The Little Shop of Found Things--A Novel

by Paula Brackston

  “You are very well informed on the matter,” he said.

  She was too angry to care how he thought she knew what she did. “Yes, well, I know what I know,” she snapped. “And I know we can’t just leave her there. We should have tried harder to get to speak to her.”

  “I requested time with her, you saw me do it.”

  “And we were turned away flat.”

  “There are rules.”

  “To hell with the bloody rules!” she shouted. Samuel looked shocked to hear her curse, but she was too upset to moderate her language another minute. “I don’t give a damn about what we should or shouldn’t do! To send someone to their certain death for taking a couple of silver trinkets … It’s ridiculous. It’s unjust. It’s barbaric.”

  “It is the law.”

  “And the law is wrong!” She could not do it. Could not simply leave. To do so was to condemn Alice to a slow death and so risk Margaret Merton’s fury. Risk that she would carry out her threat to harm Flora. No, Xanthe told herself, I am not giving up. I can’t! “Stop the carriage!” she shouted.

  “There is nothing to be gained by returning.…” Samuel began, but Xanthe was not listening.

  “Stop!” She banged on the ceiling of the carriage to try to get her point across to the driver. He seemed oblivious to her cries, but a stagecoach crossed their path at that moment so that he was forced to check the horses. Xanthe leaped from her seat, threw the door open, and jumped out.

  “Xanthe, wait!”

  She ignored Samuel. She had to go back, had to do something more. If he was not prepared to try then she would go alone. The first obstacle was the mud. What passed for the main street had been transformed by the rain into a rutted track pocked with horse manure, studded with dislodged stones and clods of earth, along with general rubbish and filth. If only she still had her boots. The lady’s shoes Jayne had found for her were ridiculously flimsy and unsuited to the conditions, making the going ten times more difficult than it would have been in her own robust footwear, her feet squelching into the puddling clay, the water and mud quickly seeping through the shoes as well was over them. Her clothes hampered her, too. She was compelled to hitch up the long skirts of her dress, which otherwise dragged in the muck, quickly becoming sodden and unhelpfully heavy.

  “Make way!” a voice shouted.

  She turned just in time to see a rider cantering toward her. Stepping to one side she narrowly avoided being knocked down by a fast-moving gig. There seemed to be no highway code, not even a semblance of who should go where. It was a wild muddle of horses and carriages and wagons and barrows and people, with Xanthe floundering at the center of it. She could hear Samuel calling her name, but she pressed on. She decided that if she reached the side of the street she could make her way back toward the courthouse more quickly and safely. Crossing the street was not a simple matter, though. She was jostled and cursed at and shoved all the way. She glimpsed the Appleby carriage stopping further up the street and Samuel jumping out. Turning away, she ran on. She knew Samuel meant well, meant to protect her, but there was no time to stand and argue about what she was doing. She had to go back and find someone, anyone, to talk to, to plead for more time to find the evidence that would prove Alice’s innocence. If Samuel caught up with her, he would only slow her down or possibly drag her away. She dove down a side street, planning to take another back to the main road further along. There were fewer vehicles rattling along the narrower lane, but as there was less space it was hazardous merely trying to make any headway at speed. She kept stumbling, bumping against people, or having to spring out of the way of the faster-moving carriages. She was almost at the next corner, about to switch back along a quieter cobbled street, when she failed to notice how little room there was for the carriage and four thundering up the road behind her. Too late, she tried to step out of the way. She felt the horses whistle past, and then a painful blow as the side of the carriage caught her as it sped by. She was thrown to the ground. For all its layer of mire, the landing was harsh enough to knock the wind from her body. She pushed herself up to her knees, refusing to give way to panic, waiting for her lungs to remember how to function properly.

  “Mistress?” An unfamiliar voice spoke softly. “Have a care, do not hasten to rise, lest you faint away,” the stranger advised. He took hold of her arm and encouraged her to lean on him as she struggled unsteadily to her feet. Xanthe was too breathless to reply but grateful that someone at least, in this pitiless place, was prepared to lend a helping hand to a person in difficulty. “There,” he said, yet holding her arm. “Are you all alone, mistress?” She tried to focus on him, her vision a little blurry from a lack of breath. He was middle-aged, with wary eyes and stubble shadowing his chin. Even to her faulty eyes, he did not look like a typical Good Samaritan.

  “Xanthe!” Samuel’s voice cut through the fog in her brain as air at last started to work its way in and out of her lungs.

  She opened her mouth to thank the stranger, who had turned to see that she was not in fact on her own. In an instant he altered. His hold on her arm shifted from supportive to bruising. She squealed in protest as he shoved her backward, her back slamming against the rough wall of a house. Before she could react he raised his free hand and snatched the locket from her throat.

  “No!” she screamed, her voice forced into action by horror at what he was doing. She threw herself at him, scrabbling to grasp the gold chain that now swung from his hand. Muttering oaths, he pushed her away with such strength that she fell to the ground again. Before she could get to her feet he was off and running, weaving his way nimbly through the throng. In a moment he would be lost in the crowd, and her locket gone forever. Her only way of ever returning home vanished in an instant!

  “No!” she yelled again. “Stop him! Thief!” She cried out in desperation, pointing at the quickly diminishing figure.

  “Are you hurt?” Samuel was at her side, helping her to her feet. “Did he hurt you?”

  “Forget about me, he has my locket!” She dragged herself from his grasp and lunged after the running man.

  “Your locket? But we will not catch him now. Wait.…”

  “We have to! You don’t understand.” She tore away as fast as she could, her breath still ragged, her back sore where the carriage had struck it.

  Seeing she was not to be stopped, Samuel too gave chase. He dashed past her, telling her to stay where she was, and charged after the thief, shouting for others to stop him or else for God’s sake get out of the way. Xanthe struggled to keep up, and even though Samuel ran swiftly, the gap between him and the stranger was widening. Terror gripped her, real and overwhelming. Without the locket she would have to stay in the past forever. She could never go home. Would never see her mother again. Never live in her own time. What had she done? How had she been so stupid as to risk everything? And for nothing, because she had failed Alice, too. At that moment she felt defeated, beaten, broken. She wanted to give in to despair, slump down into the mud and howl. She could see Samuel battling to get past a vegetable barrow and a gaggle of bemused shoppers. The thief was almost out of sight. Almost gone. And then, just as it felt like everything was beyond her, out of her control, and hopeless, she felt such a surge of rage course through her that she let out a roar of frustration and anger. She would not give up! She would not let someone snatch away her life like that. Her home. Her mother. She started to run again, and as she did so she saw the thief dash to the left down a narrow alleyway. It appeared to run parallel to the nearest street, on her left. Both routes led back to the high street. It was a shortcut.

  Xanthe charged down the rubbish-strewn road, screaming at people to step aside and let her pass, ignoring shouts of protest as she pushed and shoved and swore her way onward. It seemed an impossibly long way to the main road, but at last she emerged onto the frantic route that ran east-west through the town. She did not hesitate, but turned and ran on. Just as she drew level with the exit from the alleyway the thief came ba
rreling out of it. She liked to think she tackled him and brought him down, but everything happened so fast and the truth was he blundered straight into her. They crashed to the stony road together. She was a woman possessed, her only thought to get the locket, as she grabbed and clawed at him. The thief swung a punch and missed, then another that connected with her chest. She gasped, doubling over with the pain and force of the blow, but still held on to his shirt with one hand, digging her nails in so that he could not shake her off.

  “Give it back,” she gasped. “My locket, give it to me!”

  “Get off me, wench!” He took hold of her wrist and wrenched her hand from his shirt. He was horribly strong, but she was easily as tall as him. She hurled herself forward, flinging herself over him so that he could not get to his feet. As she grappled with him she saw the glint of sunlight on the gold he still clutched in his hand. She tried to make him open his hand but he would not. Without a second thought, she leaned forward and bit his knuckles. She could never have imagined actually biting another human being, but even as she felt her teeth break his skin and tasted his blood she did not stop. Nothing was going to stop her from getting back her passport home.

  “Argh! Cursed woman. Vile bitch!” he yelled, raining blows on her head with his other hand.

  But he could not keep hold of the locket. She forced him to let go, so that he could snatch his hand away from her teeth. She grabbed the locket and rolled on top of it, curling into a ball to avoid the kicking he was now giving her. For a moment she thought of opening the locket. Considered shutting out everything else—turning away from the brutality of her attacker, from the weight of failing Alice—and letting herself be taken home again. What good was she doing, after all? What use had she been? But she knew she could not simply admit defeat. Too many people depended upon her carrying on.

  Suddenly the kicking stopped. Hearing a cry she looked up to see Samuel hauling the man off her before landing a punch that put him down. He took a firm hold of the ruffian’s collar as he looked at Xanthe.

  “Are you wounded?” Samuel asked, breathless from running, his eyes full of both fury and fear. Fear for her safety, her well-being, she realized.

  She shook her head and climbed unsteadily to her feet, hastily dropping the locket into her pocket, shutting her mind to the pull it was exerting upon her. “I’ll live,” she told him.

  He dragged the struggling thief to his feet. “You, sir,” he hissed at him, “will take a short walk with me to the constable, and a shorter one still on your own to the gibbet!”

  Xanthe shook her head again. “No, Samuel.” She waved a hand at the man. “Let him go.”

  “What? What do you say?”

  “Let him go.”

  “But, you cannot…”

  “You think I want more of what passes for justice around here?” she shouted at him. “The same sort of justice that Alice got? A system so cruel, so harsh, so completely without fairness? Do you think I want to be the one to put someone through that, to be responsible for their death?” Her shoulders slumped as pain and exhaustion took hold. “I have my locket back,” she told him quietly. “Let him go.” She did not wait to argue further but started making her painful way back to the carriage.

  The journey home was terrible. With every mile she felt she was getting further from any possibility of protecting her mother. The roughness of the road and the resulting lurch of the carriage were constant reminders of the beating she had just taken. Samuel had fussed at first, wanting to take her to an apothecary. It had taken her some time to make him accept that she had sustained no serious injuries. They journeyed out of Salisbury in silence after that. Frustration at her own uselessness got the better of her, so that she had to bite her lip against threatening tears and turn to stare out of the window. She felt so helpless. Ignoring the look on Samuel’s face, she pulled at her ruined shoes and kicked them off before curling her feet up beneath her. Gingerly, she took the locket from her pocket and set in on her lap, examining the chain as best she could while not wishing to handle it. The clasp was broken. Defeated again, she leaned against the padded back of the seat, closing her eyes. It was then that she felt Samuel move from his seat to sit beside her.

  “Let me,” he said. He took the locket from her and used his pocket knife to work the broken clasp back to a functioning shape. He held it up, and Xanthe leaned forward so that he could fix it around her neck once more. Then, wordlessly, he slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him. Grateful and weary, she leaned upon him, resting her head on his shoulder. After another jolting mile, with the shadows lengthening outside, fatigue overcame her and she fell at last into a deep, dream-filled sleep.

  * * *

  When they reached Marlborough the driver dropped them at the front door of the Appleby house. Samuel told her there was no question of her going back to Great Chalfield and her duties there that evening, but that he would see that she returned there in the morning.

  Inside, Philpott fussed about taking their capes and hats.

  “Where is my father?” Samuel asked.

  “Gone up to London on business, sir. Not expected back until Friday.”

  “And Joshua?”

  “Not at home,” was all the explanation the manservant could give.

  “We will take supper—”

  “Not for me,” Xanthe interrupted. “Thank you, but I have no appetite.”

  “After such a day, you must keep up your strength,” Samuel said.

  “I’m not hungry,” she said, feeling that all she wanted to do was go to her room.

  “At least allow me to have Amelia fix you a tray of something. And send up a draft for the pain, and some balm for your bruises.”

  She nodded. “Thank you, Samuel.” She made herself look at him. It was not his fault, she kept telling herself. He had done what he could. “Really, I mean it,” she said. “Thank you for helping me. For trying to help Alice.”

  “I only wish we could have had greater success,” he said.

  She could think of nothing else to say. He was looking at her with such genuine concern, such sympathy, she knew she was in danger of weeping. She doubted her ability to remain composed if he were to be nice to her again. She turned and trudged up the stairs. With each step it got harder not to whip round and run back to him. But how could she explain how desperate she felt? How could he answer the question that now screamed inside her head: Would Margaret Merton consider her daughter saved, or would she punish Xanthe’s failure by taking her revenge on Flora?

  Philpott had lit a fire in her room, but it remained chilly. The storms of the previous days had gone, to be replaced by a severe drop in temperature. She rubbed her hands by the fire for a moment, bracing herself for the business of getting out of her cumbersome clothes. She marveled at the thought that women had to go about their daily lives, all day every day, laced and tied into so many heavy layers. No wonder noblewomen were treated as semi-invalids half the time. The higher up the social scale you were, it seemed, the more restrictive and elaborate your clothing, the less you were able to actually move. For a while she knelt in front of the hearth, removing the many pins that secured her headdress until at last she could let her hair down. She ran her fingers through it, relieved to release the tension such a tight hairstyle provoked in her head. It felt to her as if everything a woman had to wear was designed to remind her just how much freedom, how much control over her own life, she did not have. Eventually she forced herself to get up and undress. Amazingly, she had not suffered anything more than bruising, from either being knocked down by the carriage or from being thumped and kicked by the would-be thief. Even so, she felt sore and fragile. She winced as she pulled the bodice back off her shoulders and thought longingly of a deep, hot bath. She had removed all of her clothes except the underdress when there was a knock at the door. Expecting Amelia with her food she opened it, only to find Samuel standing there. Seeing her in a state of undress he struggled not to look flustere
d.

  “I have brought your supper. And some wine,” he mumbled, holding up the tray.

  “Oh, I thought Amelia … Um, thanks. Thank you,” she said, stepping aside so he could bring it in and put it on the table by the fire. She followed him, so that when he abruptly turned around they were standing face to face, very close. The light in the room was all shadows, jittery flashes from the fire, steadier glows from the candles, nothing but fading twilight through the window. He seemed about to say something, but instead he reached out and touched her hair, taking a ringlet between his fingers, feeling the soft springiness of the curl. He looked at her so intensely, so searchingly. She felt her pulse quicken. She scarcely knew him and yet she was strongly drawn to him. It was more than just his dark good looks, his lean, muscular body, and the sensitivity and kindness he had shown her. She felt a connection. Something on a different level altogether. As if he had been a part of her traveling back in time that she did not yet fully understand. Part of the reason, though whether for her sake or his, she was unsure. Either way, she knew she had no wish for him to leave her. She wished him to stay. To step closer. To touch her again. To hold her.

  “Xanthe,” he murmured. “You are as if come from a foreign land, a distant shore, across seas not yet charted. A person apart from all others. Unknowable. And yet I would know you. Unclaimable, and yet I would with all my heart claim you.”

  He lifted his hand and went to stroke her cheek but hesitated, holding back. She took a small step, just a tiny movement toward him, not taking her eyes from his, all the time watching him as he watched her. It was all the encouragement he needed. He slipped one arm around her waist, pressing the thin cotton shift against her skin. His other hand he slid beneath her hair, cradling her head, titling it up toward him. As he kissed her she felt any sensible restraint, any common-sense resistance, melt away. She was tired of being sensible, of being strong. She was worn out from thinking. She did not want to try to make sense of everything more, she only wanted to give in to the powerful desire she had for this man. She wanted to feel his mouth upon hers. She wanted his strong arms holding her. She wanted to feel the press of his warm, firm body against her own. She longed to forget all the impossible things she was trying to do and to only feel instead.