Elyse Mady (8 page)

Her prayers were jumbled and incoherent.

Dear God, please. Thomas, please.

She ran towards the shelter of the shop but the men crowding around her were too strong and she was pushed back, landing inelegantly on the street. One of her shoes had fallen off. She crawled to her feet beneath a hail of garbage.

The street was crowded with bodies, all of them shouting invectives and many brandishing further ammunition.

Hester never knew who threw the first rock that shattered the window with a shower of glass. But it was as if a signal had been given, and suddenly, she was caught in a maelstrom of debris and masonry. She could not withdraw. Everywhere was confusion, and when she looked up and saw Stroud, his cane raised in his hand, her first thought was he meant to strike back against the rioters.

Her next to last thought, before the polished silver end struck her temple with a resounding blow, was that she would not have thought George Stroud capable of such a thing.

Her last thought was that she had clearly been wrong.

* * *

Lost in the minutiae of a particularly cumbersome manifest, it took Thomas a moment to realize that the raised voices were coming towards his office. Frowning, he looked up. Larkin should have better control of the staff than to allow them to behave in such—

Before he could finish voicing his mental complaint, a boy burst into his office, nearly prostrate, his breath coming in heaving gasps. Hard on his heels, Larkin and a handful of his clerks followed.

“I’m sorry, sir,” his manager puffed, trying to catch hold of the interloper’s arm. The boy evaded him, sending a cascade of account books across the floor with his struggles.

“Shop…Aspinall…rioters…” he heaved, resisting Thomas’s staff’s efforts to drag him from the office. “Come…immediately!”

The breathy words suddenly snapped into focus. Thomas realized where he had seen the young man before. He’d been one of the youths speaking to Hester outside her brother’s shop two days ago. One of the apprentices Aspinall had taken on. If his shortness of breath was any indication, he must have run the distance between the shop and the office without pause.

“Are you trying to tell me there is a riot? At Mr. Aspinall’s shop?” At the young man’s frightened nod, he stood, his chair falling back with a crash. “Damn. Larkin, send for the constables. If they’re quick, they’ll get there before the whole place is torn to pieces. Thank God at least, the shop is empty.”

He dropped to a crouch behind the massive desk and unlocked the lowest drawer, sliding it open to reveal a slim, mahogany case. He should have foreseen such an event, understood the likely outcome the news of the Vere Street arrests would have on a populace long burdened by war and shortages.

A riot against king and country would be stamped out with brutal immediacy but a crowd seeking “justice” against a man accused of engaging in an unnatural crime? It did not take a judge’s perruque to guess the outcome, or the fact that the law would be very apt to look the other way.

“Not empty…” the boy wheezed. “Miss Aspinall…”

The loaded pistols were in his hands before Thomas even realized his own intentions.
Hester is in the building
. That was what the boy was trying to say. Hester, alone and vulnerable, facing an angry crowd seeking who knew what sort of vengeance on the shop of a purported sodomite.

“Fetch the constabulary,” he ordered the dismayed manager, striding with single minded focus out of the offices. “You are to stay here,” he commanded the apprentice.

“No, sir. I will not.”

Thomas thought of arguing but from the ferocious look on the apprentice’s face, he knew it would be pointless. And did not the lad deserve some credit? He’d had the wits to fetch him. Thomas gripped the firearms and made a lightening decision.

“What’s your name?”

“Jeremy Hutt. I work for—”

“I know who you work for. We have no time for this. Come. But do not delay me or I will leave you behind,” he warned.

They darted into the street, which teemed with early morning shoppers and conveyances. It took no more than five minutes to make the harrowing journey, yet it seemed as though every inch of progress could be measured in hours, not seconds.

They could make out the cries and jeers of the crowd long before they could see it. There were at least one hundred people, maybe more, outside the shop. The rabble-rousers hurled rocks and bits of rubble and whatever else they could lay hands on at the shop’s façade. The neatly painted sign listed precariously, hanging from a single chain. The panes of glass had all been shattered and the door bore the signs of having been kicked by vengeful feet.

And Hester, a small, fallen body on the ground. His heart caught in his chest. If she were dead, he would tear these creatures apart with his own hands. The anger and fear were potent and visceral. Hester could not be harmed. He would not allow it.

The sharp report of Thomas’s pistol brought the crowd to an eerie halt.

“Disperse,” he ordered, not daring to glance at Hester’s vulnerable form for an instant. “Or the next soul to act will find themselves my gun’s mark.” Something in his voice must have convinced them, and slowly the rowdy passersbys began to dissipate, amidst dark muttering and deprecations. He watched them warily, his eyes searching the crowd, until the street had resumed its usual course and only Jeremy and himself remained standing in front of the shop.

“She breathes!” The boy knelt beside Hester’s prone figure, his features knitted with worry. He held up his fingertips; they were wet with fresh blood. “We cannot leave her here, sir. She needs an apothecary. Should we carry her to one?”

“No,” Thomas answered. “She should be moved as little as possible.” It took all of his considerable reserve not to let his anguish show as he gathered her up in his arms. She felt so light and insubstantial. Jeremy led him to the back of the shop, where the damage had not yet extended. If he’d been a few minutes later, the riot would have doubtless turned to looting and given the looks of the crowded room, there would have been much to take.

Thomas ignored its disordered state, heading instead for the simple cot, to lay Hester upon it with care.

He brushed away her hair, helpless against the urge to reassure himself that she continued to live. The bruising that mottled her delicate face infuriated him. The blood was mixed with the grit she had lain upon and her clothes were smeared with the filth that had been hurled at her.

He swallowed, more distressed than he could express. He knelt, taking her hand in his and squeezing it, hoping to elicit a response. “Miss Aspinall? Hester?”

Nothing.

A thought occurred to him. “How did this happen?” he asked, not bothering to hide his fury. “Do you know who started the rioting?”

The apprentice nodded, his face grim. “Stroud,” he reported. “His daughter was to marry the master in a fortnight.”

“He owns a company that deals in woollens, doesn’t he?” Jeremy nodded. Then something else the boy said struck him. “You said his daughter
was
to marry?”

The lad snorted. “Don’t know, but I can’t imagine he’d countenance one of his own marrying Mr. Robert now, sir. Not the way he was carrying on, calling him and Miss Aspinall the most terrible names.” His colour heightened with remembered anger. “Come with his men to take what was theirs. But it weren’t. Theirs, I mean. Miss Aspinall, she tried to stop them but she weren’t no match. The crowd was growing louder and louder and I couldn’t get her away.”

“She wouldn’t leave?”

“No. She just kept pleading and begging that damned man, and he mocking and taunting and hurling the master’s things here and yon. I saw the way the wind were blowing and I thought of you. I hope you don’t think me presumptuous, sir, bursting in on you like I did.”

Thomas knew he would deal with Stroud later. The merchant would not find him a forgiving adversary. There were a thousand and one ways to ruin a man, and while Thomas had never undertaken them before, now he would execute them with perverse pleasure. He smiled with grim intent. But right now, his priority must be Hester. Every moment of delay could cost her dearly.

“Your actions likely saved her life. That is the most important thing.” He withdrew his purse from inside his coat and handed several coins to Jeremy. “You must flag down a hack and send it here. Miss Aspinall cannot remain in such a situation. When you have done this, go to my offices. Have one of the clerks carry a message to Dr. Aubrey. They will know his directions. Have the doctor meet us at my home.”

To his credit, the boy drew himself up to his full height and, regardless of the social gulf between them, fixed Thomas with a determined stare. “She will be safe with you?”

Perhaps the way Thomas had cradled Hester had given away something of his feelings towards her, and he wondered just what the boy had seen on his face earlier when he’d gazed down at Hester’s unconscious form.

“Perfectly,” he responded, meeting Jeremy’s wide eyes. Whatever he saw there must have reassured him, for the apprentice was off again in an instant, pausing only long enough to assure Thomas that he would return posthaste.

The hired coach arrived quickly. Hester, her head cradled in his lap, flickered between consciousness and unknowingness as the conveyance bumped and jostled towards his London townhome. He did not take the freedom of touching her face, but he did allow himself the liberty of stroking her hair. The brush of the strands against his hands was oddly comforting, for all that he had intended to give ease to her and not to himself.

“Be well,” he crooned, so softly he doubted that even if she had been conscious she could have discerned his words. “Be well.”

Chapter Seven

The day’s ferocious heat had moderated a little with night fall but inside the prison cell the close, thick air offered no real relief. It was black inside the felons’ quarters. No light issued through the high-set window crossed with stout iron bars which stood opposite a heavy gate of the same material that secured the prisoners overnight.

Waiting for Hester, Robert had paced the cell during the daylight and knew its dimensions. A narrow room, measuring some fifteen feet wide and forty feet deep, of rough-hewn stone, with an oppressive, low, curved ceiling, it was here, crammed shoulder to shoulder like so much kindling, that he and some eighty other men too poor to afford the better quarters of the master’s side, tried to sleep each night.

He could not cease wondering about his sister’s whereabouts.

She had promised to come to him, yet despite lingering about the inner gates, she had never appeared. That she had forsaken him never crossed his mind. Hester always kept her word. What had happened to keep her from her intended visit? The only person he’d met with was Adolphus Charlesworth.

He frowned in the darkness, remembering his mentor’s coldness at their first meeting here in this loathsome place. The disgust on the churchman’s face, the reserve in his voice. Robert had been fully prepared for a stern admonishment on his faults and a rebuke for bringing shame on his sister and his acquaintances, but the reality had been even more searing than he’d imagined.

But he had told Robert of Mrs. Hannaford’s intercession on his sister’s behalf and of his intention to offer Hester sanctuary during his incarceration and for that reason, among others, he had held his tongue.

Of course, Charlesworth was a man concerned with the spirit and not the flesh, so he had not thought to bring any victuals with him either. Now Robert’s stomach was cramping so painfully from three days with naught but a bit of water to break his fast. But he’d endured the pangs as best he could, sure that Hester would be arriving.

Except that she had not arrived, and worry at her fate was now at war with the biting hunger to see which of the two could better rob him of what paltry sleep he might snatch in a place such as this.

All around him, men fidgeted, coughed, scratched at louse bites, tossed and turned. Someone farted. Someone else moaned with discomfort. Rats scuttled amongst the prone figures. The vermin retreated when one of the inmates rose. The man didn’t attempt to navigate in the darkness, given the uneven stones underfoot and how tightly the men were laid out. He simply followed the Newgate custom of pissing on the floor, the sloping stone leading his water towards the overburdened drain.

In a fit of pique, someone had knocked over the bucket that served as their chamber pot for those times when they were not free to reach the closets. The nauseating stench of rotting shit and days-old piss was pervasive.

The pallet on which he lay was too narrow, without so much as a thin blanket. He turned, trying to find a comfortable—or at least tolerable—position with which to pass the night, but his shoulder ached, his three loose teeth throbbed and he suspected, given the ferocious black bruise he’d spied when he’d lifted his shirt, that one or two of his ribs might be cracked or broken. Gingerly, he squeezed the folded clothes serving as his pillow again, but even a careful pummelling didn’t render them any softer.

The prison didn’t provide bedding and he was momentarily glad, despite everything, that he’d been taken up in July. A night in a room such as this six months from now, when summer’s heat gave way to winter’s cold, did not bear contemplation.

Robert tried to ignore the pain but it made its presence felt in a myriad of ways. He thought of his sister and her expression when she’d first beheld him, manacled and bloody, in the press yard. Guilt, never at a far remove since that horrific moment Sunday night, when the constabulary had burst upon them all at the White Swan, rolled across his mind.

His wounds and discomfort were the price his descent into depravity exacted. He had tried to deny his inclinations. Since his removal to London, had not he abjured of the ruinous habits he’d adopted during his days as an apprentice? For four years, his business had consumed him and he’d considered himself cured of his carnal affliction. Not for him, he would reassure himself on the occasions when memories would intrude, the dark alleyways and bridges where men could meet, exchange a glance or a few words, then take balls and cock in hand or mouth or ass before disappearing once more.

And when he’d met Charlotte, he’d believed God was showing him that his days of unnatural fornication were behind him. She was sweet and charming and everything he could hope for in a wife. But when he kissed her, bending down that he might reach her, he was often taken by surprise by how soft her lips felt, as though expecting to meet with a mouth that bristled with whiskers and stood at a level to his own.

He’d tried.

He’d tried, and he’d failed. Coming back through the Clare Market after delivering a suit to a prosperous cabinetmaker shortly after his engagement to Charlotte had been announced, he’d cut through Bear Yard from Lincoln Inn, thinking to cut a few steps from his walk. But as he’d come out of the narrow alley and made towards Great Wild Street, his thoughts preoccupied by his business and his engagement, he’d seen the pub and decided to delay his return home in favour of a pint pot and a moment’s rest.

And if he hadn’t met James Amos that afternoon, he liked to believe he wouldn’t be in this predicament now. But he had, and from the first moment he’d laid eyes on the lithe man’s face, every objection, every intent to the contrary had simply flown from his head. He’d been on fire with it, unable to think of anything but slaking himself with the gorgeous man. He’d known nothing of him that first time, not even his name. Afterwards, Robert had learned that he was a servant out of place who lodged at the White Swan and had been convicted and pilloried some time since for the same crimes.

But even if he’d known all of that, Robert doubted he could have restrained himself. There’d been little gentleness and even less control but it hadn’t seemed to matter. He hadn’t spared a single thought for Charlotte or Hester or even his own reputation. His repugnance at finding himself acting thusly once more had been no staunch against his desires. He’d been insatiable.

And James Cook, the landlord, had been only too happy to lend the men a room for an hour. The house was furnished for it. Above stairs, overlooking the street, there was a room with four beds in it, constantly manned by those waiting for casual customers. Another room was fitted up for a ladies’ dressing room, with rouge and maquillage and furbelows of every description while the third was known colloquially as “the chapel,” where men might indulge in less than sacred rites with their temporary spouses.

On the night of the raid, Robert had been in the back parlour with Esau Haycock, a shopkeeper, and a few others when they’d heard the commotion. He’d been below stairs, nursing a pint of ale, when the back door had been flung open. A dozen constables, truncheons at the ready, had descended with swift intent and rousted them from the back room while another dozen entered from the front and climbed to the rooms above to capture the men ensconced there. He’d seen still more waiting outside as he was dragged from the premises, his hands bound behind his back, and flung into a waiting cart.

There had been no opportunity to flee. The raid had been too swift and encompassing.

To his right, he heard another man begin to grunt. In the dark, it was difficult to make sense of its cause. He could hear the unknown man’s breath catch and stutter in his throat, as though he were labouring hard.

Was he having a fit? There was no chance of helping him if he was, for the guards did not enter the cells after dark, no matter the provocation. But when the sickly sweet scent of rosewater reached his nose, Robert suddenly knew what his cellmate was about.

He was fucking.

He was being serviced by a whore, in earshot of four score of men. A shilling’s consideration to the turnkey and a Newgate wife as they were known had full run of the prison. They would spend the night, locked in a cell amongst the prisoners, sleeping with as many men in succession as had money and a craving for their dubious and temporary charms.

Robert’s neighbour to his left lay so tightly beside him that, when either one moved, their arms jostled and knocked. Now, he felt the man reach down to his breeches. His neighbour’s breath caught in time to the moll’s practised moans. His arm moved rhythmically, sliding his hand across his cock until Robert could stand no more.

The sounds of sex between the nearby pair, so wet and gasping, revolted him. His neighbour’s participation only multiplied the disgust—as much at his own past behaviours as his current situation.

He couldn’t breathe.

His throat caught, tightening to a painful degree.

Robert lurched up, stumbling a little on the floor, slick with shit and who knows what else, towards the heavy door. He reached it, hitting his knee so hard against the metal that he swore.

“Shut the fuck up,” came the order, barked from the darkness.

Air.
He needed air.

He fumbled with the latch. It was locked. Had he truly expected anything different? His panic intensified, as though the heavy stone walls were pressing in on his lungs, making it difficult to draw breath. He wrenched at the ironwork, the bolts cutting into his palms, slicing the skin, as he shook them futilely.

A hand, cool and calloused, reached out and, closing round his bloodied one, drew his fingers back. “’Tis a lost cause, that. You’d best save your energies for other things.”

The accent was not one Robert recognized. Not a Londoner, for certain. Nor from the Home counties. But he couldn’t ponder the question long; his mind was unfocused and vague.

“I-I can’t…” Robert felt light-headed from lack of breath, everything unreal and weightless. “Need…air.”

“And until St. Sepulchre beyond the walls there tolls six times, what’s in this room is all the air you’ll be getting.” The unknown hands were steady as they helped him to the floor, pushing his head between his knees and pressing with comforting intent between his shoulder blades.

It was difficult to gauge the passage of time in this hellish place but after a long moment, Robert felt the terrible affliction begin to ease. He’d suffered this shortness of breath since he was a child; it was worse in the summer and when he was overexcited or worried. He hadn’t suffered an attack in months but the prison’s foul air exacerbated his damnably susceptible lungs.

“Better?” the voice asked.

Robert nodded before remembering that his benefactor couldn’t see the gesture. “Yes.”

“That’s good then. Because I don’t fancy sharing the room with a blue-faced corpse. There’s enough foulness amongst this lot without the maggots clamouring over ye.”

“I shan’t die.” Not yet, at any rate.
But if I am found guilty, I could hang for my crime.
That thought had his throat thickening again but with an effort, he continued to inhale and exhale, ignoring the foul odours as best he could.

“See that you don’t,” his unknown companion ordered. He stood, pulling Robert up. He kept a hand beneath his elbow, as though to satisfy himself that Robert wouldn’t sink down. Resenting the inference of his weakness, Robert shook off the interfering hand, taking a perverse pleasure at the man’s intake of breath.

But the pleasure at overthrowing him was short-lived when the stranger grasped Robert by the neck and kissed him, full on the mouth.

The kiss was hard and silent. The man, whoever he was, was shorter than him by several inches but clean shaven. His breath was fresh. His tongue slipped into Robert’s mouth, tangling with his own. He didn’t try and put his arms around him or grab at his crotch.

He just kissed him.

Then as quickly as it had begun, it was over and the mystery man disappeared into the inky darkness once more. Robert strained his ears, trying to discern a direction, a clue to his rescuer’s identity but the only sounds were of the moll, still fucking, and the men, restless and snoring.

* * *

It was late. Gone on midnight, at least. Dr. Aubrey had come and gone. Thomas had paced the hall while the physician, accompanied by the housekeeper, Mrs. Lytton, had examined her. After a quarter of an hour, Aubrey emerged and pronounced himself satisfied at his patient’s eventual recovery. He had left a tincture of opium for her injured head along with instructions for Hester to be woken every four hours over the next day.

Thomas had not left her side since. He knew his vigil was foolish but could not bear the thought of leaving Hester, so vulnerable and pale, alone. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting beside her now. The fire had fallen into embers, its occasional pop and hiss the only sound to disturb the room.

Hester’s head moved. He was instantly on alert.

“It hurts.” Her voice was rough.

Thomas leaned forward and watched as her eyelids fluttered.

“It hurts,” she said again, opening her eyes and blinking with confusion. “I feel so…” She struggled against the bedclothes, trying to sit up, a look of panic beginning to set in as Thomas tried to dissuade her.

“No, you must not move. Rest, Miss Aspinall. Rest.”

He had only meant to reassure her but the sound of his voice shocked her. “Thomas?”

He smiled at her unwitting use of his Christian name. He moved closer so that she might see his face more clearly in the dim light. “Yes. It is I.”

Her eyes, one bruised and blackened by the blow she had received, widened as she glanced round the room, as though the sight of the fine Oriental bed hangings and marble fireplace confused her.

“Where—where am I?”

“This is my home. You were set upon outside the shop. Mr. Hutt saw the danger and fetched me. It was a close thing.”

“Jeremy?” She blinked again.

“Yes, do you remember?”

“They were taking our stock?” she asked, frowning with the effort of recalling the specifics of the attack.