3 Great Historical Novels (37 page)

Beth tapped lightly on the bedroom door and entered with a basketful of kindling as Antonia was sealing the envelopes ready for the butcher’s boy. He was swifter than the morning post, and always happy to earn a farthing or two extra.

‘Lovely fresh morning, madam.’

‘It is, Beth. Have our guests risen?’

‘Oh Mr Kelly’s been up since dawn – says it’s always been that way with him. He hasn’t had any breakfast though, just wanted a pot of tea.’

‘And Rhia?’

‘I heard her moving about as I passed by. I’ll just build your fire before I put on the porridge.’

‘Never mind, Beth, you’ve enough to do with Juliette away. I can dress without the fire.’ She gave Beth the envelopes for the boy; one for Isaac and one for Jonathan Montgomery.

Antonia washed her face in lemon water, dressed in her worsted and pinned her hair. Both guests were in the morning room when she arrived, sitting at the table by the front window, which was laid for breakfast. Michael stood when she entered.

‘Good morning, Mrs Blake.’

‘And to you both,’ she said. ‘I hope you slept well?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Michael. He didn’t look as though
he’d slept well. How odd and unfamiliar this must all be to him. To be in London after years as a prisoner, to know that he was so close to seeing his wife and son. He must have wanted to sail straight to Dublin from Sydney. But as Mr Dillon had said, they had business in common, and Michael Kelly didn’t strike her as the kind of man that would leave business unfinished.

‘I didn’t sleep a wink,’ said Rhia. ‘Probably because the floor wasn’t moving.’

Or perhaps because of Mr Dillon, Antonia thought. She sat and Rhia poured her coffee. They spoke of wool. She thought it an excellent venture and said so. ‘In fact,’ she added, ‘should you require an agent in London, I would be delighted to join you.’

Beth cleared their bowls and Michael complimented her, saying that her porridge had to be the best he’d ever tasted, even though he’d not had any in years.

‘Then there’s no porridge in Sydney?’ Beth looked scandalised.

‘Oats are fed to horses in Sydney, and people eat toast because wheat is cheap.’ Michael stood up and put on his broad-brimmed hat. ‘I’ve some business this morning, Mrs Blake, and then I’ll be meeting Dillon somewhere called the Red Lion. Thank you again for your hospitality.’

‘But you’ll come back here, Mr Kelly?’

‘Aye, of course.’

Rhia told Michael where the Red Lion was, and he took his leave.

Antonia looked at her once-lodger. It was not only that she was without her lovely long hair, she was changed in a way that was hard to define. ‘We’ve not really had time to speak, have we?’ she said. ‘I simply cannot begin to imagine …’ She faltered.
‘I have prayed for you,’ she said. It was inadequate. Anything would be.

Rhia looked down at her hands. ‘Well then it was your prayers as well as your money that brought me home.’

‘What do you mean?’ It was an odd thing to say.

‘I found the money you put in my purse. Without it I would never have been able to pay for my passage, or buy the merino.’

‘But I didn’t put any money in your purse, though I saw it in your portmanteau when I packed your things.’ They were both silent, considering this. Rhia looked confused. ‘Then who?’

‘It could only have been Mr Dillon,’ Antonia said. ‘It was he who collected your trunk and brought it to Millbank. If I’d thought of it I would certainly have stowed some money for you, but I was so shocked.’

‘Of course. And I didn’t expect it. But I can hardly believe that Mr Dillon … it was so generous.’

‘He thinks very highly of you,’ said Antonia. Anyone could see it. ‘I cannot imagine how you’ve kept body and soul together,’ she added.

Rhia smiled. ‘Through the stories my grandmother used to tell me. It was she who named me.’

‘I see,’ Antonia said, although she didn’t.

‘Rhiannon was cursed and falsely accused and exiled. She was only released from the curse by her own suffering and by the help of Manannán, god of the sea.’

It seemed an apt fairytale, Antonia thought. No different, in some ways, to the Christian stories of magic potions and the dead returning to life. She didn’t know what to say, so she changed the subject. ‘There is something you must see.’

The quilt was in the camphor wood chest against the wall. Antonia brought it back to the table.

Rhia eyed the bundle of patchwork warily, as though
Margaret who asked that it be presented to you, and it was she who composed and embroidered the dedication.’

Antonia spread the quilt across the back of the Chesterfield, which it could easily have covered twice, and examined Margaret’s cross-stitch.

Antonia leaned closer. The central panel, stitched with the dedication, was unyielding. Something was fortifying the pocket between the stitching and its lining. She had noticed it before, and suspected that the embroidery card had been left in. Rhia noticed it as well. Behind the dedication, instead of plain linen, was a square of blue valetine silk.

‘Margaret’s favourite piece of cloth,’ Rhia said. ‘I recognise it. She said she was going to keep it and make it into a purse. They looked at each other and Antonia wondered if they were having the same thought. Along one edge of the valetine, the stitching was tacked rather than sewn prettily and neatly as it was on the other three sides.

Antonia fetched her embroidery scissors and, her hands unsteady, snipped the loose stitching away. In the pocket was a stiff piece of parchment. Another disappointment would be too much.

‘My hands are shaking, Rhia, you do it,’ she said.

‘It is the negative,’ said Rhia. ‘I recognise it.’

‘There is no guarantee that it will still make a representation,’ said Antonia. Her heart was thumping. ‘The sun is strong this morning. The kitchen would be best, at this hour.’

She hurried from the room to find her apparatus. She didn’t know what she was more afraid of: seeing Josiah’s face again or that Isaac might be identified as a killer. Rhia followed her upstairs to the studio and then back to the kitchen. They did not speak. They were both preoccupied with the urgency of the undertaking.

Beth was polishing the silver on the kitchen table. She looked mystified as Antonia set up her frame on the bench-top under the window. She laid a clean sheet of treated parchment onto the negative, then clamped them together and positioned the frame so that the sunlight streamed across it.

There was nothing anyone could do. She could not bear to watch. Rhia took her by the elbow, gently. ‘Beth might be pleased to have help polishing the silver.’

‘Yes, quite,’ Antonia agreed, hardly hearing her.

Beth looked horrified. ‘Oh, there’s no need!’

Rhia laughed. ‘I’ve put my hand to dirtier tasks than cleaning silver, Beth.’

They took turns dipping their flannels into the foul smelling brew. It was her mother’s recipe, Beth said, when Rhia wrinkled her nose, made from flour of sulphur and boiled onions. They polished candlesticks and salt cellars and cake forks, and Antonia took the watch from her pocket every two or three minutes.

When it was time, she put down her cloth and smoothed her hair, and then her skirts, before she approached the little wooden frame on the bench top.

A portrait had materialised: an almost perfect image, as
though it had been penned in sepia. Five men stood in Antonia’s garden, just as they had almost two years ago. There was Josiah, looking straight at her. Her heart lurched, but she felt only relief. His image had not been spirited away. It was there all the time, waiting for the sun to reveal it. She could feel his gaze again.

Standing beside Josiah was Isaac, looking a little stiff and uncomfortable, and on his other side, Mr Montgomery wore a bemused expression but looked as handsome and elegant as ever. On one end of the row of men was Mr Beckwith, his head bent shyly so that his eyes were shaded. At the other end was Ryan Mahoney, attempting to preserve his rakish smile for the interminable time the exposure had taken.

Antonia unscrewed the bolts that held the frame in place and laid the photogenic drawing carefully on the bench top. The chord above the wainscoting yanked and the bell in the kitchen clanged making them all jump, then laugh nervously. ‘Who can that be?’ Antonia looked at the clock. It was only ten o’clock. ‘I’ll go, Beth.’

Isaac Fisher stood on the doorstep, hat in hands, the crisp morning light behind him. Even with his face in shadow it was clear that he was ill at ease. ‘I came immediately, Antonia. There seemed some urgency in your letter.’

‘Isaac!’ She didn’t know what to say to him. She should have thought this through. She had expected him to call later in the afternoon, if at all. ‘Come in. We’re in the kitchen. Rhia is here. Her ship put in yesterday.’ She scrutinised his face as she took his hat. Surely he wouldn’t want Rhia in London? He looked surprised, of course, and then he smiled wanly. He looked tired.

‘That is good news.’

‘Yes.’

Isaac followed Antonia down the hallway. She felt light-headed,
as if she was only loosely anchored to the ground. Some part of her was becoming detached, observing the scene from a distance. It was out of her hands now. Now she must simply speak the truth.

If Rhia felt anxious at the sight of Isaac, she didn’t show it. She smiled and said how nice it was to see him, and then she helped Beth clear the silver from the table. Beth hurried away as soon as she could, sensing there would soon be more ‘goings on’ in her kitchen.

Isaac surveyed the room in his usual unhurried way. He had probably never been in the Cloak Lane kitchen before. His eyes came to rest on the bench where the still portrait lay in the sunlight. He moved towards it slowly and deliberately. Antonia watched him, hardly breathing. Rhia was standing, holding the back of a chair. Their eyes met and Rhia raised an eyebrow. Antonia straightened her back. ‘Isaac, there is something we must discuss. I … I have heard …’ She faltered. The truth was not easily spoken after all.

Isaac was looking at the portrait. He seemed dazed. ‘Extraordinary,’ he muttered.

‘Is it true,’ said Rhia boldly, ‘that you and my uncle were trading in opium?’

He turned slowly. He didn’t look surprised. He shook his head, but not in denial. In shame?

‘It is true,’ he said. ‘But I have achieved my purpose now. You need not tell me, Antonia, that I am not worthy of the Society of Friends. It has been as much a convenience as anything, to continue to be a Quaker. It has not been in my heart since Louisa died.’

Antonia was deflated. She had wanted, desperately, to be proven wrong. ‘Quaker or no, it is an immoral trade. I had thought more of you.’

‘Well you need not. It is a narrow view that you hold, but I understand it well enough.’

His tone angered her. ‘Then was it worth it, for the profit?’

‘Who can say? But the money has been well spent and I have done what I had to.’

‘How can you say such a thing! To think of the damage your trading has done in China and in India.’

Isaac sighed. ‘Antonia. Keep your bonnet on. I have, these past years, visited many villages in India where the weavers do not have land to grow crops because there are fields of poppies instead of rice. There is no simple solution in a modern economy that relies on the produce of other economies. This is the new world. The British government would never place itself at the mercy of a nation as sophisticated and impenetrable as China, they simply would not tolerate it. They are far too narrow-minded. This nation’s unprecedented consumption of commodities – tea, mostly – has left our silver stocks depleted. The only way to fill the vaults of British banks is to encourage opium use in China.’

‘I do understand the economics, Isaac. What I don’t understand is that you seem to think it perfectly reasonable.’

‘My lovely Antonia. Allow me to finish. With the profit made, I have purchased back land that will feed Indian families. This was what Ryan and I planned together, and it was necessary to tell Jonathan because he is part-owner in
Mathilda
and
Sea Witch
. I didn’t tell Josiah, of course, because the knowledge would have compromised his Quaker oath. He was, as you well know, an unyielding moralist. I am the first to admit that it is a filthy trade, but I have now used it against itself and I am content. I can only hope that Ryan is resting in peace too.’

Antonia was speechless.

Rhia’s voice was unsteady. ‘Then the money has been spent charitably.’

‘Of course.’

‘And the counterfeiting?’

Isaac looked at her sharply. ‘Counterfeiting?’

‘You must know that the
Mathilda
made a voyage from Lintin Island into Pacific waters to meet the
Sea Witch
? The silver from Lintin Island was to be exchanged for guineas that were illegally coined in Sydney.’

If Isaac was guilty, then it was a performance worthy of Drury Lane. He looked puzzled, his eyes darting about the room as if he was trying to piece the story together. He was in no hurry to tell them what he was thinking. Antonia held her breath. She looked at Rhia, who looked impatient. Isaac finally nodded slowly.

‘I have never been to Lintin Island. I was busy in Calcutta, arranging land deeds and so on. Everything takes a very long time in India. Mr Beckwith accompanied the shipment for me. It was purely a business arrangement; I paid him for his time and good management. I can see now why there was a delay in returning to Calcutta, and why the captain was such a cagey old salt.’ He shook his head. ‘I can see it now.’

The bell chord yanked again. Beth called out from the front of the house that she’d see to it, and arrived a moment later with a note for Antonia from Mr Montgomery. He regretted that he would not be able to call that afternoon as requested. He and Mr Beckwith had an important engagement.