Riverrun (17 page)

“We won’t,” Cass said tightly, “if I can help it.”

Forrester laughed and shook his head in admiration. “But don’t you see, Miss Bowsmith? It’s inevitable, inevitable. We are temporarily bound together by a fate you most certainly cannot argue with. My employer also wants you to know that he himself will be seeing you in the near future. Surely before the end of the year. He’s a strict man, the captain is, and—”

“Geoffrey!” she blurted, a hand to her mouth.

Forrester’s eyes narrowed. “Madam,” he said, “I have been specifically instructed I not to allow that name to pass your lips. To anyone.”

“But Geoffrey was—”

He took a menacing step forward, his left hand resting on his derringer. “I warned you once, Miss Bowsmith, and that’s more than I usually do for someone in your position. But you have guessed rightly. Captain Hawkins is my employer. And I am to give you this as a reminder of his affection for you.”

Before Cass could move, Forrester closed the space between them and smacked the back of his hand across her face. Her head rocked back, and she stumbled back until her heels came up against the wall. Forrester watched as she brushed a finger over the reddened skin, then he bowed once more and left without saying another word.

He’s mad! she thought, a wave of unbelievable sorrow crashing over her and forcing her into the nearest chair. Whatever had happened, Geoffrey had truly gone mad! She glanced wildly about the room, suddenly feeling as though the house, the street, the city itself had become imbued with a menace she did not think she could handle without Eric’s help. The message, the hired killer, Geoffrey returned—the combination proved too much for her and she burst into tears that flowed for some minutes before they subsided into sobs that tore through her lips and sent an aching through her breast.

But just as suddenly as the release began, it ended. Quickly she dried her eyes and moved to stand by the window. You forget yourself, Cassandra, she told herself; you still have a chance to flee the country if you want, and you still have Eric to take care of you. Nothing will happen. Mr. Forrester or Geoffrey may pursue me as they promised, but nothing will happen—nothing.

Chapter Ten

T
he next few hours passed with funereal slowness as she waited for word from Eric—and in the state she now found herself in, had he begged her one more time to flee to England with him, she would have gone. At the very least, she thought, he would have to return for a final leave-taking. But the shadows grew long and her patience thin when no messenger came to the door. Yet it did not occur to her to fret about him; he was, in all respects, too extremely competent a man to fall into trouble that he could not, in the long run, handle himself. She paced. She wandered. She tried to read some of the books her aunt had kept on the shelves, books she herself had received in those packages Aggie sent to the farm. But when the lamplighter made his way slowly down the street, whistling tunelessly, topping the wicks from his precariously balanced ladder, she began to feel the first pangs of worry. There was no anger, however, that Eric might have betrayed her despite his promises; there was only a deepening sense of despair that the last sight she had had of him was his lying on her bed, innocently asleep and unaware that she had left him.

It was, finally, too much.

After a moment of rapid consideration, she hurried to the door and flung it open. The trees along the street fragmented the light, and the evening’s heat was damp and cloying. She wondered if she dared intrude upon her neighbors, changed her mind when she saw, stepping in and out of the shadows, a man strolling down the center of the cobblestones. From his dress and swagger, she knew him immediately to be a sailor, and she allowed herself a quick smile at the bit of luck she would never have thought possible. She called out to him once, then again, and he stopped, turned, one hand to his brow as he peered through the darkness at the doorways around him.

When she called a third time, he spotted her, hesitated, then moved cautiously to the foot of the walk and looked up.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said, one hand tight on the jamb, “but by any chance are you going to the docks? Down by the river, I mean?”

His face was dirty and unshaven, but his expression was quizzical and kind. Quickly he doffed his black stocking cap and smiled. “Aye, ma’am, I am.” He took a tentative step forward. “Be there anything I can do for you?”

The sudden look of blatant expectation on his face was almost comical, but she would not laugh, nor did she allow herself to feel any apprehension. She could not offend the man since she was unable to visit the port by herself. Despite the efforts of the city fathers to protect the citizens they governed, there were still a fair number of places where a woman, no matter what her reputation, dared not travel when the sun went down.

But in her hesitation, she realized that her original inspiration was filled with too much chance. To send a message with this complete stranger, a message of such import, was foolhardy, no matter how trustworthy he might appear. Instantly, then—and fighting the first shadow of fear that crept unwillingly about her heart—she swallowed what she was about to say and took a small step back into the safety of the door’s shadow.

“Ma’am?” he said, his smile slowly drawing into a leer.

“The
Gull’s Wing
,” she said quickly, before her nerve was lost. “Do you know it? Do you know where it is?”

Puzzled, the seaman scratched at his head, then pulled his cap back on. “I don’t. There be a lot of ships in port these days, ma’am, what with the blockade and all, the army keepin’ track of what’s where, if you know what I mean. I don’t know.”

Before she realized what she was doing, Cass reached behind her and lifted her cape down from the rack and fastened the silver clasp at her neck. She reached up and pulled the cowl over her head until only the pale gleam of her face caught the lamplight. It was foolish, she thought; she could be killed, she could be taken aboard a ship and never seen again, she could be—and she ordered herself to stop before second thoughts blossomed into panic. With a hand raised to stay the seaman, who was now more puzzled than ever, she hurried into the sitting room for her purse, grabbed a handful of coins and slipped them into the tiny pocket sewn into the cape’s lining at her waist. Outside again, she closed and locked the door, but her hand lingered at the knob as though she were leaving the house for the last time. And indeed, she felt that somehow she was shutting something out of her life that she would never again be able to let in. She shivered, drew the cape loosely over her breasts and hurried down the steps.

“Ma’am, look,” the seaman began, but she took his arm firmly and led him toward the mouth of the lane.

“I must find the
Gull’s Wing
,” she said, hoping that she sound of her own voice would override the increasingly insistent protests that rose at the back of her mind. “There is someone very important I must find there. Please, would you help me to find her?”

The seaman muttered to himself, rubbing a hand hard over his face in obvious disbelief at the situation he had gotten himself into; but before he could respond, she had slipped the cool metal of a coin into his palm, and his muttering stopped.

“I can at least … do ye know where she be headin’, ma’am?”

“Britain,” she said.

He nodded, his eyes narrowing as he concentrated. “I expect, then, she be some’ere near The Tide. That’s a meetin’ place for thems that ain’t homegrown. If the ship’s not there, ye might at least ask inside. Someone should be able to help.”

Turning left at the end of Jordan Lane, they moved quickly through the dark streets while faint ghosts of sheet lightning outlined the buildings around them. Now, in the dead air of the summer’s evening, Cass’s sense of smell was assaulted by numerous odors that made her wrinkle her nose and wonder how she stood them during the daylight hours: the cooling brick and fieldstone, the garbage that lay strewn in the gutters, urine, feces, rotted food in wooden buckets in alleys beside taverns, buckets overturned by fat, dirt-matted cats scavenging for their meals. They passed very few people, saw few lights in the homes that dropped behind them. A coach thundered by, its black and white four-in-hand frothing at the mouth as they gasped for air in their speed, their hooves striking sparks off the cobblestone.

This was a Philadelphia she had never seen before, and was not sure she wanted to know of. A city that, despite the lights and the faint sounds of laughter from behind a few closed doors, was filled with shadow—swirling at the mouth of alleys, climbing walled parks and yards, hovering at the base of a streetlamp and darting away when the wind blew and the leaves above shifted. Her own heels were loud and sounded frightened, and when a window slammed shut somewhere behind her, she started and gripped the seaman’s arm more tightly.

He chuckled. “You don’t go to the docks often, do you, ma’am?”

She remembered those afternoons swimming the river, too many years ago to seem part of the same life she now lived. She shook her head.

“Well, it be noisy, that’s for sure. And there be a lot of rough’uns about, too. But as long as you’re with me, I wouldn’t worry too much. I can take care of us both, don’t you fret.”

“You know,” she said as they turned down a street devoid of any light, “I don’t even know your name.”

“Nor I yours, ma’am, and if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to keep it that way.”

She looked up at him, then, a faint smile breaking the tense line of her lips. A peculiar man, this sailor was, she thought; and she was glad that he did not attempt to pry loose from her the reason for her odd and dangerous trip. Then she scowled at herself thinking, Cass, you’re going to be your own death, you know. Her hand had automatically reached for her purse, realized she had left it at the house; in it was a small dagger Cavendish had insisted she keep with her, just in case. That she might be attacked was a small, even vanishing risk, but in his single concession to her humanity, he’d admitted she was much too lovely to travel about the city without some sort of protection. Now she was weaponless.

Damn it, Cass! she told herself at once; damn it, you’d think you were heading into the lion’s den or something. For God’s sake, get hold of yourself.

At the end of the street they made another turn, and another, and suddenly the houses gave way to larger buildings for the storage of goods offloaded from the ships, to ramshackle wooden structures whose roofs canted and sides leaned, that had not seen a decent coat of whitewash since the day they were constructed. Mongrels prowled around doorways and piles of acrid garbage, men in pairs and trios walked with hands deep in pockets or arms folded, some of them singing, most of them cursing. Torches and streetlamps lined the edge of the wharfs and lights gleamed from the masts and topdecks of so many ships suddenly looming above her that Cass instantly despaired of ever finding the right one. The seaman kept her close by his side, then, moving to the middle of the street to avoid the sailors who lurched in and out of taverns that seemed to occupy every one of those buildings that faced the river. The smell of rum and ale was predominant, sweat and tar and the refuse that floated like scum on the water’s surface.

Muttering that The Tide was down this way, the seaman led her quickly away from a group of men standing at a gangway watching a half-dozen half-naked blacks carrying on their backs huge crates of goods onto a three-master. When they spotted Cass, they turned as one, staring frankly at her, ribald comments suddenly filling the air and followed by a peal of coarse laughter.

“Hey, Farrow,” one of them called; “you gonna share the doxie or does we have to take her from ye?”

The seaman only hunched his shoulders as though he’d been struck, and Cass felt a sudden pang of sympathy for him. She reached into her pocket, then, and tried to give him another coin; but he would not have it, only growled at her, led her around the still form of a man lying in a puddle of water. Cass shrank back from the sight, then jerked her head around when she heard a woman’s voice and saw, leaning out of a window over a pawnshop, a redheaded woman laughing with two men who were standing on the street beneath her. Her hair was stringy, her face pocked, and her breasts spilled from a cheap red dress. She touched one of them and the flesh rolled, the men laughed, and she licked her lips lewdly, cocking her head and grinning until the two men suddenly vanished through a doorway Cass had not seen.

A concertina played, and somewhere a mouth organ, and somewhere else the spritely off-key tune of an enthusiastically played fiddle.

And everywhere they walked there were laughter, shouts, the sounds of wood and glass breaking in the middle of a brawl.

“My God,” she said at last, “is it always like this?”

Farrow shook his head. “There be four ships tonight, that’s all. A lot of sailin’ for some men. Most nights, though, it’s fairly at peace.” Then he added with a grin, “Those nights, hardly anyone gets killed.”

Several minutes later, though it seemed like hours to Cass, they came to a stretch of the docks where the great ships were berthed against the wharf stern to bow, and high stacks of crates stood near the water’s edge. She saw oranges, bolts of cloth, machinery, trunks of clothing, barrels of salt pork, barrels of rum and gin, crates with widely spaced slats in which were poultry, hogs, sheep, and geese; there were bundles and bales of cotton and furs, hides and straw; containers of pitch; bands of brass and iron; weapons from rifles to cannon; produce from the small farms outside the city. It was a madhouse, and the noise was deafening. Men on the decks screamed at men on the docks, loaders cursed, foremen swore, a few sang at the tops of their voices. In front of one obviously new vessel a minister in his starched black and white read in a singsong chant from a large Bible a young boy held in front of him while the crew lined the railing, their heads bowed, hands clasped, oblivious to the chaos that swirled around them. More than once, Cass tripped over dark things that lay in her way. She leaned more and more heavily on Farrow’s arm to keep herself from pitching into the river. A peg-legged man reached out for her, his face scarred and his hand a bloodied stump; Farrow swore loudly and kicked the man away before she could reach for a coin to give him. Another man, thin to the point of emaciation, hovered near a gangplank, tried darting up it once, and was grabbed by a bare-chested sailor who picked him up and tossed him over the side as though he were little more than a sack of rags; no one noticed, and no one leapt in to save him from drowning.