The Girl in the Mask

by Marie-Louise Jensen

  My aunt stared at me. ‘Did you not hear what I said, or are you merely too stupid to comprehend it?’ she snapped. ‘I told you your father has lost everything. Not content with gambling away his fortune, he staked his estates and even his plantations. It’s all gone, Sophia. You are penniless.’

  And then she was gone, my mother’s jewellery in her hand, the door slamming shut behind her. I sat still for a few moments sick and shaking with shock, unable to frame my thoughts, unsure what to do. My home, I kept thinking. My beautiful, beloved home. I’ll never see it again.

  Rousing myself from my frozen, horrified state with a huge effort, I grabbed a cloak from my wardrobe and wrapped some essentials into it: a comb, a hairbrush, some clean underwear and a few of my more portable items that I could sell such as handkerchiefs, gloves and lace. Then I climbed through the window again, heart hammering at the thought that my father could return home at any minute, drunk and furious.

  Jenny was waiting for me anxiously and led me out of the city to the stables. Together we crept into the deserted stable yard and I selected the most beautiful glossy black mare with a white star on her forehead and one white forelock.

  We sneaked into the tack room to find a saddle and bridle. ‘The grooms here is as lazy as can be,’ Jenny whispered to me. ‘They never guard the horses at night, and the catch on the stable yard gate is broke, so there’s nothing to stop us getting out.’

  I picked up a bridle and a saddle and turned to leave, only to see Jenny choosing one too. ‘What are you doing?’ I whispered.

  ‘Going with you,’ she replied, leading the way back to the stalls.

  ‘But what about Bill? What about your father?’

  ‘My father drinks up every penny I get,’ said Jenny impatiently. ‘And he beats on me too. And Bill … he’s a good lad, my brother. I love him. Really I do. But he’s soft in the head. He wants me to go with him to be a chambermaid in an inn. Can you see me stickin’ at that more than half a day?’

  I smothered a laugh and lifted the saddle onto the black mare. She nickered softly at the prospect of a night-time outing and lipped at my hands. I tightened the girth, stroked her soft nose and she let me put the bridle on her. ‘We’re off for an adventure,’ I promised her. Then I turned back to Jenny. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked her. ‘We’ve no place to go, and no money. I’m going to find my cousin in the hope he’ll help me out, but it’s a vague plan.’

  Jenny grinned, her teeth white in the darkness. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It sounds better than sticking around here or cleaning out chamber pots.’

  ‘Won’t Bill be upset?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. But I’ve promised him I’ll stay in touch. You can help me write the letters.’

  ‘I’ll do better than that. I’ll teach you to read and write yourself.’

  Jenny grinned and pointed at the black and gold mask I’d looped around my wrist. ‘I can see you’ve got a plan for getting money too,’ she said and winked at me.

  I grinned back at her. ‘Do you happen to know where the grooms keep their pistols?’ I asked.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The following weeks were some of the most uncomfortable but also some of the most exciting of my life. Jenny and I rode by day and slept in haystacks and barns by night. When we could find nowhere suitable, or when the need to wash overcame us, we took a night in a cheap inn somewhere. Usually these places were so full of bedbugs and men who thought that girls travelling alone must be easy of virtue that we were pleased to sleep rough again the following night. A snug nest in a haystack and a peaceful sleep was to be preferred to grubby sheets and a pistol ready under the pillow.

  I sold my Persephone costume at the first market town we passed through. It fetched a good price and that should have kept us going for some time. But we had bad luck. My mare, whom I’d named Mayfly, threw a shoe and we needed to pay a smith for a new one. She went lame meanwhile, and we couldn’t travel on for several days. Then the girth on Jenny’s saddle broke and we had to replace it. The money was soon gone.

  When it ran short, we quarrelled about how to replenish it. Jenny was all for holding up coaches, but I pointed out that it was immoral to rob merely for our own enrichment. ‘That didn’t stop you holding up Mr Charleton,’ she pointed out.

  ‘I did that for you!’

  ‘This will be for me and all. I don’t want to go hungry,’ she said. ‘Anyhow, what did you bring a pistol for if not for that?’

  ‘It’s wrong though. It’s their money. What right have we to take it?’

  ‘If they can afford to travel in a chaise, they can spare us a bit of change. See it as charity,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Charity is given freely, not taken at pistol point. Easy to hear you haven’t been taught any morals.’

  ‘Easy to hear you’ve never been faced with starvation while the rich dines off silver plate,’ retorted Jenny. ‘How much d’you think they’d pay me to wash out pisspots like my brother wanted me to do? I could work my whole life and never afford a gown like that one you sold at Bradford-on-Avon. Show me a job girls can do what pays a decent wage and I’ll do it.’

  I turned my back on her and we didn’t speak till morning. I spent a sleepless night thinking hard about what she’d said. It was the truth. It didn’t make robbery right; nothing could do that. But things weren’t fair.

  Unable to think of an honest plan to get money, and faced with starvation if we did nothing, I finally gave in. But we agreed that we would take only cash from the travellers we robbed. ‘No large sums and no personal possessions,’ I stipulated. Jenny rolled her eyes and agreed.

  After that we held up several coaches and took enough to keep us. I confess the exhilaration and the danger of the robberies meant more to me than the sums we made, though they were needed too. But the excitement of donning Mr Charleton’s mask, and galloping towards an unsuspecting coach on a moonless night, not knowing whether we faced swords or pistols, quickened the blood in my veins and thrilled me to my very core.

  After a robbery, Jenny and I would lie awake in the darkness, reliving it. We went over what we had done well, what mistakes we had made and how we’d felt as we rode at the coach; that dangerous moment when we didn’t yet know if the groom was about to take a potshot at us. I would hold my mask in my hand as we talked, running my fingers over the smooth black fabric sewn with gold thread. One night Jenny reached out and touched the mask. ‘That was his, wasn’t it? He wore it at that party.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘I found it on the floor and picked it up.’

  ‘Do you miss him?’

  I remembered the kiss in the cellars of the Guildhall and felt a tingle run over my skin. I recalled all the times we’d spoken together and he’d joked with me, and sometimes understood me. But I also remembered that he’d bid me farewell and hadn’t seemed to sorrow. I must learn to forget him. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I never think about him.’

  ‘Liar,’ said Jenny amicably.

  The weather grew colder and the days shortened as autumn approached. We stopped lingering on the road, stopped making detours, and hastened our steps towards Windsor. But when we finally reached the barracks, bad news awaited us. Jack’s regiment had left for the continent many weeks before.

  I sat dazed and lost in the coffee room of an inn that Jenny had taken me to. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said in a voice that sounded as though it came from a long way away. ‘I’ve thought for so long that Jack would be here and we’d work out what to do together. Now I don’t know. I just don’t know.’

  Jenny took my hand and squeezed it comfortingly. ‘We’ll manage,’ she said. ‘We done all right so far, ain’t we?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s different,’ I said, and then stopped. How could I explain to Jenny that this had been an exciting adventure, a temporary existence? It had been a means to an end. I couldn’t envisage living like this for ever; drifting, homeless and making our living by robbing others. Despite the excitement, the danger and the fact that
I enjoyed Jenny’s company, I wanted something more. ‘I need some aim or purpose in my life,’ I said, unsure if it made any sense.

  Jenny shrugged. ‘Gettin’ enough coins together for a hot meal seems like a good enough purpose to me,’ she said with a grin.

  We moved on. Three nights later, somewhere between Windsor and London, we ran out of money again. We found no coaches to rob for several nights and became hungry and desperate. Which is how I found myself one night on the edge of a lonely heath on the main pike road to Reading. Waiting for a suitable coach in the dark and the wind had never seemed less like fun.

  I was astride Mayfly, hiding in the shelter of some overhanging trees. Jenny was up in the trees, waiting to drop down onto the coach from a branch. It was a method we’d found effective once or twice.

  ‘I’m freezing,’ I complained as a bitter gust of wind swept over us.

  ‘Me too,’ said Jenny from the tree, her teeth chattering. ‘At least you got the horse to warm you. This tree’s like an icicle.’

  ‘Shall we give up for tonight?’ I asked her, trying to ignore the ache of hunger in my belly. The words had barely left my mouth when we heard the rumble of a carriage.

  ‘As soon as we’ve robbed this geezer,’ said Jenny with a laugh.

  I pulled my mask on and backed Mayfly up. She arched her neck and pawed the ground impatiently. She might have been born to be a highwayman’s horse; she had a fine instinct for the work, knowing just when to keep quiet and when to make herself as fierce and imposing as possible. When the coach was almost upon us, I urged her out of the trees and she leapt forward into the middle of the road, rearing up, pawing the air and neighing a challenge. I sat her easily, reins in one hand, pistol in the other and shouted: ‘Halt or I blow your head off your shoulders!’

  I’d left it a few seconds too late and the coach no longer had room to stop. To avoid running into me, the coachman wrenched his team to one side so that Jenny, dropping from the trees onto him, missed, banged painfully into the side of the chaise and then fell into the muddy road. I heard her swear colourfully, and to cover the sound, I shouted: ‘Halt, I say! Stand and deliver, if you value your life!’

  The coach lurched to a stop. With my pistol pointing directly at the coachman, he dared do nothing else. Jenny dragged herself painfully to her feet, pulled her own pistol out of her waistband and took over covering the driver. Meanwhile I rode up to the chaise door and pulled it open. I expected cowering passengers, begging not to be harmed. Instead, I found my arm grasped in a terrifyingly strong grip, and knocked hard against the doorframe. I cried out, my wrist went numb and I dropped the pistol. It hit the ground and exploded at Mayfly’s feet. She reared and screamed with fright, and I was pulled out of the saddle by the relentless grip on my arm. Fear flooded me, and for the first time, the vision of the hangman’s noose passed before my eyes. I’d been careless, and we’d been caught.

  ‘Let her go, or I’ll shoot!’ shouted Jenny, trying to cover both the coachman and the occupant of the chaise, and succeeding only in waving her own pistol about uselessly. She never was any good with a gun.

  The man stepped out of the chaise in a leisurely manner, twisted my maltreated arm behind my back, holding me in front of him, his free hand at my throat.

  ‘Shoot me, my lad, and you’ll kill your friend,’ he said to Jenny. Then he looked at me in the moonlight, caught his breath and twitched off my mask. ‘What do you mean by holding me up again, and this time wearing my own mask to do it, Sophia?’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  ‘Mr … Mr Charleton?’ asked Jenny uncertainly. ‘What are you doin’ here?’

  ‘Searching for you two, of course. What a stupid question. Put the gun down, Jenny.’

  Jenny lowered her gun. Mr Charleton released me and I sank to my knees, nursing my throbbing wrist. He knelt beside me, and ran his fingers over it, making me cry out in pain. ‘It’s not broken,’ he said. ‘But it will hurt for a while. I won’t apologize; I was defending myself.’

  I nodded, not feeling able to speak yet.

  ‘Let’s not linger here in this freezing spot,’ suggested Mr Charleton. ‘There’s a pleasant inn a few miles on. Shall we head there for a chat?’

  I was reeling with shock. I found myself helped into the chaise, while Jenny rode beside it leading my horse. The vehicle was soon in motion. I sat stunned, still nursing my wrist. It seemed a quite impossible coincidence that of all the coaches in the whole country to choose from, we had managed to hit on Mr Charleton’s.

  ‘Coincidence?’ said Mr Charleton indignantly when I ventured to say as much. ‘I’ve been hunting for you for weeks. Reports of two slight young lads holding up coaches in this area led me to drive up and down these blasted roads at night in the hope of being robbed. I thought you’d never find me.’

  ‘But why would you be looking for us?’ I asked him.

  ‘All in good time,’ he replied. ‘Sophia, I’m sorry to tell you, you smell like a cow byre. How does that come about?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, embarrassed. ‘Jenny and I slept in one last night.’

  ‘That would explain it. Was there any particular reason? Some attraction of a cow byre over an inn that I know nothing about?’

  ‘Yes, it’s free,’ I said defiantly.

  ‘Possibly,’ he remarked, shaking out a scented pocket handkerchief and holding it to his nose. ‘But it brings with it a very pungent odour.’

  Cautiously I sniffed at the sleeve of my coat. ‘Is it so very bad?’ I asked apologetically. ‘I can’t smell it.’

  ‘Which just goes to show how very far you have strayed from fashionable life at the Bath,’ he remarked.

  I said nothing more, but watched him as the chaise swayed and lurched over the uneven road. What did I feel about seeing him again? It was utterly unexpected. Almost unreal. But a part of me was pleased.

  Our arrival at the inn caused a bustle. Ostlers met the coach and unharnessed the horses. Jenny handed over our own two horses to their care as well, and the landlord bowed us all into his inn, casting a disapproving eye over Jenny and me. I could see at a glance it was quite a different class of inn to those we’d been staying in; it was beautifully clean, wax candles were in use rather than tallow and the furniture was smart and cared for.

  ‘A private parlour, please,’ Mr Charleton said. ‘And bring some hot milk for the ladies. I’ll need a bedchamber for myself, another for the ladies, and, er … they will need a bath.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed the landlord wholeheartedly.

  ‘Hot milk?’ demanded Jenny in disgust when the landlord had bowed us into the parlour, had some candles lit and then withdrawn again. ‘If you’re goin’ to lay out your ready on drinks, can’t we have ale or a glass o’ porter?’

  ‘Hot milk will do you so much more good,’ replied Mr Charleton firmly.

  Jenny sat down and crossed her arms in a huff.

  ‘Well,’ Mr Charleton began, looking at us both. ‘I was right then. All I had to do was drive around at night and wait for you to rob me.’

  Neither of us replied. I felt a tingle of shame burning on my neck and ears. Or was that merely the effect of coming in from the cold? A servant came in to light the fire. It smoked a little, and then began to crackle. I found myself cheered by the sight of it. The arrival of the hot milk lifted my spirits further. I wrapped my hands around the mug and sipped. The creamy, sugared drink warmed me right through. I noticed that Jenny was drinking hers too, despite her protests. A sense of well-being began to spread through me.

  ‘Do you not want to hear the news from the Bath?’ asked Mr Charleton. ‘You both played your part in the events there, after all.’

  When I stayed silent, Jenny said: ‘I s’pose you’re going to tell us anyway.’

  ‘I am. The rebellion was defeated almost before it had begun. The troops the rebels expected never arrived from France or Ireland. No lives were lost in fighting. Some ringleaders fled back to France, but there were many arrest
s. Sir William Wyndham, among others, is safely in the Tower of London now. And there was a tremendous celebration last week. The Corporation wanted to distance itself from the losing side, and so put on a great show of support for king and government. There were processions, cannon salutes and everyone there did a magnificent job of showing the world they had been loyal subjects of King George all along.’

  He looked at us both, as though expecting a response. But our preoccupations had been so very different in the past weeks. We’d been concerned with the all-consuming task of getting enough food to eat and finding shelter at night. The events at the Bath, dramatic as they had been, seemed very far away. I tried to rouse myself to take an interest.

  ‘That’s good,’ I said, and it sounded lame, even to me. Sleepiness was beginning to steal over me.

  ‘You both disappeared in the midst of all the excitement,’ Mr Charleton continued. ‘If you’d only stayed, you would have seen everything resolved.’

  ‘I wasn’t staying to be married off to the lizard,’ I retorted. ‘I had no choice but to flee.’

  ‘In fact, there was no danger of your being married at all. You couldn’t know it, of course, but the captain was one of the rebellion’s ringleaders. The Bath became too hot for him, and he fled. I pursued him as far as the coast where I lost track of him.’

  ‘Gone?’ I echoed blankly. For a moment I imagined that I might have stayed after all, but then I recollected that it would have been impossible. ‘He was not my only reason for running away. My father had even worse plans for me if he did not succeed in marrying me off. I did the right thing.’

  At that moment, a maid entered to inform us our baths were ready. Mr Charleton got to his feet. ‘I can see how tired you both are,’ he said. ‘Have a wash, sleep and we’ll talk more in the morning. Good night.’