The Girl in the Mask (32 page)

‘What am I doing? I’m trying to save myself from the wreck of this family’s fortunes,’ she cried. Her voice was different to usual. More decisive, entirely lacking her usual foolishness. ‘You may as well know now, for you will certainly hear it in the morning: your father has gambled away everything he possesses. I warned him over and over again, but he wouldn’t listen. Captain Mould ruined my husband, and now he’s ruined my brother too. There’s nothing left. And your father can find nothing better to do than to head for the taverns to drown his sorrows in liquor!’

I felt the shock of this news burn through me. It was so utterly unexpected that I could barely take it in. ‘But you … you were working with him … ’ I stammered, puzzled. ‘Why?’

‘The cause is greater than personal likes and dislikes,’ she said.

‘Do you mean the cause of the Pretender?’ I asked. Aunt Amelia laughed in a way that made me shiver.

‘Yes, that cause. But there was a greater one. Earning myself an independence while I was here.’

I didn’t understand her. All I could think of was that my father had lost all his money. ‘What are we going to do?’ I asked numbly.

‘
We?
’ demanded my aunt, with a mocking laugh. ‘What do you mean
we
? I’m leaving. You’re nothing to me, Sophia. Do you really think I wish for the company of a spoiled, badly-behaved girl like you? I only persuaded your father to bring us here for the opportunities the place offered. I could never have afforded to come here and set myself up in such style alone after my fool of a husband lost everything. This time at least, I’ve made the money I need.’ Her tone was spiteful and triumphant. She cared nothing for my father or me.

‘You’ve been playing a part,’ I said. ‘You’ve been using us.’

‘You are so naïve, Sophia,’ she said scornfully. ‘People like you are so easy to prey on. Luckily the Bath is full of such gullible fools, willing to believe that a foolish matron of good family who plays cards is honest. Only the captain knew better. He was the only one I feared. But he couldn’t well expose me without exposing himself.’

‘You’ve been
cheating
?’ I whispered aghast. ‘And the captain too?’ I was shocked. Amazed. It had never occurred to me that her astonishing luck was anything other than just that. She’d deceived me completely. With an effort, I turned my mind from her betrayal to my own situation. ‘I suppose we’ll go home now,’ I said. Sudden relief filled me at the prospect. I didn’t need to run away after all. I didn’t care about being poor as long as I was at home. I was used to it. ‘Perhaps Father will go back to the West Indies.’

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.

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.