Elisabeth Fairchild (14 page)

The mob’s London.

Here, they worked, lived, conducted their business. Here they visited pubs and bought food. Now they preyed on anything in their path, no thought for their wake of devastation. Windows and streetlamps gave up their glittering purpose to the madness of destruction. Goods became booty. The mob’s mad rush slowed to a crawl, anger filling its pockets, rage forgetting its purpose.

He could not forget his. She ran before him.

He had placed her here, in the midst of danger. He must see her safely home again. His pulse pounded as hard as his boots on the pavement. He must catch up to her.

The occasional explosion of a pistol cracked the air, a terrifying noise. She stumbled, staggered. He was sure she had been hit.

The gunfire continued. No one seemed to care that lives were at stake.

With a sudden, heart racing burst of speed he caught up to her, caught hold of her shoulder, turned her into his arms. “Are you all right?”

She nodded, eyes wide, breath coming fast through parted lips. In his relief he wanted only one thing in the midst of chaos, in the middle of danger. He bent his head to hers.

Her lashes fanned downward. Her lips were ready, urgent, hungry. Passion ran riot, as wild and dangerous as the moment. His mouth plundered hers, an insistent, breath-robbing assault. She gave herself up to him, her lips a treasure, the moan in her throat worth stealing.

With a groan he turned her into the privacy of a doorway, and backed her into the resistance of the door. Encouraged by arms that rose in complete surrender, pulling him closer, he ran his fingers the length of her back. Their bodies fit perfectly, chest, belly, hips, and thighs. Their bodies knew they were meant to be together.

An explosion. Gunshot, nearby.

Nothing else could have parted them. They fell back, breath rasping.

Across the street, the doorway to Hammond’s gunsmith and jewelry boiled with frantic movement as those who had been anxious to loot the place ran out--armed by way of theft.

A lad, ruddy cheeked, hair awry, young face a picture of slack-jawed shock, fled the doorway backwards, as if unable to believe the cry of “Murder!” that followed him. A long-barreled pistol dangled in his hand, a dueling pistol, the stock glinting silver, the barrel rich with inlay.

“Murderer!!”

Clutching the gun, he ducked head and ran.

“Dear God!” Dulcie whispered.

“Wait here,” Roger insisted, tucking her firmly into the corner of the doorway.

With the guilty feeling he made a poor job of the night’s work, he plunged across the crowded street, under the very nose of a swaybacked bay pulling a wagon. The driver wore a dark coat, a pulled down hat, a blue vest.

The vest was familiar. Something about the wagon and the men who followed it struck him odd, and yet no time to make the connection as he plunged through the door to the gunsmith’s.

Blinded, the light gone blush pink, her body throbbed to a radical new rhythm, a blood rhythm. It beat in parts of her that had never before felt a pulse--in the damp, swollen flesh of her lips, in the damp, swollen need between her thighs.

The narrow fronted shop presented no outward evidence of turmoil within. A sign swung gently above the door. Rose red it looked, the color of her desire. Hammond’s Gunsmith and Jewelry. The shop front of her imagining--torches reflected in mullioned windows. More looters raced past. The rosy aura faded with the continued shouts of the crowd, the sounds of destruction. The world grayed. The sign went blue. She shivered, horizons closing in. Panic spurred her heart.

She did not heed Roger’s request that she stay put. Her position on the street left her exposed and vulnerable. Carefully, she crossed the street.

Danger, danger, danger.
Through the belled doorway she stepped into a wine-colored dimness that smelled of gunpowder. Her shoes crunched glass. The color of reality again slammed into her in the form of a roughly garbed man, unshaven, eyes flashing an uneasy white in the darkness, sweat beading his upper lip. He made his exit as she entered.

Men usually made way for her. This man did not. He stood his ground, a melon-sized cask clutched to his chest, stamped Gunpowder--menace in the dark glitter of his eyes. Fear beaded his upper lip. Danger and indomitable purpose set his grizzled jaw.

A wave of nausea gripped her gut. Lowering her gaze, she bowed her head and fell back. He, his cask, and the dark cloud that encompassed them, went out the door.

Roger’s back was to the door, his hands busy behind one of the counters.

A male voice groaned. “Taken everything, damn them. Ow! Tried to stop it. Ow, ow, it hurts. Whatever will I tell Mr. Hammond? He will blame me for the loss.”

“Things,” Roger said curtly. His glossy hair hung down over a sweat-beaded brow as he slid a quick glance in her direction. “’Tis only things they’ve taken, lad. No fretting, now.”

Dulcie rounded the counter. A young man lay prone upon the floor. Roger knelt beside him.

She sucked in a gasp, hand flown to mouth to stifle the sound as Roger threw her a glare. Startling, to see so much blood. On the wall. Painting the counter. Roger’s arms, up to his elbows, wore the bright stain of it. He pressed the wadded bulk of his apron to a gaping wound in the young man’s chest.

“Is it bad?” The lad cried, voice weak. His light, milky white, ebbed from his extremities, pooled around his torso, leaking as fast as the lifeblood pumped from his mortal wound.

Apron soaked, Roger’s hand swam in the ebb of life. Eyes closing, he soothed, “I’ve seen worse.” His voice sounded odd. His color had gone all green.

“He has not killed me, then, with one of our guns?” Downy cheeked, the lad tried to laugh, to sit up. His voice went muzzy.

Roger’s jaw worked, at a loss for words.

Dulcie knelt beside the young man, took his hand, cold and fragile as the carcass of a fallen bird. His pulse fluttered unevenly at the wrist.

“Who?” He squinted through blood-spattered spectacles.

“A friend. Rest easy,” she said. “You are safe, lad. No more pain. Nothing but peace now. Can you feel it?”

“Peace,” the young man whispered. Struggle quieting, he sank back into the dark puddle of his own making.

She gave his hand a squeeze. “A cocoon of peace. Wrap yourself in it.”

“Mmm,” the boy smiled faintly. “I see white,” he murmured. Smile fading, he left them. The paled glow dimmed and rose. His last breath carried a final whisper of light.

Dulcie bent her head, tears flowing.

Roger let his breath out in a huff of dissatisfaction as he covered the lad’s face with a square of display velvet. “Come,” he rose abruptly, and held out a blood-stained hand. “No time to mourn. You must get free of this nightmare. Go! Warn the Lord Mayor that the mob makes for the Royal Exchange.”

“And you?” she asked, legs atremble as she stood.

He frowned down at the body. “I will do my best to find the men who set this madness in motion.”

Roger loathed to let Dulcie go alone into the gathering dusk.

All that was gentlemanly in him cried out, in objection to the separation. All that was dutiful insisted it must be done.

“You will never get through the crowd in Cheapside,” he warned. “Best stay south. Take Watling to Threadneedle.”

She nodded, wide-eyed, her eyes mirroring his thoughts. She did not want to be parted from him, any more than he wished to send her away.

And then, with the tinkling of the bell over a shop’s door came the answer to his dilemma, a dark-haired guttersnipe of a lad who backed out of one of the butcher’s shops lugging a canvas bag almost as big as he.

“Felix!” He caught the boy by the collar.

“Ain’t done nuffing!” Felix let go the bag, from which a cow’s leg protruded. Bug-eyed, he peered from behind the stiffened shank, his defense silenced as recognition dawned. “Guv? That you? Gave me a scare, you did. Thought you was a Runner, catching me in the act. An artist today, are you?” Grabbing hold of the bagged beef again he said cheerfully, “Ta-ta, must get this bit o’ glue ‘ome to me mum.”

“You will do me a favor first?”

The lad shook his head, backing away before the question ended. “Nah, nah, now, guv’nor. You’ll not be stoppin’ me t’night. Not wiv’ the prospect o’ roasted beef for me supper.”

“Not even if I offer to carry the bag? A man with a coat such as this, after all, would look a little less suspicious with a shank of beef hid beneath it than a lad of nine dragging it through the gutter.”

The boy’s features assumed a resigned expression. “What would you ‘ave us do this time, then?”

Dulcie followed her odd protector at a trot, skirts clutched high, dashing through the occasional puddle without heed for splashed stockings, dodging dung heaps and refuse, her shapeless bonnet askew. Through side streets and alleyways they zig-zagged, his pattern to hug the deepest shadows. Furtive pauses met every street corner and bright patch. The lad’s head seemed built on a swivel. His gaze darted ceaselessly, side to side, before and behind them, with a look brightly observant. He was the rabbit on a run through his warren, wary of foxes and huntsmen.

She took comfort in the boy’s familiarity with the streets, and followed his lead without question, breathing fervid thanks again and again to Heaven that she had not been forced to face this imperiled trek on her own. They avoided the mob, avoided most of the street traffic entire. He looked back at her frequently, to be sure she followed, curiosity alive in his eyes, the light of him milky in the shadowed streets.

“’Ooo are you?” He threw the words over his shoulder.

She opened her mouth, almost blurted her name, caught herself in time to get it right. “Bethany,” she said.

“Not from around ‘ere, are you?” he hissed, flattening himself against the side of a building--one hand a frantic flutter, motioning her to follow suite. He pressed a singularly dirty finger to his lips.

She let the question hang between them unanswered, heart pounding from exertion and fear as a rowdy, drunken bunch of weavers staggered by, torches scorching the darkness.

“Country fresh, are you?” her street urchin escort asked, as if such a question made sense.

“Why should you think so?” seemed a safe response.

“You’ve a queer accent, and no idea as to the streets, now, ave you?”

“I am new at this,” she admitted. “Kind of you to lead me about. Is it Felix?”

“You may call me whatever you will, love.” He grinned at her roguishly, as if, even at his age, he played the experienced flirt. “Your first time with the guv?”

She nodded.

“Well, ‘e thinks well of you. Never appointed me guardian to none of ‘is girl’s ‘afore. Pay you ‘andsome, does he?”

“Pay me? No!”

Again they took to the shadows, this time in the lee of steps leading to a basement. “Well, you’re a fool to take less than a shillin’ or two whatever it is he arsks of you. The guv is free with his flash, ‘e is. Now, that’s it straight ahead on the corner. I’ll be leaving you to it. “E’ll be wantin’ to ‘ear you made it through safe and sound.”

She parted company with the boy reluctantly. The street corner teamed with traffic at this late hour, all of them strangers. And yet, she must not prove herself timid.

“Ta,” she said, as her maid did by way of thanks, and without a backwards glance, courage in hand, head high, as if she were accustomed to walking the streets of London alone as night fell, she set off up the side street hugging the west front of the Lord Mayor’s official residence.

The Mansion squatted solidly at the edge of arguably the busiest intersection in London, six thoroughfares and two side-streets coming together as if to the hub of a coach-wheel in the heart of the financial district. The house was suitably imposing: huge, porticoed, column-fronted in the Neo-classical style.

The Bank of England loomed on the far side of King William Street, the bell tower of the old church the Royal Exchange had usurped poked up from the sharply triangulated intersection of Threadneedle and Cornhill.

No time to tarry, no time to catch her breath. She could see the bloom of torches bobbing along Poultry coming out of Cheapside. The mob! And in her dairymaid’s clothing, despite the urgency of her mission, she had some trouble getting through to the Lord Mayor’s front entrance.

The guard on duty, a tall, hollow-cheeked fellow, directed her to the servant’s entrance on the ground floor, not the front door up the grand flight of stairs.

He did not really look at her as he sent her away, so much as he looked over her head, his gaze steady--bored.

“Look!” she gasped, breath coming fast. “That mob is on its way here! We must warn the Lord Mayor!”

He hesitated, considering the approaching torchlight. “Radicals, sir! From Spa Field. They have looted and pillaged gunsmiths along the way and are not above killing to take what they will. You need reinforcements. The gates to the Exchange must be closed. The Gargoyle sends me.”

His attention won at last, feet set in motion, he bounded up the steps two at a time, barking orders.

Winded, she kept up.

In a flurry of activity, men mounted horses. The Lord Mayor was summoned. The huge cast iron gates of the Royal Exchange were ordered shut tight and locked.

The first of the torches lit the approaching mob that swarmed from the mouth of Poultry Street like fleas from a drowning dog. Drunk with power, with the heat of passions unleashed, they called bravely to the soldiers to join them, to lay down arms.

“Our quarrel lies not with you,” a man cried. “’Tis the Lord Mayor who must pay, along with all politicians and money mongers.”

“All those of plump pocket and too much power over taxes,” another yelled.

The play of dark and light, torches fluttering in the cooling air, set Dulcie to shivering. She searched the upturned faces. Ramsay was not among them.

Lugging the stolen cow’s leg, Roger followed the blue-vested man, who waved no flags now. He and his cohorts were looting.

Of the riches they might have taken, in an area plump with goldsmiths, drapers and lacemakers, the blacksmith’s shop in Smithfield Market drew them. Two men stood watch at the wagon.