He was a man of the Home Office. He was Dominic Frey, whose name Silas had heard often enough and last on the lips of Harry Vane, as a friend.
This was the duty, Silas thought. You were worrying about raiding my shop in case it implicated my lad Harry, and you went ahead and did it.
You traitorous bastard.
Frey was staring at him, trying to keep his face still, but he couldn’t mask the pure sick horror in his eyes. He looked like he was sweating ice.
Silas cleared his throat. “There’s no sedition here, and no treason, and no printing, come to that. Where’s your warrant?”
“Warrant,” said Skelton scornfully. “Would an innocent man demand to see a warrant?”
“My right,” Silas managed.
“Here.” Skelton tossed a paper onto the desk. “One more chance, Mason. Tell us where the press is, or we’ll just have to find it ourselves.”
“Look all you want.” Pure defiance. If they found the trapdoor, they’d find the press, piles of Jack Cade’s pamphlets, several drafts of his ongoing work on the Peterloo Massacre. He’d be dragged to gaol under the Tory’s blank, dark stare.
The Tory wouldn’t speak for him. He couldn’t expect that.
Skelton sneered. “Carry on, men.”
They did. They crashed and clattered, upturning boxes, grabbing handfuls of paper, turfing books onto the floor with a disrespect that should have made Silas rage. George voiced protest at one point, as a soldier kicked his way into a locked chest, and was grabbed and sent stumbling to the floor with a rip of cloth. At the front of the shop, a windowpane shattered.
Silas stood, and watched, and felt the Tory watch him. Saw the Tory’s caped shoulders rise and fall and felt his own harsh breathing come into line with them, as though their hearts beat in time.
“Nothing, sir,” a man muttered at last.
“Take the papers,” Skelton ordered. His face was rigid with the effort not to show disappointment. “We’ll check them all. You don’t get away so easily, Mason.”
“I’ll want those back,” Silas said, showing defiance by rote.
“Oh, we’ll come back,” Skelton said. “Don’t worry. You’ll see us again.”
The men fanned out, picking up papers, the Tory among them, moving through Silas’s shop as if he had a right. Because he was one of them, one of the persecutors, part of the apparatus of tyranny that kept the people chained. The enemy.
“Let’s go,” the Tory said at last, his first words. He sounded hoarse. He’d sounded hoarse last night, after Silas had fucked his mouth till he choked and gasped. Skelton gave a tight nod, and the lot of them clattered out.
“Damn their eyes,” George said from Silas’s side. His coat hung off him in rags now. “Damn them to hell. Oh Gawd, Silas.”
“They didn’t find anything. There’s naught in those papers. They’ve nothing, no evidence.”
“Aye, but…the shop.”
They looked around at the catastrophe of litter and damage, books splayed open on the floor, some with pages come adrift. Silas swore under his breath and then more loudly. “Well, we’d best clear up then.”
“Swine,” George said. “Bloody swine. Oh, look at this.” He picked something up from where it rested by a shelf. A gold-headed ebony cane. “Swell left his stick. Reckon we can sell it?”
“Don’t be a damned fool. They’d do you for stolen goods straight off,” Silas said. “He probably left it on purpose—” He broke off as that purpose dawned on him.
George blinked at him. “Silas? You all right?”
“Go,” Silas said. “Go on, lad, get home. You’ve done enough today.”
“What?” George looked baffled. Not surprising; Silas did not often give half holidays.
“Go,” he repeated. “Get your coat mended. Here.” He tossed George a shilling. “It’s coming on cold. I’ll tidy up.”
“But you need—”
“Just piss off,” Silas rasped, running out of subterfuge, and his expression made George swallow whatever loyal protest was on his lips. He scurried out, leaving Silas alone with the wreckage of his shop, waiting for a man to come back for his cane.
He was kneeling on the floor, picking up the splinters of the broken chest, when he heard footsteps. The door creaked open, and a shadow blotted out the watery autumn sun.
“Best shut the door,” Silas said, rising. “Got things to say, don’t we?”
“Your assistant?”
“Sent him home.”
The Tory closed the door, careful and quiet. They looked at each other.