Wasp (49 page)

The carriage clatters to a halt. Wasp peers into the street. Another coach is drawn up outside the House. The blinds are drawn, the horses placid between the shafts.

‘I don’t know if I’m ready for this,’ Wasp says.

‘One last task,’ Mother Joan replies. ‘One more ghost to lay to rest.’

Wasp steps down into the road. A harsh breeze whips her hair around her cheeks. She imagines it smells of smoke and cinders. A slap of the reins and Mother Joan’s coach is gone, rattling off into the evening.

Wasp takes a deep breath and crosses the square.
After what I have witnessed, how can anything frighten me again?
Yet her hand is moist on the carriage handle. Lanterns illuminate the face of the man inside. Wasp sits opposite. He offers her a flask but she waves it away.

‘Are you going to ask me to come back?’ she says.

‘The warden told me you were dead. He showed me a grave. For a moment I almost believed it.’

‘Perhaps it would have been better if you had.’

‘My father never told me where you had been taken. I had to work through that village, tongue by tongue, filling pockets with my own gold. I was like a gleaner, picking up grains of wheat from a vast field. Letting you go should have been easy. Men in my position cast lives aside the way they throw out a worn pair of riding boots. Father was too ill to suspect what I was about. I don’t know if his indisposition was due to guilt or a broken heart.’

‘And the party? Was it you who hired me?’

‘I heard about this remarkable girl from Richard. The more he was in his cups, the more he revealed. He was quite smitten and gave an excellent description. Your voice, mannerisms, the cut of your cheeks. Everything. I told him I would engage you as a favour. But it was I who wanted to see you.’

‘To right wrongs? To punish me? Or to say you could have loved me after all?’

A smile softens the edges of George Russell’s mouth. ‘No, and I shall not pretend otherwise. I admit to my own character. I would have possessed you, suffocated you and left you broken. Yet you painted me blacker than could ever be proven. We are both to blame, Bethany Harris. Both of a like mind and heart. We would devour one another. You wished to use Julia and Sebastian and would have stolen those innocents at a pinch rather than lose them. Yes, my sweet, I now understand what was in your head that afternoon. You would not be put aside so easily. You saw yourself as having power over all our lives. And what would you have done after the deed? Lived in triumph whilst my family fell to pieces? I saw the look on your face.’

‘George, I didn’t intend to hurt the children. When you caught us that afternoon I believed that you would either never let me go or I would lose everything. I thought Julia and Sebastian might be poisoned against me. I wanted to take them away from that, to talk to them properly, even if in the end it meant saying farewell. I’m no child stealer.’

‘Did you really think so poorly of me? Was every touch an assault? Each sideways glance an act of brutality?’

Wasp shakes her head. ‘A squire, his son and a girl from the local village? No romantic story, however fanciful, would dare invent such a plot. I’d have proved the ruin of
you,
George, and scandal would have blighted the children’s lives.’

He reaches over and clasps her hands, squeezing the knuckles of each finger as his father did in the happy days. ‘Don’t blame your own papa. He truly thought you’d lost your wits, that obsession had conquered you and poisoned your thoughts. He was told doctors would take care of you until you were able to return to your family. He never doubted that. Neither did I. Unfortunately my father had other plans. I only learned of these after you had been taken away. No one informed me directly. Rumours gusted up from the servants’ quarters. I heard you’d gone mad, that you’d intended to hurt the children to spite my family. Father put duty before his heart and it almost killed him.’

‘Did you believe the rumours?’

‘I’ve spent a lot of time and money searching for you. I wanted to hear the truth from your own mouth, or the truth as you perceived it.’

‘I don’t know if I loved your father, George. I certainly felt passion, but love and passion aren’t the same, are they?’

‘Not always, though you told me you were with child. That was a hard thing to accept.’

‘Would things have proved different had it been yours?’

‘I don’t know. Did you really lose the child, or did Father hire a Wise Woman to get rid of it? A deed carried out with your consent?’

‘You think I could do such a thing?’

‘No, Bethany, not really. And despite our differences I could not think such a thing of my father either. Afterwards you discovered you were barren, is that not so? You’d never have another. But you weren’t about to let such a trifle stop you. Not when you could be mother to Julian and Sebastian.’

‘Do they ever mention me?’

‘No one talks about you. It’s more than they dare. I can’t take you back even if I wanted to. Society lays down strict rules for families such as ours. We have little of the freedoms the common man enjoys. The belief that Lord Russell, the squire, would consider favouring you over his son and heir was the most grievous blunder you made. I shall no doubt marry that society girl he chose. She will bring a comfortable dowry and an opportunity to slip a finger into her family’s affairs. I shall help you, Bethany, in the best way I can. In the
only
way I can. I shall leave your life forever.’

Wasp takes a final look at this man who has taken nothing yet still cost her so much. If their paths cross again he will be a stranger to her, and she to him. He bows as she leaves the carriage. ‘Farewell, Miss Harris.’

‘Farewell, George.’

Those are the last words they ever exchange.

Finalities

The brassy ‘clang’ of the door knocker sounds unnaturally loud in the near empty square. The black-painted door swings inward, revealing a girl in a gold-trimmed day gown. She blinks in the daylight, fingers stroking a slender, unadorned neck. One cheek sports a diamond pattern, the other a picture of a wild flower. Primrose, one of the Harlequins. Obviously tired yet still beautiful. Wasp hadn’t much noticed her before. A testament to how Nightingale’s brightness cast everyone into shadow.

‘It’s you,’ she says. ‘I wondered if you’d come back.’

She steps aside. Wasp brushes past her into the hall. Cold. Gloomy. No candles burning. ‘How are you faring?’

‘We go through a semblance of life. Rooms are cleaned, bed linen changed. Meals arrive from the kitchen and empty plates sent back. We pace the corridors like ghosts.’

‘Shall we talk in the Scarlet Parlour?’

Primrose shakes her head. ‘It has remained untouched since the night of the fire. No one goes in there. Some like to pretend the Abbess is still in her place on the divan, keeping the beating heart of the House healthy. They don’t wish to believe otherwise. The maids are too frightened to clear up. Perhaps they think they will see her phantom.’

‘Not very likely.’

‘I suppose not. It took days to purge the smell of ashes from the Mirror Room. Labourers stripped away the burned wood, rebuilt the floor then whitewashed the walls and ceiling. So far they have not been paid. They are patient but cannot remain so indefinitely. I know nothing of the House accounts. We brought in a man of law to try to unravel the complicated knot the Abbess had tied. He called us a “viable business”. Can you believe that? Our hearts and souls are mere commerce to him. Money is plentiful, the House deeds are in order and any one of us can claim to be the Abbess’s heir. Nobody outside these walls can ever touch our “business”. I wonder how much the Abbess paid to obtain such a tight entail. Hummingbird did well to hook that secret out of the old woman’s head.’

‘So you could continue?’

‘We could, I daresay, if we had the wit for it. But we are too used to being told what to do. Even Harlequins like myself are little better than servants with a bit of extra gilding. The Abbess
was
the House. At first I wondered whether she planned for it to die with her. Certainly without her, or someone like her, everything will unravel. Soon we shall find ourselves at the riverside taverns fighting with the harlots for custom.’

‘Did anyone other than Hummingbird know the Abbess was losing her wits?’

‘We all knew. It was like watching rot creep up the walls and knowing some day it would bring the roof down upon your head. We also know both Kingfisher and the Fixer are gone. Leonardo came back and told us. He is out there, in his stables, waiting to take someone to an Assignment. We’ve had no shortage of requests. Look at these cards.’ Primrose sweeps her hand over the hall table. ‘You can’t put a gag on scandal. We are more in demand than ever, but with no Abbess, no doctor and no one to procure Kittens the House will wither.’

‘Leave, all of you. Sell everything and go.’

‘We are all dead, remember. We have nowhere to go.’ She looks up. ‘What about you, Wasp? Do
you
have somewhere to go?’

Assuming the Mantle

She stands in front of the mirror, face scrubbed, hair tied back. A smock, trimmed with silver, flows from her shoulders and whispers around her feet. Laid out before her is an array of coloured patches cut in the shape of flowers, birds, insects. A paper testament to the beauty of creation. One by one she fixes them to her face, neck and arms, covering the tattoo on her cheek. Her eyes, peering out from this mosaic, are satisfied.

She leaves the room she once shared with a girl called Hummingbird. That ghost has been expunged. The carpet is soft beneath her slippered feet, the polished banister cool against her fingertips. She imagines for a moment a whiff of smoke on the air, but those chambers have been cleaned and purified with sulphur. The outside door to the Mirror Room has been barred with iron, the one leading from the lobby nailed shut. Perhaps they will remain that way for good. Many decisions will need to be made over the next few months.

The Cellar has closed, the building sold. Those that could be saved have been, the other harlots must work their trade elsewhere.

A Harlequin passes her on the landing, as sweet as a peach and dressed for an Assignment. A smile is on her mouth and in her eyes.
We have survived,
the smile says.
We can do this. We can go on.

Each Masque has been given the same instruction: ‘They live in every city, town and village. The lost. The fallen. The disinherited. We have learned not to see; now we must sharpen our eyes. While on Assignment look for them everywhere, from town house parlours to the most wretched gutters. Pass the word. Have it whispered in their ears. The work of a moment.
There is somewhere you can go
.’

Mother Joan made it easy. ‘Now that the Abbess is dead there is the matter of ownership of the House. It is a question my husband is able to resolve, if required,’ her letter said. ‘A single name will suffice.’

Ownership of the House had not proved an issue. No one contested it. The authorities wanted to tuck the matter away, forget about it and move on. The big fish of the American War was still in want of frying. The King’s wits were as loose and unreliable as a beggar’s teeth and his son looked set to bankrupt Parliament. Who ultimately cared about the wishes of a gaggle of gilded courtesans?

Descending the stairs, the patchwork woman runs her hand along the banister. Spotless. Eloise has proved a firm taskmaster.

The new arrival stands in the middle of the lobby, her face made gaunt by the bright chandelier overhead. She shivers, despite the shawl Red Orchid has thrown across her shoulders. A week on the streets has already robbed much of the muscle from her bones. Her hair is lank and stringy, her face smeared where she has tried to wash it in rainwater. But underneath the ravages of the city she is built well, with good cheekbones and an elegance her torn dress can’t disguise. Leonardo found her sleeping in his carriage. At some point she had scaled the yard wall, as the scabs on her knees testify, and made her bed in the coach house. ‘That one is a fighter,’ Leonardo testified. ‘She didst kick my shins black when I laid hands upon her.’

Her eyes widen when she sees the patched apparition approaching from the stairs, but defiance is there too — a strength which will likely save her.

The woman once known as Bethany Harris smiles and holds out both hands.

‘Welcome,’ she says. ‘I am the Abbess, and we are going to be friends.’