The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles (21 page)

Phillipe sat up, a little more clear-headed. Suddenly a noise drew his attention toward Marie.

The General had managed to hold onto his broken blade, shifting it to his left hand as he crouched and reached for the casket. Phillipe saw his own sword being carried off by a beggar whose tatters fluttered as he ran.

Ignoring the warm, sticky wash leaking down his neck into his collar, Phillipe lurched after the thief. He caught him in the Yard and tackled him around the middle.

A-tumble, they rolled back toward the bottom of the stairs. Phillipe used his fist to bludgeon the back of the man’s head, heard teeth crack on the paving stones. Then he was on his feet with Gil’s sword secure in his sweaty right hand.

The big stranger had caught two more of the hapless beggars and was trouncing them in turn. Mere boys, Phillipe saw by the guttering torch. But he felt no pity—nor had he time for any. The General, one hand clutching his half-sword, the other Marie’s casket, was pelting down the steps toward the sanctuary of the darkness beyond the torchlight.

Phillipe drove himself into a run, caught up with the older man and killed him with one sword stroke through the back.

The General crashed onto his belly. The side of his face flattened against the pavement. His mouth flopped open as his bowels emptied, a terrible stench.

The big stranger on the steps paused to search for more enemies; saw none. He jogged down toward Phillipe, slapping his stick against his tight breeches while his companion and the linkboy approached to bend and stare at the General.

Phillipe retrieved the casket. Unbroken, he saw with relief. The stranger who hadn’t fought said thickly to the other:

“Now there’s murder done, Esau. To whom do we explain that?”

“To no one, Hosea. Because no one cares. Vermin squashed, that’s all. They’re a ruination of the neighborhood anyway. The good fathers locked up safely inside Paul’s can decide what to do with the body in the morning. Let them be thankful decent citizens are protecting their holy sanctuary.”

“But the boy—”

“Our linkboy saw nothing. Heard nothing.” The big young man with clubbed hair swung toward the shabbily dressed carrier of the torch. “Did you, now?”

“No, Mr. Sholto. I’ve your money in my pocket to assure I didn’t.”

“Then let’s go home,” mumbled the other stranger, still with that slightly thickened speech. He bore a strong resemblance to his companion with the stick. He had the same wide shoulders and heavy, squarish jaw, though he looked to be a year or so younger. Perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two. Rather petulantly, he added, “You’d have us rescuing half the poor in London, I suppose.”

“Only those unjustly preyed upon, Hosea.”

The young man with the stick approached Phillipe. He had a blunt jaw, a broad nose, thick brows—and a suddenly amiable grin. “I heard the hullabaloo as we rounded yon corner, sir. I saw you put up a nice fight, considering the way they outnumbered you. I am Mr. Esau Sholto. This somewhat tipsy gentleman’s my brother, Hosea. He’s a good boy, but not of a temperament for street brawling.”

“I’m grateful to both of you,” Phillipe said. “I think they’d have killed us.” He bent down and wiped Gil’s blade on the patched back of the General’s filthy uniform.

For a moment he glanced at the hideous wound left by his blade. Perhaps because of his feverish condition, or his exhaustion, he felt nothing. He’d changed a great deal since the woods where he’d accidentally killed Gil’s would-be kidnapper. Well, so be it. That, apparently, was the price of survival.

Clutching casket and sword, he saw Mr. Esau Sholto flick a speck of dirt from the lacy ruffle at his throat as the latter said:

“Yes, sir, they would have killed you. For that reason, sensible folk stay shuttered indoors at night. Save when one brother must go with another to see he doesn’t wager away the family business at the new quinze table in White’s public rooms. Were you sleeping by yonder pillar?”

Phillipe nodded. “We came to town this afternoon. A church seemed a good place—”

“No, not any London church or street, after dark,” advised Esau Sholto. “But you’ve learned that lesson, eh? Your speech isn’t regular English. Do you come from France?”

Phillipe knew he must be careful. “Originally—some months ago. Then last week, we decided to journey up from—” he hedged the rest— “from the south.”

His vision began to swim. He saw a double head on Mr. Esau Sholto’s burly shoulders. He blinked away the illusion as Hosea thrust himself between them.

“Good God, Esau, will you have us chatter all night on top of a fresh corpse? Even the scruffy singers who were sleeping yonder have more sense than you. They ran off.”

Esau laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “We’d not have met any trouble at all, I wager, if it had been my kind of evening.”

Hosea snorted. “Spring—Vauxhall Gardens open—an hour of that dreadful orchestra music—and home to bed, early and bored.”

“Hosea, you are a narrow young man, thinking only of gaming and skirts. If you weren’t my brother you’d be a thoroughly detestable fellow. As it is, I find you merely half-detestable. Do the Sunday sermons never bore past your ears?”

“Well, I’m usually dozing, so—”

“How many times has our father read the story of the Samaritan aloud?”

“Thousands,” Hosea Sholto sighed. “To savor the King’s English—”

“And
drum some moral precepts into your thick skull. He’s failed miserably.”

Hosea took the rebuke in embarrassed silence. Esau asked Phillipe, “Have you some means of employment in town?”

“No, sir. But I expect I can find some. You’ve been of great help, don’t trouble yourself furth—”

“I’ll trouble myself as long as I please, thank you! Permit me to give you another quick piece of advice. Sleep somewhere else tonight. Far from here. The beggars of St. Paul’s are a curious brotherhood. They remember faces. Even voices. They
never
forget grievances. It’s the way of the ruined, gin-crazed poor. If you run into some of them again, it won’t go easy with you. Or that woman you were protecting. Who is she?”

“My mother.”

“Still sleeping,” Esau said, sounding surprised.

“She’s not well.”

Hosea rolled his eyes toward the stars as Mr. Esau Sholto dug thick fingers into his waistcoat pocket.

“Perhaps I can spare a coin for lodging tomorrow night. I don’t know a respectable landlord who’d admit you this late. I suggest you and your mother go back west, out toward Mayfair where the beggars seldom rove—”

All at once, St. Paul’s Yard began to reverberate with the heavy clang of bells. Hosea stamped one buckled shoe. “Damme, Esau, it’s twelve of the clock already.”

“All right, all right, coming!” Esau extended two copper pieces to Phillipe. “Here, and good fortune to you. Let’s hope other nights in London prove more hospitable than this one’s been. There’s work for industrious youngsters—”

“Younger in years, maybe,” Hosea grumbled. “Look at his eyes. Living to four-and-twenty hasn’t given you a corner on keen observation, you know.”

With a tolerant chuckle, Mr. Esau Sholto dropped the coppers into Phillipe’s hand. Somehow he lacked the power to close his fist. All at once his teeth were clacking. Waves of weakness, then nausea, wiped out his strength. He lurched forward.

Phillipe crashed against Esau Sholto, dropping the casket, the sword, the money. The coppers rang on the paving stones as he slipped to his knees at Esau’s feet.

“Here!” exclaimed the big young man. “His mother’s not the only one in bad health, it seems.” Phillipe felt a callused palm on his cheek. “Why, his head’s hot as the bottom of a kettle.”

Phillipe mumbled apologies, tried to stand, couldn’t. Esau’s voice seemed to echo from a far distance:

“And that slash on his neck badly needs dressing—”

“Oh, damme, I suppose you’ll summon the most expensive physician in London!” Hosea complained. Phillipe’s skull rang and hummed. He saw only a blurred glow, as if the linkboy’s torch had been lost in fog. He scrabbled blindly till one hand bumped Marie’s casket.

“And why not?” Esau Sholto retorted. “You won at cards for a change. We’ve plenty of empty rooms. You go fetch the woman, you mean-souled wretch. Be quick, or I’ll give you the kind of knocking I gave those beggars!”

Hosea’s voice retreated: “Dear God, what would I be without you for a conscience?”

“A sot, flat broke, afflicted of the whore’s pox—not to mention detestable.”

Big hands supported Phillipe under his arms. He let the foggy orange delirium give way to the dark of unconsciousness.

A beamed ceiling, dark with age. Beneath his head, a feather pillow of amazing softness.

He felt other sensations. The scratch of some kind of wool garment against his legs. A nightshirt? The thickness of a plaster dressing on his neck, where the General’s broken blade had gashed.

The bed was a place of incredible warmth and comfort, thanks to the feather-filled blanket. But the bed-frame vibrated occasionally from heavy thudding somewhere below.

He smelled something hot and fragrant, focused on a china cup held in the tiny hand of a small, mobcapped woman whose face was a crisscross of wrinkles.

“Can you drink this?” the woman asked. “Esau said you speak English although you’re French—do you understand me?”

He nodded, astonished that he found himself in such luxurious circumstances.

“I doubt you’ve eaten in a while,” she said.

He shook his head to agree.

“That’s the reason we’ll begin gently, with some black Bohea.”

She cradled the back of his head with one hand, held the cup to his lips. He gulped, then spluttered. The woman laughed.

“Slowly, slowly!”

Thus, still feverish, Phillipe was initiated to his first taste of a beverage that, later, came to symbolize the essence of the haven he’d found. A haven whose full nature and identity he did not yet know.

He drank more of the strong tea, thanked the woman, said, “My mother was with me—”

“She’s asleep on the other side of that wall. She’ll mend with rest, I think. I bore Mr. Sholto five children. But only my two sons lived. The three little girls died early. Since we bought this house for a sizable brood, we’ve no lack of space.”

The little woman said all this without a hint of pity for herself. As she left his bedside, she added:

“My son Esau has his father’s good sense. Hosea is a good boy too, but he drinks too much. In fact Mr. Sholto caned him six times for being so reluctant to help last night. Hosea apologizes. Now try to sleep if you can.”

With that she vanished, closing the door behind her.

Phillipe drifted back to drowsiness against the pillow, marveling at the comfort, at how safe he felt. Most miraculous of all was the renewed realization that the world was not entirely populated by Amberlys.

The occasional thudding continued below. Speculating on the cause of it—such a tame problem for a change—he slept.

Mrs. Emma Sholto would not let him get up, except to use the chamber pot, for three days.

Big-shouldered Esau appeared a few times, wearing black-smeared breeches and an equally stained jerkin over a full-sleeved shirt. And Hosea visited too, once, rather sheepishly. He was equally black-stained and smeared.

Hosea stated that he hoped the visitors were receiving good care and recovering their strength. Then he said with a guilty smile:

“Esau keeps reminding me I’ve no capacity for port. You do understand I was somewhat drunk in the churchyard?”

“You really didn’t show much sign of it.” Phillipe smiled back.

Hosea looked chagrined. “Some fall down. Some puke up their guts. But I walk around like a perfectly normal fellow—paying no attention to anyone but myself. I got Mr. Sholto’s cane across the ass several times, by way of chastisement.”

“Your mother mentioned that.”

“I also got extra evening work, which I suppose is good. I won’t squander so much of what I earn at the clubs. We’ll produce our new editions more speedily. I’m not altogether certain whether Mr. Sholto’s insistence that I work more hours is chiefly in the interest of punishment or profit.”

Phillipe hitched higher in the bed. The plaster aside his neck itched. “Editions? Do you mean books?”

“What else? Don’t you recognize this hellish black paste?” He displayed his smeared hands. “It takes hours to scrub it from under the fingernails. I thought you’d have heard the press thumping, too.”

“I did, but I couldn’t identify the sound.”

“We work downstairs, live upstairs. This is Sholto and Sons, Printers and Stationers, of Sweet’s Lane. Only a few paces from where we found you. Well—I’m under orders not to tire you out. Just wanted to make amends for the other evening—”

Phillipe grinned. “Not necessary.”

With a wave and a smile, Hosea left.

Reflecting on his new circumstances, Phillipe again drifted into deep, relaxed sleep.

On the evening of Phillipe’s fourth day in the Sholto household, the patriarch himself appeared for the first time. At least if the man had looked in before, Phillipe hadn’t been aware of it.

In truth, he probably wouldn’t have known if a coach thundered through the room. He had been luxuriating in sleep and security.

Mr. Sholto was a small person, lacking the breadth of shoulder of his sons. Both of them appeared with their father, standing behind him as he took the only chair in the modestly furnished bedroom.

Mr. Sholto’s most prominent features were his oversized stomach, all out of proportion to the rest of him, his stern brown eyes and his aroma of ink.

The printer subjected Phillipe to a careful scrutiny, as if totting up his impressions before starting a conversation. His tiny, wrinkled wife appeared with a tray. Crisp-crusted mutton pie, a roast apple, a cup of the inevitable Bohea.

“Well, sir, I am Solomon Sholto,” said the gray-haired man at last, as Phillipe dug into the mutton pie with ferocious hunger. “You are French, I understand. You have a mother in our next bedroom, and both of you were beset by the ungodly rascals who loiter at St. Paul’s after dark. That’s most of what I know. Are you well enough to tell me anything more?”