All around she saw only crowds and squalor. Shops and stalls selling old furniture, pots and pans, penny-brick loaves, and countless purveyors of second- and third-hand clothes. A man carrying a long stick hung with hats pressed his warty face against the carriage window. Caro draw back sharply and he gave a toothless grin. ‘Bicornes, tricornes, continental cocks,’ he bellowed, until Sam flicked him with his whip, and he backed off, shouting curses.
Half an hour later, Miles returned, looking disgruntled. ‘Only Somerset anyone seems to know is a woman,’ he said. ‘But I was told she had her brother living with her for a time. It’s rough out there, madam.’ He showed her his shoes and stockings, caked in mud and excrement. ‘Wouldn’t it be wiser to wait for Mr Child?’
‘No, fetch the steps, please. Help me down.’
Miles and Sam exchanged a glance, and she wondered if they thought she was going mad.
On Rosemary Lane, hawkers of cloth and ribbons sat cross-legged in the mud, their wares laid out on blankets, narrowing the street to a dense passage of people. Bantering and bargaining, arguing in a cacophony of London and Irish accents, the locals turned to stare as Caro and her bewigged footman strode past.
They proceeded down a succession of filthy lanes and roofed-in courts to a market named Glass House Yard. Thick with crowds, the yard was strung with ropes, groaning under the weight of coats, breeches, shirts, waistcoats, skirts, petticoats and jackets. Ragged urchins were down on the ground, trying on odd shoes and boots, caked in polish to conceal the patches and holes. A few stalls sold older clothes: Tudor doublets and ruffs. A small party of handsome men declaimed Shakespeare to one another, as they tried them on.
They turned into an alley of ancient lodging houses. A woman on a step was swigging gin, her red-faced baby screaming from a box on the ground. Everything stank, especially the cats: stringy creatures that prowled the mounds of rubbish, hunting for scraps. Miles came to a halt by the entrance to a small courtyard squeezed between a low-looking tavern and a butcher’s shop. He studied the scrap of paper in his hand. ‘I think this is the place.’
The yard was as squalid as its surroundings, carpeted with mouldering straw and dog excrement. A pair of mangy hounds, tied to a post, barked ferociously as they approached.
‘Shut your racket, or you’ll get my skinning blade,’ a woman screamed.
She was squatting on the ground, her blue silk dress torn and patched. Her hair was tousled and wild, tied with ribbons and scraps of fur. She had a sore on her lip and a bloodied knife in her hand.
‘You want eyebrows?’ she asked. Turning to the dogs: ‘Rag, Ribbon, stop that racket.’
On a bloodied cloth in front of her was a dead mouse she was in the act of skinning. A basket by her side held about three dozen more corpses. Muttering to herself, she made a few proficient cuts, removed the corpse from the skin, and tossed it over to the dogs, who devoured it greedily.
‘There,’ she said, rocking back on her haunches to grin at them. ‘Now we can hear ourselves speak. Dark brown like your hair, madam, or something bolder? Red or black? White, even? Yellow’s rarer, hence dearer, but not with your colouring, no.’
She gestured to a plank leaning against a wall. Pinned to it were rows of false eyebrows evidently made from mouse fur, in the colours she’d described. Caro swallowed uneasily, thankful that this was one of her good days.
‘I’m looking for a man named Jack Somerset,’ she said.
‘My brother. He’s dead. Three months back.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Disappointment flooded through her. ‘Can I talk to you about him?’
‘Buy my eyebrows, you can ask me what you like.’
‘Why don’t I just give you the money for them, and you can keep the eyebrows?’
She squinted suspiciously. ‘Why would you do that?’
Caro smiled tightly. ‘Call me eccentric.’
‘Go on, then,’ she said swiftly, as if afraid Caro would change her mind. ‘Two shillings.’
Caro nodded at Miles, who stepped forward to give her the coins.
‘No need to look like that, fart-catcher,’ the woman said, seeing his look of disdain. She extended her bloodied hand to Caro. ‘Suzy Somerset.’
Wincing a little, Caro shook it. ‘Did you ever hear Jack speak of a soldier named Edward Dodd-Bellingham?’ she said. ‘He was a commissioned officer, a lieutenant, in your brother’s former regiment.’
‘He never stopped bloody talking about him. Probably died cursing his name.’
‘They didn’t like one another?’
‘Jack loathed him. Called him a shitten stink of a son of a whore.’ She grinned. ‘Wasn’t always like that, mind. In the old days, at the start of the war, he thought if you peered down that man’s arsehole, you’d spot the sun. He used to write me letters from America. I had the taverner next door read them to me. How Dodd-Bellingham would drink with the men. How the ladies loved him. He had favourites amongst the NCOs, and my Jack was one of them. Said he’d make Jack his steward when he reclaimed his family’s country house.’
Suzy moved to sit with the dogs, offering them her bloody hands to lick, squinting up at Caro as she talked. ‘Jack had wanted to see America, and take it to the Yankee bastards. But the war didn’t go like it was supposed to, and by the winter of ’76 they was in some pisspot fort, cut off from their supply lines. Rebel scum all around.’
‘Van der Linden’s Mill,’ Caro said, remembering Ansell Ward’s story.
‘The camp was freezing, exhausted, men starving to death. Living off tripe soup and flour cakes and dead horses. Jack said some men even ate their own shoes. They welcomed the snow, because at least they could melt it to drink. But their blankets weren’t thick enough, nor their coats, nor their gloves. Fingers and toes turned black, men were dying in their own shit from disease. Dropping dead in the snow.’
Listening to her talk, in words she was sure were her brother’s, Caro wondered how many times she had heard him recount the story.
‘Jack thought they would all die there, cut off like that, and Dodd-Bellingham agreed. He tried to convince their commanding officer to surrender, but the fool wouldn’t do it. The snow was coming in harder, and the foragers had to go further afield to find food. Like ducks on a pond, they were, in sight of the enemy rifles. So one night Dodd-Bellingham called Jack and five others to his hut and told them his plan. At nightfall, they’d take the best horses out of the camp, under cover of darkness. They’d ride south, wait out the winter, then make their way back up to New York. Everyone in the fort would be dead by then, and there’d be no one to give the lie to whatever story they came up with.’
‘They were planning to desert?’ Caro said. ‘I was told the lieutenant led a raiding party that saved the camp.’
Suzy grinned again. ‘They came upon an enemy supply train by chance later that night. Saw the fire some distance off, and tethered the horses. Twenty Yankee soldiers sleeping and only two sentries. One had fallen asleep, the other swigging from a bottle. The lieutenant pulled him down from the wagon box, and slit his throat. Then he and his men butchered every one of them as they lay there sleeping, like babes in a bower.’
Caro stared at her appalled. Not English lions, but ravaging wolves. Men who’d broken every rule, every moral, governing combat.
‘With a wagon-train full of supplies, the prospects for the fort would look much brighter,’ Suzy went on. ‘So back they went, wagons and all, hailed as the saviours of their company. When the thaw came, Dodd-Bellingham was feted in New York. It weren’t just my Jack who thought he farted sunbeams now. He thought his secret was safe. If any of his men talked, they’d only be tattling on themselves. And why would they want to tell? They all adored him. Until they returned to England, and he and Jack fell out.’
‘Go on.’
‘Jack had taken a musket ball at Bound Brook. But those blackguards at the War Office didn’t want to pay his pension, so they slung him out of the army for drinking on the job. He as
ked Dodd-Bellingham to intervene, and perhaps the lieutenant tried, but at the end of his trying, there was still no pension. So Jack asked him for a little blunt, just enough to see him through, but the lieutenant said he didn’t have none to spare. Well, Jack got mad then. Threatened to tell the War Office about that supply train, said he was prepared to risk a hanging if Dodd-Bellingham would be kicking there next to him. The lieutenant told him to go to hell, so Jack took himself off to Whitehall to have a word.’
‘The War Office had an inquiry,’ Caro said.
‘And decided my Jack was lying through his teeth. They said he was bitter, taking out his resentments on a decorated officer. Jack was raging, but he wasn’t giving up. He said once the war was over, he would write to America. The rebels must have found the bodies of the men they’d killed. In the meantime, he wanted to let Dodd-Bellingham know that he hadn’t forgotten. Jack used to accost him in the street. He sent him white feathers in the mails. Or he sat opposite him in taverns, just staring. Until I found him dead in his bed three months ago. His heart, they say it was.’ She spat on the ground.
‘Did anyone else ever come here to talk to Jack about Dodd-Bellingham?’
She nodded. ‘Pale fellow. Broken nose. He told Jack he was from the War Office, though he didn’t look like it to me. Jack thought they was taking his story seriously at last. But nothing came of it.’
The visitor sounded like Erasmus Knox, Jonathan Stone’s man. Stone would surely have the ability to get letters to America, despite the war.
‘A lady came too,’ Suzy said. ‘Only a few weeks back.’
Caro showed her Lucy’s picture. ‘Is that her?’
Suzy nodded. ‘She said she’d see that Dodd-Bellingham paid for his crimes. I told her it weren’t my fight, but Jack would have liked it.’ She sniffed.
And not long after that visit, Caro thought, Lucy was murdered. By the lieutenant, to protect his secret, after Lucy had threatened him? Perhaps Pamela had learned it too, in the course of her obsession with him? Might she have wanted more from him in return for his silence than he was prepared to give? To be his mistress? Even his wife? Had he killed her to find a way out?
Suzy picked a louse from one of the dogs. ‘Dodd-Bellingham’s not just a coward. Jack said he’s wicked too. None of the men liked what they had to do that night, sticking it to those poor bastards while they slept. But Jack saw the lieutenant’s face as he went in with his bayonet. Smiling in the firelight, as if he enjoyed it.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
CARO HADN’T BEEN able to bring herself to come before. Ambrose was sitting in his porter’s chair, staring at the objects on the table in front of him. His favourite pocket watch. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. The bag of marbles he’d played with as a boy. Things she’d asked the footmen to lay out daily to remind him of himself.
Except who was he? The man in front of her? Laughing, generous Ambrose, ready to forgive any flaw in family or friend? Mordechai had always called him selfish and she’d defended him hotly. But what act could be more selfish, than to risk the life of a young girl to save himself?
She’d tried telling herself that his mind must have been disordered. The Ambrose she loved would never have done it. But perhaps there had always been another Ambrose. The side of a man that mothers, sisters, wives, never got to see.
The door opened and Mordechai entered, holding a copy of The London Hermes. Wordlessly, he handed it to her. Her stomach contracted as she read the lines to which he pointed.
So to the further adventures of that intrepid lady, Mrs Wiltshire. We regret to report that in the course of her nocturnal excursions at Vauxhall, Mrs Wiltshire has experienced a slip. Since her tumble, the poor lady has been suffering from a swelling. All eyes now hunt for the clumsy gentleman responsible for this mishap, Mrs Wiltshire rarely being short of admiring company. Not Captain Wiltshire, certainly, an innocent in all respects, and absent these past three months in France. With his wife out of action, Vauxhall will certainly prove a duller place.
The words blurred before Caro’s eyes. She had no doubt that it was Stone’s doing. But how could he have guessed? Had Lord March told him? Dizziness overcame her, and she put a hand to her brow.
‘Judging by your expression, I needn’t ask if it’s true,’ Mordechai said. ‘Harry will divorce you. What choice will he have? His pride will demand it. You’ll have to go to the country. Don’t even try to change my mind.’
All her worst fears had been realized. Harry the laughing stock of London. No secret trip to Germany was possible now. People would say divorce was his duty – to Gabriel, his son. To remove him from the care of a mother who barely deserved the name. She put a knuckle to her mouth.
Mordechai was still talking, but she hadn’t heard a word.
‘Pamela,’ she said, interrupting him, ‘the virgin who disappeared. Stone bought her for Ambrose. He was the fifth man at Muswell Rise. He thought she could cure him of his syphilis. Did you know?’
His face contorted with disgust. ‘Of course I didn’t know.’
She studied him sceptically. ‘But there was something you weren’t telling me, when we were here with Cavill-Lawrence. What was it?’
He was silent a moment, staring at her incredulously. ‘Duty,’ he said eventually. ‘Obligation. Some have it. Some don’t. Some had it once, but then lost it – like His Majesty the King.’
‘How can you say that? Duty is his watchword.’
‘Not any longer. His Majesty’s spirits have always been melancholic. The world knows that. But since the defeat of our armies at Yorktown, he has sunk into a malaise. And these peace talks have only made things worse. He sees it as a personal humiliation. In private, he talks of abdication. Cavill-Lawrence thinks that I don’t know it, but I do.’
‘Stand aside?’ Caro cried. ‘But he cannot.’
‘The Queen has tried to dissuade him, to no avail,’ Mordechai went on. ‘I understand the letters of abdication have already been drawn up, and any day he may wake up, minded to do it. His ministers pray for a change of heart – they keep all bad news from him, afraid that the smallest disturbance to his mind might be enough.’
‘And then Prinny will be King,’ Caro said.
Little wonder that Cavill-Lawrence was so concerned about the Priapus Club and these murders. To have a boy-king accede to the throne, embroiled in a scandal like this . . .
‘Did Ambrose know?’ she asked. ‘Back when he made the loan? Did Ambrose know about the abdication? Did Stone?’
‘I imagine that’s why they did it. They spied an opportunity to ensnare the Prince. But no amount of reward was worth such risk.’
Ambrose would have seen it differently, Caro thought. A grocer’s grandson, banker to the King of England. New clients would have followed the Crown, aristocratic owners of the great estates. They’d have been able to pick and choose whom they let through the doors of the Craven Bank.
As for Stone, Caro could guess the nature of the rewards he envisaged. A knighthood? A seat in Parliament? A peerage? And if the Prince – like his father, a mercurial man – ever forgot his obligations to the men who’d lent him money when no one else would, then Jonathan Stone could doubtless remind him of certain scenes he had witnessed during the Prince’s nocturnal visits to the Priapus Club.
Forcing herself to look at Ambrose again, she confronted an unpalatable truth. If her brother had been acting in his right mind when he’d made the loan, then he’d also been in his right mind when he’d asked Stone to find him a virgin. If you could call it his right mind, because she could scarcely conceive of anything more wrong.
‘Stop hiding his syphilis,’ she said. ‘Because if the King does have a change of heart, if he ever finds out about the loan, then you need to blame him.’ She glared at the man in the chair. ‘Say his wits were wandering. Say Jonathan Stone took advantage.’
Mordechai’s face was expressionless. ‘I am astonished that, after everything, you still have the presumption to o
ffer advice that no one has asked to hear. Go home and look to your child, while you still can.’
As Caro descended the stairs of her childhood home, she felt no sense of loss. There was nothing left for her here anymore. In the hall below, she found Louisa weeping.
‘Oh, Caro,’ she said. ‘Why wasn’t being a mother, being a wife, ever enough for you?’
Why was it always enough for you? she wanted to say. But she bore her sister-in-law no ill will and submitted to her awkward embrace. Then she called for her cloak and gloves and walked out to her carriage.
On the journey home, watching London pass by, she thought: Jonathan Stone has finally made a mistake. He should have threatened me with this, not sought to punish me – because if I do one thing more before the roof falls in, let it be this.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
THE HACKNEY CARRIAGE smelled of tobacco and sweat. Caro opened the window, allowing the cool night air to spill inside. She had never travelled in one before and it was not an experience she cared to repeat. The seat was badly sprung, her back jarring at each bump or hole in the road.
After she’d left her brother’s house, she’d returned home to read to Gabriel until he fell asleep. Then she’d dressed and gone out to Carlisle House. Her gown was purple and black silk, striped, low in the neck, closely fitted. Her harlot’s dress, Harry called it, one of those jokes that wasn’t a joke. She wore a little more rouge than usual, dyed ostrich feathers in her hair. At Carlisle House they’d stared, but then they would have stared anyway, after the story in The London Hermes.
She had given one of the Carlisle House footmen a message to take to her coachman, Sam, saying that the Henekers had offered to drive her home in their carriage. Then she’d left Carlisle House by the same alley where she’d been attacked by the plague doctor, heading for the rank of hackney carriages further down the street.
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