Authors: Highland Fling
“Yes, it would be, and I am certain that Lady Primrose will pay you even more if you will see me safely to her doorstep.”
Peg looked carefully to right and to left, as if consulting with her imaginary friends, then appeared to make up her mind. “I’ll do it,” she said. “Can ye walk, mistress? For it b’ain’t no good expecting me to carry ye.”
Repressing her own doubts, Maggie assured her that she could walk and forced herself to keep up as Peg led the way through what were surely the worst parts of Alsatia. Trying to keep her eyes straight ahead of her, so as not to call attention to herself, Maggie was certain her ragged clothing must help her blend in with the inhabitants. She looked no better than Peg.
After what seemed an eternity, they emerged onto a wider street, more like the ones the coach had passed along before taking the fatal turning, and Maggie began to take hope. She was exhausted and by no means sure she could much longer keep up the pace Peg set, but she was determined to follow until she dropped. At least now she felt safe again, though the footway was much more crowded than before.
Peg, just ahead of her, brushed against a stocky gentleman, and Maggie had to swerve to avoid running right into him. A moment later, Peg stopped in her tracks, bent swiftly and straightened, then turned back to Maggie, holding a fat purse in one hand. “That man,” she said, pointing toward the one she had jostled. “He done dropped it, mistress. D’ye run after him and give it back. Quick now! Me old legs’ll never catch him.”
Maggie stared at the retreating back of the gentleman, wondering how on earth Peg expected her to run after him when she could scarcely walk without collapsing. But when she turned to tell Peg she could not do it, the woman was nowhere to be seen. Instead, standing right in front of her was a very large, very angry man wearing a low-crowned, wide-brimmed slouch hat, a voluminous drab cloak that looked like a discarded coachman’s greatcoat, light breeches and stockings, and black boots. He held a cudgel in one hand but grabbed her right arm tightly with his other. Then, tucking the cudgel under that same arm, he took a wooden bell out of a pocket in his cloak and began to wave it overhead. With the rattling sound to punctuate his words, he bellowed at the top of his lungs, “A thief, a thief! Gentlemen, look to your purses! She’s took a fat ’un from some’un.”
Too terrified even to struggle, Maggie saw the stocky man stop, pat his clothing, and turn around, his expression shocked and furious. “I say,” he shouted, “that’s mine she’s taken!”
“Then you’ll be knowing how much is inside it, sir.”
“I certainly do know, my good man. There is all of five pounds inside it.”
Her captor put away his rattle and, keeping a sharp eye on Maggie, opened the purse. Clicking his tongue, he said, “There be all of that, sir, which be a good bit more than the forty shillings required to hang the wicked wench.”
“But I did not take his purse,” Maggie said, trying to retain her dignity and knowing she failed miserably. “Who are you to dare to detain me, fellow?”
“I be a constable’s watchman, that’s who I be, wench, expected to keep the king’s peace in London town. And who do ye think ye be, to be talking so high and mighty to yer betters?”
“I …” Seeing the number of people who hovered curiously nearby to see what would become of her, Maggie felt the shredded remnants of her courage disintegrate. The last thing she wanted to do was to announce her name so publicly. Looking desperately from Peg Short’s victim to the watchman, she said finally, “I did not take that gentleman’s purse. If you will only let me—”
“Aye, wench, o’ course ye didn’t take it. The thing just flew out of the gentleman’s pocket and into your hand.”
“No, of course it did no such thing, but I did not take it. There was a woman with me, Peg Short, who picked it up off the footpath and handed it to me.” But even as she said the words, she knew that was not what had happened, that Peg had stolen the purse and had thrust it at her in order to make her own escape.
The watchman winked at her. “Not much of a liar, are ye, wench. Best ye polish that tale up a mite afore ye tell it to his worship.” Taking her arm again, he said, “Come along now.”
“But where are you taking me?” Maggie cried.
“Why, to Bridewell magistrate’s court, o’ course,” he told her. “Lucky ye be ’tis a Friday, or ye’d sit in a cell for a few days first. His worship holds his court but once a week. Ye might scrub yer face a bit,” he added, looking her over with a critical eye. “Happen he’ll be swayed more by a pretty face than by yer silly story and decline to hang ye after all.”
It was the second time he had mentioned hanging, and Maggie shuddered. “They won’t really hang me!”
“Oh, aye. If ye were male, his worship would no doubt order ye strung up in irons outside the city afterwards, as a warning to them what enters to mind our laws ’n all.”
She remembered seeing such grotesque sights along the Hampstead Road. The punishment was a peculiarly English one, and she had been appalled, but Fiona had said practically that such sights must deter highwaymen, which was no doubt their purpose.
Suddenly, at thought of Fiona, tears sprang to her eyes, and a moment later, she was sobbing hysterically. Fiona and Mungo were really dead, and as if that were not dreadful enough, she was all alone, and the damnable English meant to hang her.
The watchman, unimpressed by her tears, merely tightened his hand on her arm and dragged her along the street behind him until her knees buckled and the world went black again.
The next time she opened her eyes, he was carrying her in his arms and they were passing through an arched stone entrance into what she feared must be Bridewell Prison.
“If ye’ve come to your senses, ye can walk,” her captor said sternly, dumping her unceremoniously onto her feet again and steadying her with a bruising grip when she swayed precariously.
The stench assailed her nostrils, and she wrinkled her nose distastefully and pressed her lips tightly together.
“Aye, it stinks, don’t it?” he said. “Hard to think it were once a royal palace. Given to the city, it were, some two hundred years ago, for a workhouse and correctional institution.” He grinned as he carefully pronounced the last two words, adding, “Ye’ll be corrected here, right enough. Been here afore, wench?”
“No, of course I have not.”
“Don’t rightly see how there be any ’o’ course’ about it,” he said, pushing her ahead of him. “Most pickpockets, nightwalkers, vagrants, strumpets, and other idle folk as get took up for their ill lives ends up here, not ter mention such like incorrigible and disobedient servants as finds theirselves committed by Justices of the Peace. Look there.” He pointed to a crowded, open yard, its iron-barred gate held ajar by a burly jailor carrying a ring of huge keys. “That’s where ye’ll spend what time ye got left on this earth, a-beating hemp or being beaten yerself.” He leered at her as he added, “Mebbe the judge’ll be payin’ some lucky watchman fourpence to give ye a good whipping afore he orders ye locked up.”
Maggie could see that the yard, open to public view, was filled mostly with women, some in tatters, others in shabby but brocaded gowns. There was one man in a pillory at the rear of the yard, and a few others scattered amidst the women, but it was the women who held her attention. Some were clearly hardened criminals, others almost children. A guard with a stick threatened a young one who paused in her work to look at Maggie, and the girl hastily wielded her mallet again. Maggie shivered.
“See the whipping post yonder, wench? If his worship don’t order ye stripped naked and whipped immediate—which is what pleases the spectators most, o’ course—like as not it’ll be done there in the yard on the day afore ye’re hanged.” With these cheerful words, he shoved her ahead of him, through a pair of open double doors, into a large and overcrowded chamber.
Maggie stopped, swaying, when the blackness threatened to overcome her again. The noise and the smell were overpowering, and the fear that had begun with her arrest now seemed to rob her of the ability to think about anything else. Never in her life had she felt so terrifyingly alone. The courtroom was nothing like the only other such chamber she had set foot in, and if the magistrate sitting behind the high bench reminded her at all of his counterpart in Inverness, it was only because they wore the same black robes, full-bottomed powdered wig, and wire-rimmed spectacles. Nothing else was the same, for this man was thin and harsh-looking. He glared down at the man presently before him.
“As a vagrant in this city, you are condemned to be whipped on your bare back until the blood runs down to your heels. If I see you here again, I will order a hundred lashes.” The gavel crashed down, the defendant’s legs buckled, and two grim-faced jailors dragged the poor victim away.
Maggie began to tremble and could not stop. If the horrid judge ordered her whipped on her bare back, the messages she carried would certainly be discovered. The watchman pushed her again, and she stumbled up the aisle between the rows of pews set out for spectators. A man near the aisle on one of the forward benches, who was drawing, glanced up at the one being dragged from the courtroom, then sketched again rapidly, as if he would catch the entire scene on paper. The thought that anyone would come to such a place merely to draw pictures of the wretches sentenced by the court made her feel ill, but she could not take her eyes from him. At last, determined to recover her dignity, she lifted her chin and forced herself to look away, only to encounter the magistrate’s flintlike gaze.
“Next case,” he declared in a cold, unfeeling voice.
Maggie glanced over her shoulder at her captor, but he shook his head. “Jest find yerself a seat on that front pew, wench. There be others ahead o’ ye, fer which ye should be grateful.”
She could not bring herself to ask anyone to make room for her, and stood by the front pew until the watchman snapped at the two women sitting nearest her to cozy up a bit. As Maggie moved to sit down, she encountered the gaze of the man with the drawing board. Glaring at him, she looked swiftly away again and sat down, hating the thought that he might dare to draw her likeness.
Time crawled by, and each case that preceded hers added to her fears, for the magistrate sitting that day was clearly not a man well-acquainted with mercy. Time and time again, he ordered his poor victim thrown into prison until such time as he might expeditiously be hanged, and in more than one case, he ordered a public whipping to take place the day before the hanging. So far, the only encouraging sign was that he had not ordered anyone’s punishment to take place immediately, in the courtroom.
Maggie kept her eyes firmly fixed on the point where the high bench met the floor, but she was constantly aware of noises behind her. Feet shuffled, people coughed or sneezed, and there was incessant murmuring and muttering. Several times, above the rest, she heard the sound of paper being shifted.
At last, when the call came for the next case, the watchman touched her arm, urging her to stand. Maggie obeyed, quaking, her knees weak, wondering how on earth she could save herself.
The formidable magistrate said icily, “What is the crime in this case, watchman?”
“Theft, your worship, more than five pounds taken.”
The cold gray eyes shifted to Maggie. “Have you anything to say for yourself, young woman?”
“Yes, I do,” she said, forcing herself to speak calmly. “If it please your worship, I can explain what happened.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly. “You speak like a person of some quality.”
“Yes, sir, I am—”
“The more pity that you should have fallen so low,” he said, shifting his gaze again. “Above five pounds, you say, watchman?”
“Aye, your worship.”
“The law is clear. Your sentence, young woman, is that—”
“Wait!” Maggie cried. “You cannot treat me like this. Please,’ sir, there are people who will speak for me. You simply must let me tell you who I am and explain how it all came to—”
The magistrate glared. “I need do nothing of the sort, but I own, your manner intrigues me. Who will speak for you?”
She had meant to invoke the name of Lady Primrose, but even as the words leapt to her tongue, she realized that if her ladyship were suspected to be a Jacobite—as indeed, certain of her hosts had suggested might prove to be the case—naming her now might do no good, and might well do the cause they both served much harm. Without thinking more than that, Maggie blurted the only other name she knew in London. “The Earl of Rothwell, your worship! I am kin to the Earl of Rothwell!”
To her utter dismay, the magistrate began to laugh.
M
AGGIE STARED AT THE
magistrate in astonishment. The rest of the courtroom fell silent until he stopped laughing, but then, behind her, she heard the unmistakable sound of a chuckle. She kept her eyes riveted on the magistrate. Her head ached.
“Rothwell, eh?” His voice still rang with amusement, but he was looking past her now. “You are related to him, you say?”
Swallowing, she said, “Well, not precisely related, your worship, but—”
“I thought not. What,
precisely
, did you mean to say?”
She swallowed again, wishing he had done nearly anything else but laugh. It would be just her luck, she thought, to discover that the magistrate himself was in fact the Earl of Rothwell. But surely so highborn a personage would not spend his time meting out justice in so lowly a court as this one. She drew a steadying breath. “Lord Rothwell has a … a particular interest in my family, sir.”
The magistrate, still peering over his spectacles past her, said lightly, “Come now, Mr. Carsley, how is it that you have not yet enlightened this court? Surely, if this young woman is kin to the Earl of Rothwell, you must have heard of her, sir.”
A calm voice—surely the same one that had chuckled—said from behind Maggie, “Since we have not yet heard her name, I can hardly be expected to have recognized it. As to the young woman herself, I cannot recall ever having met her.”
Maggie looked over her shoulder. It was the artist who had spoken, and he had done so in the unmistakable tones of a gentleman. A young man some three or four years older than herself, he was dressed casually, not at all like a man of fashion. His chestnut hair bore no trace of powder and was drawn back and tied with a plain black ribbon. His features were even, his eyes a sort of golden hazel color. When his gaze shifted to meet hers, she saw only curiosity in his expression.