London in Chains (30 page)

‘He said nothing of this to
me
!'

‘How could he, while you were locked away? I—'

‘He might have sent a note! He . . . I . . .' She didn't know how to go on, and at last finished plaintively, ‘I'm not to come back to it?'

‘Forgive me!' said Mary again. ‘I hoped it would not be a heavy blow, but I see it is.' Her pocked cheeks reddened. ‘We needed the money.'

Of course she did. Mary had been struggling ever since her husband was arrested. The family's finances had improved only slightly since his release from Newgate: he earned small sums from writing or copying, while Mary set type and stitched pamphlets for one small printer or another. The Overtons had children to support: of
course
Mary had leapt at the offer of well-paid work on
The Moderate
.

‘Mr Mabbot said he would have employed me at the first,' Mary continued, shamefacedly, ‘only he feared that the children might distract me from the work – but now Richard's taken on some of the writing of the newsbook. That tipped the balance.'

‘Your husband is writing for
The Moderate
?' Lucy asked, still bewildered. ‘When did that start?' Even as she asked it, she saw that it was a natural development: Richard Overton was one of the Levellers' most gifted writers, and
The Moderate
had become a Leveller newsbook.

She had been numb inside since Thomas died: now she was filled with an agonizing mixture of rage and despair. Even so, she couldn't unleash that rage on Mary – how could she blame her for taking work when it was offered? ‘Why did Gilbert Mabbot say nothing of this to
me
?' she demanded instead. ‘Why did he leave
you
to tell me – at my uncle's burial?'

‘Perhaps he did not wish to intrude upon your grief,' said Mary uncertainly.

‘Aye, and perhaps he knew he was playing me a foul trick and feared to do so to my face!'

She'd spoken loudly, and several mourners looked round at her in shocked surprise. Mary made hushing gestures with her hands.

‘I have lost everything!' Lucy howled. ‘My home, my savings, and now my place as well – and that
cozening hypocrite
Gilbert Mabbot didn't even dare tell me so to my face!'

Agnes, scowling, marched over. ‘For shame! Will you shout thus at the
church gate
, and your uncle just in his grave! For shame!'

Lucy wanted to scream and hit her: only the consciousness that she
was
at her uncle's burial held her back. She heaved a deep breath and pressed cold hands against her eyes. The tears flooded hot against her fingers, and she drew another choked breath, then another.

Will Browne hurried over to her in concern. ‘What's this about losing your home?' He glanced at Agnes. ‘Oh!'

Agnes would stay with her daughter and son-in-law in Stepney: the house in Southwark would be let. The new lessees would never allow the owner's niece rent-free lodging in the loft. Lucy had realized
that
the evening of the day Thomas died, and she hadn't been surprised when Agnes confirmed it in a note she sent round the following morning:

Browne turned to Agnes. ‘You cannot mean to turn our Lucy out into the street!'

Nathaniel Cotman, Thomas's son-in-law, hurried over. ‘Of course she will not be turned out into the street!' he said with a stern glance at his mother-in-law. ‘We have writ to her father, and I expect he will . . .'

‘I will
never
go back to Hinckley!' Lucy cried vehemently.

‘Yes, you will, miss!' hissed Agnes furiously. ‘You will go, or I will have you taken up as a common
thief
! There were
sixteen shillings and eightpence
in the shop till when I left the house, and when I looked this morning it was all gone!'

‘Aye!' Lucy shot back. ‘And every penny of it went on medicine for my uncle! You foul greedy woman, do you grudge
that
cost? Christ Jesu preserve me from malice and slander!'

Agnes lunged forward and slapped her so hard she staggered. Mary Overton caught Lucy's arm to steady her, then hugged her tight. Lucy struggled to get loose again, blind and breathless with fury. ‘Peace, peace!' Mary whispered, holding on. ‘Don't shame your uncle!'

Lucy stopped struggling, and Mary let her go. Nat Cotman and Hannah, meanwhile, were holding Agnes, who was bright red in the face and crying. The rest of the mourners were staring at her, aghast. ‘Forgive my mother!' Hannah begged the company at large. ‘She's distraught.'

‘You impudent inky strumpet!' shouted Agnes. ‘You
provoked
me to it! I am a decent God-fearing woman, but you would provoke an angel!'

Lucy turned around and walked off, blind with tears.

She went back to the house: she presumed that she could stay there until someone was found to rent it, though how she would keep warm and fed she didn't know. She was flat out of money. The medicines for Thomas had in fact cost
eighteen
shillings: she'd had to raid her savings to supply the difference. There'd been bills to pay after Thomas died, too: all the local tradesmen had come round to the house wanting payment for coal and bread and butcher's meat. She'd tried to send them to Nat Cotman in Stepney, who would inherit the estate and all its debts, but they'd been insistent, unwilling to wait until the estate was settled, doubly unwilling to deal with strangers across the river. Lucy had been numb and weary, and nearly out of coal for the fire: she'd given in and paid them until she ran out of savings. She'd been careful to take a note of what she paid and to get receipts, but she was bitterly certain that with Agnes involved it would be a long time before she saw any of that money, if she ever saw it at all.

She let herself into the house and went to sit in the kitchen. Even that room was cold now: the fire had been banked down to almost nothing, leaving only a ghostly residual warmth in the bricks of the chimney. Susan was still at the churchyard, and the house was deserted. Thomas's empty bed stared at her: she and Susan had stripped off the stained sheets and boiled them, but hadn't carried the mattress up the stairs again. Lucy sat down on the floor with her back against the chimneypiece and hugged her knees.

She had come to London to make a new life for herself. Through hard work, daring and luck she'd succeeded – and now that new life had shattered around her, just like the old one. She remembered Thomas saying that her mother should never have married her father, and she wished with sudden vehemence that she hadn't and that she herself had never been born. She pressed her hands to her mouth to stifle a howl and began to rock back and forth, whimpering.

There was a knock on the door. She ignored it, but it sounded again. She got up angrily and went to open it.

Mary Overton stood there with Will Browne and Liza, all three of them looking worried. ‘Might we have a word?' asked Will, taking his hat off.

Lucy made an inarticulate noise, wiped at the tears with her sleeve and gestured them in.

They sat down in the cold parlour. ‘I am sorry to have cost you your place,' said Mary cautiously.

Lucy made another noise and wiped her face again. ‘No blame to you. You've children to feed.'

‘It's true, five shillings a week are a mercy,' agreed Mary, ‘but—'

‘
Five
shillings?' asked Lucy. ‘He only paid me
four
!'

Mary sniffed. ‘Small wonder, then, that he went first to you and not me.'

The sly meanness jolted Lucy out of her despair. She snorted, wiped her face again and looked around for a rag on which to blow her nose. Liza got up, handed her a handkerchief, then hugged her. Lucy muttered inarticulate thanks.

‘I'd be glad to make what amends I can,' said Mary. ‘I can offer you a place to stay, at least until you find other work. In the ordinary way you'd want to stay with your kin, but your aunt seems a most ill-natured woman . . .'

‘She's the most cursed shrew that ever was!' said Will Browne sourly. He seemed to have forgotten his pity for her.

Mary nodded curtly. ‘So it would be better if you lodged with friends.'

Friends.
Lucy wasn't on her own: her new life might survive this blow. She could go to some other, warmer house and be welcome. The thought set off fresh tears, and she dabbed helplessly at her eyes with Liza's handkerchief. ‘Thank you! I should like that very much!'

‘We have but the two beds,' Mary admitted. ‘I sold the other while Dick was in Newgate. You would have to share with the children.'

‘In this house I shared with the maid.' She blew her nose again, glancing round them. ‘She's out of a place, too – Susan, I mean: my uncle's maid. She well deserves another one. She's a good, kind, hard-working girl, and faithful. She stayed with me to nurse Uncle Thomas while Aunt Agnes fled across the river.' Her lips curled with anger.

‘I will ask among my friends and relations,' promised Mary. ‘Indeed, I will mention it at the next council meeting! I am sure we will find another place for your uncle's maid, and for you, too!'

Browne cleared his throat. ‘In the meantime, I can find you some piecework with a bookbinder. It won't pay what Mabbot did, but half a loaf's better than none if a man be a-hungry.'

There was the sound of the shop door opening, and they looked round to find Nathaniel Cotman coming in, with Susan on his heels. He stopped short when he saw the gathering in the parlour. Lucy noticed, with a stab of resentment, that he did not take off his hat: he now considered himself master of the house. She remembered with a shock that now that was exactly what he was.

Mary Overton got to her feet. ‘Sir,' she said, ‘I came to offer Lucy room in my house, since it seems she is not welcome in yours.'

Cotman's face reddened. ‘She is welcome in my house until her own kin come to fetch her home!' He frowned at Lucy. ‘You
have
kin
, Lucy Wentnor; you have a father, and a brother who was anxious to take you home last summer! There was no call for you to shame us in that ungodly fashion, pretending we would turn you out into the street!'

Lucy looked him in the eye. ‘I pretended no such thing, sir: it was what others concluded from your half-heartedness. To say you'll keep me until I can be fetched back to Hinckley can scarce be reckoned a
welcome
! And I think even that much would be denied, were it my aunt's to dispose of me.'

‘You owe your aunt a duty of respect and obedience,' said Cotman disapprovingly.

‘Sir, I have ever tried to pay it! My reward was to be termed a thief before all those people, and then struck when I rejected that foul false name! Shall I show you the receipt, sir, for what I paid the apothecary? And what does it say of
her
, that before her husband was even buried, the first she was back Southwark since his death, she came creeping back without my knowledge to
look in the till
for the money that was left there?'

Cotman blinked. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, realizing that, yes, Agnes
must
have done just that, to know that the money was gone. ‘Show me the receipt,' he said at last.

‘Sir, that is unjustified!' protested Will Browne, getting to his feet. ‘You insult your cousin's honesty, without the least cause!'

Lucy gestured for him to sit down again and went into the kitchen to fetch the receipt. She'd written her expenditure out fair on the last page of her
Moderate
account book, and she'd got the tradesmen to sign or make their marks for what she gave them. Cotman studied the carefully labelled columns, surprised and wary.

‘You may
ask
the apothecary and the tradesmen, sir, what I paid them,' Lucy said coldly. ‘Their accounts will tally with mine.'

‘You've spent twice what was in the till,' said Cotman.

‘Aye. The tradesmen came with bills, sir; I tried to send them to you, but they would not go. I was obliged to spend my own savings to satisfy them.'

Cotman closed the account book with a sigh. ‘Well. I will repay it.'

‘And, I hope, make it public that I am no thief!'

Cotman waved that away irritably. ‘I will speak the plain truth: that you spent the money honestly in care for your uncle, but Agnes did not know that and, in her grief and distraction, she jumped to a false conclusion. She mistook you, Lucy, no more than that. Now, will you come back with me to Stepney and live with us peaceably until your family come to take you home?'

‘I will not, sir! Mrs Overton has done me the kindness of offering me lodging, and Mr Browne can find me work. You do not wish to be burdened with me, and I have no wish to burden you!'

He gave her a stern glower. ‘That is a very saucy answer! I am the head of the household now—'

‘Sir, where I am concerned that title belongs to my
father
, not to you! If my father commands me home, I will obey him – but he has no wish to have me in his house again, and that is no fault of mine, as you well know!'

As soon as she said it, she saw that he
didn't
know: he stared at her in confusion. Susan, who'd kept nervously silent until then, touched his arm. ‘That's true, sir. Paul Wentnor came without his father's blessing, because a cousin had frighted him with stories of Mr Stevens' wild Leveller friends.'