The Sparks Fly Upward (18 page)

But Philippa, watching the skiff shoot past the grounds of the hospital, was inclined to trust Marie Joséphine's instinct that the man was up to no good. True, March had come in with a slicing wind but it would be curious for a rower to beach his boat and clamber up an embankment in order to get out of it.

However, there was little to be done but alert the Watch to a prowler and make sure that all shutters and doors in the house were securely bolted at night.

Philippa had lodged the incident at the back of her mind, but just now, as their waterman took her, Georgiana and Chadwell upriver, she'd turned to glance at the view from the stern—the slope of Chelsea Hospital's gardens down to the river was worth a look—and saw a skiff some two hundred yards behind their boat, on the same course.

It was a blustery day but sunny and the choppy water was speckled with reflections that bothered the eye so that detail at a distance escaped it, yet Philippa received the impression—as she had previously—that the skiff was a good one, a racing craft such as gentlemen used in their competitions, and that its rower, in rough clothing, his head and mouth hidden by a scarf, looked as much out of place in it as would a farmhand mounted on a thoroughbred.

She told herself that suspicion was the penalty suffered by those pursuing secret activity, as she was. There were hundreds of such skiffs on the river and no reason why some of them should not belong to a working man. Strange, though, that such an ill-fitting combination of boat and rower should crop up twice in three days on this particular stretch . . .

She kept an eye on it until, nearing the City, she lost sight of it in the traffic of the river which, in Londoners' efforts to avoid the throng of the streets, was becoming almost as congested. They had to wait in a cluster of other boats lining up to approach the landing steps. Once ashore, they were sucked into the maelstrom of the City's crowds where the man from the skiff, if he were indeed following her and Georgiana, would be one among a thousand.

She shrugged. Why
should
anyone be following them?

But the chill of suspicion struck again when they reached the print shop. Mr Lucey, it appeared, had talked to a male caller.

‘He was
struck
when I mentioned that a lady had written the latest editorial. “We must not underestimate the fair sex,” I told him. “Shakespeare says in women's eyes are the books, the arts, the academes, that contain and nourish all the world.” And he agreed.'

‘Did you tell him who the lady was?' Philippa asked.

‘Oh, no. One does not break the anonymity of a leader writer.'

‘When did he call?'

‘Let me see, when was it, Jamie? The same day last week that you ladies did . . . yes, it was—not long after you went.'

‘Was he a rough-looking man?'

‘Indeed not.' Mr Lucey was offended. ‘Quite the gentleman and obviously a free-thinker, put himself down as a subscriber to
The Passenger.
'

He fetched the subscription list and pointed to the name: ‘S. Smith, Esq.' The address was Boodle's Club.

Philippa's eyes met Georgiana's. Blanchard was a member of Boodle's. But, then, so was nearly every man of fashion. And S. Smith, according to Lucey, had been very fashionable. ‘Plain cloth, you know, but the
cut
, my dear, and the
fit
. How he dared venture in these parts . . . but he'd heard of my work, he said. In any case, he looked like a man who'd acquit himself well against any of the brutes around here.'

Definitely Blanchard.

Georgiana shrugged. ‘Very well, he knows what I'm up to. Even nicer of him to keep it from Charles, most enlightened of him.'

Apparently, she accepted the man's right to inquire into her business; Philippa found it sinister. As she and Jamie walked on to the Scratcher's house, the image of a spider collecting flies in its web for later consumption kept occurring to her.

Mrs Scratcher was out or, at least, not at work today. The hovel was quiet. An iron pot from which issued the smell of stewing meat hung over a fire in the tiny grate.

There were other improvements, a good candle on the table lighted several quills with variously cut nibs, ink bottles and two small pieces of paper on one of which Scratcher, wearing a pair of mended spectacles, was carefully inscribing.

He pushed the spectacles up so that they disappeared into his hair as Philippa and Jamie entered. His eyes were sharper today but even less welcoming than they'd been the week before. ‘Tell her go fuck,' he said to Jamie. ‘I got other work.'

‘Ain't you done it?'

‘Busy,' Scratcher said. ‘Tell her go fuck.'

Jamie was incredulous. ‘You're never passing up ten canaries?'

‘Busy,' Scratcher said, ‘Tell her go fuck.'

Philippa snatched up the papers on the table. One was a bill ‘for work done' amounting to £70. The other might have been an exact copy except that its total was £200. Somebody had commissioned Scratcher to make him a profit. All in a forger's day's work and nothing to do with her.

Jamie was arguing. After a bit Scratcher reached into a filthy pocket and produced the original two guineas down payment which he flung on the table at them. ‘Now go fuck.'

‘I'll offer you more,' Philippa said desperately. ‘I'll offer you anything, '

Jamie, however, pulled her to the door and out into the alley. ‘No good, miss. Twelve guineas is more'n he'll see in a month o' Sundays, if he won't do it for that . . . I don't understand it, I
don't
. But it ain't the money, that's for sure. It's some'ing else.'

‘What?'

‘Dunno. For certain he ain't gone honest.'

‘Are there any
other
forgers around?'

‘Plenty, miss, but none of 'em don't do French.'

The wind blew the alley's detritus around their legs, a sodden piece off a poster lodged itself against the hem of Philippa's coat; an incomplete headline read, ‘WANT ...'

She felt shriveled and angry, not at Scratcher—one did not blame detritus for being what it was—not even at Blanchard whose refusal to help had put her in this situation, but at Sophie.
Why did you ask me? I am not fitted to deal with these things.

Then, even more shamefully, came relief. The difficulty had proved insurmountable; she had been absolved from a duty that had cost her anguish and sleepless nights; she had tried her best, it was not her fault she'd failed.

The burden slipped from her shoulders. She thought,
I'll wait for Andrew to return home and he will see to it.

Sophie's face rose up at her but Philippa was firm with it.
I know. The delay may be fatal and I'm sorry but there is nothing more I can do.

Redeemed, she took Jamie's arm and started back.

At the corner of the alley they bumped into Mrs Scratcher. The intervening week had worked wonders on the woman; she was inadequately dressed for the weather but her face had shed its despair; she was almost jaunty. On her arm was a basket filled with groceries.

She even smiled at them. ‘Got it, then?'

‘He ain't done it,' Jamie told her savagely. ‘Don't intend to.'

‘He what?'

‘Gave us our money back.'

‘Can't've. I been spendin' it.' She indicated her basket.

‘Got it from somewhere then,' Jamie said. ‘Show her, miss.'

There was no need for Mrs Scratcher to see the returned guineas. With a ‘Stay there,' she was off towards her home using a stride that boded badly for Mr Scratcher.

They stayed where they were commanded; even so they could hear the screeches and thumps emerging from under the Scratcher door—they could have been heard in Grub Street. Then it quietened.

After a while, Mrs Scratcher emerged. She glanced up and down the alley, though Philippa and Jamie were the only people in it, before hurrying towards them and ushering them round the corner into a backyard, empty except for the corpse of a dog that was interesting some rooks.

She put a hand on Philippa's shoulder and another on Jamie's to draw them close like a stage conspirator but her face was pale. ‘He'll do it,' she said. Her breath smelled of bad teeth and porter. ‘But it'll cost you fifty.'

At Jamie's flinch, she glared. ‘Fifty and we can flit. Go abroad, maybe. He's scared. What you been up to? Some'un's give him the cash
not
to do it
and
put the frighteners on him an' all. Some'un's told him he'll see him lagged if he does it ...'

‘Transported,' Jamie translated for Philippa's benefit.

Mrs Scratcher nodded. ‘S'right. And they don't serve no poppy on a transport. I tell you, he's shittin' on his shoes.'

‘Who?' Philippa asked. ‘Who's frightened him?'

‘Don't know, do I? I'm us'lly otherwise engaged when they come.' The woman became angry. ‘An' if he thinks I'm spending another year on my back a-cause he ain't got no spine, he's got another think coming.' She took a deep breath. ‘He'll do it. But it's fifty.'

Philippa nodded and reached into her sleeve for her purse. ‘Here's five on account and I'll agree to forty-five more if you tell me who frightened him.'

Mrs Scratcher lifted her skirts to slide the coins behind a grubby garter. ‘Give us a week. But don't you come to the house; Vlad reckons you been followed. Meet you in Saint Mary Axe round noon next Tuesday an' you make sure you looks behind you. He ain't much I grant you, but he's no bloody good to me in Botany Bay.'

She waggled her petticoats into place and made to leave but Philippa held on to her arm. ‘You know, don't you?'

‘No, I don't.' Then she sighed. ‘It might be the one talks Frenchie to him. I only hear the voices. This one . . . he's a special. Lovely pipe he's got yet he ain't, if you know what I mean. I reckon Old Nick'd talk like him, crummy but nasty . . . sort of treacle with poison in it.'

‘Thank you,' Philippa said.

Mrs Scratcher cocked her head in inquiry. ‘Know him, do you?'

‘Oh yes.'

The woman nodded. ‘You stay here till I gone. I ain't bein' seen with you.' They watched her hurry away, ill-fitting shoes flapping on her feet, shoulders hunched; the picture of a woman nearing old age. Yet when she'd smiled at them, less than half an hour before, she'd revealed herself to be no more than twenty.

 

 

THE arrangement this time was that Philippa should call for Georgiana—the Fitch-Botleys' house was the nearer to London—and go in by road with Chadwell driving the trap as close to the City as the traffic would permit, at which point the ladies would descend, use some reputable inn in which to don their disreputable cloaks and shawls, and proceed on foot.

‘And our friend in the skiff can scull up and down the river until he sinks, God rot him,' Philippa had said.

Kitty Hays was to come with them. Whey they'd reported their doings to the Condorcet Society, she'd said: ‘If you think you're leaving me behind, my dears, you're mistaken. Pursued by villains in boats—with poisoned daggers under their cloaks, no doubt. Too,
too
Elizabethan.'

Eliza Morris had been intimidated. ‘It seems to me the man's prepared to do anything to stop that
certificat
reaching M Condorcet. Don't you see? Once you have it, he could set ruffians on you before you can post it, and get killed even. It's a lawless part of town.'

‘I can't go to the magistrates, though, can I? I'm as lawless as Blanchard—more. I am accessory to a forgery and if I succeed with it, I could be arrested for treating with the enemy.'

‘Just think though, Philippa, how vulgar to be murdered in Moorfields.'

‘Then I shall contrive not to be murdered until I'm back in Chelsea.'

But the vulgarity of being murdered at all bothered Eliza and would, she said, upset her father. She did not offer to come.

There was no doubt, however, of Blanchard's earnestness to thwart Condorcet's rescue. The intervening week had proved that he was prepared to expend the time of more than one employee on it.

Philippa and Jenny had been followed on their various visits to friends, three times on trips to the village as well as to church on Sunday.

Mercifully, Jenny had remained unaware of what was behind her, but a gypsy woman who trailed them twice was not expert enough to escape the notice of the now very alert Marie Joséphine who tapped Philippa on the shoulder and muttered,
‘Regard l'indigente salle en arrière. Elle nous suit
.'

Philippa had turned round to see only a tree. ‘Are you sure?'

‘Ignore her.'

The weedy fellow who followed them to church was even less accomplished. He was not up to the pace Philippa set and was occasionally to be seen resting with one hand on a signpost while easing his boots with the other.

The situation was farcical, the more farcical because it was happening in the demure bowers of Chelsea, which rendered it not so much sinister as undignified. Philippa felt ridiculous, like a hen that some particularly ugly ducklings had mistakenly attached themselves to.

Nor could she divine the object of the exercise. Having put the fear of hell into Scratcher, Blanchard should have assumed that her attempt to rescue Condorcet had been nullified once and for all, yet obviously he did not. In which case he was crediting her with resources she did not have.

In a curious way her fear of Blanchard, which had been building, was diminished by what she regarded as an inept exercise in offense. That the man should send these clowns to dog her footsteps displayed not just rascally intent but vulgarity.