Jocasta looked straight into her half-swallowed eyes and said, “You touch my dog, missus, and I’ll curse you with boils so mean so you can’t sit for a month. Don’t think I won’t or can’t-I can and I will.”
“What do you want?” The woman turned back into the room as she said it, swaying her huge body from side to side as she went, but left the door open. Jocasta took that as invitation enough and walked in. The garret was larger than she had expected, but very dark. There was a window or two, but the glass was long gone and the gaps stuffed with rags or covered with paper. A stove was going in the middle of the room, a vast armchair beside it, black where it had been sat on, and sunk into, and four or five boys slinking into the shadows where the incline of the roof hit the floor. The stench was as bad here as in the hall, and all the worse for the heat in the room. As Jocasta felt the boys watching her from the shadows, the fat lady went up to the pot and sniffed it.
“News of Clayton,” Jocasta said, trying to see farther into the shadows.
“What-he stolen from you?”
“No.”
She didn’t seem to care much, picked up a spoon to stir whatever was stewing and licked her lips. “Not that it’s my business if he did. Anyway, I ain’t got no news of him. He ain’t here now. Wasn’t here last night.”
“Has that happened before?”
“Do I look as if I had any share in the whelping of him? It’s no matter to me who comes and goes. Though he did always seem to be hanging about. That one!” She turned and spat at her feet. “He’d dare to come home with the hunger on him and not so much as a handkerchief.”
Jocasta stood still a moment. Her head was starting to ache with the smell and the heat. She had begun to turn to go when a voice spoke up from the dark.
“He’s always here. Been here every night for a year. But he ain’t coming back.”
Jocasta couldn’t see the face of the boy who had spoken. He was a shadow among shadows.
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
Another voice, softer and with a foreign lilt to it, sounded up from the other side of the garret. “Tonton Macoute took him, lady.”
Despite the heat, a new chill began to grow and turn in Jocasta’s belly.
“What did you say?” she demanded.
The same soft voice spoke again; it lapped at her ears like the slap of water in a clean brook. “He’s a giant and speaks so sweet and moves like a cat, but his knapsack is full of little bones. He’s a devil-man. I never saw him before last night, just heard tell of him and smelled him in the shadows, but I saw him leading Clayton off as I came home.” As he spoke the little boy crept forward into the room. His face was dusky brown like sugar, and he looked up at her with large brown eyes and blinked. “Tonton Macoute took him.”
The fat lady kept stirring the pot, her face expressionless.
Another boy piped up, “He takes boys that stay out too late, and girls too if he can find them for the crack of their bones. Everyone knows that. Where else do you think the children go, lady?”
Sam had inched into the room. “Anyone seen Finn today?” he said, his voice high and full of tears.
The boys shook their heads without speaking and began to shuffle back again into the shadows. Then the dusky-faced child spoke again from the depths under the eaves.
“Tonton Macoute.”
Jocasta turned and walked out, pushing Sam in front of her. The pot on the stove bubbled and belched a little and the fat lady kept stirring, her face shining in the steam.
5
Harriet found Crowther at the very edge of the crowd preparing to enjoy Manzerotti and Isabella’s performance. He watched her as she approached. Even at first glance it was clear she was not of a type with the other women in the room. It was not simply the lack of diamonds around her neck, or the relatively casual arrangement of her hair and dress-Crowther had seen some concoctions on the heads of other ladies there that must present some danger to their spines-but there was something in the air around her that seemed a little foreign. The men and women in the room knew it. Some were fascinated by it, perhaps, but most it repelled. Her life at sea, her adventures at his side had perhaps acted like some alchemical fire, and turned her into some other substance than the usual flesh of man and woman. Whatever process had occurred-was occurring-it might well, he supposed, lead to estrangement from her sister, even from her own children in time. He believed, however, that even if she had known when her husband bought Caveley how events might make the raw stuff of her develop, she would have walked the same path with her bright green eyes open.
As Isabella began to sing, he turned his attention to himself. Was it his own otherness, his own separation from the body of men who made up his country, that had perhaps brought them together? Crowther had for many years feared and distrusted being bound to any other being in any way; he had cut those connections with his scalpel, and in all that time successfully defended his isolation even from his own sister, yet he had to confess there was a bond here, something in the complementary way their intellects functioned, though she frustrated or exhausted him at times with her impatience, her leaps of logic, her teasing. However, the more she distanced herself from the norms of the world, from her family and more quotidian commitments, the stronger the bond between them grew. He had thought her arguments with Rachel merely an annoyance, but now, for a moment as he thought of them he felt a touch of selfish pleasure. He looked down at the cane he held in front of him, the fat silver bundle of foliage under his thin fingers, and expected to feel ashamed. He did not.
“Tell me you have forced Carmichael into an admission of murder and espionage and we may leave this place,” Harriet whispered as she reached his side. “The color scheme of gold and pink in this room is making me feel as if I had swallowed my own weight in sugar and rose water.”
“I have elicited no such confession. Have you presented Lord Sandwich with the proper naval strategy to turn the tide in America? I recall a conversation in which you seemed quite certain of your plans, if only they could be followed.”
Harriet narrowed her eyes. “I had not thought you were listening that morning.”
“Your tone can be insistent.”
Harriet laughed, and a woman in front of them in the crowd turned her whitened face toward them. Harriet did not flinch. Crowther made her a slight bow.
“What of Carmichael then, Crowther? I did see you in conversation. Did you have more success than I?”
“Yes, your tour of the rooms on Sandwich’s arm made him more amenable than he was this morning. He claims that Fitzraven came to visit him first some three weeks ago with a letter of introduction from a mutual friend.”
“What friend would that be?”
“He took advantage of the crush to be vague upon that point. Beyond that, he said only that Fitzraven had called once more last week and seemed rather angry. He told Carmichael that Isabella was madly in love with Bywater, and he with her. Apparently he took it as some kind of affront.”
“Interesting. Perhaps Fitzraven was hoping his daughter would marry a lord and carry him closer to this shining company.” Crowther glanced across at her. Her mouth was set in a thin line. She continued with a clenched jaw, “For all Sandwich talks about doing business in this room, I cannot see any true or honest thing in this flimflam. I wish I were dining with Michaels in the Bear and Crown, or on the Splendor, or even in the nursery. I have never missed the sea wind as much as I do here among all this scent. I used to think you had sacrificed something, renouncing your title and such society as this. Now I see you gave up nothing.”
Crowther raised his eyebrows. “You appear to have overcome your earlier nerves, Mrs. Westerman.”