Chapter 35
Sebastian arrived in Little Windmill Street a short time later to find Ciana O’Leary’s shop shuttered.
The weak winter sun was already beginning to sink low in the sky, and he stood for a moment in the pool of light cast by a flickering oil lamp set high on a nearby wall, only vaguely aware of the snow falling gently around him.
He realized he had no idea where the Irishwoman lived.
And so he started going into first one shop, then the next—a chandler’s, a button shop, a haberdasher’s—until he finally found a stooped old fruit seller with a ragged brown shawl pulled up over her head, who eyed him appraisingly and said, “Ciana? And what would a fine gentleman such as yourself be wantin’ with our Ciana? ”
“I need to speak to her about her cousin.”
The old woman nodded knowingly, then appeared to come to a decision. “Reckon you’ll be finding her in the chapel, prayin’ for him.” She crossed herself. “Wherever he may be, poor soul.”
That took Sebastian by surprise. He said, “You mean the church of St. James’s?”
“Ach, no.” The woman’s face crinkled with her amusement. “Not our Ciana. It’s the chapel on Warwick Street you’ll be wantin’.”
The Catholic chapel in Warwick Street was less than thirty years old.
There had been a time not so long ago when any Catholic priest or nun brave enough to venture onto English soil courted torture and a hideous death.
But then came the French Revolution and the dire threat to monarchism and aristocratic privilege it represented, and the British Crown found itself allied with the Catholic royal family of its old enemy.
The most oppressive prohibitions against Catholics were relaxed, and a Catholic bishop was allowed to establish his household in Golden Square.
He then built a small chapel in his backyard, facing onto Warwick Street, for the benefit of the tens of thousands of Catholic refugees pouring into England.
As Sebastian slipped into the chapel, he could see Ciana O’Leary on her knees in the last row of pews, her head bowed, her face buried in her hands.
The sound of the door being quietly eased shut brought her head up.
Her eyes were dark and bruised-looking with worry, and the light from a nearby branch of candles shimmered over cheeks wet with tears.
“Do you know something?” she said in a hoarse whisper, settling back onto the pew. “Has Emmanuel been found?”
“No.” His snow-caked hat held in one hand, Sebastian slid into the pew beside her. “I didn’t realize you’re a Catholic.”
The faintest hint of a smile touched her lips.
“I am and I’m not. I can find comfort and strength in the traditions of my childhood even if my own beliefs have…
expanded. The Roystons have always been Catholics, you know, although of course they’ve had to keep it a deep, dark secret since the days of the Roundheads.
It wasn’t that long ago a Catholic couldn’t buy land, own a horse worth more than five pounds, or even attend university. ”
“Things are better now.”
“Better. But Catholics still aren’t equal.”
Sebastian wasn’t going to argue with that. “And Emmanuel? Is he Catholic as well?”
She looked him straight in the eye and said, “I don’t know.”
“Or at any rate you won’t admit to knowing?”
She shrugged.
He said, “But you’ve heard he’s missing?”
Her gaze went to the crucifix that hung beside the altar. “Why do you think I’m here, praying?”
When he didn’t answer, she said softly, “You think he’s dead, don’t you?”
“Why else would he disappear?”
She hesitated as if choosing her words carefully. “Emmanuel is…a very troubled soul. It troubles him that much of his family’s wealth came from the wars and the slave trade, and it troubles him that he was friends for so many years with a group of men who can only be described as despicable.”
Sebastian studied her candlelit profile. “I still don’t understand why now—why would he sever his friendship with Keebles and the rest of them now, when he’s known them since Eton?”
“I think the nasty things they did always bothered him at some level. But…” Again she paused.
“Emmanuel is at heart a good, kind man, but he’s weak.
He tolerated the disturbing things his friends did because he needed them—needed what their friendship gave him.
Acceptance, mainly, but also reassurance that he wasn’t still that awkward, sensitive, ridiculed boy he was when his father first sent him to Eton. ”
“And so he turned a blind eye to the morally reprehensible things they did?”
“Aren’t most of us like that? All too ready to find excuses for the nasty things our friends and allies—or we ourselves—do, even when we would harshly condemn those same actions if committed by someone else?
We flatter ourselves that our army would never commit the kind of atrocities we blame the French and Americans for.
And yet, somewhere deep down in the hollowness of our souls, we know the truth, don’t we?
What we did to Ireland…Scotland…the Peninsula…
” She fixed him with a hard, level stare.
“Or do you prefer to pretend those things don’t happen? ”
Sebastian shook his head. “I saw what happened on the retreat to Corunna. The truth is that most of us will accept far more reprehensible behavior from those we consider ‘on our side’ than we’re willing to admit.
But I can’t help feeling that something must have happened—something truly horrific—that finally made Emmanuel decide after ten-plus years that his friends’ behavior could no longer be borne.
You’re quite certain you don’t know what it was? ”
“No. If there was something, he never told me about it. I suppose he might have told Annie, but Annie’s dead.” She scrubbed the palm of one hand at the tears drying on her cheeks. “You think that’s why his friends are being killed—because of something they did?”
“It’s rapidly becoming the only viable explanation I can come up with. And you don’t have any idea—any idea at all—what it could be?”
But she simply stared back at him with wide, hurting eyes.
Sebastian went next to St. John Street in Clerkenwell. The early winter darkness had fallen by the time he arrived outside the Rising Sun, but to his surprise he found the coffeehouse ablaze with light and ringing with loud voices and laughter that spilled out into the snowy night.
“Sounds like somethin’s going on in there,” said Tom, scrambling forward to take the reins.
Sebastian dropped lightly to the ground. “It does, doesn’t it?”
He was aware of the soft kiss of falling flakes against his face, the snow crunching beneath the soles of his boots as he approached the coffeehouse.
Someone inside shouted something in a heavy Geordie accent that was nearly unintelligible.
The other men in the coffeehouse chorused, “Hear, hear,” and began to sing.
Why vainly do we waste our prime
Repeating our oppressions?
Come, rouse to arms, ’tis now the time
To punish past transgressions.
’Tis said that kings can do no wrong
Their murderous deeds deny it;
And since from us their power has sprung
We have the right to try it.
Each patriot Briton’s song will be,
O give me death or liberty!
“Well, bloody hell,” Sebastian said softly, recognizing the song.
Its origins dated back to at least the 1790s, when a shoemaker named Thomas Hardy was arrested for treason.
The words of the song—found amongst his papers—were read out at his trial as evidence of his guilt.
As a result, the song was published in the official trial accounts and became hugely popular.
The men were starting on the second verse—“The starving wretch who steals for bread / But seldom meets compassion”—when Sebastian pushed open the coffeehouse door and walked in. First one voice, then another and another, faltered and fell silent as heads turned to stare at him.
“Don’t mind me,” said Sebastian into the sudden, taut stillness. He spread his arms wide. “Would I be dressed like this if I were a spy?”
Someone laughed nervously as Adam York, his face ashen, came bustling out from behind his counter.
“It’s all right,” he told the men as he hurried to the door, the crowd parting before him.
“It’s all right.” He kept a smile plastered on his face, but his voice was rough when he leaned in close to Sebastian to whisper, “What now?”
“We need to talk.”
“Yes, of course, but outside, for God’s sake,” said York, jerking open the door again.
Sebastian waited until the door was closed behind them, then said, “Did you know Emmanuel Royston-Jones is missing?”
Face blank, the coffeehouse owner stared at him. “Who is he?”
“A friend of the men who wrecked your coffeehouse a month or so ago.”
York looked puzzled. “But he wasn’t with them?”
“No.”
“So why are you here, asking me about him?”
“Because he was with his friends in St. James’s Street a few weeks ago when you confronted them and threatened to—how did you put it? Ah, yes: ‘see them in hell.’ ”
York stared at Sebastian as, inside the Rising Sun, one man, then another, picked up the song again.
And shall a Crown preserve a head
Of one who robs a nation…
The coffeehouse owner swallowed hard and brought up cupped hands to cover his nose and mouth. “God help me. I’d forgotten about that. I was drunk, of course.”
“But it did happen?”
He nodded, his hands falling back to his sides.
“I’m not proud of it. It was a stupid thing to do.
” He glanced toward the coffeehouse, where the men were singing, “See Gallia’s bright example…
” “But I swear to God, I didn’t kill them, if that’s what you’re implying.
I was just…spouting off. I never could handle my drink.
Why do you think I run a coffeehouse instead of a tavern? ”
Sebastian studied the other man’s tense face. “I need you to tell me what you know.”
York frowned. “What do you mean? I don’t know anything. What could I know?”
“The last time I spoke to you, you all but came out and said that Marcus Toole and his friends had been allowed to get away with something—something considerably more serious than what they did to you. And you’re not the only person I’ve heard imply something like that. What exactly were you talking about?”
York licked his lips and looked away. “It’s a figure of speech, isn’t it? Saying someone can get away with murder. It just means they’re allowed to do things other people would be punished for.”
“It can be a figure of speech, yes. But I’m not convinced that’s all you meant in this instance.”
York stared at him unblinkingly. “It was.”
Sebastian was having to fight to keep a rein on his temper. “Three young men are dead, a fourth is missing, and a woman out at Chalk Farm had the life literally squeezed out of her. How many more people need to die before you have the balls to tell me what I need to know to stop this?”
“I’m sorry about the woman out at Chalk Farm; truly I am.
But it’s funny, I don’t hear anyone talking about her.
All the papers care about are those bloody young aristocrats.
” He flung his arm in a wide arc that took in the surrounding dilapidated houses and the snow-covered fields beyond.
“There are people starving to death out there. Men, women, and children starving to death. Do the editors of the Times or the Morning Chronicle know about them? Of course they do! But they’re not writing about them, are they?
They don’t matter.” He jerked his head toward the crowded coffeehouse.
“We don’t matter. We’re just here to obey all those bloody laws we’ve no hand in creating, work to make rich people richer, and die. That’s it.”
“The guillotine on peers shall wait,” sang the men, their voices rising louder and louder. “And knights we’ll hang in garters…”
Sebastian nodded to the coffeehouse beside them and said, “This isn’t France, and the year isn’t 1789.
Prinny has a standing army of one hundred fifty thousand battle-hardened men at his command, and unlike Louis XVI he won’t hesitate to use them against his own people.
I don’t know what you and your friends are planning, but you need to think long and hard before you try anything. ”
York’s jaw tightened. “Are we finished here?”
“Sounds like it.”
Sebastian stayed where he was, his thoughts in a bad place as the coffeehouse door opened and closed, and York disappeared inside. The song continued.
These despots long have trod us down
And judges are their engines
Such wretched minions of the Crown
Demand the people’s vengeance.
Each patriot Briton’s song will be,
O give me death or liberty!
As he watched, a man came out of the shadows of a nearby shuttered blacksmith’s to walk rapidly toward the coffeehouse door.
He kept his head bowed, his shoulders hunched as he glanced furtively around.
He wore his hat pulled down on his forehead and had a scarf wrapped around his lower face, so that Sebastian could see little more than his eyes.
But there was something familiar about the man’s silhouette, about the way he moved.
Sebastian watched the man slip into the coffeehouse, watched him pat one of the other men on the back and laugh at something he said. The song was winding down now, the last phrases carried by the cold wind as Sebastian turned away.
And future years will prove the truth
That Man is good by nature:
Then let us drink with three times three
The reign of Peace and Liberty.
Tom had swung the curricle around up by Spa Fields and was walking the horses back toward him when Sebastian met up with him, the snow falling gently around them.
“There’s a man in the Rising Sun,” said Sebastian.
“Probably somewhere around thirty or thirty-five, short and stocky, with light brown hair and a thick neck, wearing a gray greatcoat, buff breeches, and a slouch hat. I want you to follow him when he leaves the coffeehouse—see where he goes and what you can find out about him. I’ll take the horses back to Brook Street and get Giles to stable them. ”
“Aye, gov’nor,” said Tom with a grin as Sebastian hopped up to take the reins.
“Oh, and Tom?” said Sebastian when the tiger started to run off.
The boy paused to look back at him. “Aye, gov’nor?”
“Be careful. Unless I’m mistaken, the man’s a spy for Bow Street and the Home Office.”