Page 4 of The Captain of Betrayal
The rattle remained in Flora's chest for over a week, and James stayed by his mother's bedside, duly offering her more laudanum whenever she awoke and praying to God while she slept, to save his mother's life. During the day, Polly would appear at intervals, offering him tea and food, and ignoring his questions about the bruises on her face and the slight limp in her step. At night time, she would steal from her own home on Strawberry Lane and sit with him in his mother's dark room until the first traces of dawn stole across the sky.
It was she who noted the silence, when the rattle finally stopped.
"Is she?" Polly looked frightened; though both children had been expecting it, death had still managed to surprise them when it stole into the room.
James reached out and touched his mother's hand--it was cold and stiff. The icy feel of his mother's skin jolted him from the strange, dream-like state he had existed in since her illness had started, and great, heaving sobs wracked his body. She was gone,his mother was gone; he was all alone in the world.
"Hush, just let it all out. Don't worry, I'm here."
Polly's hand rubbed circles on his back and she murmured sounds of comfort as James howled with grief for his mother. How long the pair stayed for, James could not say, but soon dawn broke outside the window and Polly took on a nervous look.
"Go, before your father wakes up and finds you gone," James instructed, his young mind filled with all the things he needed to do. He would have to have his mother blessed and buried, though he did not yet know how he would find the funds for that.
"No, I should stay with you."
"Please," James looked at his friend, whose face still bore the marks of the beating Ted had given her for stealing to pay for his mother's laudanum. "Please go. Come back later, when it's safe to do so."
With a look that said she had half a mind not to, Polly turned and left, squeezing his hand as she went. James stood once the door closed behind her and began to pace.
He needed money; he could not have his mother buried in a pauper's grave, with no stone to mark her final resting place. He wracked his mind to try and think where he might source the funds to afford his mother a proper burial. His pacing came to a dead halt as he remembered his mother's ring. It was, she had often said, merely a piece of costume jewellery, made from paste, but it was a fine imitation of a diamond and James thought that he might get some recompense for it in Mr Tatterly's Pawn Shop on Haymarket Street.
He went to his mother's bureau, rifled through its many drawers and near gave up on finding it, until he spotted a small velvet box. Inside the box was the ring, which when he opened it, James thought was far nicer than he had remembered; the fake diamond was most realistic, in that it caught the light and twinkled, even in the half-dark room.
James had just slipped the box in his pocket, determining that he would not leave Mr Tatterly's until he had bartered enough for a coffin at the very least, when a loud rapping came from the front door.
His first thought was that it was Ted Jenkins, filled with rage at having caught his daughter stopping out all night, but a voice--a very refined voice--put paid to that thought.
"I say, is this the residence of Flora Black?" the voice called from behind the door. "I am calling in relation to the letter she sent."
Goodness, James started, was it the Earl of Ludlow himself?
When he opened the door he did not find the Earl, but rather an emissary in the form of the Earl's Head Steward, Charles Plinkton. He was a small man, of about fifty years, with a shock of white hair and a belly that strained at the buttons of his waistcoat.
"Where is Flora Black?" he demanded of James as the door opened.
"Dead," James whispered, feeling frightened of the pompous man, as he pushed his way inside.
"When did she pass?"
"About an hour ago."
Mr Plinkton blanched as James pointed down the hallway to the room where his mother lay.
"We shall have to have her buried."The steward spoke aloud, more to himself than James, and began to pace back and forth. "I'll fetch the vicar, have him organise a burial, then take the boy back to London--won't take more than half a day--we'll be on the road by nightfall."
"Who's going to London?" James asked, thinking that it sounded like this Mr Plinkton was intending him to go, which was absurd.
"Why you are, lad," the steward blustered, confirming his suspicions, "Your mother wrote to the Earl saying you were to be looked after. Lord rest his soul, he wasn't the most generous of men, but even he would look after an illegitimate child. Even in the grave, he is duty bound by honour. That's what his brother says, anyway."
James saw spots as he absorbed this piece of information--he was the son of an Earl? It was preposterous, he thought, and besides his mother had had too much pride to have been the mistress of any man, even if he was an aristocrat. It made no sense.
"It can't be true," James shook his head angrily, "I don't believe it."
"Well, you'd best believe it lad. Your uncle, the Honourable Mr Aurthur Livingstone, confirmed that his brother had absconded with Flora Black, the daughter of a Vicar, a few months before the sixth Earl, also your uncle, died. It would have caused quite the scandal, if the affair had continued; but, luckily, your father saw sense when he inherited the title and returned to London, to marry a woman of rank."
James bristled at Plinkton's sanctimonious tone--his mother still lay in the room next door, and here was this pompous, puffed up blackguard insulting her by saying that his father abandoning both her and James, was an act of sense and not the treachery it actually was. Did the late Earl know what kind of poverty he and his mother had endured? Would he have cared if he did?
"I shan't go with you," the tips of James' ears were red with anger and shame. "Do you hear? I shan't go to London; I shall stay here in Newcastle with my friends."
