Restitution #5
Sarah smiled. Her eyes were still red and swollen, but the tension had gone from her shoulders.
For some reason, this spurred him to add, “One time, the lads and I were trying to get into the game… a… er… shed and so we set a fire out in the radish patch and slipped in while he was putting it out.”
She laughed, then suddenly sobered, her rather lovely blue eyes widening.
“Wait. I think…” She began to pace, her hands growing more animated.
“What if they order too much, like you said, but it never comes? They don’t have to sell it.
It never arrives at all! They write a receipt, and Mr Bingley pays the merchant for more than was supplied.
That’s why the linen receipt said there should be eight when there were only four, and why Mrs Kerridge was so quick to take it and all the others down.
Then Heaver goes to the merchant and collects, let’s say, half of the extra that was paid.
If he did carry something out of the shops, it was just money in his pocket. ”
“What, so the merchants are in on it?” Robson asked. “Why would they share?”
“Why, because it’s only Heaver and Kerridge and their receipts that allow the scheme at all! And I suppose they can threaten to stop the ruse or order somewhere else.” She shook her head.
“The nerve! To take advantage of a young couple like this! Well, they won’t get away with it, I’ll tell…”
“Whoa, hold on,” Robson said, making a calming gesture with his hands.
“Let’s just think about this. Gentry can be funny about this sort of thing, and though I like him and his lady well enough, Mr Bingley might value a quiet household more than his money.
It might be us out on our ears if we go without proof, and Kerridge and Heaver are very tricky customers. We’ve got to get it all.”
Sarah nodded, though she didn’t stop pacing.
“Very well. Yes, you’re right. I’ll count up how much is delivered from Wreathe’s, Fiennes’, and Graves’ next Wednesday, and you… well, maybe you could try and get something from one of the merchants? If you—”
Robson grimaced and shook his head. “I’m sorry, miss. I’m away today on this thing for the mistress. She’s sent me to London.”
Her expression passed from excitement to desolation so quickly that it quite pulled at his heart.
“You’re leaving?”
He shuffled his feet.
“Only for a week or so… I’ll be back by the party.”
He watched her shoulders tighten once more, her face harden.
That would seem a long time with the whole house against her and no one to confide in.
For a mad moment, he wanted to embrace her, for all that he’d not yet known her a year.
Then he remembered, too, that he was covered in mud. He shuffled awkwardly.
“I’ll do it on my way back. I promise. Then, if you note what’s delivered, if I get something on the merchants and, if we can get those receipts, I think that’ll do.
” He grinned at her, raised a clenched fist, and shook it.
“We’ll have ‘em, miss. You wait and see. Look after yourself. I’ll be back before you know it. ”
She nodded and flashed him a quick smile, and he turned to go.
He’d not cleaned himself up at all, but he found with some surprise that he no longer cared.
This shared cause gave him a feeling of vigour and freedom he had not known for a long time.
Or maybe it was Sarah herself who made him feel that way.
“Robson,” she said suddenly, making him pause, his hand on the doorknob.
He met her gaze. Hesitantly, first one step, then another, she approached him.
His heart beat so wildly in his chest, he wondered if she could hear it.
All sorts of things flashed through his head, but in the end, she only held out a handful of coins. Her wages.
“Would you take this to London with you? I usually send it with the mail, but I trust you more, if you’re willing. It’s for Martha, my sister, and her little girl. Number 12, George Street, Southwark.”
“Certainly, Miss Camberley,” he said, taking it from her. “I’m willing.”
“What a beautiful morning!” Jane called, waving one arm over her head while the other held her hem clear of the wet grass.
Her husband beamed at her, bearing such a close resemblance, in his freshness and uncomplicated beauty, to the rising sun just clearing the hilly horizon behind him that she laughed aloud for joy.
She broke into a run, and he swept her up into his arms and kissed her.
“Indeed it is, my dear. I did not realise you were up. I hope I did not wake you.”
“Not at all,” she said, linking her arm with his as they began to walk together. “I saw you from the window.”
They walked for a few paces in silence, the birdsong assailing them from every side. At length, Jane said, “You were kicking the grass.”
“Was I?” asked her husband.
Another dozen steps as the sunlight strengthened and steam began to rise from the tussocks of grass.
“This was where your watch went missing,” Jane said. This was her principal skill; to speak so as to create a silence, like a vessel for people to fill. Charles smiled. With his next step, he leaned a little into her so that she had to push against him, and both giggled as their shoulders collided.
“It was.” They had settled again into a steady rhythm.
His brow creased, a wholly unaccustomed expression for him.
“I cried when Il Miraggio was not there,” he said at last. His voice betrayed a depth of emotion quite at odds with the banality of the admission.
He swallowed. “My father was quite disappointed. He… ah… he had forgotten our conversation, forgotten to book him, but he had put a lot of thought into things. Inviting people and so on. Without my mother to help him, what is more…”
Jane’s hand tightened on his arm.
“I spent much of the party in the house. I’d gone and had a cry, and everyone else was outside, having a jolly time. Thinking about it since, I cannot think why I was so upset. I had told everyone he would be there, but when he was not, I think only a few boys said anything, and then only in jest.”
Grass brushed against their legs, and the brook rushed over the rocks.
“He came to find me,” Charles said. “He rousted me out of the airing cupboard on the second floor and asked if I would come out. I put a good face on it, and we walked down the back stairs when he sat down, there on the bare wood. You have seen the portrait. He was a big man. He looked up at me. I was following him, so I was on a higher step. He looked…”
Charles stopped and shook his head. “He looked the saddest I had ever seen him. Sadder than when Mother died. So sad, and so… vulnerable, do I mean? Undefended?”
Jane still said nothing. Charles cleared his throat.
“He… brought out the watch. He’d had it engraved. He handed it to me, and he said, ‘Forgive me, Charlie, I don’t know what I’m doing”
Charles’s face crumpled, and he took a deep breath, like a diver coming up for air.
“And then he got up and carried on.”
They carried on, themselves, until they had reached the haha where the parkland abutted the pasture.
A dozen or so cows regarded them from across the divide, jaws moving mechanically.
Bingley stared back at them for a while, then smiled at his wife and indicated a path that would lead them back to the house.
“Did you ever speak about it again after that?” Jane asked, after the memory, like a gout of dark smoke, had had time to disperse in the fresh air. Charles no longer looked particularly affected. He had withdrawn into his usual state of amiable detachment.
“No, we never did, my dear,” he said. “It was only a month later… a month to the day exactly, come to think of it, that he died.”
It had been an interesting few days for Robson.
Arriving in London, and having executed his commission from Sarah, he had finished four mugs of ale with his uncle, sitting up late at the bar as they used to.
His uncle didn’t know where the conjurer was, but, as landlord of a busy coaching inn, it had been a simple thing to put the word out all over the city, and soon the report came back that Il Miraggio was lodging at Red Lion Court just off Fleet Street.
An early morning excursion thither, however, saw the room ransacked, the door off the hinges, belongings scattered.
It was mere chance that another of his uncle’s patrons, who knew the wizard by sight, had seen him board the post chaise for Portsmouth before the sun was up.
Now, thanks to a farmer, the farmer’s wagon, and Mrs Bingley’s travelling allowance, Robson, too, was in Portsmouth.
Without delay, having learned of the city’s taverns as they drove, he made straight for the Still and West, the inn on Spice Island where one might most conveniently arrange passage by ship to Gibraltar, Valetta, Palermo, and points farther east still.
To his surprise, a crowd had formed around the entrance to the inn. A red-faced man stood upon a crate and was shaking his fist as he addressed a mob, some even armed with broomsticks, lading hooks and, in one case, a flour-dusted rolling pin.
“And I’ll be damned if I’ll let a blackhearted conjurer pay court to my daughter!” the man finished to a rumble of assent.
Robson halted, wondering what to do, since clearly his quarry seemed indicated. He had barely time to think, however, before a voice like a foghorn sounded behind him to the sound of tramping boots.
“Clear the way!”
He flung himself into an alley to avoid being trampled as a splendidly uniformed naval officer and a troop of red-coated marines thundered past. Robson watched as the officer approached the mob.
“Now then, gentlemen, what’s all this? Unless I miss my guess, you’ve assembled because you’re eager to serve your King in the Royal Navy and, by disturbing the peace, are trying to tempt me into pressing you all to sea. Am I right?”
Robson chuckled to himself at the effect this had on the mob.