3 Great Historical Novels (36 page)

By the time she came up on deck, Rhia had realised that she no longer desired anything of London. She would pay her respects to Mrs Blake and call on Mr Montgomery to resolve the matter of the stolen cloth, and then arrange her passage to Dublin.

Michael was leaning on the rails staring upriver. He had his scant belongings in a small canvas sack and the broad brim of his rabbit-felt hat pulled down low over his eyes. He was travelling as light as a sailor. It didn’t look as if there was much that he’d wanted to salvage from his former life. Eliza Green was sitting on her trunk watching the acrobatics above. The riggers shimmied up the masts and pulled ropes and hoists to and fro, collapsing each section of sailcloth into a scalloped fold and tying it to a yardarm or mast.

They had decided that they would, all three, call unannounced at Cloak Lane. Eliza had done little but loop yarn around a hooked needle and talk about Juliette for weeks. But now, facing a reunion that she had never believed could happen, she was silent and nervous. Rhia couldn’t begin to imagine how she must feel,

It took another two hours before they were in a carriage amidst the noonday crowds of Cheapside and Cornhill. It didn’t seem real. Michael was studiously ignoring the ballyhoo and reading a broadsheet he’d bought from a paperboy at the docks. Eliza was in a frenzy of crocheting. It still intrigued
Rhia that she could weave such a delicate a web with her little wooden hook without even looking at her hands. The congestion along Cornhill was worse than usual. They’d come to a halt between a coal cart and a fishmonger. The latter was closest, and the funk of the catch outranked the oily smell of coal and the stink of manure.

They set off again, Michael’s gaze now fixed on the street. His expression might have been aloofness or indifference. There were many means of hiding emotion, though, and this was his. Rhia wondered if he too was thinking of Greystones. They were so close to home now. She cast a sidelong look at Eliza, who had put her crochet away and was fidgeting with the ends of her new plaid shawl. Eliza had admired it in a clothier’s window on George Street. She had pranced about like a young girl when Rhia bought it for her.

When the carriage stopped again, it was outside the Blake terrace on Cloak Lane.

‘We’re here,’ Rhia said. No one moved. Rhia looked from Michael to Eliza. ‘I wonder if I should speak with Mrs Blake first?’ Michael nodded in agreement and Eliza managed a squeak, her hands to her cheeks.

Rhia stood for a moment, looking at the cast iron beast with a ring through its nose, before she lifted it to knock. She remembered how nervous she’d felt, standing here with Ryan, little more than a year ago. Would she encounter the ghost of her former self within? She knocked.

Antonia opened the door. She didn’t recognise Rhia immediately, and then she looked astonished and embraced her fiercely.

‘Sweet lord! Is it you?’ She stood back and looked at Rhia, and Rhia looked at her. Antonia was wearing worsted, and it was blue. A dark, sensible blue, but blue all the same.

‘Welcome home,’ Antonia said, but Rhia didn’t say that she was not home yet.

‘I am not alone,’ she said, instead. She explained, as quickly and concisely as she could, how Juliette’s mother came to be waiting in the carriage at the bottom of the steps to see her daughter, and who Michael Kelly was.

Neither Rhia, Michael nor Mrs Blake witnessed the reunion between mother and daughter. It was agreed that Eliza should make herself comfortable in the drawing room whilst Antonia did her best to prepare Juliette for the event.

When Antonia joined Rhia and Michael in the kitchen, where Beth was fussing about worrying over how to make the lunch stretch to feed so many, they all looked at her expectantly. Antonia smiled.

‘I couldn’t help stopping for a moment outside the door to make sure that all was well,’ she began.

Rhia nodded impatiently. ‘Did you hear anything?’

‘I heard Juliette laugh. I don’t believe I’ve heard her laugh before.’ Antonia wiped away a tear, although she was smiling. ‘They both began talking at once and continued talking over each other.’ She looked at Rhia and then at Michael. ‘Well,’ she said, clearly lost for words. The kettle on the range was hissing insistently, so she busied herself preparing a pot of tea. ‘I hope you will agree to be my guest, Mr Kelly,’ she said. ‘The house has been empty too long.’ She put the teapot and cups on the table. ‘I shall send word to Mr Dillon and Mr Montgomery. They must know immediately of your safe return, Rhia. Mr Dillon petitioned ceaselessly for your pardon.’

Rhia felt her heart lurch at the mention of Dillon. She would have to look him in the eye, even though he must hate her. She wondered if Antonia, too, blamed her for Laurence’s death. Nothing in her expression or manner suggested it. She was
forgiving by nature though. Dillon was not. He would have no interest in her company without Laurence to mediate. He would think her ugly, with her hair only just long enough for pins and her thin, brown limbs. But why should she care what he thought of her?

Antonia and Michael had spent little time on formalities; Michael wanted to know where Isaac was, and Antonia didn’t even seem surprised.

‘Your return to London has coincided with that of the
Mathilda
,’ she said. ‘It docked only days ago. Isaac has been in India since the summer.’

‘That’s a long time,’ Michael remarked casually, though Rhia knew what he was thinking.

‘Yes,’ Antonia agreed. ‘It is a long time.’ She smoothed her forehead with the tips of her fingers. ‘Mr Dillon seems to think …’ She hesitated.

‘That your friend Isaac Fisher has been dabbling in the China trade?’ Michael’s voice was, characteristically, lacking emotion. If you didn’t know him, you might think that he didn’t care.

‘Then you know.’ Antonia seemed relieved.

Rhia wondered what manner of cloth this day would weave.

‘Rhia and I put our heads together and figured a few things out,’ said Michael, ‘and I’ll warrant you know a thing or two as well, by now. Your Mr Dillon also, by the sounds of it. So why don’t we wait until we’re all met, share what we know, and see where it leads. It’s something of a puzzle, at present.’

‘It’s more a quilt,’ Rhia said, thinking aloud. Today was not just one cloth alone. Its pieces now needed putting together.

‘The quilt!’ said Antonia. ‘I had almost forgotten. I took delivery of the
Rajah
quilt last month, and when I saw the appliqué I knew that the chintz was yours, Rhia. It very nearly
brought me to tears. I was sorry that your beautiful chintz had been cut up but, and this is most strange, when I saw it I knew that you were all right … that everything would be all right. I received a letter from the governor’s wife, on behalf of all the needlewomen, saying it was made as a gift for the Quakers of the British Ladies Society.’

‘Then the quilt is here, in the house?’ It hardly seemed possible that it had crossed the seas twice and made it back to London before Rhia herself.

‘It is. And soon I will show you.’

The talk turned to other things. Antonia asked Michael about his family. She had asked nothing of Sydney, Rhia noted, not from either of them. She would hear it all one day.

‘Would you like a ginger loaf for your tea, Miss Mahoney?’ asked Beth when she could get a word in.

‘Would I! The thought of your ginger loaf is all that has kept me from despair, Beth.’

Rhia woke in the afternoon in the bed with ivory curtains and arabesques. She dressed slowly in a gown that had been hanging in the wardrobe since the last time she was in this room. It was Japanese rose: a rich, deep pink with none of the hard lustre of mineral dye. The cloth caressed her, but she did not feel unworthy of it, now. She pinned her hair as best she could with only a hand glass, and then slipped her feet into slippers, as though she were dressing in someone else’s finery. She walked slowly down the wide, polished stairs. It was only hours since she had arrived in London for the second time. Another life had begun.

Voices drifted out from the morning room.

Michael was almost unrecognisable, standing against the mantelpiece dressed in a clean shirt and breeches. He’d shaved and oiled his hair. He was smoking and talking to Mr Dillon. Dillon’s back was to the door. He was warming his hands over the fire, his black hair reaching his shoulders. He turned as Rhia came in and bowed politely, and as he did Rhia became aware of the unsteadiness of her legs. It was nothing to do with him, only the swaying of the solid earth because her legs were still at sea.

‘It is good to see you back in London, Miss Mahoney.’

It is good to be here.’ She examined his face. She could see no trace of anger or accusation. She could think of nothing at
all to say. It seemed that she no longer knew how to be polite. Some would argue that she never had.

Antonia coughed delicately. She was sitting on the Chesterfield with her needlework. For a moment it had seemed to Rhia that she was alone in the room with Dillon. Antonia smiled at her. ‘You look well in that colour. Now that we’re all here, I’ll help Beth with the tea. I‘ve accommodated Juliette and her mother in a guesthouse in Cornhill where they can continue their reunion privately.’

Antonia left for the kitchen, and Mr Dillon and Michael continued their conversation. Michael was saying he’d come to the conclusion there was no such thing as free trade, that everything had its cost. They had much in common, Rhia thought. They were both personally affronted by corruption, and their weapon of choice was a pen not a pistol (though Michael possessed another weapon besides – she’d seen its hilt sticking out of his boot).

She’d not yet dared to look at the photogenic drawing on the wall. The trees. She edged her gaze towards it cautiously. It looked different now. Maybe because it no longer had the power to frighten her: she had made her peace by facing her fear.

Antonia returned with a tea tray and they sat around the table, Mr Dillon opposite Rhia. She might not be frightened of shadows and spirits any more, but she was having trouble looking at him. It was merely something new to overcome. She looked him straight in the eye and thought she saw something she hadn’t seen before, something softer, a silent enquiry. It didn’t make her feel weak, like some paragon of femininity in a penny romance. Rather, she felt as though she were inhabiting her own skin for the very first time. Dillon looked away, leaving Rhia wondering if he was not indifferent to her after all.

He glanced around the table, though when his eyes met Rhia’s again they were guarded. ‘We know that Isaac Fisher and Ryan Mahoney were using the
Mathilda
to trade opium, and that she and her sister ship,
Sea Witch
, were engaged in a counterfeiting operation. Do you think it’s possible, Mr Kelly, that they were chartered by separate parties?’

‘Aye,’ Michael agreed, ‘most merchant ships are for hire when they are not otherwise engaged.’

‘So,’ Dillon pressed, ‘
Mathilda
left Lintin Island with a cargo of silver, and sailed into Pacific waters just east of Sydney Cove where the silver was to be transferred onto the
Sea Witch
, in return for a hull full of counterfeit coin?’

Michael nodded, and Dillon’s proposal settled silently. He looked at Rhia. ‘Will you tell Mrs Blake about the negative?’

Antonia looked at Rhia expectantly, and Rhia explained, as delicately as she could, how the negative came to be on the
Rajah
, how the portrait was made, and how it was then destroyed.

Antonia was shaking her head. ‘No wonder …’ She trailed off, no doubt thinking about Juliette’s peculiar behaviour. She took a sip of tea, looking at Dillon. ‘You knew, didn’t you, the day you came to visit – the day Juliette told us about her father?’

He nodded. ‘Forgive me, but I saw no point in telling you. It would only have made things awkward between you and your maid.’

Antonia looked confused. ‘But the negative has not been destroyed?’ She was looking at Rhia almost pleadingly.

‘It has been lost. Probably destroyed. I’m so sorry, Antonia.’

Antonia shook her head, bewildered.

‘I think I’d like to see something of this photogenic drawing,’ Michael remarked. ‘I can’t get the measure of it.’ He was trying to soften the blow, Rhia thought, and she liked him all the better for it.

‘Then you shall,’ Antonia assured him.

‘But first,’ he said, ‘I should tell you about the evening I visited the botanist Mr Reeve, and about Mick the Fence who got arrested for counterfeiting.’

By the time they left Sydney, Michael said, more than a dozen arrests had been made, including the captain of the
Sea Witch
. The captain said he didn’t know anything except that an agent in Calcutta chartered the clipper and that whomever paid for the charter would not easily be traced. ‘There are plenty of merchants who do not wish to be associated with the opium trade,’ Michael said. ‘Twenty thousand pounds’ worth of counterfeit silver guineas was returned to the governor’s office, from whence the coin was stolen in the first place. It’ll probably be sold as alloy and used to line another few buildings with cedar,’ he observed drily. ‘Hard to know who’s the bigger crook, the coiner or the government of New South Wales.’

‘No ringmaster was named?’ Dillon asked.

Michael shook his head. ‘Aye. And it wouldn’t surprise me if Mick himself doesn’t know his master’s name. There’s bound to be an in-between to protect the boss. Besides, Mick the Fence will never talk: he’s a professional and it would be bad for business. All he said on the matter was that, seeing as there was a silver shortage, he and his men were doing the Crown a service in supplying freshly minted coins.’

Antonia was tapping her fingers on the table in an agitated rhythm. ‘I simply find it inconceivable that Isaac is trading in opium, let alone in counterfeit. Yes, I do know that Quaker ships carried slaves, so there’s no need to remind me of it, but
this
… I can hardly believe that I could have misjudged his character so wildly, and for so long. Thank God Josiah did not live to see this day.’

‘I think we must give Isaac the opportunity to defend himself,’ interjected Dillon.

‘Yes, we must,’ she agreed. ‘I shall invite him to do so.’

‘Montgomery and Beckwith should also be here,’ said Dillon.

‘Very well,’ said Antonia. ‘And you and Mr Kelly, of course.’

‘I would have it no other way,’ he replied.

‘Nor I,’ added Michael. ‘There was a letter, wasn’t there, Mrs Blake, written by your husband?’

‘There was,’ she agreed, ‘Mr Dillon has located it.’

Michael frowned to hear that Ryan Mahoney’s solicitor would not release the letter until a magistrate ruled that the death was not self-murder. ‘Is that so?’ he said quietly. ‘Well, perhaps you could leave that one to me.’

Antonia stood up. ‘Mr Kelly, would you still like to see a demonstration of photogenic drawing?’

‘I would.’

They left the room. Rhia was certain that Antonia had deliberately left her alone with Mr Dillon. The silence increased, with nothing but the hiss of wood sap from the fire to interrupt it. Rhia stole a glance, wondering if he cared as little as he seemed to that they were sitting opposite each other with nothing to say. He seemed preoccupied.

‘I have a feeling,’ he said finally, ‘that Mrs Blake’s maid may have been the key all along.’

‘Then you believe that one of the men in the portrait is a murderer?’

‘I have no doubt of it. I’ve been waiting for some archive newsprint on forging rackets operating around Manchester at the time of Mr Green’s murder.’

‘And?’

‘And I’ve received my response, but let’s keep that between us for now.’

‘Then you think John Hannam is connected to the Sydney counterfeiting?’

‘I think there’s a decent chance of it, yes.’

They lapsed into silence again. Rhia let her eyes rest somewhere safe; on his coat. ‘Are you wearing English broadcloth?’ she asked. He laughed, and she felt the stiffness in her shoulders ease.

‘I believe it is Welsh, like your name. When I was young the people in my village believed that Rhiannon appeared to her followers riding a white horse.’

‘Yes, she did. And a purple cloak.’

Dillon looked at her with the same softness she’d seen before, then he turned to the fire. ‘Michael tells me you and he have a common interest in Australian wool?’

‘Our first shipment should arrive in Dublin shortly.’

‘And do you intend to be there to meet it, Miss Mahoney?’

‘I do.’

‘Then London is not the place for you, after all?’

It was the question she had asked herself that morning, as they sailed past spires and steeples and beneath London Bridge. The sight of the city had made her ache for Greystones. Only one more expanse of water, the Irish Sea, now separated her from home. She shrugged. She longed for the shale and the hills, and to see her mother, and even her father, but she was not sure that she’d want to stay. ‘There was a time when I wanted nothing more than to see London and to travel to foreign lands, and now I have, though not in the way I imagined,’ she added, laughing. ‘I’m more settled, but that isn’t to say I would be content to pass the remainder of my days in an Irish village.’

‘You might find that the solution lies in your work, Miss Mahoney. I have always found it so. You are an artist, but you seem to also enjoy the liveliness of the trade.’

He had noticed something about her that she had hardly known herself. Before she could think better of it, she was telling him of her desire to return home with a profession.

‘Desire is one vehicle for the truth,’ he mused with a half smile.

She looked at him with mock-horror. ‘But you are encouraging a woman to have a profession!’

Dillon wasn’t smiling any more, he was looking at her; into her, with intense earnest. ‘You’ve already had the courage to defy convention,’ he said, ‘I liked it in you from the first, and I know that Laurence was in awe of that quality in you. He was very fond of you, as you must know.’ His voice faltered and he stood up and walked to the fire, half turning away from her. Rhia took the opportunity to inspect every line of his profile – his straight nose and long forehead, the colour of his skin, the black hair. He suddenly seemed so familiar a friend, yet she hardly knew him.

‘I can’t pretend that I had no knowledge of Mr Blake’s feelings,’ she said carefully, ‘but my sentiments were not … in accord with his.’

‘I had wondered.’ He hesitated. ‘Laurence was my friend, and I would not say this if he—’

‘If he were alive?’

‘Yes.’

‘What? What would you not say?’

‘That I loved you from the first.’