Unraveled (5 page)

He looked up at her approach, and his face lit. “Miss Darling. You survived. How did it go?”

“As well as you might expect.” And that was all he was going to get from her. “I do hope that Old Blazer is well.”

Jeremy gave a halfhearted shrug. “He’s got a bit of a head-cold. Or, at least, that’s what he said. Mama says he’s just malingering. But you haven’t told me anything. I worry about you.”

Old Blazer wouldn’t have worried about her. He would have been worried about the gown she’d borrowed, and he’d have been grumbling already about the length of time she’d had it.

But Jeremy was so serious, so intent on doing everything right. Nothing made an easy friendship more awkward than a man who wanted to
help
.

“Don’t,” Miranda said. “Nothing happened.”

He had enough to worry about as it was. The last thing he needed to hear, after that unfortunate business with George, was that Miranda had found herself hip-deep in trouble with a magistrate.

He gave her a sad-puppy look. “If you really don’t want to talk of it…”

“It’s over,” she said shortly. “I survived. I’d rather forget it all.”

It was impossible to forget. When Lord Justice had taken hold of her today, he’d not caviled about the matter. He’d grabbed her wrist with a firm, strong grip. She could still feel the warmth and pressure of his hand.

In contrast to Lord Justice’s dark, fine coat, Jeremy was dressed in serviceable—but fading—brown. He didn’t frighten her. He hadn’t threatened to toss her in gaol.

“Did you like the gown?” he asked.

“It suited the occasion.” She dipped into her skirt pocket and slid a half-shilling across the counter. That practically gutted her remaining stash of coins.

“No, no.” He shook his head. “I can’t possibly charge you for the loan. It was just a few hours that you had it.”

“You’re running a business, Jeremy. I’m a customer. I have to pay you, or you don’t make any money.”

“But I know how much you needed it.”

“When a customer needs something, good business sense requires you to charge him
more,
not
less.”
Equal in importance was the fact that Miranda owed enough favors. Owing favors had landed her in this tangle in the first place.

“But…” He sighed and ignored the coin. “You’re a friend. You don’t need to be a customer. I have few enough friends as it is.”

“We’ll be better friends if I act like a customer when I’m a customer. I don’t want to impose on anyone. You, least of all.”

“It’s not—” He cut himself off, shook his head. “Bother. You don’t have to trade for everything.”

She ignored this. “We still have business to do, Jeremy.” She reached into her basket. “I’ve brought another wig.”

He drooped. “Um…we haven’t sold the last two yet.”

“This one is the best so far.” How she managed to speak so calmly, Miranda didn’t know. The payment for Robbie’s schooling would be due in a few weeks. Shortly after that, she’d need to hand over the rents. Dread coiled inside of her, but she refused to let it show. Instead, she reached into her basket and pulled out her latest creation. “The hair is blond. It’s long, and it’s got the loveliest curls. I’ve fixed the hair up, but I can redo the style.” She held it out to him. “Some vain, elderly lady will want to reclaim her youth with this.”

Jeremy didn’t reach for the wig. “I…well, there’s no way to say this. Old Blazer is talking about getting rid of the wigs altogether. If they’re not going to sell, he says there’s no point in giving them valuable room in the store.”

“They’ll sell,” Miranda said airily, even though her breath jarred from her.
Smile, and make it look easy
. “And what’s more, they sell the hats. I should charge you a commission on the hats your customers purchase—they’re so much more appealing atop a head of hair, don’t you think? The instant a woman walks in the shop, she can imagine what the hat will look like on. Once you have a customer thinking of what she’ll look like in an article of clothing, you’re that much closer to a sale.”

“That’s true.”

Miranda stifled a sigh. Old Blazer would never have admitted that. He’d have bargained to the end.

“I’ll just set this one up, then, next to the others.”

Jeremy didn’t object to this piece of importunity, and so she arranged the wig—her third unsold wig. Her arrangement with Old Blazer paid her a percentage of each sale. Well enough in good months—more than she’d get selling her wares directly to shopkeepers. But in bad times… She had enough sewing work that they wouldn’t starve. And Robbie made a few pennies—that would pay for coal.

But they were looking at lean weeks ahead. Lean weeks, with winter coming on. If her luck didn’t turn, they might get down to thinning out the gruel until it was more water than sustenance.

In response to that, her stomach growled.

Behind her, Jeremy cleared his throat. “It’s been weeks since your last sale. You…you don’t need money, do you?”

She set a bonnet atop the golden hair. “You’re a shopkeeper, Jeremy, not a moneylender.”

“I wasn’t offering to
lend
you anything.” He swallowed. “We…we’re doing quite well, and—”

“I’m not comfortable with anything else. I don’t need a loan.”

“Miranda.” Jeremy set his hand over hers. “Listen to me. I don’t care if you
need
a loan.” He sighed. “George was supposed to be released today, did you know that?”

“Oh?” That should have been good news, but by the set of his jaw, it was not.

“I went to the gaol to inquire, but he wasn’t on the list of men who were set free.”

Miranda stared at Jeremy. “I can’t imagine George making trouble, getting additional time.”

“It’s worse. I made them check—he wasn’t inside the gaol, either. He’s gone.”

No wonder Jeremy looked so serious. Miranda shook her head in confusion. “How is that possible?”

“It’s this place.” Jeremy looked straight ahead. “It eats good people and spits out monsters. George didn’t even do anything, and he was tossed in prison. Now he’s disappeared. Mother—”

He stopped himself, shook his head, and looked up at Miranda. His pale eyes pierced her. And maybe they were done being shopkeeper and supplier, now, and were ready to move back to being friends. She closed her hand around his.

“Shh,” she said softly. She couldn’t bring herself to say that all would be well. Chances were, it wouldn’t.

“I’m losing everything I care about,” he said thickly. “I just want a normal life. Is that so much to ask?”

“Shh,” she repeated.

He pulled his hand away from hers and pushed her coin across the table. “Take it.” His face was stony. “And promise me that you’ll come to me if you need anything else. I can’t lose you, too.”

Miranda owed enough favors as it was. Still, she couldn’t turn him down—not with that look of stony certainty in his face. And so she picked up the small coin and slipped it back into her pocket.

It was just a little debt—a half-shilling’s worth. It couldn’t be too hard to make it up to him. She’d manage it somehow. And soon.

T
HE SUN HAD ALMOST
retired when Miranda ducked out of Blasseur’s Trade Goods & More. It was early yet; the clocks had not yet struck five. Still, she pulled her cloak around her against the chill of the oncoming night. A lamplighter across the street had lit half the lamps on Temple Street; they cast a dim glow down the thoroughfare. But the road was unlit in the direction Miranda headed.

The coming darkness lent urgency to this last errand. Robbie would still be at the glassworks where he worked in the afternoon, but it was not long until evensong. Miranda still had to make one last perilous visit. No point postponing it, except to coddle her nerves.

She darted across the street, and then down a short, dark lane. The buildings blocked all light, before giving way to a wide space, framed by a forbidding gate. After the bustle of the gloomy streets, the fog covered the churchyard like a cold, clammy blanket. The edges ruffled in a small breeze. Out of that sea of mist rose the dark silhouette of Temple Church.

To her eye, the church seemed a bit sad. After its construction, one side of the bell tower had begun to sink. At this point, hundreds of years later, the tower had tilted so much that it had actually separated from the church building; gray fog swirled through the gap. One day, the tower would come crashing down.

Miranda shook her head. “Not your problem, girl,” she muttered. With any luck, by the time the whole thing fell to pieces, she and Robbie would be long gone. But for now…

She gathered up her skirts and trotted through the mist, around to the front of the church and up the steps. She paused before the doors, and dug in her pockets until she found what she needed. It was a black stone, with red wax dripped on one side—the sigil of the Patron. When she found it outside her door, it told her that she was needed. She set the stone just outside the church doors, signaling that she was inside and waiting.

It was colder inside the church than out, but the interior showed no signs of the decay that afflicted the tower. Lush paintings hung over the altar, and the benches shone with polish. The nave echoed with her footsteps. The church was empty at this hour. It was almost always empty. Nobody came here unless there was business to do.

Miranda pulled her cloak about her. It was just the chill, surely, that brought gooseflesh to her arms.

No one came to greet her. No bustling rector asked what she was doing. The church held only ghosts and memories, as far as she could see. She kept her eyes on the dark flagstones beneath her feet. They were cut in diamond shapes, and she followed their line diagonally to the side of the room.

There was no required confession in the Church of England. Confession, she had been told once by a gentle-faced curate, was a papist affliction. True confession, he’d said, was between herself and God.

But Temple Church had been built before there was a Church of England. While confession had been stamped out, the architecture was not so easily changed. Miranda glanced about her once more—she truly was alone—found her way to the third pew on the right, and then identified the place she needed, where the wall was overhung with heavy, forbidding curtains.

It was the work of a moment to slide them aside and enter.

The onetime confessional had long since been converted to a closet. In the dark alcove that waited stood a broom, a bucket, a cracked bar of harsh soap, and a three-legged stool. One wall was partially blocked by a rosewood screen—the last remnants of Catholicism in this ancient church. She pulled the curtains back, plunging herself into darkness. Then she sat on the stool, folded her hands carefully, and waited.

She never knew whom she would talk to. Sometimes it was a man. Once, she thought the voice she heard had belonged to a woman. She doubted she’d had any conversation with the Patron himself; whoever he was, his identity was a closely guarded secret. Unsurprising; if Bristol had a thieves’ guild, the Patron was the undisputed head.

But the Patron was more than that. The constables kept order in the prosperous parts of Bristol; the Patron had taken charge of those places where constables didn’t dare patrol. If Miranda walked undisturbed on the streets at night, it was because he granted her safe passage, and the lesser bullyboys didn’t dare risk his wrath. If he refused to allow Robbie to get involved with the other street boys…well, she’d bargained for that, too.

She was mired deep in his debt.

The bargain had seemed so simple, on that fateful night when she’d begged for his help. She received the Patron’s protection in exchange for one favor granted every month. Without the bargain, a woman and a boy living alone in the slums would never have survived.

But with every passing month, the value of that favor seemed to escalate. And now…

However pretty he had been, Lord Justice had promised to put her in gaol. In gaol, like George Patten. Who had disappeared. The room was cold, indeed.

Perched on that too-short stool, she felt her calves begin to ache. Finally, a soft rustle announced that someone had arrived on the other side of the screen.

The voice that addressed her today was a tenor with a bit of a rasp. She wasn’t even sure it was a man. She detected the faint scent of tobacco from the other side of the screen. Still, she formed a picture in her mind—some hulking, brutish thing lurking in the old confessional.

“Have you come to confess?” the voice asked.

“I have.” She reached out and snapped a straw from the broom, playing it between her fingers.

“The Patron will hear what you have to say, my child.” The voice always started with that, no matter who spoke to her.

“I did as the Patron asked,” she said. “I went to the hearing. I volunteered to speak on behalf of Widdy. The charges were dismissed as unproven, and he went free.”

Her simple report was met with a brooding silence. Then: “Lying is a sin, child. And so is omission. What is it you aren’t telling the Patron?”

Of course. The Patron had likely had a man in the hearing room. “I only volunteered, sir. I was not asked to speak by the magistrates.”