Remember remember, p.36
Remember, Remember, page 36
‘Whatever has got you in such high spirits?’ Pearl asks, rejecting Colin’s hand as she jumps down to the pavement, landing unsteadily in her heels. She’s still wearing her breeches under her cream cotton dress, but for her first task she needs to remain unnoticed.
‘If all this goes to pot,’ Colin continues, ‘I reckon I’d make a good coachman.’
‘I appreciate your confidence in us.’ Delphine rolls her eyes but does accept the miner’s hand. He guides her down to the freshly cleaned pavestones. They’re almost as white as the sky, which is threatening to burst its snowy clouds above them. She shivers in the cold wind, which, thankfully, is blowing towards the river and not the town.
She’s followed by Nick, who wanders a little down the road before Jules hops down from the footman’s stand.
Colin swaps his coachman’s hat and jacket for a threadbare waistcoat and battered tricorne before passing a similarly worn hat to Jules. Then he turns to Delphine, with a severe expression.
‘Remember that while the fuse is attached to ye, your dress is highly flammable,’ he says. Like she needed reminding. ‘Good luck,’ he adds.
‘Have faith,’ says Jules.
Delphine pulls them both into a hug. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. Now let’s go,’ Bela says, donning Colin’s coach cap and sliding up to the driver’s seat. Colin and Jules are joining the protestors now, and Bela is to wait with the carriage near Charing Cross. If things go well, she’s to spread whispers encouraging a large spectrum of society to attend the clean-up effort. If things don’t go well, she’ll be aiding the surviving gang members to a swift getaway.
As the group makes to part ways, a terrible thought crosses Delphine’s mind. This may be the last time she ever sees Pearl. She checks the pocket watch, decides they can spare fifteen seconds, and pulls Pearl closer.
‘If I don’t make it out,’ she whispers, ‘if this doesn’t work…’
‘It will work,’ Pearl says.
‘If it doesn’t,’ Delphine insists, ‘stick to the plan. Get out of here. I want you to be safe. And I wanted to say—’
‘I know,’ Pearl smiles. ‘I already know.’
But Pearl already knowing is not enough. In this last week, Delphine has been trying to give voice to her fears, to all her most frightening emotions. She still doesn’t know quite how she feels about their night on the roof – whether it was the start of a different, new romance between them, or just a tender echo of the past. But she has had too many stolen goodbyes to let Pearl go without saying, ‘I love you.’
Pearl flicks her cape out of the way to grab Delphine’s hand. She squeezes. ‘I love you too. And it’s fine if you’re feeling, you know. You’ve looked it for a while.’
Delphine squeezes back. ‘Feeling what?’
‘Powerful,’ Pearl says. She bends down and kisses Delphine’s wrist before letting it go. ‘You look powerful.’
Delphine tilts her head and takes one second longer. One more second to see herself through Pearl’s eyes, to push away the discomfort of hearing those words, to fight her natural desire to bat them away or dismiss them. For just one second Delphine allows herself to listen to Pearl’s words and accept what she hears. Powerful.
Delphine agrees, ‘We both do.’
Pearl disappears into the crowd. She takes half of Delphine’s heart with her. Fortunately, Delphine retains all her strength.
Her heartbeat matches the ticking of the pocket watch – seventeen minutes to go before she lights the fuse.
They enter Westminster through the gardens. Pale irises have started to stick their heads up from the flower beds. But the grass has been trampled to mud by the visitors who are already inside.
They file into a room lit with oil sconces and swirling with pipe smoke. Nick points out a few notable individuals as they head deeper into the building.
‘There’s the First Admiral, Sir Charles Saunders,’ he whispers in a breath so close to Delphine that he tickles her ear. ‘He was why the English didn’t starve to death at Abraham. Great tactician, sees the whole playing field before anyone else has set foot on it.’
The admiral waddles over. ‘I didn’t know we were bringing our Negroes!’ he roars. ‘I wish I’d brought mine to keep my coat. May I borrow yours? Promise I’ll give her back.’ He thumps Nick on the back as if they’re old friends.
And Nick looks as though he’s been slapped in the face with a wet fish.
‘Unfortunately, Miss St Joseph has a full schedule.’ Nick ushers them out of the room and away from the great tactician. ‘Another time, Admiral!’ he calls back, then whispers to Delphine, ‘And that is why I said yes.’
Sixteen minutes left.
They continue through the inner door into the hum of Parliament. Excited chatter bounces off every wall. As they journey towards Nick’s office, they turn onto a narrow corridor with stained glass windows, elegant arches and a tiled black and white floor. A few yards ahead, two scarlet uniformed yeomen emerge from one of the many doors to the cellars. They turn towards her, and the gold crowns embellished on their chests shine like a warning.
There’s no way to avoid them as they walk past.
She bows her head, keeps her eyes down and focuses on the clip of her shoes against the tiles, hoping they don’t question her presence like the first time she wandered Westminster’s halls.
The shorter of the two, with cropped brown hair beneath a black cushioned cap, looks back twice as he passes them. Delphine stiffens and silently prays that the perfume Pearl gave her to mask the fuse’s smell performs its trick. Even today, with everyone else dressed in their finery, she is the one who summons stares. The yeoman glances back, but thankfully, he does not stop.
‘The cellar is the last place they search before the King’s arrival,’ she whispers to Nick. ‘If they’ve not discovered the powder, they hopefully never will.’
Everything seems to be falling into place.
Delphine isn’t sure whether to be worried or relieved.
As they head up the stairs to Nick’s office, a chorus of trumpets and cheers rise – the King is arriving.
Delphine grips the banister, squinting to see the King’s carriage through a mottled windowpane. There he is – though from how much his golden transport is shaking, she wagers he’d rather not be.
No one knows what ailment plagues the King, but in recent years his dismissive proclamations have far outnumbered his public appearances. Delphine has read each of his increasingly brief dismissals of the people’s calls for change. Earlier this year, even the Lord Mayor decried His Majesty’s reliance on self-serving advisors and his open displeasure towards his citizens.
He looks no bigger than a thimble from this distance, but she recognises the King’s bright scarlet cloak as he stomps towards the Master of Robes.
With the King here, everything can be set in motion.
Twelve minutes to go.
Quickly, she and Nick rush inside his office. Delphine’s hands go to her knees, and she hunches over while Nick loops his hands behind his head. ‘If what we are doing wasn’t so terrible, it would be exhilarating,’ he says.
‘It is terrible and exhilarating,’ she agrees. ‘Are you sure you want to do it?’
‘More than sure,’ Nick says.
With that, Delphine walks across the small office, pulls the desk out from the wall and clicks open the wooden panel. ‘You should stay out here and keep watch while I lay the fuse. Can you hold up a candle behind me?’
After Nick has lit one of the candles, Delphine gets down on her hands and knees once more and squeezes into the darkened tunnel.
When her hand curls over the lip of the stairs, she stands up. It’s only a few more paces and two corners to turn until she gets to the escape door. As she reaches the bottom, her shoe hits something hard – the first barrel of gunpowder. She traces her free hand over them: there are five in this area alone. She pictures the rest now, carefully dotted all the way around Westminster Palace.
The echo of the trumpets sounds again in the distance. Time is running out.
The watch ticks in her pocket, but it’s too dark to see.
Delphine hoists her skirt up as she searches for the end of the fuse. In complete darkness, she must find it by touch, but if she rips it in the wrong place, she risks tearing the fuse in half and reducing their time to escape from ten minutes to five. It’s another ten or twenty seconds until she finds the end, then she bites down on her petticoat and pulls and pulls to try and release it.
Bela had resewn the lining once they’d put the new fuse in. She’s done the job too well. Delphine tears this way and that with her teeth, but it’s no use. The fabric will not tear.
She curses herself for asking Pearl to shorten the fuse.
She stumbles over the steps, banging her knee on the barrels, and no matter how hard she tugs on the fabric, it still will not break.
Bela would not have done this on purpose, she tells herself. But it’s infuriating all the same.
With no choices left and time falling away, Delphine runs back up the stairs and grabs the letter opener from Nick’s desk.
‘Everything well?’ he asks, crouching under the table.
‘Yes,’ she says, prying the fuse free from its prison. ‘I won’t even ask what you’re doing.’
She can’t resist checking the watch.
Four minutes to go. Had she really been struggling so long in the dark?
There’s no time to dwell. Once again, she descends and pulls the fuse from her dress, placing the end inside the farthest barrel. Then she carefully sets each of the other barrel tops ajar and unspools the fuse around them. Then she makes her way back towards the secret door, running the cotton thread as she goes. Her breath is heavy with stress and exertion, and even though there’s very little chance someone will hear her rustling in the walls, worry still pricks at her.
It has been a tumultuous year for English politics, and a failed gunpowder plot is only a generation out of living memory. If there were ever a day for MPs to be suspicious, it would be today. With Vincent’s ruling, the Falklands war brewing across the ocean, and the past twelve months’ unrest in the North, it would be strange if they weren’t on edge.
‘It’s done,’ Delphine says when she’s back in Nick’s office. Taking a deep breath, she picks up the matchbox. With one last look at the clock she says, ‘It’s time.’
Then she shakes one match out of the box. And the office door swings open.
Chapter Forty-One
I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.
—JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Her muscles tighten as her body decides whether to freeze or flee from the boots that have appeared in the doorway. A red coat. White skin.
Things she has been taught to fear. Delphine wills her legs to stand firm, steady and strong as an oak. She smooths down her dress and looks directly at the intruder: he stands with his shoulders back, pug-topped cane in hand, a disdainful expression on his face.
Delphine glowers at the lord.
‘Hello, master,’ she spits, closing the distance between her and Lord Harvey in the cramped room. He returns her glare.
‘I knew you would be here,’ he says. ‘You never learn.’
Her injured body aches in memory. She’ll forever wear the scars he’s given her, but Delphine will not let Lord Harvey cause her any more pain.
‘It seems,’ Delphine clucks her tongue, ‘that neither do you.’
Below them, Westminster is silent, save for a loud knock of metal against a heavy door.
It’s Black Rod, commencing the pomp and proceedings, but with this new challenge before her, Delphine suspects she may already be out of time.
‘What are you doing here?’ Nick says.
‘My duty. The guards will be here any minute,’ Lord Harvey snaps. He grips Nick by the lapel and spins him towards Delphine. In a frenzy, he says, ‘Seize the Negress and I’ll inform the Crown you had no part in her plans. She tricked you, used you, put you under her spell. There’ll be shame, of course, but you can at least keep your life. Our legacy will endure.’
Once, Delphine may have believed Nick would betray her. But as she looks at him now, sees the defiance in his eyes, he’ll be with her until the end. She’s sure.
‘You think I am concerned for our legacy, Uncle?’ Nick twists his body, sending the lord’s hand away. ‘Maybe you and I thought the same once, but for me, now, there is much more at stake.’
Lord Harvey clenches his jaw. ‘There is nothing that matters more.’
Parliament hums in excitement below as a thousand souls enter Westminster Hall.
Delphine retreats to the desk, puts down the matchbox, and slides her hand against the wood in search of the letter opener. She grips the handle tight.
Lord Harvey scowls. ‘You have made a mockery of my family for the last time, girl. You think you’re as clever as your mother, don’t you, with your scheming and her witchcraft? You think I don’t see what’s been happening right under my nose? That I didn’t then! I should have taken your life a decade ago, just to have seen the pain on your mother’s face.’
Delphine swallows her shock. ‘What?’
He smirks at her surprise. ‘Before I present you to the King, let me tell you this. You know nothing of this world. Nothing of the hardships I have endured for my family. Of all I had planned for Vincent before he was set on ruining his life.’
He looks away from her, face drawn into a forlorn expression. ‘I never wanted a plantation. I never wanted to sail the Atlantic to some inconsequential speck of sand. But my father left me no choice. He’d drunk and gambled away almost everything we had. So, it was up to me to gain back the money, power and influence our family had taken generations to build.’ His hand balls into a fist.
Delphine remembers Hetty saying that each generation of Harveys is as cruel as the last.
‘So I had no choice but to move away,’ he continues. ‘To seek a governorship somewhere across the sea where his stain couldn’t reach. There was nothing good on that island. A god-forsaken cesspit of humidity and suffering. Nothing good but Abigail.’
Delphine feels sick. Was Vincent right in his letter? When she found the wooden bird in Lord Harvey’s cabinet, she hadn’t understood what it meant – and she’s not sure she wants to now – but she’ll never have this opportunity again. ‘What of Vincent’s mother?’ What of my own?
‘My Abigail,’ the lord barks. Delphine shudders. ‘Six years I had her, all of her, in ways you could not imagine.’ His gaze darkens. ‘She didn’t love me, not at first, but then, ten years ago, she discovered she was with child. Our child. Something we had created together.’
A final fanfare trumpets, marking the royal procession to the Hall. ‘Speak plainly, and speak quickly,’ she says.
The seconds tick on.
‘I’d just presented her with new accommodations beyond the waterfall. Somewhere more fitting to raise our son away from the rest of the plantation. I had business on another island and told her I’d be away for a few days. She promised to have moved in by my return. But when I got back, she was gone.’ Harvey’s voice catches, and he says through gritted teeth, ‘The reed floor of her cabin was stained with her blood, and beside that stain were your mother’s infernal tansy flowers.’
‘Tansy?’ Delphine gasps, mostly to herself. Tansy is used as…
‘You think I wouldn’t know what it was for?’ Lord Harvey rages. ‘That a shepherd wouldn’t know the risks to his flock? Your mother murdered my child and killed the only woman I ever loved.’
Delphine catches Nick’s distraught gaze. He too is clearly repulsed by this miserable tale of rape and consequence.
With her heart in her mouth, Delphine recalls the day she first met Vincent – a frightened boy who couldn’t find his mother. Abigail had been missing for three days by then.
But if Delphine’s mother had gone to see Abigail that first night, would it have been long enough for the flowers’ effects to take hold? To remove all traces of Lord Harvey from Abigail’s body and for her to run? Abigail and Nneka knew using tansy to end a pregnancy is never safe – could it be that the fatal flower worked too well, claiming two lives instead of one? Delphine desperately tries to remember how her mother reacted to Abigail’s disappearance: was she surprised, saddened or indifferent? But it’s been almost a decade and the memory has faded.
Whatever happened, at least her mother had given Abigail a choice.
Let Lord Harvey call her a witch. For what Nneka did took great power.
‘Vincent was all that was left of her. I would have claimed him for my own, had your murderess of a mother not taken him in. But then, I had a better idea.’ Lord Harvey straightens. ‘I let your mother keep him for a while, then I took you both to England.’
At this, Delphine’s hands tremble on the table behind her. For ten years she believed she was taken to England as an afterthought, to serve her master’s daughter. But this twists everything. To know that she was taken from her family not on a whim, but as an act of revenge.
Lord Harvey believes her mother took his child. So he resolved to take hers.
He let her mother love Vincent, let her teach Delphine everything she knew, let her instil in them the joy of little rebellions. Then he stole them both from her.
The malice of it is beyond imagining.
‘I looked after her boy,’ Lord Harvey says. ‘And when we set our wager for his freedom, I intended to uphold it. He had the learning, he had the strength, and he was honest. All he needed was a little patience!’ He throws his hands up in dismay. ‘I would have freed him in the end. I just needed him to wait a little longer, to prove that he was loyal to me, and not to my coin. But he couldn’t wait.’
He shifts his focus back to Delphine, casting her a look of pure disdain. ‘I was never going to transport him! I only wanted to teach him a lesson. But you…’ He curls his finger towards her. ‘Just like your mother, you interfered and stole away my family. You are both to blame for everything that has happened.’
