Great Historical Novels (25 page)

Mr Montgomery smiled to hide his surprise. ‘I thought the shop might provide a diversion from the tragedy of your uncle’s death.’

Had he only offered her the job as a charitable gesture,
then? Did he genuinely think her designs had great promise, or was this just gentlemanly altruism? She felt emotional about unexpected kindnesses, though she couldn’t remember it being of issue a moment ago. She also felt an urgent need to offload her fears. After all, Mr Montgomery had been a colleague of her uncle. ‘I suppose you’ve heard the rumours?’ she ventured.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Rumours?’

‘That the death of Josiah Blake was not an accident. You don’t think … you don’t suppose my uncle and Mr Blake might have both been led to take their own lives by the same external force?’

Mr Montgomery looked shocked. Then she caught Isaac’s eye – he was glowering. Rhia regretted her words immediately. She suddenly felt sober. ‘But I should not have mentioned it, without evidence.’

Mr Montgomery recovered his smile. ‘You must voice your fears, of course,’ he said placatingly. ‘It is the nature of grief. It is perfectly natural to feel distrustful, though I pray your suspicions are ill founded.’ He didn’t look certain, she thought, and she wondered if everyone else knew more about her uncle’s affairs than she.

Mr Montgomery excused himself and, since Isaac had suddenly disappeared, Rhia found her cloak and asked the footman to call a carriage to take her home. She couldn’t face saying formal goodbyes and was sure no one would miss her. She had never been very good at parties and was suddenly in urgent need of Beth’s ginger loaf cake.

Embroidery

Rhia lit the spirit lamp and shifted the sheets of cartridge paper scattered across the storeroom table. She had almost two hours before the emporium opened its doors, but the damask rose was going nowhere and she couldn’t decide what to do with the indigo either. Both were in need of green.

She had almost covered the entire table in samples by the time she heard Grace arrive. It didn’t seem that any time at all had passed, yet it was ten o’clock. She had still not found the elusive shade of green that would not clash with rose or indigo, and she was wary of using too much of her precious powders – they cost a whole shilling for a small pot.

Rhia was putting away her brushes when there was a knock at the half-open door and Isaac Fisher stepped into the store. She had completely forgotten he was coming to collect the remnants for the convict ship committee. Antonia was still busy supervising
Mathilda
’s voyage to Calcutta. Isaac carried a large carpet bag and looked a little strained as they exchanged greetings. Perhaps he, like Rhia, was feeling awkward about her indiscretion at Belgravia.

‘Miss Elliot says she would like a word with you on the shop floor,’ Isaac said as he put his bag on the trestle table. Rhia could not fathom why Grace could not come and tell her this in person.

In the emporium, Grace was looking smug. ‘I’ve just
remembered that Mr Montgomery said if it’s quiet we’re to dust the tops of the shelves and I can’t find the duster. Do you have it in the storeroom?’ Presumably she was hoping that Rhia would offer to dust the shelving.

‘I’m sorry, no, I haven’t seen it,’ Rhia said, all the more annoyed to be interrupted without good cause. Grace wasn’t supposed to leave the shop floor unattended, but if she called out Rhia could more or less hear her in the storeroom. Sometimes she thought Grace just liked to have company occasionally, and even Rhia’s was better than nothing. Regent Street, like St Stephen’s Green, was quiet in February.

Rhia returned to the storeroom irritated, and found Isaac inspecting her work. ‘My late wife was a painter,’ he said. ‘She loved mixing tinctures. I distinctly remember her saying that green has inspired artists more than any other colour.’ Isaac looked wistful for a moment. ‘What a thing to remember.’ He may have been talking to himself.

‘It is in every aspect of nature,’ Rhia proffered, but Isaac seemed lost in thought and she wasn’t sure if he had heard her. She did not yet have the full measure of Isaac Fisher. He was likeable but guarded. Antonia had called him a liberal Quaker, though Rhia wasn’t sure exactly what this meant. Presumably he didn’t like rules.

‘It was apparently the most sought after of recipes,’ she added, remembering what the dyer had told her. ‘The green dye made from metals corroded parchment, and others disintegrated in the light. Dyers used to dip their cloth first in a vat of yellow tincture made from weld or buckthorn, and then in one of woad blue.’ Why did Isaac drop his eyes when she met his gaze? It made her distrust him for a moment.

‘Do you know where your green comes from now?’ he asked.

‘I don’t.’

‘It is from China,’ he said.

‘Is that why it is so expensive?’

‘It is expensive because it is extracted from the bark of an Oriental tree.’ He sighed heavily. ‘We are ruining the most inventive race on the earth.’ He shook his head as though he were personally responsible. ‘I am pleased to see that Jonathan Montgomery had good cause to employ you.’

Rhia felt her colour rise. ‘Then you thought he engaged me as an act of charity?’

The Quaker ignored this remark. He looked sombre. ‘Even if you have heard rumours about Josiah’s death, it would be foolish and dangerous to speak of them. Please do not.’

He picked up the carpet bag, which was now full of remnants, and tipped his hat. ‘Good day, Miss Mahoney.’ He was gone before she had a chance to retort. What did he mean
dangerous
? Dangerous to her reputation? It was too late for that. And besides, Quakers were supposed to be defenders of free speech. Isaac must know something. He had been on board the
Mathilda
on the day that Josiah Blake died. The thought almost made her shudder. Maybe he knew something about Josiah’s death.

The morning passed slowly. Rhia felt restless and troubled after Isaac’s visit. She found herself dusting the top of the shelves after all when Grace went to lunch. Then she stood behind the polished walnut counter watching for a certain lightness of step in the women who passed by, for a certain dedication, on a cold February morning, to spending the household allowance on something to ease loneliness or boredom. Two women entered, one dressed in plaid and the other in barber stripe. Their coats were trimmed with musk and their eyes darted around the room. They reeked of cologne as though they had just uncorked an entire perfumery.

They bade Rhia to fetch down one roll after another of the new silk brocades, which were so sleek they slipped across the counter like water. Her shears flashed and clicked until almost a hundred yards had been ordered between them. It was enough to cover four crinolines at a cost that made neither of them flinch.

While Rhia wrapped the cloth in brown paper and tied it up with ribbon, the women discussed an invitation to spend March in an Italian villa. When they eventually left, Rhia felt deflated. Envy? Did she want a husband with a balance at the bankers larger than her capacity to spend? She might once have thought this perfectly reasonable, but she had a taste, now, for being mistress of her own affairs, and she would not easily give it up.

When Grace returned from lunch, Rhia bought a piece of pie from a barrow seller and sat in the storeroom with a cup of tea, looking at her swatches of green. None were right. She needed more moss, less olive. She put the samples away and assessed the tidiness of the shelves. She would have a busy afternoon if she was to finish sorting through all the velvets.

As she stood up there was a sharp rap at her door. Before she could say a word, two gentlemen entered, dressed in the square black hats and dark serge uniforms of the Metropolitan Police. A moment later, Grace appeared behind them, looking as though she had eaten something that disagreed with her.

‘Good afternoon, miss,’ said the older of the two, though he was still not as old as Rhia was. ‘My colleague and I are investigating the theft of a quantity of …’ and here, he took a pad of brown paper from his inner pocket and referred to it, ‘
a length of embroidered silk
from the Montgomery residence of Belgrave Square. I have here a warrant to search these premises for said goods.’

Rhia was shocked. It seemed somehow worse that there had been a theft at the Montgomerys’ when she had only just been there, but surely it was impossible that anything stolen from Belgrave Square would be found here, at the emporium. Were they implying that she might be harbouring stolen property?

‘By all means, search the room,’ she said briskly, ‘but
please
do so neatly and carefully. It has taken me weeks to put it in order.’ The senior policeman nodded, and then instructed

Grace to begin looking. Grace was clearly in an agony of discomfort. She could not meet Rhia’s eye. Grace removed rolls and folded lengths of cloth from each cubicle. The ship’s clock seemed to tick twice as loud to make up for the silence in the room.

It was on one of the higher shelves, which Grace reached only by standing on some low wooden steps, that the embroidery was discovered. Rhia recognised it immediately as the hanging that had disturbed her. Grace put it on the table where the lamp reflected its sea colours onto the walls, like sunlight on water.

Rhia was astonished. She sat down heavily. She didn’t understand. In fact, until the two constables stepped forth and stood each at either side of her, she was not even aware that she was to be accused. It was unthinkable.

‘Rhia Mahoney, you are forthwith a prisoner of her Majesty Queen Victoria, and will be held in the custody of Her Majesty’s prison, Newgate, until such a time as your case may be heard.’

Crinoline

London disappeared. Perhaps it had only ever been a photogenic drawing, only the ghost of something real though sometimes Rhia heard it from her cell – all jovial and whistling and oblivious to the dark Otherworld that lay behind the walls of Newgate prison.

She had counted five nights, but she would soon lose count if she didn’t get out of this place. They had not allowed her any visitors and she did not know any more than she had when she was first arrested. Nights were an eternity spent on a hard mat in an open cell, amongst women who bickered and snored and eyed her gown. They’d steal it from her back while she slept if they thought they’d get away with it. The pale sheen of her corinna made her stand out like a gold nugget in a pan full of earth.

Someone told Rhia that she wouldn’t be issued with a prison uniform until she had been convicted. They didn’t realise that she was innocent and that there had been a miscarriage of justice. Antonia must know by now that she was in Newgate. She and Mr Montgomery must think her guilty, otherwise they would have had her released. Each time she had this thought Rhia felt a wave of sickness, and then all the unanswered questions returned. This was how people went mad. She could see it.

There was ample loneliness and despair within the walls of Newgate Prison. At night, the living were silent but the dead
were not. To fight it all, Rhia tried everything she could. She tried to feel fortunate (for she would soon be free). She tried, in the absence of paper and ink, writing to Mamo in her head. She even tried smiling, which earned her the threat of a thrashing. Nothing worked. She wasn’t safe. Other prisoners had earned their stay in Newgate through poverty or violence or cunning – she could not compete.

Only a stone wall separated the condemned from the gallows of the Old Bailey. A stone wall, only, between life and death. The condemned huddled in a corner of the yard each morning as though they were already reducing the space they occupied on the earth. It terrified Rhia just to look at them. She kept her eyes on the sky in the yard. It was the only time all day that she would see it. She tried to name the blue of the sky but she had forgotten it.

Saying she was innocent was laughable. It hadn’t taken long to realise this. If she were to believe what she’d heard in her ward, there were many innocents in here. There was always sewing to do during the day, and this was when the women shared their stories. There were no books in the ward, so telling your story was the next best thing. Above the fireplace, on a sheet of pasteboard, were pinned texts from the scriptures:

A false witness shall not be unpunished.

He that speaketh lies shall perish.

The messages seemed more futile the more Rhia thought about them, and besides, who here could even read them?

Mary Reardon, who had spent more time in Newgate than she had outside it, was one of the few who had actually spoken to Rhia. Mary told her that the women’s ward had once been dismal. It was hard to imagine how the existing ward could be
an improvement but according to Mary it was not whitewashed before, and there had been no fire for heat, no mats to sleep on, no pewter bowls to eat from. There was rarely stewed beef then, only gruel and coarse brown bread. Mary was almost toothless and had a bad lisp. It had taken Rhia a while to understand her, but she’d persevered because there was little else to keep occupied with. Mary was beyond the noose and too old to transport. She was presently serving several years for the theft of some buckles from a gentleman’s shoes. The shoes weren’t on his feet at the time, apparently. This, Rhia supposed, meant that Mary had been in the company of a gentleman in his stockings. She didn’t ask for details.

Rhia shivered and pulled the rough wool blanket tighter around her shoulders. It had grown cold, so sunrise was close. According to Mary, she was blessed to have her case heard so quickly. Her arrest had coincided with the next session of the Central Criminal Court, and they only held one session a month. But what if the true thief had yet to be discovered? How did the cloth come to be hidden at the emporium? And how had the constabulary known to look there in the first place? All of these questions would be answered, and she would soon be free. Then she would have Beth draw her a bath with lavender to soothe the fleabites that covered her legs.