My Lord and Spymaster

Eighteen

JESS KNEW A DOZEN PEOPLE WHO SPOKE ARABIC, but only two who could read it. One was Papa, and she could hardly bring this question to Meeks Street, could she?

The other was the Reverend. She wanted to see him anyway, so it all worked out tidy. Life did that sometimes.

Ludmill Street was a bad, ugly place. The lane was barely wide enough for a cart to get through. Cobbles sloped steeply to a gully in the center, stinking and clogged with garbage. Not even grass could grow here, only lots and lots of people. Laundry hung crazily from lines out of every window, crisscrossing above her, blocking what sun made it past the roofline. The tenement windows were blind, dark squares with no glass in them, just boarded shutters that kept out thieves. One door stood crazily ajar, showing men and blowsy women sprawled on the floor in piles of straw. The sign outside read, “Gin. Drunk for a penny. Dead drunk for three pence.”

The kids were out in force, filling the street, tumbling down the stairs, screaming. Mean, snapping mongrels these kids were. Curs on four legs ran among them and stopped to sniff at her skirts when she went past. She kept a rock in her hand to shy at any dog that took it into its head to bite. You did that where you were a stranger, in places like this. Some of the kids might have tried for her purse, if she’d been fool enough to carry one.

It had been different when she was a kid. Maybe she’d been tougher. She’d gone anywhere and never been afraid. The whole East End had been her playground, every dirty, rat-infested alley of it. Everybody knew her. There was a time she must have called half East London by name.

The Service had followed her in here. She got glimpses of them from time to time, being persistent behind her. Maybe they’d get their pockets picked. She hoped so. Her little contribution to the thieves of Ludmill street.

The soup kitchen was open, serving dinner. Jess put a limp in her step as she headed for it, walking like a tired little Covent Garden whore who’s back from a long, hard stroll and doesn’t want to discuss further business with anyone.

“Bad day, dearie?” the woman at the end of the line asked her.

She lifted a shoulder. “Bleeding ’orror what some men want.”

“Ain’t it the truth, luv. Ain’t it the truth.”

The meal today was cabbage soup with beans in it and hard brown bread. She let the man at the pot fill a wooden bowl for her and stuff bread into the soup. She sat down with the other women. They were joined soon enough by a family party, a woman who smelled of gin, with her baby and two boys.

“You gonna eat that?” the older boy demanded.

She looked at the soup and decided that, on the whole, no, she was not going to eat that. She shook her head, and he took the bowl, gobbling it down fast, not sharing with his brother.

She picked a little piece of bread into smaller and smaller pieces, thinking about the Reggio letter she’d found and about Sebastian. He can’t be Cinq. But she kept adding it up, and sometimes she thought he could be.

A man like Sebastian wouldn’t steal secrets for the money. It’d be politics and idealism and believing in the republic over there in France. Being drunk on fine words and the dreams. Ignoring the reality. Likely he caught all kinds of notions from his uncle and aunt, growing up. They were wild-eyed radicals, Eunice and Standish, but they were good people and harmless as mice, whatever nonsense they believed.

Sebastian wouldn’t be harmless. He’d never be just harmless.

She had friends in France who thought Napoleon turned a crank and the sun rose. Nothing wrong with that, she supposed, if you were French, but no way for an Englishman to think.

Sebastian would run for France, probably, when she laid information against him.

“Whotcher done wif yer ’ands.” The boy—he was seven or eight—had finished her soup and was looking at the little white scars on her hands. Those were the old rat bites she got when she fell, way back when. Most people didn’t notice. Sharp fellow. If she’d still been with Lazarus, she’d have marked the boy down as somebody to watch. He might make a Runner in a year or so.

“Ah,” she said. “Story behind that, there is.”

The other boy, the younger one, stopped tormenting his little sister and leaned forward to listen. “I was about yer age, I guess, out taking the air in St. James Park one day, sauntering like . . . when what does I see but as nice a pair of duck as I ever clapped oglers on, jest sitting there in this pond. Crying waste of a foine dinner, says I to meself. So I takes this bit of pannam I had in me pocket . . .”

She went on from there for a bit. The woman fed herself and gave the baby a mouthful of the soup broth, letting it suck from the side of the bowl. Jess had both the boys giggling. “. . . set that bracket-faced she-duck a-squawking like a landlady come fer the rent. So anyways, I . . .”

The Reverend was walking the tables, talking to folks. He had a good crowd in here today, most of them getting ready for a night’s work of the illegal variety. He was heading her way, so she finished up, “. . . never did get holt o’ that bleeding bird. And that’s how I come by them scars. That was the day I near got meself nibbled to death by ducks.”

That set both boys off again, their mother, too, and some other folks who’d stopped to listen.

The Reverend came over to see what people were chuck-ling at. She never knew why, but he seemed startled to see her every time she showed up. You’d think he’d learn.

“Jess.” He sounded annoyed. “What are you doing here?”

She batted her eyes at him. “What, Rev’rend? Donn’cher like me no more? Yer said—”

“Into my office, if you please.” He took her elbow and pulled her away from the table.

“Keep yer truss on, guv’nor. Yer sure in a bleeding ’urry fer it, ain’tcher?”

She heard one man say to another as she walked by, “That’s Whitby’s daughter. They say she belongs to the Dead Man, she do . . .” So she supposed she wasn’t doing Reverend Palmer’s reputation much harm.

The Reverend clumped across his office. “Will you please not come here? It’s not safe.”

She took one of the straight-backed chairs. “I was thinking that, myself, as I came in. I’m going to have to be more careful.”

“I heard about your father. If there’s anything I can do . . . Well, of course, there is something I can do, and I’m doing it, but I very much doubt you’ve come here to hear about my prayers.” He had a pot of tea on his desk, nearly cold, already mixed up with milk and sugar in the pot. He poured her some, and she set it down to one side and didn’t drink any. She’d taken tea with the Reverend before.

“I’ll send somebody reliable with you to walk you out of this place.” He ran his hand through his lank, thin hair. “Though I don’t think anyone’s going to bother one of Eunice Ashton’s household. Or anyone claimed by Bastard Kennett. Or your father’s daughter, for that matter. But not everyone may recognize you. Now, what are you doing here?”

“I come for the food, of course. Must it be beans and cabbage? Are you determined the poor of London won’t sneak up on anybody?”

“Cheap and nourishing, just as you directed. Come to inspect the books, have you?”

“That’s what you have a Board of Governors for, to harass you about your bookkeeping. Oh, that reminds me. I’ve spent the last week making solicitors rich. There’s going to be a trust, starting a week from Tuesday, so you don’t have to be polite to me anymore. Or you can start being rude next Tuesday when the paperwork goes through.”

“A trust?”

“Nothing you have to worry about. The money comes in all the same. It just means it doesn’t come from Whitby’s. It gets managed by grim Quaker gentlemen from Hoare’s Bank. Isn’t that the devil of a name for a respectable bank? One of my clerks will send you a long, incomprehensible letter about this eventually. Ignore it, is my advice.”

“Is it a lot of money you’re giving away?”

“Middling. There’s not much else to do with it, past a certain point. It’s fun making it, though.”

This place, and twenty others like it across East London, would be protected if Whitby’s fell and the government confiscated everything. It was a cheerful thought, cheating His Majesty’s government to feed the scum of the earth. A chuckle in a dark world, charity was. “I came for help, actually.”

“Anything I can do.”

She grinned, flipped her skirts up to the knee, and pulled folded papers out of her garter. Didn’t shock the Reverend though. She’d never found anything that shocked the Reverend. “I got secrets. Seal of the confessional?”

“The Church of England doesn’t do that sort of thing, as you very well know. But if you’d like me to spit and cross my heart . . .”

“How about telling me what this says?” She handed over the bits of Arabic writing she’d copied from Sebastian’s desk.

The Reverend raised his eyebrow. “Of course. Just . . .” He patted around his coat and eventually found his glasses on the desk and put them on. “So. What have we here?” For a long time he studied the symbols she’d copied, turning page by page till he’d read the lot. He was frowning when he finished. He shuffled the pages into a pile and took off his glasses, closed them, and tapped them against the desk.

“Jess, where did you get this?”

“Found it in a desk I was cracking,” she said promptly.

“Where else? None of my business, anyway. I can’t possibly translate these for you.”

“Not Arabic?”

“Not . . . seemly.”

“What?” First time in a while she’d been dumbfounded.

“I recognize this, of course. I was fortunate enough to come across a copy at Cambridge. It’s rather famous among Arabic scholars. I don’t believe it’s been translated into English. These are quotes from an ancient . . . erotic manual. Lyric, classical Arabic. Your first passage deals with the man discussing a certain activity. The second is a description of one of the physical attributes of a woman.”

“A dirty book.” In Arabic. She leaned back in the chair and laughed. Oh, but she’d fooled herself proper, hadn’t she?

Reverend Palmer shook his glasses at her in a minatory fashion. “I cannot imagine where you acquired this, and I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me. But it’s not the sort of thing you should be reading.”

“It’s Arabic, so I’m not likely to be reading it.” She had to wipe tears out of her eyes, from laughing so hard. “And here I thought it was some deep, dark secret. All that sneaking and prying to get me fambles on a dirty novel. Lord, I’ve outfoxed myself. That doesn’t happen to me often.”

“I don’t suppose so.” He squared up the edges of the papers. “You were immensely capable, even as a child. I found you impressive.”

“I’m not feeling all that capable lately.” She watched him lay those pages of Arabic aside, thriftily, in the box of scrap paper. She folded her hands up, one inside the other, and set the pair of them against the edge of his desk. “This business with Papa . . . It’s not a problem I can solve. Not like filling up a hold with cargo. It’s slippery. I keep adding seven and twenty-two and coming up with the color red.”

“Can I help?”

“You are. You’re one of about three people I’ve talked to in the last week who isn’t lying to me all the time.” She chewed on a strand of hair. “Reverend.” There was one more thing she had to ask. It was hard to put it in words. “I came here . . . I do have a problem. I wanted to ask you . . .” She stuck there.

“Yes.” He had some papers on his desk that needed rearranging all of a sudden. It kept his eyes busy.

“What do you do if you like somebody and you’re afraid he’s done something real bad?” She hadn’t known she was going to ask it that way, till she did.

“What do you think you do?”

She’d never been able to fool the Reverend. “I guess I know what to do.” She switched her hands around and put the left inside right this time. “It hurts a lot. Hurts every way I play it. I really . . . I like him.”

He picked up his glasses and unfolded them, then folded them back up. “I’m sorry, Jessie.”

“That’s all I get from you, isn’t it? Just, ‘I’m sorry it hurts.’ All these years, you never once told me everything’s going to turn out right.” Her lips twitched, not making the smile she was trying for. “I may have to peach on him, Rev. You can guess how I feel about that.”

“I think you’ll find it hard. Is he a good man, this friend of yours?”

“Not very. About like me, that way. And I don’t think we’re friends, actually. I’m fibbing about the friend part.” She felt discouraged, thinking how profoundly impossible it was. “Doesn’t matter much. It’s not something that could have worked out, whatever happened.”

“Then I’m very sorry indeed. I always hoped you’d meet a fine man someday, someone who was a proper match for you. I’d like to see you happy.”

“I don’t think I get happy out of this particular consignment. ” She lifted her eyes and let him see all the misery inside her for a minute. He was maybe the only one in the world she could show it to. The Reverend wasn’t going to talk about happy endings. Seen a lot, had the Reverend.

She looked away and shrugged. “Maybe he’s pure as a spring lamb gamboling on the green, and I’m just being unnecessarily suspicious. He keeps telling me to trust him.”

“Do you?”

“Sometimes. I catch myself doing it and try to stop.”

“Or you could listen to yourself.”

“That’s not such a good idea. I’m . . . stupid about him.” It was too late, really, to tell herself not to love the Captain. “It’s funny, innit, what folks do for some idea in a book. It’s not like there’s a paradise over in France. I been there, and I know. Secret police, for one thing, and the bribes get higher every year. More paperwork, too.”

“You have a way of seeing very clearly, Jess.” Raucous laughter came from the main room. The Reverend ignored it.

“I should know the difference between a good man and a bad one. I seen sterling examples of both.” She stood up. “Why is it you never tell me what to do, and I always end up doing it?”

“I’m not sure. What did I not tell you to do?”

“Get to work. Prove he’s not guilty.”

“Sounds like I’m giving good advice these days. Do you need any more of it?”

“That should hold me for a while. Lead me to this safe, reliable escort of yours, Reverend. You would not believe how much work I have to do today.”

“You always do.” Palmer took her untouched cup of tea, lifted the lid off the teapot, and poured it back in. “Are you safe in that house, with Bastard Kennett? He’s a grim-looking man, from the glimpses I’ve had of him.”

“He’s that.” A piece of her hair had come loose. She stood, twirling it around and around her finger.

Palmer sloshed the teapot around thoughtfully. “I’ve heard he’s a man of his word. An honorable man.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“I didn’t think it would be, with you. I’ll send you out of here with Mrs. Trimble. Nobody in his right mind would attack Mrs. Trimble. Even I’m afraid of Mrs. Trimble.”

He opened the door for her, and they were back in the noise and confusion of the crowded dining room, with kids squalling and women talking loudly. One man rolled on the bench, shouting about the imaginary bugs crawling on him. The Reverend looked it over calmly and turned back to her. “God keep you in the hollow of his hand, Jess.”

“God’s got better things to do with his hands, I’d say, looking at this crew.”

SHE’D do what she had to, to get Papa free. She didn’t have the luxury of being a coward.

The Russian teacup with jasmine flowers on it was at her elbow. Every time she set it down, it left a little cup-sized circle marked on the blotter. There were dozens of little circles.

The first time she went on a roof, she’d hung onto the chimney, whimpering, telling Lazarus she couldn’t do this. Wouldn’t do this. And since Lazarus wasn’t a man you said “wouldn’t” to, he pried her fingers off the bricks and kicked her loose to roll down the slates till she hit a gable and stopped.

When she inched her way back up to him again she wasn’t inclined to snivel quite so much. Eventually, she got over being scared. He’d been right about that.

I can do this. She tucked a sugar cube in her cheek and drank some tea. Then she wrote,

I will see the list and assure myself that it is exactly as promised. I will examine the details of one instance of theft. An instance of my choosing.

Russian samovar. Russian tea. Russian way of drinking it. And she liked the cheap brown Barbados sugar, the kind Mama bought when they were flush with money.

What was the point of being rich if you couldn’t drink your tea just as you liked it.

Clerks were putting on their coats and hats, getting ready to end the day. She’d told the messenger boy to wait, though. He was sitting on one of the high stools, playing the game with the little ball and cup.

And there was the clerk Buchanan, peering through the window into her office. He was beginning to get on her nerves.

You will produce this document the night before any contract is signed. There can be no compromise on this.

Pitney was going down the line of windows in the outer office, closing them up and locking them. There was no job in this warehouse he wouldn’t put his hand to. He took care of Whitby’s like it was his own. Pitney would stay till she left and put her in the hackney himself and stand on the front steps of Whitby’s, watching, till she was out of sight.

She drank another sip of tea. Her nib was drying up. She took more ink.

I would suggest you bring the paper to the meeting at Kennett House tonight. The ceremony, if you wish, can be scheduled for tomorrow. The settlements are ready to sign.

Lies, lies, and more lies. But it would get that list out of the Horse Guards. It might not be a bird in the hand yet, but at least it was a bird in the bush instead of a bird locked up safe with a squad of marines guarding it.

Sebastian is not going to be happy when he finds out what I’m up to. Papa neither. And Pitney won’t be delighted. Then there’s the colonel. Reams is going to be poker-hot furious.

She signed the letter and sprinkled sand on it. She was displeasing men right and left today.