Legal jurisdictions are like sturdy beams. It is the joints between them that are weak. In such places all manner of dirt will gather.
From Revolution
It was late afternoon when I returned. I lifted the geraniums on Bessie’s roof and found the key. The tourists were long gone, but as I unlocked the hatch, I thought I heard someone move behind me. Glancing back I found the towpath empty. The experience unsettled me.
A note in Julia’s hand lay on the galley table. A page torn from her copybook, I thought.
I shut up the stove. I hope this is right. Next time, I want to go too. I worry. You know I do.
The words made her sound like her mother – an observation that dampened my mood. I did not like to think of what she would become if forced into a life of middle class domesticity. All that uncompromising drive would surely turn to bitterness.
Though I had not previously allowed Julia to accompany me in my work, little risk seemed to be posed by this investigation. I resolved to take her with me when I returned to Syston to seek out Yan Romero’s other client.
But the following day, being Monday, Julia was obliged to help the maid with the laundry. A fire had to be built, the copper heated and linen pounded in the tub. Her parents had instituted this new regime in order, Julia believed, that she might be put off from any idea of making her own way in the world. And whilst she did not like it, she seemed to take perverse satisfaction in banking her sufferings as tokens of resolve.
I had seen the blisters on her hands. “From the mangle,” she had said, a glint of triumph in her eyes.
On Tuesday morning, I wiped condensation from the porthole glass and looked out on a world heavy with dew. Having selected an indigo shawl to drape over my shoulders, I locked up the boat and joined Julia on the towpath. Then together we set out towards Syston.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said.
Yan Romero had emerged from the last house on the lane. It was the kind of cottage a farm labourer might occupy. A strange destination for an expensive lawyer. A strange destination for an intelligence gatherer, come to that. But if something was threatening my life, as he had suggested, this was my chance to find out more.
I glanced at Julia, walking beside me. “Can you stop doing that,” I said.
“Stop what?”
“Bouncing.”
“I’m not!”
“You surely are! You’re on your toes with every step. You’re supposed to make my visit seem more respectable not less so.”
“Our visit,” she corrected.
“You must keep quiet and let me talk. Even if you think I’m doing it wrong.”
“I promise. But this is so exciting. You’re taking me on an investigation!”
“Then repay me by not saying it out loud.”
Whereas Sunday had been bustling with tourists, Tuesday’s only sounds were the slow chug of cargo boats, the lapping of wash on the canal bank and the call of birds from bushes and alder trees.
I had not been idle since Sunday. No one around the wharf had been able to tell me who lived in the cottage. But the boy who worked for the dairy had seen a man there and taken payment for a delivery of cheese. “Smooth hands,” the boy had reported. “And clean nails.” All said as though these were signs of some terrible wrongdoing.
We had reached the bridge over the canal and I slowed to let Julia go first. But instead she folded her arms and looked at me.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. Then, when I made no immediate answer, she added: “You’ve been frowning all the way.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“What’s your worry?”
“A gap,” I said. “That’s all. A gap that needs filling.”
She would have asked more but I started climbing the brick steps and, there being no room for the two of us to walk abreast, she could do nothing but follow. Once we were across and heading down the lane, the sight of the cottage distracted her.
“You’re bouncing again,” I said.
From a distance it seemed a pleasant enough building, though its roof sagged in the middle. But the closer we came, the more obvious its decrepitude. A few green daffodil stems poked through the weeds of the front garden. Paint was peeling from the frames of two deep-set windows. One pane of glass had been replaced by a board.
I knocked on the door then stood back, glancing up to the chimney. There was no fire inside, but I could smell smoke. Burning paper, I thought. We waited in silence. I knocked again. Then, hearing no movement, I picked my way around the side of the house.
A clothes line had been strung between two trees at the back. A bed sheet hung limp in the still air. I stopped and stared, feeling my pulse accelerate. The linen was not white, but pale yellow.
“What is it?” whispered Julia, close behind me.
I put my finger to my lips and she fell silent.
A heap of ash smoked among the weeds of what should have been a garden. The embers were still glowing. I glanced at the cottage. The back door was open, though it was too dark to see inside. The papers around the edge of the fire hadn’t burned completely. I stepped closer, angling my head to read the charred corner of a document. In a fine copperplate hand it listed goods – sacks of coffee and nutmeg, their weight, number and grade.
Lifting my skirts an inch, I poked at the paper with the toe of my boot, trying to turn it. It crumbled. I began searching for other readable fragments, but Julia tugged urgently at the puffed sleeve of my blouse. My eyes snapped up to the doorway where a man stood watching us.
“It’s dangerous,” I said, blurting the first words that came to my tongue. “The fire I mean. You shouldn’t leave it unattended.”
He stepped out from the shadow of the doorway, gripping an iron poker, giving the impression of one who had used such an implement before. And not just for stoking.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
Julia took half a step back.
“I came to see you,” I said.
He was dressed to fit the cottage – a poor man’s jacket, patched at the elbow, slate grey trousers thinning to thread at the knee. He edged around the fire. I followed his glance down to the papers I’d been trying to read.
“Come inside,” he said.
My eyes flicked to the poker and then to the narrow doorway. “Please,” I said with all the politeness I could muster. “After you.”
I judged him to be in his forties. He had to duck under the door lintel as he led us into what seemed to be part living room part kitchen. It was colder inside the house than out. Damper too. I could feel the floorboards bowing under my weight.
“Sit,” he said, indicating a three-legged stool and an armchair with horsehair poking through cracks.
We both remained standing.
“Suit yourselves.”
“You haven’t learned to blend in,” I said.
“Who are you?”
“It’s the rudeness,” I said. “How long is it since you left the Kingdom?”
The belligerence written on his face turned to surprise and then to uncertainty. He paced to the window and looked out as if checking the lane, though I could see he was just buying time to think. I braced myself. If he lunged towards us I could grab the stool and fling it at him.
“I’m from the Kingdom too,” I said. “I’ve been here five years.”
“How did you know?” he asked, still looking out of the small window. “Was it really my manner?”
“Not just that,” I said. “Yellow sheets as well. No Republican would use them.”
He swore under his breath but his shoulders had dropped. The fight had gone out of him. He stepped wearily to the fireplace and propped the poker in the hearth. When he turned to look at us, I noticed the shadows under his eyes. I wasn’t the only one who had difficulty sleeping.
“They’re French,” he said. “The sheets, I mean. Should’ve dumped them before I crossed.”
“I don’t understand,” said Julia.
“Here, it’s white sheets for the living and black for the dead. But in the Kingdom…”
He dropped himself into the chair. “It’s like sleeping in sunshine. Didn’t want to let them go.”
“I would have found you anyway,” I said. “I followed the lawyer. He led me here.”
“Do you want money too?”
“I want information.”
“You’re not on an errand from the bailiff?”
“Women here don’t do such work,” I said.
It seemed we had both fled the Kingdom to get away from debts. But where I had run from the threat of indentured servitude, I guessed he had run with the funds of a failing business. Or, more likely, the savings of gullible investors. I wondered what kind of man would choose to live in poverty to hide a hoard of gold.
“Did you pay the lawyer?” I asked. “Ten guineas for two months of his precious time?”
“I beat him down to five,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “You want to know what he told me? It’ll cost you.”
Royalists do not blush when they display their avarice. But even hearing it made Julia put a hand in front of her mouth. I did a quick calculation. I could afford to go halves on five guineas. But if I let him beat me once, I had a feeling he would try again and again. Exile had left him little power, but he’d cling to it all the more for that.
“I don’t pay for information,” I said, holding his gaze, waiting for him to blink. When he did, I added: “If you tell me what you know, I’ll consider it a kindness. And naturally, when I find out more, I’ll tell you in return.”
He stared into space for a moment, running the tip of his tongue over his lip. Then he nodded. “There’s to be a treaty. That’s what Romero told me. Or, there might be a treaty. It’s not set in stone. But if it happens, it’ll not be safe for the likes of me and you. That’s what he said. Unless we pay him to help us. But he would say that, wouldn’t he?”
“What kind of treaty?”
He gave me a look. “An extradition treaty, stupid. When it’s signed, they’ll get us all. Drag us home in chains.”