“My coach leaves for Bath the day past tomorrow. I hope you will be able to avail yourself of the use of it, for it should be far more comfortable than the stagecoach which plies between here and there.”
At last I came to a halt. All that remained of the letter was a most polite and dignified farewell and an illegible signature which sprawled near the width of the page.
“He signs it in the usual way,” said I to Sir John.
The magistrate said nothing in reply but sat slumped at his desk, an expression of dismay upon his face.
“Uh, sir?” said I.
He maintained his silence until at last: “Jeremy, do you realize what he has asked me to do?”
“Well, to go to Bath, sir.”
“And do what? To seek out the mother, not only of Lawrence Paltrow but of Arthur Paltrow, as well. He wishes me — nay, expects me — to visit her and persuade her to retract her recognition of the claimant as her son.”
I decided to be encouraging. “Well,” said I, “if anyone can do that, then it’s you.”
“But, Jeremy, the situation reeks of cheap drama. I caught her elder son in murder! I doubt, when I present myself, that she will even consent to speak to me.”
I said nothing, did not dare to speak for a considerable while, yet managed to point out to him that though a great deal was asked of him, something was offered in return. “A holiday in Bath, sir — Lady Fielding would greatly benefit from it, would she not?”
Again he sighed, though not quite so deep as before. “I suppose so,” said he. “Perhaps the thing to do is to bring the matter before them all for discussion. Jeremy, summon them back to the kitchen table.”
THREE
The loan of Lord Mansfield’s coach and four for the trip to Bath seemed to us perhaps less a boon than he had hoped it would be. The driver, in his eagerness to abbreviate the traveling time from London, pressed the horses so mercilessly that one might have supposed that the devil himself were in pursuit of us. Rest periods were cut short. Meals were taken, as it were, on the run. There was but a single stop made at an inn along the way, of a duration which permitted us a few hours sleep — then it was up and out on the road again, gray-faced to meet the gray dawn.
In this manner, a few hours were, in fact, saved. Yet so great was the expense in sore backsides and general exhaustion that indeed it seemed to matter little when at last the four tired horses pulled the dusty coach up to the portico entrance of the Bear Tavern. It was a hostelry of some considerable size, where the Lord Chief Justice had advised us to stay.
Annie, who by right of service was entitled to a place in the coach, had chosen to remain in London. As she said, she had no interest in any part of the world beyond Clerkenwell or Kennington, nor did she wish to interrupt her tuition with Mr. Burnham. And so Clarissa Roundtree went to Bath in Annie’s place, thus relieving Lady Fielding of the anxiety she felt at the possibility of leaving the twelve-year-old Clarissa alone in London — even though she be left alone in a house full of constables.
She, then, the fourth in our party, was the first to climb down from the coach, and as she did so, she was transformed in what seemed to me quite a remarkable manner. I, who had been seated next to her all that long way from London, had felt her bounced right, left, and up and down (just as I was), and had listened to her continual complaints freely given sotto voce. She had, in sum, survived the trip no better than the rest of us. Yet the moment her feet touched the cobblestones, they began to dance to some sprightly rhythm in her head. She whirled round to view her surroundings better. Then did she cry out in the manner of Mr. Garrick’s grandest heroines:
“Bath! Bath! I’ve waited so long to come. Now I must see it all!” I turned away in embarrassment from her display.
“Clarissa, please!” wailed Lady Fielding indulgently as Sir John simply laughed loud, as if greatly amused.
But the porter, who had come forth to take charge of our baggage, laughed loudest and longest, causing Clarissa herself some degree of mortification. “Well, mistress, the old towns been here since the time of King Bladud, which is to say even before the Romans was here. So I reckon it’ll stay put for the day or two it’ll take for you to walk around it.” Then did he remove his hat and turn to Sir John: “You’ll be stayin’ with us, sir?”
“For about a week, if you’ve room.”
“A few days past, we were full up — height of the season, y’know — but the town’s startin’ to clear out a bit, which makes it a good time to be here. Plenty to see, plenty to do, and the waters bubble up the same, no matter what the time of year — but ain’t so many here to fight you for a place in line.” Then did he replace his hat atop his head and begin gathering up portmanteaus, boxes, and bags where they had been unceremoniously dropped by Lord Mansfield’s footman. A small man the porter was, but wiry and strong, and before I quite realized it, he had all our baggage in hand and was leading the way into the Bear. “This way, all,” he called over his shoulder. “We’ll have you in your rooms in no time! “
The porter’s promise was kept. It could not have been more than half an hour until I found myself in bed in one of the small servants’ rooms next to that larger one in which Sir John and Lady Fielding then slept. The moment they had arrived, she had declared it absolutely necessary that she take a nap to restore herself after the rigors of our journey from London, Sir John said he thought that a grand idea for himself as well as for Clarissa and me. Thus we two were sent off to bed at sometime after noon, an unusual situation at best. Through the thin wall that separated me from them, I heard Sir John and Lady Fielding deep in sleep, snoring, as was their wont. And I? Well, I had dutifully followed Sir Johns suggestion, thinking myself quite exhausted, yet as I lay in the narrow little bed I experienced a phenomenon that every traveler must know from time to time: It sometimes happens that following a particularly demanding trip, such as the one we had just made in that fast-moving coach, true rest is somehow impossible. The motion of the road continues within one, when you have been jostled about like some sack of meal for hours and hours, then it often happens that sleep will not come.
In any case, it would not come to me that day in Bath. The curtains were drawn; my eyes were closed; yet no matter how attentively and expectantly I waited, that which was most desired never happened. I was about to climb out of bed and search for the book I had brought in my bag, when upon the door came a tap-tap-tapping.
I jumped to my clothes and pulled on a shirt as I went to the door. I listened and waited. Again came the light tapping.
“Who is there?” I whispered cautiously.
“It is I, Clarissa.”
“What do you want?”
“Open the door, and I will tell.”
Reluctantly, I drew back the bolt and eased the door open. I noted she was dressed for the street — a cap upon her head and a light cape over her shoulders.
“I cannot sleep,” said she, “as I see you cannot neither. So why do we not go out and take our first look at Bath, just the two of us?”
“But what if they should wake while we are gone? They would doubtless fret, not knowing where we had gone, what we were doing.”
She gave that a moments serious consideration, then brightened quite sudden as a thought occurred to her. “I know! I shall write a note for them explaining our absence and promising our swift return. Then I shall slip it under the door.”
“That should do nicely,” said I. “Go write it, and I shall dress myself. “
Thus a few minutes later, Clarissa and I stepped out the door of the hostelry, sought directions from the porter to the center of town, and set off on our bold exploration of Bath. Though I had made no grand show of it as she had, I was near as curious about the place as Mistress Clarissa Roundtree was, Sir John had made two previous journeys to Bath in 1768, the first year of my association with him. He had attended the funeral of his sister, Sarah, in the spring, in this place; and then, in early fall, returned with Lady Fielding on their wedding trip. On those occasions I had, as a thirteen-year-old, imagined Bath to be a great and shining city, near as large as London yet somehow grander and more beautiful — and, above all, cleaner. (How could it not be with such a name?)