The Silk Thief (38 page)

Friday made sure she was grasping the handle in the manner Ruby had demonstrated, widened her stance for balance, raised her arm, let fly and took two candles out of the brass ceiling candelabra.

‘Shit. Sorry.’

‘The wrist action was better,’ Ruby said, ‘but your aim was way off. And it’s more of a sideways flick than an overhead one. Have another go.’

Friday did, and succeeded in hitting Violet this time, but on the back of her calf, making her swear.

‘Bloody hell,’ Friday said. ‘I can’t do this. Not to a girl. It might be different if I was walloping the hell out of some arsehole cove.’

‘No, you’re gettin’ there,’ Ruby said encouragingly. ‘It takes time. It’s not as easy as it looks. And it’s not to do with anger. You have to remember that.’

Violet stood up, her face red from dangling over the stool, rubbed her stinging calf, then stretched and shook out her arms. ‘Do we need to get a man, do you think? Will all your customers be coves?’

‘I’ve only got the one.’ Friday fetched her bottle of gin from her reticule. ‘I’m learning this just for him.’

Violet and Ruby exchanged amused glances. ‘We wondered why Mrs T agreed to let us teach you,’ Violet said as she pulled on a robe. ‘We’re not bothered, but we thought she’d be worried all our cullies’ll go galloping down to Argyle Street if they hear there’s a new flagellant in town. But if you’ve only got the one, who cares?’

Ruby said, ‘Wouldn’t matter, anyway. Like I said, there’ll never be a shortage of coves wanting their arses whipped. What are you going to call yourself?’

Friday took a staggeringly large swig from her bottle and wiped her mouth. ‘Dunno. Friday, I suppose.’

‘No, you need a special name, to add to the theatre. You know, Mistress or Madame Something-or-other. Then the cove can go, “Mercy, Mistress Ruby, please don’t beat me,” or, “Whip me, Mistress Ruby, I’ve been a bad boy,” dependin’ on whatever gets him goin’.’

‘You use your normal name,’ Friday said.

Ruby said, ‘That’s not the point.’

Friday thought about it. Unsuccessfully. ‘Dunno. What do you think?’

‘Why don’t you ask him?’ Violet suggested, peeling an apple with a fruit knife, the skin coming off in one long, curling piece.

‘That’s a good idea. And what am I supposed to wear? Anything special?’

‘Well, he obviously fancies you,’ Ruby said, ‘so somethin’ that plays up what you’ve got. But it’s the pain and submission he’ll be after, not so much your body. Is he askin’ for actual sex?’

‘No.’

‘Well, a lot of ’em don’t. He’ll still make a mess, but at least it won’t be all over you. How old is he?’

‘Ancient. Easily in his sixties.’

‘Jesus, girl, you’d better have the smelling salts ready.’

Friday turned to Violet. ‘I don’t understand it. How can you actually like being flogged? How can anyone? Doesn’t it hurt?’

‘Yes, and that’s the point. That, and knowing someone else has complete control over me.’ Violet pointed at Friday’s tattoos with her fruit knife. ‘How can you tolerate that? That must hurt like a bastard.’

‘Well, yeah, but it’s a good sort of pain. Intense. After a while I sort of float off and nothing seems to matter any more. It’s like being mashed, but without all the fighting and having to suffer the horrors the next day. I can’t explain it.’ She faltered, because she couldn’t. ‘You’ve got no idea.’

‘And you’ve got no idea what it’s like being flogged,’ Violet said, but she didn’t say it nastily.

Ruby peered into the bowl of her pipe, then sucked vigorously on the stem to get it going again. ‘Sounds to me like it’s two sides of the same coin.’

‘Do you like what you do?’ Friday asked her. Violet obviously did.

‘I don’t give a shit either way. But the money’s good, and I never have to lift my leg for anyone. Can’t ask for much more than that.’

‘Never?’ Friday said, astonished. ‘But what if they ask for it?’

‘There’s two other girls here that do that side of things. I just do the flogging and the like, though sometimes we’ll work together. But I never even have to touch the buggers.’

‘Really?’ Friday thought that sounded fantastic.

Unfortunately, Leo and Harrie hadn’t seen the last of Jonah Leary. He appeared again the following Monday, sidling in the door just as their first customer of the morning walked out.

Leo swore under his breath, and gestured at Harrie to position herself to run out of the shop if things became unpleasant.

‘What do you want now?’ he said. ‘Our business is finished.’

Leary shook his head. ‘No, it isn’t. I want to know exactly what me brother told you about the tattoo you took off him.’

‘I already told you.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘You can believe what you bloody well like. He said nothing at all, other than to find you and give it to you, which I’ve done.’

‘You said he showed it to you.’

‘Aye, he did. He said his tattoo was like yours, and showed me. He thought I might know you, because of it. I also saw it when I flayed it off him. Obviously.’

‘What else did he say about it?’

Leo’s fists curled. ‘How many times do I have to say this? Bugger all! And I didn’t ask anything, either.’ He leant towards Leary. ‘Do you know why? Because I don’t give a shit.’

Leary didn’t flinch. ‘Did he give you another tattoo?’

‘What?’

‘Another one, like the one you took off Malcolm. Preserved. Did you keep that one for yourself?’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘Me and Malcolm had another brother,’ Leary said tersely. ‘By the name of Bennett. I was thinking, Malcolm might have had Bennett’s tattoo with him.’

In the hope that it would satisfy the ghoulish bastard and get rid of him, Leo made a concerted effort to remember exactly what Malcolm Leary had said. ‘He showed me his tattoo, said you had one like his, and mentioned that another brother had something similar. I think he did say the name Bennett.’

‘Said what about him, exactly?’

‘Just that he had a similar tattoo,’ Leo said, his temper ratcheting up a level. ‘That’s it. For Christ’s sake, does it matter?’

Leary gave Leo a foul look. ‘Yes, it bloody does. Did me brother say where he was lodging?’

‘A pub called the Black Rat.’

‘Did you steal the key to his room?’

‘No, I did not! Now get the hell out of my shop!’

Leary stood motionless for a moment, then said, ‘If I find out you’ve lied, I’ll be back, and you’ll bloody regret it.’ He glared at Leo, took a good hard look at Harrie, and left.

His next stop was the Black Rat Hotel. Having got the publican’s attention, he informed him that Malcolm Leary was dead and that he had come for his brother’s belongings. He had to show his certificate of leave to prove his surname was Leary, but eventually he was shown to the room Malcolm had rented, a poky, rancid-smelling little chamber with mouldy walls far inferior to Leary’s modest accommodation at the George Inn. His brother must have been short of brads. But then, he’d never been any good at managing his money. Useless bugger. At least he’d had the decency to die in the presence of someone who knew how to wield a flaying knife.

He went through his brother’s sea bag, and found a change of clothes, eleven pounds, four shillings and tuppence hidden in a rolled-up sock (which he pocketed), a comb, a razor and a strop, and a half-empty bottle of rum, then turned his attention to the room itself. There was nothing under the thin, damp mattress, or in it, and the battered chest of drawers was empty. There appeared to be no secret compartments in the walls, and although several of the floorboards were loose, none could be levered up. Just as he was leaving, it occurred to him to look under the chest of drawers, and there it was, a small cloth-bound ledger, the cover tacky with cobwebs, the first two dozen pages filled with his brother’s poorly formed and misspelt handwriting.

He sat on the bed by the dirty window to read it. It was a diary of sorts and although most of the entries chronicled Malcolm’s clearly deathly boring voyage to New South Wales, it was the first few pages that caught his eye. Some cove in a pub on Dock Road back home in Liverpool had apparently told Malcolm that Bennett had been transported.

Leary closed the ledger and tapped it on his knee thoughtfully. So Bennett was actually here. It wouldn’t be too hard to guess what his crime had been. It was odd that he hadn’t encountered him, but he wasn’t necessarily in Sydney Town, he supposed. He could well be in Van Diemen’s Land, or even on Norfolk Island. Obviously he should now be hunting down Bennett himself, rather than looking for a tattoo flayed off a dead man. He slid the ledger into his pocket.

Back downstairs again, just to be sure, he asked the publican if there was a strong box for lodgers’ valuables.

The publican laughed. ‘The types that stay here don’t have no valuables.’

‘Has anyone been in that room since me brother’s been gone?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’ The publican wiped the serving counter with a filthy rag. ‘There’s only the one key and Mr Leary had it.’

‘He didn’t have it,’ Leary said, but he was inclined to believe the man — the money, after all, had still been there. ‘Right. I’ve cleared out his things. I’ll be gone, then.’

‘Just you hold on. Your brother owed me a week’s rent.’

Leary snarled, ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t charge him in advance.’ The publican glared at him. Leary stared unblinkingly back, his face frozen in an icy glower. Then his hand shot out and he grabbed the man’s shirt front and yanked him halfway across the bar. ‘I know you did, so don’t fuck with me.’

The man nodded vigorously, then, in case that was the wrong response, shook his head for good measure. Leary let him go and his feet found the floorboards again. Tentatively, he rubbed the back of his neck where his collar had dug into his flesh. ‘My mistake.’

‘Yes, it was.’

Outside in the sun and heat once again, Leary ambled the few yards down to the waterfront and hurled his brother’s bag into the sea.

He hadn’t found what he was looking for yet, but that was all right. He’d just have to look harder.

Chapter Thirteen

Harrie had done an awful thing, but she’d had to, and it would be worth it. This morning she’d gone into James’s purse while he’d been in the privy and stolen three five-pound notes. It was a crime possibly worse than the one that had seen her transported to New South Wales, but she hadn’t been able to think of any other way to achieve her aim. She’d earned a little money since she’d been back at work, but some of that had gone into the Charlotte fund — which she supposed would all go towards paying Bella Shand, now that Charlotte was in the orphanage — and the rest she’d sent home to Robbie and Sophie and Anna. She couldn’t just ask James for the money, not after her performance the other day about not being his wife, and she knew he wouldn’t give it to her anyway, when he found out why she wanted it. And neither would Friday or Sarah. Or Leo. In fact, she suspected no one would, because they all thought they knew what was ‘best for her’. But they didn’t. Only she knew what she really needed.

When James had come out of the privy she’d told him she had to go to Leo’s early, and left the cottage as quickly as possible before he could lecture her. He never missed a chance to go on about her working for Leo, and she couldn’t face it this morning, and anyway it would only slow her down. Also, she was frightened he would look in his purse and see that the money was gone. So she’d almost run up York Street, the ribbons on her bonnet flapping and her skirts catching around her ankles, to the stables on Market Street. She felt sick about behaving so sneakily and treating him like that, but he’d left her with no choice. And neither had the others.

She’d thought about purchasing a seat on the Sydney to Parramatta stagecoach, which also delivered the mail, but discovered that it stopped and started endlessly and took nearly all day to get to Parramatta, and she needed to be back home by nightfall, so as to cause James the minimum of worry. In the end she hired a very expensive four-seat phaeton drawn by a two-in-hand. She felt as though she were being horribly irresponsible, and knew she could have saved money by hiring just a two-seater, but she had no idea how to drive a carriage herself, and in a two-seater she would have had to sit next to the driver, which she couldn’t tolerate. Not at the moment. This way she could sit by herself behind him, thinking her own thoughts in peace and preparing herself.

As it turned out, she needn’t have bothered wasting the extra five pounds on the second bench seat, as the driver said barely a word to her during the entire trip, except to point out the location of the facilities when he stopped halfway at a coaching inn to water the horses. And she already knew where they were from previous trips. She bought herself a jar of lemonade, and cheese, pickles and a bread roll in the dining room, and picked at the bread while the driver disappeared into the bar. He must have knocked back a fair bit of ale, because he certainly reeked of it by the time the phaeton was brought around again. It had improved his mood, though, as when she asked him to raise the hood to keep the sun off, he obliged with something she almost recognised as a smile.

When they reached Parramatta, they rattled across the bridge on Church Street and headed back in the direction from which they’d just come, this time following the northern bank of the river, to the Female Orphan School. She knew exactly how to get there even though she’d never been: she’d known since the day Charlotte was born and Rachel had died.

The driver drew up on the carriageway outside the entrance to the forbidding-looking building, its small, high windows looking blankly out across the fields, and asked her how long she’d be. When she told him probably only about an hour, he complained that that wouldn’t give him time to go into town to the pub, but cracked his whip irately and headed back along the carriageway, almost knocking a man off his mount in the process, looking for somewhere to water the horses.

Harrie stood outside the front door, taking deep, slow breaths, trying to calm herself.

‘Rachel?’ she whispered. ‘Are you here?’