Sovay (11 page)

‘Mr Oldfield! I do not think you should . . .’ she began to say, but he was not listening. He squatted down, holding the paper up to the blaze.

‘Come,’ he said, ‘come here and look at this.’

Sovay feared for the lawyer’s hands as he held the paper taut and steady and as close as he could without it burning. The glow of the fire showed red, the thin paper rendered almost transparent by the light from behind it. Sovay leaned closer, ignoring the heat on her face. Tiny lines of writing began to appear, creeping across the warming paper as if by magic.

Gabriel joined them, brows drawn together. ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What does it mean?’

‘Invisible ink. Onion juice by the smell of it. Revealed only when heat is applied to it. As to what message is contained?’ The lawyer brought the paper closer. ‘It’s in cipher.’ He studied the page carefully. ‘That is unexpected. The unexpected always makes me suspicious. I distrust things that are secret. I like things to be above board. I haven’t seen this cipher for many years, but I have seen it before.’ He took the paper away from the fire and the symbols disappeared. ‘I’m curious to know what needs to be concealed in this way. I will give these pages some study before I pass them on to their rightful owners. Indeed, I will.’

He walked back to his desk, distracted. His mind on the cipher, he began to sort through the papers anew. Sovay deemed that it was time to leave.

‘Well, thank you for your time, Mr Oldfield. Will you tell me if you make any discoveries?’

‘Oh, you are leaving.’ He looked up, his grey eyes barely seeing her. ‘Skidmore will show you out. Skidmore!’ The clerk appeared immediately. ‘Show Miss Middleton and Mr Stanhope to the door.’

Oldfield closed his own door, his mind already on the mysterious document written in invisible ink. He had not seen this cipher since his youth. As a student, he had studied in Germany, at the University of Ingolstadt. While he was there, he had joined a secret society that had since gained considerable notoriety. His code name had been Lusus, companion to Bacchus. He sighed at the reminiscence, such a very great distance had grown between who he was now and the young man who had chosen such a sobriquet. One of the tasks that they had been set as they progressed from one level to another in the Order was to master this cipher.

He sat down and began to transcribe. He called for a candlestick and candles. He would copy the document first, then he could decipher it at his leisure. When he looked up from his task, the candles were guttering stubs and the room had grown dark. He sighed and swivelled on his chair to stare at the dying embers of the fire. The young Mr Oldfield believed in the law above all other things. At first, he had not been averse to the happenings in France but, like many others, he had looked on askance at each new turn of events. He did not believe that any faction had the right to take over a nation, to make their own laws and then break them, which was what he believed to be happening now. To take a king out and try him and then execute him; to treat his queen in the same manner; to slaughter innocents indiscriminately with no hope or recourse to proper trial. Like Saturn, the Revolution had begun to eat its own children, so one of its leaders had said. That man was now dead. This was not the rule of law, in his opinion; it was a tyranny, brought about by the rule of the mob. He feared the mob above every other thing. He remembered the Gordon Riots. He’d been a young man then, a young lawyer, just beginning in practice with his father.

To have lived through it was never to forget it. Although the demonstrations had started peacefully enough, he had felt deep perturbation at the tens of thousands streaming through the streets towards the Houses of Parliament, all wearing blue cockades, waving banners and chanting ‘No Popery’ with Lord George Gordon at the head of them, carrying his petition. It had not taken long for it to turn ugly, once entry was denied them and the petition refused.

By nightfall, the city was given over to the rule of the mob: shops and commercial premises looted; churches and chapels broken open and sacked, furnishings, vestments, dragged out and made into great bonfires. The night sky had been blotched and badged with the red glow from burning buildings, while the mob, made filthy by their own destructions, had roamed with wild, restless fury, their faces blackened with soot, or made pale as ghosts by plaster dust, all quite mad with the sense of their own importance and power.

For over a week, the city had been entirely commanded by the rioters. Oldfield and his father had stayed, watching from behind the shutters, with anything valuable and important moved to the cellars, while the Bank of England was attacked, the bridges over the Thames seized. Finally, the infantry and cavalry had been called out and together they had succeeded in restoring order, firing on the crowd wherever they found it, charging them with sword and bayonet.

It was not the people he despised, he felt sorry for the poor devils, hundreds of their number dead in the streets, others ending up swinging at Tyburn. No one a jot the better off. No, he reserved his loathing for those who led them, men like Lord George Gordon who sought to use them as a blunt instrument to cudgel their way to power.

He turned back to documents that he had lately translated. Terrible as those riots had been, they were nothing compared to what was planned here. Gordon and his petition had been like a torch thrown into a hayrick, causing it to flare up and burn with such a fierce heat that none could go near it, but the fire had died down just as quickly, once the fuel was spent. This was something entirely different and far more destructive, as in a fire carefully and artfully laid with each part of a building connected with fuses and mined with black powder. All that was needed was the initial spark.

Except this was not a building, it was a nation. If he understood this correctly, then all over the country, one armed faction would be set against another, until the streets of every town and every city ran with blood. National leaders would be picked off, one by one, leaving the way open for a mad king to be removed and a weak and dissolute regent swept away. At this point, others were primed to take over, to be initially welcomed by a terrified, exhausted population, grateful to anyone who could restore order, but ushering in a tyranny never witnessed in this country before. It was a cunning and evil conspiracy that made the blood run cold to even contemplate. Clever in the extreme and impossible to stop, once the fuse was lit. It would make the Gordon Riots appear as nothing. It would rival the Revolution in France for bloodshed and mayhem, but there could be no possible pretence that this was the will of the people. This was the will of one man and a fiendishly clever one. To oppose and defeat him would require equal cunning.

Oldfield spent a moment or two more pondering what to do as he collected all the materials together and put them back into the wallet. Then he summoned Skidmore.

‘Get me string and brown paper, will you?’

Oldfield parcelled the wallet himself, dripping melted wax down on to the knots and careful to use a plain seal. Then he addressed it to
Sir Robert Dysart,
Care of the Home Office
,
Whitehall
, before giving it to Skidmore to take to the Post Office in Lombard Street.

‘Too late for tonight’s post,’ he said and then looked at the address. ‘His offices ain’t there, anyway. They’re in Leggatt’s Court. I can take it over there, if you like.’ Oldfield looked at his clerk, surprised yet again by the things that the boy knew. ‘Thank you for your offer, Skidmore, but just this once, do what I ask of you! Now go.’

When Skidmore left, Oldfield’s thoughts turned to Sovay. He hoped that his actions would act like a lightning attractor and take the danger away from her. She really had no idea of the true significance of her chance discovery. Her concern had been for her father only, and those like him. The arrest warrants, the evidences, were incidental, ultimately unimportant except for the way that they fitted into the whole. She could have no inkling of what was contained within the innocuous-looking letters. He hoped that Dysart would think so, too, and that returning the wallet would take his attention away from her, but Oldfield did not want it redirected onto himself. Oldfield was not afraid of putting himself in danger, but they must tread carefully and avoid alerting Dysart in any way. The coded missives were addressed to third-party intermediaries, to be passed on to yet others, so no one would know who their co-conspirators were. They could not be identified in any way, but one strand linked them. They were all Illuminati.

CHAPTER
11

S
ovay left Oldfield’s office much relieved to be free of the wallet. The great bell of St Paul’s chimed the hour as she made her way with Gabriel through the great press of people on Ludgate Hill: lawyers’ clerks with briefs under their arms, barristers in wig and gown, merchants, men of business, porters and servants all came towards them, unwilling to give right of way even to a lady, each one preoccupied by his own affairs. There was precious little room on the pavement and the road was crowded with chairs, carts and carriages. Sovay was glad of Gabriel’s strong, guiding hand on her arm. They went over the crossing at Fleet Market and Bridge Street, a boy sweeping a way for them, and came to Fleet Street which was no less busy. The way was so crowded towards Temple Bar, and Sovay was so busy looking out for Turnbull’s Bank, her next place of call, that she almost walked headlong into a stranger and Gabriel had to steady her.

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I . . .’ she began to apologise but was immediately interrupted.

‘On the contrary, it is I . . .’ The man was removing his hat to bow to her, when he suddenly smiled in recognition. ‘Why, Miss Middleton. I did not know you were in London.’

‘Mr Barrett, isn’t it?’ She was looking into the mild blue-grey eyes of the American who had called on her father.

‘It is! I am very pleased to meet you again, even if the circumstances are accidental. In fact, I have news . . .’ he began to say, but checked himself, aware of her companion.

‘Oh, let me introduce Mr Gabriel Stanhope. A trusted friend of our family.’

‘Pleased to meet you, sir. Perhaps I might accompany you on your way?’

‘I would very much like you to,’ Sovay replied. ‘What is your news?’

Despite the anonymous indifference of the crowd, Virgil Barrett looked round. He took her other arm and fell in beside her.

‘After I left you, I went north to Manchester, to warn the societies in those parts and to Liverpool. From there I went to Dublin and that is where I picked up news of your father.’

‘Dublin!’ Sovay exclaimed.

‘Shh, have care. It is hard to know who’s about! Yes, your father had been there, seeking news of Hugh.’

‘Is he still there?’

‘No, he left for France accompanied by Sir Henry Fitzwilliam, a leader of the United Irishmen. It was them I had gone to see. As a matter of fact.’

‘Fitzwilliam?’ Gabriel asked. ‘Is he a relation of Gerald Fitzwilliam?’

‘His older brother. Do you know him?’

‘He is Hugh’s tutor at Oxford,’ Sovay replied.

‘Is he?’ The American frowned. ‘Have a care of him. He’s of a different political persuasion to his brother, if he believes in anything beyond himself, that is. Whatever the way of it, he’s not to be trusted. He’s in thrall to some dangerous men.’

‘You are right,’ Sovay agreed. ‘This is not a conversation for the street.’ They were hard by Turnbull’s now. ‘This is where we must part, I’m afraid. Perhaps you would call on me? This afternoon, about four o’clock?’

‘I would be delighted.’ He turned to Gabriel. ‘Do you accompany Miss Sovay into the banking house, or might I offer you some refreshment? Brown’s coffee house is hard by.’

‘I’d be delighted to accompany you, sir,’ Gabriel replied.

Virgil Barrett smiled. ‘Good man. Until later, then, Miss Sovay.’ He raised his hat to her. ‘I will bid you good day.’

Turnbull’s Bank was in no way grand and, except for the bars upon the windows and the liveried porter, it was little different from the other establishments along the street. Sovay’s family had banked here ever since the original Mr Turnbull, a goldsmith, had opened his establishment in 1625 at the sign of the Golden Bottle, Cheapside. The present Fleet Street premises were always referred to by the bank’s employees as the ‘new shop’ even though the old one had disappeared well over a century ago, destroyed in the Great Fire. The bank’s considerable assets had been kept safe from that terrible conflagration, secure in vaults deep underground. Bankers rarely took chances.

A clerk looked up from his ledger as Sovay approached his high desk. He peered through a brace of pewter candlesticks and a pen pot containing turkey-feather quills to enquire as to her business.

‘I am here to see Mr Turnbull.’

The clerk beckoned to a bank messenger.

‘And who may I say is calling?’

Sovay gave her card to the messenger and the clerk went back to his ledger. The only sounds were the tick-tock of a tall case clock and the scratch of the clerk’s pen. The small portmanteau that Gabriel had been carrying for her was heavy. Sovay rested it on a table as she examined a display of plate contained within a glass cabinet and tried not to count the seconds passing by. The silence began to unnerve her. Various doors led off the vestibule. Every so often, one would open, and a man would walk through and enter another. Some were clerks and plainly dressed, others were gentlemen with much gold hanging from their waistcoats. They all ignored her as the doors whispered shut on their hidden world of vaults and ledgers, locks, secrets and the turning of keys.

Eventually, the messenger returned and took her through one of the sighing doors to the office of Mr Adam Turnbull, the fourth generation of Turnbulls to head the bank. A marble fireplace held busts of his predecessors and the walls were adorned by portraits of chairmen and partners going back to the founder.

Mr Turnbull rose from his seat to conduct her to a chair. He was so grand that Sovay almost felt inclined to curtsy. He was above middle height, soberly but exquisitely dressed in dark grey velvet and silk. His perfectly fitted flaxen wig curled crisply above his ears and his skin shone with good health and good fortune.

‘What can I do for you, Miss Sovay?’ he asked as he resumed his seat behind his wide mahogany desk. He looked at her over clasped hands and the skin round his brown eyes crinkled, as if he was prepared to be amused.

‘I would like you to look after this for me.’ Sovay opened the small portmanteau, swung up the leather bag containing the guineas and heaved it onto the desk. She loosened the ties round the neck. Some of the coins spilled onto the desk.

‘Good Heavens!’ Adam Turnbull sprang up, as if the clink of coin was the last thing that he had been expecting. ‘I hope you did not come here unescorted with such a quantity of gold upon you. The London streets can be most dangerous.
Most
dangerous.’

‘No, Mr Turnbull, do not trouble yourself. I was accompanied to your door.’

‘That is a relief.’ He took out the paper money, examining the denominations, and tipped the rest of the coin onto the table. He began counting the guineas and arranging them into piles, as if he had never forgotten the skills that he had learned as a young counter clerk.

‘A tidy sum, Miss Sovay,’ he said when he had finished. ‘A tidy sum, indeed. Now what would you have me do?’

‘I would like you to look after it for me.’

‘Your father’s account?’

Sovay shook her head. As the money was of doubtful provenance and obtained by means scarcely less dubious, she’d decided that it should be kept in a separate account.

‘On your own account? Unusual, in one so young, but it can be done. Of course,’ he leaned back in his chair, ‘to open an account in your name, we would need your father’s written permission.’

Sovay bit her lip. ‘That might be difficult. I don’t know where he is, you see . . .’

The banker looked up in alarm. Sir John wasn’t the kind of man to go missing.

‘I came to London,’ Sovay continued, ‘hoping to find word of him here, but he is not at the house and hasn’t been seen for some while . . .’

‘I will certainly make enquiries. Your brother, Mr Hugh . . .’

‘He is missing, too.’ Sovay looked at him. ‘He is not at his Oxford college. I have received information that he might be in Paris. I think it possible that my father might have followed him there.’

Sovay sat back, surprised. She had not intended to tell him any of this when she came through his door.

‘Paris, eh?’ Mr Turnbull leaned back in his chair. The look he gave her was full of meaning. He was not a man to state the obvious and never pried into a client’s business but his clients often confided in him nevertheless. ‘Our French House is closed,’ he went on, ‘due to, ahem, local difficulties.’ Most of their customers had fled the country, but he saw no point in telling her that. ‘But we still have agents there looking after our interests. I will enquire among them. We will find them, young lady, never fear, and safe from harm, I trust. Meanwhile, unorthodox it may be, but I will make sure that these funds remain at your disposal. There are procedures, for orphans, and so on. Unusual times require unusual remedies.’

‘Thank you, Mr Turnbull,’ she said. ‘And thank you for your discretion,’ she added, aware that at no time had he asked how she had come by such a large sum.

‘Bankers are known for it, young lady.’ He rose to escort her to the door. ‘How could we operate else? Now, do not hesitate to call on me if I can be of any further assistance.’

Sovay left Turnbull’s office, the portmanteau she carried now empty and light. Gabriel was waiting outside, but without the American.

‘He sends his compliments and will call on you later, although he can tell you little more, at present, as to where Sir John might be.’ Gabriel looked around, his eyes searching the moving crowd. ‘He also said that he thought that we might be followed. It would be best to behave like innocent visitors to the city and to talk of inconsequential things until we reach the house.’

To this end, they walked along the Strand, looking into the windows of the shops, and returned home by way of Covent Garden Market. As they approached, the streets looked disturbingly familiar, as in a place remembered from a dream. Sovay looked around, certain that she had been here before. They took a narrow street from the Strand and, although it looked different in daylight, one of the tall, crooked houses crowding in on them was the very place that she had been taken to by the Captain, she was sure. It was early, but there were already streetwalkers standing on corners, wearing too much face paint and too few clothes. They cast a bold eye over the men strolling by and Gabriel cursed the fellow who had given them directions. What could the man be thinking of, he wondered, to send a lady this way? Sovay kept silent. She certainly was not going to tell Gabriel that she had been here recently and in the company of Captain Greenwood.

Eventually, the narrow streets opened out on to an elegant arcaded square and a broad piazza full of people. The air was sweet with the scent of flowers and the pavements spread with great, heaped baskets of fruit and vegetables. Shoppers wandered past, smiling at invitations to taste and buy, going on to inspect the market stalls, stopping to look at this and that, to pick up a notion, examine a novelty, stroke the softness of a scarf. Street sellers weaved through and around them crying their wares, while hawkers shouted from booths or a little patch of paving, and a quack doctor offered a cure for every ill known to man or woman, a bottle in each hand. A crowd roared encouragement to a pair of prizefighters, one black, and one white, both bloodied and glistening with sweat. A man dressed as a jester capered past, beating a little drum, accompanied by a little white dog with a ruff round his neck. He was surrounded by a yelling mob of children, all shouting, ‘Mr Punch! Mr Punch!’

The children sat down in front of a tall stall and Sovay followed, pulling Gabriel along with her, curious to know what lay behind the red curtains of the striped booth. The crowd settled in expectation as the curtains jerked back to reveal a very peculiar-looking fellow dressed in a red coat and a pointed hat, with scarlet cheeks and a hooked nose. He spoke in a strange squawking way that had the crowd laughing and he brandished a stick and laid about him in a furious manner that had them laughing harder. Gabriel guffawed, declaring that he looked like the church warden, Mr Pollock, and Punch’s wife, Joan, bore more than a passing resemblance to Pollock’s wife, Betty. Sovay was soon wiping tears away as Punch’s wife gave him a good drubbing for dropping the baby and all sorts of mayhem ensued in the two-foot-wide booth. The crowd hooted and roared as sausages whirled about along with the baby and Mr Punch took on all comers, including ghosts and crocodiles. All this was accompanied by a great deal of squawking talk.

‘How does he make that sound?’ Sovay asked no one in particular.

‘Thing he talks with is called a swatchel,’ an amiable voice answered from beside her. ‘Him inside’s called the professor. He’s an Italian. Always around the Garden. Amiable cove. Fond of the bottle. Near as red in the face as Mr Punch.’

It took Sovay a minute to recognise that the boy standing next to her was Toby.

‘Watch.’ He smiled up at her. ‘We’re coming up to the best part.’

Sovay laughed along with the crowd as an officer with a warrant and a constable came to take Mr Punch to prison. There was an edge to the cheering as Mr Punch set about the constables with his stick. The crowd quietened as Jack Ketch joined them, rope in hand, and the gallows jerked into view. Mr Punch, still defiant, was about to be hanged. There was a ripple of amusement as Mr Punch pretended not to understand what to do. The ripple turned to a rumble of anticipation as Jack Ketch, with much exasperation and contemptuous squawking about Punch’s stupidity, demonstrated by putting the rope round his own neck. The hush of anticipation turned to an appreciative roar and deafening cheering as Punch hanged the hangman. The play was not ended yet. A painted devil popped into view, intent on carrying Punch down to hell. The crowd howled their delight as a triumphant Mr Punch squawked, ‘Huzzah, huzzah, I killed the devil!’ and did for him, too.