The Landlord's Black-Eyed Daughter

by Mary Ellen Dennis

  “Oh, no.” Elizabeth felt all the color drain from her face. “Another door!”

  “Easy, mouse, ’tis locked with a bolt.” Rand easily shot back the bolt, opened the door, and they emerged onto a portion of roof surrounded by high walls.

  Cold air pummeled them, an invigorating contrast to the fetid atmosphere inside. Elizabeth drank in the sight of brittle stars and a night sky washed clean by the snow.

  “I never thought anything could look so lovely,” she said, crossing to the stone wall. Her thin-soled slippers crunched on the crust of snow and the wind cut through the silk of her gown. Already the air was passing from invigorating to icy. She turned and faced Rand. “Where do we go from here?”

  He climbed atop the door through which they’d just emerged. Balancing on it, he reached to the wall above and swung up. Elizabeth followed. They jumped down on the other side, then crawled across a tiled roof. She gouged her nails into the slates, fingers aching from the cold. Inching along the steep-pitched roof, she tried to ignore the tiles scraping against her legs and the fact that one misstep would send her tumbling to her doom.

  After what seemed an eternity, they reached the parapet wall of the gateway. For the first time, they could see below.

  The sharp outline of a quarter moon hovered above the sea of London’s chimneys and the steeples of her churches. Moonlight caught on the snowy peaks, causing individual flakes to glitter like scattered diamonds.

  The houses below were tall and narrow. Pale patches of light spilled outward, onto the streets. A lighted carriage rumbled past, providing the only noise. A linkboy, carrying a torch for his customers, wound his way along the narrow lanes, his light winking like a fallen star. Elizabeth tried to estimate the distance from their position to the highest roof—at least twenty-five feet.

  Rand voiced what she was thinking. “It’s too far to jump.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I’ll return to our cell, get our blankets, and collect a spike from the chapel. Then we’ll simply tie the blankets together and climb down.”

  “You wait here. I’ll fetch the blankets.”

  “No!”

  “Yes! Your leg might give out altogether. I’m more agile.”

  “What about the chimney? You can’t—”

  “Yes, I can. This time I’ll think about us.”

  Swiftly, Elizabeth retraced her steps. Alone, she found she was terrified. But she couldn’t give in to her fear, especially since she had to concentrate, probe the stifling blackness, and reconstruct their previous route.

  She began her descent down the chimney. Halfway down, she lost her foothold and crashed into the hearth. Picking herself up, she headed for the bed and tripped over the scattered bricks. Cursing, she finally grabbed the blankets and headed back toward the chimney. Then she froze. Did she hear footsteps beyond the door? Yes. The steps were moving closer. Holding her breath, she silently prayed for whomever to pass. Keys clanked. Light from the turnkey’s lantern pierced the door’s barred window and bounced off the cell’s interior.

  “Damn,” she breathed.

  The guard fit the key into the lock.

  Elizabeth stood there, paralyzed with fear. She must do something, but what? She could escape up the chimney before she was discovered, but then the turnkey would alert the others. If he just glanced inside, he might not see anything amiss. More than a cursory inspection, however, and their escape would be revealed. All their tribulations would be for naught.

  That thought, and that thought alone, tempered her panic. Dropping the blankets, she picked up a brick and stumbled toward the door. As it swung open and the guard stepped inside, she bashed him over the head. Still holding the lantern, he plummeted to the floor. The light immediately extinguished, baptizing them both with darkness, but Elizabeth could discern the guard’s form as he struggled on all fours. She hit him again. Then she groped for his keys and locked the door.

  Keys in her bodice, blankets round her neck, she quickly navigated the chimney. Tossing the keys into the corner of the Red Room, she squeezed through doorways, raced along passageways, climbed the coffin, and retrieved the spike. Not taking time to think or feel, she crawled along the steep-pitched roof until she dropped down, next to Rand.

  “The turnkey…” she panted. “He entered our room. I hit him over the head… with a brick… but I didn’t kill him… so we don’t have much time.”

  Rand nodded sharply. Sitting upon the parapet wall, he bound the blankets together, drove the broken spike into the wall with the chisel’s handle, tied one of the blankets round the spike, then climbed down onto the roof below.

  Elizabeth followed. Her cheeks stung with the freezing night air. Her breath plumed before her like the puffs of smoke frozen above London’s chimney pots. Her hands grasped the rough woolen blankets, but her slippers were soaked and provided less protection than bare feet. Resolutely, she kept her eyes on her hands, agonizingly slow in their descent.

  “Almost there,” Rand said, disentangling her hands and helping her through an attic window. “We have three flights of stairs to navigate, then we’ll be able to walk right out onto Newgate Street. Be steadfast a little longer, my brave little mouse.”

  “I will. I must.”

  Rand edged the door open, grasped her hand, and hurried them down two flights of stairs, onto the first floor landing. As they moved toward the last flight of stairs, Newgate erupted. Shouts echoed from all directions. So did running feet.

  “They’ve discovered the turnkey,” Rand said. “Run, Bess. Follow me.”

  She bolted down the steps, stumbling in the dark. Suddenly, the staircase was awash with light.

  Someone shouted, “Halt!”

  Elizabeth kept running. Ahead, Rand’s leg collapsed and he slammed to the ground. A pistol cracked, the shot ricocheting off the stone wall.

  “Keep going, Bess!” he shouted.

  She veered around him. From the corner of her eye, she saw him grope at the wall for support. Then he lurched to his feet.

  Ahead was Newgate’s front door, only scant yards away.

  She reached the bottom of the stairs and spun around. One man held a lantern. A second held a pistol to Rand’s head. The passageway swarmed with prison guards.

  I can’t help Rand now, she thought with despair, and I certainly can’t help him if I’m captured.

  Yanking open the door, she burst outside, onto Newgate Street.

  Twenty-eight

  Elizabeth raced through London’s streets. This part of the city contained an incoherent mix of buildings, haphazardly constructed, leaning like blowsy lovers into each other.

  She saw a rubble-filled alleyway. Picking her way over the remains of a fallen tenement, she searched for a comparatively sheltered spot and tried to ignore the biting cold.

  A pair of guards hurried past, their complaints audible. Even in her terrified state, Elizabeth realized that their search was more perfunctory than committed. Had Rand escaped, the area would have been teeming with lawmen, and she vaguely wondered if she should be insulted by the guards’ indifference.

  The last time she had considered the hour, it had been ten o’clock. Now it must be close to one, and yet the poorest Londoners were already stirring from their tenements. A clear-starcher passed, then a washerwoman who carried dirty laundry. Scrambling from the alley, Elizabeth approached the washerwoman.

  “I need something warm to wear. I have nothing to trade except this gown, which was once very costly. If you’re handy with a needle, the fal-lals can be sewn back on. The silk can be laundered…” Elizabeth faltered when yet another pair of guards came into view. Quickly, she grabbed one end of the washerwoman’s tub. “Here, let me help you.”

  The woman watched the guards march toward Newgate. She stared at Elizabeth, then rummaged through her laundry and pulled out a threadbar
e greatcoat. “’Ere, Miss, an’ good luck t’ ye.”

  “Thank you, oh, thank you.” After hugging the startled washerwoman, Elizabeth continued on her way.

  She passed a watch-house and bade a sleepy watchman good night. She navigated Holborn Hill by way of Snow Hill and Fleet Bridge, then headed for the open country beyond Gray’s Inn Lane. Her feet were so cold, each step was agony.

  By dawn she reached the village of Tottenham and found a cow shed where she could hide. She crawled atop a pile of hay, removed her sodden slippers, rubbed her icy feet, and blanketed herself with the straw. Taking several deep breaths to calm her beleaguered heart, she drifted into an exhausted sleep.

  She awakened to a growling belly and a glowering sky, and pondered her next move. First, she must get away from London—specifically, north to York. Rand’s trial would take place there and surely she could find shelter with her Aunt Lilith, who lived there. Once safe, she would send word of her general whereabouts to Billy Turnbull.

  York was over one hundred and ninety miles from London. She might be able to walk that distance, even with sore feet, but it would take an eternity, so she’d have to “borrow” a horse.

  In fact, if she set her mind to it, she could be at Aunt Lilith’s by this time tomorrow. In Daniel Defoe’s book, Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, he had penned a tale about a robber named Swift Nicks. Needing an alibi, Swift Nicks had ridden from London to York in fifteen hours.

  Fifteen hours! Lord Stafford and his fellow bounty hunters would still be searching London. Walter would never believe a woman capable of devising such a scheme, let alone implementing it.

  She found a white stallion tied to a fence, then galloped across the county of Essex, through Tilbury, Horndon, and Bilerecay, all the way to Chelmsford, where she stopped to rest.

  Following the general route of Swift Nicks, she rode through Braintree and Wethersfield, then over the Downs to Cambridge. Upon reaching Huntingdon, she rested again. Finally, striking onto the North Road, she raced toward Middlethorpe Manor.

  Aunt Lilith immediately ordered a couple of servants to feed and rub down the white stallion. Afterwards, they would return him to his fence.

  Exhausted, hovering between awareness and oblivion, Elizabeth told her aunt everything that had occurred since the Harvest Ball. She ended her lengthy account with Walter’s proposition and her escape from Newgate.

  Lilith’s eyes widened, but she merely said, “I knew something terrible would happen.”

  “No, Aunt, something wonderful happened. Despite all the hardships, including Newgate, I still love Rand with all my heart.”

  Lilith ensconced Elizabeth inside a storage room located near the servants’ quarters. Its window overlooked the drive so that she could survey all departures and arrivals. The storage room also possessed the entrance to one of the several secret passageways that honeycombed Middlethorpe, dating from the religious wars of the Reformation.

  During the next few weeks, Elizabeth stayed in her snug room. To the servants she remained little more than a noise heard in the passageway, a figure glimpsed in the darkness, and she rather enjoyed the air of mystery that surrounded her presence. She imagined a gardener pausing in his work long enough to wipe his brow and gaze up at the third story window of her supposedly empty room. After spying her, he would mistake her for a ghost and spread all sorts of frightening tales. “I’m a legend in the making,” Elizabeth told Lilith, a rare smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

  Lilith’s husband was in London, tending to business. Elizabeth murmured a grateful prayer. Uncle Raymond could be sweet, but when he was in his cups his behavior was unpredictable.

  A fortnight later, Walter, accompanied by Rand, arrived in York. After incarcerating his prisoner in York Castle, Walter posted a hundred guinea reward for Elizabeth’s safe return, then began a systematic search to find her.

  “I don’t mean to harm your niece,” he informed Lilith during his third visit. “In fact, I’ve dropped all charges against her. I just want to make certain she’s unharmed, I swear. You pretend ignorance, but my instincts tell me you’re evading the truth. I know she’s somewhere in York.”

  Lilith invariably responded with metaphysical ramblings, which frustrated Walter as much as they delighted Elizabeth, listening from her secret place behind the wall.

  After Lord Stafford posted his reward, Lilith called together her entire domestic staff and countered with a sum of two hundred guineas, so long as Elizabeth remained undetected and unharmed.

  Other than worrying about Rand, Elizabeth found her stay at Middlethorpe pleasant. The atmosphere was peaceful, her room warm, the food delicious.

  She began penning a fictionalized account of her life as a land pirate. She had read such books as Jackson’s Recantation and The Recantations of an Ill-Led Life. There were no books about female highwaymen, of course, since highway robbery was not a profession employed by the gentler sex. Only men possessed the necessary strength, cruelty, marksmanship, and horsemanship.

  If men are so superior, why do they always get caught?

  She decided to embellish her own admittedly meager exploits and transform herself into a celebrity on a par with Claude Duvall and the dashing Captain Hind—an ardent royalist who specialized in robbing Puritans.

  During the next six weeks, Elizabeth’s imagination took flight. She robbed the Prince of Wales, engaged in a pistol fight with a gang of smugglers, divested the Duchess of Newcastle of a second diamond ring, and successfully dueled against a duke. Elizabeth enjoyed her exploits, especially since she could control the outcome. In the end, she and Rand would flee to America. A shame one could not rearrange one’s life as easily as one could one’s plots.

  Naturally, she kept abreast of events with Rand, whose trial was scheduled for the tenth of March. Lilith sent a servant to one of Billy Turnbull’s pugilist events. The servant passed Billy a carefully worded note, and several times Elizabeth managed to meet with him in Middlethorpe’s garden. He assured her that Rand was well. Billy was trying to figure out a legal way to get his cousin released, especially since another escape attempt seemed virtually impossible.

  “We need money,” Billy said bluntly, two weeks before the trial. “We might have t’ bribe some witnesses, or if the judge rules against us, the hangman.”

  Silently, she cursed Charles Beresford for absconding with her funds.

  “Wait, Billy, I nearly forgot. I did forget! There’s a buried coin purse… the peel tower… two hundred pounds.”

  “Where’s the peel tower?”

  “You’ve not been to the Dales and you’ll never find the blasted purse. I’ll have to do it.”

  “’Tis far too risky, Bess.”

  “If I ride at night, I should be safe.”

  Billy nodded. As he readied to leave the garden, he said, “I hate t’ be a Job’s comforter, but what do ye know ’bout the murder o’ Robert Whitney?”

  “Whitney,” Elizabeth echoed. She hadn’t forgotten the bounty hunter, but Walter had said that all charges against her had been dropped, the lying bastard!

  “Me cousin’s been charged with Whitney’s murder,” Billy said. “Did Rand kill ’im? He won’t say nothin’.”

  “Odd’s bones! How can they blame Rand? What proof do they have?”

  “There’s a witness, Peter Skully. He’s stayin’ in York, at the Cock and Bottle.”

  Skully! The skeleton man!

  “Don’t worry,” Elizabeth said with more confidence than she felt. “Skully’s a thief-catcher. He’d sell his own mother for fiddler’s money. Rand didn’t kill Robert Whitney, and that’s a fact. Keep working for your cousin’s release while I ferret out Peter Skully. There must be some way to rid ourselves of that bloody liar.”

  ***

  Skully succeeded in ruining Elizabeth’s writing, her appetite, and her sleep
. She couldn’t think of anything save him. Walter knew she had shot Whitney, so why had he charged Rand with the murder? The judge was supposed to serve Rand’s interests. Under severe questioning, Skully might very well arse-about, which would exonerate Rand and implicate Elizabeth. Once accused, her efforts to free Rand would be severely curtailed. Even if those efforts were successful, she might be caught and hanged, an irony beyond belief.

  I must do something, she thought, but what? Maybe she’d obtain a witness who’d testify that somebody else shot Robert Whitney. Such witnesses could be found around any courtroom. They were called Straw Men because they made known their services by sticking straw into their shoe buckles.

  After I visit the peel tower, I’ll send Skully a note. I’ll say something like: If you want money, meet me tomorrow at midnight, inside the Church of St. Crux.

  Elizabeth only hoped the blasted bounty hunter could read.

  ***

  Before riding out on one of Aunt Lilith’s horses, Elizabeth removed a pistol from Uncle Raymond’s gun cabinet. Over and over she played a possible scenario in her mind. As soon as Skully entered the church, she would step out from the shadows and threaten him. Then she would bribe him.

  I don’t want to kill him, she thought, as she entered York through Bootham Bar, one of its ancient gates. Robert Whitney was a big mistake, a mistake I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life.

  She wondered if she’d ever use her quill to kill anybody again. On paper her murders had always been motivated by forces beyond the hero or heroine’s control, but she’d never considered the consequences. Since her villains deserved to die, the matter of a guilty conscience had never been probed.

  If I hadn’t shot Robert Whitney, he would have shot Rand. And me. It was self-defense, no matter what Walter says. Walter wasn’t there. I would have been killed, I know it. Whitney deserved to die.

  Justification achieved, at least temporarily, Elizabeth rode along Low Petergate toward the Church of St. Crux, located at the end of the Shambles. The Shambles was a street filled with inns and shops, medieval in nature. It possessed upper stories that leaned so far into the street, locals maintained one could shake hands with somebody from across the way.