The Ghost of Waterloo (24 page)

‘Ah,’ Miss Hathaway was serious. ‘I had an experience similar to our Bible belle’s. We’re “sisters”, even though I have an added “h” to my name. You see, I associated in Boston with some young people named Fitzgerald and Kennedy. They were of immigrant stock – you can guess from where – and people ambitious for fortune and fame, a hard road for them. But one, Mr John P. Kennedy, was already successful as a novelist. He, by the by, had helped our young Mr Edgar Allan Poe publish his first book,
Tamerlane
. Anyway, a problem emerged – they were Catholics.

‘Some elders of my family’s church warned me to give them up and when I defied them they told lies about me and John, Robert and Edward. Two elders offered to overlook the matter if I accepted their advances. One of them was a nasty German.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Unfortunately, I had no Daniel. I said to the German, “Frankly,
mein Herr
, I don’t give a damn.” And I packed my bags and was gone with the wind. Here.’

She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that the other errant elder was an uncle.

Dunne felt emboldened to relate to her the details of how he had been a Bow Street Runner transported for intervening in the assault by an army officer of a young child embroiled in a riot. He also managed to tell her how he had always regarded himself as an orphan in the foster care of an ordinary, decent couple – until Captain Rossi had felt forced to reveal that he was the bastard of one of the King’s brothers, the Duke of Cumberland.

‘Maybe that protects me from the Governor’s displeasure,’ he said ruefully. ‘Just as being rumoured to be the base son of the previous king has helped Mr Balcombe, the Colonial Treasurer, out of some problems – though not his current financial ones, I fear.’

They both fell silent. One thing he could not reveal to her was the identity of his mother, a fact too terrible to contemplate, although he had put together certain evidence and often imagined his origins…

Chapter Thirty-three

London, England – 1799

‘I should not have come here.’

He vaguely heard the girl’s words, but he wasn’t really paying attention. He was thinking.

Thinking that he had done it before. And boys were, he reflected idly, often more trouble than women. So, yes, if he had to, he would do it again.

He was considering that he had always been clear in his mind on the matter: if she did not enthusiastically and graciously permit him to take his pleasure with her, join him joyously in the Venus sport?

Why, then, he would be obliged to rape her…

‘I should not have come here.’

The soft glow cast from a silver candelabrum sought to invade the shadows of the huge room, but only picked out the huge bed and its surrounds. One heavy side curtain was partly open, framing the couple.

The man, well-nourished and of perhaps thirty or so years, sprawled on the tangle of sheets and pillows,
en négligé
in an Indian silk dressinggown loosely belted. He had kicked off scarlet Turkey slippers.

The girl, fair-haired and in her early twenties, sat uncomfortably on the side of the bed. Her face was pinched and pale as she stared nervously at her companion. She wore what seemed, in that light, a dress of silky persian, even mesh
barège
, perhaps muslin, certainly some flimsy fabric. Its high waist and
décolletage
forced her small breasts into view, and the semitransparent clinging gown shaped her body and legs, revealing glimpses of pink pantaloons beneath. ‘The dress of a drab,’ her father had mumbled.

She had forgiven him because he was ill, but thought him a very Janus: preaching now but at another time chasing his daughter-in-law over sofas – and even making advances to
her.

She had written it down: ‘He is all affection and kindness to me, but sometimes it is an over-kindness, if you understand that, which greatly alarms me.’

Now, in this darkened room, she was alarmed again.

The man, on the other hand, seemed relaxed, even bored. He picked up a knife from a fruit tray on a bedside table. It was no ordinary table knife, rather a single-bladed dagger, richly chased and keen as a razor. He cleaned his nails with the needle point. Then, almost as if recalling his prime duty, he put down the blade and turned his attention to the girl.

‘We must not taste forbidden fruit,’ she said suddenly, trying to push away the fingers that touched her thigh. ‘We are like the mulberry garden.’

‘What?’ The man paused in his exploration.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Long before this was the Queen’s House, even before it was Buckingham’s House, it was the Mulberry Garden.’ She tailed off.

‘So?’ the man grunted and tried to squeeze her breast. ‘I know there was a silk farm. Old James had a grand, if foolish plan.’

She nodded and pressed back a tear. ‘So, we are like the mulberry trees and the caterpillars. There are two kinds of mulberry tree and the silkworms favour one leaf above the other. The garden here failed because the King’s gardeners planted the wrong trees.’

‘God’s bones! What does
that
mean?’

She burst into tears. ‘It means that what you want us to do here is wrong, a sin!
…
We are like the silkworms – eating the wrong fruit, and ours would be forbidden fruit and no good could come of it.’

His face darkened. ‘Rubbish! Your Mulberry Garden became a pleasure ground, a very Temple of Hymen, a great bawdy house! And this pile – and the others here before it – why, they’ve seen more whoring in them than would a soldiers’ slut in Seven Dials.

‘They even pimped for a king here. They kept an apartment for Charles to entertain his tarts. It served as his nuptial chamber when he took Louise de Keroualle as his bogus bride in a randy masque.

‘Never heard of her? They say she put a curse on the place. She was a French spy, y’know. And a cockteaser, to boot. But all she squeezed out of the King turned out to be a base son nine months later.’

The girl shivered. ‘Don’t even jest about it!’ She paused. ‘But we just cannot be together.’ And she began to rise.

‘Can’t we, by God!
This
is being together!’ He dragged her to him, raking at her clothing, and pulled close the curtain, plunging the bed into darkness.

Her protests changed to whimpers, then ragged moans until she suddenly cried out in pain. When he was finished with her, only her weeping broke the silence. Then she groaned: ‘What will happen if
he
finds out?’

The man laughed. ‘My dear, he’s as mad as a loon – and no one can touch us – Hush!’ He broke off and ripped open the curtain.

A figure was slowly advancing, soon shown by the aura of the candelabrum to be dressed in the house livery of a manservant.

‘Oh, sir! … Highness!’ he stammered. ‘I thought you were alone. Not…’ Then, even in the weak, golden light, his face lost colour as he saw, for the first time, the girl’s face. And recognised her.

‘No,’ he whispered. ‘No. God! No! I saw nothing, sir. I won’t tell, sir. I’ll be the very soul of discretion!’

‘Oh, I’m certain of that,’ his master soothed. ‘Of course you won’t tell, Sallis. Come here, man.’

He gently pulled the shaking servant nearer. ‘Yes, you will be silent, won’t you, Sallis?’

Even as the intruder nodded, the man quickly picked up the dagger from the table and drew the blade, bright even in the candlelight, deeply across the trembling throat, splitting it from ear to ear. The promises and protestations ended in a gurgle and a gout of blood.

The girl looked down in horror at the twitching bundle on the floor. ‘What have you done?’ she whispered.

‘What have
we
done, my love?’ He laughed. ‘Think, sweetheart, I did this for both our sakes.’ He knelt beside the body and placed the dagger in the dead left hand, closing the fingers.

‘Details,’ he said conversationally. ‘He is – was – left-handed. I will say he killed himself. Perhaps after he attacked me? Yes, that may answer well, very well.’ He recovered the blade and calmly slashed his own breast keenly enough to draw blood. Then he returned the weapon to the corpse.

‘You.’ He turned to the girl. ‘You will go before I call for help. But not yet.’ He pushed her roughly back on to the bed. The blood-letting had excited him.

‘What are you – No! I cannot. You must not. Not again, I beg. I don’t want to!’

‘But, my heart’ – he pinned her – ‘
I
want to!’ He covered her again, ignoring the pleas.

She smelled the coppery reek of the spilled blood and tasted it on the fingers that pressed over her mouth.

Ah, he thought, after she had left, this was all a damned, double-damned nuisance.

But, he had had to act to save himself. Her, too.

After all, nothing should be too much trouble for one’s sister.

Weymouth, southern England – August, 1800

The Princess Sophia, fifth daughter of King George III, secretly gave birth to a son. She was not married. A retired senior army officer and his wife, childless, took into their home a newborn boy. The Dunnes called him Nicodemus. The day was 15 August.

Chapter Thirty-four

Sydney, Australia – Spring, 1828

To exorcise old ghosts, Nicodemus Dunne contemplated graverobbing, if that turned out to be the only way he could scratch his itch about the soldier who should have been hanged, not shot. He wanted to know more about the body that had fallen into the grave at Dawes’ Point.

If he did have to have it dug up, he would be in illustrious company. He recalled how Dr Thomas Owens had told him about famous surgeons who bought, no questions asked, bodies for dissection. He also knew that Mr Thomas Hood had wittily versified about one such client of the ‘sack-’em-up’ men, Sir Astley Cooper. Owens had happily recited it:

At the barracks in George Street Dunne found the officer of the 39th who had overseen the execution. He had sought out the men who had been in the firing squad, but learnt that immediately after the event they had all been transferred to Hobart Town, in Van Diemen’s Land. The officer, a Captain Fiddle, very young for the rank, and wearing a black eye-patch, was helpful; he was well aware of the Patterer’s links with authority.