A Gentleman By Any Other Name (27 page)

Still with his palms pressed on the tabletop, Chance looked at Ainsley. “Or we simply remain here, do nothing, and then they can have their fine battle without us. This way, we're fighting on their terms, especially if we're wrong about the point of ambush.”

“Yes, I thought of that, too. But we'd only be prolonging the inevitable. Only one gang can control Romney Marsh, and for our own protection there's no choice but to have the Black Ghost in charge. We don't need to bring any more of London's attention to this area, to Becket Hall, no matter that my son is a part of the war effort.”

“How many men can we count on? I'll need at least forty of our best on the
Respite,
and Court can't be left shorthanded on shore. Oh, and one other detail, the very first question I asked, I believe.
When?
”

“Did you have plans for this evening? Possibly something including Julia and a few words of contrition and affection?”

Chance looked at Ainsley. “Tonight? Why didn't you wait until after dinner to tell me about this?”

Ainsley lifted his wineglass once more. “Because I only had corroboration on Gautier's information from Billy a few hours ago. Clearly we were meant to have little time to prepare. And if you must know, I had planned to take charge of the
Respite
myself and hope you and Court wouldn't kill each other as you waited on shore for the land battle.”

“And would Odette know that?” Chance asked. “That you planned to be on the
Respite?
”

“She seems to know most things. Why?”

“Well, Cap'n, I can't be sure. But I think, were I you, I'd leave off letting her smear any more of that grease on my ankle.”

Ainsley frowned for a moment, then gave out a short, rueful chuckle as he collapsed against the back of the chair. “Well, I'll be damned. And the woman dares to claim she is a good
mambo.
”

“She probably thinks she's saving your life, old man.” Chance rang for someone to come help Ainsley remove his bandages, then said, “I'll have to hunt down Court. Jacko and Billy, too. It's going to be a long day and night.”

“Yes. But you might want to also find time to speak to Julia at some point. I want your head fully in the battle tonight.”

Now it was Chance's turn for a rueful chuckle. “In that case, I believe I need to stay as far from Julia as possible, because if she learns what we're about, I won't have a head left to take into battle.”

“And do you perhaps wonder
why
she would be so upset to learn you were about to put yourself in danger?”

“I know why, Cap'n. I just don't know what in blazes to do about it. And before you offer, this is one lesson I have to learn on my own.”

J
ULIA TOOK A STEADYING
breath, then knocked on the heavy wooden door before depressing the latch and entering, just as Fanny had instructed her.

The room was located in the very back of the house, reached only after passing through what looked to be a deserted storage room, as there was nothing of note inside it other than a small rug and several crates of differing shapes and sizes stacked along the walls.

That, and a mixture of not-quite-pleasant yet rather evocative smells that had grown stronger as she'd approached the second door.

The room she entered now was full of eerie shadows dancing on the walls, floor and ceiling, the windows covered with black cloth, both light and shadow the result of the glow of dozens and dozens of candles. Thick candles on china plates. Tapers. Stubby candles stuck into bottles covered in what looked like the wax from generations of previously burned candles. Red candles, white. Blue, green. Black.

Julia advanced toward the brightest concentration of light and realized she was approaching a rude altar. The thick wooden cross surprised her, as did small paintings clearly meant to represent the Madonna and Child and several gilt halo-topped saints, all arrayed amid several odd-shaped and multicolored, corked bottles. Was that a grasshopper floating in the yellow one?

At the back of the altar, tacked to the wall, was a yellowed piece of parchment with the name Isabella crudely printed on it in red paint.

In the very center of the altar, directly in front of the cross, sat a crystal bowl filled with bits of this and that, nothing easily recognizable except for a few feathers and shells and a delicate circlet of carefully braided, nearly black hair….

“You don't be touching that,” Odette said from so close behind Julia that she gave an involuntary yelp of surprise. “That be none of your business.”

Julia had quickly withdrawn her hand, folding it with her other hand in front of her as she turned to face Odette. “Of course not. Forgive me.” And then, as was her greatest curse, she gave in to curiosity. “Isabella. Is she…she's Cassandra's mother?”

“You've seen enough for now. Here, put this in your pocket.”

Julia automatically held out her hand, surprised to feel heat inside the small black cloth bag tied with red ribbon. “But what is—”

“So many questions. Now you act for me. Come. You're needed.”

“What?” Julia blinked as Odette turned and began shuffling toward the door in her ancient slippers. “Odette, wait, please. I'm needed where? For what?”

“I have the answer for that, for the questions. I could conjure me up a bad
loa
to keep your tongue silent.”

“Well,” Julia said, stung. “There's no need to be nasty, Odette.”

The woman chuckled and kept moving, passing into the other room, where she began rummaging through a dark wooden chest, coming out with a large, curiously bulging cloth bag. The woman seemed to live surrounded by bags, bottles. And crosses? “A bad
loa?
Or perhaps you'd pray to a saint instead? I had no idea you know anything about saints. Are you a Catholic
and
a…a voodoo?”

Odette straightened, one hand to the base of her spine, and held out the bag. “Here. You carry this for an old woman. Be useful.”

Julia wanted to say no, but Odette's dark brown eyes had widened so that Julia could see a ring of stark white completely encircling her irises, and she realized she'd just thought better of that idea.

Odette, with her back once more to Julia, pressed on an area of the wall, and a part of that wall seemed to slide back on itself. She then padded toward a steep, narrow flight of stairs that twisted around on itself twice and seemed to go all the way down into nothingness. Julia followed, her curiosity surfacing again as she realized this could be nothing else save a secret way to exit and enter Becket Hall.

And Ainsley had ordered it built, because he had ordered Becket Hall built. How many other passages like this were there? Surely where there was one, there were more. And why did Ainsley feel they were needed?

Once at the bottom of the staircase, Odette patted her hand along the stone wall, located a large iron key and slid it in the lock of a door Julia hadn't even noticed in the darkness.

And then they were outside, in the darkness beneath the terrace, and Odette closed the door behind them, locking it once more. There was no latch, Julia noticed. Indeed, the door had been neatly covered with stone that matched the other stone that made up Becket Hall.

“Very clever,” Julia said, then followed Odette toward a very ordinary wooden door that brought them out from beneath the terrace and into the bright morning sun. They turned and headed toward the stables and the village beyond.

After a few minutes Odette spoke again. “I saw the way you bandaged that foolish boy who was shot. The daughter of the priest, you learned to nurse the sick and the hurt?”

Julia hastened to keep up, for Odette might shuffle in her slippers, but the tall, long-legged woman covered ground amazingly quickly. Clearly they were headed toward the village. “My father was not a priest, Odette. He was a minister. A vicar. But no matter. Is someone injured?”

“One was, a week ago, in a fall down his own stairs in the dark, in order to save his candle. But he's mending, his head only cracked a little bit. It's the other you will treat.”

Julia stopped quickly, as if she'd run into a wall. “Treat? You want me to
treat
someone? Why can't you treat this person? You treated Spencer—and Ainsley. And surely there's a doctor in the village?”

Odette paused a moment to turn her white-toothed grin on Julia. “And he'll doctor again once his head isn't cracked no more.”

“Oh, God,” Julia said, her heart pounding as they continued on their way. Had Fanny known this when she'd sent Julia to Odette's room? Silly question. Of course she had. This was a test, another test. What did she have to do to prove herself to these people?

And what did that matter anyway, since she had no intention of staying at Becket Hall now that she and Chance were no longer…no, she wouldn't think about that. “But what about you, Odette? Surely you can help?” she asked as she hopped up onto the wooden flagway.

“Again, so many questions,” Odette scolded, clucking her tongue. They passed two buildings, then turned to climb some rickety steps that ran along the side of the shoemaker's shop. The woman stopped, huffing and puffing, on the small landing and banged hard on the door with the side of her fist. “Stand where Ollie can see you when the door opens. Now we see how much the fool this man be.”

“Yes,” Julia groused, also out of breath. “We'll see if he's even more the fool than I am, chasing after you like a ninny.”

The door opened and the older man Julia had spied through the window of his shop the day she and Morgan had come to the village stepped out onto the now-crowded landing.

“You!” he shouted, pointing one dye-stained finger at Odette. “What you doin' here? I told 'em, don't none of you bring her, we don't want her here! You were so smart, you and your mumbo jumbo. You said we were protected. Safe! My woman gone, my kiddies gone. You won't lay those bloody black hands on this one—God as my witness, you won't!”

Julia looked from Ollie to Odette, saw the woman flinch at the words as if she'd been physically attacked.

“I won't touch. I brought Chance's woman. Stupid Odette will only watch and learn from the English lady. Now go away, foolish man. Go drink yourself drunk.”

And with that, she gave Ollie a hard push on the shoulder and Julia had to grab the handrail as he went stumbling past her down the stairs…just as a woman's scream pierced the air inside the building.

“What was—?” And then Julia understood. “Oh, no. No!” she protested as Odette grabbed her arm and dragged her inside to where a large-bellied woman writhed on a rude, rope-strung bed. “You can't honestly expect
me
to—”

Odette's grin was back. “Ollie knows no one else here can help her no more, save me. He been bringing in everyone and nobody does nothing. He waits, and now I may be too late, foolish man. So many foolish men! This one, she been screaming for two days now. He don't know you, but he knows you're Chance's woman. Don't know what you can do, but he hears how you helped that boy on the Marsh.”

The entire time Odette had been speaking, she'd also been stripping off her rather frayed sweater, before yanking the bag from Julia's nerveless fingers and spreading its contents on a scarred wooden table.

“So…so I'm just here as a part of some subterfuge on your part? I don't have to
do
anything?” As the woman on the bed moved, screaming once more, Julia, although horribly ashamed of her reaction, began to relax.

Odette's bright smile flashed in the dim room. “Oh, you'll help. That baby's turned round sideways, I'm betting, ain't never coming out without Odette calling to him, putting her hands on him. Another foolish man for the world, this one stubborn, too, like his papa.”

She picked up an evil-looking iron contraption that resembled a huge shears with wide, rather spooned ends, held it up as she took a cloth-wrapped packet from the pile on the table and shook it in the direction of the metal as she chanted a few words that may have been French—Julia was trembling too much to pay close attention.

Now the woman on the bed spotted Odette. If she'd screamed before, it was nothing to the terrified shriek that came out of her mouth as she tried to shift her bulk higher on the bed, her swollen bare belly now visible above the wrinkled blanket.

Grabbing an enormous wooden knitting needle in her free hand, Odette advanced upon the bed. “Come. You get on the bed and sit her chest the way the men they sit a horse. Facing me. We push her legs high, you hold them high and wide and we get this done.”

“What!” Julia shot a panicky look toward the woman to see her huge belly begin to move, seem to come to a point as the woman grabbed on to the iron headboard and screamed yet again.

“You look here to me! You listen here to me! You do as Odette says or they both die!”

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,” Julia then told the woman on the bed, whose eyes had now rolled back in her head. “Dear God, Odette,” she said as she hiked up her skirts, prepared to climb onto the woman's chest, “I think she's fainted.”

“Good. Better for her, better for us,” Odette said, placing her hand on the rather pink, wet sheet. “Her waters are gone,” she said, tossing the knitting needle away, much to Julia's relief.

Then Odette worked herself onto the mattress on her knees, placed the horrible iron contraption on the bed and reached beneath the woman, grabbing the underside of the pale thighs with her large black, pink-palmed hands. With a grunt, she spread, then lifted the woman's thin legs, ordering Julia to grab them, pull them toward the woman's chest.

“Go to your knees, girl,” she ordered Julia. “Else you want to take her breath.”

Julia was beyond so much as a consideration of dis obeying this intimidating, clearly confident woman, and only did as Odette said, then watched, marveling, as Odette spit on her palms, then, unbelievably, plunged one hand into the woman's body. “Oh, God. Sweet, merciful God, hear our prayer. The Lord is my shep herd, I shall not want….”

With one hand on the woman's tight belly, the other inside her past the wrist, Odette began chanting again. A soothing, almost melodic chant that blended with Julia's fervently whispered prayer, her words a gentle, encouraging mix of English, French and something else.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…”

“I move him now,” Odette said quietly as Julia could see the woman's contraction easing. “You come to me now, little one. You don't want no big, ugly dents in your foolish head, so you come to Odette now. You know what I have and you don't want me to touch you with it, hmm? You do as Odette commands. Ah, yes, little one. And now Odette, she leaves before your sweet mama she bites my hand off.”

Julia's eyes went wide when the woman's belly seemed to grow into a point once more, then slowly empty of its burden.

“I see him!” Julia shouted, filled with sudden joy, nearly losing her grip on the woman's thighs. “I can see his head!” Then she fell silent as nothing else happened, and panic returned. “Get him out, Odette! He's not coming out!”

“So anxious. We need one more pain to help with the push, don't we, sweet baby? Just one more…”