From Whitechapel

by Clegg, Melanie

  ‘And so I have,’ the woman snarled. ‘She’s down there.’ She jerked her head at the alleyway. ‘Off you trot.’

  ‘I think not.’ I looked over at the men but their eyes were cast firmly down at their work, almost as if they were deliberately trying not to look at us, which would be typical, I supposed, for these streets. See no evil, hear no evil and no evil shall come to you. ‘Why should I believe you?’

  She heaved a great sigh, as if I was the one being completely unreasonable. ‘Who else are you going to believe? Now look here, you asked me where Emma was to be found and I did as you asked and now you don’t want to see her? Is that it?’ She pointed down the alleyway. ‘Honest to God, Miss, she’s staying down there.’

  I deliberated for a moment, my gut instinct was that she was lying through her scant remaining teeth while my head was telling me that I really had no choice here but to go down the alleyway because really, what else could I do? I had no idea where I was, there was no one nearby willing to help me and above all there was a chance, however slender, that she was actually telling the truth in which case running away now might mean another step back in my search for Beatrice. I took a deep breath. ‘You come too,’ I said, rummaging in my reticule for her money. ‘I won’t pay you otherwise.’

  She gave a shrug, making that horrible dank smell rise up again towards me. ‘Suit yourself,’ she said gracelessly before sauntering into the gloom of the alleyway. ‘You coming then, your Majesty?’

  What else could I do but raise my skirts slightly above my ankles to prevent them trailing in the filth, both animal and human, that I could see festering on the cobbled floor of the alley, then take a deep breath and follow her in, immediately wishing that I hadn’t as soon as the damp and stench of old urine and worse rose up to hit me about the nostrils. ‘Good God.’ I almost dropped my skirt in my haste to get inside my reticule to find a handkerchief to hold over my nose.

  My guide sniggered. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ she said in what I thought was a rather ominous way. ‘It doesn’t smell so bad after a while.’ Probably not when you yourself smell equally as horrible, but of course I did not dare say so.

  The alley was mercifully short and it didn’t take too long before we reached the small court that lay at the far end. ‘Here you are. It’s over there.’ The woman paused at the end of the alley and pointed across the way to a broken door covered in blistering, peeling grey paint and mildew. ‘It’s not much but it’s home.’

  Feeling somewhat relieved, I stepped into the court, which was open to the sky and lit by the few stray rays of sunlight that had managed to straggle down between the tall dark buildings that glowered overhead. In the near distance I could hear a train, dogs barking and, from somewhere near at hand, a woman laughing and singing an old folk song while the air was heavy with the smell of smoke and fried fish that floated down from a slightly ajar window overhead. ‘Is it this door here?’ I said, turning back slightly just as there came a sudden whoosh of air that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise up and every muscle in my body tense as if about to take flight. I should have known what was coming. Oh heaven help me, I did know.

  The blow to the back of my head felled me at once and I crumpled on to the ground, the sunlight dancing like stars in front of my eyes as I tried to lift myself up from the foul and muddy ground. ‘Oh no you don’t.’ I closed my eyes and, my head rolling with sickness and pain, braced myself for the next direct hit which I knew would knock me unconscious and leave me at her mercy.

  Instead there came a sound of scuffling from somewhere behind me and with a groan, I rolled over, my heavy skirts caught frustratingly around my legs, in order to see what was happening. The stars were fading now and the sickness retreating so that with a bit of effort I was able to screw up my eyes and make out the surprising sight of Mr Mercier making brisk work of seeing off the woman who had led me to this miserable place. At some point she must have been joined by an accomplice as he was now holding by the throat and shaking a scrawny man in a filthy shirt and red waistcoat, a splash of colour against the smoke blackened walls of the alleyway.

  ‘Are you alright, Miss?’ I turned my head towards this new, softer female voice, which turned out to be a grave mistake as the stars immediately returned and everything threatened to turn dark once more.

  ‘Is she conscious?’ This was Mr Mercier’s voice and I felt rather than heard him come closer until he was kneeling beside me and lightly resting his cool fingers against the pulse in my wrist. ‘What a pity that we could not have arrived sooner.’

  The stars danced away again and I looked up at the pale, anxious face of a young girl with pretty grey green eyes. ‘How’s your head?’ she asked with a rueful smile that brought the dimples into her cheeks. ‘She gave you quite a whack but you should be right as rain soon enough.’ Her long red hair fell forward over her shoulders as she leaned down to feel my forehead with the back of her hand.

  Red hair. Even in my feeble and befuddled state I knew that I had seen her before and when I closed my eyes I saw her luminous and gleaming against the star spangled gloom, her hair, decorated with amber and crimson geraniums, hanging down around her thin face as she laughed and beckoned to me from within the winding, fetid darkness of an alleyway that seemed to go on forever.

  I stared up at her, willing her to understand, to acknowledge the fact that it was she who had brought me here in the first place and that it was all her fault - the locket, the Mission, the alleyway, everything. It was all because of her. ‘I know you,’ I said with an effort as the stars began to spin more wildly inside my head and Mr Mercier tried to shush me into silence. ‘From Whitechapel.’ And everything went dark.

  Chapter Fourteen

  By the time I regained consciousness the girl had vanished and instead the first thing I saw was Mr Mercier who had somehow managed to lift me up off the dirty ground and carry me to the arguably more salubrious surroundings of a nearby public house, where I awoke on a faded red faux velvet covered bench with a pounding headache and a terrible thirst. Someone, presumably Mr Mercier, had balled up a jacket and thrust it roughly beneath my head to act as a pillow, while someone else, presumably not Mr Mercier but more probably the cheerful blonde landlady who upon seeing I had awakened now hovered solicitously over my head, had pulled my skirts down neatly over my ankles to preserve whatever scant modesty remained to me after I had been deposited unceremoniously and completely unconscious onto her premises.

  ‘Well, thank the Lord for that,’ she said with a look of satisfaction as I attempted a polite smile then lifted my head to take a curious look around. ‘I thought you was a goner for sure no matter what the quack had to say on the matter!’ She turned to mischievously nudge a small slight man with a shock of greying hair and spectacles balanced rather perilously on the end of his large nose. ‘Saving your presence, Doctor Llewellyn, I’m sure.’

  The doctor gave a good humoured chuckle then leaned over to rest his hand lightly against my forehead. ‘Now, now, Mrs Ferrar, there was never any danger of that as well you know,’ he said over his shoulder in a rich Welsh accent. ‘I told you that this young lady would be right as rain in next to no time.’ He smiled reassuringly at me as Mrs Ferrar took herself off to deal with some customers who were standing waiting at the polished dark wood bar. ‘You took quite a bump on the head, Miss Redmayne but there was no serious damage done.’ He lifted my eyelids, first one then the other and looked into my eyes before giving a small nod of satisfaction. ‘I was worried that you might be concussed when I was first called here but I believe that you fainted rather than collapsed as a result of injury.’

  I smiled at him, liking his brisk but friendly manner enormously. ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ I said, shocked by how dry and rusty my voice sounded. I lifted my hand gingerly to the back of my head and winced when my fingers connected with a huge bump. ‘It feels as big as another head,’ I said with a laugh. ‘Oh dear.’

  The doctor grinned. ‘Oh, it’s
the merest trifle,’ he said, straightening and looking around for his doctor’s bag. ‘Head bumps always feel much more enormous than they actually are when you can feel but not see them.’ He turned to Mr Mercier and the two men shook hands. ‘You’ve had more than your fair share of blows to the head, Henry so I know that I can rely on you to make sure the patient gets home in one piece.’

  Mr Mercier grinned. ‘You know me too well,’ he said with a laugh, looking more friendly and natural than I had ever seen him, which gave me a small pang of something strange and rather unwelcome. Regret? Wistfulness? Surely not.

  Doctor Llewellyn looked for a moment as if he might actually be about to ruffle Mr Mercier’s tawny hair but instead he merely gave his hand another brisk shake, patted me on the shoulder and sauntered off, jamming his hat on to his head as he went.

  ‘I liked him,’ I said with a smile, struggling to sit upright and wishing that someone would bring me a drink. ‘His bedside manner is much more friendly than that of my own doctor.’

  Mr Mercier looked at me and to my disappointment I could see the shutters come down, wiping away his easy, good natured smile and draining the cheerfulness out of his eyes. ‘I hope that you don’t mind me sending for Doctor Llewellyn rather than one of the fancy Harley Street doctors that you are no doubt used to, Miss Redmayne,’ he said flatly, his voice dripping with cold formality.

  I sighed, clearly he wasn’t going to make this easy for me. ‘Not at all, Mr Mercier. I hope that you will allow me to recompense you for any charges he may have brought.’ I looked about in some panic for my reticule and eventually located it underneath my skirts.

  Mr Mercier shrugged. ‘The doctor and I are old friends so he made no charge.’

  ‘Nevertheless…’ I began but he cut me off with an impatient gesture of his hand.

  ‘I don’t want your money, Miss Redmayne,’ he said in a low voice that vibrated with something that sounded suspiciously like anger. ‘I don’t even want your gratitude.’

  I met his eyes, determined not to be cowed by him. ‘So what do you want, Mr Mercier?’ I said, ruthlessly ignoring the dull ache of my head and scrambling to sit up even straighter even though actually I just wanted to lie down and sleep.

  ‘What do I want?’ He glared at me. ‘I don’t want anything from you.’

  To my horror, I felt tears prick the corners of my eyes and knew that I had to get out of the hot, over crowded pub as quickly as possible before he realised that he had made me cry and my pathetic, shameful weakness was exposed once and for all. ‘I’m sure that I don’t know what I could have possibly done to make you so angry with me,’ I muttered as I slid down from the bench then held on to the table edge for support as a wave of dizziness threatened to overcome me and send me back into the darkness again. ‘Clearly you have decided to dislike me no matter what I do.’ I couldn’t look at him, I was too angry and I brushed his hands angrily away as he reached out to steady me. ‘Good day to you, Mr Mercier.’

  I turned and staggered from the pub, ignoring Mrs Ferrar’s squawks of concern from behind the bar and the annoyed mutterings of the customers that I brushed past in my haste to get away. ‘Miss Redmayne!’ I heard Mr Mercier call out to me but the sound of his voice only made me walk faster until I was almost running by the time I had shoved the doors open and made it out onto the street, where I was immediately blinded by the bright sunlight. ‘Miss Redmayne.’ Unhampered by a headache and apparently unaffected by the contrast between the gloom of the public house and the brightness of daylight, he made it outside almost at the same time as I did and now stood before me with a worried frown between his storm grey eyes.

  I deliberately looked away from him and drew myself up to my full height, which was still a few inches shorter than his shoulder but made me feel better nonetheless. ‘I have no need of your assistance, Mr Mercier,’ I said with all the hauteur that I could summon and wishing that my aunt could hear me now. How she would have applauded to hear me finally put him firmly in his place. ‘Clearly my presence here in Whitechapel is displeasing to you and I would hate to prolong the unpleasantness for any longer than I have to.’ I should have rested more for even as I spoke, I could feel myself sagging back against the wall, almost fainting again.

  He took hold of my forearms then and held me straight and when I looked up at him again I saw that his generous lips were twisted into a reluctant smile. ‘You look like you could really do with a drink,’ he said.

  My reputation, if I had any remaining to me after that afternoon’s events, would barely survive if word ever got out that I had accompanied a man into a public house but I found that I didn’t care one jot and there was barely any hesitation before I gave a rueful nod of my head and followed him back inside.

  Mr Mercier grinned down at me. ‘I don’t think there’s much chance of any of your high society friends spotting you in here with me,’ he said, almost as if he had read my mind or, more likely, seen the momentary worry about my tattered reputation flash into my eyes. ‘And there’s even less chance that any of the denizens of the Princess Alice will find their way to Mayfair to tell the tale.’

  I was confused for a moment, thinking that he meant to mock me again, but then belatedly remembered that I had been unconscious when he brought me there and looked up at the pub sign that swung overhead, which had a crude portrait of the Queen’s daughter Alice overlaid with a flamboyant ‘Princess Alice’ rendered in now flaking but surely once resplendent green and gold paint.

  Mrs Ferrar gave a sigh of relief when she saw me somewhat sheepishly come back inside behind Mr Mercier. ‘You look like you need some more rest, Miss,’ she said, vigorously polishing some glasses with a none too clean cloth. ‘Let our kind Mr Mercier here take care of you for a bit before you start gallivanting about again.’

  He turned to me with an apologetic smile. ‘I’ve lived in Spitalfields all my life and my family have been here since they fled to the area from France in the seventeenth century,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Everyone here knows me - which can be both a blessing and a curse.’ He settled me back down onto the bench, even meticulously covering my ankles with my skirts until I slapped his hands away. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what there is for a young lady to drink in here,’ he said, a little abashed.

  I smiled at him. ‘I’ll have a brandy if such a thing is to be had,’ I said, trying not to think about the dirty cloth that Mrs Ferrar was using to polish the glasses. ‘Failing that, I will have whatever you think best.’ It was galling of course to defer to his judgement in such a way, but the events in the alleyway had rattled me completely and left me feeling even more than ever like a stranger in their midst. I felt adrift and badly in need of a guide and if Mr Mercier was the only one to hand then so be it.

  He nodded and went off to the bar, returning a few moments later with a pair of large brandies, one of which he placed in front of me. ‘I’m sure it’s not as fine as the sort of thing you have been used to…’

  ‘Oh shush,’ I said, taking a large sip of brandy, which turned out to be not nearly so bad as he was implying. I took another sip to make sure then fixed him with what I hoped was a steely look worthy of Aunt Minerva herself. ‘You really have the most ridiculous chip on your shoulder, Mr Mercier.’

  He paused and looked at me for a moment over the top of his glass before putting it back on the table. ‘Of course I have,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t you have one too if you were forced every day to see the injustice that this city is rife with?’

  ‘You are not poor, Mr Mercier,’ I pointed out.

  He laughed then, not pleasantly. ‘Does one have to be poor to notice or care about the suffering that the lower classes endure in this allegedly great metropolis of ours?’ He picked up his glass again and took a large swig. ‘Come now, Miss Redmayne, and here I was thinking you had deigned to come amongst us in the guise of a philanthropic lady.’

  ‘You don’t know me at all,’ I said quietly, watching my brandy swill around the glass to
avoid meeting his eyes. ‘You don’t know why I came here.’

  He looked at me with a frown. ‘You’re right,’ he said after a short pause. ‘I don’t. I could hazard a guess though.’

  I gave a shrug and took another sip of my brandy. My headache had gone and I was beginning to feel oddly exhilarated by our conversation. ‘You’d be wrong,’ I said, looking at him.

  ‘Would I?’ He leaned back in his chair, looking so thoroughly pleased with himself that I had to fight a sudden urge to lean across and box his ears. ‘So you’re not really interested in helping the poor of the area?’

  ‘Well yes but…’

  ‘So there’s more to it?’ He drained his glass then slammed it down on the table. ‘Then I’m standing by my original assessment that you are just another bored little rich princess trying to catch the eye of some benevolent peer or trying her desperate best to outrage her parents.’

  ‘Princess Alice,’ I said with a rueful little shake of my head. ‘Oh now you really are talking nonsense.’

  Mr Mercier raised one dark eyebrow. ‘Am I?’ He leaned forward, resting his elbows carelessly in a slick of spilled brandy. ‘Surprise me.’

  I looked at him and caught my breath as I considered telling him everything, thinking that obnoxious as he undoubtedly was, he would at least prove a worthy ally if I was to navigate the back alleys of Whitechapel in search of my sister. On the other hand though, this was a secret that I had kept close to my heart for over a month now and I was somewhat loath to give it up so easily and especially to someone who had demonstrated several times that they disliked me. If I was going to confide in anyone then surely it should be Lucasta or Patrick or, God help us all, Minnie rather than this arrogant jumped up prig of a man.

  ‘Miss Redmayne…’ Something in my face must have touched him for he took hold of my hands and when I hazarded a glance at his face I saw that there was nothing but concern in his eyes. ‘I did not mean to…’