Page 12 of Pandora

“You know how much this means to me,” Hezekiah is saying, quite unable to keep the whine from his voice. “After all this time I shall not be thwarted. I’ve lost it twice already, will you deprive me again?”

Matthew shifts heavily on his feet, boots squelching into the muddy sand of Puddle Dock, but he does not answer, and Hezekiah’s throat becomes hot; he must loosen his cravat. “You will not keep it for yourselves, you will not—”

“We don’t want it for ourselves,” Samuel cuts in, the youngest of the three.

Hezekiah is incredulous. “You mean to say you have another buyer?”

How dare they betray his trust?

“No, sir, that’s not it.”

And now this is altogether too much. He clenches his fists, losing what little restraint he managed to muster.

“Then what the hell are you playing at?”

At his outburst the horse snorts, its breath pluming the crisp morning air, and Hezekiah can feel the veins popping at his temples. His face must be quite puce, for only now does Matthew flinch.

“It’s cursed.”

Hezekiah stares. This he had not expected. The outlandishness of the statement deflates his anger somewhat. “What utter nonsense.”

“I’m telling you, there’s something off about it. It shouldn’t be here.”

Matthew scratches at his wrist. Hezekiah notes with distaste a ruddy stain on his cuff.

“Nonsense,” Hezekiah says again. “You’re addled from lack of sleep, that’s all.”

“Lack of sleep would be right. We’ve not had one wink since we brought it up.”

And the brothers do indeed look tired—their mouths are pinched tight like dried-out pears, their skin looks gray as silt, but of this he does not care for behind him Hezekiah is conscious of an audience. The dock has come to a standstill; Tibb and his workers have gathered in a small semicircle, the night-soil men lean rapt on their steaming shovels. He watches as two of them—one the same Chinaman as before, Hezekiah is quite certain—exchange a comment, a laugh behind their hands. Bridling with mortification he sidles up to Matthew and clamps his own hand round the man’s strong upper arm. He can smell the raw essence of unwashed skin, the salt pungence of fish and seaweed. It mixes with the noxious stink of excrement and Thames rot, and Hezekiah must use all his self-control not to vomit onto his shoes.

“Now look here,” Hezekiah hisses. “I’ll not have you ruin this for me.”

“It won’t be us that ruins anything. It’ll be this thing.” Matthew nods behind him. “It ain’t right. It ain’t.”

“Again, nonsense I say.”

“Sir, what this thing has done... Poor Charlie’s not said a word for days—”

“Enough, Coombe, else you and your brothers will get nothing.”

“No, Mr. Blake,” Matthew counters, his tone unbending now. “We want more money. The effort it took to retrieve, the journey we’ve had bringing it here. The danger you put me in to begin with. I reckon that’s worth twice what we agreed.”

“You’ll get no such thing,” Hezekiah sniffs, but he can tell he is losing his hold on the matter. “The price I stipulated is more than adequate.”

“Then we’ll load it back up, take it out to sea and throw it overboard where the damn thing belongs.”

But as Matthew begins to turn away Hezekiah presses down harder on his arm.

“No! Please, I...”

Hezekiah’s mouth goes dry, his eyes dart. He cannot lose it now, he cannot. The Coombe brothers stare with sunken eyes. Hezekiah grimaces, releases his hold.

“I shall pay you the agreed fee now, the rest when my own business is complete. I can’t pay you any sooner than that.”

A muscle tics in Matthew’s jaw. The three brothers share a look, a nod.

“Very well,” Matthew says. He chucks his chin at his siblings; they haul themselves up onto the cart. “But if we don’t have payment by month’s end you can expect us pounding at your door.”

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