by Y. S. Lee
Mary stared. “As myself?”
“Or as a lady. Let’s say, a well-to-do lady on a charitable mission. Take the widow a basket of goods, sweep into the house, cross-examine her.” Felicity’s eyes were bright. “She could hardly say no.”
That much was true: well-meaning ladies often invaded the homes of the poor, arrogantly certain of their welcome as generous benefactors. “But my role as Mark Quinn … and the funeral’s tomorrow; I’ve got to be there, too, and there’s work tomorrow morning…”
Anne consulted her watch. “We can organize the visit for this evening, if we begin immediately. And if you’re willing to drive, Flick.”
Felicity nodded and rose. “Of course.”
As Anne and Felicity swept from the room, Mary watched with an uncomfortable sense of helplessness. Much as she wanted to poke about Wick’s house, this certainly wasn’t what she’d had in mind. She wasn’t sure she could change roles so quickly. Hadn’t a clear idea what she was looking for. Didn’t like the idea of interrupting, then resuming, her life as Mark Quinn. Yet Anne and Felicity were correct: this was the most effective way to do things. And – her conscience wriggled here – it meant she could have a bath! A hot, glorious, sudsy, middle-class bath…
As run by Anne, the Agency was ferociously efficient. Ten minutes later, Mary was immersed in a steaming tub. As she scrubbed, Anne sat behind a folding screen and listened to her report. Mary began by describing her struggle to be accepted on site, from her own blunders about reading and speaking too well, to Harkness’s cultivation of her as a charitable project, to her utter lack of experience – unconvincing, even in a so-called boy of twelve.
“Just as I feared,” muttered Anne, when Mary paused for breath. “It’s a field about which we know next to nothing.”
“Miss Treleaven?”
“I do beg your pardon, Mary. Pray continue.”
“I haven’t learned a great deal in my time on site. However…” Mary heard the whisper of Anne’s pen making notes on the other side of the partition. The jottings were minimal at first. She explained the tea round and Jenkins’s small side profit, which elicited a quiet huff of amusement. But when Mary mentioned Reid’s meagre collection for the widow Wick and Keenan’s reputation as a man “always on the take”, the pen scratchings accelerated. By the time she described the break-in, its aftermath and the appearance of Octavius Jones, Anne was scribbling furiously.
“Since Jones knows Jenkins by name, I’m inclined to think that Jenkins fed him information. I’ll check that the next time I see Jenkins – tomorrow evening, I hope.”
“Good.” There was a final burst of writing before Anne said, “This Keenan character seems almost excessively villainous.”
“Jenkins would certainly testify to that.” Mary briefly described his flogging and her near escape. “Which reminds me, Miss Treleaven – what does Harkness know about my role on site?”
“Nothing, of course.” Anne sounded surprised at the very question. “Is there anything apart from the flogging that makes you wonder?”
“He’s been very kind to me; unusually so, really. I can’t decide if it’s because he suspects something, or whether he has his own agenda, or whether he really is deeply paternalistic towards his workers.”
“Perhaps he’s merely being a good Christian.” There came the whisper of pen against paper again, but now it was leisurely – more like doodling than note-taking. “It’s rather unusual, of course, but he’s very active in his church – one of the more evangelical denominations, I understand. Have you anything else to report?”
There was one more subject she ought to broach: the reappearance of James Easton. But even as she opened her mouth to speak, Mary found herself creating excuses. His appointment was already public knowledge. She’d no evidence that James even recognized her. If he didn’t, she kept reminding herself, it was all for the best. But she was reluctant even to voice that utterly humiliating fact. “No.”
“You must be hungry.”
“Constantly,” admitted Mary. She stood in the tub, tipped a final bucket of warm water over her head, then wound herself into a large towel. “Although tonight I’d rather have a bath than a meal.”
“Fortunately, you needn’t choose,” said Anne with a small smile.
The table was neatly laid for one. Mary lifted the silver dome and sighed with delight: roast chicken, vegetables, potatoes and, for pudding, a wedge of lemon tart. All the same… “Isn’t it getting rather late? I ought to set off soon.”
“Sit and eat,” said Anne sternly. “You can’t behave like a lady if you’re half-starved.”
Who was she to argue with Anne Treleaven? The only difficulty was in remembering her table manners, now that she was faced with her first good meal in several days. One of Mark Quinn’s inelegant habits had become almost ingrained…
While Mary ate, Anne moved quietly about the room, assembling the things they’d need to complete her transformation: fine muslin underclothes, dark silk gown, brocaded shawl and deep bonnet. Mary’s skin tingled as she watched Anne arrange a few extra items on a side table. It was at times like this – bruised, footsore, yet brimming with excitement – that she particularly loved working for the Agency.
It didn’t take her long to dress. The crinoline was enormous – the sort that required one to enter rooms sideways – and she practiced swishing it about for a few minutes. At first it was odd to wear her own boots again, and then it was a pleasure. Much to her surprise, the dress fitted beautifully and she looked to Anne. “But how…?”
Anne merely smiled. “Sit down so I can arrange your hair.”
Mary stifled a grimace. Her straight, slippery hair resisted buns and chignons at the best of times. Now, cropped short, it was less ladylike than ever. When Anne produced an unfamiliar item, a small roundish net stuffed full of horsehair, Mary resigned herself. It took two racks of pins but when Anne was finished – and she wasn’t gentle – Mary’s hair was smoothed back into a passable bun, with the false roll of hair anchored just where her own finished. Once the bonnet was in place, it looked surprisingly natural.
“Will I do?” asked Mary, draping the shawl over her shoulders and picking up a heavy wicker hamper.
“Of course.”
Outside the house, a good-size carriage awaited. The coachman seemed unfamiliar to Mary – at least, until he climbed down from his perch and took the basket from her with a broad wink. Mary’s eyes widened and she bit back a gasp. Felicity Frame did, indeed, make a convincing man.
“Where to, ma’am?” The driver’s voice was a supple tenor.
“Er – Ayres Street, by Southwark Bridge. Please.” She climbed into the carriage, feeling more awkward than she had in ages. So they were to maintain their roles all the way.
As they bowled south-east at a smart pace, Mary settled back on the padded bench, basking in the subtle scent of her own clean skin, a full stomach, and the soft caress of muslin and silk garments. Even after only a few days as Mark Quinn, such daily comforts felt deliciously luxurious. Their return also brought a strong sense of déjà vu. These things were hardly novelties, but she remembered a time when they had been. Several years ago, when Anne and Felicity had first whisked her away from a death sentence and out of gaol, she’d never known daily baths, citrus fruits and feather beds. Indeed, she’d been poor and hungry for so long that eating three meals a day seemed astonishing and excessive.
But the most difficult part of Mark’s life was not labour or filth or hunger. What Mary found gruelling was the sense that Mark would never get ahead, never gain a rest, never be at ease. His meagre wages bought him just enough food and sleep to survive. There was no possibility of saving money and thus no hope for any sort of change or rest. And as the case of Jenkins showed, any illness or accident was disastrous – not just for the boy concerned, but for his extended family as well. This was the bind she too had felt, during her childhood. As a young pickpocket and later, a housebreaker, she had acquired
her money in daily scraps and infrequent windfalls. What she didn’t spend was liable to be stolen from her, in turn. And all the time, there was the need to keep her head down, keep her real identity a secret. It was an exhausting life, for she was constantly on the alert, always on the defensive. And except for the heady rush of danger that came with each theft, it was a lonely, joyless existence. It was perhaps understandable that when caught red-handed, she hadn’t felt her life worth saving. But Anne and Felicity had.
The carriage halted and Mary blinked. Her eyes were moist and she dabbed them hastily with a handkerchief – another luxury. It took her a moment to return to the present, and it was only when the carriage door clicked open that she felt fully a lady once more. And what a lady!
She descended to the pavement with mincing steps and allowed Felicity to hand down the hamper. “Wait here,” she said in the general direction of the carriage.
“Very good, ma’am.”
The house was a narrow two-storey strip of brick in the middle of a row, made conspicuous by the large, slightly wilted black bow fastened to the door knocker. As Mary rapped on the door, she heard voices inside fall silent.
A small, tousled boy opened the door and gaped up at her.
“I’ve come to see your mother,” said Mary in a carrying voice.
As she’d expected, at the sound of her voice a young woman came hurrying towards the door. “Don’t keep the nice lady waiting, Johnny. Let her in, there’s a good boy.” She bobbed a curtsey to Mary. “Please to walk in, ma’am.”
Mary allowed her gaze to travel over the woman and the contents of her house. The sitting room was clean and sparsely furnished, and someone had tried to ornament it with a bunch of white wildflowers arranged in a cracked mug. Despite its plain appearance, it was a large and fairly costly-seeming house for a labourer – even a skilled one like Wick. But the most noticeable feature of the room was the number of children in it: four at a glance, plus the boy by the door. “You’re Mrs Wick?”
The young woman bobbed again. “Yes, ma’am.” She was about twenty, fair-haired, and so very thin that she appeared almost translucent. She had recently had a colossal black eye, which was now fading to a greeny-yellowy colour. “If – if you come to see the body, ma’am, it ain’t here. I ain’t had many callers, ’cause of the ink – the ink—” She stumbled to a halt.
“The inquest?”
“Aye, that’s the one, ma’am.” Something inside Mrs Wick’s dress shifted and Mary blinked: there was a sixth child, an infant, cradled to her breast. She blushed and smiled at Mary’s expression. “My youngest, Robert. He’s over a year, now, for all he’s so tiny.”
Mary bent forward to look at the baby, a bald, wizened little man suckling away, oblivious of her inspection. She had no idea what to say: he wasn’t pretty, or well-grown, or alert, or any of the usual things one complimented in babies. “And this is your eldest?” she indicated the boy who’d let her in.
“Aye, that’s John, named for his father. He’s rising seven. And the others are Katy, Michael and Matthew – twins, they are – and Paul. But won’t you take a seat, Mrs – er, ma’am?”
“Fordham. Mrs Fordham. Thank you.” Mary sat in the chair indicated, the only solid one in the room, and smiled at the children. The children stared back. They looked ridiculously alike, with their mother’s round eyes and defenceless expression.
Paul let out a sudden, thin wail and, in response, a deep voice came from the back of the house. “No call for cryin’, little Paul. Tea’s ready now.” This confident pronouncement was followed by the opening of the interior door – the kitchen door, Mary now saw – and a man entered carrying a tray. He halted, mid-step, at the sight of Mary. Surprise, embarrassment, alarm all flashed across his face. His still-bruised face.
It was Reid.
Reid, the bricklayer.
Reid, with whom she’d gone round site yesterday, collecting donations for the widow Wick.
The silence was broken by Mrs Wick’s nervous half-sob. “What must you think on me,” she asked Mary, “my husband not yet buried and another man in the house? But it ain’t what it looks like, honest it’s not. Ain’t that right, Robert?”
Reid blushed comprehensively and his hands shook as he placed the supper tray on the table. Despite his guilty look, he faced Mary with a certain awkward sincerity. “Indeed it’s not, ma’am. I’m a mate of Wick’s – we’re both bricklayers by trade, and worked the same gang – and I just come round this evening to give Janey – I mean, Mrs Wick – a hand with the young ’uns. It’s a powerful hard time for her just now, burying her husband and looking after all them little ones.”
It took a moment for the facts to penetrate Mary’s frozen façade of calm. Fact: Reid’s given name was the same as the baby’s. Fact: he was on sufficiently intimate terms with Mrs Wick to be frying eggs, unsupervised, in her kitchen. Fact: he didn’t seem to recognize Mary. It was this last that refused to register for some time.
Something of the adults’ tension inhibited the children, too. They were a quiet brood by any standard but now their round, pale-blue eyes grew even wider, and the twins shoved their right thumbs into their mouths with sudden, simultaneous jerks. At last, Mary roused herself. Reid hadn’t recognized “Mark”. That was the main thing – the only thing – that mattered, just now. Everything else could wait.
“Your supper’s growing cold, children,” she said, relinquishing her chair, and was pleased at how natural she sounded. “You must be hungry.”
John, the boldest, nodded. He now made a dash for the table. “Fried eggs!” That lifted the strain and the rest of the children moved towards Reid, clearly ravenous.
Mrs Wick smiled nervously at Mary, as though checking to see whether she’d been forgiven. “They call him Uncle Rob, the children do. He’s a real blessing to our family.” Sudden tears glistened in her eyes. “I don’t know what I’d have done without him, this past week.”
Mary nodded, and suddenly it didn’t matter what the state of affairs was between Reid and Mrs Wick – not for the moment, at any rate. “It’s always a blessing when friends and neighbours come together in difficult times,” she said in affected, pompous tones. “And that is why I’ve come, too.” She drew Mrs Wick to a quiet corner of the room and unpacked the hamper: a little basket of eggs, a boiled ham, a seed cake; a slice of butter wrapped in paper, and an ounce of tea; and, right at the bottom, a length of black crape.
“Oh, Lord.” Mrs Wick’s eyes welled up and she began to cry in earnest now. “I never seen such a basket, Mrs Fordham, never in my life. It’s too good of you.” She wiped her eyes on a corner of her apron. “And the children—” She turned pleading eyes to Mary once more, seeming to look up at her although the two women were roughly the same height. “Of course, they don’t get such splendid teas, hardly at all; only it was Robert’s idea to give them a treat, and they been so grieved…”
Mary felt acutely uncomfortable. She was glad to give things to Mrs Wick, of course. The widow certainly seemed to need them. But such extravagant gratitude for what were, truly, only small things? Why shouldn’t the Wick children have fried eggs for supper every night of the week? It was wrong that they couldn’t afford it.
“Janey.” Reid’s quiet voice broke through Mrs Wick’s anxious flutterings and her head instantaneously swivelled towards him.
“Yes, Robert?”
“I’ll be going now. They’s two eggs keeping hot in the pan for you, and you’re to eat them both, hear? No giving them to Johnny or them greedy twins.”
She blushed faintly and glanced at Mary. “Two eggs? But I couldn’t…”
“You can, and you must.” He turned courteously to Mary. “Evening, ma’am.”
She nodded graciously and watched him take leave of the children, bidding them be good for their mother’s sake. It was impossible not to admire the compassion he showed them. As Reid let himself out of the door, he glanced once more towards the back of the room, his gaze swerving
towards Janey Wick as though by compulsion. Guarded as his expression was, Mary couldn’t help but see the longing and tenderness in his eyes.
She was almost sorry to observe it. There was no way this man was a casual, drunken pub brawler. That, combined with his passion for Jane Wick and his affection for her children, meant that his bruises were significant. They’d been fading on Monday, so the fight had taken place perhaps a week ago. She wondered if Wick’s body had also borne evidence of a fist-fight.
Mrs Wick, whose attention had wandered to her children, passed a weary hand over her forehead and yawned. The languid gesture pulled her dress tight against her body – her thin, narrow body – and the slight swell of her lower belly. Mary’s gaze was riveted once more. On a woman that gaunt, such a belly could mean only one thing; even she knew that. It might not be Reid’s baby, of course. But odds were it was, and that was more than sufficient motive for violence. It was enough even for murder.
The door clicked shut behind Reid and Mrs Wick smiled at Mary, meek and conciliatory. “Forgive me, ma’am. I’m sure I don’t know why I’m so weary these days. It’s in my bones, like.”
Mary murmured something about trying times. “Have you family close by? Someone to help with the children?”
She shook her head. “I ain’t from London; it was Wick as wanted to work here, and what could I do but follow? I was right sorry to leave Saffron Walden.”
“Have you thought about what you might do? Go back to Essex, perhaps? Or at least send some of the children?” A better-off relative might even offer to raise one of them for her.
“I don’t rightly know, ma’am. It’s all so sudden, and Wick not yet buried on account of that ink…” She made a helpless gesture.
“What do you do, for work?”
“Straw-plaiting, ma’am.”
So that was why her hands were so callused and scarred. They were the hands Mary herself ought to have had, the better to pass as a builder’s assistant. “And you find time to plait straw, with six children in the house?”