The American Boy (19 page)

What the devil was I doing in a hackney? Had I been kidnapped? Try as I might, I could remember nothing between being thrust into the carriage and, at some undefined point earlier, Iversen the shopkeeper watching me as I went through the contents of Mr Poe's valise. Slowly I turned my head, and the movement made the ache worse.

“Ah,” Salutation Harmwell said. “The colour has returned to your face, Mr Shield. That is a good sign.”

“Mr – Mr Harmwell. I don't understand.”

“You remember nothing?”

“No – there seems a gap in my memory.” Even as I was speaking, that mysterious void disgorged a fragment of information. “The blackbird.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I remember someone – damned if I know who, or when, or why – an Irish voice, I think – someone saying something about a blackbird. And in St Giles, as I recall, the word is commonly used –”

“To describe a man of colour?”

“Precisely. Pray, Mr Harmwell, can you enlighten me as to how I come to be here?”

“I chanced to be walking down Queen-street when I heard the sound of an affray. I looked into the passage of the shop I was passing and saw you engaged in a struggle with two desperate ruffians. Not that I recognised you at this point – all I knew was that some poor innocent was in the process of being beaten and robbed. So I knocked one of them down. The other ran off and I judged it prudent that we should withdraw as soon as possible.”

I glanced down at his hand and saw that his knuckles were badly grazed. “I am much obliged to you, sir.” I rubbed the side of my head where a bruise was already forming. “I – I do not know what I would have done if you had not happened to be passing.”

“You have lost your hat, I am afraid. Indeed, I think it must have taken the full force of the blow, and you would have been in a much worse state if it had not been there. I believe you had a stick, too, but that has gone as well.”

I nodded. I had not noticed the absence of either. I bit back the observation that it was surely a remarkable coincidence that Harmwell should have happened to be passing. The fact that the coincidence had been of great service to me was neither here nor there.

“Do you still have your purse?”

I felt in my pocket. “Yes.”

“That is something.”

I knew only that I must be cautious, not why. I said slowly, “Perhaps I was passing along the street, and they dragged me into the passage in order to rob me.”

“That is unlikely,” Harmwell replied. “I think I should have seen you, despite the fog. It is more probable that you entered the passage from the other side, or possibly from a side door of one of the houses it serves.”

The hackney moved steadily westwards, wriggling through the bustling streets into the heart of Soho. At last we reached Brewer-street. Harmwell directed the coachman to a house on the north side, near the corner with Great Pultney-street. He waved aside my attempt to pay the fare.

The dizziness returned when I stood up. Harmwell helped me down and lent me the support of his arm as we went into the house. A servant with a blank face and shabby livery conducted us upstairs. It appeared that Mr Noak had taken the whole of the first floor. There was a sitting room at the front, and Harmwell settled me on a sofa beside the fire and told the servant to bring me a glass of brandy. He went in search of his master. By the time he returned with Mr Noak, I had swallowed half the brandy and regained a few more of my wits. But I still could not remember what had happened in the interval of time between my being in Mr Poe's room in Queen-street and Harmwell bustling me into the hackney.

God-damned blackbird?

As I heard that coarse voice in my mind, an image from those lost moments of my life slipped into the forefront of my memory: that of a small, childlike creature seizing my hand and kissing it. The memory was so clear that I saw the grey lice moving in her sparse ginger hair.

I rose to my feet as Mr Noak entered and found I could stand without support. He gave me his hand and asked me how I did. I stumbled out my thanks to Harmwell for saving my life, and to Mr Noak himself for his hospitality.

“Harmwell did no more than his plain duty as a Christian,” Noak said in his hard New England voice. “It was providential he should have been passing.”

“Indeed,” I said.

“Pray be seated.” Noak settled himself in an armchair on the other side of the fire. “The last time we met, Mr Shield, we disputed about the value of reading Ovid. I do not know London well but I understand from my clerk that he came across you in a part of town which is not the usual haunt of schoolmasters.”

“Mr Carswall sent me there upon an errand.”

“Mr Carswall? Yes, I had the pleasure of seeing him recently, though on a melancholy occasion.” He looked sharply at me. “Forgive my curiosity, but I thought you were employed at a school outside London.”

“I am, sir, but at the present I am staying with Mr Carswall in Margaret-street so that I may give lessons to Charles Frant.”

Noak's mouth tightened. “We must applaud Mr Carswall's charity in providing a home for Mrs Frant and her fatherless boy.”

He paused, seeming plunged in gloomy reflection. Time passed. My own thoughts were scarcely happy either. Mrs Frant might not have needed Mr Carswall's charity if I had not witnessed George Wavenhoe's signature on his deathbed.

At length he continued: “Are you able to remember who attacked you? No doubt you will wish to lay information against them in Bow-street.”

“I regret that I cannot remember the circumstances of the attack, nor of Mr Harmwell's rescue.”

“How very unfortunate. Still, you know where it happened, and Harmwell saw your assailants.”

Harmwell coughed. “The passage was gloomy, sir. I did not have a clear view of them.”

“And St Giles is a lawless place,” I pointed out. “The men who attacked me will no longer be there.”

Noak glanced from Harmwell to myself. “What about the people of the house? Were they concerned in the attack?”

Harmwell shrugged.

I said, “I recall nothing beforehand to show that they must have been.”

“But they might, eh?”

“It is impossible to say.” I winced from the pain in my head. “I – I cannot remember. I shall consult Mr Carswall on my return, sir, but I believe it is likely that he would advise me to let sleeping dogs lie.”

“I see,” said Mr Noak, and I had the uncomfortable suspicion that he saw more than I liked.

“I must not trespass any further on your good nature,” I said. “Mrs Frant and Mr Carswall will be becoming anxious.”

“Harmwell will take you back.”

“But I could not possibly trouble you or him any longer.”

“It is no trouble,” Noak said abruptly, rising to his feet. “Or not to me. Even if it were, you have had a bad blow on the head and it is my duty as a Christian to ensure your safe return, just as it was Harmwell's duty to come to your assistance.”

He nodded farewell to me and left the room. Harmwell rang the bell for the servant. Within ten minutes we were in another hackney, moving so slowly through the fog that it would have been faster to walk. Neither of us spoke. After a while, the silence became oppressive and I blundered into speech.

“What are your impressions of London, Mr Harmwell?”

“Why, it is so vast and so varied that one scarcely has time to form an impression before another comes along and overturns it. There is so much wealth here, the mind can hardly comprehend it.”

“But you Americans have great wealth in the United States, too, I am sure.”

“I am not American, sir. I am from Canada. My father was from Virginia but he moved north with his master after the Revolution.”

“They were Loyalists? Did your father sustain severe losses by the move?”

“No, sir, he gained everything.” Harmwell turned and gave me a level stare. “He gained his freedom. Mr Saunders was granted an estate in Upper Canada and my father continued to work for him. So did I until I enlisted in the army in the late war with the United States.” A harsh note entered his voice. “If the family had not died out in the meantime, I should have returned to their employ on my discharge from the army.”

“I am sorry – yet you found another position?”

“Mr Noak was kind enough to offer me a clerkship.”

My curiosity had already led me considerably further than good manners allowed so I turned the conversation to more general subjects. We talked mainly about New York and Boston. Harmwell did not volunteer information easily but he showed himself a man of sense in his replies.

It was after three o'clock by the time we had crossed the restless river of humanity that filled Oxford-street. When we reached Margaret-street, I begged him to descend and take some refreshment. Harmwell hesitated, and then said that if there were no objection, he would pay a call on Mrs Kerridge, if she were at liberty, as she had promised to write out a receipt for him to send to his mother in Canada. He spoke so solemnly, his face a picture of filial piety, that I almost burst out laughing when I recalled the way his hand had brushed her breast that afternoon in Piccadilly, and how she tapped him on the cheek as a punishment.

Once we were in the warmth of the house, a servant took Harmwell down to see Mrs Kerridge. Mr Carswall was at home but I wished to wash my face and change my coat before I saw him. I went upstairs to my room and lit a candle because it was already so dark I could barely see the hand in front of my face. There was still an inch or two of cold water in the jug on my washstand. I poured it into the bowl. As I peeled off my coat, a scrap of paper fluttered to the floor. I bent down and picked it up.

It was a page torn from a memorandum book. I held it up to the flickering flame of the candle and saw a crudely executed pencil sketch of a boy's head and shoulders. Something stirred in my memory. The picture had no resemblance to any living child. Yet, the shape of the skull – the high forehead, the curve of the cheek – reminded me of both Charlie Frant and Edgar Allan.

The flame was now behind the paper and shining through from the other side were ghostly traces of writing. I turned it over. Written in ink were the words:
9 Lambert-place
.

There was no indication who had written the words, or when, or why. As I stared at them in the light of that candle, I was tempted to slide the tip of the paper into the flame and forget it had ever existed. My memory of those lost moments still had not returned. Nevertheless I sensed I was being drawn into a scheme whose nature, purpose and extent I could not begin to understand. The Wellington-terrace murder, Carswall's errand in St Giles, the attack on me outside Mr Iversen's shop, Harmwell's providential intervention – all these things must make a pattern, I told myself, and I found Dansey's words ringing uncomfortably in my mind:
When great folk fall, they bring down smaller folk in their train.

The corner of the paper darkened and a wisp of smoke rose into the air. With a muffled cry, I snatched it from the flame. After all, I told myself, I needed something to show Mr Carswall for my day's work. There was also the fact that I did not like to own myself beaten.

Time reveals as well as conceals: it uncovers our lies, even those to ourselves. Now I think I rescued the paper for one reason alone. Because if I had nothing to show Mr Carswall, he would send me back to Stoke Newington; Charlie would be withdrawn from Mr Bransby's; and I would never see either Miss Carswall or Mrs Frant again.

“Noak's nigger,” said Mr Carswall, his mouth twisting in distaste. “Shut your eyes and listen to him and you'd hardly know he wasn't as white as you or me. But it won't do. Never does. An educated nigger is an abomination in the sight of God. And why didn't you tell me you was here? I knew nothing of it until Pratt told me.”

It was Pratt, a weasel-faced footman, who had climbed unwillingly to my chamber and brought his master's summons. The man had smiles for the Carswalls, and sneers for everyone else.

“I beg your pardon, sir. When Mr Harmwell brought me back, I needed –”

“Harmwell!” Carswall interrupted, his mind returning to its former topic. “There's a fine name for him. The trouble with these damned Abolitionists is they never study the nigger in his natural surroundings. I saw enough of them on my plantations. No better than animals. If these prating hypocrites took the trouble to find out what goes on in the slave quarters, they'd soon change their tune.”

Though it was not yet four o'clock in the afternoon, and Mr Carswall had not dined, he was not himself. He was not exactly drunk but he was not exactly sober, either. He was sitting before the fire in the tobacco-scented back parlour that served as his private sitting room. The shutters were across the window and the candles lit. He wore an embroidered dressing gown and slippers. I wondered whether Pratt had also told his master that Mr Harmwell was still downstairs, pursuing his filial researches into Mrs Kerridge's receipts.

Carswall fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and brought out his watch. “You've taken your time about it, Shield, in all events. Well? What news? What the devil were you doing with the nigger?”

I summarised what I had discovered: that Mr Poe had left his lodgings in Fountain-court, apparently because he had found a new position, and moved down to Queen-street in Seven Dials. According to his landlord there, he had been suffering from the toothache. Three days ago, he had vanished, leaving at least some of his possessions behind.

“Three days?” Mr Carswall said. “So he's been seen after the murder? So what of Noak's nigger?”

“Yes, sir. But to revert to Mr Poe for one moment more. There is the question of the toothache.”

“Ah – you mean his face was covered? So the man might not have been Poe?”

“It is at least a possibility. Unlike the woman in Fountain-court, Mr Iversen – Poe's landlord, that is to say – does not appear to have known him well, or for long.” I had a splitting headache and was finding it hard to order my thoughts and frame my words. On the other hand, since finding the sketch of the boy, my amnesia had receded like the fog rolling back, and I could now remember most of what had occurred in those missing moments. I told Mr Carswall about the dumb maidservant and handed him the sketch with the address on the back.