The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,43

watch – or, more likely, Sir John Fielding’s red-waistcoated Bow Street Runners – would want to interview all those present at the Pig and Rooster last night, and the table of journeymen hadn’t exactly been inconspicuous. With the exception of Aylesford, a stranger (who would have attracted notice for that reason alone), they were all regulars at the tavern, known by name. Sooner or later, the Charleys would hear of them and come looking. And when, inevitably, someone – perhaps Mansfield or one of the others – spilled the beans about Aylesford’s penchant for duelling, the prickly redhead would find himself a wanted man. And if, as seemed likely, the two of them had been seen together during the fracas, so would Quare. He felt the remorseless logic of the situation closing around him like the bars of a Newgate prison cell.

‘It’s funny,’ Clara mused meanwhile. ‘The fight sobered Tom right up, but it made you even drunker. You could barely walk. The two of us practically had to carry you through the streets. I was afraid you’d been wounded, stabbed; there was blood on your coat and hands. But you swore you was fine. I didn’t like to send you off in such a state, so I brought you here instead, both of you. My heroes.’

Quare still remembered none of it. She might have been talking about someone else entirely. It gave him an eerie feeling, as if his body had a life of its own, separate from his mind, and though he’d just had a vivid illustration of that very fact here in bed with Clara, what she was relating to him now went well beyond that momentary estrangement.

‘I offered to take you on free of charge, however you wanted, one at a time or both together,’ Clara went on, blushing like the innocent girl she must have been once upon a time. ‘Tom was shy, said he was saving himself, but you were willing enough. He went out onto the landing to give us a bit of privacy, but we’d barely started before you jumped up, ran to the window and … Well, you can guess the rest, I’m sure, love, even if you don’t remember. A blessing there. Afterwards, you came back to bed and passed out, like. That left Tom and me. I wanted to do something for him – to show my appreciation – but he brushed me off again, told me he couldn’t even if he’d wanted to, that he was too tired to think of anything but sleep. I said he was welcome to share the bed with us, and so he did.’

‘I wish he had woken me before he left,’ Quare said. ‘We could be in big trouble. We need to get our stories straight.’

At which Clara blushed more deeply than ever.

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s just’ – she shifted, averting her eyes, then looking at him again – ‘I did wake up once last night and saw the two of you …’

‘Yes?’ he prompted.

‘Mind you, I’ve nothing against it. Live and let live, I always say.’

‘I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t breathe a word to anyone.’

Comprehension dawned. ‘You think …?’ He burst into laughter.

‘I know what I saw.’

‘And just what was that?’

‘Tom was cleaving to you from behind, one hand clapped over your mouth. He saw me looking and winked at me over your shoulder, hissed at me to go back to sleep.’

‘You were already asleep,’ Quare said, disconcerted by the image. ‘You dreamed the whole thing.’

She shook her head and repeated, ‘I know what I saw.’

‘And I suppose I slept right through everything?’

‘Slept through it?’ She gave a disbelieving laugh. ‘Why, bless me, you were grunting like a pig the whole time!’

Quare’s amusement had soured altogether. He got out of bed and began to dress. ‘I think I’d remember if anything like that had happened.’

‘Like you remember killing them men in the Pig and Rooster?’

That gave him pause. After all, what did he really know about Aylesford? The man was a stranger. Perhaps he had attacked him in the dark. But it strained credulity to think that he would have slept through such an assault as Clara had described. Quare considered himself a man of the world; his life as a journeyman had brought him into contact with men who loved other men, or who sought out both sexes. Though sodomy was a crime punishable by death, his philosophy, like Clara’s, had always