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Authors: Janet Gleeson

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Rose raised an eyebrow in the direction of the butler's pantry, where Philip, the second footman, was standing at the lead-lined sink, cleaning knives. “You've no need to tell me that, Mrs. Meadowes,” she said pertly. “It's not as if I haven't done it before.”

Nettled by this insubordination and Philip's winking reply, Agnes felt herself flush. She shot Rose a look before turning to the hare. She seasoned it, set it in the jug with herbs, bacon, a blade of mace, an onion stuck with cloves, two wineglasses of port, a tablespoonful of currant jelly, and a covering of thin broth, and put it on the heat. Then she moved on to the orange cream. Being fastidious in culinary matters—why estimate and run the risk of being wrong, when you might measure and always be exact?—she took out her balance and weighed the sugar which Rose had ground. As she had suspected, it was a fraction short.

“What delights you knocking up for us today, then, Mrs. M.?” asked Philip, peering over her shoulder. “Something tasty. Make an extra serving for me, will you?” Agnes disliked the feel of Philip's breath on her neck. She sidestepped away from him, pushed the bowl toward Rose, and, managing to keep the tremor from her voice, requested that she grate two ounces more. Rose sullenly stamped off to the larder to fetch the sugarloaf.

Agnes watched her go with a measure of disquiet. Rose's deficiencies were becoming difficult to ignore; she ought to upbraid her more than she did. She ought to find out how she came by that bruise. She was not slow to tick Doris off when she found her work wanting. Why was Rose a different matter?

She knew the unpalatable answer to this question perfectly well, although she disliked admitting it to herself. Six months before she had gone to the larder to fetch a brace of partridge, and found Rose standing between a round of Cheshire cheese and a hogshead of molasses, head thrown back, eyes half closed, skirts and petticoats rucked up, moaning and groaning in ecstasy as Philip, breeches undone, buttocks bare, pressed against her. Both were entirely unconscious of Agnes's arrival. Scalded by embarrassment, Agnes did not know what to do. Should she cough, or shout, or drop something? Should she throw a bucket of water over them? Instead, she tiptoed away before they noticed her and brooded for hours over how to reprimand them. Eventually, having reached no decision, she had said nothing at all.

Agnes knew now that she should chastise the girl for her cheek, yet the memory lingered and she found herself unable to do so.

Chapter Two

T
HAT SAME
M
ONDAY
, Harry Drake rose in his dank cellar home, which was squeezed between a grain store and a ship's chandler, close to Pickle Herring Quay. He was alone. Elsie, his daughter, had risen before dawn and would not return for several hours. Later in the day, he would call on her to ensure all was well and she was doing as he ordered. Without troubling to wash or shave, Harry dressed himself in his finest: a dun cloth coat with pewter buttons snatched from the back of an open carriage; buckskin breeches lifted from the bedchamber of a cove who had taken so much port he never stirred a muscle; and a linen shirt yanked from a washing line in Fetter Lane. He squinted in a shard of looking glass at his swarthy face, with its droopy eyes and crooked nose, then raked his stringy hair with a broken tortoiseshell comb and secured it with a frayed ribbon. Telling himself he looked quite the gentleman, he secreted in various pockets a gold watch, a silver snuffbox, and a notebook containing details of amorous rendezvous between an eminent baron and a lady who was not his wife. This done, he gave his reflection a final admiring glance before emerging from his lair and clambering up a flight of rotten stairs.

Outside, the light on the river was yellowish and the tide was high—choppy brown water lapped over the wharf. Gulls wheeled and cried, gusted by the wind. Harry Drake sniffed the air and felt a drop or two of rain sting his cheek. There was a storm coming, he thought to himself and smiled. Thrusting his hands in his pockets, he prowled into the city streets.

By the time the bells of St. Dunstan's pealed five and the sun sank behind the rooftops of Blackfriars, Harry Drake's business was, by and large, satisfactorily concluded. In place of the valuables, his pockets now contained two gold sovereigns and two silver shillings. The quickening wind flogged his back but the storm had not yet properly arrived, nor had the dark hour for which he waited. Until then, he decided to pass the time pleasurably. First, he required food; a meat pudding and gravy was what he fancied. And afterward, perhaps a sating of a different kind—a visit to Dolly's in Cheapside. With this sequence settled in his mind, Harry Drake headed homeward.

It was twilight by the time he carefully descended the steep stairs so that the rotten wood did not creak and betray his presence. He gently opened the door like a man who wishes to see what lies within before he is observed. There was no window in the cellar. The only light was afforded by three tallow stubs arranged on a wooden board in the middle of a circular table. Through the smoky glow he made out the figure of his daughter, Elsie, with her crimson woolen shawl wrapped about her shoulders. She was sitting by the hearth with a broken wicker basket at her side. The opening door caused a gust, and as the candles flickered, Elsie flinched. Seeing her father's skulking shadow, she nodded mutely and returned to her occupation.

She was building the fire, as she always did at this hour, whatever the season, for warmth never penetrated here. She picked out morsels of coal and wood from her basket, wiped off the worst of the mud, then stacked them in the fireplace as delicately as if she were constructing a house of cards. When the mound was high enough, she ignited it with a splint lit from one of the candles, then puffed until she felt dizzy and the first hesitant sparks caught fire.

Harry Drake took a horsehair blanket from his bed and wrapped it about him. As he watched his daughter's painstaking efforts, his belly growled. The minute Elsie sat back on her heels, he ordered, “Leave off that! I want food—now.” He thrust a shilling toward her. “Go to the chophouse. Get me a mutton pudding and a quart of ale. Straight back, no dawdling, mind, 'less you want a leathering.”

Ten minutes later she was back, jug in one hand, steaming pudding in the other. She banged them on the table and clattered about to find crockery and a spoon. Harry gulped down the ale, then wiped the spoon on his shirtsleeve and heaped it high with a cascade of suet pastry, fat, gristly meat, and gravy. He crammed its dripping contents into his mouth, chewed, gulped, and drank several times more before his eye strayed from his dish to his daughter, who had resumed her position squatting by the fire. “Where's your dish, girl? Fetch it quick, or you'll go hungry.”

Elsie scrambled to her feet and took a pewter saucer and a chipped stoneware mug down from the mantel shelf. She watched unblinking while he pared off a sliver of pudding and congealed gravy, spooned it onto her saucer, half filled her mug with ale, and thrust both toward her. He was sitting on the only chair in the place, so she perched on an upturned coal bucket to eat.

“So,” said Harry Drake when there was no morsel left. “See anything today?”

Elsie shrugged. “Nothing different. I was there by six. Shop opened at seven-thirty by one of the apprentices. The two journeymen was there soon after. The gentleman from next door came round eight.”

Harry Drake nodded, then knitted his brows. “When I happened by, I caught sight of you talking with someone, then running off. What was that about?”

“Nothing much.”

“I'll be the judge of that.”

Elsie thought of Agnes, of the pie she had bought with her coins, and of the purse still hid in her pocket and the snatched orange she had eaten, rind, pips, and all. “Wasn't no lady. Only a servant going at me for sitting on her step.”

“Not a servant of the Blanchards?”

“No, Pa. I ain't careless. Nor stupid neither.”

Harry picked at his teeth with the point of his pocketknife. “My business there will be done this night. Tomorrow get back to the river. We are low on fuel. And see what else you can find.”

Elsie nodded, holding the palms of her hands out to the fire. The flames were the same color as the orange.

Chapter Three

G
ENERATIONS
of Blanchards had lived and worked in Foster Lane, and their grandly appointed shop had once been London's most fashionable silversmith. The street lay at the heart of the profession that had established the family's fortune. Here stood the great Goldsmiths' Hall, and craftsmen in gold and silver worked and prospered as they had throughout the centuries in the neighboring streets of Cheapside, Gutter Lane, Carey Lane, and Wood Street. The family house next door had been equally sumptuous, for the Blanchards had always considered themselves as being a cut above the craftsmen of other trades. At dinner, they ate off silver plate, with a dozen of the best beeswax candles burning in a pair of Corinthian-columned candelabra. This was no extravagance, argued Nicholas Blanchard: a well-appointed table was a canny business practice. When customers were invited to dine, nothing rivaled serving a perfectly roasted duck on a great oval platter, or a pyramid of syllabubs in trumpet vases, or pickles in scallop shells, to spur commissions.

Theodore Blanchard, Nicholas's only son, felt less certain of the need for ostentation. A year ago, after much prevarication, Nicholas had turned over the running of the business to him. But when Theodore had reviewed the accounts and order books, he had found that the seemingly thriving enterprise was far from profitable. Trade in small silver was dire. With one notable exception—a gargantuan wine cooler—no special commissions had been placed for months. Theodore had instigated economies: limited his entertaining; ordered his wife, Lydia, to reduce the household expenditures.

But when Nicholas got a whiff of these thrifty measures, he questioned his son's pessimistic view of the accounts. If the Blanchards were in financial difficulties it could be due only to Theodore's inexperience and inefficiency. Perhaps Theodore would prefer his father to resume control. Meanwhile, whether there were three or thirty at table, he would see his tureens and platters set out, and be reminded of what he had created.

On this particular late January evening, there were no guests at the dark mahogany dining table; the family were dining alone. Theodore took his seat between Nicholas and Lydia, while John, the footman, removed the domed lid of the tureen by its acorn finial, and ladled out the almond soup.

Theodore's appetite was always formidable, and now he slurped a spoonful, savoring the creamy sweetness, noting that Mrs. Meadowes had expertly prevented the soup from curdling and had seasoned it to perfection with a mélange of nutmeg, pepper, bay, and mace. Then he turned to his father. “I wonder, sir, whether you have given further thought to our conversation a week ago?”

Nicholas Blanchard's gaunt, heavily lined face regarded his son. “What was its subject?”

“Moving our business to a more fashionable part of the city. As I made clear to you before, one reason our custom has dwindled is that the city has spread westward. Other craftsmen have begun to decamp. There are now several highly prosperous workshops in Soho.”

“And good luck to them,” replied Nicholas. “But rest assured,
I
shall not follow. Since time immemorial the craft has been centered on this very spot. Why should I want to move?”

He continued in the same vein as he had last week and the week before that, and on every other occasion that Theodore had proposed alteration of any kind.

Theodore gulped, and discounted every word. “That is all very well, Father, but nothing stays the same indefinitely. Fashions change, cities alter. The name of Blanchard is not held so high as it once was. If we do not acknowledge as much, and search for a remedy, our business will founder and land us bankrupt in the Fleet. It is my solid belief that our trade would be greatly expanded if we moved west to one of the newer environs. Cavendish Square or St. Martin's Lane, perhaps.”

Nicholas shook his head. “What would be the purpose of decamping? So that each day hours are wasted in traveling to and from the hall for pieces to be stamped? So that we lose sight of our rivals and they gain the advantage on us?”

“We have received few sizable commissions in the past months.”

Nicholas fixed his steel gray eyes on his son. “What of Sir Bartholomew Grey's wine cooler? The most valuable object we have ever made!”

“Yes sir, but that is the exception—and at the present time, in my opinion, it is unlikely to be repeated.”

Nicholas dropped his knife and fork on his fish plate with a clatter. “How many other silversmiths can boast such a commission? I have said all I wish to on this matter, Theodore. You know my opinion. It is founded on thirty years' experience. Ignore it at your peril and do not expect it to change.”

Outside a steady rain had begun to fall. Theodore could hear windows sashes rattling in their frames. The footmen cleared away the dishes from the first course and replaced them with clean ones. Mr. Matthews replenished the glasses with burgundy. Theodore sat morosely, shoulders slumped. He tried to make conversation with his wife and picked over his dish of jugged hare (usually one of his favorites) with a spoonful of cauliflower pickle. But either the hare was too rich or his appetite had been soured by his father's intransigence. And Lydia was not in a communicative mood. After replying to his inquiries after their children, she fell silent.

BOOK: The Thief Taker
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