They turned into the open space of the fields and found themselves immediately pressed against the wall of one of the houses bordering it by a rush of men wild-eyed and hallooing, driving in front of them a startled cow into Charing Cross Road. Someone had tied a blue cockade to the animal’s head, another flicked about on the end of the poor creature’s tail. She had, it seemed, been made a temporary mascot. The pinched faces of the men who slapped her sides and urged her on split with glee, their eyes were glittering and small. The cow gave a startled low and tottered on as one man whipped her across the rump.
‘Nooo pooopery!’ the man cried and his companions hugged themselves with joy and took up the shout, pushing the poor beast past them. Graves thought of the imps in hell on the frescoes of his father’s church. Some had been painted over, their tortures too salty for the growing nicety of the church, but he had been fascinated as a child by those that remained, their little dark bodies and wide grins as they tortured the waxen, naked bodies of the fallen. He thought he saw them again now, in the smoke-stained faces of these raggedly dressed warriors of Protestantism, in their wild delight in public violence and desecration. He was, for a moment, childishly afraid. Then he heard Mr Chase gasp.
‘Oh, good Lord!’ Graves turned to see where his companion was pointing. ‘That is Lord Saville’s house.’
Graves had walked this way often enough in the past to know what he should in rights be seeing, an elegant white stone front, with a clean step and polished fixings, but some dark hand had passed over it, and everything that had once appeared solid, comfortable, a symbol of wealth and civility, was on fire. Flames licked out of the top windows, touching their orange tongues to the roof slates, and sucking down the guttering; the second floor belched smoke through burning drapery, and below them, where the flames were still slipping and curling, Graves could see shadows moving; every minute one would come forward, smouldering and laughing, to throw plunder down on the street below. The watching crowds cheered and danced, their soot-streaked faces shining and joyful, mouths open, wild. Graves caught his breath and murmured: ‘“The seas are bright, with splendour not their own, and shine with Trojan light.”’
Mr Chase turned to him, a little confused. ‘What, Graves?’
‘Virgil. Mr Cowper’s translation.’
Mr Chase coughed a little, and turned back to watch the flames.
The fire was too hot even for the bravest of the plunderers now. As they watched, the last of them scrambled out of a parlour window, his coat-tails alight and a large gilt mirror tucked under his arm. A dozen men stamped out the flames for him as he stumbled into the crowd, laughing like a child, then clapped the man across his narrow back as if he had saved a soul from the fire. Between the bodies of men gathered around it, Graves could see the pile of plunder on the road. It was like seeing the guts of a carcass spilled out on the back yard of the butcher’s shop. He could see carved gilt chairs upended and a leg snapped and splintered, books, open and torn, fluttering helplessly, great tapestries flung down and now being wrestled into improvised cloaks and blankets by the crowd. This was all it took, then. A day or two, a fool with a petition, and there was nothing safe or sacred in London. Mr Chase’s thoughts must have been moving in the same direction as his own.
‘We walk a narrow path, Mr Graves.’
The young man did not reply, but let his eyes close slowly and breathed in the smoke, trying to feel its texture on his tongue so that if he needed to write about it, he could bring it back. Even at this distance he could feel the heat from the broken, burning house warming his face. He opened his eyes suddenly and looked hard into Mr Chase’s face.
‘Mr Chase - the locket, I have been thinking on it. Did it belong to Alexander’s mother?’
Mr Chase turned back to the fire, to the gibbering crackling crowd below it.
‘To a young girl. That’s all I know.’
There was a short loud cheer from the other end of the street. Graves and Mr Chase, like the looters, turned to see a company of soldiers, muskets over their shoulders, progressing across the open space of Leicester Fields. There were only twenty of them, but the order and determination of their march made them seem somehow much more considerable.
‘A young girl?’
Mr Chase continued to watch the soldiers.
‘That was all he said. “I think it was the young girl’s”.’
The soldiers’ red coats stood out against the green, their white chasers glimmered and the dark wood of their muskets looked businesslike. They were followed by a rag-tag of men carrying buckets. Graves thought them too late to do anything to save the house, but it seemed the hopelessness of the case would not be enough to stop them trying. The crowd seemed to shrink, the less bold, or the less drunk, slipping back into its folds, lowering their heads. The company officer called a halt ten yards from them.
‘Drop what you are carrying, and leave this place. I order you in the name of the King!’
It was enough, it seemed. The mob, so ungovernable before, began to thin. It was sulky; an overfed child slinking away. The men with the buckets ran forward. Graves wondered if any of them were attached to Lord Saville’s family. One at least had tears running down his face. Why were they willing to make the effort, he asked himself. Perhaps to give themselves the comfort in future days of saying they had tried. The officer watched them make for the fire, and in that moment a stone flew, hard and fast from the centre of the retreating crowd, and struck one of the soldiers above the eye. The man’s forehead sprang with a flow of blood at once, and he swung his musket from his shoulder into the firing position. His officer stepped forward.
‘Put up your arms, Wilson. You’ll fire on my order or not at all.’
Wilson froze for a moment, then put up his musket again and wiped the blood out of his eye, his stare fixed all the time on the retreating crowd.
‘Bloody-backed fuckers!’ someone screamed from the mob as they turned out onto the road. The soldiers did not move, but watched till the last of them scurried out of the Square, one thin man glancing again and again over his shoulders, and trying, it seemed, to dive through the legs of his companions to the relative safety of a guarded position, further away from the polished stocks of the guns.
Graves looked at Mr Chase. ‘They are called bloody-backs for the colour of their uniforms, I suppose?’
Mr Chase nodded. ‘That, and the Army likes its discipline, I understand. Every man in that company will have whip scars across his back among the war-wounds, I’d reckon.’
Mr Chase continued to watch the flames, and the attempt of the bucket-carrying men to douse them. The older fellow that Graves had noticed had come to a halt, and watched the burning like a child whose favourite toy has been destroyed by some act of adult carelessness.
‘I was wondering why Alexander put the children into your care, rather than my own,’ Mr Chase said quietly, without looking at Graves. ‘Perhaps, for all that he had left his great family, and whatever horrors drove him from them, he still wished his children to be raised by a gentleman.’
Graves looked at him, frowning in surprise. ‘
You
are a gentleman, sir.’
Chase did not smile. ‘No, lad. I am become a little like one, but we both know it goes deeper than that. However many great houses I walk into, they can still scent the workshop and warehouse on me. Oh England! I was born as those fellows there were,’ he waved a hand towards the rank and file of the soldiers, ‘and every Englishman knows it, soon as I open my mouth, or make a bow. I wonder if Alexander even knew that that was floating in his mind when he wrote down your name. You have something I do not, though I could buy you and a dozen like you with the change in my pocketbook.’ Graves looked at his feet, and Mr Chase turned to him with a half-smile. ‘Not your fault, boy. I mean nothing against you.’ He twisted his hand round the railing beside him, as if preparing to pull it free. ‘I have bred a daughter fit for a gentleman, though. That is my comfort.’
Graves coloured a little.
‘You have, sir,’ he said. ‘You have.’
IV.9
T
HE DAY DROPPED its head towards evening. Caveley Park was quiet. Harriet and Rachel sat in the long salon saying nothing, but neither pretended to be occupied with anything more than their own thoughts. Harriet had gone upstairs for an hour when they had arrived home, and when they sat to eat Rachel thought she had been crying. They had made a poor attempt at dinner. The silence settled unhappily across the furnishings like dust. Time dripped slowly away, measured in quarters by the long-case clock in the hall. The chimes began to strike on Harriet’s nerves, their little brass hammers finding the knotted cords in her spine, and making them ring. There was a soft knock at the door and Heathcote came in with a note for Rachel.
‘From the Hall, miss,’ she said, without meeting her eyes, and withdrew. Harriet looked across at her sister with heavy eyes as the younger woman opened the note and read it, then folded the single sheet again and held it out towards Harriet as she spoke.
‘I’m sorry, Harry. But I could not do otherwise. When you went up to rest I sent a note over to Mr Thornleigh, simply to say I thought him innocent of the charge and trusted the truth would come out in time if he had patience.’
Harriet looked at her sister’s tranquil face. It was typical of Rachel to do such a thing, an act of kindness and generosity the man did not deserve. She hoped that someone who did merit that tender consideration would eventually appear. The girl should be loved for it, protected from it.
‘Of course, my love,’ she said. ‘No one could blame you for that.’
Rachel’s fingers still held the sheet. Harriet waited until her sister was ready to release the paper into her care. Harriet felt her forehead throb as she opened out the sheet. She had felt as weak as a child since they had returned home. She wept very rarely, and when she did it seemed to leave her empty and adrift. She read Hugh’s awkward scrawl. There was not much to decipher.
Thank you, Miss Trench. Patience has not served me well in the past, but neither has action improved my lot. I am grateful you do not think me capable of such crimes.
Hugh had added his compliments to them both and his name. Harriet turned the paper over in her hands as if she hoped some secret message might appear scribbled in the corner of the sheet.
‘I wonder what he means? If one had the mind, one could read this as a full confession, Rachel.’
Her sister looked up at her with a slight frown.
‘I thought when he says “action”, he meant sending Brook to search for Alexander. That did seem to be the start of all this horror.’
Harriet nodded, and winced a little, her headache still insistent and angry. It had been punishing her all evening, and she always told everyone she was never ill. She would be more sympathetic with ladies who fancied themselves sick and nervous in future.
‘Rachel, we have not spoken of Mr Hugh Thornleigh for a long time.’
Rachel smiled a trifle bitterly. ‘Indeed? It seems to me we have spoken of little else for the last few days.’
‘You know what I have in mind.’
Rachel did not look up, but covered her sister’s hand with her own.
‘It is passing, Harry. I was very unhappy for a while, you know that. I am a little unhappy from time to time even now, but it is more like a memory of sadness, than sadness itself. Does that make sense?’
Harriet nodded. ‘I am so sorry, Rachel.’
‘Don’t be, Harry.’ Rachel looked at her with great tenderness. ‘It was through no fault of yours, and though I believe Hugh is innocent, I would not wish to be his wife now, nor have I wished it for many months. I promise you that. I am not the wife he needs, nor is he the man to make me happy. Still, there were moments . . . when he used to talk about his campaigns with such enthusiasm, or his plans for the estate, there was a rightness about it. I miss thinking of the future with such happiness and excitement, Harry, that is all.’
Harriet closed her hand around her sister’s, and bowed her head.
There was another knock and Mrs Heathcote opened the door again, with rather more of a flourish this time. The women looked up at her in surprise.
‘Mr Crowther for you, ma’am - and a Mr Clode.’
They had not mentioned Crowther on the way home, though for her part Harriet had thought of little else, and she blamed her headache on him and his murderous family. It was not right of him to blame her for knowing. Lying on her bed upstairs she had concocted some half-plan of visiting him in the morning and demanding what he had learned from Cartwright of Alexander’s whereabouts, but no righteous indignation she could muster was able to smother the misery of his apparent defection and her own ill-tempered words. She stood cautiously as he was announced. If he gave them his usual dry smile, she would cross to him and give him her hand with all the joy in the world, but she doubted his demons were to be put aside so swiftly. Though if not, why had he come?
Crowther still looked dark and tired as he entered, and his bow to them was at best perfunctory. Harriet held herself back with a sting of regret, making her back straight, and her smile of welcome swift and cautious. He was followed into the room by a far younger man, dark-haired and slim. He was dressed well, the fashions suited him, and he carried about him an air of earnest seriousness. She smiled more gently at him, thinking perhaps she recognised him now, a face from the back of the crowd during the inquest. Crowther waved his hand over his shoulder, without looking at any of them directly.