow steered him from the walkway to the Lievens’ stable-mews. ‘Let’s enact melodramas for one another amongst the carriage traces and feed sacks instead of in the open street.’
In the cobbled st
able-mews, a Lieven stable-lad doggedly continued shovelling filthy straw into a barrow and Kitto at last turned to face his brother.
‘What do you want? It’s lucky I didn’t expect an apology at all, let alone to receive it without one of your verbal assassinations. So what have I done now?’ Kitto demanded in rapid Cornish, the hollows beneath his eyes bruised almost purple with sleeplessness: he was as angry as he was exhausted. ‘Was I not courteous enough? I haven’t forgotten what you always taught me, you know – that appearances are more important than anything else. I could blow up a French garrison and you’d just be filthily sarcastic, but you only threatened to horsewhip me when I was uncivil to that bitch of a stepmother.’
‘Kitto—’ Crow began.
‘And now somehow you’re out of prison and free,’ Kitto said, flushed and hot. ‘Is this another of your deceptions? I don’t know what to believe. Did you do all that just to teach me a lesson, or will they come and take you away again, and hang you after all?’ He had grown more incoherent with every word, and moved as if to push past Crow and walk back out into the street.
‘No, no, it’s going to be quite all right,’ Crow said, for want of anything else, and thank God Kitto submitted to his hard and unforgiving embrace: neither need acknowledge that the boy was weeping in a way Crow had not seen him do since he was a young child. ‘You’ll find another girl,’ Crow told him.
‘It isn’t just that,’ Kitto said. ‘You know it isn’t. I’m sorry.’
‘What a bacchanalia of apology,’ Crow said, and Kitto laughed. ‘If it helps, try and understand that Nadezhda would have felt as though she had no choice,’ he went on. ‘She’s always known that her people’s regard and care, including the tsar’s, is completely dependent on her efficiency as their own political tool. It’s conditional.’ He paused. ‘I make no excuses for myself: I’ve been despotic, indolent and occasionally unforgivably violent. I’m sure I’ve given you far too much money, and absolutely nothing in the way of principles, but I hope you knew that, if it were humanly possible, I would always have shifted to get you out of a hole.’
‘I know. Let’s not pretend you wouldn’t have been absolutely bloody about it, but yes. I bet she wept all over you as well.’ Kitto wiped his face on his arm and shook his head like a young hound rising from the river. ‘For a terrifying, cold-hearted, lying bastard, you’ve got the most convincing manner – as if it’s in your power to just sort of resolve everything. Christ, I’d as lief cut my throat before sitting through supper.’
‘Quick, then, before they untack your horse,’ Crow said. ‘Go out and gallop up Rotten Row. Dine at White’s and get drunk. Better yet, go to Clarges Street and get yourself a very expensive whore.’
‘No,’ Kitto managed, dry-eyed.
‘Come now.’ Crow still spoke in Cornish, giving him a slight shake.
‘It’s Hester,’ Kitto said. ‘She hasn’t been out of that bedchamber all day – Eames told us just before you came in. I asked one of the maids and she didn’t even open the door to let them come in with her chocolate. I would never have gone out if I’d known that. I should have gone to sit with her.’
Crow briefly closed his eyes and remembered what Hester had told him in Petersburg. What have I to live for, now that she is gone because I left her? Above all, Kitto must not witness what Crow feared he was about to find. ‘Never mind that,’ he said. ‘Go now and ride off all this spleen – must I tell you again?’
Kitto obeyed, walking out of the stables without another word, and Crow ran indoors through the servants’ quarters, ignoring Eames, who passed him with a tray of iced champagne on his way to the library. None of them understood that there was no victory to toast, and Crow sprinted up the stairs; by the time he reached the first floor he had lost all equilibrium, calling his wife’s name, suddenly furious that he didn’t even know which bedchamber she was in, and had been in all day. He cornered a maidservant emerging from the second-floor stairway that led up to the nursery. ‘Where is Lady Lamorna?’ he demanded, only half aware of how frightened she looked.
‘Down at the end, your honour,’ the girl gasped, and Crow left her, calling Hester’s name, to which he received no reply. He reached the door and knocked, calling again and again, answered only by silence.
‘If you’re there,’ he said, ‘just answer, and if you don’t want me to come in I’ll walk away now, I promise.’
The silence stretched on until Crow barged the door with his shoulder, once, twice, three times: exquisite agony after his incarceration in Little Ease, and then the door burst open inwards, but he couldn’t see Hester at all, not on the bed, not anywhere. Surely the damned maidservant hadn’t sent him to the wrong room? He would take the girl by the shoulders and slap her scrubbed pink face so hard that she fell. He took hold of the mantelpiece, appalled at himself, ashamed of this unbearable anger. It was true what he’d said to Kitto: what had he become? That was when he saw Hester’s discarded jean boot, and surely all air had been sucked from the room? He found her on the floor on the far side of the four-poster bed. She sat leaning against bedframe and tumbled counterpane, quite still, stinking like a butcher’s shop, her gown spattered with dried blood, her face smeared with it. Whispering her name like a prayer, he crouched at her side, not daring to touch her; she didn’t move, wouldn’t look at him.
At last, she did turn to him, tears standing in her eyes so that he couldn’t bear it, and he longed to hold her even as he knew he’d forsaken the right.
‘My love,’ he said, ‘what happened to you?’ He saw that she was holding a small glass bottle and lost all concern for keeping his distance if that was what she wanted, immediately snatching it from her unresisting fingers, holding it up to the light, removing the stopper. He dared not touch her. ‘What have you done?’
‘No!’ Hester said. ‘Put the stopper back in. I thought it best not to take it here: it would be a shame to leave Dorothea with a scandal. I’ll take it at home.’
‘No,’ Crow said, ‘you’ll do no such thing.’
‘Why not,’ Hester demanded quietly, ‘when you let yourself go to the gallows? They might have released you now, but I should think I’ll be next.’
With a bright burst of understanding, Crow took the vial and went to the window. The casement was already slightly open; he pushed it up and flung the poison far across the rooftops, where only gulls and ambitious rats might be harmed by it. He went and sat on the floor at her side.
‘It was you,’ he said, ‘wasn’t it? You killed Castlereagh.’
‘Of course I did, and now thanks to you I shall be hanged for it as I expect I deserve, instead of being allowed to take my own way out.’ Tears began to slide inexorably down her blood-smeared cheeks and then he took her hands, at last, at last.
‘No one shall harm a hair of your head. Even if Vansittart hadn’t this afternoon told me that the entire Cabinet sees his death as a blessing, I should let no one hurt you, Hester.’
‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘only you are allowed to do that.’
He didn’t insult her by mounting a defence to that accusation, but instead rang for hot water and waited by the door to receive it, ensuring that he thanked the maid he’d frightened, and that she could not see into the room no matter how she tried to peer around his shoulder. Crow carried the steaming jug to the wash-stand and filled the rose-patterned bowl, and all the while Hester still sat by the bed, not moving, staring sightlessly at the wall. When he held out his hand to her, she didn’t take it, so he crouched at her side.
‘There’s no relief like stripping off one’s uniform after a battle,’ he said, ‘and you have fought a war.’ She didn’t move; he was forced into underhand tactics. ‘The boy is completely overwrought, you know – I had to send him out on his horse to collect himself. He was so worried about you.’
Still she said nothing, but she consented to take his hand and stand up. He unbuttoned her gown down the back, dizzy with the scent of her beneath that of stale blood, longing
to let his touch linger on the naked skin at the nape of her neck. She stood immobile as the gown slipped from her shoulders and down to the floor, automatically stepping out of it, all that bloodied mauve-grey muslin; it was an Indian print, and evening sunlight glinted from the silver threads woven through the heap of ruined fabric; he would get her another one, as many as she wanted. The blood had soaked through to her petticoats; he unlaced ribbons and lifted more ruined fabric over her head; he would serve her however she pleased until the last breath left his body. When at last he unlaced her corset, and she stood in only her shift, she let out a shuddering sigh, and went to the bowl of warm water, washing her own hands, her own face with brisk dexterity that told him he was not needed, that she had never needed him, and certainly did not now. She turned to face him and drops of water clung to her eyelashes like seed pearls, and he was reminded with shattering force of the first moment he had ever seen her, soaked to her skin on the beach at Lamorna, and he was quite defenceless.
‘Please,’ he said, ‘Hester, please.’
Afterwards, he was never quite sure how precisely it happened, but at last she was in his arms, held tight against his chest; he had just enough presence of mind to kick her bloodied clothes so far beneath the four-poster that no servant could retrieve them without waking him, and as one they moved to the bed, he still wearing his boots. Holding Hester close to him, Crow felt himself plummeting along with her into a dark and dreamless sleep, her fingers twined around his on the pillow. But before dawn, before they were both really awake, he reached for her and she for him and he was glad that she could not see the tears of relief start to his eyes as he ran his hands down her back, pulling her closer as he had longed to do for so many weeks. Even as he did so, he realised that she herself wept uncontrollably.