Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (96 page)

IN THE MORNING, JENNY
took charge of the children so that Rachel could go with Silvia Hardman to talk to the “weighty Friends”—which was as far as a Quaker would go in attributing status to anyone—who were presently in charge of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and see whether some provision of housing, work, or money might be arranged for the Hardmans’ succor. Ian would have accompanied them, but both Rachel and Silvia expressed doubt that his presence would be helpful.

“I don’t plan to mention the beast that thee killed,” Rachel had said to him privately. “Thus, thy testimony is likely to cause more trouble, not less. Besides, thee has business of thy own, does thee not?”

“Not my own, no,” he said, and kissed her briefly. “But I promised Auntie Claire I’d pay a visit to a brothel on her behalf.”

She didn’t turn a single dark-brown hair.

“Don’t bring home a whore,” she advised him. “Thee already has too many women.”

Elfreth’s Alley was not bad, as alleys in a city went. Hardly a proper alley at all, Ian thought, skirting a small heap of vomit on the bricks. It was wide enough that you could drive a wagon down it, and several of the houses had polished-brass doorknobs. Mother Abbott’s did, even though this was the back door of the establishment. But naturally the back door of a whorehouse would be used as much—if not much more than—the front.

There were two young whores sitting on the back steps, wrapped in cloaks, and he wondered whether they were there as advertisement or only taking a breath of air. It was crisp out and their breaths rose in white wisps, vanishing as they talked. One of them spotted him, and they stopped.

The taller one eyed him briefly, then leaned back, one elbow on the step behind her, and let her cloak fall back from one shoulder, showing a glimpse of pink skin above her shift, and the rounded weight of her breast through it. He smiled at her.

Her face changed, and he realized that she’d just noticed his tattoos. She looked wary, but she didn’t look away.

“Good day to ye, mistress,” he said, and her eyebrows shot up at his Scottish accent. Her friend sat up straight and stared hard at him. He came to a stop in front of them, tilted back his head, and looked up. The house rose above him, three stories of solid red brick.

“A good house, is it?” he asked. The whores exchanged glances, and he saw the short one shrug slightly, relinquishing him to her taller comrade, who straightened up but left her cloak hanging carelessly open. The cold made her nipples poke out, round and hard under the thin cotton.

“Very good indeed, sir,” she said, and gave him a practiced smile. She got her feet under her, preparing to rise. “Will you come in and have a drink to take the chill off?”

“Maybe,” he said, smiling at her. “But I meant, is it a good place for you ladies?”

Their faces went blank, and they stared up at him, mouths hanging open in astonishment. The short one, with disheveled blond hair, recovered first.

“Well, it’s better nor doin’ it out of a carriage, or havin’ a pimp what sends you into drinkin’ barns and boxing rings, I’ll say that much.”

“Trixie!” The tall brown-haired lass kicked at her companion and rose to her feet, smiling at him. “I’m Meg. It’s a good, clean house, sir, and the girls are all clean. Healthy…and well fed.” She cupped a hand under her very healthy breast in illustration.

He nodded and reached into his pouch, withdrawing his purse, plump with coin.

“I’m healthy, too, lass.”

The short one tossed her head.

“That’s as may be. Everyone says Scotchmen are mean.”

Her tall friend kicked her again, harder.

“Ow!”

“Scotsmen are canny, lass, not mean,” Ian said, ignoring this byplay. “We want value for money, aye—but if it’s value we get…” He tossed the purse lightly, catching it in his palm so the money chinked.

The tall lassie came down the steps and stopped in front of him, close, her cold nipples near enough that he imagined them pressing against his bare chest and felt the hairs there prickle.

Forgive me, Rachel,
he thought.

“Oh, I can promise you value, sir,” she said, smiling through the wisps of her breath. “
Whatever
you desire.”

He nodded amiably, looking her frankly up and down.

“What I want, lass, is a girl with a good bit of experience.”

Her face changed at that, and he saw that he’d frightened her a little. Maybe not a bad thing.

“D’ye have any girls who’ve worked in the house for…oh, say, five years at least?”

“Five
years
?” the short one blurted. She scrambled to her feet, and at first he thought she meant to flee, but she just wanted a closer look at him. She looked him over with as much frankness as he’d displayed with her friend, but with an air of fascination as well.

“What on earth can a whore
do
that takes five years to learn?” She sounded as though she truly wanted to find out, and he looked at her with more interest. She might think he was a pervert, but she was game, and he was that wee bit shocked to find it aroused him more than Meg’s nipples. He cleared his throat.

“I’d like to ken the answer to that one, too, lass,” he said, smiling at her. “But what I want just now is a girl who kent Jane Pocock.”

THE STREETS OF PHILADELPHIA
were filled with food—at least they were when the British army wasn’t occupying the city. It wasn’t, at the moment, and there were pies for sale, both meat and fruit, big salt-dusted German
Bretzeln
carried on sticks like a ring-toss, fried fish, sugar-dusted crullers, stuffed cabbage leaves, and buckets of beer, all available within footsteps of the building where the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends conducted most of its business.

Unfortunately, most of the available food wasn’t of a style or shape that would make throwing it against a wall very satisfying. Fuming, Rachel glanced to and fro, and settled on an apple seller.

“Here,” she said, handing one of the yellow-and-pink fruits to Silvia Hardman. Silvia looked at it in surprise, then lifted it uncertainly toward her mouth.

“No,” Rachel said. “Like
this
!” And turning on her heel, she drew back her arm and flung the apple as hard as she could against the trunk of a massive oak tree that stood in the park where they’d gone to gather themselves. The apple exploded into bits and juice, and Rachel drew a satisfied breath.

“Imagine it is the head of Friend Sharpless,” she advised Silvia. “Or perhaps that oaf Phineas Cadwallader.”

“Oh, him, to be sure.” Silvia’s face was as flushed as the apple, and with a little
umph!
she hurled her fruit at the tree, but missed.

Rachel ran to fetch it back, then guided Silvia closer to the tree.

“Put thy fingers
so,
” she said, “then draw thy arm back and fix thy eye firmly upon the spot thee has chosen. Then throw, but do not let thine eye stray.”

Silvia nodded and, taking a fresh grip upon the apple, faced the tree with the fire she should have shown to Friend Cadwallader, and let fly.

“Oh.” She made a small sound of pleased surprise. “I didn’t think I could.” She laughed, but self-consciously, looking over her shoulder. “I suppose this is sinfully wasteful, but…”

“Ask the squirrels if they think so,” Rachel advised, nodding toward one of these creatures, who had rushed down the trunk of the tree within seconds of the first impact and was now on the ground, stuffing itself with the fragments of their bombardment. Silvia looked, then glanced around. At least a dozen more were bounding across the grass, tails bushy with purpose.

“Well, then,” she said, and drew a deep breath. “Thee is right. I feel much calmer.”

“Good. Can thee eat?” Rachel asked. “I’m starved. Perhaps we might have a pie and discuss what to do next.”

The calmness at once disappeared from Silvia’s face, replaced with pale apprehension, but she nodded and obediently followed Rachel back onto the street.

“I should not have gone,” Silvia said, pausing after a bite or two of her beef-and-onion pie. “I knew what they would say.”

“Yes, thee told me, but I didn’t want to believe it.” Rachel bit into her own pie, frowning. “That people who profess charity and the love of Christ could speak in such a way! No wonder thy husband turned his back upon them.”

“Gabriel wasn’t one to stand what he thought of as interference,” Silvia agreed ruefully. “But thee can see their point, surely? I am in fact exactly what they said—a whore.”

Rachel wanted to contradict her on the spot, but having opened her mouth to do so, paused, then took another bite of flaky pastry and gravy.

“Thee had no choice,” she said, after chewing and swallowing.

“Mr. Cadwallader appeared to think I had,” Silvia said, a little tartly. “I should have married again—”

“But thee didn’t know whether thy husband was dead! How could thee marry?”

“—or come to the city and turned my hand to laundry or needlework—”

“Which wouldn’t pay thee enough to feed thyself, let alone thy daughters!”

“Perhaps Friend Cadwallader hasn’t found occasion to discover what the life of a laundress is like,” Silvia said. She finished her pie, and her bony shoulders slumped a little, relaxing in the late-afternoon sun. “I suppose we must look for the light within him and Friend Sharpless, mustn’t we?”

“Yes,” Rachel said reluctantly. “But I may require a few more apples and a bottle of beer before such a search might be effective.”

Silvia laughed, and Rachel’s heart rose to hear it. Silvia Hardman was battered, no doubt of it—but not yet broken.

“Still, it would have been good to be part of a meeting once again,” Silvia said wistfully. “I have not had such company or support in many years.”

Rachel swallowed her last bite and took hold of Silvia’s hand. It was slender, callused, and ill-used, bearing the burns and scars of unrelenting toil and many small household disasters.

“Wherever two or more of you are gathered in my name, there am I,”
Rachel said, and pointed at Silvia, then herself. “One. Two.”

Silvia smiled, despite herself, and her true nature—kind and humorous—peeped out behind the wariness in her eyes.

“Then thee is my meeting, Rachel. I am blessed.”

IAN CAME BACK
from his visit to Elfreth’s Alley in something of a brown study, oblivious to the shouts of dairymaids and beer sellers.

He’d thought he might have to expend considerable time and money in order to get the inhabitants of the brothel to talk, but the mere mention of Jane Pocock’s name had opened floodgates of gossip, and he felt as one might after being washed overboard from a ship and carried ashore in a flurry of foam and sharp debris.

Now he wished he had paid more attention to Fanny’s drawing of her sister.

The loudly stated opinion of Mrs. Abbott, the madam, was that Jane Pocock had been strange, plainly
very
strange, demented and probably a practitioner of Strange Arts, and how it was that neither she nor any of her girls had been murdered in their beds, she did
not
know. Ian wondered why a young woman with such skills would have been working as a whore, but didn’t say so, under the circumstances.

It took some time for the talk about the murder of Captain Harkness to die down, but Ian Murray did ken his way around a brothel, and when the flow diminished, he at once ordered two more extortionately priced bottles of champagne.

This altered the air of accommodation to something more focused but less vituperative, and within half an hour, Mrs. Abbott had retreated to her sanctum and the whores had reached their own silent accommodation amongst themselves. He found himself on the red velvet sofa common to such establishments, with Meg on one side and Trixabella on the other.

“Trix was friends with Arabella—Jane, I mean,” Meg explained. Trix nodded, doleful.

“Wish I hadn’t been,” she said. “That girl hadn’t any luck at all, and that kind of thing can brush off on you, you know. What are those things on your face?”

“Can it?” Ian touched his cheekbone. “It’s a Mohawk tattoo.”

“Ooh,” said Trix, with slightly more interest. “Was you captured by Indians?” She giggled at the thought.

“Nay, I went of my own accord,” he said equably.

“Well, me too,” Trix said, with an uptilted chin and a wave of the hand presumably meant to draw his attention to the relatively luxurious nature of her place of employment. “Not Arabella, though. Mrs. Abbott got her and her sister off a sea captain what didn’t have the scratch to pay his bill. Those girls were indentures.”

“Aye? And how long ago was that? Ye canna have been here more than a year or two yourself.” In fact, she looked to have been in the trade for a decade, at least, but minor gallantries were part of the expected
pourparlers,
and she laughed and batted her eyes at him in a practiced manner.

“Reckon it would have been six—maybe seven—years ago. Time flies when you’re havin’ fun, or so they say.”

“Tempus fugit.”
Ian filled her glass and clinked his against it, smiling. She dimpled professionally, drank, and went on.

“Mind, I wasn’t but two years older than Jane…” Bat-bat. “Mrs. Abbott wouldn’t’ve bothered with them, save they were pretty, both of ’em, and Jane was just about old enough to…um…start.”

Ian was counting back; six years ago, Jane would have been about the age Fanny was now.
Old enough…

After a few accounts of harrowing initial experiences in the trade, he managed to drag the conversation back to Jane and Fanny.

“Ye said a sea captain sold the girls to Mrs. Abbott. Do either of ye by chance recall his name?”

Meg shook her head.

“I wasn’t here,” she said. “Trix…?” She lifted a brow at her friend, who frowned a little and pressed her lips together.

“Has he come back here—since?” Ian asked, watching her closely. She looked startled.

“I—well…yes. I only saw him twice, mind, and it’s been a long while, so I maybe don’t recall his name for sure.”

Ian sighed, gave her a direct look, and handed her a golden guinea.

“Vaskwez,” she said without hesitation. “Sebastian Vaskwez.”

“Vas—was he a Spaniard?” Ian asked, his mind having smoothly transmuted her rendering to “Sebastiàn Vasquez.”

“I don’t know,” Trix said frankly. “I’ve never had a Spaniard—knowin’-like, I mean—wouldn’t know what they sound like.”

“They all sound the same in bed,” Meg said, giving Ian an eye. Trix gave her friend a withering look.

“He sounded foreign-like, no doubt about
that.
And no talking through his nose or that
gwaw-gwaw
sort of thing Frenchies do. I’ve had three Frenchmen,” she explained to Ian, with a small showing of pride. “Was a few of ’em in Philadelphia while the British army was here.”

“When was the last time Vasquez came here?” he asked.

“Two…no, maybe close to three years ago.”

“Did he go with Jane then?” Ian asked.

“No,” Trix said unexpectedly. “He went with me.” She made a face. “He stank of gunpowder—like an artilleryman. He wasn’t one, though; they’ve all got it ground into their skin and their hands are black with it, but he was clean, though he smelled like a fired pistol.”

A thought occurred to Ian—though thinking was becoming difficult. He wasn’t bothered by the fact that his body was taking strong notice of the girls, but arousal seldom did much for the mental faculties.

“Could ye tell if he was still a sea captain?” he asked. Both girls looked blank.

“I mean—did he mention his ship, or maybe say he was taking on crew, anything like that? Did he smell of the sea, or—or—fish?”

That made them both laugh.

“No, just gunpowder,” Trix said, recovering.

“Mother Abbott called him ‘Captain,’ though,” Trix added. “And ’twas clear enough he weren’t a soldier.”

A few more questions emptied both bottles, and it was clear that the girls had told him all they knew, little as it was. At least he had a name. There were sounds in the house, opening doors, heavy footsteps, men’s voices and women’s greetings; it was just past teatime and the cullies were beginning to come in.

He rose, arranged himself without shame, and bowed to them, thanking them for their kind assistance.

At the bottom of the stairs, he heard Trix call down to him and looked up to see her leaning over the rail of the landing above.

“Aye?” he said. She glanced round to make sure there was no one near, then scuttled down the stairs and took him by the sleeve.

“I know one thing more,” she said. “When Mother Abbott went to sell Arabella’s maidenhead, she hadn’t one, so they had to use a bladder of chicken blood.”