Cupids (4 page)

“It doesn't sound dangerous,” Helen says, turning her body from the fire. Her knee bumps against mine as she faces me full on. “It sounds marvellous!”

“Would you not find it too much for your senses?”

“I scrub floors and empty chamber pots for my keep. That's too much for my senses, not the world that you describe.”

I nod and throw the second length of twig into the fire. “But there is a cost, young Helen.”

“Don't call me
young
Helen. I'm at least as old as you.” Her dark eyes, moist with anger, have caught the flame now. “I was schooled too, with Miss Eliza, at least for a while when we were children.”

“Years and school. I'm talking of experience.”

“Experience of what, exactly?” She cocks her head and frowns, and looks achingly pretty. “Why do men always talk like that? You think life is about miles traversed? Women bedded? Ale swilled? How about ovens fired, floors swept, silver polished? My broom has travelled more miles than any ship. That's experience for you!”

“Experience of drudgery, yes.”

She straightens her neck and leans away from me. For a moment I think I've gone too far, and that I might have lost her.

“What exactly would you have me do to change my situation?” I know it's meant sarcastically, but this is the opening I've been looking for.

I smile and consider for a moment.

“How did you leave your household, Helen? Are they all safely asleep? No disturbances?”

“Yes, everyone is asleep.”

“Mr. Egret too?”

“Yes.”

“I'm glad to hear he sleeps so soundly, and there was no commotion about the place.”

“Now it is you who is talking in riddles.”

I pause again and look into the flames.

“The Egret household bulges at the seams with riches. How does a woman like you polish and dust trinkets of little account to their owner, but of a value that might make the fortune of a modest man, or woman?”

“I don't know ‘how,' as you put it, but I can tell you that fear of the hangman's noose keeps my fingers where they ought to be.”

“Ah, but there you have it, Helen: fear. Listen for a second!”

I take hold of her wrist.

“What?”

“Just listen,” I whisper.

I loosen my grip upon her wrist and let my hand fall. Her startled eyes, still searching mine, widen. A woman coughs and spits somewhere in the deepest shadows near the road. The gibbet creaks. A cold-fingered breeze creeps around us.

“It's everywhere, closing in on us. Wouldn't you prefer to skirmish with death than let it come upon you slowly, unopposed?” I feel her sigh, and know the thought is not new to her. “Experience, the only experience worth having, is about risk. I was not Mr. Guy's deputy when we set out from Minehead eighteen months ago.”

“I'd say not. You couldn't have been more than sixteen years old.”

“It's risk-taking that elevated me to where I am today. That's what the new world is all about. Its wonders are not for the faint-hearted.”

“I'm not faint-hearted,” she says, a wounded look returning. “You should know that by now. I've broken my master's curfew three times already to sit in the cold with you.”

“What is the most valuable object in your master's house?” I ask her suddenly.

“Mrs. Egret, his sister-in-law,” she says with a short laugh.

It's an answer I wasn't expecting. A flame ducks suddenly before leaping afresh.

“How is that?”

“More than two-thirds of the Egret fortune is in her hands. That's what Bertha, the old cook, tells me anyway.”

“But Mr. Egret acts like the master.”

She is silent for a moment, smiling perhaps at the satisfaction of her minor betrayal.

“That's what he wants people to believe, and after her death, of course, it will be so. But the largest part of the fortune belonged to her late husband for discoveries made on his final voyage. Mrs. Egret has the power to name her own beneficiary.”

I think of Mr. Egret in his study, his thin lips, his scratching nib, a fortress of inscrutability, shielding his daughter, guarding his household. I let the image hang in the flames, then I return to my present purpose.

“Apart from Mrs. Egret, what is the most valuable possession?”

She turns away from me, staring into the fire, her hands straying upon the shins beneath her dress.

“His trunk, I imagine. It's full of any valuables he doesn't entrust to his bankers.”

“Think rather of the most valuable object that is small enough to put in my pocket.”

“That would be his pendant from Venice.”

“The one on his desk with the diamonds, rubies, and emeralds?”

She turns to me again, a curious smile appearing on her face. “You
are
a sharp one!”

Now I dip my hand inside my pocket and, feeling the gold hot against my fingers, I draw the pendant out by the chain. Rotating slowly, its emeralds and diamonds dance in the light of the flame.

A gasp — sudden and guttural as though coming from the earth — has escaped Helen's lips. She sits now, shoulders hunched, hands over mouth, a prettified gargoyle, quite incapable of movement.

The pendant ceases to turn; like a proud courtier it merely bows, first right then left, stones winking, rubies bleeding light ominously.

“Why would you do such a mad thing?”

“To prove my point.”

“You'll have us both hanged!”

“Not if you return it before your master wakes tomorrow.”

“Never!”

“Why not?”

“I'll not take it even for a second.”

“That's most unfortunate.” I open my free hand and let the pendant sink onto my palm, the chain gathering in a mound as I lower it. “You see, if they find it missing, they'll know it's you. Only the maid has access when the master is not in the room. He didn't see me take it. I know that.”

“I'll just tell them it was you.”

“Then it's my word against yours, which is not good for you. I can talk my way out of most anything and . . .” I send her a look of pity which is, in part, at least, quite genuine, “. . . honest folk like you do have a way of giving themselves away even when they are almost entirely innocent.”

“What do you mean ‘almost entirely'? I had nothing to do with this!”

“No, but you snuck out at night for an assignation. They will smell the smoke and you'll have grass stains on your dress. Believe me, Helen, once a woman compromises herself as you have done, men will believe anything bad about them.”

She lets out a sob and gathers the front of her dress in her fists. “You must be the Devil. Did you plan all this from the start?”

“I don't plan at all,” I tell her plainly, “I merely prepare and see how matters unfold. There are limitless possibilities in any given situation. It's a mistake to fix yourself too rigidly to any one course.”

She is breathing hard, still fixed on her knees before the fire. I weigh the pendant in my hand. “What shall I do with this, then?”

She looks across at me, face streaming with reddened tears.

I make to throw it into the fire.

“No!” she says, leaping before me with surprising swiftness. Her fingers wrap around the chain.

“You'll take it back?”

“Do I have a choice?”

I think about it for a moment — really I do; I suspect she thinks this pause is part of my cruelty, part of the act, but the core of me is more honest than people know — “No, not really,” I say.

Then, gathering the chain and pendant, she gives me
that
look — eyes narrowed, venom tears — that I knew would come from her sometime. I just didn't think it would be this soon.

“So just tell me,” she asks, her voice surprisingly mild considering the circumstances, “is this it? You watched me at the table, passed me notes, met me in secret, just to find a way to implicate me in your crime. Now I go home, try to return the pendant without being caught, try to avoid slipping my head into a noose, while you bide your time and then return to new-found-land?”

“No, my Helen, not at all.” I take hold of her free hand which is moist with sweat and tears. She does not pull away at first. “This is just the beginning. I ask if you can take risks and you have proven that you can. Now we are partners. Now we take all our risks together.”

She withdraws her hand gently from mine and wipes a sleeve across her face. Looking at me askance for a moment, she balances on her heels and starts to rise. I stand with her.

“I've got to go now and deal with this,” she says, as though the obvious might be in doubt. She buries the pendant awkwardly up the same sleeve which had received my love note and she fixes me once more in the light of the now dying fire. “You had better be worth the trouble.”

She turns and walks away, weaving like a ghost between the fires of frozen revellers and vagrants, until her figure merges into the night.
You had better be worth the trouble
, she said, and the words seem to echo in the darkness, sending odd tingles from my legs all the way to my scalp. I feel I may have met my match.

CHAPTER FIVE
Helen

N
OT FOR THE FIRST
time since meeting Bartholomew, I can't sleep. Moonlight skims across the room, settling on Bertha's bed in the corner. The rolling contours of her blanket, rising and falling with each of her snores, seem to map a continent of mystery and magic. The darkened valleys pulsate with unknown life — unicorns, two-headed lions, rivers of nymphs and sea horses. The luminous snow-topped mountain peaks hide underground caves full of crystal ice inlaid with rare stones.

My world is spinning in wonder. My toes itch to accomplish some unnamed quest. With his red lips and his clear blue eyes, Bartholomew seemed so young, so fresh when we spoke together for the first time only a week ago. But since then I have found his certainty of manner, his impressive bearing and confidence, gives him a strange kind of wisdom which draws me toward him as the moon draws the tide. I cursed him tonight when he claimed me as a co-conspirator and thief, especially as he had coaxed my employer's secrets from me first — although, if truth be told, I'm embarrassed at how little coaxing I needed. Then, as I made my way back to the house, as I slid in through the same parlour window through which I had made my exit, taking up the study key from its high nail, and shuffling moth-like into Mr. Egret's study, my heart hammered with something greater than fear: I was in the process of discovering some great truth about myself. The possession of riches, whether acquired by means fair or foul,
is
exhilarating. Danger is exhilarating. Returning the pendant was a choice and this made me, for the moment, a queen, especially because I knew how easily it could be taken again. I saw the pendant to its place on the desk, not gasping in terror, not ducking shadows as I might have supposed I would, but quietly, comfortably, daring the darkness to uncover my crime. I stroked the chain, taking my time and even polishing the gems with my sleeve.

The world is changed now. Stars reel in confusion. Rivers change course or flow upstream. The air I breathe is scented with some new hope, and the poor frightened maid who, at least in part, feigned tears to Bartholomew by the fire is no more. She, my drab cocoon, is cracking and peeling away. My master, Mr. Egret, recedes in my imagination and becomes no longer the whole of my life's landscape, but the frail, hunched man that he is. His outlines are distinct. There is delineation and limit to his powers. I hear the whoosh of his cane and feel the smart pain my mother must have felt when, in a fit of temper ten years ago, he struck her. Was it the shock of this attack that brought on her final illness? Bertha had once hinted this was the case.

I think of the months of her decline, how I slipped into her shoes as she wasted away, and sank, like her, gradually into the shadow of Mr. Egret's giant vulture wing. I feel again the hiss of Miss Eliza's venom, the tug of her fingers in the roots of my hair as she transferred the whole of her anger effortlessly from my mother to me. I would no longer be schooled with her. Now I was only a maid and I must not forget it.

For the first time all this does not seem part of some natural course ordained by the movement of the stars, but rather pure chance, subject to alteration. I can't imagine lifting another mop or scouring another pan, although I suppose I must for the time at least. Fear of the noose, the stocks, and the prison cell has shackled me to such tasks, but I have been an ant stuck in the rock crevice of custom and example, unaware of the vast expanse of land which lies beyond. It is such folly to hold one's breath, and remain silent and still in the hope that death will not notice us. Better to engage in the struggle for life. Better to chance the consequences. If the new world is opening up to fresh and infinite possibilities, then so can I.

CHAPTER SIX
Guy

T
HE WIND BLOWS LIKE
Armageddon, lashing the sails and spiralling around the crow's nest. The wave ridges sizzle as the white foam mounts higher and higher against the hull. I wonder if it's the tempest only that creates a constant clamour of voices — women's voices — yelling, whispering, laughing. A silver tail emerges and disappears just as quickly into the foam, and a sweet, oozing sensation comes over me as the hope rises that this might be Eliza in mermaid form.

Bartholomew appears before me, his feet anchored firmly against the tipping deck, though I am shunted back and forth and have to grasp hard to the deck rail. He gives a bow, mock-polite.

“Looks as though we might sink, Mr. Guy,” he says, smiling.

I try to answer, but the wind swallows the words and I am not sure myself what I am trying to say. When Bartholomew speaks again his voice is impervious to the elements, strong and confident.