Black Wreath (26 page)

Harry helped Sylvia onto the horse she’d fallen from.

‘I’ll try and keep her on it this time,’ he grinned. ‘You go with Mr McAllister here,’ he said to James.

‘We can’t all go back to the inn,’ McAllister said. ‘It would arouse too much suspicion. When we reach the outskirts of the town, you can go back to your father and James will ride with me back to Philadelphia.’

‘But that will take days. Are you sure you’re alright?’ Sylvia said.

‘We’ll take the most circuitous route we can,’ McAllister said, ‘in case anyone should think to follow. But we’ll be alright. When you return to the city, go to the inn you first
stayed in, and we will look for you there.’

They rode through the night without further adventure and separated when the town came into view. James hugged Sylvia so tightly she could hardly breathe. Then he shook Harry’s hands and held his shoulders as if he still couldn’t quite believe he was a real creature.

‘I wanted to make sure you’re really here.’

‘Don’t worry, James,’ she said. ‘We’re here, all of us, flesh and blood. But you’re not all here.’ She looked at him with concern. ‘You look like you’ve left a good half of yourself on that farm. You look like a ghost, James Lovett.’

‘Well,’ James said, ‘I’ll try not to haunt you too much. But you’re a sight for ghostly eyes, Sylvia.’

Sylvia laughed. ‘So the haunting begins. I hope there’s plenty more where that came from.’

Thirty-Three

Reunion

R
ichard Lovett was pacing his drawing room. His informer stood near the door, intimidated by the gusts of anger his news had raised.

‘Back, you say? How can that be?’

‘I don’t know, my lord. I only know that he came ashore from the
Princess
with the butcher and his daughter and some ragamuffin. He looks a bit different from the scrappy boy he was. Taller, stronger, something more …’ He searched for the right word, which was slow in coming. ‘More
definite
about him, if you see what I mean.’

‘I have no idea what you mean,’ Richard Lovett responded. He had no interest in what the boy looked like. It was beyond comprehension that he should have returned; it was scarcely to be believed that he was still alive. A perilous journey on a disease-ridden ship followed by punitive labour in desolate, sun-baked fields should, one or other of them, have done for
the boy. It should have been as good as a knife through his heart. Yet here he was in the streets of Dublin with his damnable butcher. It was a devilish provocation. He threw a coin at the skinny, hard-faced little man who brought him the news and called for his thug.

‘We should have settled this business long ago,’ he shouted at Grady once he had arrived and heard his master’s news.

The thug nodded his long head in agreement. ‘It’s not too late,’ he offered.

Lovett bristled. ‘I don’t want you anywhere near him,’ he said.

Grady struggled to hide his disappointment.

‘Find me a good pistol man,’ Lovett said. ‘I’ll put an end to this once and for all.’

Some things you never forget. The sight of the city in the distance as the ship approached the twin arms of the bay. A new life seemed to call out to James and, even though his memories of this place were dark enough, the bells pealing in the distance made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. Sylvia held his hand as if she read his thoughts.

‘It will be different now, James, you’ll see.’

And those early days had been all he could have wanted. Phoenix Street was a miraculous place, and a flood of well-wishers filled the house from morning till night. Nancy was beside herself with happiness to see everyone back under her
roof again. She’d grown thin from worry.

‘Where’s the rest of you?’ John had asked as he hugged her.

‘Out hunting for her lost family,’ Nancy said. ‘But who knows, maybe she’ll come back now that I can put my feet up and be waited on by all my prodigals.’

It was only when she saw her mother that Sylvia realised what a perilous journey it was that they had undertaken. In her mother’s eyes, and in the eyes of everyone who greeted her, she read the pure surprise that she was alive, that the three of them had made it back. Most people had given them up, she realised. And James found out that he had become something of a legend in his absence. People constantly stopped him in the street.

‘Is it Lord Bluecoat himself, returned from the dead?’

‘You’re not the Lord Bluecoat that was kidnapped by his uncle and sold for a slave?’

‘Will ye look who it is! The blessin’s of God on yer honour.’

There didn’t seem to be anyone in the city who hadn’t heard of him and what the man who called himself Lord Dunmain had done to him. Of his uncle he heard little enough, except that he still paraded in public, usually accompanied by his thugs, and was fond of strolling in Stephen’s Green on Sunday morning. James filed away that piece of information. When the ship had approached the landing place James’s first instinct had been to rush ashore and take a carriage to his uncle’s house and confront him immediately. But the instinct was soon governed by the understanding that that would be the very worst course of action and would play right into his
uncle’s hands. He was not, after all, the same raw boy who had been bundled out of the city like a rag doll. He knew a little of how the world worked, and how men like his uncle worked. No, he would wait a little before confronting him, and he would enlist the protection of the law, even if he was by no means confident the law could be trusted to do right by him.

Several days later, he walked down Capel Street and crossed the river. Exactly as before, ships crowded the water near the Custom House dock, and the bridge was loud with the clatter of horses and carriages. The beggars, the hawkers, the men and women about their business, the ragged children – it was all just as he had remembered it; nothing had changed. The city, like the river, went on as it always did; it didn’t notice if you stepped out of it and it didn’t register your return.

He stepped into Essex Street. For a moment, his heart sank when he saw the blank space where Harry plied his trade. Harry had wasted no time in returning to his work. Once the ship had docked, he was off before James could speak to him.

‘You know where to find me,’ he’d said, and hurried away with his small bag.

In spite of the crowds, the street had a strange emptiness to it. Then a familiar figure emerged from under the arch and took up a position by the wall. James watched him for a few moments. It was strange to watch him here again, almost as if nothing had happened and he had been here all the time. A gent came up and Harry set to work with spudd and wig. The wig at least looked unchanged, still the same filthy skein of ancient hair, but it did the work as proficiently as ever. When
Harry had finished, James went to him and touched him on his shoulder.

‘Need a shine?’ Harry said.

‘No more shining, Harry,’ James said. ‘We’re friends now, equals. I should shine
your
shoes.’

‘The world’s not like that,’ Harry said. ‘And you shouldn’t try to make it so.’

‘Just you try and stop me,’ James said.

They went under the arch to their old spot by the river.

‘I used to love to gaze at these ships,’ James said. ‘Imagining where they might go, imagining a new life in faraway places. Now, I don’t much care if I never see another ship again, and if I never go to sea again it will be too soon.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Harry said, as they walked back to his spot. ‘But what about your uncle? Aren’t you still in danger? How do you know he won’t try it again? Or worse?’

James might have been able to answer that question accurately if he had looked along the street and seen the tall slim figure who hugged the corner of the narrow alley that cut into Essex Street opposite the piazzas. The figure was observing the two boys very acutely and his hand was thrust deep into his coat pocket, where it lay snug around the smooth wood of a pistol butt. The figure turned full into Essex Street and began striding purposefully in the direction of James and the shoeboy.

‘If I am in danger,’ James said in answer to his friend’s question, ‘it won’t be for long. I intend to meet the danger head on, and have it out with my uncle by whatever means necessary.’

Suddenly, Harry had a customer in a hurry and had to attend to his business. James turned away from his friend just in time to see the tall figure in the dark coat striding towards him. Something about the pinched intentness of the figure’s face held James’s attention, but he was still not quick enough to see the glint of the metal barrel of the pistol.

‘James!’ He heard Harry shout behind him and felt himself stumbling under the weight of his friend’s body at exactly the moment that he heard a deafening report and felt a searing pain rip through his body. The ghostly figure with the pistol vanished in the crowd. James was briefly aware of a great commotion thundering above him and the anxious face of Harry peering down at him and calling out his name before the world disappeared from his senses.

When he came to, it was to find himself in the familiar surroundings of Phoenix Street, barely able to move from the pain in his shoulder. A small army of well-wishers was crammed into the room: Sylvia hovering over him with damp cloth to cool his forehead, Nancy’s anxiously smiling face and John Purcell’s grim one, good old Harry, who gave his friend a wink and a wave, and a man he hadn’t seen in a long time, nor expected to see again.

‘Doctor Bob,’ James said. ‘How do you come to be here?’

Doctor Bob – for it was indeed the doctor who had saved James’s life once before – held up a dull metal ball about half the size of his thumb.

‘This little fellow required my specialist services,’ he said. ‘You may thank your quick-thinking Sylvia for fetching me
in good time. And your good friend for knocking you down when you did. Otherwise, you’d have more than a flesh wound and we’d be waking you in this house tonight.’

‘This has gone on long enough,’ James managed to say in spite of the pain in his shoulder.

And so, some weeks later, when his wound had healed, James found himself back in the graveyard off York Street, where he’d lain in hiding so long ago, waiting to take part in his first robbery. And now here he was again waiting for Jack Darcy to appear, except this time there was no cloak of darkness to cover him. How strange life is, James thought, how like a dream that you have over and over again, with the same scenes repeating themselves. Doctor Bob had got the word to Jack Darcy – to tell the truth James was surprised to hear he was still alive, he had always seemed destined for an early death at the end of a rope in Stephen’s Green – and Darcy had agreed to meet James. James stood in front of a gravestone and pretended to be very interested in the inscription.
The above named died of a malignant fever. Universally regretted
…

‘This is getting to be a habit.’ The voice seemed to leap from out of the grave.

James started in terror, but when he looked up he saw the grinning features of Jack Darcy on the other side of the headstone. He didn’t look much different from the last time James had seen him that night in Red Molly’s which seemed like a lifetime ago. A little skinnier, his face gaunter than James remembered, but still the same dapper cheerfulness. His coat was elegant, if somewhat worn, and his velvet hat was trimmed
with gold as if to show the world that Jack Darcy wasn’t to be trumped for fashion.

‘A habit?’ James smiled, glad to see him, even if his memories of the period he’d spent with the gang were not exactly untroubled. ‘How so?’

‘I mean meeting you or your lady friend in the land of the dead to hatch plans for your advancement.’

Darcy doffed his cap and performed an elaborate bow. ‘My lord, I should have said. Or at least as soon will be, if I have anything to do with it. So how can I help?’

‘I’d like to take a stroll with my uncle,’ James said.

The following Sunday, Lord and Lady Dunmain were taking the air in Stephen’s Green, as was their custom. All fashionable Dublin turned out to parade up and down The Beaux Walk, nodding and bowing to each other, stopping to talk and exchange the latest news and gossip. James saw his uncle immediately. He was walking from the opposite direction with his usual swagger, as if he owned the walk and the park it was set in. He was a man who reached out and grabbed the world, James thought as he looked at him now, and it didn’t much matter to him who might be the true owner of whatever he fancied. It was the most natural thing imaginable that he should step, without a thought, into his brother’s expectations and send his nephew across the ocean into slavery or death. A quick glance was enough to establish that the cruel
features James remembered so well hadn’t softened. It took him a couple of seconds to recognise the woman with him. She was plumper than he remembered, her face more thickly powdered and her body covered in finer silk, but it was her alright, Miss Deakin. James gave a little shiver of revulsion at the sight. His uncle stopped to talk to a party of strollers, men like himself, full of puff and swagger, and the sound of their laughter and loud braying voices filled the park. A little back from the group stood a man James had not forgotten, the thug Grady with his long face and huge hands. A little older, a little heavier, but just as pig-ignorant, James had no doubt. He would soon be upon his uncle’s group. Well, there was no point keeping him waiting. James strode right up.