Amanda Scott (6 page)

Hearing another shriek from her companion, Maggie reached over and unceremoniously yanked Fiona back down onto the seat by her skirt, saying sternly, “Mungo knows where to go, Fiona. You only confuse him when you shout at him like that, and you make a dreadful spectacle of yourself besides.”

“But he will gang awry, Miss Maggie, as sure as check, for Mungo be a man wha’ canna find his ain stockings twixt his feet and his boots in the purest dawn light.”

“He has only to find Essex Street,” Maggie said, “and since we know it ends at the river Thames, that cannot be so hard.”

“London be a mickling large city,” Fiona said grimly.

“But a civilized one, by the look of it, and bright and clean withal,” Maggie said, gazing out the window and remembering that the greater part of London had been rebuilt some eighty years before, after the Great Fire. The red and ochre brickwork of the buildings they were passing had grown mellow with time, but neither houses nor public buildings were yet so soot-covered as their counterparts in Edinburgh.

The coach had entered the city from Hampstead along Gray’s Inn Road, and most of the residential streets she saw were pleasantly uniform in appearance from end to end. More architectural variety occurred in shopping streets like Chancery Lane and Holborn, where new shops had popped up among more ancient buildings and where even the latter appeared to have been fitted with up-to-date fronts. Gaily colored signs hung over every shop, to guide illiterate coachmen, and along with the colorful coaches, sedan chairs, and the vivid costumes of the pedestrians, they created a delightfully cheerful scene.

The streets were cobbled with small, round stones, as were the footways at all but the most important thoroughfares, where there were flagstones. Fascinated by all the activity, Maggie saw a boy riding astride his father’s cane as if it were a horse, and a man playing a flute on a street corner. When the coach slowed near an intersection, a playful struggle erupted between a pretty girl and two lads trying to steal kisses from her, and Maggie laughed to see her snatch off one tormentor’s wig, revealing his shaven head, then dash away with both lads in pursuit. Fiona clicked her tongue at such saucy behavior, just as if she herself always behaved with impeccable propriety.

A gingerbread seller at the corner rang a bell to call attention to her delicacies, and the aroma of hot gingerbread wafted above other, less pleasant smells as the coach turned from the wide road into a much narrower one, where Maggie saw a man drinking wine from a bottle and a woman leaning against a building, suckling a baby, apparently unconcerned by jostling passersby. The crowds that only moments before had looked jolly and gay now seemed rougher, of a different class altogether, and when Maggie saw two street louts leering at her, she sat back quickly against the squabs, shaken and a little alarmed.

“That daft Mungo ha’ taken the wrong turning,” Fiona said sharply. “I’ll tell him tae turn right aboot and gae back.”

But before she could put her head outside again, Maggie yanked her back. “No, don’t,” she said. “Do nothing more to call attention to us. I don’t like the way those men are looking at us, and Mungo must have realized as quickly as we did that he has mistaken the turning. We’ll soon be at the end of this dreadful street, and surely the next will be more like all the others we have seen before now.”

However, instead of finding themselves in a more pleasant residential street, like those they had seen earlier, they discovered that the next road was even narrower and more dismal than the last. It was darker, too, although Maggie soon realized that the effect was caused by jutting upper stories of buildings on either side that nearly met overhead, cutting off most of the sunlight. The coach was drawing notice from more passersby now, and the looks she encountered were not friendly. She wanted to shout at Mungo to get them out of there, but she was certain she would be wiser to draw no more attention to herself.

Feeling panic stir when men began to crowd around the coach, jeering and banging on the wooden sides, she remained stiffly upright on her seat, looking neither right nor left and praying that Fiona would have the sense to do likewise. Sorry now that she had not heeded Fiona’s warnings, Maggie knew she ought at least to have made Mungo repeat his instructions to be sure he had them clear in his mind. She could hear him now shouting at the men to stand back, but not one of the ones pressing so near and peering in the windows at her heeded him.

The coach slowed more and more, then stopped altogether and began rather sickeningly to rock back and forth.

“They’ll ha’ us over,” Fiona shrieked, grabbing Maggie’s arm. “By St. Andrew’s cross, mistress, what are we tae do?”

Wishing she carried a weapon like Kate’s, or better yet, a loaded pistol, Maggie pressed her lips together, determined not to shriek her terror aloud like Fiona but to retain at least a semblance of her dignity. Her mind raced, for she knew they stood in grave danger, but she found it nearly impossible to think clearly. So many people surrounded the coach now that the light was all but cut off. Then the window nearest her shattered in an explosion of glass, and a leering face pressed toward her.

Angrily, she snatched up a small satchel from beneath her feet and hit the man, trying to push his face away, but he snatched the bag and disappeared. On the other side, the coach door opened and hands began grabbing at Fiona and then at her. The older woman struck out with her fists and kicked anyone she could reach, but she was being dragged bodily from the coach.

Maggie grabbed at Fiona’s skirt, trying to keep her from being pulled from the dangerously lurching coach, but then she felt her own arms grabbed.

“No!” Fighting desperately to protect herself, she could do nothing more to help Fiona, who was wrenched mercilessly from the coach and swallowed by the crush. Maggie fought like a cornered badger, but soon she too was jerked from the coach and flung into the crowd. Kicking and screaming, terrified and beyond reasonable thought, she felt hands pawing at her breasts, at her face, her bottom, and even between her naked legs, until suddenly she was falling, choking, unable to breathe, into blackness.

When she came to her senses, she was lying, bruised and battered, on the filthy footway, and the street was oddly silent. Feeling sick, she tried to sit, tried to order her dazed thoughts to recall what had happened. She could not seem to concentrate. Leaning against the wall of the nearest building, she held her aching head and waited for her dizziness to ease. When she could make herself look around, she saw that the area was not entirely deserted, but no one appeared to be paying any attention to her, and there was no sign of her coach or of Fiona or Mungo. Remembering her messages and feeling frantically to find them still safe inside her corset, she drew a deep breath and shut her eyes again in profound relief.

A hand touched her shoulder.

Shrieking, Maggie jerked away, hit her head against the stone wall, and nearly blacked out again.

“Be easy, girlie,” a scratchy but discernibly female voice said. “Them pesky louts oughtn’t to have hurt such a pretty gel as yerself, but it could ha’ been a sight worse did they not all run off wi’ yer coach, and no doubt ye’ll be fit as a fiddle in due time. Have a nip from me bottle now, and ye’ll soon be feeling much more the thing.”

The woman’s accent was strange, but Maggie understood enough to believe she meant only kindness. Still, the smell of cheap gin right under her nose nearly led to her undoing. Turning away and swallowing the hot, sour taste that roiled into her throat, she struggled to attain a more respectable position and looked at her would-be savior, wishing she could think clearly.

Dressed in tattered black rags, the person she saw was definitely female but member of a class Maggie knew little about. In the Highlands, the poorest of folk generally looked respectable, and even those who liked their whisky overmuch never reeked of the stuff like this old crone did. Above the smell of cheap gin wafted the even more repulsive odor of a long-unwashed and no doubt diseased body. When the bottle was pressed to her lips again, Maggie nearly vomited.

Collecting herself, she pushed the bottle away and muttered, “No, thank you.” Her throat felt as if it were coated with sand, her breasts hurt, her gown was in tatters, and the knot on the back of her head ached unbearably, but with the woman still staring at her, clearly waiting for her to say more, she exerted herself enough to add, “Perhaps I might have some water.”

“Bless her.” The woman glanced around and added, as if to an audience, “Water, she says.” Her laugh sounded like a witch’s cackle. “Ye dassn’t drink the water here, girlie. Tastes of what floats in it.” Cackling again, she reached into the road, scooped up a handful of steaming horse manure, and waved it under Maggie’s nose. “D’ye like that?” When Maggie recoiled from the stench, the crone tossed the mess away, cackling again and holding her sides until she realized that gin was spilling out of her bottle, and clapped her filthy hand over the lip.

Maggie watched, fascinated, when the woman lifted the bottle again to drink, but she paused with it still inches from her lips, wrinkling her nose distastefully. Peering myopically at the dirty bottle, she grimaced, grabbed a handful of her skirt, and used it to wipe the opening before drinking. Then, after taking a long pull of the contents, she looked at Maggie again. “What ye looking at, girlie? Ain’t ye never seed no one take a drink afore? Ye’ll get used to such an ye linger hereabouts.”

Drawing a steadying breath, Maggie said as calmly as she could, “I have no wish to linger. Do you perchance know what became of my servants and coach?”

The woman chortled. “The dead don’t linger neither, girl.”

“Dead!” The word echoed through her mind as if it were bouncing off hollow walls in a darkened room, but it did not seem to disturb her. She said simply, “They cannot be dead.”

“Oh, aye. Put up a grand fight, didn’t they? The woman, a-screeching and a-carrying on like a banshee about what they was doing to her, so they was bound to hesh her up, and the man … Well, he didn’t fight so much, ’cause his head were broke open when they toppled yon coach ’n he come down headfirst on them stones. Sure ye don’t want a slug o’ me gin, dearie?”

Maggie, her sensibilities numb now, shook her head, then wished she had not when new waves of painful dizziness struck her. Closing her eyes, she waited until they had passed. She was having difficulty collecting her thoughts. “What … what became of my coach?”

The woman shrugged. “Dunno, mistress, but ye oughta be that grateful them louts forgot about yerself a-laying there. Coach were there one minute, gorn the next, and them with it. Worth a pile of money, it were, and such dassn’t linger long on streets in Alsatia. Dead bodies neither,” she added thoughtfully.

“Alsatia?”

“Aye, that’s where we be, right enough.”

“Nonsense, we are in London.”

The woman cackled again. “Lord love ye, dearie, but o’ course we be in London. Alsatia b’ain’t nowheres else.” Looking around at her make-believe audience, she added, “Poor girl be touched in the head, I’m thinking.”

Maggie struggled to stand up, holding onto the wall for support. Her head still swam, but her legs felt steadier than she had feared might be the case. The woman was much her own height, and now that she looked eye to eye with her, she realized she was not as ancient as she had first thought her to be.

“Please, what is your name?” she asked.

“They calls me Peg Short.”

“I am Margaret MacDrumin,” Maggie said politely.

“Scotch, then?”

“Yes, I am Scottish.” She watched Peg Short warily, knowing that acknowledging her heritage might prove dangerous, but Peg only nodded wisely.

“Aye, so I thought from the name, but ye talks so pretty, I warn’t sure. S’pect them louts didn’t leave ye no money, mistress. How will ye eat?”

Not only was her money gone, but Maggie discovered that the thieves had also taken a ring her father had given her on her sixteenth birthday. Neither observation seemed to distress her, and it occurred to her only now that she had scarcely blinked at being told that both Mungo and Fiona, servants—nay, good friends—whom she had known her entire life, had perished at the hands of the ruffians who had attacked her coach. That she was not sobbing with grief seemed most peculiar, but she had not the slightest inclination to cry. She had no particular desire to do anything, except perhaps to lie down and go to sleep.

That would not do at all. Clearly, her mind had been affected in much the same way as when she had learned of the defeat at Culloden and other dreadful events that had occurred—thanks to the English and certain Scottish traitors—in the time since then. It was certainly not the first time she had observed that her mind tended to take on a sort of protective casing when she was particularly distressed. It would be better for her, she thought, if the odd calm that overcame her at such times would only make it easier to think, but that was not the case. In the thoughts that flitted through her mind without reason or meaning, only one was clear. She did not want to stay where she was.

“I must get to Essex Street,” she told Peg Short.

Peg’s eyes widened. “Essex Street, is it? And just who might ye be knowin’ in that fine neighborhood, girlie?”

“My arrival is anticipated at the house of the widow Viscountess Primrose,” Maggie said. “Do you know where that is?”

“Aye, mayhap, but why should I help ye? Ye’ve naught to give old Peg in return for ’er kindness, that’s sure.”

“No, but Lady Primrose will reward you if you will but convey me safely to her house. If you cannot take me so far, perhaps you will just help me get out of this neighborhood. If I can find a safer street, perhaps I can hire a chair—”

“Lord love ye, mistress, but no honest chairman would take ye up, looking like ye do, even if ye had gelt, which ye don’t.”

Maggie bit her lip. Peg Short was right. “Then what is to become of me?”

Peg looked upward for a long moment as if she sought counsel from the heavens. Then, looking shrewdly at Maggie, she said, “Be it worth ten bob to ye, then, to find Essex Street?”