Gallows Pole

by Eris Adderly

She was the ‘why’.

  Emmat Bird had led her own foolish self down this path, and by God, she would lead herself out of it.

  Now if only she could figure out how. She knew one thing, however: there were no answers here under these trees.

  Emmat got back on the horse.

  * * * *

  The disastrous business with Worrall meant the Lady Red Bird had to find an alternative to Pyke’s if she wanted anything like regular meals and shelter, however intermittent. Though she made her way through the heaths and woods, often not returning for days at a time, Emmat needed a base from which to operate. To store a few things and occasionally sleep on something softer and drier than the dewy ground. The irony was not lost on her that these same reasons necessitated Vane to keep the small, stone house she’d gone to so much trouble to flee.

  The Velvet Crab was possibly second from the bottom of the list of places where respectable people would want themselves seen—Pyke’s den of thieves the only one below it, of course. A person could come to the Crab by foot or maybe by horse, but certainly never by cart or coach. The state of the roads would never allow it, a fact which suited the alehouse’s owners right down to their immoral bones.

  Emmat shook her head as she tucked the last stray curls up under her hat and made for the stair back down to the common room. The seamy establishment couldn’t decide whether it ought to be an alehouse or an inn, and its disposition made as little sense as its name. There was no way a scrap of velvet had ever passed through its creaky doors, nor was it anywhere even remotely close the sea.

  The lamplight grew as the narrow staircase turned a corner, and she opened her mouth to call out to the Crab’s proprietor her readiness for a warm supper. Instead, Emmat heard a sound that rooted her to the spot.

  “You’re Henry Finch, then?”

  Finch owned the Crab, but that was unimportant. Every fine hair on her limbs stood on end, her skin prickling with nerves. There was no other voice capable of inciting such a mutiny among her senses.

  Vane.

  “I’m Finch,” she heard the man say. “What d’ye want?”

  Emmat tried not to choke on her own heartbeat as she retreated up one, silent step, scuttling sideways like the building’s namesake to put her back to the inner wall of the stairwell.

  He can’t be. He can’t be here.

  “I’m looking for a woman.”

  Dear God almighty.

  Finch snorted. “This ain’t that kind o’ place, friend.”

  Her eyes were wide as saucers in the dim light of the stair. A deadly curiosity made her wonder if the hangman wore his hood, but this was no time to pop her head round the corner to see.

  “No,” Vane said, “a missing woman.”

  “If she’s missing,” said Finch in that drawl of his, “how should I know where she is?” If it were under any other circumstances, Emmat would have laughed. Finch’s natural propensity to make everything difficult now served to buy her time.

  “Now just you listen.” That low note of threat had come into his voice now and, to her chagrin, the dark tone wove its way up the stair and straight between her thighs. She bit her lip. No, Emmat.

  “She may have passed this way,” he went on, determined. “She’s maybe…twenty-three? Twenty-four? Travelling alone, I think. Green eyes. Hair like an angry sunset. Tongue probably sharp as a blade?”

  The last bit made her smile from her hiding place, despite herself. But her fear remained, chasing the expression from her face.

  Finch had of course seen her, not an hour ago. They’d carried on an entire conversation. How intimidating was Vane being down there? Of all the times not to be able to see. She squeezed the fingers of her left hand with those of her right, praying, straining to hear.

  “Can’t say as anyone’s been through here, what looks like all that.”

  Oh, thank God.

  The proprietor would not sell his patrons to the law. Not if he wanted to stay in his sordid little business. There was silence for a long moment, and Emmat tried not to breath.

  At last, she heard Vane let out the sigh of a man who had strong suspicions he was being misled, but didn’t know what he could do about it.

  “Well,” he said, “If you do see the likes of her come through here, you can tell her …” There was a shuffling sound here, made by what, she wasn’t sure.

  Tell me what?

  “You can tell her she ought to go back. Tell her she doesn’t”—here he bit off a word, though she couldn’t make it out—“she doesn’t have to douse the lamp anymore.”

  His words yanked some crucial buttress away and Emmat nearly doubled over in shock. Before she had a chance to recover, however, the blow to her gut peeled back the acrid tang of her initial fear to reveal the more potent, insidious inner layer she’d been working to avoid.

  He wasn’t here to make good on his threats; to hand her over to the judge. Not unless he was playing Finch false, a notion that went against the gruff honesty she knew of Bartholomew Vane.

  What he was there for grabbed a fistful of her insides somewhere between her lungs and jerked it straight downwards into her belly.

  You ran. You ran and left him, and he still wants …

  She fought down the lump in her throat, the burning at the corners of her eyes. No one had ever bothered to come looking for Emmat Bird. Not for any reason like this.

  “If ye want this woman to come back to ye,” she heard Finch saying now, “might be better if ye’d say something to her what don’t sound as though ye’ve gone barking mad.” There was a judicious pause, and then: “What’re ye to her? Hm?” The last came like a little grunt.

  Emmat stood wavering on some edge, poised on the stair for what, she didn’t know. When the hangman answered, it was a catastrophe.

  “I’m her husband.”

  The words held such a quiet resignation and they preceded what she knew were the sounds of defeated footsteps moving towards the door.

  Just round the corner, Emmat. Why run? Why hide from what you want?

  Her nails bit into her palms and denial seared through her veins. No! That was not her life. No matter the growing relentlessness of her thoughts, pulling her back each night to the inexplicable draw of odd eyes, a tender mouth, arms crushing her close as though she were the only permanent thing in the world.

  Her fingers stole to splay over her lower belly and she exhaled, one dilemma let out for another. Relentlessness was not all that was growing.

  Enough. You can’t. It won’t work. Not for you, Red Bird. Not for you.

  When she got the heat out of her face, her muscles free of knots, Emmat dared to slide an eye around the corner, to take another step.

  As her ears had reported, the hangman was gone. Finch was rearranging the grime on one of his tabletops with a rag.

  At the movement of her descent, the paunchy man looked up, fixing her with a level eye.

  “Miss Red.” Her name came laden with meaning. Somehow—and for the same reasons the owner of the Crab remained ever an ally with those of Emmat’s ilk—somehow he knew. Knew she’d heard at least some of the spurious exchange.

  “Mr Finch.” Her reply was equally heavy. A thanks for today’s and future confidences maintained. And for knowing not to trespass by asking any prying questions about a man claiming to be her husband.

  “Supper, then?” He tucked the rag into the waist of his apron. She took one of the battered chairs.

  “If you would.”

  How many more weeks would pass before she’d lifted enough coin to see her out of the country? Away from at least one of the two matters she had no idea how to handle?

  She watched Finch move off into the kitchen before leaning back in her seat with a sigh.

  Work hard now. Yes. This was what she needed to do.

  Emmat couldn’t stop her hand from wandering to her belly again.

  Work hard, Red Bird. While there’s still time.

  * * * *

  Hoof beat
s came first, followed by a swaying pair of coach lanterns that grew larger above the ruts of the road in the purple of early evening. An ideal mark, the coach came at least an hour after the last travellers to pass the same way ahead of it, and this close to dark was likely to be the last to jounce its way over the same stretch of road for the night. There would be no interruptions.

  Emmat put confirming fingertips to the dagger in her boot a final time, and then set her pace so the coach’s path and hers would meet, a carefully affected limp listing her gait.

  “Hallo?” She called forth all the wretched, helplessness she could find and poured it into her voice as she neared the road. “Please! Please stop!”

  Appropriate pity inspired—or at least so she hoped—the coachman reined the horses to a halt. The man said nothing and Emmat could tell he was squinting into the darkening eve after the sound of her calls, doubting his own ears perhaps.

  Something not quite intelligible sounded from inside the coach, the passenger to the driver, no doubt wanting to know why they’d stopped. When Emmat hobbled near enough to be sure of her own visibility in the pooling lantern light, she entreated again, bracing herself.

  “Please, will you—oh!”

  A deliberate shift of her weight set her tumbling forward over what would appear to the coachman to be her one, uninjured foot, sending her spilling into the heather. She bit down a grunt of dull pain as the heels of her palms caught most of her weight and kept her from landing on her belly.

  “There’s a woman,” the driver said. The coach door was already opening and another man ducked out into the snare she’d laid.

  “Thank heavens,” she said, making a credible go of struggling to her feet as the passenger turned to face her direction. “I’ve been trying to walk, but I’ll never get there.” The limp increased for emphasis.

  “What’s happened here?” The man’s hands found impatient hips, pushing aside the bulk of his coat. The dim glow from the lanterns showed her someone perhaps of an age with her father, of wiry build with a face like a hatchet. The cut of his garments was enough to mark this as a worthwhile stop.

  And not before time.

  “Oh, sir!” She went heavy with the trowel. “What hasn’t happened? I’ve lost my horse. I couldn’t tell you what spooked him! You would think the Devil himself had been at the poor beast, the way he jumped. And now he’s run off and I turned my ankle when he threw me and…and…”

  The crescendo leading to her teary state was impressive, but to seal the matter, Emmat gave the passenger another pathetic half-stumble as she came within a pace of him.

  “Your horse, you say?” The man didn’t sound nearly as moved as Emmat would have liked. She gave him wide eyes and a sniffling nod.

  “And what’s a young woman doing out on the road at this time of night, alone? And in men’s clothing, no less.” His assessing eye travelled the length of her and back, sceptical of her tale but harbouring that scarlet glimmer of something else. It wasn’t her aim, but no matter. Lust would do in the place of pity; either was enough to blind the man.

  “Oh, I daren’t say, sir.” She clutched her arms about her waist in a gesture of shame and protection. “I daren’t say!”

  Secrets, she’d learned over the years, piqued interest with far more success than unlikely explanations.

  “I see.”

  She watched the tumblers of his decision fall into place, the lock accepting her key.

  “You were headed where before the trouble with this missing horse of yours?” The cant of his brows told Emmat what the man thought of her story, but while she hadn’t earned belief, neither had she inspired the sort of fear a person tends to have once they have some idea they’re about to be robbed. Oblivious, it seemed he aimed to turn the situation to his own advantage. A different sort of clay, but pliable all the same.

  “I was on my way to Bath,” she said, trying for meekness.

  “Well”—the corner of a mouth turned up in the growing darkness—“I’m not going so far as all that, Mrs?”

  “Burke,” she offered. “Charity Burke.”

  “Mrs Burke,” he said, stepping out of the way to reveal the open door behind him, “but you’re welcome to ride along at least to somewhere more civilised than a road in the middle of the night.” He made a sweeping gesture towards the coach.

  Emmat tilted her head and served him a look of the utmost gratefulness and humility. She was able to make a great show of it, of course, because at least one of those things was true.

  * * * *

  Much like the rest of her life at the moment, the interior of the coach was dark. The light from its twin lanterns did little to permeate inside, and the moon shone in through the windows as a mere afterthought.

  They bumped along, Emmat and her mark on opposite benches, each playing to win a very different game. This one, it seemed, was not going to be the sort who rode along in polite silence until boredom and the late hour had him nodding off.

  “So how did you come to be unchaperoned on your way to Bath, Mrs Burke? And in a shirt and breeches, I might add.” The passenger sounded far too satisfied with his questions, as though he’d made himself privy to some great secret, and could use it to compel favours from her now. For the moment, it was to her advantage to let him continue in his belief.

  “It’s all rather scandalous, I’m afraid.” Emmat rearranged herself on her seat, trying for delicate mortification.

  “We don’t know each other’s families, Mrs Burke. Your secrets won’t harm you here.” She had to credit the man. The inviting purr he put in his voice. The promise of safety, like Old Nick crooking a finger. If she were the person she claimed to be, and any less wise to the ways of the world, a lure of this nature might have lowered her guard. There were two laying traps tonight, however. Her adversary just didn’t know it yet.

  “Well,” she said, pausing as though she argued with herself over what to reveal, “I was trying to pass as my brother, I’m afraid. There was a man my father wanted me to marry and there was no making him see reason, so I…I ran. I’ve a cousin in Bath, you see.”

  “And what was so horrible about this man that you could not imagine yourself married to him?” Emmat wanted to slap the smug tone straight from his mouth. Instead she held firm to the guise of Charity Burke.

  “He was…he was hardly more than a boy,” she said. “Barely eighteen. And I’m already twenty-four. As if there were no grown men in the whole of London.” Perfect. Let him think you long for a man. Someone older, perhaps? “But my father and his did business together and…well, neither of them would hear it.” She polished off her explanation with the perfect note of distress.

  “This cousin of yours,” he said, sampling the words like a fine wine, “would have hidden you? Or don’t you think your father would have come looking?”

  “Oh, she would, sir. She certainly would. She’s from my mother’s side of the family.” As if this explained the entire matter.

  “Ah.”

  It was time to spring this trap. Before the man began asking more questions than there were answers for in the young Mrs Burke’s fictitious life.

  “I tell you,” she said, “I was ready to give up the last of my hope before I saw the lights from your coach. Everything I had save the clothes on my back was on that wretched horse.” Ready…and… “I’ve no idea what I can possibly do to repay your kindness.”

  “Don’t you?”

  There was a shuffle of feet on the floorboard. Linen and wool rustled. She felt him take the bench beside her, far too close for either one of them to pretend was proper. “I’ve an idea, Mrs Burke.”

  There we are.

  He was crowding her into the corner, where the interior quarter panel met the bench. The ghost of moonlight hinted at the angles of his face as he leaned close, his upper body turning to make demands on her space. A too-forward hand was on her knee.

  “Oh?” she said, a meek little mouse to the clever cat this man thought he was
being. “What’s that?”

  The line of his mouth turned up in a fell smile.

  “Let me show you.”

  Her jawline felt the bridge of his nose nudging beneath it. There was a press of lips at her neck, some dry, emotionless attempt at seduction.

  Come on then. Just a bit further.

  She let him hear a feminine gasp so he might feel the effects of his boldness confirmed, and she arched through disgust into his inappropriate sallies, freeing up her right hand in the process.

  The palm on her knee took this as its cue and slid to the inside of her thigh, beginning its inevitable progress higher. The fingers dipped to cup the backside of her leg, poising to lift, to spread this wide-eyed naïf he thought he’d found.

  There.

  His next breath choked out somewhere between a gasp and a hiccough. This sort of thing tended to happen when a man found a blade at his throat.

  “A scream would make a pathetic last sound, don’t you think?” It took a considerable effort to contain her glee at this reversal, but Emmat managed. “I suggest you refrain from making any loud noises. The road is rough enough. I’d hate for this to become a funeral procession.”

  “You stupid girl,” he hissed, low but vehement. He removed the hand, but not the rest of himself. “Do you have any idea whose life you threaten?”

  Emmat pressed her advantage and bore him off her with the promise of sharpened steel. When his back was to the wall of the coach, she pivoted with him to plant her right knee between his legs on the bench. It was necessary to straddle his leg to do so, but the accurate picture it painted of the potential danger to his manhood was worth the price.

  “It would seem the burden of foolishness in this coach rests on someone other than me,” she said, innocence abandoned for contempt. “And aside from being a lecherous old man on the road to Bath? No. I’ve no idea who you are. Amuse me.” She tilted the dagger, flirting with violence. “A name to go with the purse, so I might enjoy the spending of it all the more.”

  “You hold a weapon to the neck of Silas Hollow, you filthy bit of laced mutton. I’ll see you hanged in chains for this.”