Chapter 33
When Sebastian finally tracked down Damion Pitcairn, he was sitting on the worn stone stairs near Beaufort Wharfs, watching the snow fall gently into the river before him.
“You don’t have anything better to do these days than look for me?” he said as Sebastian settled on the top step.
Sebastian stretched his legs out straight and crossed his ankles. “I’m told you like to collect swords—cavalry sabers in particular.”
The fencing master stiffened, then returned his gaze to the Thames. “So? No one’s had their head lopped off lately, have they?”
“Not to my knowledge. How much do you know about the Celts?”
“The whats?”
“The Celts: the tribes that lived in Britain and Ireland before the arrival of first the Romans, then the Germanic tribes.”
A smile of amusement lit the younger man’s eyes. “Sorry. Can’t say I know anything about them. Why?”
“According to numerous Roman writers, the Celts used to practice human sacrifice. Their best-known ways of dispatching their victims—depending upon the intended godly recipient—were by drowning, burning, and hanging from trees—or wood, I suppose you could say.”
Pitcairn’s smile had disappeared. “Are you serious?”
“I am, yes.”
“You think that’s what’s going on here? Human sacrifices?”
“I honestly don’t know. Thankfully, the papers have been so fixated on Toole’s burning on Primrose Hill that no one in Fleet Street has noticed it’s part of a pattern. But I suspect it’s only a matter of time.”
Pitcairn was silent for a moment, his features a tense mask as he stared out over the gray surging river.
The snow was coming down harder now, big wet flakes that melted almost as soon as they hit the old stone steps and nearby muddy bank.
“Then I’d say Bow Street’s finest should be looking for someone who spent his growing-up years reading Latin at Eton or Harrow, rather than sweating in the sugarcane fields of Jamaica. ”
“Maybe. But for some reason I can’t understand, everything keeps circling back to you.”
“And you expect me to explain it?” Pitcairn shook his head. “I can’t.”
Sebastian studied the younger man’s solemn profile. “And yet you know more than you would have me believe.”
Pitcairn twisted around to look at him again. “You think I owe you honesty? I don’t owe you a damned thing.”
“Not for my sake, no.”
Pitcairn rested his elbows on his bent knees, his gaze once again on the river before them. After a moment, he said, “You ever been to Jamaica?”
“I have, yes. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful place; clear blue skies, turquoise seas, and the lushest green hills I’ve ever seen.
It was like a vision of paradise—if paradise came with slave auctions and the severed arms, legs, and heads of men and women dangling from the trees.
I was told there’d recently been an uprising. It was put down…harshly.”
“They always are. I was four the first time I saw a man whipped to death. I don’t remember now what his crime was, if I was ever told, but I know I’ll never forget the sound of his screams. Old man Pitcairn usually just sold off the slaves that gave him trouble; ‘Why waste money by killing them?’ was his philosophy.
So whatever the fellow did must have seriously aggravated him. ”
Sebastian kept his gaze on the river. Impossible to think of this brilliant, accomplished young man as the son of a brutal slave owner. “Is he still alive? Your father, I mean.”
“No. He was over fifty when I was born. He had three other children that I know of, older than me, and all from enslaved women. But they were girls. I was the only son.”
“Did he free his daughters, too?”
Pitcairn stared down at the worn stone steps between his boots and shook his head. “Only me.”
Sebastian found his chest hurt, just at the thought of it. How could any man—even one as debauched and amoral as a slave owner—father a child and then leave her to live and die enslaved? His own flesh and blood?
How?
Aloud, he said, “Because they were girls?”
“That might have been part of it. But it was only part.” Pitcairn yanked off one of his gloves and held up his splayed hand, turning it this way and that in the cold light of the day.
“He liked the way I came up pale. All his other children were dark.” He dropped the hand to his lap but made no move to put on the glove again.
“He took me away from my mother a week after we watched that man get whipped to death. My mother…” His voice trailed off, and he had to swallow before going on.
“She didn’t take it well. That’s when the old man sold her down the road. ”
“Sasha told me your mother died when she was eight.” The knowledge of the manner of the woman’s death hung in the air between them, although neither of them mentioned it.
Pitcairn swiped his hands down over his mouth, then nodded. “I was gone by then. The old man sent me to Scotland when I was twelve. His intent was for me to become a solicitor or a surgeon.”
“He sent you to his family?”
“Yes, in Fife. His brother William was a vicar in Dysart. It was my uncle’s wife, Aunt Elaine, who taught me music.”
“So who taught you to fence?”
“Ah, that was the old man himself. He saw something in me that suggested I had an aptitude, and it amused him to foster it. He died when I was seventeen. That’s when Uncle William kicked me out of his house.
And he didn’t just kick me out; he also pocketed the money my father had sent for my apprenticeship.
Funny enough, I hadn’t realized all those years that the old man had been paying Uncle William to keep me.
But when the money stopped—” He made an outward sweeping motion with his hands.
Sebastian watched as a quick succession of painful emotions flitted across the younger man’s face—hurt, resentment, bafflement, and, inevitably, a ghostly shadow of reluctant, shattered love—before Pitcairn’s rigid self-control slammed back into place.
“That’s when you came to London?” said Sebastian.
“Yes.”
“If your father was from Fife, you must be related somehow to Major John Pitcairn.”
The other man’s eyes narrowed. “He was my father’s cousin. How do you know of him?”
“He was one of the first casualties of the American War—fought at Lexington and Concord before being killed at Bunker Hill.”
Pitcairn’s frown deepened. “That’s significant?”
“Damned if I know.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The fathers of Gilbert Keebles, Marcus Toole, and Phineas Upcott all fought in the first American War, as did Theo Bridgewood’s father. It could be absolutely meaningless, or…” Sebastian shrugged.
Pitcairn was thoughtful for a moment, watching a barge working its way upriver. “He did, too, you know—old man Pitcairn, I mean. Before he set up as a planter in Jamaica, he was an ensign in the cavalry.”
“Do you know where he saw action?”
“I think it was in the Carolinas, although I’ll admit I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention when he talked about it.”
“Is that how your interest in collecting cavalry sabers began? Because of him?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I never thought much about it.”
Sebastian watched the foam-flecked waves curl away from the barge’s low sides.
The snow was coming down so thick and fast now that he could barely see the opposite bank.
“Which came first?” he asked. “The incident with Sasha in Southwark, or the confrontation with Keebles, Toole, and their friends in Kate Price’s printing shop? ”
It was a moment before Pitcairn responded. “Heard about that, did you?”
“Yes.” When the younger man remained silent, Sebastian said again, “So which incident came first?”
“The printshop. Why?”
“I’m trying to figure out how you just happened to show up at precisely the right moment to protect first Kate Price, then Sasha Stone. That doesn’t strike you as a bit…curious?”
“There’s a word for that sort of thing, you know. It’s called serendipity.”
“Is that what we’re talking about here? Pure chance?”
“What else could we be talking about?”
Sebastian shrugged and pushed to his feet. “You know the Home Office is having you watched?”
“I had noticed, yes.”
“They’re planning to arrest one of the Spenceans for this string of murders. What do you think the odds are it’s you?”
Pitcairn looked up at him. “What exactly are you suggesting I do about it?”
“You could leave. Go someplace else. How’s your French?”
“You think I’d be better off in Paris than here?”
“Possibly. They do seem slightly more accepting of people with darker skin. Look at Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. Joseph Serrant. The Chevalier de Saint-Georges.”
“I’m not running away.”
Sebastian shrugged and started to turn. “Just be careful, will you?”
“Why? What is it to you if your government should choose to hang me?”
Not only hang you, but have you castrated, disemboweled, chopped into four pieces, and beheaded, thought Sebastian. But all he said was, “ ‘How can a people be free that has not learnt to be just?’ ”
Something flickered in the other man’s eyes. “Sieyès, right?”
“You’ve read him?”
A smile of genuine amusement spread across the Jamaican’s features. “Of course I’ve read him. He did play a rather significant role in France’s revolt against monarchy and aristocracy, remember?”
Sebastian had to work to keep his reaction off his face. “So he did.”
“Drawn and quartered?” said Hero in disbelief when Sebastian told her of his conversations with Lovejoy and Pitcairn. They had bundled the boys in coats, scarves, hats, and boots and were taking them for a walk in the snow.
“And castrated, disemboweled, and beheaded,” said Sebastian. “We haven’t moved on much from 1745, have we?”
“Are they serious?”
“Absolutely. It’s what Edward Despard and his friends were sentenced to in 1803, remember?
The only reason they weren’t disemboweled and quartered is because Despard’s wife and his good friend Horatio Nelson—Admiral Nelson, for God’s sake!
—successfully petitioned the King to reduce the sentences.
So they were merely drawn, hanged, and beheaded. ”
She watched Simon plant his feet far apart, then throw back his head and squeeze his eyes shut as he opened his mouth to catch the wet snowflakes on his tongue. “They’re frightened, aren’t they?” she said quietly. “The government, I mean.”
Sebastian nodded. “They’re terrified—and with good reason.
Prices keep rising while wages keep falling and jobs are disappearing.
The weather has been worse all year than anyone can remember.
Crops have failed, and livestock are dying.
People are cold, starving, and deeply, justifiably angry.
They sacrificed, bled, and died for over twenty years for the sake of the war against France, and for what?
To put the Bourbons back on their throne and pay crushing taxes to keep the Hanovers fat and happy on theirs? ”
She looped her hand through the crook of his arm and leaned into him. “If you’re not careful, you’re liable to be hauled into court on charges of sedition yourself.” Her smile faded. “I never did believe Despard was guilty of treason.”
“He wasn’t. The evidence against him was a farce manufactured by government spies. I never understood how they managed to get a conviction.”
They watched together as Patrick scooped a handful of wet snow off a nearby area’s iron railing and laughed as it turned to mush in his fist.
Hero said, “I think it was because people didn’t like the fact that an officer and a gentleman had taken a Black woman to wife. And now they’re going after a man with a Black mother. Pitcairn is in serious danger, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
She fell silent, her eyes narrowing as they came around the corner to find an opulent, gold-trimmed landau drawn up before their house, its beautifully matched team of creamy white horses stomping their hooves and shaking their heads in the snow as a liveried footman reached to open the carriage door.
“Who is that?” she said quietly. “Do you know?”
“No.”
As they drew closer, a stocky older man in an old-fashioned powdered wig emerged. At the sight of them, he drew up, then came down the carriage steps in a rush to stride quickly toward them.
“You’re Lord Devlin, aren’t you?” he said in a rough voice.
“I am.” Sebastian exchanged a quick glance with Hero as she reached out to catch Simon by the hand. “May I help you?”
“I’m Royston-Jones—Zacharia Royston-Jones. I assume you’ve heard?”
Sebastian shook his head. “Heard what?”
“My son—Emmanuel—has disappeared.”