The Girl in the Mask (24 page)

Mr Charleton gave me a cold, formal bow and passed on without a word. I sensed my father’s eyes on me and quaked inwardly. My father took hold of my elbow and gripped it so hard that I couldn’t forbear a squeak of pain. ‘Be silent, Sophia, we are in public,’ he hissed in my ear. ‘Tell me why the supposedly enamoured Mr Charleton will barely acknowledge you?’

‘I … I don’t know, Father. He was still friendly only yesterday.’

‘What have you done?’ my father’s voice grew so soft in his anger that I could scarcely catch the words.

‘Nothing, that I know of,’ I lied, ashamed to hear the pleading in my voice. To tell him the truth was unthinkable.

At Harrison’s, Captain Mould awaited us, bowing over my hand and my aunt’s, and waiting for an introduction to my father. If I’d hoped he’d be repulsed, I was mistaken. My father shook his hand, and fell into conversation with him. I moved away, sickened and restless. Only a few minutes later, I saw him sitting down to play at cards with the captain. My heart sank still further. The afternoon seemed painfully long without even the hope of Mr Charleton’s company to while away the time. It was deeply uncomfortable to have quarrelled with him.

I expected my father to be angry with me that evening, perhaps even punish me. But, strangely, he said not a word. He was even, in his way, cheerful. He discussed the recent riot at length with my aunt and gave moderate praise of the captain. He looked at me meaningfully as he did so. I felt my throat close with horror.

I needed to get out of the house, away from his abominable presence. As soon as I was sent to bed, I wriggled out of my gown, petticoats, and hoop, and clambered up onto the roof in my shift and bare feet. It was a warm night, but there was a pleasant breeze up on the rooftops; it stirred my damp hair and caressed my overheated skin. I would go to Jenny, I decided, and hear how she’d got on with her brother. It would be good to see a friendly face.

I lifted the tile to retrieve my breeches and shoes and reached my hand into the roof-space. My hand closed on empty air. Certain that I was mistaken, I reached in again and groped around. My fingers met only timbers. My heart started to thump. Where were my clothes? Not to mention the large sum of money that I’d wrapped in them. Had my father somehow discovered my hiding place? I tried to calm my quickened breathing and to think straight. Surely he wouldn’t have been able to contain his anger if he’d discovered I’d been sneaking out? No, it couldn’t be him. But then who? My thoughts jumped instantly to the only person who knew about the hiding place: Jenny.

As I had the thought, there was a soft clatter of roof tiles behind me. I whipped around to see a small slight figure illuminated by the moonlight. ‘Jenny!’ I exclaimed. ‘I thought for a moment … that you’d betrayed me. Tell me you only hid them for a jest!’ My relief was so great that I could have laughed heartily over such a deception. But instead of smiling and confessing, Jenny looked confused.

‘Hid what?’ she asked.

‘My clothes and money,’ I said, trying to stem the rising tide of panic inside me. ‘They’re gone.’

‘Not me,’ she said with a shrug. ‘You sure you looked properly?’

‘You’re the only one who knew!’ I said, forgetting to keep my voice quiet. When she looked blank, I launched myself at her. With surprise on my side, I succeeded in knocking her over and pinning her onto the roof. I knelt on her chest, holding her arms down, and hissed into her face: ‘Where are they? What have you done with my money?’

Jenny looked up at me, fury glinting in her eyes. Then she twisted ferociously beneath me, knocking me sideways with ease. Before I knew what had happened, I was sprawling with my face shoved into the slate tiles and my arm burning as Jenny twisted it. ‘Is it likely I’d come up here for a chat if I’d prigged your stash?’ she demanded, her voice vibrant with anger. ‘I ain’t got the slightest idea where it is. You bin careless, I daresay.’

‘I haven’t,’ I answered, gasping with the pain in my arm, the slates grazing my face as I struggled to escape her grip.

‘Well, it wasn’t me! You said we was friends and I
almost
believed you. I come here to thank you for taking me to see me brother yesterday. And now you’re accusing me! Say you’re sorry!’ Jenny demanded.

‘I’m sorry!’ I gasped. ‘If you say it wasn’t you, I believe you.’

The grip loosened a little. ‘No more attacking me then!’ Jenny said.

‘Much good it would do me,’ I muttered resentfully.

She released me and stood over me, daring me to break my word. I sat up and rubbed my sore arm. ‘There was no need to hurt me,’ I said crossly.

‘Who started it?’ asked Jenny. Then she began to laugh. ‘Fighting like a couple of cats on the rooftops,’ she said.

I only managed a faint smile. The loss of my possessions was too serious for laughter. I crawled over to the hiding place, and lifted the tile again allowing the moonlight to shine into the gap. There was only gaping blackness. Carefully I reached in one more time, and explored the roof space. Unexpectedly my fingers closed on a slim package. It wasn’t my breeches, nor yet the leather of my father’s purse. Puzzled I pulled it out and turned it over. It was a hard rectangle wrapped in brown paper.

‘What’s that then?’ asked Jenny.

‘I’ve never seen it before,’ I replied, unwrapping it. Inside the paper was a slim volume. I could just make out the gold lettering.
The Rape of the Lock
by Alexander Pope. A small piece of paper fluttered out of the package and down onto the tiles. I turned it this way and that, trying to make it out in the moonlight. It was just one word.
Sorry
. ‘Sorry,’ I repeated out loud. ‘
Sorry!
How dare he?’

Jenny raised her brows in a question.

‘Mr Charleton,’ I said bitterly. ‘It must be. He’s the only one besides you who knows this is my route out of the house. And he knows I want to read this book. He’s preventing me from getting out of the house, and leaving me poetry as compensation. If it had been my father, it would have been a book of sermons I found here. Or a birch cane for a beating.’

Jenny squatted down beside me and rocked on her heels. ‘So,’ she said. ‘Why?’

I poured out my tangled story of friendship mixed up with hostility and suspicion. How he’d followed me onto the roof, tried to prevent me going out at night and suspected me of involvement in last night’s riot. Jenny listened silently, then drew a die out of her own pocket and tossed it casually, catching it deftly again. ‘Do you care for him?’ she asked, off-handed.

‘Not a jot,’ I assured her swiftly. I was glad of the darkness to hide my traitorous flush. The truth was I had confused feelings towards Mr Charleton. I didn’t understand them myself.

‘So you don’t think you should do like he says?’

‘Absolutely not,’ I said, this time with complete truth. ‘He has no right to interfere with my activities! I told him so.’

Jenny grinned, her teeth gleaming in the moonlight. ‘Well then,’ she said. ‘Here’s a plan. I get you more clothes. You help me out with a little job I needs doing tomorrow night.’

‘Anything you like,’ I said promptly, without pausing to consider what I might be required to do. ‘I’ll go insane if I have another spell of being tied to the house.’ Privately, I considered it served Mr Charleton right if I got into mischief after he had behaved so treacherously. A very small voice whispered that it could have been worse. He could have gone to my father and told him what I was doing. I stifled the voice and refused to be grateful. He had no right to interfere.

‘I’ll meet you here tomorrow night then,’ Jenny said with a grin.

‘Aren’t you going to tell me what we’ll be doing?’

‘It’ll be a surprise,’ replied Jenny, vanishing silently into the darkness.

I crept back into my room, frustrated to be deprived of the outing I’d looked forward to all day. I hated to admit it, even to myself, but the poetry did sweeten the disappointment. Though not as much as the prospect of an adventure tomorrow night.

Overnight, a new subject for gossip succeeded the riot. From one moment to the next, it seemed forgotten, and all the talk was of costumes. Beau Nash had announced a grand masked ball to close the Bath season. Precedence was to be set aside in favour of disguise, and there was to be a classical theme.

I couldn’t care less how I spent the final ball of the season. A masquerade didn’t excite me in the least. I listened all the next day to the excited chatter about Helen of Troy, Zeus and Paris, and yawned, biding time until nightfall. My only disappointment was the absence of Mr Charleton from the round of daily activities. I had a few choice words stored up to say to him.

Jenny was true to her word, arriving with a bundle of boy’s clothes, a cap and shoes at dusk. She herself was in a ragged gown. I followed her as she made her way by dark alleys through the city and across the wall. From there we made our way to a tumbledown stable in a field where two horses awaited us ready saddled and bridled.

‘So what is it we’re doing?’ I asked at last. Jenny was stripping off her gown, stuffing it into her saddlebag and pulling on breeches, shirt, and black coat. Once the transformation was complete, we swung ourselves up onto the horses’ backs and made our way at a brisk trot across the field.

‘Holding up a coach, o’ course,’ she said with a grin. ‘There’s two loaded pistols in your saddlebag. And a mask.’

I felt a slight lurch in my stomach. ‘I told you I didn’t want to rob,’ I said.

‘Well, we ain’t after his valuables so much as his papers,’ said Jenny. ‘So that’s all right, ain’t it?’ She led the way through a gate into a lane. The shadows were deep here, and I could see little as the horses walked briskly up the hill. When I didn’t reply to her question, Jenny admitted, ‘Though they said to nick his purse as well, to make it look less suspicious.’

‘Who are you doing this for?’ I asked curiously. ‘And what’s it about?’

‘Dunno who they are or why, but they’re paying me five guineas and I can keep any valuables I take,’ said Jenny with a grin. ‘They said as how this was important. I’ll go halves with you. The clothes I’ve give you are for free.’ She grinned wickedly in the moonlight.

‘And why isn’t your father helping you instead of me?’

Jenny frowned suddenly. ‘He was supposed to be. This was his job. But he got took,’ she said shortly. ‘He’s in gaol.’

We reached the brow of a hill and left the lane, pushing into a wood. ‘He got taken, and you want me to take his place?’ I asked incredulously. ‘And what if
we
get caught?’

‘Oh, not on the highway,’ Jenny assured me. ‘He was taken in the rumpus in the city the other night.’

‘He was rioting?’ I asked, remembering the violence of that night.

‘Not exactly,’ she said evasively.

‘What then?’

‘He was more using the fuss to his advantage, like. Oh, all right, he was picking the pockets of them that was. But he got arrested for all that.’

‘Can you manage without him?’ I asked concerned for her.

‘I’d do a sight better without him,’ said Jenny caustically. ‘If only he hadn’t left me with never a penny, his drinking debts and the rent unpaid the past two months. I got to have money. That’s what tonight’s for.’

‘Can’t Bill help you?’ I asked.

‘Lord love you, he ain’t got no money. Spent it all getting here, didn’t he? I can look after meself.’

I stifled my misgivings and resolved to hear her out at least.

‘Listen,’ said Jenny, ‘this man who’s comin’ along, he’ll be armed. This ain’t goin’ to be an easy plucking. I thought we should rope the road to be safe. Then we can hide in the trees and jump out at ’em.’

‘Rope the road?’ I asked incredulously. ‘Do you mean tie a rope to bring down the horses?’

‘We’re outnumbered and they’re stronger than us. There ain’t no other way.’

‘I’m having nothing to do with that,’ I said firmly. ‘Chances are the horses would have to be shot. They don’t deserve that.’

The wood opened out into a field, the moonlight was bright, and Jenny pushed her horse into a canter down the slope. ‘If you’re going to be soft about it … ’ she said derisively over her shoulder.

‘Not soft, just humane,’ I said urging my mount after hers. ‘How long do we have?’

Jenny shrugged. ‘After dark was all they said, on the road back from Bristol. Driving a curricle with his own pair o’ horses. So that’s unusual enough that we’ll not mistake it this time o’ night.’

‘A curricle,’ I echoed. ‘So there’ll only be space for one groom. That makes it easier. But … we need more people, surely? If this is important, as you say it is, we can’t afford to muff it. We need a lookout to tell us it’s the right carriage; we can’t afford to rob a wrong one first in case they alert the magistrate.’

The more I thought about this the more anxious I became. We slowed to a walk, and emerged onto a tree-lined road. ‘Why is this being entrusted to two girls?’ I asked. Jenny looked away and didn’t reply. ‘Jenny?’

‘All right, so they don’t know I’m a girl. And this was entrusted to me dad and his cronies, not to me. But now he’s not here and some of them are in prison and all. The rest is gone to ground; can’t find ’em. There was no one but you. And I need the money.’