Pugg's Portmanteau

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Pugg's Portmanteau Page 40

by DM Bryan


  “What happens now?” said Glossolalia to the boy.

  “We say our prayers, and then we have our supper. Bread and cheese by the ounce, four of the first and one and a half of the other, and half a pint of beer for those of us over six.”

  “Will you not be late?” said Glossolalia, who preferred the coachman’s solid hand to the narrow palm of the boy, and besides, the youth no longer seemed willing to help her climb into the coach. Instead, she could see that he held something pale between his fingers, a scrap of paper and no more. “You should not delay and miss your meal. I would not have you punished on my account.”

  The boy held out the paper to her.

  “What’s this?” said she, and she felt such fear of that page that she could not understand herself. She blamed her trepidation on her surroundings and on her long exertions that day. When had she herself eaten last?

  “If this is some message you wish me to carry,” she said to the boy, “I cannot take it. I will not do anything that might offend the law.”

  The boy said nothing in reply, only urged the paper into her hand. Despite the beating of her heart, she took it, feeling the rough scrape of the page against her glove. It is his face that frightens me so, she thought. His face.

  “Open it,” said the boy.

  Glossolalia turned the paper over in her hand, finding it unsealed. But she made no move to unfold it. “I can carry this if you promise you do no harm, “said she. “Now that I see you closer, I would like to believe you an honest boy.”

  “Open it,” repeated the youth.

  “I cannot read by distant lantern light. I shall look it over later, when I am nearer to a candle.”

  But the boy stood waiting—he would not be denied. Glossolalia could find no more excuses, and at last she opened the paper.

  Bridewell’s yard had quite emptied. Not a prisoner remained but the boy, pressed up against the side of the carriage. The driver, eager to be gone, looked down from his seat, begging to know if the lady needed a hand up after all. Glossolalia, with an energy she knew she possessed but found few opportunities to use, shook her head and scrambled up the step of the coach all by herself. And no sooner was she seated than she reached out and pulled the boy up behind her. He came unstuck from Bridewell’s wet yard, shooting into the inside of the coach like a cork from a bottle. Almost before she knew what she’d done, he was seated at her feet, the capacious folds of her petticoats tumbling over him like a blanket. The youth’s paper, she tucked into the bosom of her gown, and as she pulled her shawl straight, she felt its edge, sharp over her heart.

  A knock on the wall of the coach set the contraption in motion, first rolling in a wide circle, as if to bid the prison farewell, and then trundling slowly toward the grilled arch that led out of that place.

  No sooner had they reached the portcullis than a voice called loudly for them to halt. Glossolalia felt the boy stir. She put a hand out, stilling him even as the coach door swung open and a face looked inside. A guardsman, grinning so that his face seemed to split open, regarded her with a gawping stare that seemed one with Doll’s puppet-faced constable.

  “I know what you done,” he cried, even as Glossolalia sank back against the cushions.

  “What have I done?” she cried, knowing the boy wriggled at her feet, as fearful as she and for the same reason. She had never heard herself sound so guilty, so she repeated her words, hoping to force some innocence into them: “What have I done?”

  The guardsman chuckled—she knew not at what. “Bless you, you don’t know, madam,” said the grinning figure in the guardsman’s flared cap. “Mrs. Malcolm is a great favourite with all of us here, and anyone who does her a good turn is a friend of Bridewell forever.” And at that he swept off his cap and bowed so low that Glossolalia could see the narrow estuary of his scalp. Behind him stood a whole clutch of guards, each with his cap in hand and each bowing and scraping as if to a lord or lady of the realm.

  Glossolalia felt the heat rise in her cheeks; she felt a confession trembling on her lips. She wanted to cry: but here I am, stealing a child from under your very noses. Take me back amongst those women, for I am no better. Nay, I am as bad. Hold, I am worse.

  But the pirate captain in her bade her say nothing. Her buccaneer-self gestured her thanks for the guardsmen’s homage and called for the coach to proceed. The coachman geed his horses, and the carriage trundled away, into the London night.

  This Glossolalia did, she and the boy.

  By the time, Glossolalia at last dared sweep aside her skirts and reveal the youth, the hackney coach was a long way from Bridewell. She had the unfolded scrap of paper in her hand, and now she once again examined the crayoned sketch, made so very long ago. She saw how Mr. Hogarth had drawn her, back in the days of her youth, reclining in her chair, stretching and laughing.

  The boy took his place on the opposite bench with a sort of reluctance Glossolalia could well understand. The interview that must now take place could only be painful for them both, and she must begin as harshly as she knew how.

  “This drawing—by what means did it come into your possession?” she said, keeping her voice stern as if she were a judge in the Bailey. “From whom did you steal it?”

  “It is mine,” said the boy. “It has always been mine.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” said she. “It cannot be yours, for it was mine, and I gave it to another. Did you steal it from her? Or did you find it? Was it somehow lost?”

  “It was never lost,” said the boy.

  “You make this into a silly guessing game,” said Glossolalia, scowling. “Well, I do not wish to play along. Tell me the truth now—how did you come by this drawing?”

  The boy grinned, but with no show of amusement. The lady looked across at his face and then out the window, into a lantern-smeared night. She remembered sailing northwards until streaks of emerald and lime undulated above the Ice Queen. Had that really happened? How like fiction your own past could seem—little different from something once read. Books take shape from memory. And memory gives each book its heartbeat.

  The boy seemed almost to divine the flow of her thoughts as he resumed the tale she had interrupted in Bridewell. “My mother,” he said, “was born into a good family, but she made a bad marriage, and so she lost her fortune while I was yet a babe in arms.”

  “Stop,” cried Glossolalia. “I want no more stories. I am sick of them.”

  “It’s the drawing you want,” said the boy. “You asked me how I came by it.” Then he stuck out his jaw at her and dared her to interrupt him again. At last, she listened.

  He said, “My mother went on board a ship bound for Virginia to escape my father, who proved a wasteful rake, and I was left in the care of a very good woman, a particular friend of hers. This lady expected to hear directly from my mother as soon as she was settled, but we heard nothing for a very long time. We feared that the Primrose, for that was the name of the ship on which my mother went to sea, had vanished before ever reaching that colony. Then the name of the cursed boat appeared in the shipping news as one taken by pyrates, and we knew the worst: my mother was dead and forever lost.”

  Here the boy paused and bent his head. Glossolalia judged his action an easy show of emotion, designed to tug her heartstrings, although she found herself not unmoved by this account of her own death.

  The boy continued. “My mother’s friend proved a friend to me also, providing for me, now an orphan without a parent, as though I were her own child. My foster mother feared my father would hear of my whereabouts and steal me back, and so she contrived to keep me from him. Through cleverness and foresight, she was able to raise me alongside her own boy as safely as if I were his brother.”

  “So you say,” said Glossolalia, “and so I discover you for a cheat. My own dear child was a girl, and your knowledge is stolen—taken from her I know not how.”

&
nbsp; “My knowledge is not second-hand,” said the boy. “You have not caught me out in any lie. I seemed but a girl when I went home in the carriage with my new mother, but when next I appeared in public, I was truly a boy. The servants could not disclose my secret, for I had no secret to keep. I wore my foster brother’s garments, for it was that lady’s stratagem to introduce me to her family as a distant cousin, removed from the country and brought to London to serve as companion to her own son. He had been breeched very young, and so, without ceremony, was I. I took to the alterations in costume and form of address without complaint, and as soon as I was old enough to see the life lived by girls, I knew my new mother acted wisely on my behalf.

  I was myself. I ran freely, wearing breeches and leather shoes in place of skirts and satin slippers. I kept a sparrow bone in my coat pocket and was praised for my empirical curiosity. Dirt on a girl’s tucker was cause for a scolding, and inquisitiveness was pressed out of them, like whey from cheese, but that was not my lot and I rejoiced. I shared a tutor with my brother and no avenue of learning was closed to me, except for stitching on the tambour frame and dancing in petticoats. I wished to try neither, and so I was content. The only time I felt dissatisfied was when my brother, in the heat of some temporary frenzy, would hiss at me that I might again be reversed, returned to what I was not. This maddened me beyond measure, and I bruised him so often, he learned to hold his tongue.

  No doubt, you will find all this impossible to believe—that a girl might be really a boy. All very fine on the stage, you will sneer, but real life defies such magic tricks. To this I say, I am not in hiding. I am not an actor in a boy’s disguise. This is no magic. I am what I am—and you know who I am.”

  Glossolalia thought of Morris. She looked at the boy on the bench. She did not know what she thought.

  “You may put your mind at ease,” said the boy. “You gave me the drawing—you put it in my hand—and now I return it to you. I make no claims on your person or your precious purse. Only consider how I felt when I heard you give Mrs. Malcolm your name—my own mother, risen barnacled and dripping from her grave. I could hardly believe my ears. Like you, I suspected some imposture, but then why did you stare at me so, stealing glance after glance? Did I see a message hidden in the play of emotion on your face, like some truth written on water? It was then I decided to set you the trial of the drawing.”

  “You set me a trial?” said Glossolalia. Then, after a moment’ s reflection she asked, “And did I pass.”

  “You stole me from Bridewell, madam. Are such acts a habit with you?”

  This reply forced a smile from the lady. “Truly,” said she, “I have not taken anyone hostage in many years.”

  “I am glad to hear it,” said the boy.

  “But you must finish your tale,” said Glossolalia. “I admit to more interest in its continuation than I at first expected.”

  The boy said, “Then you must steel yourself, for what comes next is not easy to tell. The illness that destroyed my foster mother did not come all of a sudden. We watched her failing long before she gave way to the urgings of those who loved her and called in the surgeons. On a wet day they came, seven of them all dressed in black, and no sooner had they entered our house than we two children were hastened out by the same door.

  Our tutor put us in a carriage and took us to St. Paul’s. We had a book between us, which was written for young people such as ourselves and told us everything we wanted to know—and a great deal we didn’t—about that grey pile. My brother and I climbed the five hundred and thirty-four steps to the upper gallery, where London spread out at our feet like a painted cloth. Down we peered at curving lines of brick and stone, and running through all, the fat, brown slug of the Thames. But no matter the charm of this view, our thoughts flew ever westward, to where the seven surgeons bent low over our mother—for pardon me, madam, the lady had served that function for most of my life, and while I never forgot my real parent, I love my foster mother as she deserves. Descending to the whispering-gallery, we boys murmured to one another, asking was our mother cured yet? And thanks to the wonders of those curving walls we heard our tutor’s sad sighs as clearly as if he sat between us.

  Our mother saw us directly we returned, and this sight of her cheered us very much. She held up her head and spoke to us clearly, her eyes bright and full of interest in our visit to St. Paul’s. The malignancy of those past few weeks seemed vanished, cut away by the surgeons. Indeed, the following weeks saw her rally, but it was not long before she sank again. Then, the servants remembered her surgery and the cries that lanced the house. Whenever our mother groaned or cried aloud, the family froze at whatever they were doing: kneading the bread, tending the fire, blacking a boot. Such pain can kill, said our servants, and we believed them.

  Every morning and after our lessons, we went to see her, but then came the day they would not let us go in. Instead, we hung about uselessly, panting at her chamber door, curled like dogs on the floorboards outside her room. At last, she called for me alone, without my brother. “I have settled,” said she, as I sat on a chair beside her bed, “a sum upon you that will be yours when I am gone.”

  I said nothing, for despite the familiar curtains—taffeta, with tiny finches—the sick chamber seemed another world. Her body beneath the covers was a stick, her face all eyes. I did not completely understand what her words meant.

  She asked me if she had done well by me. “For, I would not have your mother reproach me when we reunite,” she said.

  “She’s dead,” said I, even more confused. “You can no more see her than I can.”

  “I shall see her soon, and I would have your blessing.”

  Here, the boy paused in his narrative. In the dark of the carriage, he sat swaying on the bench. His eyes were shut. Glossolalia thought: I have the same trick myself—we close out the world.

  “Did she speak of the sketch?” she asked him, this time with gentleness.

  “She had taken it for safekeeping, for I was a wild boy and not trusted with treasures, but she gave it to me then. She spoke Mr. Hogarth’s name, and said you had been happy when he drew you that day. I took the paper, the one you have there now in your hand, and thanked her. Whatever my fortunes have been since that day, I have always kept that paper close. The lady in that drawing has been all my comfort and the whole of my consolation. I did not expect to see her appear like a ghost in Bridewell prison.”

  Glossolalia sat quiet. The streets outside had begun to show familiar lines in the dark.

  “Long ago,” said the boy, “did we have a window where I liked to stand and draw with my finger in the fog upon the glass?”

  Glossolalia nodded.

  “And did I sleep in a bed not my own and dream that the Primrose would sink?”

  The lady said, “No one but my child and I know that. But the dream was only a fearful fantasy and not a true foretelling—the Primrose was taken, but never was she sunk. I lived to return to England and found my dear friend dead. Her household had scattered to the four winds, but I hunted them down, one by one. I found footmen and parlour maids, begging them to tell me the fate of the little girl in her care, but no one could remember any such—ah.

  Glossolalia sat in the trundling coach and regarded the boy again. At last she said, “but Bridewell? How came you there?”

  “It is easy enough to get to Bridewell,” said the boy. “Almost no effort at all. In my case, my journey began the day of the finch-painted curtains. It was the last time I saw my foster mother in this life, for she died the next morning. My brother and I, each fitted with a new suit of black clothes, were the chief mourners. As soon as she was laid to rest, we came before the executors of her estate to decide our separate fortunes.

  My brother was sent to school, and he might have gone sooner but that his mother’s fondness kept him close. As for me, I was made to enter a drawing room where several gentlemen
stood before the fire, having come from the city to see me—or so I was told. But when I walked in, they sent me away, asking for the girl, the foster daughter named by Mrs. E— in her documents. I went out and stood in the hallway, uncertain of what to do. I understood the frightful moment had at last arrived. I was to be reversed, to be converted to what I had never been. But I was no helpless baby—I was a lad who knew my own mind and who was content to remain in that happy condition.”

  A passing housemaid saw me and said, “Why do you stand there? The gentlemen wished to see you right quick.”

  “They want a girl,” said I.

  “A girl?” said the housemaid, who, like the rest of that family, knew me for what I was. “The fools—they have made a mistake,” said she. “If it’s a girl they want, I will go in your place, for you are to get a sum of money.” And with that she opened the door and pushed me in again.

  “Where is the girl?” said the men around the fire. “Did you call her?”

  “Please, sirs,” said I. “Consider. I am no girl. I am a boy.”

  “Of course you are a boy,” said they. “We have eyes in our heads,” and they rang for the housekeeper.

  The housekeeper explained that I was the charge whose care Mrs. E— had taken up when I was orphaned—a claim the gentlemen denied, demanding to know what kind of trick she played on them. The papers, they said, were very clear: a girl, daughter to—and here they named you and my father, both deceased.” The boy paused. “Is he deceased?”

  “He is,” said Glossolalia. “I attended both service and interment. I saw him waxy in the coffin and buried in the grave. He will not jump up as I have done—he cannot be hero of this tale and is done playing villain. But continue your narration, for I still cannot trace your path from Westminster to Bridewell.”

 

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