To Kiss A Spy (24 page)

“Here.” Owen swung Pen under the light from one of the candles. He caught her chin and pushed it up. “What d’ye think?”

The woman came closer. “Mistress Boulder’s the name,” she said, peering at Pen. “Looks as if she’s been in the wars. A mite troublesome is she?”

“Needs to know her place,” Owen said shortly. “But she pretty well knows it now.”

“Well, well, dearie.” Mistress Boulder walked all around Pen. She stopped and pinched the flesh of her upper arms. Pen couldn’t help recoiling.

The woman gave a coarse laugh. “Doesn’t look strong enough to ’andle the customers we gets ’ere. ’Ow much d’ye want fer ’er?”

Owen seemed to consider, then he said, “I’ll take a look around first, mistress. See if it might suit her.” He winked and the woman laughed. “Oh, I know what you wants, sir. You wants a look at what’s upstairs? Well, I’ve a choice morsel or two up there, but they’re with customers at present.”

“I’ll take a look,” he said. “Then we can discuss terms.” He released Pen’s wrist abruptly and spun her into the corner of the parlor. “Don’t move!” He followed the whoremistress outside to the rickety staircase that gave access to the upper floor.

Pen turned slowly back to the parlor. The three women at the fire regarded her with unfriendly eyes and she guessed that they didn’t like competition. She swiped the back of her hand across her eyes as if wiping away tears. It was a bid for sympathy that fell on stony ground.

“I’ve a baby,” she whispered. “Will she let me keep him?”

One of the women spat into the fire. “You don’t want to bring no baby ’ere, girl.”

“But would she let me?”

“Nah! No time fer ’em lest someone’s payin’ fer their keep.”

Her heart jumped. She said in the same whisper, “Does she board any like that now? Mine’d be good as gold. I’d pay for his keep out of my wages and maybe help to look after the others.”

The women shook their heads at her. “Y’are new to this, ain’t yer?” one of them observed. “Right namby-pamby way o’ speakin’ you got.”

“Aye, one o’ them lady’s maids, I reckon,” one of her companions commented. “Got ’erself a swollen belly an’ out on the streets, I’ll wager.”

They were talking about her as if she weren’t there, Pen thought. But it seemed they had spun a convincing tale, one she could use at the next place if this one bore no fruit. “Are there any here?” she pressed. “If there are I’d tell my man I’d stay.”

At this they laughed delightedly. “No, there ain’t any ’ere at the moment. Was one a few weeks ago. But, bugger me, dearie, you thinks to tell yer man where you want t’ stay?” They all laughed again.

Owen reappeared. He jerked his head at Pen and she scuttled from the parlor, ducking as she passed him as if expecting a blow. Once outside, even the reek of the alley seemed fresh and clean.

“No children,” he said tersely.

“No, they told me. But there had been one.”

“Let’s try the next one.” He stopped for a second and looked closely at her. “How are you holding up?”

“Well enough,” she said, and it was true that energy coursed through her now that she was grappling with reality. She
would
find her child tonight. If he was alive behind some vile door in these vile streets she would find him and she would take him.

“Come then.”

The next whorehouse was much like the first. Pen told her tale to the women while Owen explored the place with the whoremistress. There were no children here either.

Owen came down the outside stairs, his voice angry as he accused the mistress of the establishment of trying to cheat him. He shouted for Pen and she hurried to join him in the street. The woman stood on the stairs, a stream of profanities pouring from her lips.

“Sounds like you were asking too much for me,” Pen observed with strange gallows humor.

Owen didn’t respond. His face was grim as he stood in the street, rain dripping from the upturned brim of his hat. He’d had his share of whores in his time and he knew the harsh realities of their lives, but these two houses had filled him with a violent disgust.

“Where now?”

“I’m thinking,” he said curtly. “Let’s go back to the river.” He walked briskly back to the South Bank. Lights glowed through the rain from the more substantial establishments. He looked around, trying to picture the moment when he’d seen Miles Bryanston emerge from one of the alleys running back from the river. He’d thought he’d been right the first time, but clearly not. He stared fixedly at the openings to the remaining lanes, hoping that something would jog his memory.

Pen huddled into her sodden cloak and waited. Now more than ever she realized how much she depended upon Owen. She could not possibly have ventured into this place without him. Whoever or whatever he was, whatever his reasons for helping her, he was all she had.

All the damned lanes looked alike, Owen thought. Particularly in the rain. But he thought there was something about a particular house at the end of the row on the corner of the alley directly in front of them. It was crooked, and the unsupported side leaned so far over it looked as if it might tumble at any minute.

The more he looked, the more convinced he became. Bryanston had emerged from that lane.

“This way.” He took Pen’s elbow and propelled her ahead of him. There was but one lantern here, and if it were possible the lane was fouler than the one they’d just left.

The door beneath the lantern was very firmly closed. Owen lifted the latch but it was fastened from within. “Not too eager for custom,” he muttered. He banged imperatively with the hilt of his sword.

After a minute they heard shuffling feet and mumbled grumbles and the door was opened a crack. A wizened crone peered at them in the lamplight.

“You open for business, woman?” Owen demanded in the harsh rasp he had been using all evening. “Light’s on.”

“Depends,” the woman said. “What’s that you got?”

“A girl. You want her and the price is right, you can have her.” He pulled Pen into the lamplight. “Fresh meat, she is. She’ll clean up nicely . . . suit your choosier customers.” He gave a short laugh and pushed into the house, thrusting the woman aside whether she would object or not.

He looked around what seemed to be the only room on the ground floor. It was deserted. “Quiet tonight.”

“I ’ave me regular customers,” the crone declared. “Out back.” She examined Pen. “I don’t want no troublemakers,” she said, gesturing to Pen’s marked countenance.

Pen shrank back behind Owen. Her eyes darted around the chamber and her heart jumped into her throat. There was a cup of milk on the table with a rag dipped into it. A memory came back, fresh and vivid from her childhood in Derbyshire. A woman sitting in the sun, holding a baby on her lap, dripping milk into its mouth from a soaked rag. Tilly had told her that the woman couldn’t suckle her infant because her own milk had dried up.

“You’ve got a baby in this house, mistress?” she asked in a whining, cajoling tone. She plucked at Owen’s sleeve. “Please, sir, ask her if she’ll take my baby too? Please, sir.”

Owen snarled at her and she cowered, covering her face with her hands.

“I heard tell on the street, mistress, that you run another little business on the side,” he said, pulling at his chin. “Baby boarding.”

“An’ what of it?” The crone’s eyes shifted slightly. “You got summat in that line you want taken care of?”

Owen jerked his head towards Pen, who still stood covering her face with her hands. “Anywhere we can talk alone, mistress?”

The woman glanced at Pen, then shuffled to the rear of the room, where Owen now saw a narrow door. He followed her into a squalid scullery.

He lowered his voice. “I’d make an arrangement with you, mistress. A lucrative one. I want to get rid of her child. It gets in the way of her work and she thinks of nothing else. Take her and the brat and see the whelp off. Until the brat’s gone you can have her for free, and I’ll pay you well once the job’s done.”

“Seems like a deal of trouble for a whore,” the crone muttered. “Summat special about her?”

Owen smiled, and it was a most unpleasant smile. “She has some special talents for those who like what she has to offer. They pay dearly for them, I can assure you. But she’s been no good to me with the child.”

“Why don’t you see him off yourself?”

Owen shook his head. “Not my line of work, mistress. I’d prefer to pay to have it done.” He dug into his pocket and tossed a handful of sovereigns on the table.

The crone stared at them. “And I get the girl for free?”

“Aye,” he said shortly. “When the brat’s gone, we’ll discuss a fair price if you still want her.”

“Well, let’s just see now.” The crone moved a hand to sweep the coins off the table.

Owen clapped his own hand over the money. “Talk first, mistress. I want to know what I’m paying for.”

Nineteen

Pen waited until the door was shut on them, then she raced outside. She paused to look up at the top floor, where she saw two very small shuttered windows. She scrambled up the wooden staircase at the side of the house, grabbing at the broken rail when a rotting step crumbled beneath her. There was a door at the top.

“Please let it be unlocked,” she whispered into the rain. She raised the latch. The door creaked open into a dark, noisome space, cold as the grave.

For a second she stood there, her hand still on the latch. She was paralyzed by an icy fear of what she would find . . . of what she wouldn’t find . . . that having come this far she might find nothing. Then strength returned in full flood, and with it the hard conviction that she
had
found what she sought.

She had no lantern but stepped inside, leaving the door ajar behind her. Her eyes were already accustomed to the dark of the street and now in the dimness she could make out three bundles on the floor.

“Whassat?” The startled question came from one of them and Pen stepped cautiously across the uneven floorboards, desperate not to make a sound that could be heard below.

She knelt beside the first bundle. An emaciated girl blinked up at her, her eyes huge in her filthy face. Beside her slept a tiny baby. “It’s all right,” Pen whispered, adding absurdly, “It’s only me,” before shuffling on her knees to the next bundle.

A small boy lay curled in a ball, sleeping on the pile of straw that made his bed. She looked down at him. He was stick thin beneath the ragged scrap of blanket and she tried to guess at his age, but in the dimness it was hard to be certain.

She crept to the third and last pallet. Another small boy. This one was awake though. He stared up at her, sucking on a grubby thumb.

Despair hit her with the force of a tidal wave, threatening to drown out all her conviction, her dreams, her determination. Surely she should know which of these was hers? A child she had carried for eight months, a child she had labored through hours of agony to deliver alive into this world.

Surely there was some maternal instinct that would enable her to recognize her own son.

Pen squatted on her heels and fought her tears. They would do no good. How much time did she have? How long could Owen keep the woman talking? Not for one minute did the possibility occur to her that neither of these children belonged to her.

She bent and lifted the boy. The straw beneath him was soaked and he wore only a ragged shirt. He stared up at her with shocked eyes. “Hush . . . hush, little one,” she whispered, cradling him against her bosom. His thumb dropped from his mouth but he didn’t cry out as she’d feared.

She carried him to the door, where there was a little more light. She examined his dirty face; she was looking for Philip’s eyes, his nose, his mouth. She could not see them. There was nothing remotely recognizable in this child’s face. She held her breath as she clutched him close, wondering if she would sense something, some kinship, but she felt only a dreadful pity for the neglected scrap she held.

She set him down just inside the doorway and he stood swaying, sucking his thumb, watching her in mute curiosity. Pen picked up the second boy and carried him to the door. He awoke and blinked, startled and then afraid, his mouth opening on a wail.

“Shh.” Pen put her hand gently over his mouth. “It’s all right.” She explored his face, looking for some sign, and again there was nothing.

What kind of mother couldn’t recognize her own child?
she thought wretchedly.

She set the boy down next to the other one. They were much of a height, both thin as twigs, both filthy. She guessed them to be around two years old. She squatted down before them. “What’s your name?” she whispered to the thumb sucker.

He shook his head.

“ ’E don’t ’ave no name.” The girl spoke suddenly out of the darkness, and as she came up to the door Pen saw that she was older than she’d thought. Probably six or seven. She clutched the infant to her bony chest.

“Don’t suppose ’e’s stayin’ long enough to get one,” she informed Pen. “Them’s me charges. What d’you want wi’ ’em?”

“Where do you all come from?”

“Me mam works in the cribs out back,” the girl told her, gesturing into the darkness behind the house. “This ’ere’s me sister.” She held out the baby, who gave a thin wail. “Don’t know about them two. Not been ’ere long.” She looked at Pen hungrily. “Got any food on ye?”

Pen wished she had had the forethought to bring something, but how could she have imagined anything like this? Owen hadn’t warned her until they were on the barge, and even then, even in darkest nightmare, she could not have pictured this hideous world.

Her desperation had receded in this exchange with the girl and she knew now what she had to do. She hitched a boy on each hip and turned with her burdens to negotiate the rickety staircase.

“Eh, you can’t take ’em away, them’s me charges!” the child exclaimed. “Mistress’ll flay me!”

“I’m not taking them away at the moment,” Pen said over her shoulder. “Come with me if you wish.”

“Don’t got no choice,” the girl informed her, following on her heels. “I dursn’t let ’em outta me sight.”

They reached the street without mishap. Pen’s two burdens were so light she barely noticed them. They felt like paper in her arms, flimsy and easily torn. She’d left the door ajar and now she kicked it wide open and marched in.

“Owen?” Her voice was peremptory as she strode to the door at the rear of the parlor and kicked it open.

Both Owen and his companion turned to the door. “Ah,” he said.

“Eh, what d’ye think y’are doin’?” the woman demanded, her voice rising. “Them’s my children. Nellie!” She grabbed up a wooden ladle and advanced on the girl, who was cowering behind Pen. “ ’Ow many times ’ve I told ye to let no one near ’em? ’Ow many?” She brandished the ladle.

The girl grabbed Pen’s cloak. “Oooh, it weren’t me fault. ’Onest it weren’t.”

“All right, that’ll do!” Owen’s voice cut through the scullery with the cold edge of steel. He caught the woman’s raised arm and expertly liberated the ladle, not once taking his eyes off Pen. He had never seen her look the way she did now, afire with a brittle desperation as she tightened her grip on the two children.

He understood immediately the reason for that desperation and it did not surprise him. It would have been too much to expect her to know her son at first glance, unless the child had some unmistakable distinguishing feature. But Pen had expected the impossible of herself, he could see it at once, and his heart filled with compassion. But compassion alone was not going to see them safely and successfully out of this situation.

Pen intended to force the truth out of the baby-minder, and Owen could see no better way to achieve their purpose swiftly. He could only hope that one of those pathetic scraps was indeed the rightful Earl of Bryanston. If not, they’d have the devil’s own job continuing their search. The entire Southwark brothel network would be alerted.

“One of these boys is
my
child,” Pen stated, stepping closer to the woman. “One of these was brought to you by the man who calls himself Lord Bryanston.
Which one?
” She fixed the woman with a stare of such piercing intensity that the brothel keeper drew back.

“I don’t know what y’are talkin’ about,” she said. “Them’s my children. None o’ your business.”

She glared at Pen, but there was a flicker of uncertainty in her narrowed eyes. Her visitor’s outward appearance was still that of a beaten whore. But everything else about her was radically changed. She stood erect, her body poised and taut as an archer’s ready to loose her arrow. Fire raged in her hazel eyes. There was a contemptuous curl to her mouth, and a set purpose in the line of her jaw. She looked capable of murder.

Pen sat the children on the stained trestle table and turned again to the woman, keeping the boys at her back. “Which one?” she demanded again, her voice frigid yet somehow distant. “My friend is very skilled with a knife. I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to ask for his help.”

She seemed to be doing very well without it, Owen thought with a flicker of appreciation, but he stepped forward, his knife now in his hand. He would prefer to use bribes rather than threats, but Pen had set the course and for the moment he would follow.

The woman glanced over her shoulder at Owen, her gaze going to the serviceable knife in his hand. “I dunno what y’are talkin’ about,” she muttered.

Owen adjusted his grip on the hilt of the knife. “Oh, I think you do, mistress. Tell us which child was brought to you by the Earl of Bryanston.”

“I dunno nuthin’ about no earl,” she said, stepping backwards while keeping her eyes on the knife. She seemed to abandon the fiction of her own maternal stake in the children. “Didn’t give no name. None of ’em does.”

“Fat, red-faced, nasty little brown eyes,” Pen supplied promptly.

Behind her the children began to whimper. The girl, Nellie, still holding the infant, stood in the doorway poised for flight, although she gazed with fascination on the scene unfolding in the scullery.

The woman backed another step towards a broken dresser, her hand sliding behind her. Owen moved with the lightning speed that Pen was now so used to. The woman shrieked and the heavy carving knife she’d reached for fell to the earthen floor. Owen had her arm twisted behind her back, his own knife held with apparent negligence at her throat.

The children’s whimpering became outright wailing and the heartrending sound filled the filthy scullery.

Pen stepped up to the captive crone. She put her face very close to the woman’s, ignoring the stale reek of her, and repeated slowly, “Fat. Red face. Little brown eyes. Short-cropped mouse-colored hair. He would have been richly dressed, carrying a sword. He probably stank of drink. Now which of these boys did he bring you?”

The woman’s eyes darted to the screaming children, and Owen with his usual supreme sense of timing released her arm and returned his knife to its sheath. It was time for the carrot.

Pen looked at him in surprise and indignation but he gave her a short, reassuring nod and turned to the woman again.

“Mistress, let’s have no more talk of knives,” he said affably. “Let’s talk of coin instead. I’ll take the child off your hands and pay you three times what Bryanston is paying you. You may tell him that the child died of the fever if you wish. I doubt he’ll question it in this place.” He cast a derisory look around the scullery.

There was sudden quiet, even the children’s crying now diminished to hiccups and the occasional sob.

Pen turned to them, gathering them against her, heedless of runny noses and wet filthy faces pressed to her whore’s habit.

Owen looked at her for a second, then said in the same pleasant tone, “Now, mistress, let us come to terms.”

Pen lifted the children onto her hips again and turned around, leaning for support against the trestle table. Her eyes never left the old woman’s face, and the woman seemed to retreat from the intensity of her gaze, her own eyes shifting sideways, darting around the scullery, resting nowhere.

“Which one?” Pen demanded again.

Owen took a leather pouch from his pocket. It was very like the one he had given Betsy Cosham. It flitted across the hard clear surface of Pen’s concentration that she hadn’t yet repaid him for those sums disbursed in her cause.

The woman’s eyes fixed upon the pouch that Owen held in his palm. “ ’Ow much?” she asked thickly.

“Five guineas.”

Her eyes narrowed and a greedy, speculative glitter appeared in their shallow depths. “The lord pays two guineas a month for ’is board.”

“Nonsense!” Pen exclaimed involuntarily. “His mother would never let him out with such a sum.” Lady Bryanston, as Pen knew to her cost, was as miserly as a woman could get.

Owen’s demeanor changed abruptly. All signs of affability disappeared and his eyes were black stones in a suddenly impassive countenance. He said coldly, “Two guineas a month would feed an entire nursery of two-year-olds. You don’t appear to be feeding
one
adequately. I will pay you five guineas. Or shall we try the alternative method of persuasion?”

The old woman looked at the two children in Pen’s arms. Pen held her breath.

“The lord brought that one.” She pointed at the child whose thumb was once again in his mouth. “Said ’e’d give me two guineas a month.” She turned and spat into the sawdust at her feet. “ ’Aven’t seen ’alf that.”

“Well, you shall now see five guineas,” Owen said, opening the drawstring of the pouch. He shook out five coins and laid them on the trestle.

Pen gazed into the filthy face of her child. He sucked steadily on his thumb and sleepily returned her stare. His eyes were brown like Philip’s, she thought. She waited for a rush of maternal adoration and felt nothing. Only a curious cold detachment. Her quest was finished. She had her baby. He was alive, he would get well. But instead of relief there was just this sense of absence, of something missing.

She looked at Owen. He was so calm, so . . . so indifferent, she thought. Indifferent to this miraculous moment when she held her child for the first time. He had done what he’d promised. Was that all it meant to him? But of course he had no place in his life for children, not even his own.

Now, as the end drew near, the information that Robin had given her, the knowledge that she had pushed to the farthest reaches of her mind during the night’s urgency, surged forward. She looked at Owen, at her lover, with the eyes of a stranger now. She did not know this man, had never really known him. He was a stranger with whom she had had a bargain now completed, merely now a stranger to whom she owed money.

Pen looked at the second child she carried. He snuffled against her chest. She said flatly, “Pay her for this other child too.”

Owen inhaled sharply. “Do
what,
Pen?”

She met his gaze steadily as she held both children. “I cannot abandon a child, even though you can, Owen.”

She hadn’t meant to say that but the words spoke themselves. Instantly she wished them unsaid. At the very beginning of this night she had told herself that Owen’s past, the spy’s past, was no concern of hers and of no interest. Once she had her child, their bargain was complete. She need never face him with what she knew, need never express the revulsion that now hit her with full force. They would part as they had to, a natural end to what could only ever have been a brief idyll before the spy went about his business elsewhere.