London - Edward Rutherfurd [477]
St James was a fair swordsman, but Meredith was far better. It surprised Jack, nonetheless, that his opponent did not seem to be pressing him very hard and he concluded that this was probably a ruse. He waited cautiously, therefore, almost a minute before he saw his chance, and then, with a single swift and deadly lunge, he shot his rapier straight into Lord St James’s heart.
The seconds cried out. The doctor ran over. But within seconds, the earl was dead.
“My God, sir, was that necessary?” the doctor exclaimed.
But Meredith only shrugged. That had been the bargain he made with Lady St James. And even if he might, faced with his man, have changed his mind, the note he had received from her in the middle of the night had made sure he would not.
“For God’s sake take care, Jack,” it read. “He means to kill you.”
It was late that night, after he had blown out the candle, that Jack Meredith became aware of the door to his room in the Clink quietly opening and a figure softly stealing in.
Though he could only just make out her pale form in the darkness, he could tell who it was immediately by the scent she wore. She came over, touched him gently on the lips with her finger, then kissed him on the forehead.
“We cannot be seen together for a little while,” she whispered, “but I have been active on your behalf. Since it was St James who called you out, and I told them he meant to kill you, they will take a lenient view in your case.”
She went over to the window, where there was a chair. He could hear her starting to take off her clothes. He offered to strike a flint to light the candle, but she did not want him to. When she came to his narrow bed, she had on only a short nightdress, as far as he could see. It seemed to be of a coarse material of some kind, which rather surprised him; but soon he thought no more about it.
Then Lady St James, dressed in the linen shirt, still spotted with blood, in which her husband had been killed, made love to his killer and so completed her revenge.
As the pleasant month of May progressed, the only thing Sam and Sep could not agree about was the stealing.
The chimney-sweeping venture was going very well. As their partner, they had found a young man, a little simple in the head, but whom they taught to perform well enough for their needs. Calling at a house with one of them, he would send the boy up the chimney with a few rough words, then leave him up there while he went round to the next house with the other brother and did the same thing. Returning to the first house, he would wait until there was someone by, then curse Sam or Sep, whichever it was, for taking so long and promise them a whipping; and they, in turn, would cower, and look so pitiful that there was scarcely a house where they did not get an extra tip of some kind. Covering two houses at a time in this way, they were splitting the payment, but not their tips, with their simple-minded partner and making a handsome living.
But, as Sam pointed out, they could do better.
“It’s the little things you want,” he’d explain. “Don’t take anything too valuable or they’ll see it’s gone. Just something small they won’t even miss. If you see a golden guinea and some small change on the table, leave the guinea but take a piece of silver. They’ll think they lost it if they ever notice.” But a silver coin here and there, an ivory comb, a gold button – these things mounted up. And Sep’s reluctance to avail himself of this obvious opportunity was trying Sam’s patience.
How could Sep explain? He did not understand it himself. Some deep instinct inside him seemed to say that property must be respected, even though he himself had none. Perhaps it was the ancient