A Nest of Vipers (3 page)

‘That night Sam came to me where I slept in the kitchen. He was almost mad with worry and fear. “They are coming for me in the morning, Cato! And I have seen no progress! I can wait no longer – I will run tonight. You can open the front door for me and I can take a place on a boat.”

‘I begged him not to go. Captain Walker would know all the boats this side of the river and probably half the ones on the north side. So I pleaded with him: “Sam, please! You must trust Mother Hopkins. Captain Walker will put a price on your head if you run, and any boat man will turn you over soon as look at you!”

‘“You are but a baby who knows nothing!” he said, and I made to speak again but Mrs Leppings the cook came to see what the noise was. I stayed up all night in case I heard him try to leave. I was so vexed I bit my fingernails to the quick imagining Sam chained to the mast of a boat in the Thames and – in my worst nightmares – me alongside him, sailing for the plantations.’

The Ordinary stopped writing to rest his hand. He stared at me through the bleak light, no doubt guessing I would rather be heading for the plantations than heading for the noose. Both options were hell, but one was a living one. I shifted uncomfortably and he picked up his quill once more.

‘So,’ I continued, sighing, ‘in the morning the doorbell sounded at eight thirty, and Sam was shaking. But it was a messenger from the bank, a boy dressed in the livery of the Commonwealth and Indies Trading Bank. A slight and slender boy, but the captain let him in and the boy winked at me. I had to keep my face straight because Addeline made such a very convincing boy.

‘She asked for the captain’s signature and waited while
he
signed and sealed (with his second-best seal) various letters. Then the messenger boy was gone. So when (I imagine) the Mistress Walker called for her little Sam to pour chocolate that morning at eleven, she called for ever, louder and louder and longer and longer until she must have been quite red in the face. Sam and I had slipped out of the back door into the street, where Mother Hopkins and Bella waited with a change of clothes for me, and Sam Caesar’s certificate of freedom signed and sealed that morning by the captain himself. By eleven o’clock me and Sam were sat snug in the upstairs room at the Nest of Vipers, Mother Hopkins counting the cash she’d made from selling my collar and clothes, Addy still dressed as a boy, her eyes saucer-wide as I told her about the house and the diamonds.

‘I read Sam the letter from his mother, her tender words hoping her son would find his freedom in England, but Sam snatched it away, pretending the tears I could see so plain were provoked by nothing but a bit of dust. Oh, I should mention, Sam can read himself now. Bella taught him, and Mother Hopkins bought the fine sedan chair he runs with Jack Godwin – you must have seen them, all in their wigs and livery. You won’t find sharper pair of young men! I had hoped, one day’ – I sighed and shifted on the hard stone floor – ‘that I would be like Sam.’

I tried to stretch – my wrists were raw and oozing
under
the shackles – and yawned, making the Ordinary yawn too. He was still scratching away with his quill. Then, when I spoke no more, he looked up from his scribbling and said, ‘Was that the end of it? Didn’t the captain come after you? What about the sparklers – the diamonds? I thought you were going to pocket them? And how does this relate to the
Favourite
, boy? Was that not tied into the Walkers? Wasn’t that the captain in court done up in naval rig?’

‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘And we had his seal, remember, and a lot more besides. And the sparklers . . . Well, that’ll be another story.’

I could tell from the tone of his voice that the Ordinary fair drooled to hear more. Outside the watchman called the hour for five o’clock. I had so little time . . .

We’d be leaving at ten for the drive to Tyburn along the Oxford Road and then the hanging, my hanging, at noon.

I closed my eyes and let out a deep breath. Only seven more hours . . .

C
HAPTER
T
WO

A Fleet Wedding, Winter 1711

THE PARSON REEKED
of spirits. Cato had heard Mother Hopkins promise him as much of the best Geneva as he could neck if the ceremony was over before ten. Cato thought this a good plan on account that they would all freeze if the ceremony took any longer. It was cold as ice, even with the tiny fire sputtering yellow flames in the grate.

Cato thought that the debtors who were forced by law to live within the Liberty of the Fleet could probably only afford very small fires, another reason for offering cut-price, ask-no-questions marriage ceremonies. And ‘Liberty’ was, in truth, the worst word to give to what was essentially a wall-free prison – a prison of streets and houses and inns and shops. It was to be marvelled at that the prisoners could find the cash for even a few coals. Mother Hopkins said the Liberty of the Fleet had come
about
because the local prison had no more room, and debtors, being punished for their lack of money rather than their use of violence, were told to live as close as possible to the prison, if not actually inside it.

The parson swayed slightly as he pronounced the couple man and wife. The groom, Lord Peters’s first and only son, Edgar, shone with bliss, and Bella, bride for a third time in six months, tried her best to look at least pleased, if not authentically smitten with love’s arrow. Her blonde curls were pinned in the latest style and she was quite the picture dressed in Spitalfields silk and garlands of ivy.

Mother Hopkins cried real tears of joy, but Cato imagined she was not thinking of the couple’s future life of matrimonial happiness but the guineas she would squeeze from Lord Peters to engineer a way out of the union for his son. Her own hair had been that shade of yellow once, she’d said. But now it was salt-and-pepper grey and hidden under a widow’s veil.

Cato picked up the fiddle as the bride and groom signed the register. His fingers were so cold he wondered if the tune would come out straight at all.

Mother Hopkins waited until the ink was set and blotted, and then nodded at Cato, who struck up ‘No Truer Love’ with all the energy he could muster. Addeline, listening downstairs, would hear her cue and come dashing up the wooden stairs, red in the face as if
she
’d run all the way from Piccadilly to warn our groom to return home at once in case the wedding was discovered. The groom would usually hesitate – after all, the adjoining bedroom had already been booked for the evening – but Mother Hopkins could usually get him downstairs and into a chair for home in five minutes.

Sure enough, Addeline came heavy booted up the stairs, wearing her boy’s jacket and squashed and dusty old tricorn hat. Cato could swear there was more than one footfall but he was concentrating on a difficult place in the tune, and then suddenly Addy was there, red faced, agitated, wringing her hat in her hands for an instant before she was pushed aside by a man as big as the door frame.

The pistol shot made the parson faint. He dissolved into a pool of black fustian cloth. Cato dropped his fiddle and felt Addy grab his hand and throw him to the floor.

‘Get down!’ she hissed.

Two men had followed her up. From the buckles on their shoes – silver; Cato reckoned Mendes would give them plenty for either set – they were wealthy. He heard Mother Hopkins coughing, and when he looked, one had a sword at Bella’s throat. It was right up against the skin and Cato could see her veins pulsing and her chest heaving and he wanted to stand up and push the man aside, because even though it was Bella, who would sometimes tease him or ignore him, she did not deserve
that
. One move and the blade was through her skin!

But Addy, seeing the look in his eye, held him down and whispered, ‘Cato! No! It is Lord Peters and his man!’

‘Father! Please!’ Edgar tried to stand between the swordsman and Bella.

‘Father?’ Lord Peters spat out the word as if it tasted rotten. ‘You still have the nerve to call me that!’ He turned to Mother Hopkins, who in the absence of the parson – still out stone cold on the floor – was the most senior person in the room.

‘You! Crone! Is this your doing? I cannot believe he’ – he pointed at his son, now shaking and pale as Bella’s silks – ‘could be part of such devilry without some assistance!’

Mother Hopkins glared at Lord Peters so hard, Cato thought she would spit fire, but when she spoke, it was softly, gently.

‘Sirs, please. Put down your arms. We are but women and children here.’

Cato flinched. He and Addy were no children. He was thirteen at the last count and Addy roundabouts twelve, both most definitely old enough to look after themselves.

Lord Peters nodded at the swordsman, who then lowered his blade. Bella swooned slightly. Her new husband gallantly held her up.

‘Step away from the trollop!’ Lord Peters thundered.

‘She is not a trollop!’ In comparison with his father’s,
Edgar
Peters’s voice was thin and reedy, and Cato saw that he was only a year or two older than himself. Next to him Bella looked every inch a grown woman. Edgar Peters was most definitely a boy. Cato felt sorry for the lad, and there was another feeling, a tingling that he knew was not just the cold. Shame, perhaps.

‘She is my wife! We are in love!’ Edgar Peters stamped his foot.

‘Stupid boy! In love? You are sixteen! Sixteen! And besides, what has marriage to do with love?’ Lord Peters turned back to Mother Hopkins. ‘Well? How much did you want? How was it to be, the price to escape this tawdry union? A guinea a month in perpetuity or a lump sum when we arrange his real wedding – although what woman would want this excuse for a son I cannot say. Well, crone, speak!’

‘I am not a crone,’ Mother Hopkins said with dignity. ‘And my daughter Arabella is as fine a girl—’

‘Cut to the chase, woman! This is the Liberty of the Fleet, the biggest open prison and open sewer in all London. This is not St Paul’s! A marriage here is a marriage far from prying eyes or society. It’s hardly a marriage at all! Don’t tell me this was any more than a sham, a beau trap!’

Mother Hopkins gasped theatrically. Cato, watching, thought she would have made an excellent actress. Lying seemed to come so easily to her.

Lord Peters sighed. ‘For pity’s sake, woman. I am not a fresh-faced country bumpkin with no knowledge of the city or people like you. Now, business. I will give you five guineas to burn the register.’

‘Father, no! I love her! You shall not part us!’ Edgar pleaded.

Mother Hopkins said nothing. Bella moved away from her husband and nearer to the fire.

‘Bella!’ Edgar Peters looked longingly at his wife and Cato felt even sorrier for him.

‘Five guineas, and if you keep me waiting any longer, I will burn the damn register myself and my man here will let his sword do the work on you and your daughter.’

Mother Hopkins took a deep breath. ‘Then I will see your money first, sir!’

‘Madam, no!’ Edgar looked at Bella. ‘My love! They can’t do this. Our union has been blessed!’

‘You’ll thank me for this in time.’ Lord Peters called his man over. ‘Hughes, take Edgar down to the carriage. At once.’

The swordsman took Edgar by the arm and led him away from his wife. He didn’t go quietly as he was dragged down the stairs. ‘Bella! Please, I will always love you, Bella! Always!’ Cato could hear him shouting from the street.

Bella turned away and regarded herself in the mirror by the fireplace. Cato wanted to shake her. She could at
least
have been kinder, seemed a little more concerned.

Lord Peters passed a purse to Mother Hopkins. Cato knew she could tell the contents of a purse without ever looking inside it. She weighed it in her hand and a second later had torn the page from the register and watched as it curled to nothing in the flame.

‘Good.’ Lord Peters looked from Bella to Mother Hopkins. ‘I will be more than happy if I never see either of you again. And if I do, you can guarantee I will not be so restrained with my pistol. Good day.’

No one moved or said anything until the carriage had gone. Cato stood up and rubbed a peep hole in the frosted window to make sure.

Bella threw her wedding garland into the fire. ‘I swear, that is the last time I am getting married! Do you know how scared I was?’

Mother Hopkins tipped the purse onto the table and counted out the five guineas. ‘You’re not getting any younger, Bella, that’s for certain.’

‘Mother!’ she said and Addy laughed, more out of relief than anything else, Cato thought.

He watched as the carriage turned the corner and disappeared into the traffic on Turnmill Street. ‘I do not think we should play the mock wedding any more,’ he said. ‘That poor boy. He has a broken heart.’

‘Ooh, Cato,’ Bella said. ‘You will find out in a year or so that broken hearts are ten a penny!’

‘She is right, Cato,’ Mother Hopkins said. ‘And anyway, better a broken heart than one that has never known love. He will remember Bella for ever and will think constantly of her kisses for at least a week, a month maybe. He will fall in love again, and it will be truer and deeper and . . . and all that rubbish you find to sing about in those songs and poems of yours.’

They were mocking him, Cato knew that. He also felt sore and aggrieved that Mother Hopkins and Arabella could treat love so lightly. He doubted that either of them really knew what love was if they could let it go the way they did. Cato thought he ought to warn Jack that Arabella was not as constant as she pretended when she sat on his lap by the fire at home.

The parson stirred and pushed himself up from the floor shakily. ‘Fetch the Watch! Call the Watch! We are dead! All dead! By pistol fire delivered over to the other side!’ He looked at Cato. ‘My God, the devils in hell are blacker than sin!’

‘Parson Langley.’ Mother Hopkins shook him hard by the shoulders. ‘You are no more dead than I. This is not hell, this is Frying Pan Alley and out there’ – she held his face up to the window – ‘is St Paul’s Cathedral, and this’ – she turned him back to face Cato – ‘is my own dear son, not a devil from hell nor any one of Satan’s imps.’