Runaway

by Marie-Louise Jensen

  I shook my head. ‘My mother died a year ago. I have no one in England,’ I said.

  A strange expression crossed his face. I wasn’t sure why but it made me uneasy. Was it satisfaction?

  ‘Very well. Stay here for now. It sounds to me as though it was merely a robbery that went wrong. You shouldn’t be in any further danger. But perhaps, to be on the safe side, you should give those papers to me for safekeeping for now.’

  As I stared up at him, my blood ran cold. He continued to look down at me with a condescending air. He held his hand out. ‘The papers?’ he asked again.

  ‘I didn’t … mention any papers,’ I said slowly.

  ‘Of course you did. You’re confused, my dear.’ He opened his notebook again. ‘You told me the man demanded your father’s papers from you. Now, what I suggest is that you hand them over to me for safekeeping and to look into. Meanwhile I’ll call an inquest into this death.’

  ‘Murder,’ I said unsteadily. ‘It was a murder.’ My mind was reeling with shock and confusion. Had I really mentioned the papers? I was almost certain I had not.

  ‘The inquest will decide whether it was murder or not,’ he said. ‘The papers?’

  He held out his hand again. Was it my imagination or were his eyes glistening? If I was right, I was in far more danger than I had thought. ‘My father had no papers,’ I said. ‘You are mistaken.’

  The magistrate hesitated, then bowed briefly. ‘If you’re sure. If you remember where they are, do let me know, won’t you? Mrs Wickett can always get a message to me. They could be important in tracing whoever did this dreadful deed.’

  ‘I will,’ I said, forcing myself to sound calm. ‘Thank you … for all your help.’

  The man nodded and left. I heard him descending the stairs.

  My hands were icy in my lap. I was shaking. With difficulty, I rose to my feet, steadying myself by grasping the chair back. My head swam sickeningly. The weakness passed after a moment and I left the room, stepping out into the now deserted hallway and creeping down the creaking, filthy stairs after the magistrate.

  When I reached the window on the landing below our room, I stopped and peered out through the grime-encrusted panes. I could just see down to the narrow street from here. I watched until the magistrate emerged from the building below me. He paused on the pavement below and wiped his thin face and hands on his pocket-handkerchief. Then he took a pinch of snuff from a box, sniffed it, and tucked the box back into his coat. Casting a glance around him, he crossed the narrow street and paused by a doorway, apparently exchanging a few words with someone, before walking on. I stayed where I was, watching, my heart thumping uncomfortably in my chest.

  After a few moments, a man stepped out of the shadow of the doorway where he’d been concealed and looked up at the house. I caught my breath and drew back swiftly from the window. In that brief moment, despite the distance, I’d recognized my father’s killer. The magistrate had been speaking with the murderer. Clearly he had no intention of arresting him. He knew him.

  I retreated back to my room, closed the door and stood leaning against it, shaking. What had I told him? Dear heaven, I’d told him I would know the murderer anywhere. I’d given him a description that proved it. I’d surely signed my own death warrant with those words. My life was in danger and I had no one to turn to for help.

  I needed to flee. To get far away from a killer who was so powerful he was in league with a magistrate. I tried to imagine what my father could possibly have that they wanted so badly, but I had no idea. We were poor. We had no connections of note, no influential friends. My father had been a mere major in the army, living on his pay.

  I rummaged through my scattered effects. My head was clearer now, my senses sharpened by fear. What would I need? Some clean linen. I looked hopelessly at my few gowns. They had once been good quality, but now every one was patched and shabby. They made me pause and think: a gown was no good anyway. How was I going to escape from the house unrecognized? Where was I going to go? What would I do?

  An idea came to me that gave me hope. I rummaged deeper to find garments I’d not worn for a while: my brother Robert’s outgrown breeches, shirt, and jerkin. I was going to be destitute on the streets of a strange city where I knew no one. It would be safer to be dressed as a boy. I was used to it, after all. My parents had sometimes dressed me like my brother when we were travelling in America, to keep me safe. The murderer was looking for Charlotte Smith, but he would not find her now, no matter where he searched.

  I discarded the gown I was wearing, horribly stained with my father’s blood, and dragged the breeches on with shaking hands, fumbling with the buttons. I wrapped a scarf tightly around my chest to conceal my breasts, put a shirt over it and pulled on a leather waistcoat. I knotted a shabby silk neckerchief around my neck to hide the knife cut that was still bleeding a little. I twisted my long, brown hair into a thick rope and pulled my father’s cap over it.

  I picked up a clean shift, the least worn of my gowns and an extra shirt, wrapped them hastily into a bundle and stuffed them into a leather satchel. As my only shoes were unmistakably girls’ shoes, I pulled riding boots over my stockings. My disguise was complete.

  To one side of the closet was the floorboard where father had hidden his papers. With difficulty, I prised it open with my fingernails, ignoring the splinter that stabbed under one nail and sent a sharp pain through my finger.

  A bundle of assorted papers wrapped in oilskin and a leather pouch lay beneath the loose board. I stuffed them all hastily inside my shirt. As an afterthought, I picked up my father’s cloak from the floor. Before I left, I knelt beside my father and kissed his brow one last time. ‘I’m so sorry, dear father,’ I whispered, fighting the tears that trembled behind my eyelids. ‘If I could help you by staying, I would do so. But I cannot. Farewell.’

  The light was fading outside the window as I slipped out of the door. I half expected the children to be there, gawping, waiting for something more to happen. But they had long gone and so, I noticed now, had my pie. It wasn’t difficult to make the connection. I would go without food tonight, but it would be worth it if I succeeded in leaving unobserved.

  I descended the stairs swiftly. From behind each door came the sound of voices, the bawling of children and the smell of cheap food.

  Instead of leaving through the front door, the way I’d entered with the pie, I went out the back into the courtyard. Here was the stinking latrine that was shared by several houses, with a queue of people waiting to use it. Children played tag in the yard and mangy dogs sniffed at the rubbish that lay strewn about. No one so much as glanced at me as I walked by. They had no interest in a scruffy, unknown lad.

  I paused, pulled my cap down low over my eyes, and joined a gaggle of other lads, all of them ragged and dirty, so that I wouldn’t be leaving the yard alone. We passed right by the murderer. His eyes ran over all of us, but rested no longer on me than on the others. It took all my courage to saunter by casually when my legs shook for fear of my life, but somehow I managed it. The man stood slouched in a dark doorway, his pale eyes watching the coming and going from both the front door and the back yard. There was no other way out, and he was probably confident I couldn’t leave the house unobserved. But he was looking for a girl.

  As soon as I was well past him, I left the lads, disappeared into a back street and wove my way through a maze of narrow alleys. After ten minutes or so, I paused in a doorway and watched for a while. There didn’t seem to be anyone following me. I leaned my forehead on a dilapidated wall, weak with relief.

  I forced myself to move on along the unfamiliar streets with no clear idea of where I was heading. It was the strangest feeling in the world, to have nowhere to go. On the busy main roads, I was jostled and bumped from all sides by pedestrians and street sellers as I walked, and found myself drifting with the crowd. It was easier to follow everyone else than to fight my way through the throng. I glanced back often but saw no sign of the murder
er.

  I was soon hopelessly lost and the light was fading fast. Cold and hungry, with no money to buy food, I searched instead for a safe corner to spend the night. The bridges and doorways were full of ragged, destitute waifs, all of them keen to defend their sheltered spot. Eventually, the best I could find was a small space behind a wagon in a carrier’s yard. It was open to the elements as well as being dirty and uncomfortable, but I crouched down to conceal myself, wrapped in my father’s cloak, determined to stay awake all night.

  I was chased out of my spot before dawn as the yard came to life around me and goods were loaded into the carts. The streets were already bustling and crowded, with stallholders calling their wares, servants fetching water and dogs nosing among the refuse for scraps. I had only two thoughts in my head. The first was how desperately hungry I felt, the second was that I had to get out of the city.

  I dared speak to no one in case they remembered me. Fatigued, famished and frightened, I imagined everyone around me was my enemy. Fear drove me onwards through the city with no knowledge of where I was going. Some streets were wide and fine with grand carriages rolling along them; others were mean and narrow, peopled by ragged beggars and children, their faces pinched with want. Everywhere was equally unfamiliar to me.

  A train of packhorses came towards me, carrying panniers full of winter vegetables. Somewhere in my dazed and shocked mind, it occurred to me they must have come in from the country. I headed in the direction they had come from.

  Eventually, I found myself at a city gate. I had no idea which one it was; London was so unfamiliar to me. I followed the crowd out of the city and kept going along the road. I suspected I was heading west, as the sun was on my left, and that was confirmed when I saw a milestone beside the road bearing the information: Bristol, 90 miles. I kept walking. My father had never spoken of his childhood home, but I remembered my mother once saying that she’d grown up in the countryside between Bath and Bristol. I may as well head there as anywhere.

  I hoped sleeping rough might be easier and safer in the countryside. Perhaps I could find a haystack or barn rather than risk another night beneath a bridge or in a doorway, where I might be robbed or attacked by one of the many ragged and desperate souls who eked out a miserable existence in the huge, grimy metropolis.

  I found myself considering these things quite dispassionately, as though they were happening to someone else, not to me. For how could I, Charlotte Smith, respectable soldier’s daughter, be in such a position? Meanwhile, I kept plodding westwards along the rough road.

  As the light faded, the crowds thinned. Fewer people were riding or walking along the road. I kept going with dogged determination, putting off the moment when I would have to think about where I could sleep. My boots, never intended for walking long distances, pinched my feet and the satchel strap cut into my shoulder. My belly was aching with emptiness. I hadn’t eaten since the early morning of the day before, and little enough then.

  It was growing cold again and I needed to find somewhere to sleep. I turned off the road and crossed a field towards a barn. A dog frightened me away by barking fiercely. I could find no other shelter and ended up stumbling around in the darkness. Eventually I crawled under some bushes and lay down on a bed of dry leaves. I slept fitfully, curled around my satchel, my father’s cloak wrapped tightly around me.

  I awoke at dawn with the sickening knowledge of all that I’d lost. It was as though I’d scarcely understood until this moment. I’d acted by instinct, fleeing from danger. But now I truly realized that my father was gone. Murdered. Yet another member of my family torn from me. ‘Oh father,’ I whispered to myself. ‘What shall I do now?’ The grief that I’d been able to hold at bay up to now swept over me. I wept like a baby.

  I caught my breath abruptly on a sob when something touched my ankle. I started in fear and jerked away from the touch, convinced I’d been found and would next feel a knife on me. A giant man in ragged homespun crouched beside me.

  ‘You a’right, lad?’ he asked, his rough voice gentle with concern. His face was dirty, his teeth bad, and there was a vacant look in his eyes that suggested to me he might be simple minded.

  ‘I’m … fine,’ I said, sniffing and dragging my sleeve across my tear-stained face. ‘Th … thank you!’ I pulled my cloak and satchel closer to me, edging away from the man.

  ‘Don’t be afeared,’ he said. ‘I wussn’t goin’ to hurt yer.’

  Nonetheless, I scrambled to my feet and fled. Disorientated and weak, I stumbled through some trees, unsure of my way. Eventually I followed the sound of a creaking wagon back down to the road. I watched as it approached from the east, the sun low in the sky behind it and then turned and followed the wagon westwards, picking my way around the worst of the churned-up mud and deep ruts.

  I overtook the laden wagon after a while as it lumbered ponderously along, jolting through potholes, pulled by six horses at length with a chain linking them. A gentleman’s carriage came the other way, rattling towards the big city, drawn by four fine carriage horses, sleek and glossy. Some stable hand had worked hard to make them look so fine.

  I passed another milestone: Bristol, 80 miles. I’d come a good distance already, but felt conspicuous walking along the road alone. I was convinced people were staring at me and might remember me if questioned. A greater problem still was hunger. I’d eaten nothing for two and a half days now.

  At noon, I left the road and concealed myself behind a hedgerow. Sitting on damp grass, I glanced carefully around me, to be certain I was hidden from prying eyes, before I pulled my father’s papers and pouch from my shirt. First, I leafed through the papers, looking for bills. No such luck. If my father had had any large sums of money remaining, he would not have taken us into such poor lodgings.

  I put the papers carefully aside and emptied the pouch into my lap. My father’s precious gold signet ring rolled out. I gasped in shock. I’d mourned that ring as lost, certain it had been sold as everything else of value had been. I clutched the ring in my hand, shaking with unexpected gladness. Then I uncurled my fingers and studied it, so wonderfully familiar to me when all else was lost. The unusual design on the front, the stag in the ornate R, and the curiously wrong initials on the inside, curled around one another, ASL.

  I’d asked my father once, years ago, with a child’s curiosity, why he wore a ring with initials that were not his. A cloud had passed over his face and then he had smiled mischievously, grasped my hand and told me he had inherited the ring from his godfather. ‘They’re his initials, you see, Charlotte,’ he’d said. And he’d winked at my mother. I’d never thought to ask him his godfather’s name. I was far more curious now. In the light of everything that had happened, I was beginning to suspect my father had kept secrets from me. I slid the ring onto my finger, but it was too loose. I shook the bag, still hoping for a coin or two, but there was nothing. It appeared I was alone in the world with no more than a ring.

  Next, I turned my attention to the papers, hoping they would tell me more. I sat for a moment, just holding them in my hands. I remembered my father as he’d been when my mother was alive: tall, dark-haired, strong, with bright, laughing eyes and smile creases.

  I broke open the oilskin package and found a sheaf of letters and sundry other items. I took a deep breath and spread out the first letter. It was clearly old, the paper discoloured and the ink faded. It was dated July 1704, and addressed from The Home Farm, Deerhurst Park, Gloucestershire.

  My dearest Andrew, it began. I miss you more than I can say.

  I’d never heard of the place, but recognized my mother’s flowing hand. This was from before my brother and I were born. A love letter, it seemed from the next few lines. I felt deeply uncomfortable; as though I were spying on something private and secret. Besides, this could not be what the killer had been hunting for. I folded it up and laid it aside.

  I unfolded the next. A quick glance showed me it was another similar letter, but this time from my father, also
dated 1704 but addressed from an army barrack in Plymouth. The tenderness of the opening lines brought tears to my eyes. I’d lost both parents, and so recently. I could not bear to read their private correspondence. I laid this letter aside with the first.

  More than half the papers were personal letters between my parents, filled with endearments. They must have been deeply precious to them personally, but they had no value to anyone else that I could see. I folded them all carefully together and put them back inside the oilskin package before turning my attention to the remainder of the papers.

  There were several documents connected with my father’s time in the army: his joining papers dated some years before my birth, some commendations, a letter praising his bravery and confirming his promotion to the rank of major, and his discharge letter. I’d seen them all before. There was nothing either valuable or dangerous about them.

  I’d come to the very last paper without discovering anything of importance. This one had been sealed, but the seal had been broken. I spread it out on my lap and saw it was dated just a few months previously and addressed to me. There was no message of any kind, however. Simply a name and address: Henry Palmer, Seaview Cottage, nr Studland, Dorset.

  Henry was my father’s friend and companion from America; it was a comfort to me to find his direction. The address was printed in my father’s neat, elegant handwriting. But at the very bottom of the paper two words were scrawled: Sorry, Charlotte.

  Remembering how his hands had trembled constantly in his final weeks, I could guess that these final two words had been added later during that dreadful time. My poor father.

  Now at last I knew where I should go. I had someone in England who knew me and cared what became of me. As long as I could find him; for I had not the least idea where Dorset might be. England was almost completely unknown to me.