Chapter 29
The Cat and Fiddle was a smoke-fouled, ramshackle old half-timbered structure on John Street, not far from the vast warehouses of the East India Company. Sebastian selected a high-backed booth in a quiet corner, ordered a tankard of ale he had no intention of drinking, and settled in to wait.
Archibald Potter, when he appeared, looked more like a comfortable middle-aged shopkeeper than a smuggler. Somewhere in his late forties, he had full, ruddy cheeks, bushy side-whiskers, and a round, knobby nose. The combination could have made him look jovial and soft. It did not. His clothes were typical of an older generation, his waistcoat long and striped with green, his coat square-cut with broad lapels and large pockets. In place of a cravat he wore a stock, and he had a cocked hat perched above a periwig. He stared at the red feather in Sebastian’s hatband, then walked up to stand stiffly with his fingers tapping on the scarred tabletop. He was not smiling.
“I hear you’re just back from Jamaica,” he said in guttural French with a strong Kentish accent.
“The weather’s much better there than here,” replied Sebastian in the same language.
“Huh. Where isn’t it?” With a grunt, the free trader slid into the opposite bench. “Miss Kat says you want to know about smuggling in the Channel—with a particular emphasis on the activities of a certain Frankfurter we all know but few love. Says it’s got something to do with that lady found with her head bashed in up in Clerkenwell.”
“Yes.”
Potter stared at him long and hard. “She swears I can trust you.”
“You have my word.”
The free trader turned to call for a tankard of ale before resting his shoulders against the bench’s high back, his thick, bushy brows drawing together in a frown. “I’ve only ever known one other fellow with yellow eyes, and he wasn’t somebody I’d care to mess with. See well in the dark, do you?”
“Yes.”
Potter nodded. “So did this fellow. I met him in Dunkirk.”
“I take it you spend a fair amount of time in France.”
“I was born there, for all that my parents were from Dover. Still got a sister in Gravelines. She takes care of the French end of the business, while I deal with things over here.”
“Convenient.”
Potter waited while a young barmaid slapped an overflowing tankard of ale on the table before him. “It is that.”
“Gravelines, you say?”
He took a deep swallow of his ale, then wiped the foam from his lips with the back of one hand. “That’s right. It ain’t like in the old days, when we used to have to collect our contraband either in the Low Countries or off neutral ships in the Channel.”
“So what’s changed?”
“Few years ago, Napoléon got clever. He realized that if he worked with us smugglers—made it easy for us to do business with France—he could use us to get French goods into England while at the same time keeping control over what we were bringing into France. So he issued this imperial decree, officially opening up a couple of French ports—first Wimereux and Dunkirk, then Gravelines—to smugglers. He even built special warehouses for us. Keeps them filled with lace, silk, leather gloves, brandy—whatever we want.”
“That was indeed clever. So what do you take to France—besides the usual spies, of course?”
Archibald Potter grinned and leaned forward. “Letters. English newspapers. Escaped prisoners of war. And gold. Lots of gold. They even built a special quarter just for us in Gravelines—they call it the ‘ville des smoglers.’”
“You’re saying the entire operation is officially sanctioned by the French government?”
“It ain’t just sanctioned—it’s controlled. Organized. They got the Ministers of Police, Finance, Interior, War, and What-have-you, all writing reports and procedures and the like. You know the French. Ain’t nobody like ’em for security passes, articles, rules, regulations, and any other kind of government paperwork a body could dream up. They’ve got something like seventy merchants and bankers in Gravelines officially designated to deal with us.”
“‘Us’ being the smugglers?”
“That’s right.”
“How many vessels are we talking about?”
“Hundreds. Most of ’em are small—under ten tons, with some of ’em smaller still. Smugglers like galleys, you see—especially for gold smuggling. They’re light and easy to build, they don’t need a lot of rowers, and they’re fast. Plus, you can turn a galley and row it into the wind if you’re unlucky enough to stumble upon the bloody Water Guard.”
Sebastian ran one finger up and down the side of his tankard. “Tell me about Rothschild.”
Archibald Potter hunched his shoulders and leaned in closer, dropping his voice lower. “They call them ‘the Family,’ you know. Ain’t nobody more active in the Channel than them. Lots of other London merchants and bankers finance operations. But the Rothschilds, they run their own bloody ships, specially constructed with secret compartments. They don’t just use kegs with false heads and hollowed-out pigs of iron hidden under the ballast. They’ve got secret drawers built into the binnacles that open by springs, false ceilings—anything you can think of and probably more than a bit you can’t. And they’re all flying flags with that Rothschild red shield and gold eagle.”
“So they don’t get stopped,” said Sebastian. The Rothschilds paid a number of officials in various countries to look the other way. And even those who weren’t paid off were frequently too afraid to tangle with such a powerful, wealthy family.
“They don’t get stopped very often—that’s for sure. And if they do get caught with contraband, all Nathan Rothschild needs do is claim he doesn’t know anything about it—just lays the blame for any illicit cargo they find on the crew and captain. That way the ship’s not forfeit, and it’s the crew that gets hauled off into custody.”
“I wouldn’t think they’d keep quiet.”
“They do if they’ve any sense. A revenue cutter stopped a Rothschild ship just a few weeks ago—the Viking—with a secret cargo of guineas in her stern. The revenuers took the captain and crew into custody, but a few days later they just”—Potter fluttered his hands through the air like a conjurer doing a trick—“disappeared. Everyone knows Rothschild’s got friends in high places—people who make sure anything he wants to happen, happens.”
Sebastian felt a quickening of interest. “When did you say the Viking was stopped?”
Potter shrugged. “First part of the month—during that nasty Great Fog we had.”
According to Nathan Rothschild, Jane Ambrose’s final lesson with little Anna Rothschild had taken place on a Tuesday at the end of the Great Fog. It could mean nothing, of course. But then again . . .
He became aware of Archibald Potter studying him with renewed interest. “You got Scottish in you?” asked the free trader suddenly.
Sebastian shrugged. “Some. Why?”
“You remember that fellow I was telling you about—the one with the yellow eyes?”
“Yes.”
“He had a Scottish name, for all he was a French colonel.”
Sebastian kept his hands steady by pressing them flat on the table. “Oh? What was his name?” he asked, his voice sounding convincingly casual.
“Mac-something. Can’t recall exactly. But he looked more than a bit like yourself—except older, of course. Old enough by now to maybe be your father, I reckon.”
“Interesting,” said Sebastian, his features carefully schooled into an expression of polite boredom even as he felt the blood coursing through his veins hard enough that for one pulsing moment he heard a roaring in his ears.
Leaving the Cat and Fiddle, Sebastian turned his steps toward the river, his gaze on the heavy white clouds pressing down on the city. But his thoughts were in the past.
He was the third son and fourth child born to the marriage of the Earl of Hendon and his beautiful, restless wife, Sophia. He’d always known he was different from his brothers, Richard and Cecil—different in looks, interests, talents, and temperament. And so very, very different from their father, the Earl. He’d grown up feeling like an outsider in his own family, wondering why his eyes were a strange feral yellow rather than the startling blue that was such a strong characteristic in the St. Cyr family and wondering at the anger and disappointment he often glimpsed in the Earl’s face when he gazed upon his unsatisfactory third son. But somehow it had never occurred to Sebastian to wonder if he were really Hendon’s child.
He’d learned the truth only recently in a series of devastating revelations that had come close to destroying him. Even after all these months, even after the long-delayed reconciliation with Hendon, he still felt a stranger to himself. For if he wasn’t Hendon’s son, then who was he? Half of his history, half of himself—his unknown father’s half—remained an enigma to him, a murky, mysterious world populated by the shadowy men and women from whom he was descended and yet about whom he knew nothing.
Nothing.
Looking out over the jumbled ice of the frozen river, he told himself the free trader’s tale of a French colonel with a Scottish name and yellow eyes meant nothing. Yes, yellow eyes were rare, but they were not unique. And while a Welsh cavalry officer—along with an English lord and a Gypsy stableboy—had been amongst those named as Sophia Devlin’s possible lover, no one had ever mentioned a Frenchman with a Scottish surname.
He told himself that one of these days he was going to need to make peace with the mystery of his origins and accept that he would probably never learn what he was so desperate to know.
He told himself these things. And still hope thrummed within him, undeniable and irrepressible.