Coming Home (18 page)

‘I
T'S IN YOUR hands now, Colly,' played an endless refrain in Colly's head. The marquess seemed to have unbounded faith in his abilities. That was all very well, but Colly had not been to London for several years. He was unsure of finding the place where Tilly and Kit were imprisoned. The rookeries of London were a complex of interwoven alleyways where even a man well versed in their intricacies could still get lost. From all accounts Rosemary Lane was not a salubrious address, though the driver and groom seemed sanguine enough. The groom was armed with a serviceable pistol and Colly had his own double-barrelled pistol too, of course. Apparently the groom possessed a handy bunch of fives. Colly could truthfully say he did not fall short in that category either.

The men he was to meet were servants from the Trewbridges' London townhouse who ‘often carried out extra-curricular errands' for his lordship. Lord Trewbridge had told Colly that fortunately these men knew London ‘like the backs of their hands'.

Colly's main problem was to restrain fidgety Sir Alexander. During his time on the Peninsula Colly had met many men like Sir Alexander. If one did not control them, their impatience tended to escalate and infect all those around them.

‘It will be several hours till we reach the outskirts of London,' Colly said casually. ‘We had best use the time for rest.' He sat back on his seat and, leaning his head against the padded leather headrest, closed his eyes. Of course he would not sleep. But he hoped the others would.

Through his lashes he peered at Juliana. She gave him her little imperfect half-smile and his heart flopped around in his chest as though he had run a mile. Then she leaned forward to speak and her open cloak afforded him an interesting view. Today she was not wearing a fichu, and he let his eyes dwell on the creamy mounds with the dark shadow between. He remembered holding the smooth warmth of those breasts….

‘Mr Hetherington, do you know what is happening at the workhouse? Who is managing the place today?'

‘That question should be more properly addressed to me, young woman,' Sir Alexander broke in.

Juliana sat back, depriving Colly of the best view he'd had in a long time. ‘Oh? Have you heard?' she asked Sir Alexander.

‘Ah … no. But Captain Easton has been deputized to keep an eye on things.'

‘The women will wonder where I am,' Juliana fretted. ‘I promised them I would let them know if I found Kit and Tilly.'

‘Well, we haven't found them yet, have we?' Sir Alexander snapped.

‘We will,' Colly answered, although he did not feel as confident as he pretended.

Four hours later the carriage rumbled over the rough cobblestones heading for Whitechapel. Colly pulled the curtains shut when he saw how many people were gawking at the occupants of the carriage. A carriage with a crest on its panel was not a common sight in this district – at least, not during the hours of daylight. Sometimes during the darkness hours young blades bent on adventure found their ways to the mean streets hereabouts. If they were not taken up by the Watch, their adventures ended with them being assaulted for the contents of their pockets, or in catching a disease from gin-sodden tarts desperate to earn a penny.

Juliana held a handkerchief to her nose. The stench from the open drains was nauseating.

Then the carriage ground to a halt, but their journey was not yet over. Colly helped them disembark, then herded them into an unmarked carriage. It was in this vehicle that they covered the final half-mile into the depths of Whitechapel. When the hired carriage slowed, Colly pushed the door open and told the others, ‘Travers will drive you to an inn. Wait there for me. Please do nothing to draw attention to yourselves.' He stared hard at Sir Alexander.

‘What about you?' Juliana asked, looking horrified.

‘I can look after myself,' Colly replied tersely, jumping down from the still-moving carriage. He
hoped
he could look after himself. He had no idea what to expect.

The driver nodded to him and pointed with his whip towards an inn further down the lane. The carriage rolled forward.

‘I hope that young man of yours knows what he's doing,' grunted Sir Alexander, half an hour later, as they sat waiting in the taproom of the filthiest inn Juliana had ever set eyes on.

‘No, no. You mistake the matter, sir. We are not—That is to say, he's not mine.'

In spite of his agitation, Sir Alexander's eyes lit with amusement at her disjointed explanation. ‘Dear me. You don't seem to know what you mean.'

She waved a hand. ‘It's uh … very complicated.'

Sir Alexander nodded sagely. ‘Ah, we always make life more complicated than it need be. I advise you, my dear, to sort out your differences. Look what happened to me. Now I have no son and I may not have a grandson either.'

It was the first time Juliana had heard him admit to being at fault. She patted his hand. ‘Sir, if anyone can find Kit and Tilly, Colly will.'
I do hope so, Colly, I do hope so. And oh, I pray that you keep safe, too
. She stared through the gloom of the dusty window beside her. It was a little past one o'clock, yet here in the half-dark she could not even see the inhabitants of the cobwebs festooned from each corner.

The taproom door swung open and she glanced up, but it was only a group of rowdy workers from the docks. Juliana shrank back in her seat, trying to hide. This was not the place for a young woman, but the inn boasted no private rooms. Indeed, the arched sign above the entrance saying Rosemary Lane Inn was stretching things too far. Rosemary Lane Inn was merely a squalid taproom with big stables out the back. From what Juliana had seen, the stables were preferable to the taproom. She knew very little about London, but Whitechapel was notorious. Stories about the place had filtered through to the citizens of Porto from the English soldiers quartered there. She had never thought to find herself here.

The door opened a second time and Colly entered, accompanied by two men. They all seemed to be on the best of terms. She watched Colly order up a couple of ales for his companions, then he hurried across the room towards her.

‘Juliana, come with me. Hurry. Polking is waiting for us outside a house where Kit and Tilly are being kept.'

Juliana jumped up. ‘Polking?' she asked.

‘He's the marquess's London footman,' Colly explained. He grasped Sir Alexander's arm as he, too, rose to his feet. ‘Sir, please stay here and be very careful. Those two men will explain it all to you.' He signalled to the marquess's men, then grabbed Juliana's elbow and bundled her out to the street. ‘We don't know how much time we have. They may be shifted at any moment.'

He steered her along an alleyway behind the inn. The cobblestones
were littered with detritus accumulated since the last rain, and Juliana concentrated on breathing shallowly as she had in the hospital. The street lay in shadow. The sunlight could not penetrate the dank alleyways between the high tenement buildings.

She hitched up her skirts with one hand and clasped her cloak with the other. Colly kept his hand beneath her elbow, but when he glanced down and saw her clutching her reticule he exclaimed, ‘For heaven's sake! Give me that thing.' Stuffing it into a pocket in his greatcoat he muttered, ‘If anyone around here sees
that
, they'll assume there's something in it worth stealing.'

‘Then they'd be wrong, wouldn't they?' Juliana snapped. If he only knew how sick of the wretched thing she was. But although it contained such frivolous things as a hairpin and a handkerchief, it also contained a very important item – her penknife. She never went anywhere without that knife. Even though it was small, it was her safety net. She had great faith in that bone-handled knife. It had saved her once before, and it might save her again. Of course it hadn't helped her last night on the Pewsey road because her assailant had anchored her arms to her sides. Just the same, she had derived comfort from knowing it was secreted in her reticule. She had heard injured soldiers in Sao Nazaire talking among themselves and they had maintained that a small knife was virtually useless. You had to get too close to your enemy to do any damage, they said, and that was dangerous. But she knew that most men discounted women when it came to weapons, so women had the advantage of surprise. She smiled grimly as Colly hurried her along the alley. How shocked he would be if he opened her reticule!

‘Here,' he said suddenly, and tugged her into an alcove between two shops.

A short man stepped out of the shadows to meet them. ‘They're still inside, sir.'

Colly nodded his thanks. ‘Anybody else gone inside, Polking?' he asked.

Polking shook his head. ‘No, sir.'

‘Good.'

Colly didn't need to explain what he meant. There were only so many enemies a man could take on at once.

‘How will we see clearly enough to know if it's Kit and Tilly?' she whispered.

‘No need to whisper, miss,' Polking said with a grin. ‘They won't hear a thing above this row.' And indeed, the alley and street beyond it were in a constant state of cacophony with the clatter of hoofs on
cobblestones in the main street echoing through the narrow alleys. The tall buildings along the alleyways channelled the sounds into a roaring commotion. The narrow walkways teemed with a life of their own. Hawkers wandered in the middle of the streets advertising their wares in stentorian cries, and the screams of children playing added their mite to the general row.

At that moment the side door of the building they were watching opened a crack and someone peered out. Tucked around the corner as they were, they could not tell if the person was male or female. The red painted door shut again.

They waited.

And waited.

‘Perhaps I should go in as a customer,' Colly said to Polking. ‘What do you think?'

‘Customer?' Juliana enquired.

Colly regarded her with amusement. ‘What do you think this place is?' he asked.

Juliana shrugged. ‘I don't – oh!' How stupid of her not to realize they were standing outside a brothel.

‘Nah, best just to wait, sir,' Polking said.

All very well for him to say wait, Juliana thought. In the meantime God knew what Tilly and Kit were suffering. She said a quick prayer underneath her breath. She had been praying so much lately that she suspected the Almighty was heartily sick of her.

Colly fidgeted. Waiting did not come easily to him.
A man of action
, she thought.

Then the door opened again and a blowsy, middle-aged tart shoved a dishevelled, battered girl through the doorway and into the alley.

‘It's Tilly!' both Juliana and Colly exclaimed.

‘Where's the boy?' Polking asked, as another of the marquess's servants joined them.

Puffing and blowing, the other man wheezed, ‘We just seen 'im. Leastways, we think it might be 'im. An old codger had 'im. They passed by the tavern as cool as you please. I think it's the same boy we saw this morning.'

‘Damn. We'll have to split up,' Colly said. ‘Juliana, go with Stebbing here to see if that boy is Kit.'

‘But I must help Tilly!'

‘I'll look after her,' Colly promised.

Yes, of course he would. ‘May I have my reticule, please?' she asked.

‘Huh?'

In front of the men she walked up to him and pulled it out of his greatcoat pocket. She held his gaze. ‘Thank you. Come on, Stebbing.'

Stebbing raised his eyebrows in amusement. No doubt he thought she was stupid to bother with her reticule. Colly grabbed her hand as she hurried away. ‘Be careful, Juliana. Leave everything to Stebbing.'

She pressed his fingers with her gloved ones and rushed after Stebbing, already hovering at the corner of the alley. As they turned the corner they heard a voice shrilling with anger. ‘Don't look back, miss. No time,' Stebbing gasped. He was rather stout and Juliana suspected she was much fitter than he was.

They ground to a halt outside the tavern where the third member of the marquess's staff was yelling furiously at a tall, thin man who held tight to the elbow of a scruffy urchin.

Juliana's heart sank. ‘Stebbing, that's not Kit under all that dirt.'

‘Dash it all,' Stebbing puffed, exasperated. ‘Miss, stay here and I'll find out what's going on.'

Stebbing spoke to his friend, then returned to her side. ‘That's not the boy we saw earlier, miss. That's a different one. That creature there' – he stabbed his finger in the direction of the thin man – ‘'e's been back and forth past the tavern three or four times, each time with a different boy. Seems like they use a smokescreen if they think someone's on to 'em.'

At this inopportune moment Sir Alexander burst out through the doors of the tavern and strode over to the urchin. ‘Is this him, Miss Colebrook?' he yelled.

The tall, thin man turned to peer in her direction and her heart shrivelled within her. She had
never
seen such evil eyes. They were stone dead in an expressionless face. He looked her up and down without seeming to see her at all. Yet Juliana knew he would never forget her. She stood straight and gave him back stare for stare, but her heart quailed. She was in great danger.

‘That bloody old fool!' Stebbing spat. ‘Now he's given you away.'

He grabbed Sir Alexander's arm and thrust him back inside the tavern.

‘How dare you!' were the last words Juliana heard from Sir Alexander. As she turned back towards the thin man, something hard banged on the back of her head and she felt herself falling. Then a heavy darkness pressed around her.

S
LOWLY SHE DRAGGED herself up through layers of blackness to consciousness. The street noises had stopped. She was lying on a wooden floor in a large, gloomy room. Her head throbbed unmercifully and when she touched the back of it, her gloves came away sticky with blood. At least she thought it was blood. It was difficult to see much at all. Some big shapes, covered in dustsheets, loomed in front of her. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. The shapes were still there. Then she realized she must be in a room where furniture was stored.

‘Miss?' hissed a breathy voice.

She froze, then closed her eyes in thankfulness. ‘Kit?'

‘Yes, miss. Why are you here?'

‘I was searching for
you
, Kit. Thank goodness I've found you. Ohh!' She tried to turn around to face him and her head thumped painfully in an urgent rhythm.

‘Are you hurt, miss?'

‘Just a little. I shall be fine in a trice.' She doubted that. Her heels were bruised and the skin on her arms stung as though she'd been pinched black and blue. They must have dragged her here rather than carried her.

‘At least you're not tied up,' Kit muttered.

‘What?' Ignoring the pounding pain, Juliana struggled to her feet, using a nearby piece of furniture to pull herself up. The dustsheet on the furniture slithered off and she blinked at the beautiful inlaid table revealed. What a lovely piece of furniture! As she brushed her gloved hand across the dappled walnut, she left a swathe in the dust. This place must be where stolen goods were stored, she surmised. Just how many strings to their bow did Mr Pettigrew, her uncle and the dead-eyed man have? Because she had no doubt that the dead-eyed man was the main perpetrator – the ‘man in London' the fearful prisoner had spoken about.

She groped around on the floor.
Please
Lord, surely she still had her reticule? Yes. She'd been lying on it. She breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Hurry, Juliana,' she told herself. ‘Someone could come in at any minute.' She hauled herself towards Kit hand over hand, using the furniture for leverage. Gingerly she knelt down beside him and stroked his tumbled curls. ‘Oh, Kit. You poor boy.' He leaned against her and she held him, just held him. Who knew what the poor little boy had endured? Her arms tightened around him. Her uncle would pay for this. She'd make sure of it. As for Pettigrew, if they didn't have enough evidence against him, well, she'd invent some. She'd lie to the magistrate if necessary.

Something warm dripped down the back of her neck and she put Kit gently aside to fish in her reticule for a handkerchief. She dabbed at the wound on the back of her head and flinched. What on earth had they hit her with? At least her handkerchief was a reasonable size; it belonged to Colly. Even so, it was saturated.

‘There's a lot of blood, miss er … ma'am. Are you
sure
you're all right?' Kit asked.

‘Don't worry, Kit. Head wounds always bleed a lot.' She should know. She'd treated many of them.

She turned her attention to the ropes that bound Kit's wrists and ankles. Her trusty penknife made short work of them. Kit's eyes opened wide as he watched the little knife sawing back and forth. ‘How did you come to have that, miss?'

‘I've carried it for years, ever since I got into some trouble in Portugal some time ago. The penknife was all I had, but it worked. I've carried it ever since.'

It had worked all right.

‘Do you know what lies outside the door?' she asked, nodding towards the stout ash door at the end of the room.

‘Stairs, ma'am – miss – what
is
your name, please?'

Juliana smiled. Kit had an unmistakable lisp.

‘Miss Colebrook.'

‘Miss Colebrook. A staircase leads straight down to the front door. I been lying here thinking about that,' Kit admitted. He had an amusing patois of good English and servant's cant, no doubt the mixed influence of his mother and the Pirate.

‘I'll try the door, though it's probably locked.' Juliana eased herself to her feet, but at that moment they heard a scuffling sound. Grabbing Kit's hand she subsided back on to her knees.

A key scraped in the lock and the door creaked open. To Juliana's
terror the thin man with dead eyes stood there, peering at them through the gloom. She clasped her penknife tightly in her free hand and hid it beneath her skirts. The dead eyes swivelled from Kit's hemp binding, now lying on the floor, to Juliana's face where she hovered protectively in front of Kit.

‘What a clever young lady,' the revolting animal purred. At the menace in his voice, Juliana felt as though a snake had slithered up her spine. She stood up and held out her ungloved left hand to show him how she had untied the ropes. Dead-Eyes was too wary to come any closer, and she knew he couldn't see in the dimness that the knots had been sliced through.

The pale eyebrows rose. ‘Perhaps those dexterous fingers can be put to better use. Come here.' He crooked a long, thin forefinger and the muscles at the bottom of Juliana's stomach jolted.
Hold yourself together, Juliana. Your plan relies on your being as close to him as possible
.

Slowly she sidled towards the creature and for the first time she saw signs of life in the cold eyes.

‘I always interview our new young ladies before they are thrust on our clients,' he purred thickly. ‘I like to … warm them up, so to speak.'

Bile rose in her throat. She had never seen an iceberg but she had heard about them, and she had the distinct impression that a huge chunk of iceberg had just washed into the room. ‘Warm them up?' She didn't think so. Please, please, please God, don't let him have touched Tilly.

Clutching the penknife in the palm of her right hand, she shuffled closer to him, measuring the distance carefully and also his height. Yes, he was tall. So was she. Flexing her body she moved closer, as if in a trance. His arm shot out and grabbed her.

‘No!' Kit yelled behind her.

‘Stay back, Kit,' she warned.

‘That's right, my dear. You understand. You
want
to be tutored by Benny Ames, don't you?' He tugged her flush against his body.

Struggling not to recoil, she saw he was sweating. His tongue slid greedily over his yellowed teeth and he clasped her left hand like a lover. She kept her right hand hidden in her skirts. Ames's breathing deepened as he tried to rub her left hand over his erection. Even as she struck, he was so lost in a haze of sexual pleasure he had no idea what had happened.

‘Hurry, Kit. Run!' she yelled.

This time she was prepared for the blood. It spurted out of his throat in a great arc, dousing the holland covers beside them. Juliana ducked backwards holding the slippery knife handle. The knife blade was buried in Ames's neck. He clutched his throat, his eyes wide with stupefaction.

Juliana's stomach lurched and she dropped the handle. As Ames made the most fearsome gurgling sounds she edged around his flailing body and raced to the door. She hurtled down the stairs and cannoned into Kit. ‘Hurry, Kit. Hurry. Get out of here.' She shoved the front door open and pushed him outside.

Kit slanted a glance back over his shoulder as his little legs sped along. ‘Where are we going?'

‘To the Rosemary Lane Inn. Hurry!'

‘But I don't know where it is!' He kept on running all the same, tugging Juliana along by the hand.

Juliana cast a quick glance behind them. The blue door with number 32 painted on it still stood innocently ajar and she could hear no sounds of pursuit.

‘Run towards the traffic noise,' she gasped.

A few people glanced at them as they rushed by, but nobody seemed interested in a scruffy boy and a bloodstained, dishevelled young woman running helter skelter up the alleyways. No doubt it was a common sight in these parts.

As they stumbled from the dank alleyway into a wider street she saw a sign stuck on a building façade that said ‘Chamber Street'. The steady throbbing of her sore, bruised feet echoed the drumming in her head. Swaying, she knew she was nearly done for.

Kit glanced back and tugged her hand. ‘Come on, miss,' he encouraged her, then he raised their clasped hands and stared at the red stains on Juliana's fingers. ‘Thank you,' was all he said.

Breathless, she gulped and said nothing, fighting her queasy stomach. Soon it would happen – the reaction. Last time she had shaken as if with the ague for several hours. And when she had finally found herself safe, she had huddled into a ball and cried and cried and cried. She had cried for her mother and for herself, and for all the other women who had been held in the power of men who did not deserve them.

But now was not the time for self-indulgence. She must protect Kit. She lifted her chin and plodded on.

Footsteps pounded behind them. Twisting around, she shoved Kit out of the way.

‘Juliana!'

Colly. On a wave of relief so strong it dizzied her, she ran straight into his arms.