The Sparks Fly Upward (38 page)

As ever, when she was nervous, Makepeace rubbed her hands agitatedly up and down her knees—and was asked by her neighbor to desist.

The procedure was taking forever. The men in the dock couldn't stand it, she couldn't stand it.

The clerk of the court asked, ‘Gentlemen of the jury, what is your verdict?'

‘Not guilty.'

Makepeace's hands went still. Amid the cry of ‘Disgraceful' from John Bull, the cheers and hubbub of the court, the beat of the judge's gavel trying to stop it, a great and loving peace descended on her. There were times, not too frequent and not too many, but there
were
times when she was very, very proud of England.

By the time she got outside, it was to find that the Paine-ites had been joined by their supporters and a crowd less concerned with reform than rejoicing in what it regarded as an English jury's right to cock a snoot at government. Erskine was having to appeal to it to let the judge get to his coach. The best-known of the acquitted men were being carried shoulder high. Makepeace saw Hardy set in a carriage, its horses replaced by men, being dragged in triumph towards the West End.

She found Beasley cowering in the court doorway.

‘Aren't you proud?' she asked him. ‘Wasn't the jury brave?'

‘So it bloody well ought to be.' It was automatic gracelessness; the fight had gone out of him. The ridge of his nose and cheekbones were almost poking through his skin; scurvy had lost him some teeth so that his mouth had puckered into an old man's. Lice crawled in his lank hair.

Sanders helped her to get him to the coach. ‘You can drop me at St James's Square,' she told him. ‘Then take him home. Give him to Hildy.'

To Beasley she said, ‘Young man, you're staying with me till you're better.'

‘Ain't going to get better,' he said, for all the world like a small boy refusing to clear up his toys.

‘Oh, shut up.' But he frightened her, and so did the tenderness with which Sanders settled him against the coach's cushions.

 

 

LORD and Lady Ffoulkes had returned from their honeymoon—for the last half of which, it appeared, they had been joined by their friend Sir Boy Blanchard.

When Makepeace was ushered into the dining room the three were at dinner; Lady Ffoulkes and Sir Boy were teasing his lordship.

Sir Boy's fine eyebrows went up at the sight of Makepeace but he rallied, ‘We were just saying, Mrs Hedley, could you conceive of any other man in England who would take his bride to a steel mill and a turnip farm on their
voyage de noces
?'

She ignored him. As Lord Ffoulkes hurried round the table to kiss her, she said, ‘Philippa's gone to France, Andrew.' She turned on Blanchard. ‘And it's your fault.'

‘I
beg
your pardon?'

‘Yes, it is. I heard it all from Jenny. If you'd given her Condorcet's papers when she asked . . . It took too long. In the end it was quicker to take 'em than send 'em.'

‘I thought you'd arranged it for her, Boy.' Ffoulkes's voice was quiet.

Blanchard's was reasonable though his face was pale. ‘My dear man, I had every intention of it. I told her so. It just could not be done on the instant—the estimable Scratcher was
hors de combat
from an injured hand . . . Anyway, are we certain the young lady has taken this dramatic step?'

‘Yes, we are,' Makepeace was speaking to Ffoulkes. ‘I got a letter from Ginny this morning. That's where Pippy said she was going, up north. She ain't there, Andrew. Ginny asks how she is.'

There was a silence. Blanchard filled it with silk. ‘E'en so. One hestitates to suggest it but there are gentler reasons for a young lady's absence than a precipitate run into the cannon's mouth.'

Lord, how she hated him. And how he hated Philippa. Why he did, Makepeace didn't know, but Chelsea gossip put him somewhere behind Fitch-Botley's discovery of his wife's radical doings and the subsequent assault on her daughter.

You bastard
, she thought.

Andrew was sitting her down, pouring her wine, asking for details.

Félicie said, ‘Some food, Madame 'Edley? A little cheese, per'aps? No? Then forgive me that I retire, I am weary.' The conversation did not look like it would center on her. As she drifted past Blanchard, she touched his shoulder. ‘You stay for cards, later?'

He put up his hand to cover hers for a second. ‘Of course.'

Andrew, Makepeace saw, didn't notice his wife's going. ‘Tell us, missus.'

She told them what she knew, Blanchard interrupting frequently but kindly to suggest that it was nonsense; Philippa's disappearance could be interpreted in a dozen ways, the most likely being a romance.

‘I know her,' Makepeace spat at him.

‘So do I,' Andrew said. ‘God, missus, she's your daughter right enough. Now then, she'll have gone via the smuggling route, you agree?'

‘Yes.'

‘What's the smuggling route?' Blanchard asked.

Makepeace's eyes begged her godson to be quiet about it; add smuggling to all her other nefarious activities and her name would irretrievably be mud.

Andrew's eyes reassured her. ‘A private matter between the missus and me,' he said. ‘If I find she's gone, I'll follow her. All right, missus?'

‘Oh, Andrew.' She'd wanted it; but now she was afraid for him.

‘Yah,' he said. ‘I'm the arrow you shoot after the one you've lost, ain't that right, Reynard? That's how you find arrows.' He laid his cheek against hers. ‘Done it a hundred times, ain't we, Boy? Easy as lick a dish. It's what we do. London's teemin' with aristos we've nipped from under Robespierre's snout. I'll have that little baggage back in England quicker'n you can sneeze.'

‘Thank you.' She put her arm round his neck and held him close.

‘No.'
Blanchard's chair scraped back. ‘I will go.' He stood tall, looking down at them both. More quietly, he said, ‘I go, Andy. It's only just. If it was my fault, it's my responsibility. Only tell me where she is—one presumes she was making for wherever Condorcet's holed up.'

Ffoulkes looked at him with affection. ‘Good try, old man, but this one's mine. You're to stay and look after Félicie for me.'

‘Oh no, my lord, Miss Philippa is my bag.'

‘She's my goddaughter.' The words lashed; Ffoulkes had finished with pleasantries. ‘She tell you where Condorcet's hidin', missus?'

‘No.' Makepeace felt humiliated; Philippa had not confided in her. Blast the girl. And blast me, I was too tied up in myself.

‘Nor me.' Ffoulkes began striding. ‘She'd had a letter from Madame Condorcet . . . that's right.' He wagged a finger at the air and started walking again. ‘What did she say . . . something, yes, that's right. The woman was earnin' her living painting portraits. Paris, somewhere. Where?' He banged the heel of his hand against his forehead. ‘Damn, where
was
it?'

‘Left Bank?' Blanchard suggested, softly. ‘Lot of painters there.'

‘No. Not the Left Bank.'

‘Pont Neuf? Palais Royale? Montmartre?
Voisinage de la Comédie, peut-être
?'

Makepeace dragged her eyes off Andrew Ffoulkes. Blanchard was sitting as stiffly as she was, invoking the locations in a whispered litany. I've misjudged him, she thought; he's desperate to find her.

‘No. NO.' The candles flickered as Ffoulkes slammed his fist on the table. He took in a big breath and let it out again. ‘I'll think of it. Look here, I'll meander upstairs. I'll collect a passport or two, few false noses. I'm a master of disguise. Ain't I, Reynard?'

They were left alone. Blanchard took Ffoulkes's seat and leaned back in it, his hands clasped like a priest's, his eyes contemplating the gilded ceiling, the sheen from the table's candles caressing his chin.

‘Will he be all right?' Makepeace asked.

‘The September massacres of '92,' he said, gently. ‘Did Andy ever tell you what the
canaille
did to the Princesse de Lamballe in that little rampage?'

The newspapers had. ‘I don't want to hear.'

‘She was Marie Antoinette's mistress of the household, you know. Pretty thing, blond curls. Andy and I dined with her more than once in the old days at Versailles. Lesbian whore, so they say, but loyal. Stayed with the queen when the others fled. They hacked her to death. Stripped the body and displayed her private parts to the mob. Stuck her head on a pole and carried it to the Temple to show the queen.'

It was like being in the room with an assassin; he stabbed at her with words.

‘Andy and I and the lads of The League were out to rescue the Saint Galière children at the time. Which, I may say, we eventually did. Arrived in Paris the day after the massacres. There were still bits of Lamballe's pubic hair on sale outside La Force. Enterprisin' lot, your revolutionaries.'

‘You hate her, don't you?'

‘Not at all. Empty-headed little filly but she served the best champagne I ever tasted.'

‘Philippa,' Makepeace said. ‘You hate Philippa.'

He opened his eyes wide. ‘Oh, your daughter. No, ma'am. Apart from the fact that she's like to cause the death of my best friend, I can't say I think of her.'

Hatred
, she thought.
It isn't only me and Philippa; he just hates.

Ffoulkes appeared in the doorway. ‘Rue Saint Honoré. Came to me. That's where La Condorcet is, bloody Rue Saint Honoré. On your feet, missus, the carriage awaits. I'll drop you at Reach House on the way.'

Behind her, as she left the room, she heard Lord Ffoulkes's friend embrace him and tell him lovingly not to concern himself for his wife, Boy Blanchard would look after her.

 

 

HILDY had bathed John Beasley, shaved off his hair and put him to bed. She'd also sent for Dr Baines to come on the morrow. ‘He's in poor fettle,' she whispered, ‘but he's slumberin' at least.'

They looked down at her patient. The shaven head was that of a convict but his adolescence had returned to him in sleep.

‘Does he nivver say thank you?'

‘Never.'

Hildy said that Jenny had come back exalted from her day with the Abolitionists and had already retired. The theater party hadn't yet returned. ‘Get t'bed yeself, missus. You look worse nor this beggor.'

Though Makepeace obeyed, sleep eluded her. The responsibility of having sent a beloved boy into danger after a beloved girl was almost as terrible as the likelihood that she might see neither of them again.

She's like to cause the death of my best friend
.

No, it's me that's done that.

She attempted to overlay the dreadful day with remembering the trial jury's triumphal ‘not guilty' but even there the cost to the acquitted was represented by the wreckage that was Beasley and she wept for it.

When she did doze, Blanchard came at her out of the shadows, a knife in his fist, and the head of a mutilated princess shrieked until she woke up again.

Some time after midnight, her door opened and a voice with depth to it said: ‘I've been thinking you owe me another apology.'

Gratefully, she made room for him in her bed and apologized.

Chapter Twelve

MME Mabillon was well known in the Cour du Dragon as a bruiser and the mother of six hungry children, in both of which capacities she felt herself entitled to arrive late and push herself into the bread queue ahead of those who'd been waiting longer.

Having invented the queue, Paris was still having trouble sticking to its principle. Waiting in line in the heat was bad enough but tempers became dangerous when the queue began to move as those at the front were served. The fear was that the bread would run out before you got to it. Tussles were frequent.

Today Mme Mabillon was using her bulk and vocabulary to overcome the objection of a comparative newcomer to the court's queue, somebody's maid by her appearance, and she was prepared, if necessary, to use her clogs as well. ‘Fuck off, you snotty little nothing. I got six children. Who you got?'

‘Six legal ration cards.' Philippa waved them. ‘Think you're a bloody aristo?' She shouted at a National Guardsman who was talking to an ironmonger farther down the alley. ‘Here, look at this
ci-devant
trying to get ahead of everybody else, thinks she's a fucking aristo.'

Ci-devant
was
really
rude, once an adjective now a noun, the worst word in sansculotte vocabulary, and Mme Mabillon shrank back as the guardsman came lounging up. The suggestion that they'd been aristos, had aristo connections or even served in an aristo household, had been the excuse to get more than one queue-jumper guillotined. She protested. ‘ 'Course I ain't, you know me. I just got hungry kids at home.'

There was a chorus of so-have-I. Mme Mabillon's belligerence had won her no friends over the years. As the National Guardsman told her to behave herself, she retreated like a dog slinking away from a growling pack.

Philippa shuffled forward, shaking from the anger that had torched her like dry straw, but victorious.
Teach her, bloody woman.

Then she was frightened at herself. Calling on a National Guardsman had been madness; her papers had stood up to scrutiny so far . . . still, you never knew.

But I am a dog now
, she thought.
I snarl the language of the streets. I think in the language of the streets. I want to use every dirty word there is.