Secrets and Billionaires

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Zachary had won the game of chess. He asked if she want ed a return match, and she nodded; they set out the pieces, and halfway through Mrs. Bowes and her daughter came into view again, leisurely walking up the approach to the long windows, along a stone terrace flanked by urns in which Zachary grew rare hanging plants. Kitty was talking vivaciously, with Clair ette's plain long-nosed face giving no sign of having listened, or enjoyed the chatter. Poor Kitty was another, Annabel was thinking, who maintained appearances; who hadn't lowered the flag even that one time, years ago now, when Annabel herself had been deeply angry with her. Kitty had never dared act so again; as it was, she'd done harm to Zachary, and he had been ill afterwards and had not completely recovered.

SOME weeks after the foregoing events at Malvie, a hired coach was negotiating the steep, crowded cobbles of Edin burgh High Street. The comings and goings of the lawcourts impeded its progress and caused one of the inmates to rap, impatiently, for the driver to bestir himself. That personage shrugged, and gave a routine flick of his long whip above the horses' idle rumps; as if they were used to this treatment, they shrugged likewise, so that the sharp reminder might have been no more than the bite of a passing cleg or gnat; and continued their slow pace.

"This is intolerable!" said Gavallan Doon to his companion, who lounged opposite him in the coach-interior, a plain beaver hat pulled down over his eyes. "We are an hour later than we intended already; the attorney will have gone to his tavern."

"Not so," replied the other soothingly, in the accents of a foreigner. "The courts are only now emerging."

"Scaling, they call it here, if nowhere else; add that to your vocabulary, Samson. What a country! Since the Parliament left it, in my great-grandfather's time, the capital is nothing but a lawyers' warren where proofs pile up." He himself, long unable to see even so unworthy an aspect, stared with sightless eyes beyond the window, where, he knew, past the press of black gowns and white wigs the brooch-tower of St. Giles' raised itself, and further up the bulk of the Castle; the light eyes, bright as a falcon's, rested on them unseeing. Gavallan Doon had lived in darkness since the customs-fight, seven and a half years back; the deep wound to the nerve-centres at the back of his brain had taken his sight, though the eyes them selves were uninjured. The passing of time, in such a condi tion, had altered Gavallan in immediate appearance very little; a thick white lock of hair grew at the site of the old injury, but he had covered it today with the wig which he wore be neath his hat. A ruthless quality about the thin mouth, a masklike lack of expression in the face, might have told those with eyes to see that this man had lived long with horror, but most men, seeing him pass by in the coach, would notice only a well-to-do citizen clad in the fashion of, perhaps, ten years back; he had had the suit of clothes made to order in Port Jackson, and they were still of the cut he remembered before leaving home. His coat was of broadcloth, of good imported quality, with modest braiding on the fastenings and turned back cuffs, and he wore a gay waistcoat of French brocade, which had cost a great deal; his shoes had silver buckles. He had made, as his appearance suggested, a reasonable fortune in Australia; old Max's legacy had come at the right time to permit him to buy, at low rate, a strip of land to clear upriver. With Samson as foreman, and native labour, it had shortly become a productive farm; before leaving, Gavallan had sold the land and equipment at auction, making a good profit. He smiled; that wasn't the only pair of irons he had in the fire. the man Tom Neilson had been sent to Abel Judd with in structions to proceed in a certain way over the money still hidden, and the contacts they retained in France.

Gavallan's companion in the coach was attired similarly to his master, although his waistcoat was plainer. The noticeable thing about him-leaving aside the dusky colour of his skin. for he was a mulatto, a half-black-was his strong frame, compact and massive as a bull's rather than very tall; he had average height. His eyes, surprisingly, were smoke-grey, and surveying the teeming streets now with a kind of resigned acceptance. Now and again he would pass a pink tongue across his lips, and his teeth, when once or twice he smiled at some saying of Gavallan's, were ruinously decayed, more like a white man's than a n***o's.

His name was in fact Nathaniel Weeks, but Gavallan, who had rescued him up-river in circumstances which ensured the young man's lifelong gratitude and service, called him Sam son because he was so strong. Samson's hands, with the palms showing pink and the nails, against the fingers' dusty tinge, pink also, could perform feats with pig-iron and copper bars, as though the latter had been cheese; his prowess with women was likewise considerable, though less prodigious than Samson himself made out. He had been born in Sydney Cove shortly after the early consignments of prostitutes sentenced to life long transportation had landed, and his mother had been an Irish Protestant named Matilda Weeks. She took to her trade with vigour both on the transport-ship and off, and one of her customers was an immense buck n***o ashore from galley service, whose ship had called in at the port only briefly to take on water. He was also an ex-pugilist. Tilly found, after the ship had left, that the tickler of the fancy had left behind more with her than his money, and, as she herself told her son later, she tried every damned means to be rid of the little bastard, even knitting-needles, but he was set too high up inside. He emerged, in due course, to the light of day in the bawdy-house, and knocked about there for the first part of his childhood. He was growing, surprisingly, a pretty little boy, coffee-coloured, and shaped like a god, with Tilly's Irish eyes deeply fringed by long black lashes. He learned, quite early on, to steal untraceably; all his days he was to keep a happy knack for this, and for such foresight in general.