For Ali

He that dares not grasp the thorn

Should never crave the rose.

Anne Brontë

PART ONE

August 1867 – London

Chapter 1

The day which was to change Harry Compton’s life for ever began like most of the others this past year. His eyes snapped open – as they usually did – a good ten seconds before Mrs Pincham’s brisk knock at his door. How did his mind manage to wake him so efficiently? Harry wondered yet again. Was it chalking off the hours as he slept?

‘Master Compton?’ came his landlady’s harsh London vowels.

‘Awake, Mrs Pincham,’ Harry groaned. ‘Wide awake.’ He lay there a moment longer, staring up at the damp stains that spread across his ceiling like dark, unexplored continents. Then he rolled out of bed and carried his chamber-pot downstairs, trying to avoid the fierce eyes of his landlady as she cracked eggs one-handed at the kitchen range.

Slops disposed of, Harry hurried back up the stairs to his bedroom, where he dressed as quickly as possible. Flannel shirt and trousers, twill waistcoat, flatcap and boots – comfortable clothes, the clothes he’d worn in his former job. Unlike the other salesmen at the boarding house, Harry preferred to complete his ablutions at work, and as he caught sight of his unshaven face in the glass, he realised how much older he looked since he’d arrived here from Battersea last summer. Dark eyes tired, and a touch wary; the little cleft at the base of his square jaw blackened by stubble. It was a handsome face, he’d been told more than once, and it had been both his fortune and his curse. For without it, he’d never have landed this strange new job in the first place . . . Turning away, Harry ran down the stairs and into the dining-room, where the landlady was already laying out the chafing trays.

‘First down again, Master Compton,’ Mrs Pincham said. Her keen gaze took in his unkempt appearance, then flickered away.

Within a few minutes, Harry knew, Barrington, Ratcliffe and Drinkwater would make their appearance – preening and strutting, resplendent in their freshly-brushed frockcoats, beards carefully clipped, hair gleaming with pomade. They were always ‘Mister’ to Mrs Pincham, despite the fact that two of them were even younger than his own twenty-one years.

‘The early bird, Mrs Pincham,’ Harry said, using the tongs to lay a poached egg between two triangles of cold toast. There was no danger of spilling the yolk, he knew, as the landlady liked to steam the things until they had the consistency of India rubber. Having washed his down with a cup of hot, strong tea, Harry headed for the front door, just catching the first bars of ‘Mr’ Barrington’s tuneless voice issuing from the stairwell behind him.

It was a fine summer’s morning, Harry found to his delight. In the open countryside at the end of North Street, the sun was rising over the fields of Fulham, and in the misty distance he could just make out a ploughman steering his dray horse, digging furrows for his next crop of potatoes. After crossing the humpbacked slats of Stamford Bridge, Harry skirted the railway line above Chelsea Station. In the cutting below, the stationmaster was standing outside his ticket hut, clay pipe cupped in one hand, scarlet cravat knotted jauntily around his neck. The man raised an arm to Harry, well-used to seeing him pass at this time of morning, and Harry waved back.

Turning away from the railway line, Harry wove between a network of market gardens. August had been warm this year, and, judging by their wilting tops, all those carrots, turnips and runner beans could use a drink of water. The scrubby grounds of St Mark’s College appeared to his left, and Harry followed its fencing for a time, then drew to a halt, feeling that little heart-clench of excitement which always accompanied this part of his walk to work. For just a few yards ahead of him lay the King’s Road, Chelsea.

The moment Harry joined the road, he was struck once again by the magnificence of Mr Weeks’s stovehouse. Something in the way that it rose so dramatically from the pavement, a fantastical cathedral of white-painted iron ribs and gleaming plate glass. Within those domes, a lush jungle of exotic plants pressed against the panes, flaunting their charms, enticing one to enter.

Harry’s attention was caught by one of Mr Weeks’s undergardeners, who was setting up a pavement sign outside the nursery with a new poster fixed upon it. ‘Madonna Lily Bulbs!’ the lettering screamed. ‘Lifted fresh from the Plains of Syria! Only three sovereigns a half-dozen!!’

‘Only three sovereigns?’ Harry said.

The undergardener glanced up. Boulter, his name was – Harry had met him once or twice at the Man in the Moon.

‘Cheap at half the price,’ Boulter said, baring his snaggle-teeth. ‘You ain’t seen nothing like these blooms, Harry. And the fragrance . . .’ He fanned a hand against his chest like a swooning lady. ‘Fuck me ragged.’

Harry threw Boulter a doubtful look, then continued past the next stovehouse, where a team of window-cleaners was busy polishing the glass, trying to attain a sheen that could compete with that of Mr Weeks’s. Behind lay Mr Veitch’s Royal Exotic Nursery, with its neat rows of greenhouses running between here and the Fulham Road; then came Mr Wimsett’s stockground, acre upon acre of beds and borders stretching all the way down to the Thames – musk roses, monkey-puzzle trees, forsythia. Was there anywhere else on earth that hosted as many valuable plants as the King’s Road? Harry wondered. The plains of Syria? He doubted it.

He continued along the elegant, gravelled thoroughfare – reserved for the monarch’s exclusive use until 1731, as the most direct route from St James’s Palace to Hampton Court, but now a hive of private enterprise. Flower-sellers from Hammersmith were setting up barrows of peonies, hoping to capitalise upon the prestige of the plant nurseries. Harry knew a few of them by name, but they were too busy securing the best pitches to greet him. Next came the gates of the Cremorne Pleasure Gardens, padlocked shut now, a couple of smashed flagons outside suggestive of last night’s festivities. A beggar in tattered clothes sat amidst the earthenware shards, head bowed, upturned cap laid out before him. Harry dropped a four-penny piece inside, and the beggar nodded without looking up. Sometimes, Harry wondered if the man waited there especially for him, as he was usually gone the moment that he passed. Not that it mattered – one thing Harry wasn’t short of these days was spare change.

He reached the dogleg of the King’s Road, where the publican of the Man in the Moon was busy sweeping the horseshit off her section of pavement. ‘Morning, Ma Potts,’ Harry called out, and the old woman swivelled her hatchet face his way, leaning heavily on her broomstick.

There’d been more plant nurseries on the King’s Road once, Harry knew – as many as twenty, at one point – but London’s steady creep westwards had proved unrelenting, and a few of the weaker operations had been sold off for housing, or for shops catering to the new residents – tobacconists, tea-sellers, chophouses. Only past the squawking cacophony of Mr Baker’s pheasant dealership – ‘Exotic Fowl to the Royal Household!’ – did the nurseries begin again: Colville’s, Tuck’s, Little’s. This last had a placard outside. ‘Just 4 miles from London,’ it proclaimed. ‘Omnibuses from the Bank every ¼ of an hour.’ Nice idea, Harry thought – lure in the City boys to Chelsea village. If you could still term it a village, he reflected, seeing a fine new terrace of houses sprouting from the green grass of Markham Square.

But as he reached the most ornate stovehouse of them all, Harry felt his spirits ebb. Raising his head, he read the words ‘JM Piggott’s Plant Emporium’ detailed in curly wrought-iron above the door. Josiah Piggott, he thought – my Lord and Master . . .

Mr Piggott had been a foundry-man once, Harry knew – a pig-iron manufacturer from Bow. But then he’d got wind that the tax on glass was to be dropped in 1845, and had purchased these premises from an ailing nurseryman. A canny choice, as the price of glass had duly plummeted, and Piggott had poured all he had into constructing his new stovehouse. A touch smaller than Mr Weeks’s, it was true, but a good deal showier, its combination of sinuous curves and rectilinear glass panes calling to mind the Crystal Palace of the Great Exhibition. Just the thing to draw the eye of the well-heeled punter. The only catch was that its owner knew next to nothing about horticulture.

Taking a steadying breath, Harry turned off the King’s Road into Anderson Street, and knocked on the nursery’s backdoor. ‘Name?’ came an aggressive voice from the other side.

‘Harry Compton, sir.’

The door opened to reveal Decimus Frith, Mr Piggott’s nursery foreman, and the man tasked with securing his operation from espionage and theft. Mr Frith was a short, thickset man in his mid-fifties, with sandy hair and a pair of washed-out blue eyes that seemed always to be smiling at some private joke. According to Jack Turner, Harry’s old friend from Cultivation, Frith had served as an officer in the Crimean War – killing twenty Russians in a single day, Jack claimed – and the yellow stripe he wore down the sides of his worsted trousers still lent him a faintly military air.

Frith peered up at Harry, hard eyes crinkling in amusement above his waxed blond moustaches, which protruded from the sides of his face in sharp, elegant spikes. ‘Why do you always arrive alone, Compton?’ he asked. ‘Too good to keep company with the other chaps from Mrs Pincham’s?’

‘I like to take my time, sir. See the King’s Road wake up.’

‘Things don’t wake up, Compton,’ Frith drawled, waving Harry into the backyard of the nursery. ‘People do.’

Harry gave a flat smile, eyes sliding inexorably to Frith’s ulster coat. Whatever the weather, the man always wore it, leading Jack Turner to claim that there must be a pistol concealed beneath its skirts. ‘A fair few of Frith’s fancy-friends died in the Charge of the Light Brigade,’ Jack had vouchsafed to Harry once. ‘Learnt him the dangers of being unarmed, so now he always carries a barker . . .’

‘Run along now, Compton,’ Frith said in his cut-glass accent. ‘Get your gladrags on!’

Harry rounded the hoardings that shielded the nursery’s customers from the sights Josiah Piggott did not want them to see. The brick outhouse containing the boiler that heated the stovehouse – a smoke-belching, pot-bellied beast that some underpaid stoker was constantly feeding with coal. Then came the coalstore, and the potting shed, where the nursery’s head gardener, Mr Jarvis Siggers, propagated the rarest and most valuable plants Piggott owned – those bought from the curators of botanic gardens, or from auctions following the deaths of private collectors. That was where Harry was meant to be working by now – that was what had been promised him – but no, he had to walk on by, around the stinking heap of manure and into the cramped little hut set aside for Piggott’s salesmen to change their clothes.

Harry pulled closed the warped door, then lit the paraffin lamp, the ammoniac reek of horse manure still stinging in his nostrils. At least there was no one else inside. His outfit still hung from the peg where he’d left it at close of business on Saturday. Quickly, Harry undressed, then slipped on his white linen shirt and fawn-coloured trousers, and changed into his frockcoat. Silk lining, velvet collar, double breasts of the softest black cotton – how well he remembered having that coat fitted on Jermyn Street! It had been Mr Frith who’d taken him. Three years Harry had been working in Cultivation by then – until Piggott had spotted him one morning whilst touring his nursery’s growing grounds in Battersea. ‘He looks about right,’ Piggott had remarked to Frith, and Harry had been thrilled to be plucked from obscurity; honoured that the master had seen some talent in him. But it had not been that at all, Harry had learnt, for he’d been promoted for his good looks, rather than his horticultural abilities – chosen to work not in the potting shed, but in the stovehouse, where his handsome face might help flog an exotic plant to an undiscerning client, most of whom were wealthy women of a certain age.

Sinking down on to the bench, Harry stuck a fist into one of his Oxford brogues and began to buff the leather with an ostrich-feather duster. If Jack Turner and the boys from Cultivation could see him now . . . Shoes polished to the requisite gleam, Harry tied a cotton bib around his neck and set about shaving at the washstand. Having towelled himself down, he fixed on his wing collar and reached for the pot of bear’s-grease pomade. And then there it was, the face that had sold a thousand pot plants. Harry winked sardonically at the mirror, then fixed on the ash-grey topper that set off the costume so fetchingly. No other nursery dressed up its salesmen like toffs. It was Piggott’s way of standing out from the crowd.

Back in the yard, Harry saw that Mr Siggers had arrived in the potting shed, and was busy transferring a batch of slipper orchids into ornamental terracotta pots, readying them for sale. The man didn’t even turn his head as Harry passed.

On the other side of the hoardings, Frith was opening the back door to Harry’s fellow salesmen – Barrington, Ratcliffe and Drinkwater – who swaggered in like dandies, vanity stroked by all the admiring looks they’d drawn on the King’s Road in their Piggott’s frockcoats. All they would need to change in the hut was their footwear.

‘I’ll outsell you this week, Compton,’ Barrington called over. ‘You see if I don’t!’

Harry made no reply, just followed the cinder path between the petunia beds towards the rear door of the stovehouse.

Sales were brisk that morning, even by the nursery’s usual standards. Harry spent the first part of his day outlining the soil requirements of the insectivorous pitcher plant to a blonde woman in a poke bonnet and low-cut bustle dress. The woman kept wafting a fan across her swelling bosom, saying, ‘Do you not find it rather sultry in here, young sir?’ In the end, she’d ordered six of the plants, then slipped Harry a calling card and told him to drop by Cheyne Walk next week to ‘cast an eye over their progress’. Next had come a more serious-minded customer, a high court judge with a soup strainer moustache, seeking a gift for his wife. He’d listened to Harry’s passionate discourse on the differing scents of the Australian pittosporum, before choosing the least aromatic variety, which his clerk would return later to collect. Harry was just in the process of telling a very pretty lady with a pink parasol why ferns needed no pollinators, as they could reproduce themselves alone by means of spores, when the door of the stovehouse flew open, and in came Josiah Piggott himself.

Harry peered uneasily between the fronds of tropical foliage. Everything about Mr Piggott was oversize, as though he’d spent too long in his stovehouse glutting on bonemeal and leafmould. Some six foot two inches tall, with a barrel chest and bushy silver sideburns that spread across his jaw like climbing ivy. Springy brown hair flecked with grey, a few sprays of which protruded from a sable top hat, fashioned by the same tailor as Harry’s. A garish red-and-green tartan waistcoat peeking from beneath his morning coat, a nod to some specious Caledonian ancestry that Piggott had cooked up to appeal to the increasing number of Scots buying plants in Chelsea. As usual, he carried his gold-knobbed cane – though he had no problem walking, despite his girth and advanced years – and when he spoke it was in a permanent bellow, those East End vowels just audible beneath a dreadful approximation of the Queen’s English.

‘Finest stovehouse on Her Majesty’s King’s Road, though I say so meself,’ Piggott roared, embracing with one tree-trunk arm his companion – a nervous-looking potential client whom Piggott must have swept up along the way. ‘You want rhododendrons for your new pile in Hertfordshire, sah?’ Piggott went on. ‘Then you’ll find ’em out back – and more competitively priced than at Veitch’s or Weeks’s, by Jove! But this is the showroom where I keep me crown jewels, so to speak, and these fine fellows’ – Piggott indicated his team of salesmen with a sweep of his cane – ‘are just the chaps to show you what’s what!’

The fact that Barrington, Ratcliffe and Drinkwater knew as little of the vicissitudes of horticulture as their master was of minor importance. They all stared at Piggott, practically drooling like dogs, fully alive to his hint that there was money to be made here: for if a man were building a new country house, then he would be buying large-scale and long-term.

But Piggott was heading for Harry. ‘This here’s Harry Compton,’ he called out, ‘our most knowledgeable salesman. Ain’t nothing young Harry can’t tell you about botany – though he’s so pretty most folk want to stick him in a Ming vase and keep him in their conservatory!’

This image seemed to discomfit, rather than encourage, the customer, so Piggott – remarkably alert to others’ reactions, despite all appearances to the contrary – changed tack. ‘But I see Harry’s tied up with this exquisite young creature’ – the lady with the pink parasol blushed the colour of her appendage – ‘so I’ll steer you instead to Rex Barrington, who’ll provide you with all the assistance you need.’

Once the customer had been dispatched, Harry excused himself from the lady with the sunshade, and sidled over to Piggott. ‘Sir?’

‘What is it, boy?’

‘I’ve been a year now in Sales, and—’

‘Not now, Compton,’ Piggott hissed, then strode away through his stovehouse, sweat oozing from his ruddy brow – despite all the time he spent in here, he never seemed to acclimatise to the humidity.

‘Tree ferns?’ came a meek voice.

Harry turned to find the lady with the pink parasol standing beside him. ‘A joy to behold, ma’am,’ he replied, ‘but a tad slow-growing. Personally, I’d favour the hart’s-tongue fern . . .’

The day wore on. The salesmen all took their lunch on rotation, repairing one by one to their wooden hut, where a basket of food would be waiting, purchased from one of the local tradesmen. When it was Harry’s turn, he pulled shut the door to minimise the reek of manure, then sat down to eat his slices of beef tongue, wondering yet again if he should resign right now, or stick it out in the hope he might one day be allowed to join Mr Siggers in the potting shed.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door, and Harry stood up to open it. Peering around its frame was a moon-faced youth with a head of ridiculous red curls.

‘Jack!’ Harry exclaimed. ‘What brings you up this way?’

‘Just dropping off some seedlings,’ Jack Turner replied. He glanced over one shoulder, then beckoned Harry closer. ‘I’ve news! There’s plant hunters in town.’

Harry’s eyes lit up. If nurserymen were the gallery owners of the King’s Road, then plant hunters were its artists. Wild and reckless, and with the self-regard to match.

‘There’s a few of ’em mustering tonight at the Man in the Moon,’ Jack went on. ‘Some of the boys from Cultivation are going down to take a gander. Want to come?’

‘Too right,’ Harry said. ‘What time were you thinking?’

‘Seven o’clock?’

‘Perfect.’

Jack winked. ‘You do look dashing in that get-up, old stick,’ he said in his Cockney accent. ‘Give Beau Brummell a run for his money.’

Harry cuffed his old friend on the shoulder, then a shout went up – ‘Turner!’ – and Jack threw him a quick salute, and retreated.

Harry sat back down to finish his lunch. He knew what Jack and the other lads would be after – plant hunters needed hired hands, and there was big money to be made if you were chosen to join an expedition. Not that such a commission was easily achieved. Plant hunters risked life and limb on their expeditions to find rare plants: they needed people with them whose gifts extended to survival and fearlessness, as well as to botany.

Harry checked the time and headed back out to the stockground. Beside the rear gate stood the handcart of wisteria seedlings that Jack would have dragged over Battersea Bridge. Wisteria floribunda, Harry saw – Piggott had been buying them on the cheap from his rivals’ catalogues for years; Harry must have germinated thousands in his time in Cultivation.

By the back door, Decimus Frith was patting Jack down, checking his pockets for pilfered seeds. ‘Enjoy this, do you, sir?’ Harry heard Jack ask. ‘Must remind you of looting on the battlefield . . .’

Chuckling to himself, Harry fixed on his topper and prepared himself for the busy afternoon trade. Seven o’clock at the Man in the Moon, he thought, as he set his face into a solicitous smile. He’d be there – with bells on.

Chapter 2

The pub was rammed with drinkers. Harry sat at a corner table, with Jack Turner on his right, ginger curls dewy with sweat. Opposite sat Tony Banks, a bull-necked Scot who’d arrived in Cultivation just before Harry had left. The others – Pugh, Tonks and Davies – were all new to Harry, and they regarded him with a marked scepticism, he felt. Perhaps it was the residue of bear’s-grease pomade in his hair, or the clean-shaven gleam to his face. Either way, Harry was glad to have Jack Turner by his side, treating him as though he’d never left Cultivation at all.

‘Over there,’ Jack called above the hubbub, pointing to a louche, rangy man standing by the bar. ‘That’s Paxton Crosse, ain’t it? And look who’s creeping up on him!’

Sure enough, the small, fussy figure of James William Wimsett was edging across the taproom, preparing to make his pitch. A conversation started up, the famous plant hunter leaning nonchalantly on the bar, the nurseryman gesticulating imploringly with open palms. Eventually, Wimsett nodded at Ma Potts, the publican, who refilled Paxton Crosse’s glass of porter, before the two men repaired to the snug. As they passed close to the corner table, Harry took in the plant hunter’s sunburnt face and crooked, knowing smile. The things that man must have seen on his travels . . .

‘It was Crosse who brought back that purple crabapple from Kazakhstan,’ Jack went on. ‘The one Colville’s are selling. What’s the name again?’

‘Malus crossii,’ Harry replied.

‘Smart-arse,’ Banks muttered.

‘What did you say?’ Harry asked, meeting the Scotsman’s eye.

The table fell silent, and Harry could sense Jack glancing uneasily between him and Banks. Jack had seen Harry’s temper before; knew there was a flint edge beneath all that charm.

‘You Sales boys all know the name of a plant, don’t ye?’ Banks goaded. ‘But no how tae grow one!’

‘Lads, lads,’ Jack Turner intervened. ‘Harry here’s a plantsman to the tips of his toes. When he was in Cultivation, he germinated seeds none of us could get a breath out of. Remember them gingko seeds, Harry? Everyone said they was rotten, but you cleaned ’em up, sowed ’em in three inches of loam – and blow me down, a glossier set of seedlings you never did see!’

Banks gave a begrudging nod and looked away.

‘Thanks,’ Harry said stiffly, and Jack answered with one of his winks.

‘Over there,’ Pugh called out, the first time he’d spoken. ‘That’s Niven McCabe, ain’t it?’

They all looked round to see a burly, scar-faced man emerge from the snug, deep in conversation with the owner of a Southfields nursery. He looked more like a gamekeeper than a plant hunter to Harry, with his tweed breeches and deerstalker hat.

‘I thought he’d been eaten by cannibals in Guatemala,’ Pugh said.

‘And that’s Donald Moncrieff behind him!’ Davies put in. ‘I’m sure of it.’

‘Why do they all have to be Scottish?’ Tonks complained.

‘’Cause we Scots is as hard as fuck,’ Banks said with a nonchalant sniff.

Harry smiled, and the atmosphere seemed to lighten.

‘I heard Moncrieff was just back from Syria,’ Pugh said. ‘Wonder what he collected there?’

‘Lilium candidum,’ Harry replied.

Everyone turned to look at him.

‘Three sovereigns a half-dozen at Weeks’s,’ Harry added.

Davies shook his head. ‘It’s like tulip fever all over again. What was it that Dutchman did in Amsterdam? Swapped his mansion for a single bulb?’

‘They’ll be doing that on the King’s Road next,’ Tonks muttered.

‘Paxton Crosse charges two thousand guineas an expedition now,’ Jack said.

‘Piss off!’ Banks exclaimed.

‘Excluding expenses.’

‘I wonder how much he pays his hands,’ Pugh reflected, and the group turned again to gaze at the bar, where McCabe and Moncrieff were enjoying sherry cobblers that someone else had paid for.

Harry wasn’t sure if Jack was right about the plant hunters’ fees, but there was no doubt that the way the King’s Road did business was changing. Until recently, plant hunters had worked exclusively for august academic institutions such as Kew Gardens, the Chelsea Physic Garden or the Royal Horticultural Society at Chiswick. But nowadays, aware of the massive profits being made by the commercial nurseries, they were taking their work private – and reaping the rewards.

‘I’m going over,’ Banks said, unable to restrain himself any longer. He heaved himself to his feet and shouldered his way to the bar. A couple of undergardeners hopped out of his path, affording Harry a view of a small table nestled under the panelled staircase that led up to the few modest rooms the Man in the Moon offered for rent. Sitting alone at the table was a short, dark man with a straggly brown beard. A tatty billycock hat rested on the table before him, and the man’s head kept bowing down to it, as though in prayer. His arm lay beside the hat, trembling slightly, creeping ever closer to a pitcher of wine that sat precariously close to the edge.

Turning his gaze to the bar, Harry saw the publican, Ma Potts, eyeing the man with dour interest as she twisted open a jar of pickled whelks. She gave a sharp nod, and a moment later, Edwin the chucker-outer appeared, a massive bear of a man with a Malmsey nose, who Harry knew took great pleasure in cracking heads. ‘Watch him,’ Harry saw Ma Potts mouth, before the scene was lost from view.

‘He’s off down the Cremorne later,’ Banks said, throwing himself back down into his chair.

‘Who is?’ Pugh asked.

‘Paxton Crosse, you greasy divot!’ Banks retorted. ‘There’ll be a fair few painted lassies about at that time of night. If we approach Crosse when his guard’s down, maybe he’ll give us a place on his next expedition.’

‘You’ve got it all mapped out, don’t you, Tony?’ Davies laughed.

‘We’d best not bring Harry to the Cremorne,’ Jack threw in. ‘You should see how the ladies make a beeline for him. Crosse’d never get a look-in!’

Frowning with embarrassment, Harry signalled for another round.

‘Well, you ain’t cheap, Harry,’ Davies said, ‘I’ll give you that.’

Harry shrugged off the compliment, if that was what it was. It seemed the least he could do, given that Sales were paid twice what Cultivation got. And then there was the subsidised accommodation he received . . . The drinks arrived, and conversation switched to Old ‘Pie-Gut’ Piggott, and whether he would ever be found in here trying to recruit a plant hunter. ‘Too tight by half’ was the unanimous conclusion.

They all fell silent again as Paxton Crosse sauntered past their table, trailed by a long line of nurserymen ducking and scraping like courtiers. Then came McCabe and Moncrieff, the latter limping slightly, a shimmering blue feather tucked into his hatband, no doubt plucked from the tail of a bird of paradise.

‘Drink up, lads,’ Jack called out. ‘That’s our cue!’

Looking over to the table by the stairs, Harry saw the small, dark-skinned man shaking in his seat, eyes rolling back in his head. Harry put down his tankard and got up. He knew that look only too well; remembered it from his childhood with a horrible clarity. As Harry approached his table, the man slumped forward, and his arm knocked the ceramic jug to the floor.

‘That’s it!’ Ma Potts shouted. ‘Edwin!?’

The chucker-outer made his move, but Harry stepped in front of him and said softly, ‘There’s no trouble here, Eddie.’

The chucker-outer glanced back at Ma Potts, who pursed her lips, eyes roaming appreciatively over Harry’s face. Eventually, she turned away, calling back over one shoulder, ‘Well, it’s still two shillings for the jug!’

Harry handed the chucker-outer the payment, then looked down at the swarthy man. He was lying face-down on the table, making little popping noises with his lips. Harry took off his jacket, rolled it up, then slipped it under his head.

‘What’re you playing at, Harry?’ Jack Turner hissed as he walked past, heading for the door.

‘I’ll come and find you later at the Cremorne,’ Harry replied. ‘After I see this fellow right.’

‘You’re a soft touch, Harry,’ Jack said, shaking his head. Then he fixed on his flatcap and followed his friends into the night.

The man had stopped shaking now, Harry saw. His bloodshot eyes fluttered open, and Harry crouched down next to him. ‘You had a bit of a spell, sir. A fit.’

The man pushed himself up into a sitting position and leant his head back against the wainscot. ‘Don’t you think I know that, boy?’ he said in a thick accent. ‘Now pass me my drink.’

Harry had half-expected a Spanish lisp, so tanned was the man’s skin, but the intonation was different, something Harry couldn’t quite place. He slid the cup across the table.

‘Roight up to me mouth,’ the man urged. ‘Me arms ain’t steady yet.’

Irish, Harry thought, lifting the cup to the man’s flaking lips. He sucked at the contents, breathing quickly through his nose. Over by the bar, Ma Potts was watching them closely, her expression hovering somewhere between fury and pity. Harry remembered seeing a ‘NINA’ sign in the window once, when she’d been advertising for a position – ‘No Irish Need Apply’.

‘Thanking you,’ the man said.

Harry lowered the cup. ‘Breathe deep and slow. In through your nose, and out through your mouth.’

The man looked up at Harry with weary eyes. ‘You know the affliction, then?’

Harry nodded. ‘My mother.’

Gathering up his jacket from the table, Harry put it back on. Ma Potts was coming over now, strong sinewy arms folded across her apron. ‘You work at Joe Piggott’s place, don’t you?’ she snapped.

‘Harry Compton,’ Harry said, holding out a hand.

Ma Potts ignored the gesture. ‘Your friend’s lodged himself in one of my best rooms. He’s paid in advance, but if you could ask him to make this his last night, I’d be grateful.’

Harry nodded, and the publican turned away to start clearing empties from the other tables. Now that the plant hunters had left, the taproom was quieter. In one corner, the chucker-outer sat alone, smoking a cheroot as he gazed mournfully into the middle distance.

‘Help me upstairs, will ya, boy?’ the Irishman asked.

Harry held out an arm, and the man used it to push himself to his feet, then hooked one hand around Harry’s shoulder. With his other, he picked up his hat and wedged it on to his matted brown hair. ‘Up we go,’ he said cheerfully.

They tottered away from the table, and Harry kicked open the swing doors to the staircase. The Irishman’s arm was looped over both his shoulders now, and up close he smelt oddly fragrant, a blend of stale cologne and toffee. Harry was just starting to wish that he’d ignored his conscience, and followed Jack and the boys to the Cremorne, when they reached the landing. ‘Well, this is me,’ the Irishman said, fumbling in one pocket.

Out came a large iron key, which the man prodded against the door, missing the lock by a good three inches. Was he really cursed with seizures, Harry wondered, or simply drunk as a lord?

‘Here,’ Harry said.

The Irishman relinquished the key, and Harry inserted it into the lock. It twisted to the left, and he pushed open the door and stepped back.

But the Irishman remained where he was, leaning against the wall, staring at Harry with eyes of bright, steely blue. He was younger than Harry had thought – no more than forty-five. ‘You’ve the patience of an angel, boy,’ he said, looking at him in wonder. ‘And the face.’

Harry frowned.

‘Don’t you worry, lad,’ the man added with a grin, ‘I’m not one for the sins of Greece. Never have been, despite all offers. Lorcan Darke,’ he said, extending a hand.

Tentatively, Harry took it. The man’s grip was firm and dry, his gaze unwavering. ‘You’ll come in for a dram, Harry?’ he asked.

‘How d’you know my name?’

‘Sure, you told it to that harridan downstairs! Come on – lend you some Dutch courage before you join your pals at the Cremorne.’

Harry wondered how the man could have known that, too. When his mother had come round from her convulsions, she would remember nothing of what had occurred. So much the better, Harry had often thought.

Darke pushed open the door and, in the light thrown by the landing sconce, Harry had a sense of a room crammed with more possessions that might have been usual in rented lodgings.

‘You’ll forgive the mess, I’m not much of a housekeeper,’ Darke said, indicating a chair by the bed. ‘Take a pew.’

Harry picked his way through the clutter and sat down, as the Irishman addressed himself to the gas-lamp. At length, the room flooded with light, and Harry could discern its contents more clearly. On an occasional table in the corner lay some kind of tobacco pipe, with a candlestick and some little pots of unguents scattered around it. Three leather trunks were stacked side by side against the wall, one of them covered in a dustsheet. Laid beside them was a bedroll and blanket. It seemed that Mr Darke had been sleeping on the floor, rather than in the bed, which Harry could see now was covered in little squares of ochre paper.

Stooping to pick up one that had fallen to the floor, Harry’s eyes widened to find a daguerreotype of a naked woman leaning over an ottoman, her head angled back to the camera. The woman’s face was dark and alluring, her eyes like a cat’s, and she wore a curious necklace of coiled silver around her throat.

‘Beautiful women,’ Darke said with a wry chuckle. ‘My greatest weakness – and my greatest joy.’

Harry passed the image back, cheeks burning, and Darke turned and started rummaging in one of the trunks. ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, holding up a half-drunk bottle of whiskey. ‘A taste o’ home.’

Darke stood there for a moment, motionless in the glow of the lamp, suddenly fixed in time like some ancient chieftain or idol, bright blue eyes gleaming in his saturnine face. Then, as he stepped forward, one boot caught on the dustsheet, and Harry saw that it wasn’t covering a piece of luggage at all, but a wooden crate topped with a pitched, glazed roof.

‘Is that a Wardian case?’ Harry asked.

Darke glanced round. ‘So you’re a plantsman, are you?’

‘I am,’ Harry muttered under his breath. ‘Or was . . .’

‘This case was built by Dr Ward himself back in 1852,’ Darke said proudly, tapping a black fingernail on the glazed gable. ‘The year he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society.’

Harry nodded. Most people in Chelsea knew the story of the lucky Dr Ward. A medical man with a keen interest in the natural world, Ward had stumbled on his discovery quite by accident, whilst making a study of the life-cycle of the caterpillar. Having left one of his subjects in a soil-filled jar overnight, Ward had been astonished the next morning to find a baby fern sprouting inside it. He’d realised then that inside a small sealed glasshouse, a plant could thrive without water, or even fresh air. Ward’s patented contraption had soon become indispensable to botanists, used to transport live plants from one part of the world to another. Harry had seen one once – conveyed in triumph up the King’s Road towards Mr Weeks’s nursery, verdant with exotic foliage – but it had been hard to get a close look past all the crowds.

‘Sláinte,’ Darke said, passing Harry the grimy toothcup he’d found in his trunk. ‘Help yourself.’

Harry poured himself a modest measure of the amber-coloured liquid. Now that his eyes had adjusted, he was able to identify more of the botanical equipment that lay scattered about the room. The stacked wooden frames of a plant-press. A varnished box and viewfinder that could only constitute a daguerreotype camera. A cylindrical container with a hinged lid and shoulder strap that Harry knew to be a vasculum – a sort of reinforced satchel that horticulturalists used to carry plant specimens without crushing them. On its front was a plaque engraved with the name ‘L. R. C. Darke’.

‘Are you a plant hunter, then?’ Harry asked.

‘I am . . . or was,’ Darke echoed, with the ghost of a smile. He took off his rough tweed coat and laid it carefully on one of the trunks. ‘Now get on and wet your beak, Harry! You’re making me nervous.’

Harry obediently sipped his Bushmills as Darke set about lighting the candle on the table. A moment later, the man’s small hands began to flit back and forth with a dexterity Harry wouldn’t have imagined possible just a few minutes earlier – plucking up a glass jar; scooping out some black paste with a teaspoon and placing it on a ceramic plate; using the flame of the candle to set the paste alight. Soon, Harry smelt the sweet, herbal reek he’d caught in Darke’s clothes, and realised that this must be opium, and that the man’s entire being was saturated in it. How could such a raddled specimen as this be a plant hunter, Harry wondered, thinking again of the swashbuckling heroes he’d seen downstairs in the taproom.

‘Ever partaken?’ Darke asked, using the teaspoon to transfer the burning syrup into the bowl of his pipe.

Harry shook his head.

‘Wise man,’ Darke said, lips clamping on to the teat of the pipe as he drew the pale fumes deep into his lungs. ‘There you are,’ he murmured, as though greeting an old friend. Then he was silent for a time, his pink-rimmed eyes half-closed, so that Harry wondered if he’d fallen asleep.

‘What brought you here?’ Harry asked.

Darke’s eyes flickered open. ‘Finish your drink, boy, and I’ll tell you,’ he said, setting down the pipe, the smouldering bowl resting on the side plate.

Harry did as he was told, gasping at the heat of the whiskey, then looked up at Darke expectantly.

‘You’ll have heard of Lord Kinlathan?’ Darke asked.

Harry shook his head.

‘Rich man from County Meath,’ Darke said. ‘Decent sort, all told, and imbued with an insatiable appetite for exotic plants. Sent me on a number of expeditions to the Far East – China, Japan, Malay.’ Another of his dry chuckles: ‘He’s got an estate that he likes to fill with the brightest new trinkets. Or liked, I should say, for he died last year, and his son and heir, in his infinite wisdom, has refused to pay me for my last expedition. A slug in the Lord’s vineyard, that’s what I call the likes of him! So I caught the boat here instead. To try my hand at Chelsea.’

‘Did you manage to sell your stock?’ Harry asked.

Darke smiled. ‘The right question, young Harry. Everything I collected made it safely home to Ireland. Over the South China Sea; through the Indian Ocean, across the South fuckin’ Atlantic!’ Darke reached for his pipe and drew on it angrily. ‘But one wee crossing of the Irish Sea and I lose the lot. Take a closer look at that Wardian case, would you? Go on!’

Harry examined the miniature greenhouse. One of the glass panes at the back was missing.

‘A storm not twenty miles from Holyhead,’ Darke said. ‘Seawater all over my cuttings. Seedstock ruined. Bulbs poisoned. Everything lost.’ He let out a mirthless laugh and sucked again on his pipe. The reek of opium filled the room now, making Harry feel a little nauseous. Surely there was a danger of it seeping under the door, drawing the attention of Ma Potts, or worse, her chucker-outer . . .

‘Ah, don’t look at me like that, Harry,’ Darke said, ‘like a wrathful angel! You can’t begrudge me my pipe. It steadies the seizures.’

‘You sure it doesn’t cause them?’

Darke grinned. ‘So your mother suffers with the same affliction?’

Harry nodded, not bothering to correct Darke’s use of the present tense.

‘I had my first seizure last year,’ Darke went on. ‘Caught the blackwater fever in Hunan province, and it brought the condition on.’ He put down his pipe and looked at Harry, his eyes seeming to penetrate deep into Harry’s innermost thoughts. ‘It’s an interesting region, Hunan,’ he continued. ‘Full of undiscovered flora. You’ve heard of the icicle tree, I’ll wager?’

Harry knitted his brows. ‘That’s just a legend.’

‘A legend, says he!’ Darke exclaimed. ‘Well, Alexander the Great thought it real enough! As did Marco Polo. The most beautiful tree on God’s green earth, people say. Gorgeous pinnate leaves. Lacy and deciduous – a bit like Pistacia sinensis. Know what that is?’

‘The Chinese pistache?’

‘Good lad,’ Darke said, the creases in his sun-browned cheeks deepening as he smiled, as though his lips were set in parentheses. ‘The foliage alone would commend it, of course. But the blooms – sweet Mary Mother of God.’ Darke shook his head: ‘As clean and white as an icicle bathed in frost . . .’

‘Like a horse chestnut?’

‘Horse chestnut my arse!’ Darke scoffed. ‘This tree makes Magnolia grandiflora look like a roadside weed! The flowers are like frosted daggers, Harry. Exquisite in every way. And the tree’s temperate. And hardy. Imagine that. What a showstopper! It’d be in every garden in the Western World . . .’

Harry shrugged, and Darke widened his eyes, which were moist now, their pupils like chasms. ‘Ah well, another disbeliever,’ he said. His eyes began to close then, his lips moving soundlessly.

‘I should leave you to your rest, Mr Darke,’ Harry said, climbing to his feet.

‘Human kindness . . .’ Darke murmured.

‘Excuse me?’

‘The rarest of treasures. Harry Compton . . . human kindness . . .’

Harry caught Darke’s shoulders just before he hit the floor. Dropping to one knee, he supported the Irishman’s slender frame, then lowered a hand to his ribs and eased him down on to the bedroll.

‘Thank you,’ Darke said, as he curled up on his side. ‘You’re a kind boy, so you are.’

Harry pulled the blanket up over him. ‘Ma Potts has asked that this be your last night here,’ he said, and to his surprise, Darke responded with a nod, meek as a child.

Having checked that the opium pipe was fully extinguished, Harry turned down the gas-lamp and snuffed out the candle. ‘Well, good night, Mr Darke,’ he said, receiving nothing in return but a slow, rasping snore.

Thankfully, Harry made it out of the pub without encountering either Ma Potts or Edwin the chucker-outer. The King’s Road was quieter now, the only sounds a few distant cheers from the Cremorne Pleasure Gardens. Harry set off towards them, still feeling strangely unsettled by his encounter with Lorcan Darke. So this must be the seamier side of planthunting, he realised – the failed, lonely aspect that no one spoke of, as far from the strutting peacock of a Paxton Crosse or Donald Moncrieff as could be imagined. He rounded the dogleg of the King’s Road, thinking now of how Mr Darke had seemed able to stare into his heart, to read his hopes and ambitions. The man had something mystical about him . . . Harry stopped and shook himself. Darke was an opium-eater, a pipe-dreamer. And as for that trove of Oriental erotica . . .

A pair of dandies came swaying through the shadows, leather soles clipping the cobbles. ‘They’ve shut up shop,’ one of them declared. ‘Doxies all taken. You’re too late!’

Sure enough, the gates of the Cremorne were locked with a chain, two beefy men in bowlers stationed outside, each brandishing a nightstick. ‘Fuck off out of it, pretty boy,’ one of them said, and Harry felt a great wave of lassitude wash over him, as though the whiskey and opium fumes were only now taking effect. He would just have to catch up with Jack Turner and his pals another night, he thought, pulling his coat tight around his shoulders and steering his steps in the direction of Mrs Pincham’s boarding house.