Joanna Bourne: My Lord and Spymaster

“You ran away from Lazarus. No one does that.” It was about the first thing Flora had said to anyone, just on her own.

“It’s complicated.” She went back to pulling hair through her fingers. She wasn’t feeling terribly talkative, herself, right then.

“I heard about you. From when you were Hand. Jess the Hand.”

She shrugged. The baby was making weak sounds in the cradle, like a kitten or something. They sounded like that the first couple weeks. “That was years back.”

“You tunneled into a bank once, and everybody almost drowned when it started to rain. They still laugh about that.”

“Always rains in this town. I’d go about it different if I was doing it now.” People had been patting the woman’s hand all day long and encouraging her to talk. Maybe a little quiet was what she needed.

Flora sat up in bed. She was older than Jess had thought. Twenty-six or twenty-eight. Eunice had put her in a huge white cotton nightgown that buttoned up the front with about sixty little buttons. Her hair was scraped hard back from her face, and she looked exhausted. But she was beautiful. Lazarus always picked pretty girls to play with.

“He was always telling Twist how you did everything better. He said you could plan a caper so it ran like a gold watch.”

“That’s just him talking. Me, he used to tell about this kid named Hawker. Before my time. Seemed Hawker could do anything but walk on water.”

Flora twisted her hands in the quilts. “They’re very kind here. But they don’t understand. I have done such things. You know the kind of things I had to do.”

“Nobody’ll know if you don’t tell them.”

“There are whole pieces of myself I can’t find anymore. I became . . . I cannot believe what I have become.”

“You get over some of it, I think. You don’t go back to what you were.”

“You understand, don’t you? The rest of them just say I can do whatever I want and not to worry. But you understand.” Flora lay down and looked at the ceiling again. “I can’t go home.”

“Up to you, really. You can be whatever you want to when you don’t have anything to lose.”

That made Flora look thoughtful. She wondered if she’d said the right thing, then decided in the long run it probably didn’t matter what she said. Flora would work it out for herself. Everybody did.

She sat beside Flora for a while, planning what she’d do tomorrow. She’d use the cargo manifests, if she had to. It depended how much information Sebastian had managed to find for her.

A maid pushed through the door, carrying a tray. It was fish stew. That meant it was time for her own lunch.

The baby was lying in the cradle, waving his hands around, looking fairly unhappy as she walked by. “Better make some arrangement for this one if you don’t want him. Another couple hours, and he’ll start getting scared, all alone, when it gets dark.” She thought that covered it.

Either that worked or something else did. Anyway, Flora fed the baby, and they fell asleep in bed together that night.

“TRY TO KEEP THE STACKS IN ORDER. THEY’RE sorted and I know where everything is. Nine-tenths of my problem tomorrow’s going to be finding things.”

“MacLeish brought boxes. Over there.” Pitney didn’t look happy. She could see he was worried right to his guts about Papa. It hunched his shoulders and put another twenty years on his face.

“Everything on my desk. The rest of the ledgers, too.”

By this time tomorrow she’d know what ships carried treason across the Channel. Papa would be home and safe the day after. She had to believe that. “Put the files in the wagon tonight and set a guard sitting on top. It goes to the Admiralty about three tomorrow afternoon. They’ll have a room clear for us.”

The Whitby warehouse was deserted. Nobody left but her and Pitney and three guards patrolling downstairs. Empty.

“This is damned dangerous. Jess, you should talk to Josiah.”

“No point in it. I already know what he’d say. I don’t want to have to go against his orders.” Kedger’s cage was empty. She checked the food bowl and water dish. Both full. There was a pile of notes she’d left on top of the cage. She picked them up, tapping them neat. “Everything in my desk drawers, too. There’s notes I may need. Ships sighted. Ships not sighted where they should be. There could be one line in there that makes the difference.”

“Jess, they can hang you with any page in those books. You trust them too much.”

“Could be. It’s too late to stop, though.”

“It’s not too late to leave England.” Pitney looked sick. He was brave as a tiger when it came to facing the Revenue cutters. Papa getting arrested shook the order of his universe. He’d be all right when Papa was cleared.

She took one last look round at all her charts and lists. All her letters and reports. All her planning. “I’m going to know Cinq’s name tomorrow. I can do this. I can really do this. You would not believe how much paper they’ve pulled together for me to sieve.”

“Think about what you’re doing.” Pitney took the papers from her like he was getting an order for his own execution. “There has to be another way.”

That was the problem with life. Sometimes there wasn’t.

IT WAS SHORT OF NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING when Sebastian rang the bell at Meeks Street. Doyle met him and unlocked the door to the study and let him in to see the old man.

Whitby was writing letters. He had three pages in a neat row to the side of the desk, drying. The Service would look those over before they went out, just as they opened the mail before they handed it over to him. The Times was folded and laid aside with a bright red apple holding it down.

He had French silk brocade swathed around his middle today, cream and crimson stripes. Expensive fabric for a waistcoat, but he could afford it.

“Ah.” Whitby looked him over without getting up. “A new face.”

Sebastian took his time crossing the room. He set his knuckles down on the wood of the desk and bent over, face-to-face, level with the man. “What the hell kind of father are you?”

“Not a good one, I’m afraid.” Whitby leaned back and rubbed the side of his nose. “You’re a friend of Jess, then.”

His hands closed into fists. The urge to hurt this old man was strong. Whitby let Jess grow up in the worst slums of the East End. Let her fall prey to men like Lazarus. When he got himself into trouble, she went out climbing roofs and accosting strangers in the street, and he didn’t put a stop to it. “She’s living in my house.”

“Then you’re Bastard Kennett.” Whitby indicated the chair. “Sit down.” His face was all bland good nature. “Nobody tells me anything. What’s my Jess been up to?”

“Romping through my halls in her dressing gown, searching my private papers. Did you tell her to do that?”

“No. You don’t have to loom over me like the dome of Saint Paul’s to ask.”

“What I’d like to do is break your neck.”

“In a few weeks, you can watch Jack Ketch do that. You and half London.” Under bushy eyebrows, hard, shrewd eyes studied him. “It’s a nice little company, Kennett Shipping.”

“Whitby’s Trading is a nice company, too. Mostly Jess’s work, isn’t it?”

“Almost all of it. Not many men canny enough to believe that. Sit down and tell me what Jess is doing.”

“Rifling through my shipping records. Picking the lock on my strongbox. You made her into a first-rate thief.”

“Not my doing.”

“The devil it wasn’t. Where were you when Jess was learning to pick locks?”