Chapter 11
Arch arrived at Renforth House in company with Baines, which was rather like returning from church in company with a fox—one might be glad of the companionship while remaining perfectly certain that mischief was near.
The night had deepened whilst they were at Drury Lane, and the air possessed a dark fog that sharpened the senses.
The streets were still active, of course.
London never truly consented to sleep when there remained coaches to rattle, gentlemen to swagger homeward from clubs, ladies to be conveyed from assemblies, and those of the persuasion that night better suited their purposes than day.
Baines, who had joined Arch at Upton Place the very moment Arch was departing—and had then insisted upon accompanying him back to St. James’s—looked so intolerably pleased with himself that Arch considered refusing to ask, for at least a quarter of the journey, what had happened on principle alone.
He did not, however, succeed in maintaining the silence. Baines’ expression invited inquiry with the vulgar force of an act at the Bartholomew Fair.
Renforth’s drawing room was already occupied when they arrived.
That, too, was as it ought to be. The house kept certain habits as faithfully as a regiment kept its watches.
Renforth sat in his usual chair near the hearth, one ankle upon the opposite knee, his brandy resting untouched upon the small table beside him.
Stuart had taken possession of the sofa, Fielding lounged in the armchair by the bookcase, one hand folded loosely about his glass and the other turning over some folded paper that he had plainly ceased to read the moment he had heard the door.
All three looked up as they entered, and all three, in their separate ways, took in first Arch’s coat, then Baines’ expression, and then registered the conclusion that neither man had returned merely from the theatre.
O’Malley appeared, as ever, from nowhere and everywhere, relieving them of hats and coats. “I trust the evening rewarded your efforts, sirs?”
“Immensely,” said Baines before Arch could answer.
He handed them both a glass of brandy almost before Arch had taken note of the motion, and vanished again with the eerie discretion that made O’Malley seem less like a butler than a useful haunting.
Fielding lifted his glass in Arch’s direction. “Well?” he said. “Did the theatre improve your character?”
“It enlarged my acquaintance with human vanity and did nothing to recommend the stage as a cure for it.”
Stuart’s eyes moved lazily from Arch to Baines. “Baines looks as though he has swallowed a canary whole.”
“Do you not have wives to return to?” Baines addressed both Stuart and Fielding.
“Both are in the country, visiting, as it happens,” Stuart replied, nonplussed.
Renforth regarded Arch. “I take it,” he said, “that Lord Upton’s box has survived your attendance?”
“It did,” Arch said.
“Did Miss Vale?”
Arch took a slow swallow of brandy before answering. “Miss Vale also survived.”
Fielding leaned back in his chair. “You say that as though survival was not guaranteed.”
Arch looked into the fire. “It seldom is, where Society is concerned.”
Baines dropped himself into the nearest chair with outrageous satisfaction. “Will you hear him?” he said. “A week of balls and reformists and now he speaks like an old dowager.”
Stuart’s mouth twitched. “He was always grave. He is only now becoming decorative in it.”
Arch gave them all a look of practised boredom.
“There it is, a look just like his mater’s,” Baines teased. “He has become Lady Upton’s lap-dog.”
Arch turned his head very slowly.
“Take care,” said Stuart mildly. “He is tired enough to kill and trained enough to do it neatly.”
Baines only grinned wider. “There is no shame in it, Arch. You go where you are sent. You come to heel when called. You bear ladies through the crowd with admirable solemnity. Another fortnight and you shall fetch slippers.”
“I should rather fetch pistols,” Arch said.
Renforth lifted his glass. “That sounds more like you.”
The teasing was not cruel. It never was, among them. They had all endured too much together for malice to survive where affection could do the same work with greater efficiency. Yet Arch was not entirely sorry when it began to thin, for Baines’ look of triumph had by now become almost indecent.
Indeed, if vanity could have illuminated a room, Baines would have rendered the lamps unnecessary. Arch set down his glass and looked at him properly. “Very well, Baines,” he said. “What have you done? You look fit to burst like a small boy who has just caught his first fish.”
Baines straightened with delighted offence. “First fish? I will have you know I have landed a great many things in my life—most of them more dangerous than pike.”
“A shark, more likely,” said Fielding.
Renforth made a minute gesture. “Begin before your pleasure in the telling spoils the substance.”
Baines grinned at them all, folded one ankle over his knee, and said, “I am glad you asked, Manners. It so happens that I followed our Mr. Kendall tonight.”
Arch’s attention sharpened instantly. “Yes, he was at the theatre. We saw him there.”
“Aye, he was,” Baines said, “for a while. He remained long enough to look proper and thoughtful and watch your Miss Vale, but then he took himself off to a little tavern in Edgware Road.”
Renforth sat forward at that—not much, just enough to reveal that what had been conversation was now intelligence.
“She is not my Miss Vale,” Arch protested.
“Continue,” prompted Fielding.
“Indeed,” Baines replied. “It so happens that he and some other known revolutionaries are hatching a plot against Cabinet members.”
The room’s atmosphere altered at once. Fielding lowered the paper in his hand. Stuart’s relaxed posture became one of intense attention. Renforth’s face lost the last traces of amusement and settled into extraordinary stillness.
Arch’s voice, when he spoke, was even. “Define ‘plot’, if you will.”
Baines enjoyed suspense too much not to savour the word for a moment, but even he knew when not to delay.
“I mean,” he said, “that Kendall sat in an upstairs room at a tavern with about a dozen men of the known reforming sort and listened while they discussed the Cabinet as one might discuss a row of ducks on a pond—namely, in terms of how and when best to bring them down.”
Fielding asked quietly, “Names?”
Baines lifted a finger. “Thomas Spence for one—though you know he is a corpse now and no use to anybody.”
Stuart frowned faintly. “Then not Spence?”
“Not the live man, no,” Baines said, “but the society and disciples of him. Spenceans—the sort who support his ideals.”
Renforth nodded once. “Go on.”
“Arthur Thistlewood,” said Baines, and that name was enough by itself to sour the air.
“He was there, as were Tidd, Ings, Davidson, and Brunt. I did not get every Christian name, but I did not need them. Thistlewood does enough speaking for six men, and the others have the faces of fellows who would cut throats merely to make themselves useful.”
Arch’s fingers tightened once against the arm of his chair. “You are certain?”
Baines gave him a look. “I did not stumble into a convivial supper of clergymen, if that is what you mean.”
Stuart leaned forward. “Describe the room.”
“It was a private parlour above the tap-room,” Baines said at once.
“Kendall sat at the far end of the table. Thistlewood paced about more than he sat. Ings drank. Brunt watched the door. Davidson spoke less than the others and looked as though he wished to stab something simply to improve the evening.”
“And Tidd?” said Renforth.
“He was nervous,” said Baines.
Fielding’s voice had gone very soft. “What, precisely, was said?”
Baines drew a breath, and when he resumed he did so with less relish and more care.
“They were deciding,” he said, “when the Cabinet might be most vulnerable. There was talk of ministers dining together; and talk of routes, servants, watches, guards. Thistlewood believes the whole Cabinet may be taken at one stroke if assembled in the right place at the right hour.”
Arch stared at him. “Taken?”
Stuart said, “Murdered, I infer.”
Baines inclined his head. “Yes.”
No one spoke for some moments after that.
The fire shifted in the grate with a dry sigh.
Somewhere, in the passage beyond the room, one of the boards gave a small familiar creak.
The ordinary noises of a house did not cease merely because treason had entered the conversation, but their very ordinariness made the thing more terrible.
Murdered ministers, planned over ale and bad tobacco on Edgware Road; Arch felt nauseous. It was Fielding who broke the silence. “What did Kendall do?”
Baines’s expression altered. “That,” he said, “is the difficulty. He did not lead the meeting. not openly, but neither did he leave.”
“Did he encourage it?” asked Arch.
“No.”
“Then what did he do?”
Baines considered a moment. “He asked questions.”
Renforth interjected, “What sort of questions?”
“The useful sort,” Baines said grimly. “How many men? Which servants might be bribed? Whether the room where these Cabinet fellows meet had more than one entrance. Whether confusion in the street might delay intervention. Whether men in livery could gain admittance where men in rough coats could not.”
Arch felt something cold and clean settle in his mind. “He was refining the plot,” he said.
Baines pointed at him. “Exactly. His was not the loudest voice in the room—that was Thistlewood’s by a mile—but Kendall was the fellow making the thing less like a siege and more like a plan.”
Stuart swore under his breath.
Renforth said, “Did he commit himself?”
“Not directly,” said Baines. “He spoke always as a practical man. If this happened, then how—? If that failed, then what—? It was all couched in hypothetical terms. Nevertheless, the room listened when he spoke, and Thistlewood did not like it.”
Fielding looked up at that. “Did not like it?”