Hugh Kenrick (51 page)

Hugh shrugged. “Father will know where to find me.” He shut the coach door and walked away. In the distance and growing dusk, he could see lamps being lit between the columns under the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral ahead. He walked rapidly in the direction of Quiller Alley.

*  *  *

“You cannot assign any blame to me for this scandal!” said the Earl to his brother that evening in his study. “This incident is entirely of his own manufacture!”

“I have not assigned blame to you, dear brother,” replied Garnet Kenrick.

“It is disgraceful! First, his association with this freethinking, libertine rabble, and then, his disruption of their deserved punishment! I told you, more than once, Garnet, that you were too coddling with him and his ways! Did you know about these Pippins?”

“No.”

“God, I wish that puppy had thrashed him at Eton! You would have had a better son today!”

Garnet Kenrick narrowed his eyes menacingly. “I would have a simpering wastrel, and he and the late Marquis would have been fast friends.”

The Earl sat at his desk, and felt thoroughly in command. His brother paced back and forth before him, hands behind his back, hearing only half of what his brother was saying. The news the Earl had given him left him numb.

“Perhaps,” said Basil Kenrick. “But he would be obedient! Have you any notion of the damage that news of this could cause us in Lords?”

“It had not occurred to me.”

“No, it wouldn’t! We would be ostracized there, and in society! There go the Kenricks, breeders of fugitive rabble! Friends of plotting regicides! Why, we would be so despised that we would not be invited to attend a whore’s ruelle! Why? Because your precious son must be allowed his precious books and his brain-steamed friends!” The Earl snorted once. “Well, you can count the Brunes out, dear brother, once they hear of this! They would no more want him in their family than they would a…fishmonger’s son!”

“No doubt,” remarked the Baron absently.

“That rotund fool Pannell is the only other person who saw it! He called on me to tell me so. I nearly thrashed him for the impertinence!” The Earl paused. He wished his brother would stop pacing. “It was necessary to purchase his silence, too.”

“And how did you manage that?”

“I promised him discounted shares in your blasted bank.”

Garnet Kenrick stopped pacing and faced his brother. “You had no right to promise him such a thing.”

“Don’t speak to me of rights, dear brother!” Suddenly the Earl’s eyes grew brilliant, and the madness that had seized him in the afternoon welled up in him again. He rose and leaned forward over his desk, his hands balled into fists that rested on the baize blotter propping up arms stiff with self-control. “I do not ever wish to see your son again, Garnet, nor ever hear his name mentioned in my presence again! He has disgraced this family for the last time! Disown him, or send him to the Continent, to Italy, or the West Indies! I don’t care where! Just remove him, get him out of my sight!”

“Remove him?”

“Before I harm him with my own hands!”

“Why should I banish my son from my own and Effney’s lives?”

“You will do it, or I will tell him about the Lobster Pots, and how much he owes to the corruption he deplores, the dear boy!” The Earl stood to his full height. “Perhaps I should tell him! The pure saint would likely drop dead from sorrow and dismay! Then I would be rid of him!”

Garnet Kenrick raised his hand to slap his brother in the face. Basil Kenrick saw the desire, and smiled, pleased that he had driven his brother to this. He moved his face closer, daring his brother to do it.

The Baron narrowed his eyes and lowered his hand. “You overstep your privilege, dear brother.” He turned and left the room, knowing that his brother was right.

*  *  *

It was late when the Baron called on his son in his room on Cutter Lane. The father was resolute but resigned; the son, guarded, distant, and tired. The Baron asked him for the whole story. Hugh told him everything, beginning with the night he rescued Glorious Swain from Brice Blissom and the Mohocks, and ending with his own unsolicited rescue by Dogmael Jones.

“I see,” said the Baron. He was quietly astounded by the quantity and variety of his son’s adventures.

“What is to be done?” asked Hugh.

Garnet Kenrick shook his head. “I have not yet decided.” He glanced around the room. “But—you will go home, to Danvers, and await me.” He spoke now with disorganized thought. “I will interrupt my stay here, and also return.” He paused. “Your uncle is near to throttling you, Hugh, with his bare hands. There is no placating him. And, well, in a sense, he has a right to be…outraged. This is a serious matter. Your mother was in tears, not because of what you had done, but because she is afraid for you. As am I. Even if you stayed here,” he said, gesturing to the room, “you would be in, well, danger.”

After a moment, Hugh nodded. “I know it.”

They were silent for a while. The Baron, seated across from Hugh at the window, espied a pair of books on Hugh’s desk, sitting atop some notebooks. It was a copy of
Hyperborea
. “Where did you find that?” he asked, nodding to the volumes.

“It was Mr. Swain’s,” said Hugh. “He left it to me…before he died.”

“I see. What kind of fellow was he, this Mr. Swain?”

“Like an elder brother.” Hugh looked at his father. “They were all good men, Father. The best men I have ever known. They were alive. And now they are dead, or condemned to work as slaves with brutes, for brutes, for men who wield whips, not wisdom.” He glanced out the window. “I shall hate England for what it has done to them.”

“Do not hate England,” said the Baron. “We are England.”

“I shall hate the corruption that permeates it, the corruption of men who fear what my friends were…men who could never be what they were…”

Garnet Kenrick glanced away, as though wounded. He leaned over and touched his son’s face. “You have been hurt. Have you seen a physician?”

“No,” said Hugh, passing a finger over the cuts and bruises. “These will heal.”

The Baron sat back. “As will, I hope, your soul, Hugh.”

“It is very strange, Father,” said Hugh. “Mr. Worley was on the jury that indicted my friends, yet he is somehow blameless, and I cannot hate him. And Jones, the barrister, lost the case, and I hold him faultless. They were dupes of something I cannot yet name, something that is more insidious than corruption.”

His father winced again at the word. He sighed. “I am certain that you will someday find a word for it.” He shook his head. “Hugh, I can’t say whether I am ashamed of you, or proud of you. I know only that this entire matter has your…stamp on it.” He rose and stood over his son, and caressed his face. “You are an exasperating burden to your mother and me, but we would not wish you to be other than what you are, and have been always, it seems… We knew from the first that if we attempted to force you in a conventional direction…as your uncle wished, and still wishes…we should kill you, or maim you somehow… We could never bring ourselves to do that… You are something more than what we ever expected or could explain, though we do not know what it is… We have not known how else to assist you, or guide you, other than what little we have done… My son, we are sorry for you, and concerned for you, and glad, and content…all at the same time… Please, do not regard that as cruelty, or indifference, or neglect…”

Hugh stood up, and, for the first time ever, embraced his father. “I never thought that, Father, and I am grateful to you both…”

Garnet Kenrick experienced a violent tangle of emotions—among them, gratitude. He patted his son’s back, then held him away, not because he objected to or was uncomfortable with the display of affection, but because, secretly, he did not feel worthy of it. For a moment, his brother’s threat flashed through his mind.

With a reminder to Hugh that he would settle his rent with Mr. Rickerby, have his things in the room packed, and a caution not to speak of the pillory incident to Mr. Worley in the morning, Garnet Kenrick took his leave. It was only when he was in the hackney on the way back to Windridge Court that he remembered his chief purpose for visiting his son, which was to rebuke him for not thanking his uncle for purchasing his release. But when he had entered Hugh’s room, he saw a man, and not just a son, and that purpose suddenly seemed churlish and irrelevant, and he forgot it. He talked with his wife late into the night about Hugh, about his brother, and about what must be done.

T
WO DAYS LATER
, H
UGH
K
ENRICK ARRIVED IN
D
ANVERS BY COASTAL PACKET
. His last view of London was from an inn coach bound for Canterbury and Folkestone. He looked back at the city with a pained wistfulness, which combined a regret for having to leave it, and relief that he was escaping a nightmare. He did not know if he would ever see it again, or want to see it again. He was once its master; he had done great things there, splendid things. Now it was spurning him for those very reasons. He did not feel disgraced. He felt wronged.

Yet nothing had happened to him. He knew that his exclusion from sharing the Pippins’ punishment was to become his own pillory, just as Swain had predicted. He felt like a doomed man, a banished renegade, as unwelcome as a band of cutthroat highwaymen.

Owen Runcorn and the staff of servants were surprised to see Hugh arrive in the merchant’s sulky he had hired to bring him from Poole. As Runcorn unpacked his three valises, Hugh briefly explained his presence to the major domo, then promptly retired. He slept for three hours, and awoke late in the afternoon. Runcorn brought him tea and biscuits, and some of the London newspapers that had come by the post. Hugh read through these, and in one saw a cartoon picturing William Pitt and the Duke of Newcastle as a man and woman quarreling over their marriage contract, the both of them being offered inducements and strenuous and contradictory advice by other political caricatures.

The cartoon gave Hugh an idea. He found a pencil and a sheet of drawing paper, and began to sketch the members of the Society of the Pippin. It consoled him that he could at least preserve their likenesses. It was the only memorial he could think of giving them. He smiled for the first time in days.

By early evening, he had drafted the figures, assembling them all on one sheet of paper. There was Tobius, dapper-looking with the Society’s silver apple-ornamented cane. There was Steven, with a violin. There was Claude, with his ever-present clay pipe. There was Elspeth, looking over his bifocals. There was Abraham, looking pensive. There was Muir, smiling back at him.

And there was Mathius, whom he set apart from the others, his back turned, walking away, his head turned to glance furtively over his shoulder, a petulant scowl on his face, and a copy of
Twenty Moral Fables
in his hand, the title visible.

Beneath each figure he wrote the name, club name, and profession of the members, and over them he inscribed, “The Society of the Pippin. Convened at the Fruit Wench Tavern, the Strand, London. 1756. Betrayed to the Crown by Mathius, for a fizzle of fame and security. Long Live Lady Liberty!”

He looked at his handiwork for a long time. He paid one of his father’s workmen to frame it.

*  *  *

The next morning he called on Reverdy Brune. She gasped when a servant admitted him into the family’s drawing room. “Hugh! What are you doing here?” She put a hand to her mouth when she came closer to him and saw his face. “Hugh! What happened to you?”

“Stones hit it,” he said simply.

“Why…?”

“Because I threw them back.”

“When…where?”

“A few days ago, at the Charing Cross pillory.”

“I don’t understand.”

They sat down together on a couch. Hugh said, “Some friends of mine were convicted of an offense against the Crown. I tried to defend them from a mob.”

“Were you arrested?”

“Briefly.” Hugh paused. “I will not be returning to London, Reverdy, not for a long time. My father is sending me away. Perhaps to Leyden, or Edinburgh.” He grimaced. “Away from my uncle.”

“Hugh…!”

“We may not see each other for a year or so.” Hugh took one of her hands. “I must tell you this before your parents hear it first, and before you hear it from them. It may affect things between us.”

“How could it?”

“That will be for you to decide.” Hugh smiled. “What I feel for you, Reverdy, will never change. What you feel for me, I do not think could
change either. I wanted you to know, to hear it from me, so that you may judge for yourself.”

Reverdy leaned over and kissed him lightly. “Let us walk in the garden.”

As they walked arm-in-arm among the flowers and hedges, Reverdy asked, “Who were these friends, Hugh?”

He told her about the Society of the Pippin, how he had met its members, what had happened to them, and why. He finished by saying, “I will be leaving on the command of my uncle, with whom, I believe, Brice Blissom had much in common. He has threatened my life. My parents have resolved to move out of our house here. There is a vacant one in the town that is owned by the family, and they will stay there until a new place is built for them, on the other side of our grounds. They are more intimately tied to my uncle than I could ever permit myself to be.” He sighed. “Your parents? Well, I don’t know how they will now view a marriage between us.”

“I don’t think it would make a difference to them what you did, or what your uncle does.”

Hugh looked at her. “You mean, it should not make a difference. But it may.”

After a moment, Reverdy nodded in concession. “Yes, that is what I meant.” She stopped to face him. “Hugh, why can you not reconcile with your uncle?”

Hugh shook his head. “It is not possible, ever. If it were possible, it would be only at grave risk to myself. And then you may not want to know me, or marry me. I would not want to know myself. In the end, I would grow to be like him. But—I would not do it. I could not do it.”

Reverdy frowned. “Then I think he should make his peace with you! Pardon me for saying this about his lordship, your uncle, but I don’t believe it would cost him anything! He is a vain, empty, pompous…fool! There! I said it! Everyone says so! He would add something to himself, if he apologized to you…and let you be. I would think better of him. Everyone would.”