A Taste for Nightshade (31 page)

Each morning I walked, and each afternoon I painted and read. When he was free of his work, the captain would accompany me on my jaunts; for as soon as I understood that his gallantry was of the harmless, old-fashioned style, I enjoyed his gentle flirtation. He introduced me to the pleasures of promenading along the pretty gravel walks of St James's Park; and treated me to a daily cup of curds, ‘for your good health, madam', at the Milk Stall, where stood a couple of lazily grazing cows.

One February day as we loitered there at our healthful repast, a news-crier ran towards us, followed by a chattering throng. Halting, the crier called his news to gasps of astonishment: the King of France had been murdered by his own people, on that infernal machine, the guillotine. Now the cut-throats of France had declared war on Britain and all of Europe besides. Within days, red-coated militia had been quartered in the city parks, undisciplined lads for the most part. The captain vastly regretted he could not join them, for age allowed him to attack the French only with caustic words.

Amidst these commotions I attended to my small affairs. My new friend showed me where I might buy second-hand clothes, and was made to stand a long while on duty as I rooted amongst the baskets and trestles. With my limited purse I settled on a black woollen mourning gown, not unlike the old-fashioned one I had worn to mourn my mother. I felt this garb to be the surest disguise against troublesome questions, yet I cannot say it fooled the captain. ‘Was it a hasty sort of bereavement?' he asked me one day as we strolled to Golden Square. ‘After that riding accident – at a stile was it, or another time, a turnpike?' His bright eyes shone as he teased me about my differing accounts of my husband's death.

‘I'm afraid it was certainly very hasty,' I confessed with a conspiratorial smile.

I discovered the great sights of our capital, exploring that new institution called the British Museum, where glass cases contain a great many marvels, collected by Englishmen from obscure parts of the world. There I sketched mummified corpses of Egypt, so ancient that those pharaohs lived long before Christ himself. Soon after, I discovered the famed Royal Academy, where I studied the new style in portraits painted with freer, bolder brushstrokes.

Yet if the thick ice of the great shock I had experienced was melting, I cannot claim the detritus of the past was so easily washed away. As I walked I often started at the sight of John Francis across the way or in a passing carriage, only to look a second time and see it was quite another man. On my first arrival I had fancied, like a country bumpkin, that I would find him in the streets as easily as two friends might meet in a small town like Greaves. As the months passed, I began to comprehend the immensity of the capital: spreading parish after parish, a view of church spires and smoking chimneys as far as every distant horizon. John Francis could be anywhere in the city, I told myself, or in Bristol or even America.

Nevertheless, day by day, I eased myself of the drug that my fascination with Michael had been – the nightshade in my veins that had kept me transfixed and insensible. By May-time I breathed in the warm spring air and let unfamiliar sights settle restfully on my eyes. I began to sketch scenes of springtime in the city parks, of greenery and unfurling leaves and new shoots rising in the flowerbeds.

The captain was, indeed, as sharp as a razor. One day, on our usual walk to St James's Park we paused to watch a man taking bets and putting on a lively show using a board, three thimbles and a pea. His trick was to place the pea under one of the thimbles, shuffle them about and invite bets as to which thimble hid the pea. One of the crowd wagered sixpence, then another ninepence. The shuffler goaded him, and soon another fellow made a bet of a whole crown. ‘Done!' shouted the shuffler; and lifted his middle thimble. Lo, the shuffler's face was aghast – for the challenger had won his crown. After some laughter at the thimble-man's folly, he offered the crowd a second wager, admitting that his memory was bad, as he had been up all night. He gave us another display of his thimble-shuffling skills, and this time half-a-dozen men vied to lay even larger bets. The highest bidder was a top-hatted gentleman, who boasted that his eye had never left the thimble, and he was confident of making an easy ten bob.

‘He may as well hand over his purse and save his time,' muttered the captain in my ear.

I raised my brows; but the captain's prediction came true – when the chosen thimble was raised, the pea had astonishingly disappeared, and moved beneath another. Thereafter all the games were won by the shuffler, or the thimble-rigger, as the captain called him.

‘How did you know the outcome?' I asked on our way home.

‘It's a trick as old as time. Seen it in Egypt, seen it in India.'

‘But how is it done? How does the shuffler always place the pea beneath a thimble no one bets on?'

‘Ha, those fellows are as good as conjurors. The trickster's way is to make you see something that was never even there. Think, Mrs Frankland, how can the thimble-rigger be sure to win?'

‘By knowing exactly which thimble the pea is under?'

He laughed. ‘So what is to stop someone else guessing the right thimble? The odds are only one in three. Come – it's the same method for any conjurer or sharper.'

‘I truly don't know. I am poor at guessing.'

‘By the time the bets are laid,' he whispered. ‘All the thimbles are empty.'

‘What? But I have seen the pea go under the thimble!'

‘You've seen it go under – but he flicks it out at the back and palms it. Then later, he flicks it back under while you are distracted. It is all done by tricking your eye to look the wrong way.'

‘But that must take so much practice.'

‘And that is the second way these folk confound the public. You, an honest personage, think it too much trouble to learn such flash-handedness. But look at the thimble-rigger again. How much has he taken this hour? Maybe two pounds already – save for the cut he must give the fellow who won a crown, who is, of course, his accomplice. If he chooses a different place for his table every day, he might earn more than ten pounds a week. So it is worth those hours of practice with the flash-hand technique, wouldn't you say?'

Soon afterwards, the captain was called upon to spend long hours at the Justices' office at Lichfield Street. ‘Perhaps you are a criminal on bail?' I teased.

‘Perhaps I am. Either that, or a habitual seducer of beautiful young widows.'

‘But what is it you do for the Justices? Tell me.'

With some pride, he described their attempts to improve the Watch system and set up an organised band of thief-takers. ‘I am sadly too old to be a member of that band of head-breakers,' he quipped. ‘For I should enjoy nothing more than to clap up a few of these wicked felons. I am merely a watcher. When the thief-takers want to keep an eye on a fellow – or a woman, of course – they do not want their own visages to be remarked upon. So I sit in a tavern all day, or follow a fellow about the docks. In this alone my white hair is an advantage, Mrs Frankland, for with a few different jackets and caps I might pass for any ancient codger.'

‘It sounds dangerous work,' I said – though I was, in fact, wondering how dangerous it was for me to befriend such an upholder of the law.

‘It is true that a number of the thief-takers have been injured or even snuffed out – but I believe that's a fair price to pay for saving so many citizens from the scourge of crime.'

Though at last I grew easier in my mind at Glasshouse Street, my body then chose to betray worrying symptoms. Had I ingested a few grains of Michael's ratsbane after all? In the confusion of that evening, who was to say that both glasses might not have been tainted? Or had Michael been slowly poisoning me since I first met him? The fact was that, since December, both my appetite and bodily courses had been in great disorder. Then, in June of that year, I could no longer ignore the swelling of a tumour. Secretly, I found out the address of a respected doctor. I had little hope of surviving such an illness, and for the first time considered writing to Mr Tully to set my affairs in order. I was absolutely decided; if I should die, Michael must not inherit a penny from me.

Dr Dalrymple was a medical man of the grand type, in a red coat and cauliflower wig. But his manner was kindly enough as he bade me lay down while he prodded the swelling. Then, to my consternation, he smiled and said, ‘Well, Mrs Frankland, it is indeed a tumour of the benevolent type. And I heartily predict you will be delivered of it within a month or two at most.' Astonished, I let my fingers creep down to the taut dome of flesh and experienced a queasy sense of the miraculous.

‘You are happy with the diagnosis?'

‘I am, sir. Only rather confounded by the news.'

All I could think was what a terrible irony it would be for me to bear Michael's child. And also, of course, how foolish I had been. I was still, it seemed, quite stupefied by life, not to have understood the clearest of natural signs.

 

 

The news of the baby changed everything. Michael, however despicable, was my child's father, and I could not allow him to be rid of me, and of his child, so easily. As for his marrying Miss Claybourn, I would see him imprisoned for bigamy if she ever wore that Venice lace. But before I told him about the child, I decided to be more cautious than in the past. Whenever I turned over the tangled events at Delafosse, I always found awkward little knots of confusion. Chiefly, I wanted to know whether Michael was capable of the cruelty Peg accused him of; and if he truly had sent her to the gallows for such a slight crime. Reluctantly, I decided to take the captain into my confidence. We were alone in the downstairs parlour, and the captain was enjoying his evening dram and tobacco by the fire.

‘I need your advice, Captain, as a good friend.'

‘Good advice is often the enemy of friendship,' he quipped. Then, seeing my solemnity, he made a stealthy motion with his pipe for us to go upstairs. When we reached his landing he said in a low voice, ‘We must be very quiet. Otherwise, I fear we may be punished for impropriety. Who knows the vengeance of Mrs Huckle – perhaps a pair of damp sheets, or a pot of cold tea? Hark though, how might we remark the difference?'

I smiled and followed him into his quarters, all as neat as a pin; his few possessions arranged carefully about the room with such exactness they might have been measured with a ruler. There was his pewter tankard, his pipe and tobacco box laid on the table. The walls bore testament to his remarkable career; his red captain's coat hung at the ready, immaculately brushed, with epaulettes and buttons smartly polished. There, too, hung his medal for bravery, laid in a case of leather, his sword shining like a looking glass; and, on the shelf, a pocket pistol, so small it might easily be hid about his person.

‘A useful precaution on certain watching jobs,' he said, nodding at the fine silver craftsmanship of his firearm. I reached out for it, but he shook his head. ‘In case of urgency I always keep it loaded. It's a good piece at short range.'

‘Your wife?' I asked, seeing a delicate miniature of a pleasant, pink-cheeked woman. ‘My Emma,' he said gruffly. ‘The finest wife a man could have. But gone these twenty years, Mrs Frankland. It is a long and lonely wait for us to be re-united. Now, do sit in that armchair, my dear, and tell me what troubles you.'

So I told him as concisely as I could, a true account of my marriage to Michael – of his at first seeming not to care for me, but to care rather for the money he might raise from my land. In even briefer terms, I told him of a confession made by my trusted housekeeper that Michael had recruited her to help him replace me with his paramour. His plan was that they would then marry and share my fortune.

‘This servant. How was she persuaded to carry out your husband's wishes?' He reached for his pipe and lit it with a spill from the fire; a mazy puff of smoke curled before his wise face.

‘This is the nub of it. He had a hold over her,' I whispered. ‘Years before, upon compulsion, she told me she had stolen some money from his brother, and my husband stood as a witness at her trial. She was transported to Botany Bay, but escaped and returned to England. Then, as ill-luck would have it, he recognised her on the streets of Manchester, and used that secret knowledge to terrorise her.'

The captain wrote down Michael's name, and asked me his mistress's name, too.

‘Miss Sybilla Claybourn.'

‘And your servant's name? We might take a look at the court case that drew them together.'

‘Mary Jebb,' I said.

∗ ∗ ∗

Two days later, the captain knocked at my door. I gathered my hat and shawl, and together we took a hackney to Newgate Street. He had found a lawyer, and agreed a fee to examine Mary Jebb's case. We thus arrived at the imposing bulk of Newgate, the prison that so terrorised Peg. Across the way stood the Old Bailey session house, where lawyers processed back and forth in wigs and robes.

The lawyer, Mr Bonamy, eyed me with such apathy that I easily perceived it was only for the captain's sake he had agreed to see me at all. Yet to his credit, a copy of Mary Jebb's case lay before him.

‘The case was first indicted at the Lancaster Sessions,' he pronounced in a tired, sing-song tone. ‘Mary Jebb, spinster, indicted for publishing a false, forged, and counterfeit pound note, knowing it to be such, with intent to defraud. Then, and this is irregular, they admitted a request to be tried at the Old Bailey before a Grand Jury. An expensive decision, given the cost of the lawyer who drew it up.'

‘Why would she want it heard at the Old Bailey?'

‘The jury could be one reason. It would not be the first time a young woman worked upon the hearts of a group of men. And yes, no doubt it was a shrewd move. A betting man would have said there was a greater opportunity of a pardon here, given the imminent departure of the fleet waiting on the Thames, in readiness to sail to Botany Bay.'

I asked if there was any reference in the case to my husband, Mr Michael Croxon. Wearily, he flicked the pages over, scanning the clerk's small hand.

‘Here: Mr Croxon was indeed a witness for the prosecution.'

I glanced at the paper and read:

And so it ran for many pages.

‘And may I ask your opinion of my husband's testimony?'

He scanned it and pinched his nose, then scratched his head beneath his wig. ‘He was a lucid and most providential witness in the box.'

‘So it was his testimony that ensured Mary Jebb was convicted?'

‘Yes, yes. Here. “Verdict: Death by hanging”. He did his duty as a good citizen. But just as they ascended the gallows, she and three other women were extended the Royal Mercy. In other words, her sentence of death was commuted to seven years' transportation. She then waited here at Newgate, in readiness to board the transport ship.'

‘Why was she reprieved?' I asked.

‘For the good of Britain, and for the good of the colony, naturally,' he said carelessly, not looking up. ‘She was certainly fortunate. I see the judge did in fact direct the jury to her previous misdemeanours: an appearance for theft in '87 and, in the previous year, here's another case of fraud, when indicted for impersonating a gentlewoman. That time she was freed on appeal. She must have had generous friends. Hence the death sentence, given her long and invidious career.'

‘I think there must be some mistake,' I said. ‘I doubt this is the same Mary Jebb.'

The lawyer looked at me as if I were an imbecile.

‘Is there a description of the woman's appearance?' the captain asked.

Mr Bonamy found the prison surgeon's description, taken down when she was first imprisoned. ‘“Of above medium height, good figure, red hair, distinguishing features: five ink-dots between thumb and forefinger, left hand.”'

I shook my head. ‘That is Peg – save that I recall no such ink-dots.'

‘It is a common spot for gang marks,' the captain said, ‘for no one will generally notice it.' I looked at my own hand and understand his meaning; for the little fold beside the thumb is a hidden place. ‘It is the sign of a jailbird. The four dots represent the prison cell walls and the fifth the prisoner herself.'

‘“And upon her back,”' continued Mr Bonamy, ‘“an ink engraving of a naked man and woman, viz Adam and Eve beneath an apple tree. Beneath, the motto: ‘The Serpent Tempted Me and I Did Eat'.”'

‘Goodness,' I said, ‘I find that hard to believe. But then I certainly did not inspect her naked back when I employed her.'

I was bewildered. Very well, Michael had been robbed by this Mary Jebb, and had taken a part in her prosecution; but I found it hard to reconcile this tattooed creature with Peg Blissett.

The captain asked, ‘Is it possible that Mr Croxon and Mary Jebb might have had further relations? Might he, for example, have visited her while she awaited transportation?'

The lawyer shrugged. ‘I have no reason to believe so. But the jailer will have an account in the record book. We are quite modern here. Everything is catalogued in ink. Now, to bring matters up to date, I have a Notice here that states this dangerous felon escaped from His Majesty's colony at New South Wales three years past. She was last seen in the company of another felon, a Jack Pierce. The pair are believed drowned somewhere off the coast of New South Wales.' The lawyer looked hard at both of us, and I avoided meeting the captain's eyes.

Boldly, I spoke up. ‘And if such notorious felons were to be apprehended here in England?'

He raised his grey eyebrows and I blushed.

‘It is only a theoretical question. What would the consequence be?'

‘This time no appeal or reprieve would be possible. The death penalty would stand. Such degenerates need to be extinguished. Britain would be well rid of such a wretch.'

∗ ∗ ∗

After our meeting my friend led me to the tavern on the corner, where we drank some strong spirits. I was despondent. ‘I don't know what I'm looking for,' I said. My ten-shilling fee to the lawyer seemed only to have gained Michael great praise – and Peg even greater condemnation.

‘It will do no harm to see the jailer's book now we are here,' the captain replied. ‘I know Mary Jebb and her type.'

His manner annoyed me. ‘Captain, it is my husband we are pursuing. Whatever you menfolk think of Mary Jebb, I believe she is a wronged woman. Women of her class are generally persecuted. She has already suffered brutal punishment.'

‘That's what she told you, is it?' my friend said lightly.

‘A woman's lot is hard, Captain. Yes, she told me she fell among thieves when a young woman. An orphan, too. Yet my religion says that any soul can be redeemed. It is hard for a man to understand, I suppose, but we grew friendly. She was my ally against Michael. That woman saved my life.'

He nodded, slowly; but I hoped his benign expression was not the well-meaning pity it appeared to be. We dined after that, lingering pleasantly over roast fowl and peas. The captain lit his pipe, and I dallied over a pot of tea.

‘Tell me, dear, does your husband admire your skill in painting?' The old fellow blew a smoke ring that drifted up to the blackened ceiling.

‘Michael?' I remembered his looking at my pictures only to scoff at me.

‘No.'

‘Why ever not?'

I was in the habit of speaking very truthfully to the captain; I pressed my fingers to my brow and examined his question. ‘I believe he does not especially care for other people's accomplishments.'

‘Oh,' the old fellow replied, tamping down more tobacco into his pipe. ‘Now why would that be?'

I felt a frown crease my brow. A whole cavalcade of justifications for Michael sprang up in my mind – that he suffered from melancholia, that his parents had not cared for him, that he had been mistreated at school. There were excuses aplenty – but none of them would satisfy a wise old bird like the captain.

‘Because,' I said, not knowing at all what my next words would be … then, suddenly, the phrase bubbled up from nowhere, like a spring rising from the earth. ‘Because now I am no longer with him, I believe he can feel no natural connection with any other soul.' The words resonated in the air, chiming with truth, causing a peculiar shift around me. For a moment my breath caught in my throat and I wondered if I would burst into tears – but instead, I burst out laughing. ‘That is quite miraculous,' I said. ‘That I finally see it, as clear as day.'

The captain leaned back in his chair and stroked his whiskers. ‘When you are young, as you are, my dear, it is easy to dress unworthy characters in grand costumes – to believe them to be noble, charming, or deserving of your self-sacrifice. An old fellow like me has a sharper eye. I judge a person upon their actions, and the actions of that most sensitive organ, the human heart. There is a great deal of flim-flam in the world, and the trick is to see through it.' He leaned forward and fixed me with his bird-like eyes, shining from within a web of wrinkles. ‘You deserve better than that, Grace. A good soul like you deserves to be cherished by a man who respects and loves you.'

The smile left my lips as he spoke. ‘That is difficult,' I said very quietly.

‘I understand. But overcoming difficulties is the price of growing up, my dear. Now what about supping up and putting a brave face upon this visit to Newgate? After all, we might still be home by five o'clock for tea; for they cannot imprison us without a warrant.'

Thus fortified, we crossed the way to Newgate prison; a most oppressive mass of stone, rising above us like a tomb of lost souls. The captain knew the means of entry – namely, to bribe the keeper with another crown. From the moment I passed beneath the Newgate arch, my skin began to itch, and I gagged on the stench; not just of unwashed bodies, but a putrid taint like a long abandoned charnel pit.

We entered a mean sort of office, where an oaf in greasy leather grinned at me with a broken mouth. ‘I am from the Lichfield Street Justice's office,' said my friend, in his most commanding voice. ‘I am instituting an inquiry on behalf of this young woman, and I need to see your Visitors' Book for the years 1787 and 1788.'