Part 18 (1/2)
He read through the paper without comment, then folded it and looked at her. ”I am remiss in something, Emma,” he said.
She looked at him then, curious.
”Do you remember when I asked you what would make you happy?”
Emma nodded. ”That seems so long ago, my lord.”
”I think it was longer ago than either of us can really appreciate,” he murmured. ”You have your own bed and your own room, do you not?”
She nodded again, mystified and wondering where he was leading.
He stood up and gestured for her to follow him. ”I believe you also wanted to hear Ma.s.s. Let us go.”
She took him by the arm. ”You don't need to do this, my lord,” she said.
He took her hand and pulled her after him. into the hall. ”Of course I do, my dear. I will take you to St. Stephens, where you will have ample time for confession first and then Ma.s.s.”
”You want me to tell this whole story to a priest,” she asked, but it was more of a statement.
”I do, indeed.” He allowed Lasker to help him into his overcoat, and then he waited for Emma to retrieve her cloak. ”Unless I have been misjudging the Almighty all these years-and I probably have-you are about to discover that you have nothing to be forgiven for.”
She said nothing as they rode toward the city, only beginning to stir now with carters and other early risers. She stared straight ahead, but he knew it was not the angry, sullen mistrust of their earlier acquaintance. Again, he had the feeling that she was seeing things out of his vision. He looked down at her hands, and noticed that they were balled into tight fists. He put his hand over hers.
”Don't worry, Emma. Have you ever considered the possibility that the Lord might be on your side?”
He could tell from her expression that she had not, and he wisely gave himself over to silence, too.
There were only a few wors.h.i.+pers in St. Stephen's, a small Catholic church on the outskirts of the financial district that he knew about only from driving by on several occasions. The earlier Ma.s.s had just finished, and the smell of wax was strong in the low-ceillinged chapel. Emma took a deep breath of the mingled ecclesiastical odors and sighed.
”It has been so long, my lord,” she murmured as she started toward a priest who stood beside the door to a confessional. She looked back at him once, real fear in her eyes, and he longed to follow her, but he only smiled and seated himself in the back of the church, crossing his fingers and hoping that the Lord was the kind of fellow Lord Ragsdale thought He was.
She was a long time in the confessional, but he knew it was a long story and felt no impatience. He was content to breathe deep himself, and allow the aura of the place to work its way into his spirits. When she came out, he made room for her on the bench.
He wanted to speak to her, but she dropped immediately to her knees and began to recite the rosary, murmuring softly. She had no beads, so she ticked off the litany on her fingers. He watched Emma and resolved to find a rosary from somewhere for her. What a paltry gift for someone who has given me so much, he thought.
When she finished, she sat beside him. ”You were right,” she whispered.
He leaned closer until their shoulders touched. ”I thought so. Any penance?”
She smiled at him, and his heart flopped. There was nothing in her smile of reticence, calculation or wariness this time, only a great relief probably visible to s.h.i.+ps at sea or Indians in distant tepees. ”He told me to recite one rosary,” she whispered back.
”Small penance, my dear,” he said, wis.h.i.+ng she would turn her marvelous, incandescent gaze on some other man.
She grinned even wider. ”Faith, my lord, he's an Irish priest.”
He burst into laughter, forgetting where he was. Heads turned, paris.h.i.+oners glowered. He rested his long legs on the prayer bench and sank down lower in the pew, stifling the laughter that still threatened, and thinking suddenly of Clarissa, who wouldn't recognize a joke if it said h.e.l.lo.
The Ma.s.s began. He nudged her. ”You know, Emma, we're very much alike,” he commented.
She digested this, her attention divided between him and the priest at the altar. ”Oh, we are?”
”I drowned myself in bitterness and alcohol, and you let yourself be captured by guilt. Such foolish damage we have done ourselves.”
She nodded and sighed. ”I probably would have taken to the bottle, my lord, but I had no money like you.”
”Ah, my dear, the toils of the too wealthy ...”
The paris.h.i.+oner in the pew in front of them turned around and put a finger to her lips. Lord Ragsdale winked at her, and she turned back swiftly.
”D'ye know, I think I will seek out the man I hate the most, and give him the contents of my wine cellar,” he whispered to Emma. ”And my first choice is the porter at the Office of Criminal Business.”
She laughed this time, and the priest paused momentarily, glaring at her. ”Hush, my lord,” she insisted. ”You are a bad influence on me. In another moment, I really will have something to confess, and it will be your fault.”
Lord Ragsdale behaved himself for the rest of the Ma.s.s, marveling at the prescience of the priest to deliver his homily on forgiveness. He watched, great peace in his heart, as Emma took the sacrament at the altar, then returned to kneel beside him. He knew she was crying, and he kept his hand on her shoulder for the remainder of the service.
”Well, my dear, can we face the porter now?” he asked her in front of the church as he helped her into another hackney.
”I can face anything,” she a.s.sured him.
”It may be that we learn little or nothing,” he warned her. ”We may come away feeling worse.”
”I know, my lord,” she said quietly. ”But at least we will know we are trying.”
Her hand tight in his, they approached the porter in the Office of Criminal Business, who practically threw himself off his stool and asked in unctuous, kindly tones if they would like to see Mr. Capper.
”Indeed we would,” Lord Ragsdale said. ”You must want to keep your job.” He looked the cowering man in the eye. ”Do you know, it probably wouldn't be too hard to get you transported.”
To his grim amus.e.m.e.nt, they found themselves hurried into a cluttered office. ”Mr. John Henry Capper,” the porter announced, and then beat a hasty retreat.
Capper stood and motioned them into chairs in front of the desk. He took a few swipes at the piles of paper surrounding him, gave up, then seated himself, ”I am Lord Ragsdale, and this is my servant, Emma Costello,” he began, gesturing to Emma. ”She has a story for you.” He sat back then, and let Emma tell it all again, leaving nothing out. He watched the clerk's face, wondering if such a man in such a job could be moved by her words. I wonder if it is possible to become hardened to such wretchedness, he thought, and then decided it was not. Capper listened intently, asking questions quietly, but not disturbing the flow of her narrative. Several times he pa.s.sed his hand across his eyes, but his attention never wavered.
When she finished, and blew her nose on the handkerchief Lord Ragsdale kept handy, Capper looked from one to the other, his lips set in a tight line. He asked her the names of all her family members, and scribbled them on the pad in front of him.
”Your mother, Miss Costello. Do you think she is yet alive?”
Emma shook her head, and reached for Lord Ragsdale's hand again. ”She was so sick when I was taken out for torture in Prevot.”
Capper drew a line through her name, and Emma flinched. Lord Ragsdale tightened his grip. ”And here, your little brother Timothy?” he asked, his pencil poised over the next name.
”Oh, no,” she whispered. ”He is the only one I am certain of.”
Lord Ragsdale felt his own nerves tingling at the pencil's brief scratch.
Capper quickly drew a line through Eamon's name. ”I suspect he was hanged, as you fear. You say he was separated from you after his confession?”
Emma nodded, her face pale. Capper sighed and drew a circle around the two remaining names. He stared at them a moment, as though wis.h.i.+ng the names would turn into information, then reached behind him to pull down a ledger. He searched through the pages, then opened it on his desk.