False Colors (26 page)

A pleasant, fussy, feminine room—the only indication of a man in the house was a pair of work boots by the door, and they mysteriously disappeared behind drapery while his back was turned. He kept an eye out and so caught the way Millie swept up the pipe and twist of tobacco from the mantle, to deposit it in a basket and draw a flowery cloth over it.

“Or will you have a cup o’ tea? For I heard you was a religious gentleman, and maybe you doesn’t drink anything proper?”
John perched on an overstuffed chair, feeling obscurely threatened by all the frippery, and said, “You are remarkably well informed, Mrs. Shaw. I wasn’t aware my antecedents were so generally known.”
“Oh lor’ bless you, sir,” Mrs. Shaw laughed, and encouraged Millie—a black girl who might have been slave or servant—into the kitchen with a glare. “All the
Britannias
knew everything about you in moments. We took a friendly interest in you, like. Finding you like that.”
“I’m very glad you did. Find me that is.” John relaxed a little. She had, after all, seen him at his worst, and despite the overfeminine surroundings, she was a shipmate and a potential ally. No need to stand on ceremony. “I’ll have tea, if you please.”
“What brings you ’ere then, Lieutenant, as if I don’t already know?”
“Mr. Donwell.”
“Aye, poor lad, it’s a shame. Ain’t it always the way, though. Them what has money and rank behind them gets away with it. The rest of us don’t.”
“Mrs. Shaw, I’ll be honest with you, for I recently became aware that the observations of an intelligent woman are worth those of five men. I am not willing to allow Mr. Donwell to be hanged without a fight, and I believe you may know where I may find ammunition for that battle.”
“Well, now….” Mrs. Shaw beamed until the ruddy light of the fire gleamed off her shiny cheeks. She waited for the tea tray and then poured him a dish, setting it in front of him with great satisfaction. By the time she had repeated the procedure with a cold slice of plum duff he was itching with impatience and unable to scratch. “I do have a couple of names for ou. Me and the rest of the
Britannias
, we don’t want to be known for running no mollyship, and it ain’t our Mr. Donwell what’s bringing us into disrepute. You want to speak to that Dr. Berkeley and Bert Driver. Accuser and prime witness they are. Ginger them and the whole thing falls apart. I’ll do the rest.”

“In there, sir.” Price-Milton gave a self-satisfied grin, jerking his head to the side to indicate the hovel from which emerged the roaring laughter of men at play. “Spending his money like water, and the clothes on his back too.”

They watched the door together for a while until a louder howl and an outbreak of clapping was followed by the lurching exit of a disappointed sailor with a dead cockerel swinging from his hand. Price-Milton sucked in a thoughtful breath through the gap where his front teeth had been lost to scurvy and said, “It ain’t true, what they’re saying about the captain. Is it?”

John paused for a moment, looking the boy up and down, unsure whether this was naïveté or jest. He was a typical midshipman of His Majesty’s navy, with the cheerful air of having already lived through more perils than a landsman might see in a lifetime.
And a slouching habit of standing that will instantly get him caned by any new captain,
John noted idly. “That’s for the court martial to decide, Mr. Price-Milton,” he said, with automatic oppressiveness. But he passed the boy a shilling nevertheless. “Take your hands out of your pockets and keep them out. Lord Lisburn may have tolerated such slovenliness, but the same cannot be said for the rest of the fleet.”

“Aye, aye sir!” Price-Milton gave a huge gappy smile, knuckled his forehead in salute, and darted away, back up the coast road towards Kingston where he could spend his new bounty on rum, or creamed ice, depending on the depravity of his tastes. John spent five minutes screwing up his courage, then elbowed his way into the tiny room.

Bert Driver was indeed inside, sitting on the edge of the pit, with a red cockerel under his arm, examining the steel blades on the bird’s legs. Bert’s ridiculously handsome face was lined with suspicion and anger. His gentlemanly clothes—a dove-colored suit and yellow silk waistcoat—were spattered with blood, and his white stockings covered in a motley of stains, some distinctively foot-print shaped where he’d been kicked. In front of him, on a new handkerchief, his watch and fob lay, with a pile of loose change and a promissory note.

John wiped spilled kill-devil rum and blood from the side of the ring and sat down. “A word with you, Bert.”
“Not now.”
They did not belong to the same ship, so it could be taken for

mere insolence, not mutiny, but still John slammed his hand down on the poor little fortune, leaned forward, letting the three uniform buttons on his coat sleeve make the point:
Do not force me to see you flogged, because I will do so without hesitation or regret.

“I was told you gave yourself airs because of your…standing with Captain Lord Lisburn. I see it’s true. I
will
speak with you, Bert. Here or in private. The choice is yours.”

Bert flinched, his slate blue eyes almost contriving to look pitiable. “Sorry, sir. Didn’t…didn’t recognize you at first.” Getting up, he passed the cockerel to a scrawny fellow in a long leather apron and gauntlets. “Nah, they was on right. He won fair and square. Take the watch and the coin, you’ll get the rest later.”

Wiping the blood from his fingers on to his handkerchief, Bert passed that over too, then walked out to the narrow, dusty street. The smell of sewage came up from the sea, but overhead the first stars poked out their glittering needle points.

Bert was a big shadow, silhouetted against the glimmer of the horizon, and John, his heart hammering, clenched his hand around the hilt of his sword for reassurance, the twisted wires of the grip pleasantly rough against his palm. “This is a strange way to honor the memory of your captain,” he began softly, “by destroying his reputation. Do you not owe him your silence?”

“I don’t owe him anything.” Bert snorted through his nose, scornful, not quite loud enough for a laugh. “Fuckin’ old sod. He got what he paid for.”

“Your transactions were entirely monetary then, no affection involved?” It wasn’t that John had no experience of this frame of thought, but that his opinion of whores had been fixed in his youth. He found the idea of selling something so intimate as one’s own body frightening, and also perplexingly sad.

“Affection?”
Bert did laugh this time, the sound echoing between the lines of poor cottages and warehouses. A dog half way down the street lifted its dripping muzzle from the gutter at the sound, its eyes gleaming gold for a moment before it returned to whatever it was eating. “Hoo! You sound like a preacher. Nah. I’ve expensive tastes, me, and—”

The sidelong look Bert gave him almost made his head ache. The man was so handsome John found himself constantly assuming that he must also be good. It jarred him on a deep, irrational level, to see such a perfect face express such imperfect thoughts. “Dr. Bentley,” Bert said. “But not enough. Why? You here to make a better offer?”

“I’m here to deliver a warning.” John stepped back into the shade of the cock-pit’s roof. It was easier to threaten and blackmail—even in a good cause—in the dark. “Your shipmates are not pleased at having
Britannia
made a laughingstock, and them with her. If you do not withdraw your evidence, they ask me to tell you that you will be next.”

“What?”
“If you light the fuse, Bert, don’t complain if the bomb goes off in your hands. If the
Britannias
can’t hide their shame, they will be forced to expunge it, with zeal, by delivering up every other perpetrator to the noose.” John locked his hands behind him to prevent himself from rubbing the stress from his forehead.
“But I ain’t no sod! I done what I done for money.”
It was John’s turn to laugh, astonished. “I think you’ll find the Admiralty does not make that distinction. And you were never particularly discreet about it. I will have a score of witnesses and a court martial board on hand. If Mr. Donwell dies, the crows will be feasting on your eyes before the month is out.”
Bert growled, put his head down, and crouched in readiness to spring at John, but John slashed out his sword in an arc of starlight and pressed the tip beneath Bert’s chin, proud that even the light on the blade did not tremble. Only he knew he was shaking, inside. Stilling, breathing hard, Bert eased away, his hands spread, clearly aware of how easily John could gut him and walk away, no one the wiser. Men dying of stab wounds in the gutter in this part of town was a nightly, expected occurrence.
“I’m only the messenger,” said John, more gently than he had intended, seeing the other man’s fear. “If you get rid of me, any one of
Britannia
’s officers will bring the charge.” He reached into his pocket, brought out the small pouch of doubloons his prize agent had offered as an advance against his new wealth. This was a touch of his own—Mrs. Shaw being all in favor of the neat threat, undiluted by reward. But John could not bring himself to be easy with that. He could not, in all conscience, see Bert tried for bringing false charges, no matter what he thought of the man. The charges were not false.
Letting the gold chime between his fingers for a moment he threw it into the road by Bert’s feet. Bert’s eyes flicked down and he wetted his lips, but his chin stayed raised, propped by the blade.
“The
Africane,
with a cargo of sugar and rum, sails with the tide to England. I suggest you be on her.”
John sheathed his sword, and Bert picked up the bag, tipping out some of the coins. His face smoothed with a near angelic look of awe. “Sir,” he whispered. “Yes, sir.”

Elated by his success with Bert, John had gone the next morning to call upon Dr. Bentley, and on being informed that the Doctor was at Lady Lisburn’s side, he had swallowed his courtesy and walked up into the hills to try again there. Only to find himself pinned like a butterfly to a card by the glare of a formidable, leather-faced elderly Irish butler in a severe black suit.

I
must
speak with Dr. Bentley. It is a matter of life or death.” “We have too much death of our own in this house.” The but
ler began to push the door closed.
John fished in his pocket for his card case. “At least take—” A woman’s voice from within called, “Let him in, Healy. In
form Dr. Bentley and then you may bring tea to the garden.” So John found himself ensconced beneath a mahoe tree,
shaded by vivid orange flowers, while Lady Lisburn pushed back
the black sleeves of her gown to pour tea into black rimmed cups.
Dr. Bentley, beside him, watched him with narrowed eyes that
looked disconcertingly huge beneath their thick-lensed glasses.
Bentley’s wig was black, and his suit was black. John, in his naval
blue and cream, felt vulgar, as if his mere existence was as impolite as his presence, unspeakable as his mission.
“Lady Lisburn,” he began, “your husband saved my life. If
you have need of anything that I can provide, call on me and it
will be yours.”
Her mouth thinned and she turned her face away for a moment, concealing tears. It lasted mere seconds before she recovered, smiled at him with an expression more melancholy than
agonized. A grief that had already reached resignation, already
come to the tempest’s end, and sailed into calm water. “Bentley
would have me avenge him.”
John sipped his tea, frowned in confusion. “The pirate who
stabbed him, he cut down with his own hand—so I heard. The
man’s long dead. I don’t see how vengeance is possible.” “There was a…an
underlying condition,”
Bentley broke in.
He picked up his napkin, smoothed it, folded it and smoothed it
again, his face growing sourer all the while. “Oh, let me not mince
words. I want to see Lt. Donwell hang. But for him the captain’s
placid life might have continued as it was. There was a trend, perhaps, but he exacerbated it.”
Society had drilled John’s first reaction into him. He turned to
look at Lady Lisburn, concerned for her comfort at discussing
such a subject. “Should we be…?”
She laughed a little bitter chuckle and raised her eyebrows at
him. In mourning, she had left off powder, rouge and paint, the
wrinkles and flaws of her skin cruelly evident.
She must be,
he
thought,
about the same age as Lavinia Deane, but less fortunate in her life.
“Please don’t, lieutenant,” she said. “I have an estate to manage and an angry father-in-law to placate. Pray do not treat
me like a fool merely because I am in petticoats.”
John ate a couple of kickshaws of pastry and raspberries to fill
the moment as he wondered how to proceed. This was far more
complicated than dealing with the likes of Bert, and John knew
himself not to be particularly subtle.
Honesty, then.
“It is about
Lt. Donwell that I came to try and speak to Doctor Bentley. Donwell was my First on the
Meteor
. A good man, a fine sailor. I am
come to beg for the prosecution to be withdrawn.”
“You don’t argue for his innocence?” Lady Lisburn filled up
the tea cups again, the perfection of the bend of her arm, the
music of poured liquid into translucent, fragile porcelain, and the
little smile she produced at the end, all infinitely brave. “I am not a fool either, madam. Nor a habitual liar. But I know
Alfie—forgive me—Lt. Donwell well enough to say that whatever may have happened would have been as much your husband’s doing as his.”
Bentley stiffened with anger beside him, but Lady Lisburn
smiled an oddly fond, doting smile. “Three quarters Farrant at
least,” she said. “He was, God forgive him, never very apt to restraint.” She held up a hand, forestalling the doctor’s indignation.
“Well, he wasn’t. Had he been a normal man he’d have had a
string of mistresses and no one would have thought the worse of
him. It isn’t fair. It honestly isn’t.”
“It is not fair to you either,” John said, seizing the tide. “If Mr.
Donwell goes on trial, so by necessity does your husband. A mere
rumor will become an attested fact, a scandal.” He gave Bentley a
milder look than he intended—it proving impossible to intimidate
a man who had seen him raving. “Would you really bring the humiliation, the shame of a public trial on your lady, her children? I
thought it was your place to heal wounds, not to inflict them.” Taking off his glasses, Bentley polished them with shaking
hands, his face as white as his shirt.
“Yes,” murmured Lady Lisburn, “why?” She reached out and curled her hand around Bentley’s wrist. He stilled at once. “I didn’t think you loved him more than you loved me. But why else
would you do this to avenge him, knowing it will ruin me?” Pulling his hand away with an oath, Bentley shot to his feet
and strode away, his glasses still on the table. A hundred feet away
he stumbled on a molehill, caught his balance and stood, head
down, mumbling angrily beneath his breath.
Rubbing his eyes, Bentley straightened his shoulders and returned to lean heavily on the back of his chair. “My work,” he
confessed. “My life’s work. I was so close to understanding, to
finding a cure. So close! And then
he
came along and ruined it.
Wasted! All those years! All those years of biting my tongue and
bearing with the man’s intolerable rudeness. Of telling you to
hope and watching you die a little more each day. Impatient years
in which men were being hanged by the score, whom I could
have saved had I just perfected my cure….”
As he sank into his seat, head in hands, the handle of John’s
cup fractured between his fingers. The cup fell, shattered on the
ground, warm tea spraying over his ankle.
A cure!
“A cure?” He
dragged his mind back to the present, stood aside while a servant
picked up the pieces and wiped down the table. “You talk of cures
as if this were a disease. But if that’s so, how can you hang Mr.
Donwell for merely being ill?”
Silence for a moment, while a footman in what seemed, now,
heartless turquoise livery, placed the tea things on a tray, replaced
the spattered cloth and John’s broken cup, tidying the mess away.
Bentley returned to creasing his napkin, eyes following the motions of his hands, with his mouth set. The sun had swung past the
tree, and Lady Lisburn opened her parasol, the green silk covered with a layer of black crepe.
A cure!
John tried to imagine what that would mean. The
thought had dark roots. It crept out like a vine, grasped and
pulled, threatening to choke him. It didn’t feel like hope. Out from the house ran a young boy, his white blond hair startling against his funereal clothes, and a girl who must be his sister, her face uncertain beneath its careful dressing of ringlets. Both stared at John with curiosity, before turning away to the ornamen
tal garden to throw stones into the fishpond.
“The Duke,” Lady Lisburn’s hand tightened on the handle of
her parasol, “their grandfather, gave very particular instructions
to Farrant. ‘No scandal,’ he said, or the title would pass to Farrant’s brother. The title is gone as it is, but I fear for my children’s
inheritance if you press this charge, Bentley. You would not do
that to them, or to me, would you?”
Bentley’s mouth pulled itself into a firmer line. He picked his
hat from the ground beside his chair, screwed it firmly onto his
head and, rising, bowed with formal, chilly precision. “Forgive
me, Isabella, I promised to visit the hospital. They are overwhelmed.”
Do something. Stop him
.
Make him understand!
John gripped
the edge of the table, half rose, and could not think of what to do.
Neither threat nor bribery would help, nor could he offer either
in front of the lady. And persuasion had failed. It was Lady Lisburn who breathed in deep, her black silk fichu tightening over
her breasts, her eyes hurt and hopeless. “You will think on what
I said?”
“I will, my Lady. Good day to you. Lieutenant.”
They watched him depart together. John rubbed his forehead,
his fingertips coming away pale with spilled wig powder and
smelling of orange flower water. Lady Lisburn raised her fan to
cover her face. “You see, I am on your side.”
“Thank you, Madam.”
“I will talk him round.”
“I am very obliged.”
“Is he your lover, this Mr. Donwell?”
John almost broke another cup, snapped out of despair into
astonished embarrassment. “No, madam!” he exclaimed and
found himself half smiling despite it all. “Just my friend. My very
good friend.”
“I had no idea Bentley could be so single-minded.” She lowered her fan and smiled back, wearily, her eyes straying to the
silhouettes of the children, who stood together with hanging
heads, surrounded by the water’s silver glitter. “But Farrant too
loved nothing more than his work. It must be a man’s peculiarity.
A failing of the whole sex. He causes others to depend on him,
desires it, enforces it, but chafes beneath the responsibility. For
his own fame always takes first place in his heart.”
The sting of this observation passed John by in its revelation.
So Bentley mourned for his lost life’s work, his fame, his fellowship of The Royal Society, all killed along with his captain. But if
he could be distracted from his loss; given new hope? With unexpected fondness, John thought of Sweet Bess, whose mouth
had been full of the taste of rotting tooth. Surely he, and any
number of his regular clientele, would be happy to exchange information for the care of a properly qualified doctor? “Give me
a sheet of paper, if you please,” he asked. “I will write down an address for Dr. Bentley where he may find as many new subjects to
experiment upon as he could possibly wish for. He will be too
busy for vengeance then.”