Chapter 32
That afternoon, Sebastian was staring thoughtfully at a map of Richmond Park and the surrounding area when he heard a door slam in the distance, followed by the pounding of running feet and Morey’s annoyed hiss.
“Gov’nor! Gov’nor!” shouted Tom, sliding to a halt as he came through the library door, one hand flying up to catch his cap. “Wait till ye ’ear what I found out about that there fencing master yer interested in!”
Sebastian found Damion Pitcairn sitting by himself at a quiet table, drinking a tankard of porter in a public house in Soho known as the Cock.
A tidy brick inn dating to the previous century, the Cock was popular with the fading area’s population of artisans, day laborers, small shop owners, and tradesmen. The atmosphere was thick with the scents of tobacco, roasting meat, spilled beer, and hardworking men’s sweat; the clatter of tankards and heavy ironstone plates punctuated the roar of rough voices and laughter. When Sebastian walked up to him, the fencing master raised his tankard to his lips and took a deep swallow before saying, “I gather you’re here to see me?”
Someone nearby cracked a lewd joke, and the half dozen men grouped around the table with him roared with laughter. Sebastian threw a significant glance toward the door to the street. “It might be a good idea to go for a walk.”
Pitcairn stared up at him for a moment, then set aside his tankard with a dull thump and rose.
They walked down Dean Street, toward the Haymarket. This was an area of older houses and shops some two and three stories tall, interspersed with blacksmiths and stables and an extraordinary number of pubs. “You didn’t tell me you’re a Spencean,” said Sebastian, dodging a puddle in the broken pavement.
Pitcairn’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t deny it. “Why the bloody hell would I? What difference could it possibly make to anything?”
“Perhaps none,” said Sebastian. “Did you know Thomas Spence?”
“I did. He was an admirable man. Spent more than twenty years in and out of prison for daring to believe—and say—that all men are created equal, slavery is an abomination, all men and women should have the right to vote, and children have a right to live free from abuse and poverty.”
“Not to mention that the aristocracy should be abolished and all land held in common.”
Pitcairn looked over at him and grinned. “That, too.”
“I assume Sir Ivo was ignorant of your philosophical leanings when he hired you to improve his son’s fencing?”
The man’s smile faded and he looked away. “I don’t exactly go around advertising my beliefs, if that’s what you’re asking. I’ll be the first to admit I lack Thomas Spence’s courage.”
“And yet you drink at the Cock.”
“So?”
Sebastian studied the other man’s taut profile. He was brilliant and unbelievably talented and wise beyond his years, but he was still young—so very, very young. “Ever hear of a man named John Stafford?”
Pitcairn shook his head.
“He’s a nasty, officious little clerk in Bow Street who basically functions as the domestic spymaster for the Home Office. And it just so happens that he knows all about the Spenceans’ habit of frequenting places like the Mulberry Tree in Moorfields, and the Carlisle in Shoreditch, and the Cock in Soho. Thomas Spence might have thought he could evade surveillance by decentralizing his movement, with small groups of followers who meet only at inns and taverns. But the problem with that idea is that the government has the power to yank the licenses of public houses, and they learned long ago to use that threat to pressure publicans into reporting on any radicals who meet in their establishments.”
Pitcairn walked along in silence for a moment, his jaw tight. Then he said, “Why are you telling me this?”
“Partially because I think you ought to know, but also because it might help you to understand how I came to hear that a Spencean named Watson has been worried about you. He knew you’d involved yourself with the sister of one of your students, and he told you last week over a couple of pints at the Cock that he was afraid you were making a dangerous mistake.”
The fencing master drew up abruptly and swung to face him. “Watson told you that?”
“No, not Watson. But your conversation with him was overhead and reported to Bow Street. And if I know about it, then it’s possible that Sir Ivo knows about it as well.”
Pitcairn put a hand to his head and half turned away, swearing long and crudely.
“How did Watson know?” said Sebastian. “Did you tell him?”
Pitcairn blew out a long, harsh breath. “Not exactly. But I used to talk to him about Emma more than I should have, and he eventually guessed.”
“How serious were things between you and Miss McInnis?”
“We were friends!” He paused, swallowed hard, then said, “Well, all right; maybe a bit more than friends—although that’s how it started. But we both knew that what was between us could never go anywhere. I swear.”
“You might have known that,” said Sebastian. “But I can see a man like Sir Ivo—proud and hot-tempered and inclined to turn ugly when angry—maybe killing his own daughter if he thought she was getting too friendly with his son’s handsome young Jamaican fencing master. Can you?”
Pitcairn stood very still, his chest jerking with his ragged breathing. “But why kill Emma? Why not kill me?”
“That I can’t answer.” Sebastian hesitated, then said, “Tell me more about Emma—what she was like. All anyone will say is that she was still in the schoolroom and never gave her parents any trouble.”
“Who said that?”
“Her governess, Miss Braithwaite.”
The young fencing master huffed a soft, disbelieving sound. “I suppose that’s her version of refusing to speak what she considers ‘ill of the dead.’ The truth is, Emma gave both her governess and her father a great deal of trouble—simply by refusing to pretend to be the person they wanted her to be.”
“Meaning?”
“You know the image of young womanhood held up as ideal by McInnis and his ilk: mindlessly obedient, submissive, self-effacing, compliant, reticent . . .”
“Emma wasn’t like that?”
“Not at all. She was exactly the kind of female her father despised: independent-minded, outspoken, fiercely passionate about the things she believed in.”
“Like her mother.”
Pitcairn was silent for a moment, considering this. “Yes, and no. Emma shared her mother’s values, her passion for social justice, her commitment to helping those less fortunate. But Emma also . . .” He paused as if searching for the right words. “I think she was determined never to find herself living her mother’s life—trapped in a loveless marriage, having to fight constantly to be even a shadow of the kind of woman she wanted to be. Emma used to sneak and read books from her father’s library that Miss Braithwaite considered ‘unsuitable’ for a girl her age. And because McInnis’s library didn’t exactly run to some of the more radical texts that interested her, she’d save up her pin money and use it to secretly buy books rather than hair ribbons and other trifles.”
“And discuss Spencean philosophy with her brother’s fencing master?”
A faint, sad smile lightened the younger man’s features, then vanished, leaving him looking bleak and unexpectedly vulnerable. “That, too.”
Sebastian found himself remembering something cryptic Pitcairn had once started to say. “You were secretly teaching Emma how to fence, too, weren’t you?”
Pitcairn hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Malcolm went along with it—he’d even practice with her when they could. She loved it. With time, she could have been even better at it than her brother. She was so frustrated by the limitations McInnis put on her activities.”
A cloud drifted over the sun, suddenly casting the street into shadow in a way that drew Sebastian’s attention to the clearing sky. “I find it surprising McInnis didn’t stop his wife from doing some of the things she did.”
“I don’t know how much he was aware of what she was doing. I gathered from what Emma told me that they pretty much lived separate lives. Oh, he knew about her work with the Foundling Hospital, but that’s something gentlewomen have been doing for years, isn’t it? The other things she did—like working to improve conditions in the workhouses—she kept fairly quiet. There’s a reason she asked Lady Devlin to write that article on the widespread cruelty to apprentices rather than doing it herself.”
“You knew about that?”
Pitcairn nodded. “Emma talked to me about it.”
“So tell me this: If Sir Ivo did find out about his daughter’s increasingly serious friendship with you, how do you think he would have reacted?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. There’s no denying the man has an ugly temper. I’ve seen it myself, several times. Malcolm even told me once that his father had killed someone in the past.”
“Did he say whom?”
“No, only that it happened in a duel when McInnis was younger. But I was curious enough that I asked around about it. Seems it happened when Sir Ivo was still up at Cambridge. The man—some vicar’s son in his college—was in his cups when he challenged McInnis, but McInnis himself was stone-cold sober. He should have insisted the duel be put off, but he was in a rage, and when the man drunkenly insisted they fight then and there, McInnis took him up on it and killed him. The man who told me about it described it as basically murder. But what struck him more than anything was that afterward, he said McInnis showed no remorse at having taken a man’s life; none at all. In fact, he spit in the dying man’s face.”