A Catch of Consequence. Diana Norman

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СКАЧАТЬ safety lantern had swung in its cradle, not from the movement of the sea, which was pressed flat by the heat, but from preparations on deck for embarkation. Bare feet had pattered overhead like heavy raindrops; there were commands to the rowers of the sweeps that would pull Aurora out of the quays to the open sea. They could hear the bosun rousting out the crew’s women from their rats’ nests below. ‘All ashore as is going ashore.’

      But in Ffoulkes’s cabin a silence had been enjoined by the ghost of Sidney Conyers demanding recognition of a past that went back to schooldays and the age of eight, which was when they’d acquired him or, more truly, he had acquired them. Not quite of their birth nor wealth but qualifying as a friend by his eagerness to be one and by the orphaned state they all shared, he’d joined them like a frisking, abandoned puppy until, puppylike, his escapades got them into trouble and they found themselves to be a trio in the eyes of their fellow Etonians.

      Debetur fundo reverentia: Conyers had adapted the Juvenal quotation for them, translating it into a battle-cry against such schoolmasters and older boys who wanted to beat or bugger their poor little backsides. ‘Respect is owed to our arses’.

      At university they’d drunk, gambled and whored together as befitted young gentlemen, gone on the Grand Tour together – on Ffoulkes and Dapifer money – cementing a friendship that had survived Conyers’s entry into the army.

      It was a ghost, a past, due some sort of salute and Dapifer had found himself honouring it. ‘Despite it all, you know, I believe he loved us.’

      ‘He loved what we were,’ Ffoulkes had said, less forgiving. ‘He always wanted what we had – and you were the first to marry.’

      ‘Well, he had her. On my own bloody carpet.’

      Ffoulkes hadn’t smiled. ‘Come back with me, Pip.’

      ‘Shall, old fellow,’ he’d said. ‘Intend to. Back in a year or less. But if you’d be good enough to lodge the papers or whatever it is you have to do and see she’s out of the place by the time I return. Embrace that boy of yours for me.’

      ‘He’s the only reason I’m leaving you now.’

      ‘Of course he is, you’ve got to go.’ His own marriage, thank God, had been childless. ‘Just thought, now I’m here, might as well squint at what lies beyond the Alleghenies.’

      ‘Scalping knives probably.’

      ‘More likely to be scalped in Boston. When they hear my accent nearly every Puritan looks at me as if I’d raped his mother.’

      ‘Exactly. A sullen and uncouth continent. And God knows it’s cost enough, why it should balk at a not unreasonable tax … Listen to it.’

      What had begun as confused and discordant noise in the centre of town, whistles, horns, war-whoops, was now rising into an orchestration of pandemonium with a relentless, underlying beat.

      ‘Will you be safe on the streets?’

      ‘Hutchinson’s sent an escort.’

      The Aurora’s captain had appeared in the doorway. ‘Sir Philip, I don’t wish to hurry you but we mustn’t miss the tide.’

      They’d said goodbye at the taffrail. He’d tried to thank this best of friends. ‘All you’ve done, Ffoulkes … over and above the call of.’

      They embraced stiffly, like true Englishmen, patting each other on the back.

      He’d stood on the quay, watching water widen between them, watched as the ship had suddenly flared out all sail to catch what breeze there was, kept on watching her until, in the distance, she resembled a cluster of shells. A slightest lightening of the sky beyond her had suggested the beginning of dawn.

      By that time the town had developed a patchy flush as if it had become feverish, which it had. A copse of white church spires, usually just silvered by the moon, were orange in the reflected glow of flames from the streets below them. Beacon Hill twinkled with a necklace of torches. Boston was burning to the beat of drums.

      And yet, knowing the danger, he’d dismissed the Lieutenant-Governor’s escort, told it he’d walk back alone and, against its advice, turned along the quays, meandering away from the bonfires along a waterfront that grew meaner and quieter as he passed empty warehouses, their open interiors smelling of guano and urine. The depression at this end of the harbour equalled his own.

      Good God, he thought now, it was suicide. He’d been gambling, casting his life over those dirty stones like dice, baring his neck to a cut-purse’s knife as surely as to an executioner’s axe.

      The thought shocked him. Had she brought him to this? That he wanted to die? How hideously gothick, how very Castle of Otranto – not that he’d read the damn book – how … commonplace.

      Bloody nearly suceeded, too.

      Yet he remembered fighting the bastards who’d set on him. Illogical, that. Fought like a madman. Wounded a couple at least. After that … nothing.

      Yes, yes, remembered clinging to the wreckage in the water and wondering if survival was worth it and deciding it wasn’t.

      And then the God he didn’t believe in had sent a boat and a red-haired, interfering tavern harpy to whom, it seemed, his life had mattered.

      Couldn’t argue with God … Christ, his damn head hurt … couldn’t argue with harpies …

      Sir Philip Dapifer fell asleep.

      Downstairs, Makepeace lay down on one of the taproom settles, closed her eyes, opened them, got up, went to the jetty door, flung it wide and went out, breathing like a creature deprived of air.

      The tide was on its way in, creeping up the little beach of silt that had formed under and around the jetty piers. She climbed down the steps until it reached her bare feet and let it cool them while she looked out to sea.

      She was not a fanciful woman. Her father had provided enough fancy to stuff a crocodile: some of it had rubbed off on Aaron, none on her. ‘D’ye not hear the mermaids singing, daughter?’ Standing on this very jetty, staring out at the islands. ‘Like the sirens of Odysseus. I hear them, I hear them.’

      In the bad times he’d also seen pink spiders coming for him through the walls.

      But tonight, on such a night, his daughter too was hearing a siren voice and it wasn’t included in the noise of the town and it didn’t come from the sea and it disturbed her. ‘Stop it, Lord,’ she begged. ‘Stop this.’

      When she finally fell asleep on the settle, she dreamed that a creature with spider legs was clawing its way into Aaron’s room. She heard a thump and sat up, rigid, looking at the ceiling. Movement again; her room, not Aaron’s. She snatched up the rushlight and raced upstairs.

      The Englishman was on the floor, trying to get up. ‘Shaky on the pins,’ he said. ‘Where’s the bloody receptacle?’

      She got the chamber pot from under the bed and steadied him while he pissed into it; she’d done the same for her father at the last.

      He clambered back, querulously. ‘Who constructed this bed, Procrustes? And where are my damn clothes?’

      She СКАЧАТЬ