The Skull and the Nightingale (49 page)

“Yes: as you do. As you do. He gave me a small allowance.”

“To do what?”

“To report to him about you—about what you had been doing and saying.”

“You were to be Rosencrantz to his Claudius?”

Cullen hesitated as he took in the reference.

“Mr. Gilbert did not speak like Claudius. He used the language of experiment. He wished to oversee your doings, he said, but your letters to him might be so many inventions to beguile him. My accounts would confirm them.”

“Or otherwise.”

“Or otherwise. But far more often confirm them.” Cullen’s voice became pleading: “Dick, I was your ally. I was your guarantor. I could confirm that there
was
a Kitty, there
was
a Sarah.”

“Did you tell him of my attempt on Mrs. Deacon?”

A pause. “Yes. But with
humor
. He knew your disposition. He invested in it.”

“You told him that I had hurt my tongue?”

“I think I did.”

“Would your letters describe our conversations?”

“Some of them.”

I drew breath and drank some wine.

“Then he knew that I distrusted him, knew that I disparaged him, knew that I mocked him—and knew that I hoped to be his heir?”

“In general terms—only in general terms. And
tone
, Dick—the tone was all. I wrote in a spirit of humor.”

“Mr. Gilbert is a merry old gentleman. He must have been greatly diverted. And through all these months you flattered my high hopes?”

“Why not, Dick? Why not? What did I know of your prospects? I was a mere agent.”

“So you did not know whether I was a potential heir or a specimen in an experiment?”

“I was told nothing of such matters. My letters received only the briefest of replies.”

“Save when you were asked to find out more about Mr. Ogden.”

“That was an exception.”

I had exhausted my questions and exhausted myself. By now I should have been flaring into violence, but the fire within me seemed to have burned itself out, leaving black vacancy. Listlessly I rose, took a turn across the room, and then stood staring out of the window across the narrow street.

“What are you thinking?” asked Cullen hoarsely.

“I hardly know. I hardly care.”

He clattered abruptly to his feet and came to my side.

“Did you tell Gilbert that you had seen through him?”

“I did not.”

“As far as he knows, things stand between you as before?”

“For the moment.”

“Then do you not see”—he was suddenly eager—“we could outwit him. Invent any story you choose, and I will confirm it. His experiment will be turned on its head.”

I saw the hope fade from his face as I made no response.

“You are angry,” he said. “I can understand it. But think about what I have said. We both stand to gain.”

Suddenly weary, I had to exert myself to make a reply.

“I am not angry. I felt disgust—but it became self-disgust. We are neither of us to be trusted. We have both been bought.”

“What if we have?” cried Cullen. “What if we have?” He was in a sort of passion. “It is the way of the world. We could be bought because we were in need. If I deceived you, you were already deceiving Gilbert. You have deceived many a woman with those brown eyes. Have I behaved worse than that? We are liars both, but can we not still be friends?”

“You are not capable of friendship. Nor am I, perhaps. Our allegiance is to ourselves—and to money.”

I slopped out more wine and ironically raised my glass:

“We have had some fine times together, Matt, but they were all worthless.”

Cullen emptied his own glass as though taking bitter medicine.

He spoke flatly: “What are we now to do?”

“I shall do nothing. Your task is to write one last letter to Mr. Gilbert, recording this conversation—faithfully recording it. Tell him that he will not hear from me again. With that letter your employment and my own will come simultaneously to an end. And then we must live by our wits.”

Cullen made to go, but turned back at the door.

“You have known me in happier times, Dick, and now you see me wretched. I am ashamed. But if you saw what I had written to Mr. Gilbert, you might think that I had not greatly harmed you. There was some deception, but I was always your friend.”

“And I was yours,” I said. “But we can be friends no more.”

I
lay abed next morning, feeling no inclination to stir. What was I to do? Where was I to go? All my reflections concluded in nothing. I had no plans and no engagements. Cullen had perhaps already written the letter that would estrange my godfather and leave me with nothing. I could confide in no one save, perhaps, Sarah, who would be by now on her journey north.

I hoped that Gilbert had not yet written to me—and would not before hearing from Cullen. It was possible, of course, that he would not now write at all, but silently stop my allowance. I would become a fish out of water—a gentleman without money. In this plight I envied Pike his freedom. There was a man who found it easy to move on, to step from one life into another—a man who could sleep in a haystack or a barn and find employment anywhere.

The thought of Pike did something to stiffen my sinews. After all it was something to be oneself, to be indomitable. If I was condemned to be solitary and penniless, I would at any rate have ceased to be a dependent, a cat’s-paw, a dupe—the passive subject of a heartless experiment. Like Pike, like Jack Gardiner at Tyburn—even like Ogden—I could show myself unpredictable and defiant.

I rose from my bed and sullenly stretched my limbs. Peering in the mirror, I thought that my face had hardened since the spring: there was no trace of charm or humor in it. I could expect to please no one. But merely for the sake of self-respect, I would don the uniform again: the breeches, the clean shirt, the fresh stockings, the wig. Through this final chapter of my gentlemanly career I would perform my duties in style.

And so through several succeeding days I tried to live as I had lived before. I walked in the park and bowed to a few acquaintances; I attended a reception or two. One night I set out for the Black Lion, but hearing the tumult within turned away, unable to rise to the challenge.

On another occasion, driven by a recurring and uncomfortable impulse, I walked along Duke Street and glanced through the window into what had been Ogden’s office. I glimpsed within a gray fellow I took to be Mr. Gow, the gentleman who had taken charge following Ogden’s death, and had unknowingly provided one of the clues to Cullen’s treachery. Still in this vein of disturbing recollection, I walked on past Mrs. Kinsey’s home, along Margaret Street and past the Ogden house. With an effort of will I continued to Wyvern Street and the spot where Ogden had confronted me. My recollections of that night now seemed no more substantial than a dream. How long had the episode lasted? Three minutes, perhaps? I was thankful to be forgetting so readily. The small, deep wound was healing, if over an embedded fragment of thorn or grit.

Each time I returned to Cathcart Street I expected, with fear, to see that a letter had arrived for me. But day followed day and there was nothing. It became clear that at least there would be no redundant message from Mr. Gilbert, written before Cullen had intervened. I tried to revive my former hope that illness would carry the man off and leave his estate in my hands, but I now knew it to be a puerile fancy.

From this short period only one or two episodes stand out in my recollection. One stemmed from a visit I made to the theater, alone and inconspicuous. Jane Page and Kitty Brindley were both performing, the latter in a minor role only. It was curious to see them from my new perspective: they shone and were applauded to the echo; I was nobody. When I left London they would still be here, and would still be celebrated. Kitty seemed to my eyes more charming, more vivacious, than ever. How foolish I had been to let her go—and how fortunate for her that I had done so.

Outside the theater after the performance, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see Nick Horn. For a second I was at a loss, but Nick’s expression so comically mingled embarrassment and triumph that for the first time in days I began to laugh.

“You have heard the news?” he said, laughing himself.

“I have heard that you are a married man.”

“I am.”

“Then I congratulate you.” I shook his hand, feeling a sudden warmth toward him. “Does this mean that your pig-wrestling days are at an end?”

“I have not wrestled with a pig this fortnight.” He hesitated. “Dick, I am here to meet my wife: would you care to speak to her?”

I recognized this for a gracious gesture and tried to respond in kind: “I would feel honored to do so.”

So it came about that I shared supper with this married pair. Kitty greeted me demurely, but with the smallest spark of irony in her glance.

“I am pleased to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Horn,” said I.

Over the meal we conversed a little haltingly. Perhaps we could do no more than act out our friendly feelings, but that very attempt was a demonstration of goodwill. I was touched to see Nick so obviously infatuated with his bride. Having felt at a disadvantage, I suddenly decided to venture a direct apology.

“This has been a most agreeable occasion,” I said. “Let me take the chance to express deep regret for a past episode of unkindness to Mrs. Horn. I can offer but two submissions in mitigation. The first is that I was disgracefully drunk; the second is that my failings accidentally promoted your shared happiness—to which I raise my glass.”

Both took the gesture kindly: there was even the glint of a tear in Kitty’s eye. While the wind was in the right quarter I added boldly: “You will know that the Diana who distracted my attention that night has been unfortunate since.”

“We have read the story,” said Nick, a little uncertainly.

“She was a friend when we were children together in York. I have not seen her since that night of the masquerade, but she wrote last week to tell me that she had retreated to York again to help her recover from the ordeal.”

Little more was said on the subject, but I felt sure that Kitty would pass on what I had said to her friend Jane, thereby perhaps retrieving for me a little undeserved credit in the Crocker household.

Later in the evening, when we were briefly alone together, she thanked me for my kind words to her.

“I meant what I said. I am pleased to see you look so happy.”

“I am happy—very happy.” She smiled at me and put on her rustic voice: “I do sorely miss ’ee, young Master Fenwick, but times do change.”

I went home in melancholy mood, but more cheerful than I had been. After all, these were friends worth having.

A day or two later I went, in a fit of bravado, to visit Mr. Ward. I was watchful to see whether his expression changed as I approached. It did not.

“Mr. Ward,” said I, “when I last saw my godfather, more than a fortnight ago, he was somewhat unwell. I have heard nothing since. Have you any news of him?”

“No direct news. But he has sent me signed documents lately—after an interval. I infer that he is recovering.”

I hazarded one further question:

“Mr. Ward, tell me, if you feel it permissible: have you had dealings on my godfather’s behalf with a Mr. Matthew Cullen?”

The brain inside Ward’s big skull seemed to labor like the workings of a town clock about to strike the hour. At last he said:

“If the answer was to be the affirmative, I would not feel free to give it. But I have had no dealings with a gentleman of that name.”

“I am pleased to hear it,” said I, and meant what I said.

I
tried to calculate how much money I could scrape together when my allowance ceased. I found it a hateful task. Without being a prodigal spender, I was by now accustomed to living comfortably. This attempt to number my available guineas on paper twisted my face with discomfort. By the end of the year what would I be doing? Would it be the army, after all? Might I run a bookshop like the one I had recently patronized? I shrank from such possibilities. It came to me that my father, at about my own age, had moved to York to run a school. Could I endure a life such as his—or such as Thorpe’s? Unwilling to answer the question, I pushed aside pen and paper and poured myself some wine.

Another walk in the park proved slightly more productive, in that I was greeted, with polite condescension, by Latimer, and briefly conversed with him.

“You will have heard that Nicholas has married? I believe that you once had dealings with the lady in question?”

“One might say so.”

“This is an indiscreet affair—a very indiscreet affair. Master Horn will live to regret it. Marriage can make or mar a career.”

He lowered his voice, as though there might be eavesdroppers in the bushes. “I myself am in distant negotiation with one of Lord Ashton’s nieces. It would be a most advantageous match.”

“Latimer,” I said, “you are wise in the ways of the world.”

When I returned to Cathcart Street I chanced to see Mrs. Deacon in the hall.

“A letter came for you,” she said. “I have left it on your desk.”

The words set my heart thumping. At last the blow was to fall. To postpone the moment I began to practice the coolness I knew I would now need to show:

“Mrs. Deacon, I am afraid that I may soon have to leave these lodgings.”

“I am sorry to hear it, Mr. Fenwick.” She seemed to mean what she was saying. “You have been very kind to Charlotte. And I shall miss your singing.”

As I opened my door the letter at once caught my eye. I drew a deep breath and paused to calm myself before picking it up.

But the handwriting was Sarah’s.

Dear Mr. Fenwick,

You may be surprised to hear from me so soon; and the content of this letter will surprise you still more. It may surprise me, too, since I know what I would say but not how I will contrive to say it.

Since Mr. Ogden disappeared my thoughts have been sorely confined, my mind imprisoned within that one theme. The creeping journey north, hour after hour and day after day, the gradually changing scene, served somehow to extricate me from the worst of this despondency. By the time I alighted in the familiar streets of York, I was halfway returned to a former self, able to consider more freely what I had been and what I would now become.