“Christ!” He backed his way into the bow to catch his breath and began to rub himself dry with his shirt.
“Least he’s fresh,” Proctor said. The boy did not reply but took his place and clambered back into his red coat. They began to pull out for the Black Lyon Stairs. “Though we could have towed it.”
His nephew looked black. There’d be a crowd there already, ready to tut at the corpse and bless themselves for having survived another day. Damn, his hands were cold! The noise of London was full-throated now. Whistles and shouts rang from the boats making their way up and down the river. Smoke poured out of every chimney and the banks were alive with hammerings and thumps as the warehouses were filled with and emptied of sugar and timber, cloth and spices, fancy goods and dried fruits. Off downstream on the far side of London Bridge where the Tower stared down into the waters, the merchant ships would be pulling at their anchors like dogs eager to be off and running again, yapping over the oceans for fresh trade.
The body’s head lolled to one side and the mouth drained the dirty water of the Thames onto the floor of the scull.
In other parts of London one could breathe sweeter air. On Bruton Street in Mayfair, a lady paused as her maid plied the door knocker of one of the graceful buildings at the Berkeley Square end of the street, and touching her high and powdered hair, which so bore down on her neck she was rarely free of a mild headache, she noticed a man on the opposite side of the street. He was consulting a pocket watch and frowning a little. She marked the cut of his plum-colored coat and thought it gentleman-like, if rather plain; and saw the man who wore it was not unpleasing, though the dustings of youth had been mostly knocked off him. He had a slightly Roman look to his face, long-nosed and rather serious, but nothing in his dress or bearing marked him out as anything remarkable.
Turning away, she began to think of the gossip she was about to trade with the lady of the house outside which she waited, what she would be willing to reveal, and what keep secret. It might have surprised her to learn that the gentleman whom she had been observing was thinking also of the trading and flow of information, the commerce and management of knowledge. The gentleman was a spy, and a controller of spies. He had ears and eyes in every court in Europe and he collected their whisperings and spun it into the gold of intelligence-at least, that was his intent. Her friend’s footman opened the door to her, and the lady never thought of the idle gentleman again.
Mr. Palmer, the gentleman who had been under observation, glanced over his shoulder as he heard one of the street doors open and close again behind him, then returned to contemplation of his pocket watch. It still wanted a few minutes to eleven o’clock. That was the hour he had suggested in his note that he would call on Mrs. Westerman and Mr. Crowther, that strange pair of companions recently celebrated for their role in bringing justice to some unfortunates in Sussex, and now, due to the indisposition of Mrs. Westerman’s husband, resident in London. He did not wish to be early and so looked about him.
Berkeley Square. Some of the richest families in the country made their homes here in the Season, it being near enough the business and pleasure of the town but removed enough to offer some respite from the stink and the squalor. The air was certainly cleaner here than in the city, and the streets quieter than around his offices at the Admiralty in Whitehall. The houses were the work of various architects of the century, but though a number of hands had been employed there was among the buildings a slightly smug sense of agreement as to the fundamentals of tasteful design. Tall narrow windows peered with a certain disdain over the central gardens; the stone steps to their cellars were sheltered with black iron railings that flowered into iron brackets. The lamps they held aloft were all extinguished now, but when the gloom of a November evening stole up again from the river tonight, slippered footmen in powder and livery would emerge to light them till they decorated the square like marsh lights, each catching the glitter of gold braid in their little defensive pools against the dark. Mr. Palmer thought of those things he had lately learned, and saw himself suddenly as a lost traveler on hostile ground, chasing glimmers, and unable to say if they would lead him to greater security-or into danger.
From his position on the pavement, Palmer could see a group of children at play in the central gardens. Two boys, of about seven he would guess, were neatly tacking up one of the lawns under the leafless trees toward a young girl and a nursemaid with a small child in her arms. They were a well-made-looking group. The boys both appeared sturdy and healthy, their coats streaks of blue and brown against the grass. The girl, still not at her full height, though older than the boys, wore a black silk mantle over a gown of blue. She picked at its edges as she walked briskly by her nurse.
“Thornleigh, engage the enemy!” shouted the boy in the lead, the darker of the two.
“Yes, sir, Captain Westerman, sir,” his blond companion replied.
Mr. Palmer watched their maneuvers for a moment with a smile. So this was Captain Westerman’s son and the young Earl of Sussex, with whom the Westerman family were staying in London. He wondered what adventures they were undertaking. Perhaps they were replaying Captain Westerman’s capture of the French warship, the Marquis de La Fayette in the spring. It had been a valuable prize, since the ship was laden with goods bound for the rebels of the American Colonies from their continental allies, and worth not less than three hundred thousand pounds. It was also the last such victory the captain would enjoy in his remarkable career. An accident at sea during the repairs to his ship had left James Westerman badly injured. It had been the most appalling piece of luck, and now Westerman had returned home with his brains so shaken up, it was found after some weeks that he was not fit to live with his family but instead must reside under the care of a mad-doctor in Highgate. He was a great loss. The threat to England’s supremacy on the seas had never been so great, and the Navy felt the lack of such a competent commander most keenly.
“Stephen!” the young lady called. “If you launch a broadside at baby Anne and myself just when she is sleeping, I shall have you flogged at the capstan and-oh, what is the phrase. .”
The fairer boy paused, then shouted, “Keelhauled!”
Lady Susan grinned happily. “Indeed. Keelhauled!”
The darker boy appeared to subtly alter his course, as if the shrubberies to the north of the gardens had always been his intent, remarking only, “It’s just the Dutch do that, actually,” and kicking up the damp late-autumn leaves with his heels.
Palmer smiled at the young lady’s management of the boys before letting his thoughts drift back to the mother of the prudent warrior. He had met the captain’s redheaded wife in the past, and on the first occasion, some years ago, he had found her a good-humored and intelligent woman, and loyal consort. He had seen her again after her husband’s return to England, and on official business. Palmer had received information that a man taken captive on Westerman’s ship, who had later died from his wounds, might have been possessed of certain knowledge Mr. Palmer wished very much to have. He had found Mrs. Westerman as helpful as the grief and confusion caused by her husband’s injury would allow. James Westerman himself seemed drunk, childlike, petulant, but Palmer had left their orderly and apparently thriving estate in Sussex thinking well of the captain’s wife and family, and grieving for them.