Deep Purple
Page 44
With a goodly measure of pride, Modesty considered herself one of the best of London’s craftsmen in the art of camouflaging or altering watches, seals, rings, and other valuable stolen items.
* * *
Located between Fleet Street and the Thames, Modesty’s run-down neighborhood, the Bridewell Dock area, with its narrow courts and alleyways, was the haunt of all manner of thieves, strumpets, and cutthroats who disposed of their victims’ bodies in the stinking River Fleet at night. Every day Modesty saw these lowlifes pass through the Bridewell Dock Grog Shop’s battered door. Even at this time of morning, nearing the tenth hour, the alehouse—the remains of a portion of an old Saxon castle—reeked of cheap drink, stale vomit, and piss.
Few heads turned when Modesty spotted the rakishly dressed Handsome Jack Holloway stroll in. Most of the alehouse occupants, as well as Modesty, knew Jack for what he was— a skilled pickpocket and a fencer of stolen goods.
In spite of rewards offered for information of his whereabouts, Jack swaggered around in flamboyant finery. Wearing a ruffled white silk shirt, red velvet suit, silver-hilted sword, diamond rings on every finger, and a gold watch dangling from his waistcoat, he cut a dashing figure.
Through the white haze of pipe smoke, his bright blue eyes found Modesty. She set the tin cup of ale before one sour-faced patron and waited for Jack to wend his way to her through the maze of God’s neglected souls.
Jack employed a team of artists to alter stolen valuables and owned several warehouses for the storage of these goods. She sincerely liked her nocturnal employer. He might cheat, steal, and lie, but he was the gentlest of souls. Wouldn’t harm a cockroach. She was lucky to work for him.
Yes, between the alehouse and her artistry, she was most fortunate. She had a roof over her head and food in her belly. Security was hers.
Jack wasn’t smiling, and she suspected her news wouldn’t cheer him any. He might find her repartee entertaining, but she sensed that now was not the time for salty byplay. Bluntly, she told him, “The snuffbox isn’t finished."
"We are." His mouth, as mobile as his hands, was set in grim lines. "We’ve been fingered. I’m just one step ahead of the bailiffs.”
Fear robbed her of her breath. She had no desire to be shackled in leg irons.
Jack grabbed her shoulders and shook her lightly. "Modesty! You’re gawking like a simpleton. We’ve got to do something! Quick!”
She focused on his face, where a roguish mouth warred for dominance with a deceptive angel-innocent gaze. Was it genuine concern that showed this time in those thick-lashed eyes? "I am. I’m getting married."
"My felicitations," he said without missing a beat, which was so like Jack. He was adaptable, a mark of their profession.
Gallant even in the face of calamity, he made a leg, then began to saunter back past the noisy tables of clothed primates. When the alehouse door swung open once more to reveal two burly men, he pivoted in the opposite direction. “Hide me!" he mouthed at her.
“The taproom." She nodded toward the rear of the alehouse. If luck was with him, and it usually was, he might appropriate an empty cask for temporary living quarters.
As Jack beat a retreat for the taproom, Lemuel, the slovenly alehouse keeper, sidled up to her and said, “High Sheriff’s officials from the looks of them."
"No doubt here to monitor yewr ale." The publican was an adept at watering down the ale with lime.
But one of the Crown’s two ruffians was pointing her out to his partner. Casually, she removed her stained apron and tossed it on a counter slick with sludge and littered with flat-sided bottles. "I’m on me way to the Virginia Colony, Lemuel."
He stared at the two, now weaving through the alehouse's patrons toward her. "I’d say ye be on 'oor way to Newgate."
“No time for fond faretheewells then.” She sprinted to the taproom, saw that the only available cask was occupied, and sped on toward the back door, which opened onto an alley that was home to rats, vagabonds, and odorous garbage. Negotiating the narrow way speedily could be tricky. Slime, rotten food, and raw sewage threatened to impede her flying feet.
In back of her, she heard shouts for her to halt.
Incarceration in Newgate Prison, where the vice, drunkenness, immorality and filth far exceeded her present circumstances and where prisoners died off like flies from jail fever—well, the images spurred her even faster.
She picked up her skirts, hopped over a derelict drunk, and dodged a chamber pot being emptied from a second-story window. The alley abutted the Fleet Ditch, a tributary of the Thames. Twenty thousand boats, from heavy barges and scuttling river ferries to the towering fortresses of the East Indian Company, blocked her view—and her escape.
With nothing to lose, she jumped into a skiff moored in the ditch. The skiff lurched dangerously. From the skiff, she bounded onto a barge. Then she gathered every ounce of her might to vault to the opposite bank—a span that not even a chimney sweep would attempt. And she made it!
“Ta da!" she called to her two pursuers, waved a grimy hand, and hurried on toward Guildhall.
Opposite the Quarter Moon Groggery and a row of shops, Guildhall was thronged with the unemployed who were often subject to imprisonment.
After a few questions, she found the room designated as the Board of Trade and Plantations. "I am here to apply for the position of bride, as advertised by the Virginia Company of London," she breathlessly told the magistrate, who stared at her over his bulbous nose.
Her hair had come loose from her pins during her mad dash, and tangled wisps straggled from beneath her dingy white cap to her shoulders. Her red, cheap satinet skirts were splashed with muck. She and the satinet had both seen better days.
“You meet the qualifications?" he inquired, his brows arched in skepticism.
“As God is me witness, yewr lordship.”
She might not be young, handsome, or honest but she was shrewd—and desperate. So the opportunity to marry a planter who lived at the edge of the world was God-sent.
Not that she believed in God, of course.