Ace, King, Knave

  ‘I’m afraid he went so far as to strike both of us. Don’t be alarmed, Mrs Zedland. No bones broken.’

  Hetty rises and approaches him. ‘But where did he hit you? I don’t see any marks.’

  Mr Letcher ruefully indicates his chest and side. ‘I endeavoured to pour oil on troubled water but,’ he shrugs, ‘it didn’t do. Didn’t do at all.’

  ‘What did he want?’ Hetty asks.

  Her husband only clears his throat.

  ‘Well,’ says Hetty, ‘the brute should be taken before the magistrates.’

  ‘No doubt, my dear. I’d like to see the man who could take him.’

  Sophia remembers to speak. ‘I’m so grateful for your assistance, Mr Letcher. Should I have bandages brought – ointments ― ?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Not for me, Mrs Zedland. I’ve nothing worse than the odd bruise.’

  ‘Then if I may,’ she edges around him on trembling legs, ‘I’d better speak with Mr Zedland. Pray excuse me. Don’t hesitate to ring for the maid should there be any need.’

  As she moves away along the corridor she hears the low urgent questioning of Hetty and Letcher’s muttered response: ‘I should say so. Yes.’

  Her husband’s chamber door is standing open but Sophia knocks anyway.

  ‘Edmund? Are you hurt?’

  After a blow to the head, men have been known to rise, walk and dine in high good spirits, only to die later from swelling in the brain. Mama was acquainted with a young gentleman who died in precisely that way after a fall from his hunter.

  ‘Edmund?’

  Perhaps he is in his closet, applying cold water. She gives a warning cough, then, still hearing nothing, pushes aside the alcove curtain. The basin is empty; Edmund’s soap lies dry and unused beside it.

  Puzzled, Sophia moves away. Has he perhaps gone to the necessary house? No: she would have heard him come downstairs. She next tries the study. Though her knock brings no response, the door is bolted on the inside. She can hear him striding about the room, careless of noise: there is the thwack and slither of papers falling, spreading out across the floor.

  ‘Edmund? Mr Letcher says that fellow hurt you.’

  He does not reply.

  ‘Will you kindly answer me, Edmund!’

  His voice, when it comes, is muffled and sullen. ‘Leave me alone. I’m not in want of coddling.’

  ‘I will, if you unlock the door. Suppose you collapsed?’

  ‘Then I’d die in peace.’

  There is a groaning, splintering sound. She flinches away before realising it comes from deeper inside the room: he is breaking up the furniture. Before Sophia realises what she is doing, her ear is pressed to the door panel. Fortunately, Hetty is not present to witness it.

  ‘If you don’t stop,’ she cries, ‘I shall fetch Mr Letcher.’

  The bolt shoots with a fierce chack. Edmund rushes out, seizes her shoulders and pushes her away. She is sent staggering backwards, trips on her gown and falls. Her husband’s face, as she stares up at him, is misshapen, as if someone has been kneading it. The skin around his mouth has begun to darken. He says, ‘Now get back to your booby friends before I throw you downstairs.’

  On the staircase she is overcome by a positive ague of shaking, so intense that she almost falls without any aid from Edmund. Reaching the turn of the stairwell, where there is a wedge-shaped step, she sinks down and tries to lower her head between her knees, only to find that her stays render it impossible. It is thus, clinging to the banister as to faith’s anchor, that she hears the swish-swash of a gown hurrying up the stairs towards her.

  ‘Madam?’

  Sophia lifts her head. The girl, what’s her name? Frances. Fan.

  ‘O dear, Madam! Have you fainted?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Shall I fetch Eliza? Or a doctor?’

  ‘No. Bring me the hartshorn. By the bed.’

  ‘I could unlace you, Madam.’

  Sophia waves her away. ‘Hartshorn.’ This is no time for lying down and complaining of vapours.

  The hartshorn is brought. She fears and desires it, having never understood how an odour, that most frail and bodiless of phenomena, can so assault the senses. Sophia steadies herself, grasps the bottle and sniffs.

  ‘Good God!’

  The cry is involuntary. Fan catches the bottle as it slips from her fingers.

  ‘Help me up,’ Sophia says, the hartshorn still throbbing in her nose and eyes.

  ‘Madam, there’s something I should tell you.’

  ‘I have guests.’

  The girl is persistent. ‘Best tell you now, Madam. It concerns Mr Zedland.’

  Sophia laughs, causing Fan’s eyes to widen in surprise. ‘I suppose it’s a secret, is it? Something of that sort?’ She waits for Fan to cry, O, Madam, since that seems to follow next in the script.

  ‘Yes, I believe it is,’ says Fan, unsmiling. ‘I shouldn’t wish to be overheard.’

  Sophia glances upwards, to the banisters and the concealed area of the landing, and lays a finger across her lips.

  Medicinal drops: one, two. She tilts back her head and lets them run the length of her tongue.

  ‘Don’t draw the curtain, Fan.’

  She gestures to the girl to sit down, then seats herself at the toilet table with its flasks of cream, its powders and lotions, their mingled perfumes redolent of comfort. Since all the Cotterstone women (even when translated into Bullers, Zedlands or Letchers) share common notions as to cosmetics and how they should be made, each female member of the family bears a certain olfactory resemblance to the rest. Sometimes, upon her first entering this closet of a morning, it seems to Sophia as if Mama and Hetty are invisibly present.

  Her mirror reflects something new: maid and mistress both seated, their heads on a level.

  ‘I can still draw it if you wish,’ Fan whispers. ‘Nobody could open the chamber door without my hearing.’

  ‘I mustn’t neglect my guests. Tell me quickly.’

  ‘Then, Madam, Mr Zedland had two visitors today.’

  ‘This brute just now – he was the second?’

  The girl nods.

  ‘And the first?’

  Fan catches her mistress’s eye in the mirror. As she does so, she puts a hand into her bosom and brings out an earring of black pearl.

  Sophia starts as if slapped. Once, reading of a secret society in which any member falling from grace was sent a token, by which the society announced that Open Season was declared upon him and his, she speculated as to the prey’s sensations upon opening the fatal message. Something like hers at this instant, perhaps. She takes the jewel from Fan as if handling poison; the pearls, little drops of wickedness, glow darkly in her palm.

  ‘To whom does this belong?’

  ‘A person came to the door. We didn’t let her in, Madam, we know better than that.’

  ‘Why didn’t you return it to her?’

  Fan takes a deep breath. ‘It’s not precisely lost, Madam. She threw it at us. And her shoes.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘In the kitchen. The other earring broke. I’ve got it in a teacup.’

  ‘And she went away without shoes? She sounds like a fugitive from Bedlam.’

  ‘I think she belongs to another kind of house, Madam.’

  Her eyes meet Sophia’s in the mirror. There can only be one reason why jewels should be returned here. Sophia wonders whose money purchased them, Edmund’s or her own.

  ‘You did right not to admit her. Did she ask for Mr Zedland?’

  ‘I don’t recall that she did. She seemed to know he was out. But she said,’ the porcelain of Fan’s cheeks is darkening, ‘that she was a very particular friend.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Only she didn’t put it in quite those words.’

  ‘Has anybody informed Mr Zedland of this?’

  ‘Not I, Madam, and I’d take my Bible oath not Eliza.’

  ‘Good girl.’

  F
an bows her head, her expression not so much submissive as relieved. ‘Shall I fetch you the other things?’

  ‘Not now.’ Sophia hands the earring back to her. ‘I must return to my guests.’

  ‘O, I forgot!’ the girl cries. Sophia, half-risen from her chair, sits down again. ‘The man who came here. I believe he’s – connected.’

  ‘Do you mean that beast is her husband?’

  ‘I mean there’s a resemblance.’

  Sophia is astonished. ‘Was she so very ugly?’ Perhaps, after all, this is some other mistress of Edmund’s. The one in the Rose of Normandy, though coarse and vulgar, was comparatively well favoured.

  ‘O, no, Madam, she’s a handsome woman – in her way,’ Fan adds hurriedly. ‘But there’s a likeness. And she’s tall. Her feet are big as a soldier’s, you may see that from the shoes.’

  Sophia considers. Yes: the woman in the tavern was something of an Amazon. She failed to notice it previously, perhaps because no other female was standing nearby.

  ‘Brother and sister, perhaps.’

  ‘That was my thought, Madam.’

  ‘What a very noticing girl you are, my dear.’

  The maid flushes with what looks like honest pleasure. I have been a fool, thinks Sophia. Had I taken the trouble to win her good opinion earlier, what might I have discovered? I distrusted her prettiness. And with a pang of sorrow: I am what Edmund has made me.

  ‘They might be in with a crew,’ Fan volunteers. ‘House-breakers, perhaps. It’s the first thing you think, isn’t it? That they’ve come to rob the house?’

  Sophia almost laughs at the idea of robbing this dismal place. What could they carry off? The carpet in Edmund’s chamber?

  ‘But throwing her pearls away,’ Fan continues, ‘that I don’t see the sense of.’

  ‘It gives her an excuse to return. For false pearls!’

  ‘O, no, Madam, they’re real. I tried them.’

  Fan does indeed have a head on her shoulders. ‘You’ve done me excellent service,’ Sophia says. ‘We shall talk later, but for now keep the items safe. I must return to Mr and Mrs Letcher.’

  Alas, this astonishing new intelligence joins the great many topics she cannot enter upon with her friends. She begins to devise excuses for the extraordinary time she has been upstairs; so urgent is the need for a convincing lie that the smell of burning paper, as she passes the study door, fails to attract her attention.

  42

  When the front door rattled in its frame, Fortunate knew what was on the other side. He tried to hold back Fan from answering, but she shook him off with a cry of impatience and opened it: a gust of air entered and on it a smell of death, spreading infection through the house.

  Fortunate backed away before the thing could see him, stumbling up the stairs and into a first-floor room where a bed for visitors was kept in readiness but never used. He eased the window open a crack. Fan’s voice floated upwards to him, a little shriller than usual because she was ill at ease, but no more than that: she seemed not to recognise the Spirit. Now it answered with ferocious laughter, like a roar deep in its throat. It was not a pleasant sound.

  At this moment Dog Eye and the Wife appeared, with the people he had seen earlier on. Fortunate was in agony: should he go down, where the Spirit was, or stay here and run the risk of being called for? He heard the front door close, then open again. For a terrible moment he thought it had entered, but when he dared to peep down again it was still on the pavement: the men had stayed to speak with it while their womenfolk went inside. Don’t speak, Fortunate whispered, run away, but they could not hear him. The Spirit threw them and their words about as dogs throw rats and went away laughing.

  Sick with confusion and dread, he stood back from the window. Was it indeed a spirit, or a man? Others could see it. It had no fear of the master. It came nearer each time; perhaps one day it would enter, whether man or spirit, and hunt him through the house.

  He told himself it was not in the house now, and stayed there, unmoving, as his terror went down and his breathing quietened and no longer filled the room.

  Now he could distinguish sounds: the voices of Dog Eye and the Wife. They were outside the study, quarrelling as usual. Relief washed through him, leaving him limp as grass in wind. The study door slammed. The Wife came along the landing towards the stairs: he knew her step as he knew everybody’s in the household. She began to descend. Then the sounds changed to a faint rustling and stopped. He opened the door a crack: she was slumped on the corner stair, her face in her hands. He had no desire to go to her and be found fault with. Closing the door, he waited for her to move off.

  She was there for what seemed a long time, but at last he heard Fan coming upstairs. She whispered with the mistress, went away, came back. More talk, and they returned upstairs and went along the landing.

  He was glad he had chosen this room to hide in. He waited for the Wife’s chamber door to close – she was enraged whenever servants left doors open – but failed to catch the sound. At last he decided he must take his chance. Tip-toeing across the landing, he gained the stairs and crept softly down them to the ground floor.

  *

  ‘La, Titus!’ Eliza turns from her pile of carrots as he enters the kitchen. ‘You’re a ghost.’

  ‘A ghost?’

  ‘Grey, sweetheart. You’re grey.’

  He follows her gaze down to his hands and catches her meaning: he has neglected to oil his skin. The maid fetches him a spoonful of butter and watches him rub it over his fingers. Mrs Launey wanted him to use lard, it being cheaper, but the Wife said he would smell. It seems to Fortunate he could hardly smell worse: he passes his days stinking of rancid butter.

  ‘I don’t know where she got these carrots,’ Eliza remarks, holding one up. ‘Soft as an old man’s sugar stick.’

  Soft, a sugar stick? One of his tasks is to grind the sugar loaf and that is hard enough for anybody: it is a strange thing to say. But then, Eliza is a strange young woman. She once told him that she came with the house. He was struck by this and thought perhaps there were such things as English slaves, but then the next day she told him that she could leave whenever she wished and find work elsewhere. She said, ‘I’ll see life before I’m done, believe me.’ He is not sure what she meant by this. Does not everybody see life? He smooths his buttered hands over his face to oil the skin there.

  Eliza grins. ‘That’s better.’

  He nods: speech is full of traps. Whenever he answers a question, Mrs Dog Eye corrects him – ‘Now repeat! Repeat!’ – though mostly he is unable to perceive the difference. It is there, however, since others also react: with laughter, with frowns of perplexity, with contempt.

  Eliza says, ‘I s’pose you heard them milling out there?’

  ‘Milling?’

  ‘Beating, fighting.’ She raises her fists as if to box with him. ‘I’ve seen him hanging round before. Ten to one he’s a dun.’

  ‘Done?’

  ‘It’s loss of breath talking to you, Blackbird. A dun comes looking for money.’

  ‘A poor man. A beggar.’

  Eliza laughs. ‘A devil, more like. When you borrow, Titus, and you don’t pay it back ―’ She breaks off as Fan enters. ‘Did you tell her about the woman?’

  Fan looks towards Fortunate and frowns. ‘Little pitchers, Liza. Tell-tale tits.’

  Fortunate says, ‘A dun is a devil?’

  ‘Hear that?’ Eliza answers, not to him but to Fan. ‘Innocent as a babe unborn.’

  ‘Later.’ Fan picks up a carrot, wrinkling her nose. ‘Are these the best you could find?’

  ‘Launey bought ’em. She must be riding the market man. Time she was back, if you ask me ―’

  There is a loud slam: the front door.

  ‘Talk of the devil,’ Fan exclaims, causing Fortunate’s stomach to turn over. She and Eliza become very busy peeling and chopping, but no Mrs Launey appears. ‘I’m not losing my wits, am I?’ Fan demands of her heap of carrots. ‘It was
the door I heard?’

  It was. The dun-devil has entered. It is in the passageway even now, snuffling its way towards him.

  ‘Unless it was the mistress going out,’ Eliza suggests.

  ‘Can’t be, those Lechery people are still here.’

  Eliza goes to the kitchen door. ‘Come on, Titus. Let’s have a look.’ She catches hold of his sleeve and pulls him towards the corridor.

  ‘Scream out directly if you meet a robber,’ Fan calls.

  ‘I’ve got Titus to protect me.’

  He would rather Eliza protected him, so he keeps to the rear, listening out for the snarl of the Spirit. All he hears, however, is a murmur of conversation from behind the Blue Room door, proving Fan correct: the visitors are still within the house. Fortunate and Eliza go from room to room, searching behind curtains and sofas and inside wall cupboards.

  Taking up a candle, Eliza suggests they should check the cellar. Down they go, Fortunate sweating like an overdriven horse, into a darkness smelling of cesspits where he is forced to breathe through his mouth. Eliza holds out the candle to each corner of the brick vault in turn.

  ‘Nobody here. Let’s try upstairs.’

  As they mount to the first floor, he is comforted by the knowledge that he was able to hide his fear from the maid. He has not disgraced himself. Eliza goes to the mistress’s room and searches there while Fortunate, bolder now, knocks at the door of the study and when Dog Eye does not respond, pushes it open.

  ‘Eliza!’

  The girl hurries to him. ‘You’re not fooling me, are you?’

  It is no foolery. The desk is torn like a deer after the kill. A leg has been ripped off and the drawers dragged from its belly, one thrown against a wall, another lying charred near the hearth. In the grate lies a grey feathery nest of burnt papers. Eliza, like Fortunate, stops at the doorway, her eyes wide.

  ‘Dear God,’ she says. ‘Dear God.’

  She whirls about and runs along the corridor to the master’s chamber. Fortunate has a happy inspiration. He goes to the box of pistols, sets the safety catches and slips one of them into each of his pockets. They are just concealed. There is a smaller box of powder and one of lead balls. These, too, he takes before following Eliza, his belly tight with anticipation.