Black Wreath by Peter Sirr Read Free Book Online Page A

your father’s dead.’
    James stared at him, uncomprehending. ‘What?’
    ‘I’m sorry. There was an argument, I think, with someone who had lent him money. Hard words were spoken, and your father challenged him to a duel …’
    James heard the words, but they didn’t penetrate; they hung somewhere in the air outside him. He remembered his father’s duelling pistols, their shine and heft. ‘Feel the weight of that, boy. You won’t be fit for society until you’ve blazed.’ His father had blazed often – he was easily slighted – and he had always survived. He had strong opinions about duelling, as about everything else. The nature of the insult, the rules of engagement, the best places to fight. The challenged chooses his ground; the challenger chooses his distance; the seconds fix the time and terms of firing. James had heard it often enough.
    ‘It seems his pistol misfired …’
    James could hear no more. He ran from McAllister’s room and right through the college until he emerged in College Green. He ran until he came to Harry’s pitch near the Custom House. Harry was the only source of news he could trust without question. Nothing happened in the city that Harry didn’t hear about. His friend was perched on his stool near the archway to the quayside, finishing off a merchant’s boot. Harry nodded at James and when he had finished, he rushed up to his friend.
    ‘You’ve heard, then,’ he said. He could see how upset James was.
    ‘So it’s true.’ James’s whole body sagged. Now that the truth had been established there was no more hope, and all the life seemed to drain from him. He sat down on Harry’s stool and slumped forward with his head in his hands. Harry put his hand on his shoulder.
    ‘I’m sorry, Jim.’
    Harry stood silently by his friend for a few moments.
    ‘By the way, Jim, do you know your uncle?’
    ‘Uncle? My father had a brother, I think. I never met him. I think he went to England.’
    ‘He’s back. He has assumed the title. A hard fellow by all accounts.’
    James barely took the information in. Right now, he didn’t care about any uncles, good or bad. He wanted to take his leave of his father before they put him in the ground.

Eight

A Funeral and a Fight
    J ames crept into Christchurch cathedral and slid into a bench at the back, beside a group of townspeople who seemed to be there more out of curiosity than grief. At the front he could see the chief mourners: Miss Deakin – James would never call her anything else – arrayed in black like a rook, and beside her the man who must be his uncle. There was something strangely familiar about him; the dark cruel mouth, the straggly black hair, the way he stood, even here, as if he owned the cathedral and everything in it. Suddenly James felt his stomach lurching and his blood run cold. He recognised him: it was the man whose boots he had cleaned in Essex Street, who had cuffed him and abused him and thrown the coin to the ground as he marched off. This brute was his uncle? The knowledge sank into James’s bones so that he felt exhausted. Every so often the man turned his head around to scan the congregation, coolly assessing the mourners at his brother’sfuneral. James ducked down into the pew when he saw the head move. He did not want to be seen by this strange new figure whose every gesture seemed calculated to arouse fear. He noticed Miss Deakin seemed very friendly with him, glancing and smiling in his direction at every opportunity.
    At the side of the cathedral, some distance away from the proceedings, James saw a strange group of men. They were tall and loose-limbed and quite brutal in appearance, with rough, pocked faces and squashed noses that might have been broken several times. James half expected to see blood on their knuckles or a tear in the lapels of their coats, but if they had been engaged in fisticuffs lately there was no sign of it other than a flicker of malevolence in their eyes and the curl of