“The rest of you lads, find a way t’get us cross Piccadilly, through all that traffic,” Lewrie ordered.
“We tried to fight ’em, sir,” Turnbow told him, tagging along at Lewrie’s side. “Just weren’t big or strong enough.”
“Not your fault, Turnbow, you tried, and that’s what is important,” Lewrie told him, “And Dasher? You tried t’fight ’em, too, and then gave chase. That was brave of both of you.”
Behind them as they left the park, the bystanders chatted among themselves, and Lewrie faintly heard “That was Captain Alan Lewrie? The naval hero? My stars, him to the life?”
“What’s London comin’ to, I ask you?” another spoke up. “Crime and assaults in the parks, on a famous man’s helpless wife? Tcha!” and “Wot’s th’ bloody Bow Street Runners doin’, then, drinkin’ beer an’ havin’ a pie when things like this’re goin’ on? Police I ask ya!”
* * *
They stopped traffic long enough to get across Piccadilly and up Dover Street, and finally into the house, where they lay Jessica on a cushioned settee in the front parlour, her head and shoulders propped up on fetched bed pillows.
When Jessica said she still felt faint, smelling salts were sent for. One maid suggested willow bark tea as a good remedy for aches and pains; who had any? The maid knew a shop, and bustled off to buy some. Was her wrist sprained, or broken? Ice, in quantity, might help, but who had a stock of ice this late in the Autumn? The little maid-of-all-work was given some money and sent off to hunt some up. Deavers was despatched to the Stansfield house for the physician.
If Lewrie imagined that his wife would get any ease, that hope was dashed at once. The physician’s wife was a childhood friend, and she lived close by, and attended St. Anselm’s Church. She came with her husband, after sending a servant to the Mertons’, and the banker’s wife arrived a bit later. She, in turn, had sent word to the manse at St. Anselm’s, and Reverend Chenery, a hand-wringing, shivery wreck, Jessica’s brother Charlie, and Madame Berenice Pellatan were banging on the door not ten minutes later. Next came Mrs. Eaton, a barrister’s wife, Mrs. Pryor, another girlhood friend wed to a steam engine manufacturer, and Miss Kensington not long after, after dismissing her elementary classes at St. Anselm’s.
If Missuz Heiliger shows up too, I hope she brings a keg o’ beer, Lewrie thought as the gathering crowd of sympathisers shoved him out of standing room. Then, damned if round, blonde Betsy Heiliger entered the house almost as soon as he thought it—without beer or ale that her husband’s family brewed.
“Perhaps we would all be more comfortable in the drawing room abovestairs,” Lewrie suggested. “I’ll send for tea.”
“That would be best, Sir Alan,” Dr. Stansfield said, “thank you,” as he bent to his patient. “Hmm. Hah. Hmm. Aha?” he mused whilst examining her. “I fear that the gash on your temple, Dame Lewrie, must be stitched to close the wound. And, I fear that once healed, it will leave you with a faint scar.”
“A match to my husband’s?” Jessica gamely asked.
“Oh my dear, how brave of you!” Mrs. Merton gushed, and that set off another bout of syrupy condolences and praise from her friends, a fine pack of “chick-a-biddies” in full cackle.
As Lewrie began to herd them up the stairs, Agnes, one of the maids, blew in the front door, waving a tiny paper spill aloft. “Found the willow bark, sir!” she bawled triumphantly, “an’ I’ll have it hot an’ ready in two shakes of a wee lamb’s tail, an’ th’ first’un already be shook!”
“Regular tea for all in the drawing room, too, Agnes,” Lewrie reminded her. “Set Hazelwood to that, and you do the other tea, that willow bark, yourself.”
“Willow bark tea?” Dr. Stansfield said with a sniff, and a bit of amusement. “A folk treatment for headaches and fevers. Still, I’ve seen it prove efficacious in some instances. Now, my dear, if you can manage to flex your fingers?”
“Ow!” Jessica cried after the effort.
“Hmm, ahh, hmmm,” Dr. Stansfield speculated some more.
There came another banging on the front door, not the knocker, but a fist. Pettus and Lucy were in the entry hall, Lucy with her hands to her mouth in concern. Pettus unlocked the door and swung it open, and in came a ragamuffin shop boy with a square-ish bundle on his shoulder, wrapped in burlap or jute, and the little maid-of-all-work, beaming like a cherub.
“Somebody’s wantin’ a block of ice here?” the lad asked. “Damned near the last of our winter stock. Iff’n ya got a cool larder?”
“Show him to the kitchens,” Lewrie directed. “How much?”
“Summer rates, sir,” the lad said on his way down the stairs, “Ten shillings.”
“Oh, your poor hand, Jessica,” Madame Pellatan wailed as she made her way upstairs, the last of the herd. “Mon Dieu, if you can no longer paint, or draw?” Jessica let out a mournful wail, at that.
“Enough o’ that,” Lewrie snapped, wishing that he could boot the old French baggage and her melodrama right up the arse. “I’ll leave you to Doctor Stansfield’s care, my love,” he said as he trudged up to join the others, oath as he was to join them at that moment.
“‘Ere, where’s me master’s money for th’ ice?” the lad who had fetched it called out at the top of the kitchen stairs.
“Some peace and quiet, please!” Dr. Stansfield demanded, rather loudly. “Give Dame Lewrie some quiet, in which to rest!”
“Thought she already paid you,” Lewrie snapped. “I gave her some money.”
“You did, and I did, sir!” the little maid swore. “I give him twelve shillin’s!” I still got five o’ wot you gimme!”
“Yarr, ya did not!” the shop boy countered. “Ya said yer master would pay when we got here!”
“Did not!”
“Did too!”
“Quiet!” the Doctor roared.
“Oh my Lord!” Jessica exclaimed, partly in pain and partly in utter exasperation. “I need a brandy!”
“Turn out your pockets, boy,” Lewrie demanded.
“Don’t have none of it on me, yer honour sir,” the boy objected, “me master already … uh.”
“So my maid already paid for the ice?” Lewrie asked, grabbing the scamp by the front of his shirt to give him a shake. “Twelve shillings, and then you demand another ten when you get here? There’s boys transported for life for less!”
“Right! Just like I told ya, sir!” the maidservant piped up in triumph, showing Lewrie the five shillings she had left.
“Damn your blood, boy! Get ya gone, and damn the two shillings your master charged. I hope he chokes on it.”
“Daughter!” the Reverend Chenery called out as he crept down the stairs from the drawing room. “Is your wrist quite broken? I heard you cry out! We are all, this instant, praying for your recovery. A word to the Lord, dearest Jessica? I remember your dear mother’s passing.”
“Nobody’s dyin’, for Christ’s sake!” Lewrie roared in his best quarterdeck bellow.
“Quiet!” the Doctor entreated, even louder.
“Brandy?” Jessica re-iterated. “Anybody? Ow, ow, ow!”
“And one for me, too,” Lewrie demanded, “before I strangle somebody!”
The shop boy was shoved out the door, with the little maid sticking her tongue out at him. Reverend Chenery slinked off up the stairs to fret in the drawing room, and Deavers turned up with a brandy bottle and two glasses.
“Hmm, aha!” Dr. Stansfield said at last, sitting back up in his chair. “Your wrist is not broken, Dame Lewrie, merely a bad sprain. I do believe you may regain full motion in a fortnight. Did someone say something about ice?”
“I believe it was mentioned,” Lewrie dryly said, “yayss.”
“Take a sip, my dear,” Stansfield said to Jessica as the brandy glass arrived, “then I shall use a bit of it on your wrist, where the leather of the leash abraded your flesh. Scratches, mostly, and naught torn open.” He opened his bag and removed a clean, white handkerchief to dampen and press on he
r hand and wrist. “A bit on your temple, too, I know, it stings. There, there.”
What the Devil’s he doin’? Lewrie wondered as he got his glass of brandy, and took a restorative sip, taking a chair nearby.
Dr. Stansfield drew out what looked like a “housewife,” a sewing kit with needles and thread, all of which he dampened with the brandy. “Turn your head to me, my dear. You will feel some pinches, but you must bear it. Do you know that King George the Third once had to be operated upon for the stones. He read a book before the surgeons were ready, drank off a brandy, and then underwent the procedure without a single groan?”
“Ow!” Jessica cried out as he made his first stitch.
“There, there, I’ll dose you with some laudanum, after. There, there,” Stansfield cooed, taking a second.
“Ow, my Lord!” Jessica whimpered, breaking Lewrie’s heart. “That is not a pinch! Ow!”
Two more stitches—sutures, he called them—were taken before Stansfield snipped the thread with a small pair of scissors, and he was done. “Drink all that up, now, my dear, and I shall wrap your wrist. Brave lady! And could someone fetch several small pieces of that ice, wrapped in a clean tea towel? That will reduce the swelling, which is sure to reveal itself.” He stowed away his needle and thread.
“Alcohol, sir?” Lewrie asked, frowning.
“Most apply hot, clean water, preferably boiled,” Dr. Stansfield told him, with a faint smile, “to cleanse a wound. I’ve heard that a sailor will use salt water, but I’ve found that deep scratches and wounds that break the skin seem to stay fresher, without suppuration, with the application of highly fermented spirits. God only knows why it is, but it seems to avail. Did you know that Galen, the classical healer, used honey, even on deep sword cuts? Imagine! It was once widely used by the surgeons of the Roman legions. Successfully, too.
“More brandy, my good man,” Stansfield said to Deavers, who was still standing by with the bottle. Stansfield got a refill, tossed it back for himself, then allowed Jessica another glass. “I will leave you a bottle of laudanum, but you will need something to allay the bitter taste.”
“I’ve some tea in my study,” Lewrie recalled, “with lemon, sugar, and ginger beer.”
“I’ll go get it, sir,” Deavers volunteered.
“Only a minim at any given time,” Stansfield cautioned, “And the willow bark tea once the pain has abated to a tolerable level.”
“Of course,” Lewrie agreed, going to sit by Jessica’s side.
“Am I marred for life, Alan?” she asked, reaching across her body to take his right hand in her left.
“Tosh, love, it ain’t even piratical, and not a patch on mine,” he comforted her, only having to lie a little, showing her a gap of less than two inches ’twixt his left hand’s forefinger and thumb. “My darling, nothing could steal your beauty.”
“If you’re fibbing to make me feel better, I suppose I could wear my hair in bangs from now on,” she said, squeezing his hand and shifting a little on the settee to a more comfortable position.
“We should consider getting you up to bed,” Lewrie suggested.
“No, just let me rest here for a while,” Jessica demurred, putting on her first smile since the attack. “After the laudanum, I will most likely nod off. We can do that later.”
Deavers returned with the pitcher of cool tea and Lewrie’s glass from his study. Stansfield had a sniff at it, poured a glass, and added a small, measured amount of the laudanum. Jessica drank it down, thirstily, then gave out a sigh, wrinkling her face up.
“I can taste the laudanum, even through the tea,” she said with a sigh. “Brew more of it, do, with more ginger beer poured in.”
“I’ll get the company herded out, so you can rest,” Lewrie told her, rising and patting her hand one more time.
“I’ll join you, Sir Alan,” Stansfield offered. “They’ll listen to a physician’s orders, if they won’t heed yours, hah hah. My wife can convince the rest that she’s no longer in danger.”
“Your fee, sir?” Lewrie asked as they went up the stairs.
“After all the good dinners I’ve eat here, Sir Alan?” Stansfield said, chuckling, “and all the grand conversations? No fee.”
Well, there’s something good come of it, Lewrie thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY
How they got word of it, God knows, but even Lewrie’s father and son Hugh showed up as Lewrie and the Doctor got the women herded out so that Jessica could rest. They exchanged a few comforting words with her, vowed to find the culprits, somehow, and let her drift off to a restful, pain-free sleep on the settee in her studio. Lewrie led them all up to the drawing room, calling for a fresh bottle of brandy.
“Wish I’d been there, ’stead of the lads,” Charlie gruffly said, with his fists clenched. “Lord, is any place in London safe any more?”
“My neighbour’s servants caught a boy trying to snake his way in through the drains,” Sir Hugo said with a sniff, “so he could let the house breaker gang in on the quiet. They didn’t reckon on a pair of hungry footmen making themselves some midnight dampers.”
“Did they call the police?” Hugh asked.
“Not much point in it,” Sir Hugo told him. “The gang must have seen candles lit and scampered. Oh, they turned the boy over, but he kept mum.”
“Why try to steal dogs, though,” Lewrie wondered. “What use can they have for them?”
Dasher, who had come to collect the tea things, popped his mouth open several times as if summoning up the courage to speak. Finally, he set the tray down on a side table, and went “Ahem. Sir?”
“Aye, Dasher?” Lewrie said, turning to look at him.
“They woz dog buffers, sir,” Dasher related, fingers busy on the seams of his trouser legs. “Part o’ th’ cantin’ academy. Criminals, false beggars, house breakers, safe crackers, pick pockets … they’s all got their specialties wot they call ‘lays,’ an’ put on airs that they’re smarter than regular people. Got their own slang language.
“Dog buffers aren’t well thought of, even by the beggars, sir,” he went on. “They’re a mean bunch.”
“What do they do with the dogs they steal, then, Dasher?” Hugh asked him.
“Ransom, mostly, sir,” Dasher said, turning to face him. “A day or two from now, a wee boy or girl will be at th’ door, maybe leavin’ a note. Th’ owners haveta place a notice in th’ paper th’ buffers say to, offerin’ a reward t’get their dog back.”
“How much?” Lewrie asked.
“Depends on wot th’ carriers, th’ ones who do the scoutin’ an’ casin’, figure wot th’ swell can afford, sir,” Dasher said. “In their lingo, you an’ all gentlemen’re swells. Maybe … ten pound apiece?”
Lewrie shared a look with his father. “That’s dear, but Jessica is that fond of her silly spaniel. And Bisquit has been close to me for years. We’ll get them back?”
“Yessir, iff’n ya pays,” Dasher assured him. “Ya don’t, they’s gone forever.”
“What happens if we don’t pay?” Hugh asked.
“Well, uhm…” Dasher said, scuffing the toe of one of his buckled shoes on the carpet, looking down for a moment. “They gotta make somethin’ outta their snatch, sirs. They’s dog fighters wot need dogs for their fightin’ dogs t’practice on. They can sell ’em for a few shillin’s, It’s good odds the buffers’ll have a slew o’ dogs to ransom, an’ they need feedin’, so they kill th’ ones wot won’t earn ’em any money, sell the skins, an’ feed th’ meat to th’ rest. Even eat dog meat themselves, sir. Dog meat ain’t bad, sir.”
“Good God!” Hugh and Charlie both exclaimed. They had both been raised with dogs in the house, Jessica’s Rembrandt, or Hugh bowled over by his brother, Sewallis’s, pack of setters.
“Dog ain’t bad, indeed,” Sir Hugo commented, and everyone had to gawp at him, appalled. “What? None of you have ever been on short commons in the field? Alan, Hugh, Mister Chenery, haven’t you ever eat your shipboard rats, your
‘millers’? Haw!”
“Well, I suppose a man can never get enough meat, but…” Lewrie said, “Aye, we’ve all eat ‘millers,’ but I draw the line at dogs … and cats!”
“Don’t know why th’ buffers stole th’ dogs right out in th’ open like they did, sir,” Dasher told Lewrie. “Most times, they’ll get over a wall or a fence t’snatch ’em when nobody’s lookin’. Attackin’ women like that’s not natural.”
“I will ransom our dogs,” Lewrie vowed, after tossing back his remaining brandy, “but, dammit, I want t’track ’em down, chase ’em to their lair, and murder the bastards for what they did to Jessica!”
“Right with you, father,” Hugh seconded.
“Count me in, too,” Charlie swore.
“Desmond an’ th’ lads’d be that eager t’help, sir,” Dasher said with a gulp.
“And this talk about killin’, skinnin’, and eatin’ dogs,” Lewrie cautioned, “We’ll not mention any of that round Jessica. She’s upset enough.”
“Passed, nem con,” Sir Hugo agreed.
“How to find them, though, sir,” Charlie Chenery speculated. “We have no idea where their lair is. Dasher? Any clue on where they went?”
“Like I said, sir,” Dasher explained, looking sheepish, “I run almost t’Arlington Street, an’ their cart was still lashin’ on, as fast as Jehu, up Piccadilly, ’til they passed so many coaches an’ such that I lost sight of ’em in all th’ traffic. I couldn’t say where they made a turnin’.”
“Doesn’t make much sense,” Sir Hugo scoffed, looking querulous. as he reached out for a refill, “Shaftesbury, Haymarket, Saint James’s Park, Charing Cross Road, or Pall Mall … those thieves were running through good neighbourhoods. Where would low-born filthy criminals find a hidey-hole in there?”
“They woz both of ’em right nasty beau-traps, sirs,” Dasher told them. “Cast-off finery from th’ rag pickers’ barrows, but dirty an’ greasy-grimy. Had a fortnight’s worth o’ beards, an’ th’ leader, he said, ehm…’gie oos th’ dogs,’ makin’ dog sound like ‘doges.’”
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