Endure My Heart (7 page)

“Where are you from, Mr. Williams?” I condescended to inquire.

“I get around a good bit,” was his answer.

“Where is your home, I meant?”

“Devonshire,” he answered.

“I have an aunt from Devonshire. Whereabouts in Devonshire is your home?”

“It’s just a wee place. Ye’d never have heard of it. I left when I was a lad. I’ve been living in London since.”

“How nice. You will find Salford quiet after the city.”

“Not too quiet, I hope,” he said, and smiled up at me in a bold, assessing way. “There must be routs and assemblies, even in Salford. Do ye attend the assemblies, miss?”

The “miss” was a definite step down in this case, and I lifted my brows to show him how disagreeable I found his encroaching ways. “Very seldom,” I told him. Before Papa’s death I went as often as I could get Andrew to accompany me, but had not been to a party since that time.

“What would a young lady like yourself be doing of an evening then?” he went on brazenly.

“I am busy, Mr. Williams, with church and school work.”

“Betwixt your teaching and charity works ye must be fair frazzled, but are ye busy
every
evening?” he insisted, with amazing brass.

“No, sir, some evenings I help my brother, Reverend Anderson, copy out extracts that he has published in ecclesiastical magazines, and some evenings I just sit home quietly and play the piano, or read Shakespeare. I particularly enjoy Shakespeare.” I felt these exalted pastimes would give him the notion he was aiming too high to aim at me.

“I prefer Milton myself. I have just been agonizing over
Samson Agonistes,”
he replied.

I stared, astonished that he had ever heard of
Samson Agonistes,
let alone be swift enough to tell me so in a clever manner. “Indeed!” I said, with a peep down to the counter, where a book of Milton rested unopened by the open ledger. Still, I knew well enough Mr. Owens did not keep such reading material at hand. It was certainly his book.

“Oh yes, I do read something other than ledgers,” he said. “But I prefer to attend a play.”

“I thought it was assemblies you preferred.”

“Aye, so it is when I’m in stout form, but I’ve wrenched my ankle that bad it howls when I make a leg.”

“I wonder what boundaries you were overstepping to have given it such a turn, Mr. Williams,” I asked in a polite tone, then I signed the voucher without another word. I strode from the shop with the feeling I had got the last word in, but as the door closed behind me, there was an unmistakable bark of amused laughter. I didn’t satisfy him to look over my shoulder, but went straight home to tell Edna that Mr. Williams was a very bold, underbred fellow, and she wanted to be stiff with him when she went tomorrow to get a look at him.

“Bold?” she asked, astonished. “I have already met him. I was over this morning to pick up a few woolens to mend Andrew’s stockings. I found him extremely civil. He has made himself very popular within the space of a day. Why, he is walking out with Sally Trebar this very evening, and they, you know, are very nice people. Her uncle a solicitor in the city, and…”

“And her brother a smuggler,” I reminded Edna, with a little burst of annoyance that Williams had been rolling his eyes at all the girls, and not only myself. Quite the pink of courtesy, this Williams.

“As to that, who are
we
to talk?”

“Hush, Andrew is in the next room.”

“Only in body,” she replied, then used the time to revile me with dismal forebodings as to the gibbet awaiting me when I was caught.

Chapter Five

The week passed
quietly and uneventfully. There was a shipment due on Friday evening; I was trying to decide whether to have it taken to the school for a change. Even when one has a very good hiding place, it is a good idea to make a change occasionally—just in case. Yes, Crites had given up on the school, so I would revert to it.

The week was a busy one for Mr. Williams. He was seen to visit not only the Trebars, but two other young females that week. A dull scald it must have been for him all the same, with nowhere better to go than the parlors of a yeoman farmer and the local harness maker. He was not a gentleman, but he might have looked a little higher than that. He regularly took his noonday meal at the tavern with whatever company he could find, bachelors like himself, or travelers. I believe he had very little time to spare for Mr. Milton.

The shop, Edna informed me, was busier than it had ever been, with all the girls nipping in to buy up one button or spool of thread at a time, to allow as many visits as possible. I did not go back. Even when I ran out of blue wool for Andrew’s slippers, I had Edna pick it up for me sooner than satisfy Mr. Williams by returning. He asked her to convey his compliments to me, the brass box.

I was always nervous the day of a shipment. As evening wore on, I became very unsettled. It was the routine worked out early in the business that Jem would come to me after the brandy was safely stored, to let me know. I made a point to be lurking about the front door, or if Andrew were still up and about, which he was not usually, Jem knew by the lights that he was to slip a note under the back door.

Andrew chose that night to be up. He had been practicing a new piece on the organ, and was pestering Edna and myself with details of his feat, without regard to the house. At twelve-thirty I slipped down to the kitchen to await my note. I was there when it came under the door, accompanied by a light tap. As Jem did not usually tap, I feared there was something amiss.

I went out to talk to him, in case Andrew should decide to follow after me. It was an eerie night. Not yet so very cold, but with a high wind that soughed through branches in a plaintive way. It stirred some feeling of dissatisfaction in me, that wind.

“What is it?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know that it is, miss, but I thought I’d best mention it to you all the same.”

“Yes, what is it?”

“The window was open when we got to the school. Since you gave me the key, I thought we were to keep it closed. Did you forget and leave it open?”

“No, I did not.” I had got the key to be rid of this telltale sign of the open window, in case Crites should tumble to it, or in case some wide-awake vagrant might notice it, and go in to steal what was lying about.

“It was wide open when we got there.”

“It’s impossible. Are you
sure?
Maybe one of our men was there before you.”

“Nay, I was the scout myself, and it was open.”

“There was nothing else amiss? No one interrupted you? You didn’t see any sign of Crites?”

“We fooled him proper tonight. The stuff came down from Ipswich, instead of up water from the ocean. We weren’t burned off at all.”

“What can it mean?”

He bunched his shoulders. “I’ve let the lads go on home, as I didn’t want them all hanging about. With nothing better to pass the time, they might take to roistering.”

“We must move the stuff.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes, tonight. I don’t like the looks of this.” I did not worry Jem about the special agent, but it was in my own thoughts that there might be a better brain than Crites working against us now.

“The lads are all gone off home.”

“Get them back. They’ll be paid double for double work. Have them bring it here, to the crypt.”

“It'll take hours to round them all up, miss.”

“That's all right. I don’t want it done at once. If there is anyone snooping around, let him get good and tired and go home. We’ll make the move toward dawn, Jem.”

“Seems a bit unnecessary, like,” he thought.

“Better safe than sorry.” Jem was not satisfied with this platitude. Of course he was tired after a hard day, poor boy, and wanted to go home to bed. I decided to divulge to him my fears regarding the special investigating agent.

“Gorblimey, it’s a good thing you read the papers. We’ve never heard a word of this. I’ll round up the lads and bring the load here.”

I felt a pang of pity, to see the poor boy dart from the yard, Lady a shadow at his heels, and to know he had a sleepless night before him. My own was hardly more restful. I had a great deal of thinking to do. The agent had arrived, and was already beginning to become a nuisance. He had discovered somehow that we used the school—Crites of course would have mentioned it. But why had he not arrested the men and taken the cargo on the spot?

This puzzled me for nearly half an hour, till I realized the new agent was more ambitious than Crites had ever been. He did not mean to content himself with my carriers. He was after the chief—he was after
me,
and had very nearly caught me. Had he followed Jem to the rectory?

The barrels arrived at the crypt door at four-thirty in the morning. I watched from the kitchen window, unseen, terrified that at any moment a shout or a shot would ring out. None did, nor did any subsequent hammering at the door come to signal my arrest. My care had paid off. The agent, if he had been lurking at the school, had given up and gone away, thus missing out on the second move. But he was dangerous. Thank God the men wore masks. Even if they had been seen, they could not be identified.

I blush to consider all the hours I sat puzzling over who the investigator could be, suspecting first the traveling salesman who had been selling brooms and brushes on Monday, the cousin of the Trebars, who stayed from Tuesday to Thursday, even the colonel visiting at Squire Porson’s place, trying to remember if I had seen any of them in conversation with Crites.

The answer had been staring me in the face, and I should have been shaken for not seeing it sooner. It was Mr. Williams. He even had the lame leg, from being wounded at Waterloo. He was Colonel Sir Stamford Wicklow, with his military haircut. But how had he got himself into Owens’ store? The government could arrange anything—had worked some deal with the Owenses—a lucrative deal you may be sure. Owens’ business would not be worth a Birmingham farthing when this came out. Not a smuggling family in town (and that was the majority of the families) would go next or nigh them.

All Williams’ courting of the local wenches was similarly explained. He was sniffing around for news, trying to work his way into confidence with the men via the girls, calling at any house that would give him sitting space. I had to get a warning out to my men at once that Williams be told nothing.

I gave up any pretense of sleep, and went downstairs to make myself a pot of tea to help me work out my arrangements. There is nothing like a pot of tea; it is the greatest panacea there ever was. It can wake you up, put you to sleep, settle your nerves or steel them to do your unpleasant duty. It performed all those functions for me that night, in a little different sequence than I have mentioned.

Of prime importance was that Williams not suspect I was on to him, which made it poor policy to tell the men directly. They were a close lot, but if even one let anything slip, the secret would be out. They would be warned that old bogeyman, the government, was taking special steps to trap us, but Wicklow would not be pinpointed. Next item was to find a new hiding place, for the school was now useless, and I had no desire to implicate myself or Andrew by using the crypt.

The cautious, the
intelligent
thing to do would be to discontinue deliveries for a while, but if we stopped taking shipment, others would soon take up the slack. I had just been at some pains to arrange a good price in London providing we delivered regularly. Interrupting the supply so early in the game was a poor business tactic. It was autumn too, with the winter, the best season, coming on. I might as well confess the whole while I am about it.

On top of all these rational reasons, there was a quite irrational one as well. The game had been becoming almost dull. Crites was too easy to fool. I welcomed taking on a more challenging foe. I would not be brought to a standstill by Colonel Sir Stamford Wicklow, with his greasy grin and double-dealing. I would continue to accept every load I could get my hands on, and devise a way of doing it without his knowledge. I had the advantage of having pierced his disguise early in the game. This might be turned to good account as he seemed intent on flirting with anything that wore a skirt. I would try his own trick, and see what I could discover by making up to the opposite sex.

But first I must make arrangements for storing the next shipment—that was more important. I remembered Jemmie telling me Lord Aiken’s place had been used once in an emergency. I must discover whether Crites had ever caught on to this ploy. The weekend was always a good time for making contact with Jem. I led the church choir, and he was one of my singers—a very good tenor voice he had. We had a small musical group comprised of flute, violin and cello all sitting up in the gallery (everyone of them smugglers). Andrew would have liked to rout them out and play the organ instead, but his presence was necessary below. This Sunday there would be the added contact of my handing out the calico as well, in the church porch. Sunday was time enough to talk to Jem, but on Saturday I would go into the drapery shop and give Mr. Williams’ nose a tweak.

After considering my tactics for a while, I decided the best ruse was to pretend to be smitten with him, like all the other girls. Bachelors were in such short supply around Salford that all the girls and even half the ladies were running mad for
Mr. Williams. Still, as he was posing as a draper, he could not seriously expect any real romance with me. I must be at some pains to conceal that I possessed a brain, and rather regretted having boasted of my imaginary love of Shakespeare.

It was unlikely my visit would reveal a single fact of any importance; a clever investigator would not let fall his plans, but still I looked forward to it as a game. I was curious to get a sharper look at him, to try to find a flaw in his accent or manners, now that I was on to him. I suppose it was no more than a wish to weigh up the enemy.

Saturday was always a busy day in the shops of Salford. On this Saturday, you had to fight to get a foot into Owens’. Around noon hour the crowd thinned out, and I went in to see what luck Sir Stamford was having with the wenches. Those saucy, ill-bred Turner twins were making faces at him in a disgustingly forward manner. They were his only two customers. One of them held a tiny bag that could not possibly contain more than a yard of ribbon. He looked up when I entered, then excused himself to the twins. This first move confirmed in my mind he was Wicklow. Mr. Owens or anyone of his class would not have automatically excused himself so prettily.