Remember remember, p.14
Remember, Remember, page 14
Mansfield huffs.
‘Can you prove that?’
‘I—’
‘Young lady,’ he says, rubbing his eyes beneath his spectacles, ‘the courts of this land are not as they once were. The only thing worth more than testimony is evidence. If you have some, it should be presented in the right way.’
‘But my lord, it is the court that prevents us from seizing the evidence we need. The contract, if it still exists, is in Lord Harvey’s possession. How can that be right?’
‘My position is not to question or reinvent the law but to interpret it fairly within its sacrosanct confines. You heard me criticise Mister Forthright and both counsellors today for presenting me with unfounded opinions. You heard my comment that Lord Harvey should not have taken matters into his own hands and spoken to the press.’ His lips tighten as he turns away from her once again and steps up into his carriage.
Delphine thinks of the books she’s been studying over the course of the trial. How motivated she’d been to develop her skills, to distil the inked pages into her thoughts and beliefs. Before this man rides away, she needs to put into practice what she’s learned. ‘But is it not your responsibility to not only preserve the law, but also to set the Empire’s standards for values and morality?’
Mansfield’s eyes flicker with interest from his seat, which is gilded with roses and lilies. ‘Only God can do such things.’
‘But where God does not intervene, surely that falls to you. To your conscience, to your heart.’
‘Be careful, child. That is mere breaths from blasphemy.’
Delphine raises a hand to her lips. It crosses her mind that despite his unthreatening demeanour, Lord Mansfield could have her arrested, even end her life if he wished. The King’s Bench has allowed Catholics to be burned at the stake for saying less.
Mansfield’s face softens.
‘Dear girl, do not look for humanity where there is none. Regardless of what you and I believe, you need evidence. If you can present me with some, I shall consider it.’
‘And if there’s none?’
‘Then my decision must be based on the facts I have been given.’ Mansfield raps his knuckles on the hollow carriage roof. ‘Good evening.’
She flinches as the coachman cracks his whip, and the horses fling themselves into action. She is unsure what to make of the conversation she’s just had. She no longer feels Vincent is in as dire a situation, but he certainly is not safe either.
It all rests on one thing.
‘Evidence,’ she says to Nick when he eventually joins her at the roadside. ‘We need evidence.’
‘Twenty years ago a court would never have asked for evidence,’ Nick laments. ‘Testimony was what mattered above all else. I swear more rulings have been judged on evidence in the last two years than in the preceding two centuries.’
‘That is good for us, is it not? If it can outweigh all the damage done today.’
‘It would, if we had any,’ he concedes. ‘But we have presented all we can. Without the contract, I’m afraid we’re doomed.’
But maybe they don’t have to be. The contract might still exist.
They just need to find it.
‘If Lord Harvey still has it, and we managed to secure it,’ Delphine says carefully, ‘would it matter how we’d done it?’
Nick is silent momentarily as if searching the sunset for an answer. ‘There are no rules regarding how a defence counsel procures evidence.’ Recognition dawns on him, then another look that reminds Delphine of the face he made when she suggested rescuing Vincent from the ship: disappointment. ‘You can’t seriously mean to break in?’
He’s right: the idea is reckless and likely futile. But somewhere in 20 St James’s Square, there might just be a piece of parchment that can free her brother.
‘What choice do we have?’ Delphine counters. Plenty and none.
Nick reluctantly nods, confirming that the ends would justify the means.
‘If it’s there, we must find it. No matter what,’ Delphine says.
He hesitates. Is this a boundary he is willing to cross? Delphine prays it is, and that Nick can muster the courage to help Vincent one last time.
‘How can you be certain no-one is home?’ Delphine asks as she silently eases open the door to the servants’ quarters.
‘Undoubtedly, my uncle will be at Socrat’s, partaking in his usual ritual of Sunday night revelry. Filling himself with canary wine and pheasant until the early hours of the morning. He never did need much sleep.’
Delphine remembers.
Once inside, they creep through the Harveys’s kitchen. The curtains are still open, bathing the room in silver moonlight. On the largest table, dough for tomorrow’s bread – Hetty’s handiwork, no doubt – is rising beneath a cloth in a ceramic bowl. As they pass it, Delphine breathes in the scent of the yeast, along with traces of the evening’s leftover stew. Once, this was a comforting smell, but now it sits uneasily in her lungs, and transports her back to the last time she was in this room.
It was the night before Ranelagh. She and Vincent were stuffing dried meat and fruit into Delphine’s bag: supplies for her escape with Pearl.
It had taken Vincent several days to accept their plan to elope.
He’d spent a fortnight failing to convince them to stay, but Delphine had known he would support her in the end.
When they were younger, her mother told them stories of the Agojie, the legendary women warriors from her grandfather’s birthland of Dahomey; stories of female husbands and male wives, of many different types of marriage. Her mother’s tales taught her that Black hearts are capable of anything: like finding love where white men forbid it, and fighting for it against all odds.
And as Pearl’s wedding drew closer, their time was running out: there was no better time to flee.
It had to be Ranelagh.
If Lord Harvey looked harder, he might have realised the mounting evidence of betrayal in his household – the thick air of anticipation due not to impending nuptials but to a union of another sort.
Delphine, Pearl and Vincent all knew that Vincent shouldn’t help them. Knew what Pearl’s father would do to him if he found out. But he did it anyway – selling some of Pearl’s jewellery to purchase their stagecoach tickets, and handing over his outgrown breeches and shirts for them to wear as disguises. And even though Delphine had no choice but to escape alone when the critical moment arrived, Vincent’s little rebellions changed her future. She could never thank him enough for them.
So, breaking into Lord Harvey’s office is the least she can do in return.
It’s almost pitch black when they enter the study. The house seesaws between eerie silence and a strange chorus of groans from the settling floorboards. Each creak freezes Delphine in place until she’s satisfied that the only sounds remaining belong to Nick, or to the rapid thrumming of her pulse. After stumbling around the office to find and light a candle, she sets another aflame and passes it to Nick, whose face emerges golden in its soft glow.
‘Which cabinet?’ she asks. There are at least four in the room. ‘The ebony one with some metal adornments. I think that’s what Vincent said.’
They all look ebony in the dark but it doesn’t take Delphine long to find the one he means. The one closest to Lord Harvey’s desk, with gold handles and bronze ornamentation: near the bottom of the left door, a Roman centurion brandishing a sword; on the upper side of the right, an angel weeping heavenly tears. Delphine has seen this cabinet before, of course, but she never noticed such details when she lived here. During her little time in the master’s study, her eyes were mostly fixed on the ground.
Nick stands beside her, and neither moves to open the doors for a while. Delphine suspects he is equally as afraid as she is of what they might find – and what they might not.
Tensing with her eyes squeezed shut, she flicks the latch. Nick comes closer, she opens one eye, and they both lift their candles to examine what is inside.
‘I had no idea we still had one of these in the family,’ Nick gasps.
‘One what?’
‘It’s a curiosity cabinet,’ he answers, matter-of-factly. Of course Nick knows there’s a name for it. ‘They were prevalent a while back, I’m sure. Lots of the nobility had them for storing oddities they had collected. Some even held human remains, I’m told, but I’m glad that’s not what we see here.’ They examine a colossal snail shell, an azure-blue egg, and a beaten shekere with half its cowrie shells missing. ‘They’d wheel these out at parties and dinners, tell stories about their collections and how they procured them. They were used for gaining status – which is undoubtedly why my uncle still has one.’
‘So that’s what Vincent’s contract was? A curiosity?’
‘Apparently so. But I can’t see it in here.’
Delphine clenches her jaw, hoping he can’t see her shoulders sagging. ‘Can I take a look?’
He moves aside, and she peers closer inside the cabinet. Every part of her knows that by now, the contract is probably a small pile of ash in Lord Harvey’s hearth; every part of her is clinging to the hope that it isn’t.
Beside the musical instrument, there’s a figurine of a toga-clad woman, no larger than Delphine’s palm; a ruby and bronze perfume bottle; and the skull of a small bird with a very long beak.
Beneath that, a drawer.
Inside is a gold ring attached to a scarlet ribbon. Without thinking, she pulls on it to discover what it’s connected to.
A mechanism begins whirring, emitting a buzz so low she feels the hum from her fingertips to her collarbone. It knocks the statuette over and the perfume with it – what spills out before Delphine rights the bottle is not the toxic sweetness of Lord Harvey’s, but something saltier, more floral, the smell she chooses to conjure when she thinks of St Lucia, of home.
The house seems to stir from below.
‘What did you do?’ Nick whispers as the base of the cabinet sinks towards the floor, revealing a previously hidden shelf.
‘The only thing I could.’
Delphine lowers her candle – surely this will be where Lord Harvey has hidden the contract. But when she sees what is on the shelf, her excitement drains away. Instead, her body reels backwards. She tries in vain to blink away the memories. Scenes she never witnessed first-hand, but has spent years trying to banish from her imagination. A newlywed man and girl, carriage-bound for Cornwall. A detached wheel rolling into a muddy ditch.
The highwaymen circling, threatening, daggers drawn. The body of a dead baron and a bloody string of pearls.
‘My God.’
Startled by the strength of Delphine’s reaction, Nick drops his candle to the floor. ‘What is it?’
Quick as a fuse, Delphine stomps out the flame. This room is half-filled with silks and oil paintings. It will easily go up in smoke if they aren’t more careful. She rubs her throat and chest to regain her composure, and dares to look back at the shelf.
‘It’s Pearl’s necklace. The one they found after she was killed.’
‘Christ.’ Nick swallows and grips a hand to his throat. ‘How morbid.’
The house moans in agreement, the outer windows wheezing at a sudden gust of wind that sends a distant door clicking shut. They freeze again, limbs tight, waiting for the silence to return. A creak, a tap, then nothing.
‘What else is there?’ he asks, releasing his held breath.
Beside the necklace, they find an ornate box stuffed with papers and miscellaneous trinkets. One is the deed to 20 St James’s Square. The next is a letter from Lady Katherine. And beneath that, the most surprising object yet: a wooden bird that’s missing a wing.
Vincent’s.
Delphine remembers this bird. Vincent’s mother, Abigail, gave it to him mere days before she went missing. It was one of the few belongings he kept from their shared home and the first thing he packed when he learned that Lord Harvey had selected him for transportation to England. Delphine runs a fingernail over each groove in the wood. It feels much smaller than when she’d last gripped it, clutching it to her chest for days as they sailed away from everything she’d ever known.
She’s not seen the bird since they first arrived here. And she doesn’t remember the right wing being missing then. Why would Lord Harvey take this from him?
She will have to puzzle that out later.
Before Nick can question her, she pockets the bird, and, after a moment’s hesitation, the necklace. One precious item for Vincent, another for herself.
It can’t fill the absence of their loved ones, but at least now they’ll have something physical to ground their losses.
She riffles through one, two, three more documents until at last, she finds an item that makes her heart stop.
Two items, in fact.
It can’t be. She blinks in disbelief, drawing the candle so close she risks setting fire to it. Here, in Delphine’s hands, is the impossible document they came here to find. The contract.
And beneath it, the tally of Vincent’s boxing winnings.
Was it arrogance that stopped Lord Harvey from destroying these? The smug surety that the authorities would not come looking for them?
Right now, Delphine does not care. Resting the candle on the cabinet’s middle shelf, she angles the paper carefully above the flame. ‘Listen to this,’ Delphine whispers to Nick. ‘On the occasion Mister Vincent Mourière earns a total sum of his weight – estimated at one hundred and sixty pounds on the twenty-first September 1767 – I, Lord Reginald Harvey IV, do promise to grant the named Negro his freedom.’
‘Yes!’ Nick shouts, then he shushes himself. ‘Yes. Sorry – I very much wanted this to go our way.’
‘Me too,’ Delphine agrees, giddy excitement in her veins. ‘And look at this.’ She swaps the pages so the earnings sheet is on top. Score tallies are lined up in rows of ten; corresponding dates in a column down the side. Scanning it, she shakes her head – mathematics is not her strong point, but the numbers aren’t adding up. ‘This can’t be right.’
‘What is it?’ Nick says, squinting at the paper. ‘I can’t see from here.’
‘How many tallies do you count?’
She hands him the list. He mutters the numbers as he counts. ‘The fiend,’ Nick spits. ‘He’s been underreporting the odds for months.’
‘We can prove it too,’ Delphine says. She explains she still has the betting slip from Vincent’s final match tucked away in her box of keepsakes. It didn’t feel right giving it to Vincent after everything that happened. Still, her face pinches with fury. The cruelty of it. The ease with which Lord Harvey denied Vincent his freedom despite having kept track of every last ha’penny; the length to which he’s tried to keep him in chains. One day, she will strangle him with them.
‘Incredible,’ Nick sighs. But unlike Delphine, he’s smiling.
Because this is all they need to secure Vincent’s release.
Dunning may have argued his way out of ending slavery for good, but at least now they can give someone the life they deserve –the person Delphine loves most in the world.
She’s about to fold the documents and slide them into her pocket when another door slams shut. This time, the noise is coming from nearer to the study. And it’s followed by the staggering tap, tap, tap of Lord Harvey’s cane.
‘God’s bones.’ She’s never heard Nick curse other than in this room. Lord Harvey truly brings out the worst in people. ‘Get down, behind the desk,’ he commands. ‘I’ll go and distract him.’
But Delphine’s feet remain treacherously frozen to the floor. She cringes at each nearing step and feels like her knees might snap beneath her – the anger that had burned within her a few moments ago is now turned to ice.
Lord Harvey would never let her get away with this. Nick he might forgive, but for Delphine it’ll be the noose if they’re caught. He’ll burn the contract, and the tallies, and Vincent will still end up on a plantation. It will all be for nothing. The papers tremble in her hands.
As if Nick has just realised the same thing, he snaps, ‘Give them to me!’
‘I can’t.’ They’re too important. Even now, she’s not sure she can trust him.
‘You can,’ Nick pleas. ‘I’ll deliver them to Mansfield tomorrow. All you have to do is wait for me to persuade him into the lower drawing room, then get yourself to safety. You cannot be caught.’
The footsteps draw closer, closer, closer still.
‘You have my word,’ he whispers, desperately throwing out his hand to her. ‘I can use his signature on my letter of disinheritance to prove the integrity. You go home and fetch the betting slip. It’s our best chance.’
Delphine looks at his outstretched palm and swallows. If she lets him have these documents now, she is handing him her brother’s fate.
Terror doesn’t begin to cover it. ‘Delphine!’ Nick begs.
It’s not their best chance. It’s their only chance. Delphine hands them over.
‘Thank you.’ Nick grips the papers to his chest, his released breath the sound of shuddering leaves, then tucks them into his jacket pocket. ‘Wait until you hear us descend the lower stairs. You remember the way out?’
She nods at him before rushing to crouch behind the desk. Peering above it, she watches Nick wipe his brow then his hands on his breeches. Then he turns the door handle and leaves the room, taking with him the key to Vincent’s manacles.
On her knees, Delphine listens. Nick’s footsteps are hasty and heavy. She hears him flee down the corridor, and Lord Harvey’s drunken, slurred speech brings him to a halt. ‘What do you think you’re doing here?’
Nick’s reply comes loud and bright. ‘Uncle, I’m here to make amends. I looked for you in your study but found it empty. Ah! I see your wine glass is empty. Let’s away to the parlour – I’ll rouse the housekeeper to build a fire. There’s much we need to discuss.’
Chapter Fifteen
Each player must accept the cards life deals. But once the cards are in hand, he alone must decide how to play them in order to win the game.
