The Devil's Mask (3 page)

Though Oni rubs her sides, crouching over the fire of her panic, there is no warmth to be had in the cellar. She shivers in the dark. The crack of light above the door has long since disappeared, leaving cave blackness, a blinding nothingness.

She listens for the other girls. Both are sleeping. Abeni draws deep, regular breaths, waves on a distant shore. Idowu fights a more ragged battle with the damp, underground air. From time to time one of them moves on the straw. The outside noise, which filtered into the hole during the day, is gone now, apart, that is, from the distant song of the bird. It starts, and stops. A bird singing at night is wrong. Oni shivers again, draws her knees to her chest and stands up slowly. She puts her arms out in front of her and, shuffling with the chain, sleepwalks the few paces to the opposite wall.

Her fingers find a hardness, rough as bark, running with cold sap. Wet bricks. The sap tastes of iron when she licks it. Everything about the hole is damp. It has a wet-fur smell, unpleasant, but nothing like the putrid stench of the ship.

Why build a wall underground?

Oni digs her fingernails into her thigh as a punishment because that is a question and she must not ask questions. If you make the mistake of looking for answers, you go mad. She saw that happen so often below deck it became boring. Didn't they realise? Questions are as pointless as days, hours and minutes.
Better to navigate heartbeat by heartbeat, blink by blink, breath by breath.

There is a cough, followed by a shuffling sound as Idowu shifts in her sleep. She will die soon. They all will, but Idowu will be first, because of the wet air. Her lungs can't cope with it; she is coughing up bits of them in protest. No, Idowu's only hope is in following Ayo soon. Again Oni digs her fingers into her thighs.

Breathe in, breathe out. At least that is possible. During the first crossing the air in the hold was so thick that at times she thought she was suffocating. She feared she would choke to death as others around her did. A gap of just three hand-spans separated the boards they lay upon from those above their heads. Here she can stand up, walk these few paces even, right to the end of the chain. Oni bends to adjust its grip on her ankle, then picks up the first links and follows them to their fixing on the wall. The hoop of metal through which the chain passes is as thick as her wrist, the bolt attaching it to the wall is as big as her closed fist. Where do they think she will run? Oni feels her thigh burn and then glow dully with the punishment of another pinch, but it is no use, the next thoughts tumble through her head regardless. So strong a chain cannot be explained by her worth to these devil people; it is instead a warning of how hard they know she might fight to get away if she understood the worse terror that lies ahead.

The paper trail confirmed my suspicions: the Western Trading Company had underpaid import duties and shirked its share of the port fees. Having re-sequenced the file chronologically, I worked my way forwards from the first recorded voyages in which the Company had invested, through to the ships they owned outright, all the while setting declared cargo against duties and fees. The columns did not tally. Since the majority of the Company's shareholders were also members of the Merchant Venturers, who owned the docks and levied the fees, the merchants had in effect been cheating themselves, which … I flicked through more receipts, stifling a yawn … more or less amounted to cheating nobody at all.

Voices filtered into my office from the landing. Carthy and his daughter Anne, reciting the alphabet together, a prelude to her reading lesson. Though she is laughably young – and a girl – Carthy is fanatical about this daily ritual. He likes to joke that my scepticism is understandable; one day Anne will inherit the practice, making her my employer. With his customary contrariness, Carthy led by mis-example.

‘P.I.G. spells HORSE!'

‘No, no, no!'

I stiffened in my seat, a new document before me.

‘What then? DRAGON? HALIBUT? I can't make it out.'

‘Pig!' Anne shrieked.

I spread the paper flat upon my blotter. The name upon it did not change. Nor did the figures. Michael Bright, my father, a Western Trading Company member these last two years had, ten months ago, made a payment of two hundred and twelve pounds, nine shillings and four pence, to settle the Company's unpaid balance of dock fees and import duties.

‘M.O.O.N.'

‘That's not a word.'

‘Yes it is, Daddy!'

‘No it's not. It's the sound a cow makes.'

I totted up the figures. The remittance, dated 13 December 1808, cleared the substantial deficit owed by the Company at that time. Which … was a relief, wasn't it? A number of Western Trading Company ships had docked since then, including the
Spirit
, the
Good Hand
, and the
Ranger
this summer, and there were still sums outstanding in relation to them, but the Company would no doubt clear those further debts too, when approached. The receipt detailing the payment made by my father suggested as much, didn't it? I was cross-checking the figures when Carthy, lesson complete, appeared in my doorway.

‘Early start. But it'll take more than such grandstanding diligence to pull the wool over my eyes.'

I reported my findings.

‘Right. So they still owe money.'

‘Yes, but it looks like they'll pay, as I say –'

‘And I look like I might increase your wages one day, but I wouldn't count on it.'

‘That said –'

Carthy's brows dipped, cutting me off. ‘I doubt the Dock
Company consider it good enough for merchants to remunerate them as and when they feel like it.'

Carthy was right, of course, but his objection still rankled. This aspect of the law, the pernickety bit, in seeming so wilfully to ignore the bigger picture, lowers my spirits. Time and again I've heard Carthy's mantra: ‘detail is the Devil's mask'. I know he's right. On a good day I feel equipped to penetrate the veil. On a bad day it blinds me. My shoulders slumped.

‘Come now,' Carthy's tone softened. ‘You've done what was asked of us. If these are your findings, so be it. We'll report them to Mr Orton and he can decide what to do. Who knows, he may even be of your persuasion.'

Carthy had advanced to the window and was feigning interest in the limited view it gave of the street. The pretence, coupled with his ‘so be it', further unsettled me. I ran my finger around the inside of my collar. I had not mentioned my father by name to Carthy. Why? Because his involvement was not strictly relevant. If anything, since my father had last cleared the Company's debts, he appeared in the best light. Did he not? Regardless, it was one thing to have chosen not to work for the family business, quite another to strew obstacles in its path. I would hold fire until I'd spoken with Father himself about the matter.

Anne wandered into the office now, a tube of rolled paper pressed to her eye. Carthy's brows immediately unfolded at the sight of her.

‘What's that you've got?'

‘A telescope.'

‘Do you mean to inspect Inigo with it?' the lawyer asked,
gathering his daughter up. ‘Or were you going to lend it to him, the more closely to examine his case with?'

Again I stiffened in my chair.

‘Neither. It's for you. To look at the moon with,' Anne said.

Carthy picked up his daughter under one arm and squeezed her like a set of bagpipes. She duly squealed. He said, ‘We need to go and practise your piano playing,' to her. And to me: ‘It would be useful if your final reckoning of the sum outstanding could incorporate whatever the Company owes in respect of the last ship, the
Belsize
. Attend to that.'

I nodded.

‘Then begin again with the rest of the dock records. The crate will no doubt furnish further … anomalies.' He squeezed a further chirrup from Anne and turned away, muttering, ‘Hours of fun.'

That evening I went home. I did not take Carthy's rickety coach, preferring to walk despite the bank of grey cloud which had overrun the clear sky at lunchtime and now pulsed with fine drizzle. A veil of droplets too small to see swept across my face and clung to the wool of my greatcoat and beaded in my hair. I put my head down up the steep hill of Park Street, towards the great house in which I grew up, the home my father commissioned beside Brandon Hill on his return from the West Indies some twenty-one years ago.

Nothing much about the house, inside or out, has altered in at least fourteen years, not since my stepmother, Clarissa, died. Shucking off my coat, I took stock. The worn tiles of the hall floor hadn't moved. Nor had the mahogany chest which squatted upon them, or the silver candlesticks which stood sentry on its dull lid. The portrait of my grandfather astride his black horse still hung on the landing wall. I ran my hands through the damp tangle of my hair, thinking: the house is too big, that's the problem. Carthy's place in town may be taller, but Bright House is wider, squarer, deeper, never mind the stables and grounds. It's too spread out. That's why Carthy's place feels full but home has always felt empty, even before Clarissa died.

More sameness washed over me: the familiar sound of Sebastian playing the piano upstairs. As a child, my youngest
brother played piano to soothe a nervous disposition. Father even credited the instrument with having cured his stutter. I wiped my feet on the faded hall rug and made my way up to the music room. The door stood ajar. I glimpsed the paleness of Sebastian's neck, his fair head bent over the keys.

‘Where is everyone?' I asked.

He looked up, shrugged and said, ‘You're staying for dinner though? They'll no doubt be here then.'

‘Father keeping you busy?'

‘The work does that by itself. It's not called business for nothing.'

‘What's he got you doing?'

‘This and that,' Sebastian sighed, then picked out a flurry of notes.

I traced a line in the dust on top of the piano. Did Sebastian think I would not be interested in the detail? The line became a snake. There could be no deeper reason, could there?

‘When is Father going to employ a proper cleaner?' I asked. ‘Either Mrs Watson's eyes are failing or she's working on the basis that you three are blind to her efforts.'

‘She's loyal, and a bit of dust never hurt anyone.' Sebastian played a loud chord. ‘Since when did you grow so fussy?'

A dog barked downstairs. Hearing my father clunk down his stick and mutter the dog into silence, I felt a sudden surge of tenderness towards Sebastian, and ridiculous for questioning his reticence to discuss business. He simply doesn't care much for work. Like me, he'd no doubt prefer to spend his time doing something else. Composing songs, perhaps. He, however, has never been granted the option to go his own way. Nobody stood between
me
and the door.

Claws clicked and faded, moving from the rug and down the flagstone hall. Dog and master were on their way to the study. I left Sebastian and went downstairs. My father seldom uses the house's formal reception rooms; when not in Bright & Co.'s counting house he is most often to be found here, cocooned in memorabilia. Framed contracts, deeds and bills, and a pair of etchings showing planters in Barbados adorn one wood-panelled wall. Opposite there's a fox-head hung with its milky eye to the window. I stood in the doorway and watched as Father drew a pipe from his jacket pocket, thumbed it full of tobacco and struck a match. The flame painted his square, balding brow, the implacable nose, the boxer's chin. I took a step into the room and, as the flame died, made out the broken capillaries which reddened his weather-worn cheeks. The
walleyed
fox-head had belonged to the quarry of his first hunt, killed some thirty-five years ago. He still shoots throughout the season and rides out with the Aust foxhounds most weeks.

Seeing me now, Father sucked hard on his pipe, advanced, clapped me on both shoulders, turned in a circle, then threw himself into his favoured armchair. He settled himself. Only then did the smoke explode from his nostrils.

‘You need a haircut,' he said.

I resisted the temptation to flatten my curls. It is unnerving, this ability of his to home in on a person's sensitivities, no matter how trifling, and jab at them with a pin.

‘They have good barbershops in town. So something else must have driven you up the hill. The wine. For the wedding. I've already said it'll be my pleasure to furnish it.'

Upstairs, Sebastian's piano recital faltered, stopped, then took off again.

‘No reason or excuse. I just thought I'd call in.'

Father raised his eyes to the yellow plaster ceiling above us and smiled. ‘Well, it can't have been on account of the entertainment.'

‘How's business?'

The smile stayed in place – perhaps registering the out-
of-character
nature of the question – until he saw fit to draw deeply on his pipe again. Smoke rolled from his mouth. Finally he said, ‘Passable, since you ask. Profitable, even. The same can't be said for Cartwright, Dudley and those other poor fools who stuck at the African trade to the bitter end. But for the more progressive traders, such as us, dealing in humdrum commodities, sugar, tea,' he waggled his pipe, ‘and good old tobacco, all's well. It's a miracle, really. The predicted apocalypse for all merchants just hasn't happened. So yes, we're rubbing along. There's certainly enough fat on the hog's back to contribute to the grand celebration; if the Alexanders will allow our help, that is.'

‘They're appreciative of the gesture, as I've said.'

‘I'll wager they are!'

‘And your hip?'

Reminded of the injury, Father's eyes darkened. He rose from his seat and stumped to the worktable on which lay the disassembled components of his twelve-gauge pheasant gun. He lifted the barrel to the light and winked down it. He is a young forty-eight, vigorous still, and proud of his prowess both as a shot and in the saddle. Yet he fell from his horse late last winter, injured his leg, and to his dismay hadn't been able to shake off the hurt. The sound of his stick on the hall floor had told me that the hip still hadn't mended, and despite
knowing how he would hate to be reminded of the injury, it seemed I had done exactly that. He replaced the barrel carefully amidst the felt cleaning rags, and slapped his hip with a feigned lack of concern.

‘Damnable. It'll mend. But the going's slow. That said –'

‘I wonder whether the riding is helping?'

‘The riding has nothing to do with it.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes. Lounging around never cured anything,' he replied. ‘Now, the sun's past the yardarm. What can I get you to drink?'

One of Bright House's cellar-rooms is stocked with a good range of wine, bought on the advice of Father's old friend, George Heard. Father himself appreciates the value of the collection more than the subtleties of its taste, but is generous with it nevertheless. The offer signalling a truce, I sat back in one of the leather armchairs before the fire while he went to retrieve a bottle. Perhaps Sebastian guessed at the development; he stopped playing upstairs; silence flooded the study. Then the quieter noises – the lapping of flames, Father's uneven footsteps on the wooden floor, the wind through treetops in the garden – or was it distant caterwauling – asserted themselves. The lurcher, curled asleep before the fire, stiffened as the cat-noise broke in upon its dream. Its forelegs twitched and its lip curled to reveal yellow incisors. Did it imagine itself sinking them into the cat, silencing it, as the screech faded?