Vanquished (2 page)

"Mine is William."

Harry wavered a moment more. "The name's Harry."

That he didn't offer up his mother's surname of "Stone" was a matter of both principle and practicality. William, if indeed that was his real name, hadn't given up his. If things got dicey, he might take it into his head to snaffle the old gent's purse and make a dash for it, in which case volunteering his surname would be pretty bleeding stupid.

Solemn eyes settled on Harry's face. "How old are you, Master Harry?"

Old enough
was Harry's standard reply, but something in William's manner prompted him to give a more sober answer. "Fourteen, I think, maybe fifteen." Dragging the toe of his boot through the snow, he found himself admitting, "I'm . . . I'm not exactly sure."

Voice gentle, William asked, "Have you any parents, any relative who might give you succor?"

Harry couldn't say what "succor" was, but he felt his eyes watering in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. "Only me mum, and she's dead." He looked sharply away, ashamed by the cracking of his voice. "Of the typhus," he added because at least typhus was a respectable ailment unlike the pox, which peppered you with putrid red legions and drove you mad as a March hare. Of course, considering what his mum had been, she might have had the pox, too. But no, Sally had assured him it was typhus that had carried her away, and Sally was the one person in the world he trusted not to lie.

You had to trust someone.

"I see," William said. Making himself meet that kind, knowing gaze, Harry could almost believe he did. "What if I were to tell you that, if you come with me now, I will help you secure employment in the country where you will receive wholesome food, clean clothing, and a warm bed?"

"Workhouse, you mean." Harry spat on the snow-covered cobbles to wash the detested word from his mouth. Everyone knew workhouses were terrible places where children were made to work all day and pray all night--and beaten soundly if they failed to do either in sufficient quantity.

A pained look crossed William's weathered face. "Roxbury House is not a workhouse, far from it. It is an orphanage established and operated by the Society of Friends--the Quakers. Commensurate with its mission of placing orphaned boys and girls in Christian homes is reaching out to those who have fallen into sin and preparing them to embark on productive, God-fearing lives."

Harry shrugged though inside his heart was drubbing his chest like a mallet. "What's that to do with me?"

"As it happens, the orphanage finds itself in need of an able young man to serve as assistant to the groundskeeper. The position would entail plenty of fresh air and exercise while working in the gardens and about the property."

The only air Harry had ever breathed was London air, heavy with coal dust and ripe with rubbish. As for gardening, he doubted he'd know a radish from a leek. Yet when he closed his eyes at night, the vision he summoned to send him to sleep was one of rolling green fields and cobalt-blue skies; of milk thick and creamy and still warm from the cow; of groves of apple trees where a boy might make a feast of fruit plucked straight from the branches.

William bent to him, his gaze boring into Harry's. "Might you be that able young man?"

The snow was falling faster now, feathering William's shoulders with silver, the silver of . . . angels' wings? Harry held his breath without knowing why.

Might you be that able young man?

Might he? Harry reached inside himself, searching his bruised soul. A chance for a new life, a chance for something clean and good--could such a chance truly be within his grasp?

Almost afraid to believe, he found his voice and mumbled, "As able as the next, I expect."

Seemingly satisfied, William nodded. "For tonight you will come back with me to my house, where my dear wife will see to your supper. Tomorrow we shall set your feet on the path to a new start in life."

Without another word, he turned and set off in the direction of James Street, the tip of his cane leaving chink marks in the mounting snow. The scene reminded Harry of a story he'd once been told about a little boy and girl, lost in the wicked forest, who'd scattered a trail of breadcrumbs behind them so that they might be found.

I want to be found.

Heart pounding, Harry ran after him, thin soles skidding on the sticking snow. "Hold.
Hold!"

Gulping down great mouthfuls of icy air, he raced on, ignoring the fiddle music, raucous laughter, and occasional shriek pouring out of the doorways of the gin palaces and brothels he streaked past. He caught up with William at Long Acre as he was climbing inside his carriage, an impressive black-lacquered conveyance, not unlike the ones Harry saw depositing well-heeled theatergoers at the entrance of Drury Lane.

He launched himself at the open door before the caped driver might close it in his face. Breathless, he fell back against the tufted leather seat across from William.

The older man regarded him with sober, searching eyes. "Well then, young Harry, am I right in thinking you are prepared to put your wicked ways behind you?"

Before he might answer, the carriage door slammed closed. He felt the small vibration, the finality of it, in every cell of his quivering body.

But when William reached out to him, it was only to hand him a carriage blanket and to point out the two flannel-wrapped bricks set on the floor beneath his seat. Enfolded in the warm wool, feet propped atop the heated bricks, Harry let his head drop back against the leather squab. Inhaling the comforting scents of fine leather, cigars, and bay rum, he felt his eyes drifting shut. When he opened them again, the carriage was at a standstill and a hand, firm but gentle, was shaking him to wakefulness.

He shook it off and scrambled upright, horrified he'd let himself fall asleep in the presence of a stranger. "Where . . . where are we?"

If William was offended, he gave no sign of it. Sitting back against the seat, he folded his gloved hands over the knob of his walking stick. "My house on Downing Street. Number ten, to be precise."

Ten Downing Street; why that direction should strike Harry as familiar he couldn't say, for lifting the leather window shade and peering out onto the quiet, elegant street, he could be certain he'd never been there before in his life. A plain-faced woman of middle years threw open the black-lacquered front door for them before the lion's-head knocker need be raised. When she whisked away William's wet coat and hat and then shooed him off to the library fire with dire predictions about the effect of the damp on his ague, Harry knew she must be William's "dear wife." As for Harry, he soon found himself wrapped in a homey quilt and bade to sit on a bench before the kitchen fire, a bowl of savory stew and wedge of crusty bread pressed into his hands. Afterward he was placed in the care of a plump, pleasant-faced maid who ushered him up the grand staircase to his room, which smelled so wonderfully clean that for a moment he just stood breathing in the freshly laundered scent. Though he'd expected to lie awake brooding on the queer turn his life had taken, he fell into exhausted slumber the moment his head hit the goose-feather pillow.

The next morning, bathed, fed to bursting, and wearing scrupulously clean if ill-fitting clothes, he stood on the train platform at Victoria Station, a coach-class ticket to Kent clenched in his fist for fear he might otherwise lose it.

"The Almighty loves the sinner as well as the saint," William told him just before he boarded. "Be a good lad, work hard, love the Lord and you will surely prosper."

In later years when Harry would recall his first and only meeting with William Ewart Gladstone, then Britain's prime minister, it would be with a mixture of amusement and awe. For it was in that unlikely encounter on a bitter winter night with the man known as the People's William that Harry Stone had begun to die . . . so that Hadrian St. Claire could be born.

"Your denial of my citizen's right to vote, is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers as an offender against the law; therefore the denial of my sacred right to life, liberty, property . . ."

--S
USAN
B. A
NTHONY,
United States of America
v. Susan B. Anthony,
1873

V
otes for women now. Votes for women NOW!" The protestors' voices pitched higher still,
shriller
still, or so it seemed to Hadrian as he hurried across Westminster Bridge, the wind tearing at his greatcoat and scarf and threatening to rip the bowler from his head. Stepping out onto the crowded street, he tightened his grip on his camera, a German-made Anschutz with a shutter mechanism capable of arresting motion to one-thousandth of a second. He'd put the equipment to good test that afternoon at St. Thomas Hospital photographing a newly discovered medical anomaly. The poor bastard had been born with an enormous scrotum, tumor-mottled skin, and a chronic palsy that would have rendered traditional photographs little better than a blur. Even so, using his talent to turn a fellow human being into little better than a circus freak hadn't sat well with Hadrian, and the subject's sad-eyed patience in holding any number of humiliating poses had made him feel like the lowest of beasts. Now frozen, footsore, and famished, he couldn't reach his studio soon enough.

But to do so he first had to run the gauntlet of suffragists who'd overtaken Parliament Square. They'd camped out for coming on two days now, creating a bloody nuisance for pedestrians and conveyances alike. Dressed in somber grays and serious blacks, the fifty-odd females picketing beneath the gray wash of winter sky might just as easily pass for a funeral procession as a political rally were it not for the placards the women held aloft and the noise they emitted-- especially the noise.

"Miss Caledonia Rivers to speak on the subject of female emancipation . . . Caxton Hall in Westminster . . . tomorrow evening . . . seven o'clock sharp."

Dodging traffic to cross to the sidewalk, Hadrian could only shake his head. That any woman fortunate enough to possess a roof and four walls would march about in the bitter air struck him as a sort of perverse self-indulgence, a foolishness on par with going slumming in the stews or touring prison yards to observe the convicts picking oakum. He had no patience for it, none at all and when one bug-eyed female had the audacity to try and stuff a pamphlet in his already full hands, he swallowed an oath worthy of his Covent Garden days and darted inside the square's gated entrance.

He realized his mistake at once. Apparently not content with clogging the sidewalks, the damnable females had made camp within the park proper. A platform had been erected in the center of the green and several more dark-clad women busied themselves lighting the torches set about its perimeter. Giving them broad berth, he kept his head down and his sights trained on the opposite end of the wrought-iron gate.

The blare of a bobby's whistle from outside the park walls instinctively sent him swinging around--and barreling into a female's soft body. "Oof!"

Hadrian stared down in horror. The woman he'd knocked off her feet now sprawled at his, feathered hat askew and skirts bunched. On the frost-parched grass beside her, a leather briefcase crammed with papers stretched wide open.

He went down on his knees beside her. "Madam, are you all right?" Unleashing his grip on the camera, he slid an arm beneath her shoulders.

She jerked at his touch. Obscured by a netted hat veil and framed by wire-rimmed spectacles, her green eyes flashed fire. "It's 'miss,' actually." She elbowed her way upright and yanked down her skirts--but not before Hadrian caught sight of a pair of appealingly trim ankles. "And I would be in fine fettle, indeed, had you seen fit to mind where you were going." Broken ostrich feather dangling, she got to her knees and began collecting her papers.

Courtesy toward women was deeply ingrained, one of the few values Hadrian possessed, and the only claim he could make to being a gentleman by deed if not by birth. And so, rather than point out that she had bumped into him as well, he held out his hand to help her to her feet. "Allow me."

Beneath the weight of that atrocious hat, her head snapped up. "I believe I have had quite enough of your
help
for one day."

She'd barely got the declaration out when the demon wind kicked up, scattering vellum sheets to the four winds.

She leapt to her feet. "My papers!" Hiking up her skirts, she gave chase across the park. Over her shoulder, she shouted, "Well, don't just stand there.
Do
something!"

With a muttered prayer that his camera would still be there on his return, Hadrian abandoned it to run after her. Hell-bent on cheating the wrangling wind, he plucked one sheet from its skewer of wrought-iron fencepost and another from the foot of the statue of the late Benjamin Disraeli. At the lady's insistence, he retrieved two more from the upper branches of one very tall, very scratchy oak tree. Breathless, bruised, and sporting a tear in his coat, he shoved the last of the papers in his pocket and climbed down. Dropping to the hard-packed ground, he scanned the square for signs of his erstwhile victim, but she appeared to have vanished.