Infernal Revolutions (42 page)

‘Up to your old tricks again, Lover?'

‘No,' I blathered, very flustered, as I quickly stuffed the letters back in my pocket, ‘Nothing like that. They are just…just…'

‘Whatever they are,' interrupted Sophie, slurring badly, ‘I need to attend to my toilet. Where is the best place?'

I pointed up the nearest dark alley, and heaved a sigh of relief. When she came back five minutes later the letters had been forgotten, and the subject of overnight accommodation had taken their place.

‘I have been talking to a very decent gentlemen in there who has offered us a room for the night,' said Sophie, taking my arm and very affectionately nuzzling her head under my chin. ‘He is a scrivener and lives in something-or-other street, not far from here. Says we can stay, but we must leave the house when he does at seven o'clock tomorrow morning. The uncertainty of war means he cannot leave his door open all day, as he used to.'

‘That is fair enough, my dear. And well done for finding us somewhere to stay; I had completely overlooked the matter.'

‘As long as you do not overlook me, I do not mind. Now come, Sir, we must drain the night to its dregs – this is our engagement night, AND THIS IS NEW YORK!!'

Suddenly shouting at the top of her voice, and whooping like an Indian, Sophie dragged me back into the tavern, and subjected me to more furious merriment. As the night wore on into the early hours, I kept gaping at the scrivener in the hope that he would leave soon and put me out of my misery. When at last he did express a desire to be gone, I was at his side in a flash, and soon had Sophie brought into line with me. Taking emotional leave of our well-wishers and companions for the evening, we left the tavern and followed the scrivener – Mr Roderick Quiggins, a handsome-looking youth – out onto the streets, which were eerily quiet until Sophie started caterwauling at the top of her voice, so that all New York must have heard her.

‘Happy, my dear?' I enquired, keeping a nervous look-out for dragoons in the gloom.

‘Very,' said Sophie drunkenly, trying to leapfrog over me and ending up sprawled and giggling on the ground. ‘The happiest day of my life.'

I helped her up and kissed her, and said it was mine too, which it would have been had not Isaac's disclosures just about ruined it for me. Then, for the rest of the walk, still feigning outward happiness, I gloated on the slowest and most agonizing ways I could kill Amanda Philpott if I ever got back to England alive.

As we left the scrivener's house the following morning, after a decent sleep and a breakfast of coffee and rolls, Sophie was strangely pensive. I thought at first that crapulousness was the cause, but it turned out to be disappointment following discovery of my letter cache.

‘I hope you have not lapsed back into your old habit of secrecy,' she suddenly snapped, as we walked towards Kip's Bay, a beauty spot recommended to us by the ever-accommodating Mr Quiggins, ‘knowing how it almost finished us before.'

‘My dear, what is the matter?'

‘Don't
my dear
me, you sly dog. You see, my memory is very good, even after liquor; I remembered the letters I caught you reading last night so I have been through your pockets and I have read them. So before we search out a parson, I need you to tell me who Burnley Axelrod is, and who Amanda is. There is to be no more secrecy between us, if you remember.'

‘I was going to tell you everything, my dear,' I said sheepishly. ‘Aye, this very morning. Truly I was. But you must remember that I was not aware of these things myself until last night, when Isaac Tetley handed the letters to me; I needed time to comprehend their import. Also, I did not want to trouble you when you were enjoying yourself so much.'

‘Thoughtful,' said Sophie sarcastically. ‘But now I am not enjoying myself, so now you can.'

Sighing, truly in the doghouse, I led the way to a shady bench overlooking the East River, and proceeded to turn it into my latest confessional.

‘Well,' said Sophie, chuckling to herself when I had finished my narrative, ‘who would have thought? My Harry prefers me to a real English heiress. What is the world coming to?'

‘But what about Burnley Axelrod?' I said, wanting to bring her back to the point. ‘What am I to do?'

‘What are
we
to do, you mean, sweetie.'

‘What are we to do then?'

‘We are to shoot him dead if he approaches us,' said Sophie brightly, mind obviously still musing on the mysteries of love. ‘'Tis simple.'

‘No, ‘tis not simple,' I said. ‘'Tis not simple at all. You cannot just kill a man in cold blood – even your greatest enemy – without the most hellish remorse haunting you for the rest of your days. Have you not read your Macbeth?' There was a silence, suggesting she had not. ‘Anyway,' I went on, ‘I'd miss, I'd be so nervous.'

‘I'll shoot him then; I'm not bothered about all that remorse stuff.'

I rose from my seat, and paced about in exasperation, gesticulating wildly.

‘No, no, no, no. We are barking up the wrong tree. There must be a peaceful way of resolving the problem.'

‘Why not simply write to Amanda and break her heart. Tell her you are married, or dying from disease. Or I will.'

I remembered the farewell letter I had written to Amanda from my prison cell, and wondered what had happened to it. Probably another farewell letter was required, just to be on the safe side.

‘Yes, I will do that anyway. But one month will pass before she receives the letter, and another two months will pass before Burnley receives his reply saying he can have her and the accompanying estate. That's January of next year at the earliest before I can be sure that Burnley is not coming after me. Three months of constant anxiety is an intolerable burden for any man, my dear; which is why, as I say, something must be tried in the meantime.'

‘Why not write to the old fools in charge of this war: the Howes, Cornwallis, Percy, one of that crowd? Or what about Axelrod's commanding officer? Even he must have one…'

‘He has – General Harcourt is his name, but I do not think I rate very highly in the scheme of things. Axelrod is employed as a loose cannon in any case, and given
carte blanche
to do as he wishes.'

‘But they are supposed to be gentlemen, are they not, stuffed full of honour and all that
ordure
? Surely they cannot stand by while one of their own soldiers is hunted down and hacked to death.'

‘Sophie, please. There is no need to be so graphic in your scenarios.'

‘Sorry, sweetie. ‘Tis just that I cannot see what there is to fret about. Two are stronger than one any day of the week, and we will always be together.'

‘What, even when I am advancing into battle?'

‘Even then, sweetie.'

I concluded from these ridiculous answers that Sophie had spiritual togetherness in mind, of no solace to me at all. Nevertheless I was pleased that a hitherto dormant religious sense had appeared; if nothing else, ‘twould come in useful when the time came for Sophie to compose an inscription on my gravestone.

‘So you think I am worrying unnecessarily?'

‘I am positive of it. But even if you are not, you can alleviate distress by playing off one fear against another. For example, if you are worrying about Burnley Axelrod, think about the horror of going into battle; if you are worrying about the horror of battle, think about the terror of Burnley Axelrod.'

I looked closely at Sophie to see if she was being serious. She was. In despair, I sat down next to her, stuffed my hands in my pockets, outsplayed my legs, and gazed out over the water to the idyllic pastures of Long Island.

‘Well, nothing can be done, it seems, whether I am worried or not. So let us enjoy what is left of life. It is, after all, a lovely day to get married.'

I said this with all the mournfulness of the philosopher in Ecclesiastes, but either Sophie was not sensitive to my mood, or she deliberately put a more optimistic gloss on the words, for she suddenly jumped up with all the eagerness of a schoolgirl.

‘My feelings precisely, Harry. Come on, up you get! Let us go and find your Parson Blood, then we can get married, and spend the rest of this lovely day as God intended, fornicating freely in a field somewhere. I am eager for it, Harry, I do not mind telling you. After two days without it you must be too, poor boy.'

She clamped her hand on my artillery, and gave it a good squeeze of encouragement. I looked down dispassionately at the manoeuvre, then turned to Sophie and feigned a grotesque smile.

‘That's my boy,' said Sophie. ‘Cheer up. After all, what is life?'

‘A great adventure,' I said, a morose parrot.

‘And is that not why you joined the army in the first place, to seek adventure and get away from the stifling boredom served up by Amanda Philpott?'

‘Sort of…'

‘Of course it was. But you must remember, Harry, that the very nature of an adventure means that the rough must be taken with the smooth. You must expect that, and not lose heart when it does come. You must be a like a Knight of the Holy Grail, for whom there is no turning back once a course has been decided upon. But in recompense for the little trouble you're having with Burnley Axelrod, I promise you that this afternoon you will reach sexual heights unattainable in Sussex – or Europe, for that matter.'

‘I will?'

To my own surprise, both my voice and my artillery sparked into life.

‘Promise. This afternoon you can do anything you want with me. Or to me.'

‘Anything?' I croaked.

‘Anything.'

‘What, we can even play Rebels and Redcoats?'

‘That, my dear, will be your
hors d'oeuvre
.' Then, presumably a
hors d'oeuvre
for the
hors d'oeuvre
, she unbuttoned her gown, took my hand, and placed it on her bosom. I watched with interest as it began involuntarily to squeeze at the firm fruit. ‘God, the things I can show you,' Sophie panted in my ear, ‘my breath goes just thinking about them.'

My breath had already gone, as had my mind. Taking one cursory look to see that no-one was around, I began kissing her lasciviously, and tugging her to the ground.

‘Let us find that field first,' I urged, heart pounding furiously, ‘and then set about finding Parson Blood.'

‘No, Harry, you impetuous dog. We marry first, then fornicate like hot little devils later.'

Ceasing my immediate mauling, I rose as best I could given the state of my stalk, then pulled her in the direction of Trinity Church, last sighting place of Parson Blood.

‘Oh Harry, is this not thrilling?'

I grunted assent, mute with swinish lust.

‘What church shall we get married in, dearest? I had a look at a few yesterday. There's St Luke's in Cotton Street – a lovely little church with pale blue walls and a flat ceiling. Or there's The Old Dutch Reformed Church off Garden Street, with its glass chandelier and gallery. Then there's…'

‘Which has the shortest aisle?'

‘St Luke's, I think…'

‘Then that's the one it will be. Now come – come quickly before I do, you…you…' A thought struck me – I gambled on it, ‘…you hot little whore!'

This was a bold thing for me to say, but I thought it might please her, these being the very words Verne used on Nancy to hurt Sophie. And I was right, it did please her.

‘For that, Sir,' panted Sophie, beaming with satisfaction, struggling to keep up with me, ‘you will experience Hot Hell.'

I couldn't wait, and we hurried back into town as quickly as we could; indeed, I even gave Sophie a piggy-back on several occasions, just to speed things along. When the spire of St Luke's Church finally hoved into view, my stomach gave a strange lurch, as if suddenly aware of the significance of the occasion. As I stopped to gawp upwards in a kind of religious awe, Sophie took the opportunity to hop off my back.

‘This will do, sweetie,' she said, all vivacity. ‘Now we must part for a while. You go and find the parson; I will go and find a dress. I will meet you at the church door

at…what time is it now?'

‘About eleven, I think.'

‘About one then. Don't be late.'

She gave me a kiss with some tongue, then scurried away as if she knew exactly where she was going. Able to make my own way around the city as well as Sophie – what a cosmopolitan couple we were – I set off with equal confidence for Trinity Church, a landmark so famous only a fool could miss it. It was with some mortification therefore that I found myself, not fifteen minutes later, on the banks of the Hudson River, scratching my head and wondering where on earth it had got to. Vanity wounded, I retraced my steps with more concentration and attention to street signs, but this only disorientated me more. Eventually I had to swallow my pride and ask directions of an old woman who looked as though she had lost her brain in an Indian attack. Gawping at me as though I were the idiot, she told me exactly how to get there, and why I had missed it – it had been razed to the ground in the Great Fire, as every person above suspicion knew. Astonished at both forms of intelligence, I thanked her grudgingly, and ran off in the direction indicated, aware of the need to make up for lost time.

As informed, all that awaited me was the burnt-out shell of the church, inside which five crows bickered raucously over a loaf of bread. Human crows appeared to have accounted for the fixtures and fittings of the place, and of Parson Blood or anyone else in the 85
^th
Foot there was no sign at all, even in the immediate vicinity. Feeling an unexpected sense of abandonment, I made frantic enquiries of passers-by, but no-one seemed to know or care what had happened to them. I hurried to Pete's lodgings like a child running back to its mother, but was dismayed to find the 85
^th
no longer on picket duty, which probably meant that Pete was no longer inside either. I enquired anyway, but was aggressively told to ‘hawae hae cruddy yon rigwoodie messan', or some such nonsense, by a glassy-eyed Scotsman in a tartan bonnet. All further attempts to locate the parson similarly thwarted, I trudged back to St Luke's in tears. The day was ruined, my lifeline to England was gone, and there would be no sex in the fields for me later. My sole melancholy job now was to find Sophie, tell her that I could find no-one to marry us – at least for the time being – and break her happy heart. I was on the lookout for her when, to my joy, I spotted a tower of books entering the very church in which we hoped to get married. It looked for all the world like the carapace of the man I wanted.

‘I hope you have paid for those, Parson,' I said excitedly, when I caught up with him in the porch of the church, ‘and are not abusing your position as a holy man to plunder an occupied city of its treasures.'

A face turned towards me that was about as far from Parson's Blood's as ‘twas possible to get. It was young for one thing, with startling blue eyes and a long straight bony nose.

‘What?' he said, seemingly dazed from a morning's unearthly reading. ‘Oh, yes, these. Yes, I have. I have money to burn thanks to the ridiculous fashion that has sprung up for tawdry marriages to the nearest drab to hand. But who are you, Sir, and what can I do for you?'

Though taken terribly aback, I knew I had to seize my chance. It seemed as if I had stumbled across the very man I needed.

‘My name is Harry Oysterman, and I'd like one of those very same tawdry marriages, if you please.'

The parson groaned, as if torn between duty and the love of easy money. He put his books down on a table just inside the church door, and studied me in the gloom.

‘You are not even a soldier, are you?'

I no longer found this old barb so maddening, having adjusted more to my place in the world. Besides, I was too desperate for his services to be indignant at anything.

‘I will doubtless be back in scarlet this time tomorrow.'

‘Not many soldiers get the chance to take time off from soldiering, and wander around a city in their ordinary clothes.'

‘I am a very special soldier, but more I cannot say.'

‘Does your commanding officer know you plan to get married?'

‘No.'

‘You cannot get married without his permission.'

I pulled out a few notes of uncertain denomination from my coat pocket, and waggled them in front of his face. His eyes crossed as he focused on them, and he began to salivate.