by Sean Gabb
Chapter Eight
Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, Oh, Oh!
His mouth still a perfect circle from the repetition of “Oh, Oh, Oh!” Samuel flopped down on the opposite side of the table.
“I thought I’d find you here,” he said with a bright smile.
He snapped his fingers for the serving boy, as if by magic producing one of the new pennies between forefinger and thumb.
Sarah sat back from the bowl of water she’d ordered. The washing had helped. So too the coffee. Chief minister, though, to her ravaged soul had been the five drops of laudanum added to the steaming brew. Five drops—not enough to get her out of bed on a normal day. But, like slush on a squealing axle, the bare hint of a Turkish poppy had set the wheels and cogs of her mind back in their proper motion.
The application to her unseen parts of a rag soaked in vinegar could safely wait.
This didn’t make the company any more welcome. The vinegar could wait—not so her deliberations on the Irishman’s packet. Now recovered, and sat at her usual place in Mrs Clapton’s, she was moving into second thoughts about the events of the morning.
Five years in her present course of life, and placing facts into a pattern was become second nature. Perhaps she’d allowed too neat a pattern to emerge from the events at Tyburn. It was possible that the Irishman had employed her for an act of betrayal, and had then tried to betray her to the authorities. Just as likely, his letter might have got to Sir John too early.
Or the letter might have been an attempt by some other person to betray him.
Or there were the half dozen other possibilities of descending likelihood conceived since her arrival in the coffee house.
The only undeniables were a dead man and an undelivered packet. The former was something best avoided. The latter couldn’t be avoided. Anyone with an ounce of common sense would throw the packet away unopened. Plainly, the Irishman had been up to no good. She’d been lucky not to get fully involved. She’d never see him again. Therefore, throw it away.
Good advice, that was—though quite useless. As well as recovering her, the opium had created space at the front of her mind for thoughts of the packet to fill. She could feel the pricking of its seal where it had settled in her shift beside the candlestick. She’d open it once she was home and out of sight.
Until then, passing the time of day with her favourite actor-manager Lambert wasn’t on her list of things to do.
She dried her hands. She reached inside a pocket under her left armpit. She pushed the creased slip across the table.
“The note is from a failed bank,” she said coldly.
If she’d hoped for a polite excuse, followed by departure, she was out of luck. Samuel dumped his wig on the table and set about scratching his head. He looked awhile at his fingernails, and then at her washing bowl. But his own coffee was now served. Sipping delicately, he sat back in his chair.
“My dear Mistress Goodricke,” he said in his quietest grand voice, “you will appreciate that the bank wasn’t failed when I received the note.”
He sat forward and pushed the note back at her. “After all we’ve been through together, you surely wouldn’t accuse me of so petty a fraud.”
Dropping his grand manner, he broke into another of his smiles.
Sarah had seen women swoon at smiles less broad. But that was after better lines than he’d just brought out. The louse making its way along his forehead didn’t help. It was plain, though, she was stuck with Samuel at least for as long as he took with his coffee.
She stopped herself from smiling. In truth, you were never “stuck” with Samuel. She’d rather he hadn’t dropped in. But here was Samuel. Like everyone else, she would always find time for him. She just wouldn’t smile at him.
She took another sip of her coffee, and tried to make her face as sour as the drug it contained.
“So when can I have my 27/-6d in silver?”
He smiled again. “That, dear Sarah, is what I’m here to discuss.”
“There’ll be no more silver in this country,” a man broke in from the next table. “You mark my words.”
He laughed bitterly. “If you want silver, you’d better take yourself to Holland. Failing that, there’s the Dutch Embassy.”
Samuel and Sarah looked at each other. There was no need of the warning, but Samuel twitched his nose ever so slightly. He put his wig back on and set his face into a puzzled look.
“I entirely fail to understand your meaning, Sir,” he called out in a voice that sounded conversational, yet filled the room.
The government spy looked carefully round. This wasn’t the main time of day for coffee, and Mrs Clapton’s establishment was thinly attended. But the few desultory conversations in progress had ceased, as men found a sudden interest in the newspapers.
A thin smile on his face, the spy turned back to Samuel.
“I merely observed, Sir, that the total withdrawal of the circulating medium coincides with a quickening of its export to the Low Countries. That is surely a truth evidenced on the face of things.”
He raised his voice and looked round for agreement. “So too is the distress of all commerce among His Majesty’s English subjects.”