Once More, Miranda

by Jennifer Wilde

  “What’s happened?” Bancroft exclaimed. “What’s going on?”

  “She filched your purse. Filched your watch, too.”

  “Bleedin’ liar! I never! Lemme go!”

  Holding me firmly with his right hand, he plunged his left into my bodice, fingers digging roughly between my breasts to fasten around the watch. He took it out and held it up as though it were a trophy. Bancroft shook his head slowly, gave a curious little smile and, taking the watch, dropped it back into his pocket. The Scot continued to stare at me with those chilling blue eyes, mouth curled up at one corner now, the heavy black wave spilling over one side of his brow. He looked as though he’d like nothing better than to beat me senseless, and I had the feeling he’d do so at the least provocation. I didn’t struggle. I didn’t dare. He held my wrist at a crooked angle, fingers twisting savagely, and the least movement on my part brought excruciating pain.

  “Well, well, well,” Bancroft said amiably, examining me. “What shall we do with her?”

  “If I had my way, I’d break her bloody neck. It’s scum like this who are responsible for making London the cesspool it is. Thieves, pickpockets, cutthroats—the lot of ’em should be rounded up and hung.”

  “She’s terribly young,” Bancroft remarked idly.

  “And a hardened criminal already.”

  He gave my wrist a brutal jerk. I stumbled, falling to my knees, tangled auburn hair spilling over my face. He jerked me up, swung my arm out and took a step to one side, twisting the arm behind my back, jamming my wrist high between my shoulder blades. I screamed, tears springing unbidden to my eyes. He slung his free arm around my throat, his forearm pressing tightly against my windpipe.

  “I say, Gordon, no need to be so rough. She’s little more than a child.”

  “Adult enough to steal your watch, lift your purse.”

  His voice was cold, steady, with a harsh, metallic rasp, a voice to send chills down your spine. I found it difficult to breathe with that bony forearm held so firmly against my throat. I dared not move, knowing full well he would strangle me brutally without the slightest hesitation. I was a fighter, yes, quick with tooth and nail and knee, but I had sense enough to know when I was out of my league. This Scot had the killer instinct. I’d seen that immediately, and I sensed that he was far more dangerous than the most brutal denizen of St. Giles.

  Bancroft picked up his thin chamois purse, jangled the coins inside, then put it back into his pocket. Those good-natured brown eyes examined me closely, amusement in their depths, and I knew that if I was to get out of this it would be through his grace. I contrived to look extremely pitiful, grimacing with pain as the Scot gave my wrist a slight turn. Both men seemed to have forgotten the execution, the man dancing on air even now, and I saw that Bancroft, at least, was relieved by the distraction I had provided.

  “Shall we drown the wench?” he asked. “The river’s nearby. You could hold her under.”

  “Nothing would give me more pleasure,” the Scot retorted.

  “Wenches drown in the Thames every day,” Bancroft continued in a teasing voice. “I wager there’d be no hue and cry. I doubt seriously if anyone would even miss her.”

  “Oh, please, sir,” I wailed. “Please don’t.”

  Bancroft smiled. It was a lovely smile, warm and friendly, the kind of smile to melt your heart. He was a soft touch, big and handsome and amiable, and I felt sure he’d not allow anything terrible to happen to me. After all, it was his pockets I’d picked, not the bloody Scot’s. Tears spilled down my cheeks, attractively, I hoped. I sobbed, gulping a little as the Scot’s arm tightened a fraction of an inch. Bancroft studied me, eyes twinkling, not at all perturbed by my thwarted crime.

  “I—I ’adn’t ever done nothin’ like this before,” I lied, looking up at him with welling eyes. “It—I was so ’ungry, you see. I ’adn’t ’ad anything to eat since—for two ’ole days, an’ I was starvin’.”

  “She’s lying,” the Scot said coldly.

  “I ain’t!” I protested. “It’s true, every bleedin’ word!”

  “You were hungry?” Bancroft inquired.

  “It wudn’t so much for me, it was—it was for my wee baby brother and my mum. My mum’s sick, sick somethin’ awful, and I don’t ’ave no pa, an’ my poor baby brother just—just wails. ’E ’as th’ fever. I was desperate. I ’oped to take ’em some food and get some medicine for my poor wee brother.”

  “Touching,” the Scot said dryly.

  “Lemme go, you brute! You’re breakin’ my arm!”

  “You’re breaking my heart,” he retorted.

  He jammed my arm up a bit higher, almost wrenching it out of its socket. I cried out, but his arm cut off the sound, brutally tightening, trapping the cry in my throat. I could feel the blood rushing to my head, felt a strange dizziness as black clouds slowly enveloped my brain.

  “I say, Gordon, give the wench some air. You’re choking her. You’re upset, mate. You’re in a foul mood, seething with anger, consumed with a thirst for revenge—I can understand that, but you needn’t take it out on this pathetic little street waif. It’s not Cumberland you have in that stranglehold.”

  “Would that it were,” the Scot snarled.

  I was sinking into unconsciousness when he relieved the pressure around my throat. The misty black clouds receded. I coughed and spluttered, my face all flushed and warm and my arms and legs felt numb. Th’ bleedin’ sod would ’ave killed me if it ’adn’t been for th’ gent. Although the arm was looped loosely now, resting lightly across my windpipe, his fingers still held my wrist with brutal tightness, keeping my arm locked high behind me so that I was in constant pain.

  “Please,” I whispered. “Please let go of my arm.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You’re hurtin’ me awful.”

  “I’m glad to know that.”

  “Really, Gordon, there’s no need to torture the wench. No real harm has been done. What do you say we tan her bottom and let her go.”

  “You can’t give these vermin the least quarter, Bancroft. You let them get by with something like this and it only encourages them.”

  “I’ll never do it again,” I promised. “I swear I—”

  He wrenched my arm again, tightening the bar across my throat. “I told you to shut up,” he said.

  “What do you propose we do?” Bancroft asked.

  “Find a constable. Turn her over to him.”

  “They’ll clap her in prison. The wench might even hang.”

  “Hang enough of ’em and the rest will think twice before slitting a throat and lifting a watch.”

  The Scot was dead serious. Bancroft looked perturbed. All this while the Scot’s cousin had been swinging from the gallows, his every twitch accompanied by hoots and cheers from the merry, rapacious mob. There was a great roar now as he was cut down and stretched out on the wooden platform. A physician took his pulse, rested his ear against the man’s chest and declared him still alive. The mob applauded wildly. A bucket of water was hurled into the man’s face to revive him. A fire was lighted in a huge black pot. The flames began to crackle immediately, a plume of dark black smoke curling up to the sky.

  The Scot stiffened, momentarily forgetting me, although he still held me in that brutal lock. I could sense the tension in him, could almost feel the anger and anguish that charged through his veins. Bancroft frowned. He clearly wanted to get his friend away before the second stage of the execution began. The condemned man was pulled to his feet. He stared about him in a daze, water dripping from his head and shoulders. He saw the crowd, saw the soldiers, saw the flames leaping lustily in the huge black pot. He closed his eyes and straightened himself up, determined not to cringe.

  “Look, Gordon,” Bancroft said nervously, “I—I really don’t think I care to stay for this. You’ve seen enough, mate. No need tearing yourself apart. It can only—” He hesitated, groping for the right words. “We have to dispose of this wench,” he continued. “We’d
never find a constable in this mob. There’s a roundhouse a mile or so from here. What do you say we take her there and discuss the matter on the way.”

  “There’s nothing to discuss,” the Scot said dryly. “I don’t intend to let her go.”

  “It wudn’t your pockets I picked!” I protested.

  “Wench has a point there,” Bancroft agreed. “If charges are pressed, I’ll have to press them, not you.”

  “You will, if you value our friendship.”

  “You’re a hard man, Cam Gordon.”

  “And you’re forever good-hearted, Bancroft. It’s going to get you into a lot of trouble one of these days.”

  Bleedin’ bastard. Brutal sod. The milk of human kindness never flowed in his veins, not for an instant. As a child he probably took pleasure in slaughtering small animals, probably beat up other boys and felt good as he bloodied their mouths. How I’d love to kick him in the balls, kick him so hard he’d be neutered for life. How I’d love to rake my claws across those lean, hard cheeks and bring the blood, make the sod squeal. Maybe I’d have a chance. Maybe on the way to the roundhouse he’d drop his guard and loosen his hold and I could break free without having my arm torn off. I hadn’t given up hope yet, not by a long chalk. In St. Giles you learned to keep right on hopin’ till they finally threw the dirt into your face.

  “Shall we leave?” Bancroft asked.

  “Very well. Come along, slut.”

  I didn’t have any choice. He started walking, wrenching my arm, forcing me to march ahead of him, his arm still looped around my throat. Every step I took was agony, for those fingers clamped relentlessly around my wrist, twisting it, holding my arm at that excruciating angle. Sod didn’t care at all. Wasn’t his arm bein’ pulled out at the roots. We left Tyburn Fields, heading toward Oxford Road, and the noise of the mob gradually began to recede, fading to a dim, muted roar.

  “You’re really determined to turn the wench in, aren’t you?” Bancroft said idly.

  “Damned right I am.”

  “She’s a pretty thing beneath all that dirt.”

  “Smells like a refuse heap,” the Scot snarled.

  “I wish you’d reconsider, Cam. Pity to see a wench so young rot in Bridewell or dangling from a gibbet.”

  “Why all this concern for a thieving little whore, Bancroft?”

  “Something called compassion. I’m cursed with it. Guess it’s never bothered you much.”

  “It’s never bothered me at all.”

  “I ain’t a whore!” I exclaimed. “I ain’t never let any man top me, never once, no matter how much I was offered. I still ’ave my cherry, you bleedin’ liar!”

  Both men ignored me. They might have been taking a casual stroll together. Although he held me firmly, forcing me along in front of him, I had a feeling the Scot was hardly aware of me, that I didn’t exist for him as a human being. We passed Marylebone Fields, Hampstead and Highgate in the distance, gray and brown under the bleak gray sky. A few stragglers hurried past us on their way to Tyburn, worried that they’d miss everything, but there were no carriages, no carts or sedan chairs. A cow grazed nearby. A dog barked. This part of London seemed curiously deserted, all activity concentrated on that field far behind us now. The roar of the crowd was barely audible, a mere buzzing in the background.

  My arm was practically numb now, the burning, tearing sensation dulled to a throbbing ache. He held me firmly but without pressure, his arm looped loosely around my neck. If only I were wearing shoes, I could rear my foot up and slam the heel down on his instep, then swing my elbow back into his ribs and bang his balls with the side of my hand. That’d do it. He’d let go for sure, but I was barefoot, and instinct told me this one would maim me savagely before I made the first move. No, if I was going to get out of this, I’d have to use my wits. I stumbled deliberately as we moved over the stone bridge that spanned the Fleet. The Scot gave my wrist a jerk, pulling me up. I began to sob.

  I sobbed quite beautifully, quite pathetically, sobbed so softly and so wretchedly it should have melted the hardest heart. The Scot paid no attention whatsoever, the bastard. I forced, tears into my eyes. They spilled over my lashes and streamed down my cheeks in shiny rivulets, and my sobs grew even more mournful. Who could resist such pathos? Bancroft was beginning to grow very uneasy, I could see that. At least he had a heart. I gulped and swallowed, trying valiantly to control my sobs, but they merely increased in volume, growing louder and louder and even more pathetic.

  “Stop that hideous caterwauling,” the Scot ordered.

  “Go play with yourself, you scurvy son of a bitch!”

  Bancroft looked appalled, and then he chuckled, delighted. Damn both of ’em! All that beautiful sobbing, all that brilliant acting, all that energy wasted. Insensitive clods! Didn’t care a jot about me or my poor sick mum or my wee baby brother burnin’ with the fever. I thought I had Bancroft on my side, almost did, in fact, until my blasted tongue gave me away. Damn! I was furious with myself, even more furious with Bancroft who was laughing heartily now.

  “Laugh, you bastard! You ain’t th’ one bein’ drug to the roundhouse. It ain’t so bleedin’ funny to me!”

  “Has a tongue on her, Cam,” Bancroft said merrily. “Has a lot of spirit, too. Never thought I’d see the day when someone called Cameron Gordon a scurvy son of a bitch and lived to say anything else.”

  Cameron Gordon made no reply. He wasn’t amused. The sod probably never laughed in his life unless he happened to step on a baby chicken. Solemn as a grave, that one, grim as the plague. Bloody Scot! So what if his two brothers were killed at Culloden and he lost his property and his first cousin was even now having his entrails roasted in front of his eyes. That didn’t give him the right to torture a poor, innocent girl who was just trying to keep body and soul together as best she knew how. He had a right to be bitter and angry, sure, but he didn’t have to take it out on me.

  We were nearing the roundhouse now, one of many of the temporary gaols in the city where thieves, felons, forgers and other miscreants rounded up by the constables and Bow Street Runners were kept until they were sentenced and sent to pillory, prison or the gallows. They were hideous holes, all of ’em, filthy and rat infested, prisoners all crowded together in dank, dark basements, the stench so bad you could smell it half a street away. The putrid fumes filled the air like a fog, and many prisoners died of jail fever, a virulent form of typhoid that cheated many an executioner of his sport. I had heard all about the dreaded gaols. The subject frequently came up in my profession.

  “Wonder what they’ll do to her?” Bancroft inquired.

  “Hang her, probably,” Gordon replied.

  “Maybe they’ll just put her in the pillory for a couple of days and cut off her hand,” Bancroft said chattily. “I understand they do that to thieves on occasion if the magistrate has had a good breakfast and is in a good mood when he passes sentence.”

  His voice was teasing, but I wasn’t at all amused. Many miscreants preferred hanging to being locked in the pillory, a large wooden plank with holes for the victim’s head and hands. The pillory was always set up in public so the people could be reminded of the wages of sin, and the rowdy populace took savage delight in pelting the poor soul with sticks and rocks, mud and buckets of excrement and rotten fruit and vegetables. Many a person suffocated from the mud and filth splashed on his face, clogging mouth and nostrils. Others were blinded or sustained fatal injuries from the stones. A forger might have his nostrils slit and ears cut off as part of the sentence, a pickpocket have a hand lopped off and the stump seared with a hot iron. It was barbarous and inhuman, and I could see why some preferred the gallows.

  “Pity to see a pretty thing like her lose a hand,” Bancroft continued in that same chatty vein, “maybe an eye in the bargain—the mob can turn quite vicious, I understand. Tormenting a pilloried man seems to be one of the people’s chief pastimes.”

  “They have to have something to do,” Gordon replied.

 
“Maybe they’ll simply hang her,” Bancroft said.

  And I thought he was a good-natured chap, a great, friendly pup! He was as bad as the Scot.

  “By the way, Cam,” he said, “you ever replace that skinny, frightened little titmouse you had working for you, living in the maid’s room?”

  “She left me. Sneaked out in the middle of the night without even bothering to ask for her pay. I can’t seem to keep a maid.”

  “And no wonder, the way you treat ’em. Always yelling and hurling things at ’em, expecting ’em to polish your boots and darn your stockings and fetch your meals and keep that pigsty of a place in order, threatening to throttle ’em if they make any noise while you’re working. How many have you had now, six?”

  “Eight,” Gordon confessed. “Ungrateful wretches, every one of them.”

  “They’d rather face starvation on the streets than face the devil every morning in the shape of Cam Gordon. Can’t say I blame ’em.”

  “Fine friend you are,” Gordon said dryly.

  “I’ve seen how you treated the poor creatures.”

  “I paid them generously. I gave them a comfortable room. I never laid a hand on a single one of them.”

  “Browbeat ’em, tongue-lashed ’em, threatened to boil ’em in oil if they so much as touched your precious manuscripts, kept them in a constant state of terror. You can be a demon, Cam, particularly when you’re working on one of those bloody novels you’re always churning out.”

  “It’s called artistic temperament.”

  “Oh, is that what they’re calling it nowadays? Called it surly boorishness when I was a lad. Seems to me working for you’d be about the worst punishment that could be wished upon a girl.”

  “What are you getting at?” Gordon asked sharply.

  Bancroft assumed an air of hurt innocence. “Nothing,” he said, “nothing at all. I had an idea, but it probably wouldn’t work. I’m always thinking of the comfort and well-being of my friends.”

  “That’s one of your most grievous faults.”