Instruments of Darkness

6

They turned into Holland Street and the road narrowed. Their footsteps slowed, and Graves was not sure whose reluctance held them back. The streets were very quiet for a Saturday; hawkers were few and called out their wares almost softly. It did not seem healthy or right, but if that was the atmosphere of the street or the heavy dark Graves carried with him, he could not say. There were enough people looking from their windows, or standing at the doorways, however, for their approach to be noticed.

Apprentices and servants from the houses near Alexander’s own appeared in the doorways as they passed. The cook from the wig maker came up to them, and pressed a napkin of gingerbread into Susan’s hand, “for little Master Adams.” Susan looked at her blank-faced and took the package with a little nod. She had grown up fearing this woman, huge and apparently always covered in flour, ever since she had been caught trying on one of the legal wigs the shop made and sentencing the other children in the street to terrible punishments. She said thank you, and the cook turned away to wipe her eyes on her apron.

They managed only a few steps more before Susan was stopped by a hesitant female hand on her shoulder. The thin, birdlike face of Mrs. Service was bending toward her. The bones of her neck stuck out, and her wrists were no thicker than Susan’s. She was a widow, starving in genteel poverty in a single room opposite the shop. People took her little bits of sewing from time to time, though it was known she was not particularly skillful, and the work was given more out of charity than any other cause. Susan thought Mrs. Service knew this, and it made her sorry for her. She would always have her window open when Susan was practicing. Sometimes she could see her leaning out of the window a little, straining to hear over the sounds of the street. Susan would try and play more loudly, impossible of course, but in her heart she sent the music across to her audience.

Looking a little flustered, Mrs. Service held out a small cameo brooch of fruits and flowers in front of her, and said in a rush, “I wanted to give you this at the service, but there were so many people.” Her tired eyes looked to Graves, and Susan, then to the ground again. “Your father once admired it. It would give me great pleasure to know you had it, and might wear it from time to time. I’ve liked hearing you play so much.” Her voice cracked a little.

Susan took the brooch. “It’s very pretty.”

Mrs. Service began to cry, and turned away from them.

Jane was waiting for them at the door to the shop and held her arms out. Susan gave a little sob and broke free from Mr. Graves to run to her and bury herself in her apron. Graves stepped hurriedly after her, then looked into the room as discreetly as he could. Jane caught where he was looking and nodded. The floorboards were scrubbed white. Susan straightened herself, squeezed Jane’s hand in her own, then turned into the shop ahead of them.

“What’s going to happen, Mr. Graves?” the young maid asked.

Graves looked at the dust and muck on his shoes and shrugged. “I have no idea. I hope there may be a will. Are you owed?”

Jane waved him away. “I was paid two days ago, sir. Mr. Adams was always most punctual.”

Jane was still a young woman, hardly out of her teens, but there was an air of sense and goodwill about her that made Graves feel a little hopeful. She was a thin girl, but straight and wiry.

“Can you keep an eye on the shop and house awhile?” he asked. “Till we settle what should be done?”

Jane stood considering, and having decided, dusted her hands on her apron and looked him in the eye.

“I’ve been wondering if you might ask that, and what answer I should give you, so here it is. I’d be happy to. But do you think I might have my mother along with me? I don’t like to be here on my own, nor do I want to leave her alone at the moment.” She touched her hand to her head to suggest the blue cockades the rioters of the previous day had been wearing when they burned the Catholic chapel in Duke Street and Golden Square. “She is willing,” Jane added. “She is visiting a friend in Soho Square till I send her word.”

“Perhaps we should ask Susan.”

But when they entered the shop, Susan was nowhere to be seen. A sudden spasm of alarm caught Graves in the throat and he shouted her name perhaps a little more loudly than was necessary. She sprang up from behind the counter.

“I’m here.” She saw the relief on his face and looked a little conscious. “Will you help me? It’s heavy.”

Graves made his way over to join her. She had shifted a bundle of scores to uncover a black wooden box large enough to take a manuscript sheet without folding. It was deep too and Graves felt himself grunt with effort as he brought it out onto the countertop. He steadied it and told Susan what Jane had suggested.

“Only if that’s agreeable to you, miss,” the girl added quickly. “If you think it’s for the best.”

Susan bit her lip and nodded quickly. The comb Miss Chase had put in her hair to hold it in place wobbled a little.

“Yes, please. That’s very nice of your mother to come.”

Her lip began to shake, and Jane stepped around the counter to her side.

“Oh, miss! Look at your hair. You’ve been pulling your ringlets again, and you know your father likes you looking neat.”

She put her hand up to smooth Susan’s curls back into place and the tenderness of the gesture overwhelmed the little girl. She began to sob in earnest and, thinking it best to leave them awhile, Graves went out into the parlor.

The remains of the dinner, so horribly stopped, had been cleared away, and the space was as tidy and cheerful as normal. Graves paused, as if by a sheer effort of will he could run time backward and Alexander would walk in and ask him to dine with the family. They would talk, and Alexander would mock him gently for his mute admiration of Miss Chase, and Graves would ask for all the news of the shop. Then they would look at some new score that had come into Alexander’s hands and the evening would melt away.

Graves sighed heavily, and looked around the room without a clear thought in his head, then seeing Alexander’s writing desk open in the corner, walked over to it, vaguely wondering if he might find there evidence of a will, or some inspiration as to how to take on the responsibilities with which his friend had left him.

Everything about the desk was neat and orderly. The sight depressed him, thinking of the tattered and scattered papers around his own little table. The lamp set above the desk was carefully trimmed, and the desk contained a convenient series of pigeonholes where bills and receipts could be kept and correspondence sorted. The little box where Alexander had kept his ring was still there, still, Graves noted as he flicked it open with a fingernail, empty.

Graves sat down sadly and picked at the edge of the blotter, sure that whatever tasks were being given him, he was incapable of shouldering them. There was a sheet of paper under the blotter. He pulled it free and saw the first words of a letter begun on the day of the concert. It had the name and address of the shop at its top, and the date of 31 May 1780 in the firm and confident hand he knew to be that of his friend. It began:

My Dear Hugh,

You know, I think, only too well the reasons that caused my separation from the Hall, but an odd loss on my part, and the knowledge that my children are now growing, motherless and uncertain of their future, has caused me to

Here Alexander had broken off. Graves felt his heart constrict. He remembered the conversation with Alexander that night, his strange hints to his daughter, and the new resolve he had taken to live the life he had chosen, rather than make any attempt at reconciliation with his family. Graves bit his lip. If he had advised differently, the letter might have been completed. He should have questioned his friend more closely before he had given his advice. His answer had perhaps been too full of his own pride. He, after all, had left his own home, and perhaps he had encouraged Alexander to stay away from his to bolster his own decision. He remembered the weight and size of the black box in the shop, thought of its careful concealment away from Alexander’s neatly arranged business affairs in this more public room. Perhaps there were answers there, and some help for him.

He stood up swiftly, but in turning toward the door in the shop his eye was caught by a movement in the window into the back yard. His heart froze. That face. That yellow leering face that had flashed in front of his mind’s eye every other moment since he saw his friend dying on the floorboards in front of him. It was there, looking in at him through the window. He rocked backward a step. The two men stared at each other a moment through the glass, each held by the other’s eyes, then Graves let out a roar of rage and charged to the door from the kitchen into the courtyard. The yellow man had turned and run through the side passage back into Tichfield Street.

“Murderer! Killer! There! There!” Graves screamed after him and threw himself forward in pursuit.

The street came alive as if, as the man dashed past, he transmitted an energy that awoke the people. More cries in the street, the houses themselves seemed to bend forward. More men in pursuit, a woman shrank to the wall with a scream as the yellow man tore past her and spun into Little Angel; he stumbled in the muck, but was up and running again before Graves could do more than brush the edge of his dirty coat. He had been wrong to turn this way. Now Londoners looking cautiously about them for the scenes of last night’s riots could see the approach of the chase, and hear the shouts of “Murder!” as the desperate men charged toward them. The yellow man grabbed a basket from a narrow-waisted street-hawker and threw it back at his pursuers. Her burden of burned pies rolled on the ground, and though it was enough to trip one man, the rest kept coming with Graves at their head, his lungs bursting. The hawker screamed and spat at the yellow man, but was shoved aside in the instant and he ran on. Not far though, not far. He turned sharply into Chapel Street, scattering people and their goods, but a fat coachman, hearing the cry following him, launched himself against him from his right flank, and the yellow man fell into the dirt and refuse of the street with all the coachman’s bulk pressing him to the ground. The crowd descended, held his arms away from him, and someone pulled his knife from his pocket. He struggled, and no one man could have held him, but with twenty grasping him and pressing forward, he was lost. Graves came to a stop before him, and without pausing to fill his lungs, threw a punch that landed under the yellow man’s chin and let the crowd take his weight as he slumped insensible among them.

“Smartly done,” Graves heard from the crowd. A broad-shouldered man stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder as Graves raised his fist again. “But don’t kill him, or we’ll have to take you in too. Who is he?”

“He killed Alexander Adams,” Graves panted.

The crowd murmured and exclaimed. The broad man nodded soberly. “What magistrate is closest?”

“Addington! Addington!” the crowd shouted.

A barrow was produced with a young man to push it, and the yellow man was rolled onto it with a bit of rope around his wrist and another around his ankles. His head lolled like a guy’s ready for the fire, and the crowd began to process to the magistrate’s house to demand satisfaction of the law.

Graves’s brain was clogged and weary as he made his way back to the street door of the Chases’ home. He had sent messages back to Susan and Miss Chase through the evening, telling them first that the man had been taken, then later that with little ceremony, on his evidence, and to the delight of the crowd that accompanied him, the yellow man had been sent to Newgate to await trial at the Old Bailey sometime in the next week.

Once he had come around and realized his position was hopeless, the yellow man had become surly. He refused to speak other than to curse and call down every revenge imaginable on Graves and the children, but would give neither his name, nor any reason for his attack on Alexander. The crowd had jeered him, and the magistrate, looking exhausted and fretful, merely nodded at Graves’s evidence and sent the yellow man away under guard within half an hour of reaching his house in Covent Garden.

The crowd that had traveled with Graves were disposed to make a hero of him, and it was with difficulty he had managed to free himself from them and their congratulations. He could have drunk himself to death on their credit, but was haunted by his thoughts of Susan and Miss Chase waiting for him with the black box between them. Still, as he walked past Seven Dials he was aware that his fame had spread. His neighbors approached to pat him on his back, or nod, or smile at him significantly. His legs ached after running down the yellow man, and his knuckles were bruised. He did not think to pause at his lodgings again, merely passing them by on his way to Sutton Street to rejoin the Chase family. As a shadow stirred next to him, he was ready to smile and wave off congratulations again.

“A conquering hero, Mr. Graves, you are!”

Graves felt his heart sink. He knew the voice; this was not going to be a pleasant meeting. The shadow unfurled itself from the wall. A tall wizened-looking man with green teeth smiled at him like the crocodile Graves had seen exhibited at Vauxhall the previous year.

“Mr. Molloy. Good evening.”

“Isn’t it though? Only one thing could make it more pleasant …” He paused and pulled Graves back into the shadows for a moment as a group of men wearing blue cockades in their hats, their faces dirty with soot, barreled past them. He released Graves’s arm and continued as if nothing had occurred “… and that is my money.”

“I have none.”

“Then you shouldn’t have bought yourself that pretty coat, or new shoes. The tailor has sold me your bill, and I’ll be paid, or you’ll be in the Marshal-sea by Monday night.”

The smile never shifted from his face as he spoke. Graves lifted his arms.

“For God’s sake, have pity! My friend has been murdered, his children put into my care! I cannot get the money for some days.”

“Yes, I’ve been hearing all about your adventures, son. Talk of the parish-most commendable. I esteem you for it, and am sorry for your loss, but pity does not make a man wealthy, you know. And I have a fancy to be a wealthy man. Now Adams had a nice little concern in that shop, didn’t he?”

Graves pulled himself very straight. “You think I should steal from his children? What sort of creature are you?”

Molloy laughed till he had to pause for breath and spit on the ground.

“Creature am I, indeed? Well, at least the coat I walk about in I have paid for.” Graves blushed. “Twenty shillings is how the debt stands. I would not wish to embarrass you by asking for it from Mr. Chase while you are under his roof, keeping an eye on your little charges.”

Graves felt himself go pale. “How twenty shillings? I could not have owed more than half that.”

“You writerly types will never understand the function of interest, will you now?” Molloy shook his head sadly at what passed for an educated man these days. “Now, perhaps you might get a little reward, or ask for one if you are too busy running about the streets to practice your trade, but that is your concern. Just make sure I have the money in my fist by Monday dinnertime, and I shall tip my hat to you all friendly-like. Any later than that and you’ll be locked up in the prison before you can spit.”

Graves felt his shoulders sag.

“I shall make it easy for you, Graves. I shan’t stir far from Sutton Street over the next day or two. That way you’ll know how to find me.”

Molloy put a hand to his hat brim and seemed to disappear into the shadows again without a sound. Graves sagged for a moment then, straightening his back, he walked on toward the home of Mr. Chase.

18 APRIL 1775, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS BAY, AMERICA

It was unfortunate, and of course, Captain Devaille was known to be a fool, and no one in the regiment could understand why he had not transferred out when they had been sent to America, but he would not have spoken as he did if he had known Hugh was within earshot. Thornleigh had paused in the doorway to the officers’ mess to knock some of the dirt of Boston off his boots, so Hawkshaw was a few moments ahead of him, greeting his fellow officers and calling for news and claret in the same breath.

Captain Devaille heard his voice and without turning round called out: “Hawkshaw! You’re thick with Thornleigh, aren’t you? How does he take the news that the earl of Sussex has married his whore? What a mother to come home to!”

There was a horrible silence, and Devaille turned suddenly in his chair and cursed as he saw Hugh’s broad shoulders form a shadow in the doorway. He stood, stock still and white. His hands clenched.

“Thornleigh. M-my apologies,” Devaille spluttered. “I … My father wrote me, just came in an hour ago.”

Hugh took a step forward, his face and manner murderous. Hawkshaw moved in front of him, facing Devaille.

“We’ve been riding out. Not checked for letters yet. No doubt there is some mistake.”

Devaille looked in danger of being sick; he could not meet Hugh’s black eyes, still fixed on him over Hawkshaw’s shoulder.

“No doubt, Hawkshaw. Of course.”

“Some other earl of Sussex, presumably,” drawled another voice.

Hawkshaw glanced angrily in the direction it came from. An older Lieutenant, Gregson, who looked in his well-cut coat as if he had mistook the mess for a duchess’s drawing room, smiled sweetly at him. Hawkshaw turned to Hugh.

“Come on, Thornleigh. Leave with me now. Let us see what news from England we have.”

But Hugh took another half-step forward, apparently unhearing. Devaille’s chair scraped on the stone floor as he retreated in front of him.

“Damn it, Hugh,” Hawkshaw sighed. “Time enough to kill and be killed tomorrow.”

“Oh, tomorrow will be like stealing butter from the nursery table,” sang the voice of Gregson again. “We are to have a brisk walk through the countryside, blow up some powder the rebels have scraped together and then trot home again.”

Hawkshaw turned on him. “You are mighty open about our army’s plans, sir.”

Gregson held up his hand, as if gently fending off Hawkshaw’s annoyance. “We are among friends, are we not?”

Before Hawkshaw could reply, Hugh turned and walked out of the door, leaving it to clatter to behind him. Hawkshaw rubbed his face and collapsed into a chair. Food and wine were put in front of him.

“Thanks, Hawkshaw,” Devaille said under his breath.

“You’re a fucking idiot, Devaille,” he replied without much heat. “And if you fight as carelessly as you talk, you won’t bother me much longer.”

He began to eat.

As the afternoon slipped toward evening, the atmosphere in the camp became more charged with the promise of action.

Devaille’s comments were confirmed, first by another officer whose letters from home contained the same gossip, and then in a paragraph in a month-old copy of the Gentleman’s Magazine which was being handed around the mess. It was passed to Hawkshaw open at the significant page, and with a tap of a thumb on the middle paragraph.

It seems that no one, not even one of the highest personages in our land, is immune from the terrible passions and persuasions of great beauty. The holder of one of England’s oldest and most stainless Earldoms, Lord T of T…ll in Sussex, has gone against the wishes of all his friends and lately married Miss Jemima B-, also known under her professional name of “The Glorious Jemima,” when she graces the public in Covent Garden with her performances of dances from around the world. The lady in question is known to be the friend of several other members of the aristocracy, if not of their wives. Much as it pains us, we cannot forbear but to point out that Viscount H-, son and heir of Lord T-, was cast out of his family for honorably loving and desiring to marry a humble but beautiful young lady of spotless character some ten years ago, and has made his way in obscurity ever since.

Hawkshaw threw down the paper and went outside, walking without great purpose till he found himself at the edge of the camp. The light began to leach out of the sky in front of him. He thought about the action of the coming day. He could feel the unnatural calm he always experienced before and during action begin to circulate in his veins. He smiled at it, as if greeting an old friend. He heard a footstep beside him; it was Gregson, probably seeking some peace himself. He approached with a nod and offered Hawkshaw a cigar from a leather case he carried in his breast pocket. Hawkshaw hesitated a second, and then took it, thanking him stiffly before lighting it and drawing in the thick gray smoke to roll around his mouth.

“Have you seen Thornleigh since he heard?” The man asked.

Hawkshaw shook his head.

“I decided I’d leave him to his own thoughts. He did get letters from home. Presumably there is something from the earl. But you know Thornleigh. He won’t want to discuss his family with any of us.”

They heard a branch crack behind them.

“Who goes there?” Gregson demanded of the shadows of a small clump of low bushy trees a couple of yards away. “Come out, and let us see you!”

A thin, middle-aged man stepped into the light. He was carrying firewood under his arm.

“Sorry, sir. I’m Shapin, I help out in the kitchens.”

The man held out his wood in front of him as if he were offering his papers for inspection. He was dressed in the homespun of the country farmers and laborers. His back was a little bent, and a long scar across his neck glittered palely under his otherwise heavy tan. His accent had an American drawl, but you could still hear the old country under it, like a woman’s scent clinging to her handkerchief, though the girl herself is long gone.

“What are you doing, skulking about in the shadows, Shapin?”

Shapin looked like he thought this was a rather simpleminded question in the circumstances, and rattled his sticks together.

“Collecting kindling, sir. Then I heard the name Thornleigh, and it brought me up sharp. Is one of the earl of Sussex’s sons serving here? Is it Mr. Alexander, or Mr. Hugh?” He looked up at them expectantly. The two captains exchanged glances, and Hawkshaw shrugged.

“The Honorable Hugh Thornleigh is a captain of the Grenadiers in my regiment.”

Shapin looked pleased. “That’s good to know! I served the family back in England, you see. I knew Mr. Hugh when he was just a little boy, before his mother died.” A sudden thought seemed to cross Shapin’s mind. He blushed, and gathered his sticks to his breast. “I must get back. The kitchens will be wanting me.”

He was off again toward camp before the officers could speak to him again. They watched him trot away.

“Do you think he might be a spy, Hawkshaw?”

“Well, if he is, he is a very bad one.”

The gentlemen returned their attention to their cigars, and to discussion of the coming action.

His duties done, Hawkshaw still could not settle, and though he knew he should be resting in preparation of the night march ahead of him, before the hour was out he decided to pay Shapin a visit in the kitchen. He had some vague plan of introducing him to Hugh in an attempt to bring him out of whatever black mood the news of his father’s marriage had dropped him into. His visit was not welcome. When he asked after the man, the Quartermaster cursed him.

“So it was you scared Shapin away, was it, Captain?”

“I can’t see how I would have made him nervous.”

“Well, someone did.” The man spat onto the soil floor. “He came in here looking all white and stared about him like his wits were gone, then next thing we know he dropped his kindling and lit out like the devil himself were after him.”

“He claimed some acquaintance with Captain Thornleigh’s family in Sussex.”

One of the passing royalists caught this and laughed.

“That’ll be what did it. He was transported for stealing from them, came here as an indentured servant a good twenty years ago. Always wondered why he was spending time round our camp anyway. God knows, he’s got no reason to love England. Probably thought Captain Thornleigh had come over special to hang him.”

Hawkshaw turned to the man. “For theft, you say?”

“Yes, that’s what I’ve heard. And I wish you would stop sending your felons over here, too. We already have plenty of people that need hanging, thank you very much.” The man paused and rubbed his chin. “Mind you, he tried once soon after he arrived to save us the burden of looking after him.” He drew a finger across his throat, and Hawkshaw remembered the scar. “He proved no better at that than at his thievery. He was patched up and put to work again.”

“He didn’t try to get home when the term of his transportation was up?”

“Doubt he had much to go back to. Many of them lose heart, or any idea of going back after ten years.”

Hawkshaw frowned. “Where do you think he’s gone?”

“Probably had a think about his allegiances and has moved over to the rebels. Next time you see him, he’ll be waving some grandmother’s flintlock at you.”

Hawkshaw nodded, and wandered out of the building.