‘Can’t say I have, sir. Looks expensive.’
‘Can you ask around the brothels and the gaming houses in the Broadway and the Strand? See if any of them uses a ticket like this?’
He made a grab for it – a little too swiftly, I felt – and I moved it out of his reach. ‘Just remember what it looks like. I’ll keep hold of it for now. But if you find the right place, then after I’ve been there, I’ll let you keep it.’
He gave me a smile that made his dimples dance. ‘You can count on me, Captain Corsham.’
‘One last thing. Did you ever have a problem with someone leaving dead birds here at the Ark?’
His smile vanished. ‘Not just birds, sir. Someone left a cat’s head in the yard once, and before that it was three dead rats, crawling with maggots. It’s slave religion, sir. Black magic.’
‘When did it start?’
‘Just after your friend came to town that first time. People say he told the story of the drowned slaves to the Negroes up in the Broadway and it riled them.’
‘Does anyone have any idea who is behind it?’
‘I caught a glimpse of them once, when I was coming back from my shift at the warehouses – saw two Negroes running away. Footmen from their build. That was the time we found the cat’s head in the yard.’
‘Has anyone else had trouble aside from Monday and the officers?’
‘Everyone who crewed The Dark Angel when the slaves were drowned. That’s why the men refused to serve on her. It fuelled the rumour that the ship was cursed.’
‘Why didn’t you mention it when we talked before?’
Again that wary look entered his eyes. ‘Ma don’t want anyone to know. Thinks it will frighten our guests away. That’s not why you’re leaving, is it, sir?’
‘It will take more than a few dead birds to scare me. When was the last time anything was left here at the inn?’
He thought for a moment. ‘The night before I found Archer dead. A doll made of twigs was nailed to the stable door. You could tell it was supposed to be a blackamoor by the hair. If you don’t mind, sir, don’t mention this to Ma. It scares her witless. After the doll, she got all manner of ideas in her head. Pestered Mr Child for days. I don’t want to start her off again, if I can help it.’
‘What kind of ideas?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘We’d had a spot of trouble at the inn earlier that day. Ma caught that Negress whore from the bathhouse skulking around.’
‘Jamaica Mary?’
‘Aye, that’s her. She was probably looking for something to steal. I boxed her ears and threw her out. Then later that evening, Ma saw Mr Stokes’s free Negro in the yard. He was only looking for Brabazon, but Ma got it into her head that he and the whore were responsible for the doll.’
Scipio certainly struck me as an unlikely practitioner of witchcraft. ‘Did Mr Child question him?’
‘Aye, sir, but like I said, he was just looking for Brabazon. He’s the one Negro in Deptford with prospects. Why would he be in alliance with a penny-fuck whore? Why would he risk his position with Mr Stokes for a bit of foolery? Mr Child thought the same, but there’s no reasoning with Ma where Negroes are concerned. She thinks they’re all out to murder us in our beds.’
‘It doesn’t frighten you? Witchcraft and curses, I mean.’
He touched the ivory charm around his neck. ‘Got one of these, haven’t I? It’s a nigger finger bone – gives protection from their magic. You want me to get you one? I can buy them down at the dock for half a crown.’
Swiftly, I held up a hand. ‘Thank you, there’s no need.’
‘Just that silver ticket then. I’ll get right on it, sir. If it’s come from a place in Deptford, then I’ll find it.’
As I rode out of town, I carried the sulphurous smell of the place with me. It pervaded the clothes and the skin and the hair. Three hundred drowned slaves. ‘Nigger finger bones’. In my absence, I reflected, it would be no great loss if someone put a tinder to this place and burned it to the ground.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
At Rotherhithe there were problems with the horseferry and a crowd of oyster women were screaming at the poor ferryman. In the end, tiring of the delay, I rode on into London, crossing the Thames at London Bridge. I doubled back on myself, heading east out of the city again to see Amelia. It added nearly two hours to my journey, but I was determined to make the trip. Even amidst all my other concerns, I was still painfully aware how I had left things between Amelia and I.
The sun was low in the sky by the time I rode into Bethnal Green. The sow in the neighbour’s garden eyed me from her bath of mud. The door to Amelia’s cottage stood ajar, and I pushed it open, calling her name. I stopped. Shards of broken china crunched beneath my boots. Something was wrong.
Drawing my pistol, I opened the parlour door. A scene of disorder greeted me. Every sofa cushion had been slashed open, feathers floating through the air. The tea table was on its side, and a broken lamp lay beside it. I moved further into the room, and almost stumbled over a woman lying on the floor.
‘Amelia!’ I cried.
I crouched down and rolled her over, immediately realizing my mistake. It was Amelia’s Indian maidservant. The poor woman’s head lolled back grotesquely, where the throat had been cut. My hands sticky with gore, I stared appalled.
Somewhere up above a floorboard creaked and I raised my eyes to the ceiling. Another creak – my senses alert, I tracked the sound. Someone was trying to move silently in the room above. Amelia or the killer? I couldn’t be sure.
My pistol primed, I returned to the hall, listening intently. Whoever was up there must have heard me calling Amelia’s name. If it was her, then why hadn’t she replied or come down? I walked slowly up the stairs. Two doors opened off the landing, both of them closed. I examined the one that led into the room over the parlour. Sweat snaked across my back. I reached for the handle.
The person behind it must have been listening out for me, for the door swung open suddenly, knocking me backwards. My pistol fell from my hand and clattered along the floor. A hooded figure dressed in black leaped over me and made for the stairs. With no time to recover my pistol, I went after him. He was already halfway down the stairs, and notwithstanding the advice of my surgeons I vaulted over the bannister to cut off his escape to the front door. A jolt of lightning split my leg as I landed.
Seeing that his route was blocked, the man turned, seeking another exit. I ran after him as quickly as my injured leg would permit, catching him up in a small kitchen to the rear of the house. A door led out to a vegetable garden, and my quarry was kicking it hard. I almost had him, but the door splintered, and he barged through it.
He reached the garden wall in seconds, and took a leap to grab the top of it. I was slower, but I managed to seize hold of his boot. He kicked out with his other foot, striking me in the face. I stumbled backwards and he pulled himself up and over the wall. I climbed after him, but by the time I reached the top he was sprinting away down an alley on the other side.
Amelia. The thought forestalled any idea of going after him. I jumped down and hurried back through the garden, dimly aware of a neighbour peering at me from an upstairs window. I took the stairs as fast as I could, and burst into the room. My breath came in painful gulps as I took in the scene. A cast-iron bathtub stood on the floor, at the foot of a half-tester bed. Amelia was kneeling in front of it, fully clothed, her hands tied behind her. Her face was in the water. I could see bruising at the back of her neck, where he’d held her under. Prayers tumbled from my lips, as I pulled her out.
Her face was white, her lips purple. Her eyes rolled back into her skull, the whites crackled with blood like a pottery glaze. Dear God.
I had once, in America, seen a man revive his son, after the lad was trapped under ice in a lake. He had forced the water from the boy’s lungs by applying pressure to the abdomen. Desperately, I tried to remember how it was done. I interlaced my fingers and pressed down upon her stomach.
I did it again, harder, willing life back into her body.
My arms ached with exertion and tears rolled down my face. The seconds turned into minutes that felt like hours. I don’t know how long I laboured like this, but her limbs remained limp. I knew she was dead long before I accepted the fact. Eventually, I pulled her head into my lap, overwhelmed with despair. How could I have failed to foresee that Amelia was in danger?
I gazed at her face, remembering the awkward, birdlike girl I’d ignored in Devon and the lonely woman who had asked for my friendship. I wept for her and for Tad, sitting there on the floor in that cold, miserable room with the light fading around us. I did not even move when I heard voices and the pounding of feet upon the stairs. Three stout men clattered into the room and one produced a pistol.
‘Blackguard, you are under arrest for murder.’
PART THREE
26–29 JUNE 1781
If we imagine that a thing which is wont to affect us with an emotion of pain, has something similar to another thing which is wont to affect us with an equally great emotion of pleasure, we shall hate it and love it at the same time.
III. Of the Affections or Passions, Ethics, Baruch Spinoza
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The constables dragged me from the cottage, the neighbours peering at me from windows and doorways. One of them must have summoned help, after hearing the commotion. I was manhandled along the street to the Bethnal Green watchhouse, where I was shoved into a cell. One of the constables set about chaining me to the wall, while the others stood over me as though I was a dangerous animal.
‘I didn’t kill her.’ I had already told them this many times. ‘My name is Captain Henry Corsham. Please send for my lawyer.’
The man chaining me to the wall gave me a slap. ‘You’ll hang while your lawyer watches, murdering bastard.’
One of his friends drove his stick into my belly as a parting shot, and the door crashed shut behind them. I was left to moulder overnight with the rats and the stink and my own despair.
Why hadn’t I seen Amelia’s murder coming? Why, when I knew that Tad’s rooms had been searched, hadn’t I anticipated that the killer would take an interest in his only living relative? It never occurred to me that the murders were unrelated. I didn’t believe in coincidences like that. What was the killer looking for? The thing Tad went to Deptford to collect? Had he forced her head under the water to make her tell him where it was?
I held my skull in my chained hands as I contemplated her last moments. To be tortured for information you didn’t possess was every soldier’s secret terror. Amelia’s life had been hard, but none of it would have prepared her for her death.
My leg throbbed unbearably and I hardly slept. When I did, I dreamed of Tad and black winged women. When I woke I thought of Amelia’s cold damp face and the man who’d killed her. I had few recollections of him, save a sense of size and swiftness and a faint smell of sweat. I kept seeing his pink hand grabbing the bannister pole.
By the time the first misty fingers of dawn penetrated the bars of my cell, I was no nearer any answers. One of the constables unlocked the door and placed a bowl of slops in front of me. I asked again for my lawyer, but he ignored me.
A few hours later, the local magistrate came to see me. He had a thin grey face scattered with warts, and seemed genuinely horrified by the murders of Amelia and her maid.
I protested my innocence, which bored him. Then I tried bribery, which angered him. Finally, with little option left, I invoked the name of my patron, Nicholas Cavill-Lawrence. The magistrate gazed at me with scepticism, but I must have planted enough seeds of doubt in his mind, for eventually he hurried off to dispatch a message to Whitehall.
I felt little relief. By now Cavill-Lawrence would have received Lucius Stokes’s letter. He would know about my inquiry into Tad’s murder. Now I stood accused of a sensational murder myself.
I passed many more hours in that cell. The day lengthened and it grew dark outside. Where was Cavill-Lawrence? Why didn’t he come? Was he angry, leaving me to stew? Perhaps, having read Stokes’s letter, he had washed his hands of me altogether? I contemplated every possibility over those long, anxious hours, including a dismal death at the end of a hangman’s rope. Finally, I heard the rattle of a key in the lock. A lantern dazzled me, and I turned away.
‘That’s him,’ I heard Cavill-Lawrence say. ‘That’s Henry Corsham.’
Distaste coloured his tone and I realized how I must look. My wig was crawling with lice and my coat was stiff and black with the maid’s blood.
Cavill-Lawrence’s voice rose with characteristic impatience. ‘Get those chains off him, sir, before I have your job. The man’s a war hero.’
My shackles were duly unlocked and my money and weapons returned to me. Cavill-Lawrence instructed the magistrate to have my horse and bags returned to my house in Mayfair. Then he had the constables line up outside the watchhouse to offer me their sullen apologies. A short time later I was ensconced in Cavill-Lawrence’s large black carriage, the lights of Bethnal Green retreating into the distance behind us. My legs felt brittle as twigs and the stink rising off me was pungent. I hadn’t touched the filth the constables had called food and I was dizzy with hunger.
I glanced at Cavill-Lawrence, trying to gauge how angry he was. ‘Forgive me if I have caused you any embarrassment, sir. The magistrate wouldn’t listen to my explanations.’
‘Forget Mrs Bradstreet’s murder,’ he said tersely. ‘You should be more concerned about Lucius Stokes’s letter. The West India lobby are in high dudgeon about it all. Stokes says you were prowling around Deptford asking questions about The Dark Angel – what were you thinking?’
‘A friend of mine was murdered, Mrs Bradstreet’s brother. I think they were both killed because of a massacre that happened on board that ship.’
‘Do you think I don’t know this?’ Cavill-Lawrence shook his head. ‘Dear God, Harry, but you should have come to me. I’d have told you not to tangle in this wretched business.’
Our faces were orange in the dim glow of the carriage lamps. Cavill-Lawrence was approaching fifty, but you might have guessed sixty. His stomach strained against his velvet waistcoat and his jowls spilled over the top of his cravat. Heavy pouches beneath his eyes seemed weighed down by the responsibilities of the offices of state he held: Under-Secretary of State for War, trusted member of His Majesty’s Privy Council. It didn’t altogether surprise me that he seemed to have already known about Tad and the ship. Caro said he held more secrets than an Ottoman dungeon.
‘Napier Smith is most displeased about your role in all of this. He thinks you are an enemy of the slave trade and he suspects you of much more. I have tried to convince him that your worst crime is naivety. That had better be true.’
I stared at him in alarm. Napier Smith, the Chairman of the West India lobby.
‘I only wanted to find the man who killed my friend, sir. I am sorry that you were dragged into all of this.’
His gaze was unforgiving. ‘Caro is like a daughter to me. Her father was one of my oldest friends, but I’ll not make an enemy of Napier Smith for you or any other man.’
The carriage swung off the highway onto one of the country roads running north of the city. Cavill-Lawrence answered my look of inquiry with another hard stare.
‘He wants to see you tonight. I imagine he has a lot of questions. So do I.’
I bowed my head. The prospect of meeting Smith when I was so disordered in thought and appearance filled me with trepidation. My mistakes were compounding, everything falling apart.
Yet I was still capable of rational thought and I strung a few together now. Lucius Stokes was a tadpole compared to Napier Smith, and yet Smith had involved himself personally in this matter. Now he wanted to see me at eleven o’clock at night. This couldn’t simply be because I’d trampled on Stokes’s patch. I’d always suspected that the Deptford mayor had some secret agenda where Tad’s murder was concerned. Perhaps that agenda w
as shared by the West India lobby?
We drove at speed through the outlying villages and hamlets. Trees pressed in on either side. Sometimes I glimpsed the startled eyes of a rabbit or a deer in the hedgerows.
Tad’s words kept coming back to me: They are a cabal of wealthy slave merchants. Their power runs deeper than most people in this country will ever know. He had told Amelia that the West India lobby was part of the conspiracy ranged against him. A week ago I had dismissed it. Now I wasn’t so sure.
Yet Lucius Stokes’s complaint was that I had been asking questions about The Dark Angel – not Tad’s murder. The ship must be important to them – but why? Africans died at the hands of slave traders every day, though never in such large numbers, or where profit underpinned those murders so starkly. Was that it? Was it the scale of the deaths that was significant?
I remembered my horror when I’d first learned of the massacre. My reaction wasn’t much mirrored in Deptford, but in London it would be a different story. Out in the countryside too. I thought of the Wiltshire village where I’d grown up. People there had simple ideas about right and wrong. I knew instinctively that if someone told them about The Dark Angel they would not like it.
I nurtured this thought as we drove. Cavill-Lawrence sat very still, saying nothing. His eyes were half closed and if I hadn’t known him better, I’d have said he was asleep.
I had assumed Stokes was protecting the murderer, and maybe he was, but what if that wasn’t his primary motivation? What if the West India lobby were concerned with a bigger secret: the story of the massacre itself? I knocked this notion around in my mind, trying to see it from all vantages, determined to understand the chain of cause and effect. By the time we turned off the main road, onto a private drive somewhere north of Hampstead, I believed that I had it all worked out.
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