by Amy Wolf
“Hullo, mistress,” I said, touching my hat.
She grunted, perhaps too heartsick to speak.
“It seems this part of Middlesex is as wretched as London,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes—perhaps she was wary of city folk. But wait! Of course, it was my attire. I thought I best get to the point.
“Do y’know,” I asked, “what became of those at the Whale?”
She shook her graying head sadly, at last moved to reply.
“Thank the merciful Lord, most escaped except the ostler. He was so overcome by drink they could not carry him out.”
“So Claude is dead,” I said. I could not have been calmer.
The woman cocked her head, no doubt puzzled by my local knowledge.
“And,” I asked, “what of the proprietor?”
“Ah.” The woman sighed. “He was raddled too but did not weigh as much as Claude. They managed to drag him out, though I hear tell he’s in a bad way.”
“Hmm.” I could not say I felt especial distress. “Do y’know where he might he be found?”
“Two streets over from this, at Sally Marpole’s.”
“Thank you, mistress,” I said, turning sharply on my heel before she could ask me questions. “You have been most helpful.”
I knew well where Sally’s house lay. Had we not served together at the Whale for nigh on thirteen years? I was relieved to see it whole—humble, but whole. When she responded to my knock, I could barely suppress a smile.
“Hullo, mistress,” I said, with another pull of my hat.
She did not answer; just stood there holding the door.
“Uh . . . ” I said, “pardon me, but it is my understanding that Dick Tanner lies within.”
“Yes?” She regarded me with suspicion. What could this errant highwayman want with her?
“I-I am here on behalf of his daughter—”
“Margaret!” Sally cried, her still youthful face beaming. “Lord, I thought her dead these many years!”
“She is in London,” I lied.
“Unhurt?”
“Oh yes, she came through the fire,” I said.
“Thank God!” Sally answered, her blue eyes tearing. “We was always the best of friends.”
I nodded, trying not to recall those years of hoisting ale and getting pinched. I fixed my eyes past her shoulder and into the darkened sitting room.
“Oh, I beg your parson!” she said. “Please, do come in. Would you care for some tea?”
“No thank you,” I replied, though I hadn’t had the brew in years. I looked over the place as I would a coach interior: there, in a corner, amidst the modest furniture, lay a familiar form. He was resting on a small divan, his body swaddled in blankets. Though his face was charred and his eyelids drooped, it could be none other but him.
“Fa—” I said, moving toward him. “That is, Master Tanner. Your daughter Margaret bade me to come.”
“Meg,” he gasped. He sounded as if even his lungs were scorched.
I nodded, expecting some message, and he did not disappoint.
“God damn that filthy little whore to hell!”
Unlike the old days, I did not retreat.
“I shall relay your kind greeting,” I said, adopting the air of “Megs.”
“Ah.” He closed his eyes with difficulty. I tried to envision the damage beneath those blankets, then shrugged in the manner of Megs.
“Well,” I said carelessly, “do not despair overmuch. I lately knew a fellow who came through the very plague.”
Father attempted to nod, but the effort was too much. He shakily brought up a hand pocked with bright red blisters.
“Meg requests—” I began, wondering what she would ask. “That I am to . . . look after you. You may call me Highwayman.”
Father stared at me, but unlike most of our countryman, did not display alarm. Indeed, we shared a tie—not so much blood but trade.
“Very well,” he said.
Over the next few days, I fulfilled “Meg’s” wishes, fetching him warm mugs of tea and wiping his blistered brow. To Sally I was cordial, but no more than necessary. The less I said, I thought, the less chance of being discovered. Finally, on day three, I saw that father weakened and would not last the night.
“Leave me,” he said. “I wish to meet the devil in peace.”
Damn his black soul, I thought. Why was I even here? What could I possibly ask of him, now, before he expired?
Did I desire forgiveness? Bah! Forgiveness for what? Being used as a servant the whole of my young life? Or did I, in some Aventis-like way, wish to forgive him? Ha! I thought. Not in this lifetime or the next! What then did I want? As I stood over his motionless form, the answer came to me whole. I bent down.
“Father,” I whispered.
“What?” he rasped.
“I am not Highwayman after all. It is me, your daughter, Meg.”
In one swift motion, I let down my hair so that it fell about my face. He gaped up at me.
“Yes, it is me,” I said, “the one who broke your noggin and hoped that I had killed you. But know that before that day, there were so many beatings, slaps, threats, and curses that I barely lived as a human. Until I left your ‘care.’”
Anger inflamed my blood just as it had when I left.
“What do you want?” father gasped. “Get it over with, damn you!”
“It is simplicity itself,” I said. “I wish for an apology. I wish, at the last, for you to show remorse.”
He stared up at me with defiance.
“Or do you remain a bastard,” I asked, “until I close your eyes?”
He let loose a long sigh, then motioned for me to come closer.
“Very well,” he forced out. “I admit I treated you ill. You have every reason to hate me.”
“I do,” I said, placing my hand on his. “Words alone cannot undo the past. Still, it is good to hear them.”
He nodded, then fell into a stupor from which he would not awake.
“Farewell, father,” I said.
As I stooped to close his eyes, I felt we were both at peace.
The Rebuilding
I laid father to rest next to mother in our village’s cemetery. It was not a well-attended ceremony: just me, the gravedigger, and Sally. The local priest had fled—to a less fiery locale—while I made excuses for “Margaret.”
“She, uh . . . must see to rebuilding,” I said. “Of course, she would come if she could.”
“Of course,” said Sally, “she were always a good-hearted soul.”
I attempted to nod gravely. Lord, if she only knew!
“Well,” Sally sighed, as we faced the newly dug plot, “Master Tanner might not have been an honest man, but he was always good to me.”
I response, I grunted.
“Shame about the missus, though,” she went on. “Weren’t in this world long.”
“Ah.”
Staring at her grave, I thought about the mother I had never known. How different my life would have been, I thought, had I a female protector!
“I s’pose ye’re back to London, Mr. Highwayman?” Sally asked.
“Oh. Oh yes. That is exactly right.”
I doffed my hat in farewell, ignoring her looks of interest. The sooner I left, the better! But where would I go now? Since my two oppressors were gone, should I remain in Middlesex? Perhaps I could work some alchemy and change my childhood home from ash to a place where I thrived! Why not rebuild and declare myself mistress? In this guise, I would not have to answer to anyone—no, not even Jeffries.
With a smile and a firm stride, I made my way to High Street and entered a dressmaker’s shop.
“How’d ya do?” I greeted a woman framed by bolts of bright cloth. “Me and-and my wife . . . have been burnt out, and I am looking for some clothes to replace her charred rags. Any chance you could you help me?”
“Certainly, sir,” said the woman, withdrawing out of view and then returning with colo
rful garments. “These I have recently sewn for myself, but I can do so easily again, and to think of your poor wife—please sir, I bid you, take them!”
“You are very kind,” I said. When was the last time I had said that to a stranger? “My wife is roughly your size, so these will do very well.”
I gave her a smile, handed her a guinea, and headed for the door.
“God bless you,” I said. Aventis would be proud!
There was now the matter of changing, and I, denizen of the Heath, knew just where this could be attempted. I headed for a lone tree which I had long used as a landmark. There, I shed the garb of Megs and strangely became Margaret: sporting a skirt and bodice; with a light skirt beneath that; and a soft cotton shirt with lace tucked at the neck! The only discordant note was my thigh-high boots—but hidden as they were, they appeared as but leather shoes. Once my hat was thrown down and my hair allowed to fall free, I felt a weight fell from me: the heavy one of disguise. Taking care to bury my highwayman’s costume (but keeping hold of my pistol), I headed back to the Whale, practicing on the way: that is, how to walk like a woman.
Word of my return spread quickly, until a small circle of former workers gathered before the inn.
“It is so good to see you, Margaret!” Sally said, embracing me. “Where have ye been all these years?”
“Oh, running some shop or t’other,” I said, feeling strange in her embrace. I suppose I could do such things now, and no man might object!
“Lord knows, we missed ye,” said John, a jovial sort who had served in the tap room for years.
“As I missed all of you,” I lied. How could I let them know that once I’d fled, the Whale was dead to me? “I have a proposition,” I told them.
They all looked at me with hope.
“In my absence, I have done well—that is, I have managed to put some aside. What say you to raising the Whale and having her swim again?”
“Huzzah!” came the cheers.
I wrote to the London bank where Moll had placed my guineas. Fortunately for me, the bankers had escaped with their gold. It was thus the matter of a week before construction began and I, lodging with Sally, felt new hope rise along with stone walls.
Slowly, the Whale’s insides took shape until there was a kitchen; six chambers; a fireplace and a bar. When after three months panes were placed in the windows, I knew that the time had come to decide upon a new sign. I had never fancied the old one, with its whale ensnared in words: no, my beast would be free, leaping above the waves.
As we prepared for guests, I moved to a chamber upstairs. At last, we reopened on 1 January, 1667, and before the arrival of March, were turning patrons away!
I soon settled into my role, serving beer, ale, and wine: all of it fine, for I had sampled the best. I oversaw the new cook, so something like sanitation prevailed in the kitchen. In the main room, I strove to be friendly, but still kept up my guard: with my past, there was no choice.
Of course, it did not prove easy to shift from Megs to Margaret. Even as I served ale, my mind would flash back to those sweet years on the road: stopping Lady Castlemaine, the Duke of Monmouth, even the queen herself! As for our broken company . . .
Ah, Jeffries, you expected obedience, but how I admired you! Even Carnatus: I would give twenty guineas just to hear you place odds again! And Aventis, my Aventis . . . would we meet again? Or would I be forever haunted by that tall thin figure with a pistol in one hand and a sword in another, risking himself to help others, or pressing his lips against mine?
Though my days were filled with industry, at night the tears would come and I confess my dreams were filled with my companions, those three “knights of the road” I would never see again.
A Promise
Some say that time is a balm which can cool the heated past.
Though I resisted, I found with the passing of years that Megs faded away. I had become wholly Margaret, female owner of the Whale, and at twenty-seven, was close to becoming a spinster! I had to laugh at that: me, a woman whose blood ran so hot she was nearly hanged at Tyburn! Yet, I carefully sought to hide this aspect of myself.
“‘Night, Sally,” I called, as her shift ended and she headed for home. We had been a going enterprise for nigh on two years now, the Great Fire like a dream that never happened—not only here, but in London as well.
I must have made a good appearance for I had no lack of suitors during those two years in business. Some were bakers and some were butchers; some travelers from other parts, but how could any match Aventis, my first and only love? Indeed, they were too stout, too thin, too loud, too crude, but in the main merely boring. Who could rival my warrior-priest? No ordinary man in Middlesex.
Now, there was one patron—his name was Ned Huntington, and each evening he liked to stop in for a bottle of beer or two. Ned was a farmer possessed of a few acres not far from the Whale. He was a good man—at least, I had never heard any ill of him.
“Laid in four fields of taters today,” he told me one night as I set about closing up.
“Mmm,” I said.
“If the weather holds, should be a banner crop.”
I looked at him with a smile, a cleaning cloth in one hand. His speech pleased me, for he was a gentleman, or as close as one could be given his occupation. He was not unhandsome: in fact, his sandy hair, green eyes, and form made hard by labor were not unpleasant to the eye. He was older than I—perhaps thirty—and though the village girls sighed over him, he seemed not to notice. Perhaps, like me, he could set an old love aside—or had simply not found the right woman.
“So.” He took a swallow of beer. “I’m sure I must bore you silly, with all my talk of farming.”
“No, no,” I said, though in truth he sometimes did. “You can see that my own life is hardly pamphlet-worthy.”
God, if he only knew!
“You work very hard,” he remarked, watching me wash down the bar. “I like that.”
“Indeed.” How many on the road had commended me for effort?
“Oh yes. It cheers me to see a woman who makes an honest living and is not beholden to anyone.”
I paused to think this through. Despite the “honest,” it seemed a true depiction!
“Thank you,” I said, giving him a weary smile.
“What I like best is you employ your time so well! Not a moment wasted.”
“Yes, I-I suppose that it so,” I answered. I did not want to tell him: I maintain a state of industry so I do not have to think.
“Well, best be getting home,” he said, standing with reluctance. “There is . . . there is a village dance on Friday. Held at my barn, in fact! I would be much obliged if-if you could favor me with your presence.”
I shrugged.
“Why not?” I said. It had been so long since I had done something pleasant.
Oddly, all that week, I looked forward to Friday. At least it would break the monotony of washing, serving, and smiling. On the day, I dressed with extra care, even leaving my pistol at home.
When I arrived at Ned’s barn with its thatched roof and smell of livestock, I saw some couples at its side already dancing as a lone fiddler played.
“Ah, Mistress Margaret!” Ned cried, rushing over and bowing.
“Good evening,” I said.
From the way he looked at me, I could tell he admired my finer dress.
“May I have the honor?” he asked, gesturing toward the dancers.
“I beg your parson,” I said, “but I do not know how to dance.”
“Oh, that is all right,” he said, motioning to a wood bench. “I daresay that at court, I would be called a bumpkin.”
“I cannot say. I have never been,” I said, thinking of Queen Catherine.
“Well, you have employed your time more wisely.” Ned gave me a smile. “Instead of frivolity, you have devoted yourself to industry.”
“Of various kinds,” I muttered. I attempted to change the subject. “Tell me, how are the crops coming?”<
br />
He laughed.
“I am sure my potatoes don’t interest you.”
I gave a feeble smile.
“But you—when you were away in London, you must have encountered all sorts. Pray, do you have some tales to relate?”
I gulped. How to respond?
“I would prefer not to speak of that time,” I said. “I am sure you understand—estrangement from home and all that.”
“Of course,” he said, and allowed the matter to drop. One thing I could credit him with: he did have perfect manners!
“This seems a prosperous farm,” I said, glancing over the pastures and the happy cows within them. “You must do quite well here.”
“Yes, but . . . must we always talk of business?” he asked.
“What else is there?” I said. “You are a farmer and I am an innkeeper. Of what more do our lives consist?”
“That is very wise,” he said, smiling as if I’d just uttered a great truth. “Most dream of being more than we are, but you are content with your lot. I like that.”
I responded by sighing heavily.
He gave me his arm and we rose, strolling past the boisterous dancers. I waved to Sally and her most recent conquest.
“Tell me, Ms Margaret,” said Ned, as we passed those content cows. “Forgive me if I am too bold, but . . .why is it that that you do not wed?” He slapped his forehead. “I am sorry! I intrude where I should not.”
“No, no,” I said, “I have no secrets.” Ha! “There was-there was someone in London, but it did not end well.”
“I am sorry,” Ned said, and from the look on his face, I could tell he was sincere. “That must be terribly difficult. I confess . . . I have not yet found . . . that is—”
“Let us not speak of it now,” I told him, turning back to the party.
A Bold Call
Poor good-hearted Ned! How could he know that whenever he brought up the subject of Love, the more I thought of Aventis! I must have breathed so many sighs around him that had he been a small craft, he would have been blown from the Whale! Every night, as he sat patiently by the fire, nursing his bottle of beer, he could not discern he was causing me real torment! Should I respond to his overtures, or continue to wait and molder, as I was doing now? It had been three years since I’d set eyes on Aventis.