A Nest of Vipers (10 page)

Cato laughed and almost lost some of his pie. ‘Now that I would pay to see.’

‘This is serious! I was thrown out because of Ruth,
thrown
out and relieved of my money, my living, by her cheating father!’

Cato’s face showed blankness.

‘She was my schoolmaster’s daughter.’ Quarmy sighed. ‘Prettiest girl in all of Barnet.’

Cato saw Quarmy’s eyes mist over and could tell he was lost in some kind of dream. Still, he told himself, there was probably not much competition as to pretty girls in Barnet. As far as he could remember, the place was no more than a village where the ash men carted the rubbish of the city. But still, Cato could see the moonish look on the young man’s face as proof of the same emotion he’d seen in young Edgar as his father dragged him away from Bella. Love. Quarmy sighed again and Cato wondered if his Ruth did love him truly – or maybe she was like Bella. Was there a way you could really tell? It could be a pile of dreams that Quarmy had staked his future on. Could a Barnet girl, one with less sophistication in her little finger than a Billingsgate fishwife, really see beyond the spiral scars and love this Quarmy – even if he was a prince?

Outside, the church clock at St Martin-in-the-Fields struck three o’clock.

‘Christ swipe me! I was to be back home before now. See, Master Quarmy – or should I call you
sire
? – although you have drawn me a pretty picture of your life so far, I fail to see how I or’ – Cato lowered his voice –
‘Mother Hopkins could help.’ Quarmy opened his mouth to go on but Cato put a hand up to stop him. ‘No, please, and even if she –
we
could help, we are currently more than one hundred per cent engaged. It would be impossible.’

Cato ate up the last crumbs of his pie and stood up to leave.

‘If I were in your shoes, Master Quarmy, I would work my passage on a ship back to Bonny and live the life of ease and feather beds you was born to. Oh – excepting one thing. I would take over so many guns and cannon that when the slavers came I’d pepper their ships with shot and dance as they all sank. Clear? Now, if you excuse me, I have to get on.’

Quarmy got to his feet, a half-eaten pie in hand. ‘I am a prince, sir. I can no more work my passage than sweep the streets! But I have not told you the half of it! Please, sir! Wait!’

There was much work to do: errands to half of London for Mother Hopkins, more clothes for Bella to be found for an Ice Ball in Mayfair. ‘Quarmy, I am sorry.’ Cato smiled a half-smile and slid between the benches of the pie shop and out into the street. He heard Quarmy calling after him and felt more than a little guilty. He turned round and saw the young man standing at the door, pie in hand. He yelled at the top of his voice, pointing at Cato with his half pie.

‘Cato Hopkins! I . . . I command you!’

The imperious sound of Quarmy’s voice carried down the street and Cato’s guilt rose up into the cold London air like a pauper’s breath and vanished. He turned and shouted back, ‘Sir Prince! I think you’ll find I’m not your subject!’

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

View Halloo

‘SORTED, MA!’ SAM
said, putting his hands out to warm. There was a big pine log crackling on the fire, which scented the room and made Cato think of Christmas. ‘Bella will invite the Stapletons to Carfax this next Monday. And Jack gets to put the boots on again.’

‘Oh, those boots look better and better on my feet every time I wear ’em. I swear those Russkies know how to keep a body warm,’ Jack said.

‘Well, make sure you keep your mouth sealed shut. I don’t want a word – even a sound – out of your lips that will betray you’re from Islington Spa rather than St Petersburg.’ Mother Hopkins looked straight at Jack.

‘You can count on me, Ma. You’ll not hear a squeak,’ Jack said. ‘And Bella’s already told Elizabeth – you heard she calls her “cousin” now! – that I lost my tongue in a
skirmish
outside Pskoff. And she has planted the seeds of our investment opportunity.’

Mother Hopkins sucked hard on her pipe. ‘Tobacco,’ she said, leaning back. ‘The gold that grows on trees.’ She blew out a cloud of thick blue smoke.

‘It’s bushes, Ma, not trees,’ Sam said.

‘Bushes! Trees! It’s God’s own green leaves that turn to hard cash. And more modern than a playhouse gold mine. If you’d told me when I was your age, Cato, that we’d be playing a scheme with leaves, I’d have thought you soft-headed! Tobacco! Who’d think it?’

‘And the price in the London Exchange rises almost daily,’ Cato said. ‘People are mad – after all, you cannot eat or wear the stuff.’

‘You can’t eat gold either, Cato. That’s how it is, and our Bella – Ekaterina – is in London to purchase tobacco trading rights in the Baltic. She’ll make the whole deal seem unmissable. I’ve spoken to Joshua – Master Tunnadine – and he will be our broker. He’ll put a bad American wig on his bald Kentish pate and play a cove hot-foot from the colonies.’ Mother Hopkins smiled. ‘He’s as good a man as ever lived, old Joshua Tunnadine! He’ll paint up a picture so rosy the Stapletons’ll be waving their goree in the air and begging he’ll take it off ’em!’

For a minute, when she mentioned Tunnadine, Cato thought Mother Hopkins’s eyes misted over, but it
passed
instantly. He wanted to ask her about Newgate, and about himself, but there were too many people around, and Jack and Sam would only rib him about it. He sighed and inched closer to the warmth of the fire.

‘What’re you sighing for, Cato?’ Jack asked. ‘Lost love? Laziness, more like. I know you – you’re needing a bit more of the action. Or maybe you’re troubling yourself about tomorrow night?’

Cato sat up straight. ‘No, never! It’ll make a change from nights sat in while you lot gad about playing Russians.’

‘He wants a go of your boots, Jack,’ Sam said, laughing.

‘Wearing a pair of fancy boots is a deal easier than breaking into a body’s business. In the dark!’ Cato was indignant.

Mother Hopkins leaned down to where he was sitting by the fire and ruffled his hair. Cato pulled away and then, for a quick second, wished he hadn’t.

‘You’re a good lad,’ she said. ‘There’s not a boy in town could get in among Sir John’s accounts as fine or as fast as you. Addy’ll let you in by the area door and you’re to be in and out quicker than a dog down a rat hole. We know they’ll be at the ball with Bella till past midnight.’ Mother Hopkins looked hard at Cato.

‘Are you sure it’s not too much of a risk for nothing, Ma? I mean, we know they’re loaded,’ Sam said.

Mother Hopkins tapped the side of her nose. ‘There’s rich folk and rich folk, and there’s some that do a mighty good job of
looking
like rich folk. No point in us wasting our precious time taking down a pair of coves who are all front with nothing in the bank. What if all the cash went on that fancy house?’

Sam and Jack nodded.

‘And, Cato, mind you tell our Addeline our thoughts are with her. Now, you should get along to your bed and dream of barrel locks and Dutch teeth, or whatever it is those infernal things are called. And, Jack and Sam, have a mind to look for Bella. She should be at home now, not out gallivanting in borrowed clothes. You go and fetch her home please. Go! I need my thinking time.’

Cato got up in a hurry. Mother Hopkins liked her thinking time uninterrupted. He was climbing the stairs on his way to bed when he heard Jack and stopped still.

‘One thing, Ma, before we go. Old Ezra said as how he’d seen one leery-looking cove hanging about The Vipers like a bad smell the last day or so, and he was there again this afternoon when we came in from town.’

Cato stood stock-still on the stairs and listened as hard as he could.

‘Ezra said he was pacing about on the street outside like he wanted something badly but didn’t know how to ask, or, worse, like he was being paid to watch us. Although, if someone is paying him, it can’t be much on
account
of how he sticks out like a man looking for a wife down Haymarket. Blacker than Sam, he was, but with these patterns all over his face like he was, I dunno, like he was embroidered . . .’

Cato slipped into the area of the Stapletons’ house. His feet were chilled in his soft-soled slippers; under his coat his lock picks and tools were rolled up in a case of yellow leather. He knew the parish watchman was still on the far side of the square, where Sam Caesar had engaged him in conversation about the excessive number of foreigners working on the building sites that seemed to have sprung up in every corner of the city. He hadn’t bumped into Quarmy – and from Jack’s description Cato was sure it had been
him
hanging around outside The Vipers – even though he had spent most of the day watching out for him.

Cato knocked twice on the area door, firmly but softly. Addy must have been waiting there because the door was opened in a second. Cato tried not to gasp, because even in the pale moonlight that filtered down into the basement he could see she looked tired. Her shoulders drooped and the fierce set of her chin was somehow less fearsome. Even her hair was smoothed back into submission.

She put a hand to his mouth. ‘Don’t say anything. I know I’m a state.’

‘I never—’

‘Cato Hopkins, I can read your face quicker than you read a ballad sheet,’ Addy hissed. ‘I can’t wait till this damnable lay is done with. Whatever you do, Cato, never, ever go into service, not for all the gold in Threadneedle Street. Come on upstairs, and don’t tread on the fourth step up. It creaks like Mother’s bones on a rainy day!’

Cato followed Addeline silently up to the first floor, keeping his eyes on the familiar curve of her back. When they reached the landing, she opened a door for him and stood aside.

‘I’ll wait out here. If you hear any sound, you know the game’s up. And for God’s sake be quick.’ She leaned over and passed him a candle stub on a saucer, then kissed him. For a second Cato thought her face softened; he felt himself flush hot and was glad there was no light from the curtained and shuttered windows.

He heard the door close behind him and suddenly it was dark. He lit the candle and the room flickered into life.

Cato knew where to go: the small blond-wood bureau with an inlaid pattern of a rose in darker wood. The outer door opened easily and he flipped the writing desk top down to reveal several small drawers and cubby holes. None of them moved and, to cap it all, there were no keyholes. Cato cursed under his breath.

He had heard much of these modern cabinets: no visible locks, but secret sprung mechanisms that opened to a touch, if you knew where to touch, that is. But he’d only ever seen one, only ever practised on one.

Cato took a deep breath and ran his hands under the drawers at the back of the desk. Nothing moved.

He leaned over and felt all around the back of the bureau, moving his fingers very slowly but with an even pressure. Suddenly he was aware of a depression in the wood, a place where he could press harder, and then there was the softest of cracking sounds before a deep, heavy drawer slid open under his eyes as if by magic.

Cato smiled. Sometimes there was no better feeling in the world than beating a lock.

Inside, a roll of papers, some envelopes sealed with carbuncles of red wax, navy leather-bound inventories of the house in London and the house in Hampshire, of the farms and estates in England and in the Caribbean; lists of acreage and cattle; lists of furniture, of paintings, silver and jewellery; and after all that lists of people, of Negroes, of men, women and children. These were only things to the Stapletons, just like the fine wooden bureau Cato sat at in the dark.

The names were numerous: Jupiter, Tom Turkey, Femmy, Oxford, Glasgow. Just reading them, Cato was aware of a knot growing in his stomach and he thanked God and Mother Hopkins that his life was not theirs.

He closed the inventory book. He had business. Quickly he flicked through as much as he could, looking for signs of bad debts, but there were none. The Stapletons’ wealth was solid as the dome on the new cathedral. Mother Hopkins would be pleased.

The door opened and Cato felt his heart jump up into his throat.

‘Are you done?’

It was only Addy, whispering.

‘You could have stopped my heart!’ he hissed back at her.

Addeline came inside and shut the door behind her. ‘Have you finished? Only I been counting – I got up to five hundred. You should be done by now.’ She sat down on a chair. ‘I am so tired.’

‘Nearly done.’ Cato shut the drawer and pushed the bureau back against the wall slowly and silently. ‘There. No one’ll know I’ve been,’ he said.

Addy yawned. ‘It’s not just the work, Cato! I miss The Vipers so much it’s like I feel sick to my stomach all the time.’

Cato thought she looked thin. ‘You must eat, Addeline. You need your strength. You’ll be home soon, you know that.’ He checked the desk was exactly as it had been. ‘And you can get straight to your bed now.’

‘You know, that’s the only comfort there is in this place. I tell you clear, I ain’t never working for no one in
service
ever, ever again.’ Addy pushed herself up off the chair and opened the door to the landing. Suddenly, from the street, there was a clattering of hooves and iron wheels. Addy ran back and looked between the curtains and out through the crack in the shutters.

‘Don’t worry, Cato, it won’t be for the Stapletons. That’s not their horses, nor their carriage neither.’

Cato nodded.

‘Hang on! The cove’s only getting down and coming here!’ She blew out the candle and the room was in darkness again. There were shouts from below and someone thumping on the front door as if their life depended on it. Cato and Addy froze.

More knocking and shouting. They could hear it from the first floor.

‘A message for the Stapleton household! Open up with all speed, I beg you! Good people, terrible news! News from the country!’

Cato looked at Addy, but there was so little light in the room he could only imagine her face mirrored the shock in his own. He took a deep breath. ‘He’s not going to come up here, Addy.’