The Battling Bluestocking (17 page)

“Lady Susan,” said Bates, directing another repressive look at the housekeeper, “sent the sweep about his business, without so much as giving him time to clean up the mess or collect his gear.”

“Good heavens,” Jessica muttered, “we’ll have a constable on the doorstep before the sun has set.”

“We may that, Miss Jessica,” the butler agreed in solemn tones, “but if we do, it won’t be on account of a few brushes and bits of canvas. I regret to say that her ladyship refused to let Mr. Crick take the little climbing boy away with him, as well.”

Bates fell silent, letting that thunderbolt take its full effect upon his listeners. The silence went unbroken for several seconds, until it seemed to Jessica that the very walls were waiting for her response. She glanced at Andrew.

“I think perhaps I had better go up to her.”

“Well, if you think I mean just to go about my business in a casual gentlemanly fashion whilst you hear the rest of this devilish tale, you’ve got another think coming, ma’am. Lead the way.”

Jessica glanced questioningly at the butler. “She is in the drawing room, miss, with the boy. She has sent for Sir William Knighton.”

Jessica had started up the sweeping stairway, but at Bates’s last words she turned back. “A doctor! Is she ill, then?” Andrew, behind her, likewise stopped and looked back.

The butler shook his white-fringed head. “No, miss, not her ladyship, the boy. I fear some of his burns are rather severe.”

“Merciful heavens!” Jessica exclaimed.

Waiting to hear no more, she hurried upstairs and along the railed gallery to the drawing room, where she found her aunt and one of the maidservants hovering over a settee upon which an old sheet had been spread in order to protect it from the scrawny, soot-covered little boy who crouched there, looking not so much hurt as frightened out of his wits.

“Jessica, my love! At last.” Lady Susan got to her feet and strode toward them, her gloved hands held out to take Jessica’s. It was clear from the fact that she still wore the high-poke bonnet she had donned that morning before sallying forth to the King’s Bench, that her ladyship had not stopped for a moment to take stock of herself since returning to find the sweep in her house. “Did Bates tell you?”

“Aunt Susan, whatever are you about?” Jessica demanded, but her tone was gentle, and the look she gave her aunt was one of compassion if not understanding. “You cannot keep this child. His master will be back with the constable.”

“Nonsense, he wouldn’t dare,” declared her ladyship militantly. “I should have him up on charges so fast his head would spin. And so I told him to his miserable face.”

“Cor, missus, Jem don’t be afraid o’ no gentry mort,” observed the tyke on the settee, his gravelly voice reflecting his fear and at the same time making him sound older than he looked. “’E’ll be back, awright, ’n when ’e gits ’is ’ands on me, ’ere won’t be but a morsel left t’ me backside. Not wiv all this row, ’n all.”

“I’ve told you, Jeremy, you’ve nothing to fear,” Lady Susan said firmly, turning to face him. Her expression softened in response to the abject terror in the child’s eyes. “I couldn’t let that dreadful man take him away again,” she said to Jessica and Andrew. “When I walked in upon them, he was lighting brands under the child’s bare feet in order to force him up the chimney.”

“I dassn’t like goin’ up inta the dark,” little Jeremy muttered. “’E always gi’es me a ’otfoot. On’y way I’ll go up a bleedin’ chimbley.”

“Well, he shant’ be let to do it again, my dear.”

The boy shook his head in patent disbelief, and Jessica turned to Andrew. “We’ve got to do something. I don’t know what the law is with regard to situations of this nature, but if the boy is properly apprenticed to that sweep, I fear we haven’t a leg to stand upon. We shall be forced to give him back.”

The child cowered further into the corner of the settee. “’E’ll gi’e me what-fer, ’e will. Near kilt me t’ last time.”

“You are quite right about the law,” Lady Susan agreed bitterly. “Though I doubt that awful man realized it at the time, there are no real charges I could bring against him that would amount to any more than his having to pay a fine. We shall simply have to make a case of it, use this poor lad to see some changes made.” Her eyes brightened at the thought. “We can do it, Jessica. I know we can. Just as soon as Sir William has seen him and the child has had a bath”—the boy recoiled from the last word in horror—“I shall call a meeting of the Society to End Employment of Climbing Boys. Someone will know precisely what must be done.”

Jessica stared at her aunt in dismay. Just the thought of such a course struck fear into her heart, for she could easily imagine the sort of scandal Lady Susan might stir. The
beau monde
would rock with it.

Andrew’s expression reflected her feelings. “I wish Uncle Brian were here,” he said in an undertone when Lady Susan turned back to her charge. “Would you like me to find him? I’m sure he will be at the house or at one or another of his clubs, you know. I could run him to earth in a trice.”

“Nonsense,” retorted Jessica, her own spirit reasserting itself. “There is nothing he can do that you and I cannot do as well. We simply must think. There has got to be a way to remedy this situation before we all find ourselves in the basket.”

“What are you two muttering about?” demanded Lady Susan, patting the boy’s filthy head, then removing her gloves when she realized she had got soot upon them. “Do you not think we can succeed with such a campaign? Maybe we cannot, but I certainly think we ought to try. We must help this child. Look here,” she added to the boy, handing him a crystal globe containing an intricately carved village scene. “Shake this, and see what happens.”

“Cor, I knows wha’ ’appens,” he said scornfully, his fears forgotten for the brief moment as he took the globe into his grubby hands. “Ye shakes it, like this, ’n it makes snow. Me mum ’ad one like this.” But despite his scornful tone, he turned the globe first one way and then the other, seeming to delight in the snowy scene that resulted.

Jessica stared at him. The crystal was not an expensive toy, but she doubted that any climbing boy’s mother would possess one. Clearly the child was a prevaricator. She turned back to her aunt.

“I agree that we must do what we can for him, Aunt, but I doubt that using him as the focal point for a campaign against the iniquities of his position will accomplish that. In the first place, you can be accused of stealing him from his rightful master. The laws covering apprenticeship are very clear.”

“’Fraid she’s right about that, Lady Susan,” Andrew put in. “There’s not a court in the land wouldn’t turn him over to his rightful owner, same as any other piece of property.”

“But he’s a child, not a piece of property.”

“Well, that’s true enough, and perhaps I oughtn’t to have put the matter in such a way. ’Tisn’t the child the sweep owns, so much as the right to his services as an apprentice. Can’t hope to change that. Dashed well been the law in England for centuries, you know.”

“Well, it’s exactly the same as slavery, and there should be a law against it,” declared Lady Susan. “And I think we should use Jeremy here to fight for such a law.”

Jessica had been thinking. She turned now to Andrew, her brow furrowed. “Can you purchase an apprentice?” she asked.

“Not like one purchases slaves,” he said, “but I suppose the result is much the same. One purchases their papers of apprenticeship.”

“Jem jest bought me,” contributed the boy on the settee. “Paid two-poun’-ten fer me, ’e did.”

“There, you see,” said Lady Susan. “Just like slavery.”

“I do see,” said Jessica slowly, her eyes beginning to light. “Andrew, if that dreadful man paid two-pounds-ten for the boy, wouldn’t he be likely to sell him again if the price offered him were higher?”

“Not selling the boy,” Andrew corrected her, but when she glared at him, he retreated. “Oh, very well, same thing. I daresay he might accept a good offer if one were made.”

“Well, then, we’re going to make that offer. Where does Jem live, Jeremy?”

“In Kettle Lane, back o’ the Fleet, in Cheapside,” responded the boy promptly. “Ye really gonna buy me papers orf ’im?” Jessica nodded. “’E won’ like it, miss. Bit of a brute, Jem is. You watch yerself wiv ’im, y’ ’ear?”

There was an anxious look about him now that appealed to Jessica’s compassionate nature. She wanted to hug the filthy little waif. Instead, she just grinned at him before turning back to Andrew.

“You’ll come with me?”

“I still think we ought to discuss this with Uncle Brian, Miss Jessica. Kettle Lane dashed well don’t sound like much a place for a lady. No doubt he would say a gentleman ought to attend to the business. Would myself, only I’d likely make a botch of it, for I’ve never done such a thing before. He would know precisely what to do, however.”

The thought of acquiring Sir Brian’s assistance in the matter was an appealing one. Jessica knew she would be completely safe in his company, safer than she would be in Andrew’s, certainly. But a second thought convinced her that Sir Brian would flatly refuse to allow her to accompany him upon such an undertaking, and while she was perfectly certain she could trust him to see the matter ended satisfactorily, she had a great desire to attend to it herself. The notion of purchasing Jeremy’s apprenticeship had been hers, after all. Surely she could see it through without assistance. She straightened her shoulders with a little shake of her head and looked directly at Andrew.

“You may come with me if you choose to do so,” she told him firmly, “or you may remain behind, but I do not intend to wait until your uncle chooses to pay us a call or for you to search him out before seeing this business at an end. If Jem…What’s his surname, Jeremy?” The boy looked bewildered. “His other name. Bates mentioned it, but I cannot recall what it was. Jem what?”

“Oh, Jem Crick, miss.”

“Well, if Jem Crick is not searching out a constable at this very moment, then he is most likely plotting mischief of another sort, so I don’t think we have any time to spare. Ring for a footman, Andrew. Two pulls of the cord just there behind you.”

Andrew obeyed, and when the footman arrived, Jessica sent him to gather up all the sweep’s belongings and to call for her aunt’s carriage. “And request that someone accompany me besides the coachman, if you please. You’ll do, yourself, actually,” she added, after regarding his tall, well-muscled body with approbation. “Are you coming with me, Andrew?”

“By Jove, I guess I am,” he responded promptly. “Uncle Brian won’t like it much, I daresay, but I think you’ve got a deal of spunk, Miss Jessica, and I wouldn’t miss this for the world. But should you not have suggested that that fellow carry a shotgun or some such thing?”

“No need, Andrew,” she assured him, twinkling. “I shall have my chinchilla muff.”

He stared at her, eyes widening, then burst into laughter. “By Jove, ma’am, you are the most complete hand. That ruffian don’t stand a chance.”

She grinned at him, then hurried upstairs to change out of her riding habit. When she returned to the drawing room, looking complete to a shade in a carriage gown of peach-colored sarcenet with a matching spencer, Yorkshire tan gloves and half-boots, and carrying her large fur muff, Sir William Knighton was speaking to Lady Susan and Andrew. Of the boy, Jeremy, there was no sign.

“The child is seriously malnourished,” Sir William was saying. “It is the same with all those lads, I fear. Their masters starve them in order to keep them small enough to squirm up into the chimneys. Feed him well but with small portions at first until his body adjusts. And put that salve I’ve given you on the burns daily, being sure to keep them very clean. I don’t envy that maid of yours trying to bathe the little devil, since he seemed so set against it, but it is a necessary thing, I assure you, my lady. The burns are not as serious as you might have supposed, but the scarring indicates that he has been burned before, and he has certainly been abused in a good many other ways as well. I shan’t ask how he came to be here in your drawing room,” he added with a slight smile, “but I wish him well. He’s a sturdy lad. Ought to come out of all this without too much damage.” He nodded to Jessica and to Andrew and took his departure a few moments later.

Lady Susan expelled a sigh of relief. “I am so grateful that the boy was not seriously injured in my house,” she said. “I should have felt so responsible.”

“He is being bathed now,” Andrew said with a grin. “Must be the first bath he’s ever had. You ought to have seen the dust he kicked up when the maid came to fetch him.”

“Well, we shall leave him to your tender mercies, Aunt, and see what we can do to free him from Mr. Crick’s employ,” Jessica told her, bestowing a kiss upon her cheek.

“Wonderful,” Lady Susan replied. Then a frown creased her smooth brow. “That is…I know we must do something, Jessica, but it really does sound, like a dreadful place. Behind the Fleet and all. Do you think you should go yourself? Would it not be better—”

“This was my notion, Aunt, and I intend to see it through. If Kettle Lane is behind the Fleet Prison, then it is also quite near St. Paul’s Cathedral. I shall be perfectly safe. Besides, Andrew is to accompany me, and I am taking a stalwart footman along as well, so you need not bother your head about me.”

Lady Susan agreed, albeit with reluctance, and Jessica and Andrew were soon bowling along toward Cheapside, the sweep’s gear tucked neatly into the boot, and the large liveried footman standing up behind. Jessica fingered the little pistol in her muff. She had checked before leaving her bedchamber to be certain the weapon was fully loaded, but now she was remembering Sir Brian’s words that day so long ago when she had attempted to intervene between Janet St. Erth and the miner, Hayle. If the sweep was as much of a brute as both Jeremy and Lady Susan seemed to think him, perhaps it would be as well if she didn’t have recourse to her pistol. Still and all, she told herself, it would be as well to have it there to give her confidence.

The journey to Cheapside took them some time, but Jessica and Andrew indulged in only sporadic bursts of conversation, punctuated by longer periods of silence, during which Jessica’s thoughts were taken up with imagined scenes between herself and a burly sweep. All of these were long and drawn out, with the sweep reluctant and recalcitrant and Jessica cleverly using her wits and her quick tongue to best him.