Anne Perry - The Angel Court Affair

Pitt straightened to attention. “Yes, sir.”

“Sofia Delacruz?” Charlotte said with a sudden sharpening of interest. She and Pitt were sitting by a low fire in the parlor, the curtains drawn across the French windows onto the garden. Almost all the light was gone from the cool spring sky and there was a definite chill in the air. Sixteen-year-old Jemima and thirteen-year-old Daniel were both upstairs in their rooms. Jemima would be daydreaming, or writing letters to her friends. Daniel would be deep in the adventures of the latest Boy’s Own Paper.

Pitt leaned forward and put another log on the fire. It gave less heat than coal, but he liked the smell of the apple wood.

“Have you heard of her?” he asked with surprise.

Charlotte smiled slightly self-consciously. “Yes, a bit.”

He remembered Sir Walter’s reference to a scandal in the past; he knew how Charlotte loathed gossip, even when it was the lifeblood of investigation. She listened to it, but with guilt, and a thread of fear. She had seen too many of its victims firsthand to take pleasure in it.

“What did you hear?” he said gravely. “She may be in danger. I need to know.”

Charlotte did not argue, which in itself was indicative of a different kind of interest. He detected concern in her eyes. She put down the sewing she had been doing.

“You are going to protect her?” she asked curiously.

“I’ve assigned Brundage to it,” he replied.

“Not Stoker?” She was puzzled.

“Stoker’s quite senior now,” he pointed out. He did not want to be sharp and set a division between them. This quiet evening alone with her was the best part of his day. Its peace mattered intensely to him. “He has other responsibilities. Brundage is a good man.”

“I’ve heard Sofia’s ideas are pretty radical.” She was gazing at him steadily.

“For example?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, pushing the sewing away entirely and leaning forward a little. “Perhaps I’ll go and listen to what she has to say when she arrives. She has to have more fire than our local minister.” Charlotte went to church on most Sundays because she took the children. It was a natural part of belonging to the community and of being accepted. It was also the best place for Jemima and Daniel to meet other youths whose families Charlotte knew in a somewhat substantial way.

More often than not, Pitt discovered some pressing duty elsewhere on Sundays.

Pitt nodded agreement, but he was far more conscious of a sharp memory stirring in his mind. His mother had taken him to the parish church on the edge of the estate every Sunday of his childhood. He could still picture the shafts of colored light slanting downward from the stained-glass windows; smell the stone and faint odor of dust. There were shuffles of movement, a creaking of stays, and the dry riffle of pages being turned. Very seldom had he actually listened to the sermons. Some of the stories from the Old Testament were good, but they were isolated, forming no consistent history of God and man. To him the Bible seemed to be more a series of errors and corrections, well-earned disasters and then heroic rescues. A lot of the rest of it was lists of names, or wonderfully poetic prophecies of desolation to come.

Had he believed any of it? And even if he had, did it matter? If he were honest, the stories from his borrowed copies of Boy’s Own had stirred his heart far more, with their tales of adventure, of heroes any boy would want to copy. He smiled now with quiet pleasure; he felt a sense of identity with his son when he saw Daniel reading. The magazine now had a new name, the stories had different settings, but the spirit was the same.

So what was it that still clung to him so sharply about those old memories of church? The companionship of his mother, the rare sense of peace within her when she was there, as if she were at last safe, loved and completely unafraid? He had thought at the time that her faith was simple and certain. While he was glad for her, because he knew it comforted some of her fears that he could not, he had no desire to be the same way. It was a subject they had never spoken about, out of choice on both of their parts.

He wondered now if perhaps it had not been nearly as easy for her to keep faith as he had supposed, that she had led him to think it was because it took a certain burden from him. It was one area in which he could be a child. She had allowed him that, as she had so many other things of which he had been unaware at the time. She had died without ever telling him she was ill. She had sent him away so he would not notice, not suffer with her.

Charlotte was watching him, waiting. Was she aware of the thoughts inside him?

“You truly want to go and listen to her?” Pitt said, breaking the silence at last.

“Yes,” she said immediately. “As I said, I’ve heard she is outrageous, even blasphemous in her ideas. I’d love to know what they are.”

He realized how little he and Charlotte had ever spoken of their beliefs when it came to matters of religion. And yet he knew everything else about her. He knew what hurt her, made her angry, and made her laugh or cry, who she liked and what she thought of them, and what she thought of herself. Often he would read her emotions by her expression. At other times it was in far smaller things: a sudden silence, an unexplained kindness, the letting slip an old grudge someone else could have held on to, and through these small actions he knew she had understood a shadow, or a pain.

“Does it matter to you?” he asked. “If she is blasphemous.”

She looked at him with surprise. At first he thought it was because he had asked. Then he realized that she was surprised to not have a ready answer.

“I have no idea,” she confessed. “Perhaps that is why I want to go. I’m not sure I even know what blasphemy is. Cursing, or the desecration of a shrine, I understand. But what is an idea that is blasphemous?”

“Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, ” he answered immediately. “The suggestion that we evolved from something lesser rather than descended from something greater. It threatens our entire concept of ourselves.” He smiled ruefully.

“Well, if that is what she has come to talk about, she is a little late to cause trouble with it,” Charlotte said drily. “We’ve been fighting about that one already for the last thirty some years! It isn’t even interesting anymore.”

“So you’re not coming, then?” He tried to keep his face straight, as if he were not deliberately teasing her.

“Of course I’m coming!” she said instantly, then realized what he was doing and smiled. “I’ve never seen a woman blasphemer. Do you suppose there will be a riot?”

He did not satisfy her by answering.

Sofia Delacruz’s meeting was to be held in a very large local hall facing a square. Pitt went early in the evening in order to check what precautions had been taken against any protest becoming violent. He also wished to speak to Brundage and hear his opinions of Sofia and, perhaps even more importantly, her followers.

It was a typical April day, sunshine one moment and spatters of rain the next. The new leaves were glistening pale on the branches and there were swathes of yellow daffodils on the grass of the square.

Pitt walked past them, taking a moment of pleasure at the sight, and then up the wide steps and through the double doors to the hall where the meeting was to be held. He noted that there were already several local police around, although there was still an hour before the meeting was due to begin. He asked for Brundage, and was directed to one of the dressing rooms at the back, just beyond the stage. It was bare except for a couple of chairs, a mirror, and a number of hooks on the wall.