Where Shadows Dance

Turning, he saw William Franklin shuffling up the street toward him, his walking stick tap-tapping on the flagstones of the footpath.

“Sir,” said Sebastian, going to meet him. “Are you looking for me? There was no need to put yourself to such exertion. If you’d sent round a note I would have been more than happy to come to you.”

“Poo,” said the aged American Loyalist, pausing to catch his breath. “When a man stops moving he might as well be dead.”

Sebastian smiled and nodded to the tavern beside them. “May I buy you some refreshment?”

The old man’s eyes twinkled. “Now, that I will allow.”

They sat in a nook near the empty hearth, each fortified with a tankard of ale. Franklin took a deep drought, wiped the back of one hand across his mouth, and said, “You asked about Jeremy Bateman, father of Nathan Bateman.”

“Yes,” said Sebastian, sitting forward.

“He and his daughter Elizabeth have taken rooms at the Ship and Pilot, on Wapping High Street, in Stepney.” Franklin slid a piece of paper with the name and direction across the table. “I haven’t told them the details of your interest in them. But I must confess I did suggest you might be able to do something to help their son, for they were at first somewhat reluctant to speak to you.”

“I’m certainly more than willing to try,” said Sebastian. “Although my acquaintance with the First Lord of the Admiralty is slight.” He frowned down at the address. “Seems strange for someone at the Foreign Office like Ross to have become personally involved in an affair of this nature.”

“I’ve no notion how it came about. Perhaps Bateman can enlighten you.”

Before he left for Wapping, Sebastian called the various members of his household together in the servants’ hall. The official notice of his forthcoming nuptials was due to appear in the next morning’s papers, and it had occurred to him that it might be a good idea to warn his staff first.

He waited while they filed into the room, whispering amongst themselves and throwing him curious, furtive looks as they took their seats. He raised his voice. “I won’t keep you long.”

The room instantly quieted as all eyes trained upon him.

He said, “I’ve called you together because I have an announcement to make. This household will soon have a mistress: Miss Hero Jarvis has consented to become my wife. We will be wed this Thursday.”

A moment’s stunned incredulity greeted his words. Then Tom blurted out, “Gov’nor! No!”

Morey clamped a warning hand on the boy’s shoulder, silencing him, as Calhoun leapt to his feet with a hearty hurrah. “Congratulations, my lord!”

The others quickly chimed in, although in some instances Sebastian suspected he detected a forced note to their good wishes. A few, no doubt, anticipated more work as Sebastian’s carefree bachelor ways came to an end; others perhaps feared their new mistress might be unduly critical or even demand a change in staff. But only Tom sat with his arms crossed and a black scowl on his face.

Tom was not fond of Miss Hero Jarvis.

When the majordomo leaned down to whisper something in the boy’s ear, Tom squirmed from his grasp and fled the room.

“He’ll come around soon enough,” said Calhoun later, as Giles was putting in the chestnuts.

Sebastian tossed his driving coat over his shoulders and reached for his gloves. He hesitated a moment. Then he went in search of his tiger.

He found the boy in the hayloft, a forlorn, prostrate figure with his face buried in the crook of one elbow and bits of straw plastered to his livery. “Go away,” he wailed in a gross breach of etiquette when Sebastian crouched down beside him. But then, their relationship had always been more than a simple one of lord and servant. Once, the boy had saved Sebastian from the gallows, while Sebastian in turn had given Tom a new life away from the brutal dangers of the streets.

Sebastian said, “You are aware, of course, that I could by rights have you thrashed for that?”

A ragged sob shook the boy’s thin frame, and he mumbled something incoherent.

Sebastian said, “I beg your pardon, but I didn’t quite catch that.”

Tom twisted sideways, showing him a tear-streaked face. “I said, why are you doing this?”

Sebastian rubbed the side of his nose with the back of his knuckles. “It’s quite a common thing, you know— for a man to marry.”

“But why her? She tricked me. And she’s—” Tom broke off. But Sebastian knew what he’d been about to say. She’s Jarvis’s daughter. And, She’s not Kat.

Sebastian said, “She is quite an accomplished horsewoman, you know. And no mean whip.”

Tom sniffed, unimpressed. “Everything’s gonna change.”

“Some things will undoubtedly change, yes. But not everything. I shall still have need of a tiger.” Sebastian paused. “If you’re willing to continue in that position.”

Tom sniffed again and hung his head. “Oh, yes, sir. I am. Please.” He gulped. “And I am very sorry, my lord.”

Sebastian pushed to his feet and began to draw on his driving gloves. “I’m off to the East End. Must I take Giles as my groom?”

“The chestnuts don’t like Giles,” said Tom, dragging his sleeve across his eyes as he scrambled up beside him.

“Then, come along,” said Sebastian.

Sebastian could remember his father—or rather, the man he’d thought of at the time as his father—taking him to Wapping as a boy of four or five, to view a famous pirate hanging in chains on the banks of the Thames. It was the custom to hang the pirates at the low-water mark and leave them there until “three tides had overflowed them.” Sebastian had a particularly vivid memory of a crow perched on the dead pirate’s shoulder, its shiny black head jerking up and down as it pecked through the iron netting that enclosed the body.

He found himself shadowed by that long-ago day as he drove through the crowded streets of Stepney. Like Rotherhithe on the opposite bank, this was an area focused on the river and its maritime trade, the narrow lanes and alleys crammed with ship and boat makers, biscuit bakers and rope makers, mast makers and anchor smiths, its taverns and alehouses overflowing with drunken seamen. Thanks to the long decades of war with the French, the settlement around the Wapping Docks had expanded and expanded again. They didn’t hang pirates here anymore.

The Ship and Pilot proved to be a modest but respectable establishment. Leaving Tom with the curricle in the inn’s yard, Sebastian tracked Bateman to the Shadwell Spa in Sun Tavern Fields.

The day was sunny but not excessively hot, the sky arcing above the open fields a pale blue scattered with puffs of high white clouds. The fine weather had brought out a score of the area’s aged, lame, and otherwise afflicted to drink the Shadwell mineral waters, whose sulfurous content was reputed to assist all manner of ills. The American was seated, alone, on a rustic bench in the shade of one of the ancient elms ringing the springs.

“Mr. Bateman?” said Sebastian, walking up to him and holding out his card. “I’m Devlin.”

Bateman squinted up against the bright sun, his hair white and sparse, the lines on his face dug deep by the passage of the years and the ravages of a life lived in the sun and weather. He took the card, but he did not glance at it.

“You’re a viscount?” he said incredulously.

Sebastian laughed and pulled up a nearby chair. “I am indeed. Don’t I look like one?”

“I suppose. But ... You’re walking. And alone.”

“Ah, I see. I left my carriage and retinue at the inn.”

“Oh.” The man still didn’t sound convinced.

He looked to be somewhere in his sixties, of medium height with slightly stooped shoulders and a ponderous belly that hung over his sticklike legs. His worn, old-fashioned clothes were those of an honest shopkeeper or tradesman down on his luck. Sebastian suspected that the desperate struggle to save his son from the horrors of the British Navy, topped off with a voyage to London and the extended stay here, had essentially bankrupted