Wicked Company (11 page)

***

“And let us never forget,” thundered the celebrated Irish actor from his podium in the fan-shaped amphitheater, “English is the language of the immortal
Shakespeare!
Whosoever has command of his mother tongue, has command of
much
in this world!”

Sophie glanced around at the rapt assembly and felt her pulse quicken with excitement at being introduced to Sheridan’s passionate belief in the power of the spoken word. It was almost as if the concepts he was imparting to his audience were unlocking a secret door in her youthful consciousness.

“Learn everything you can about your language,” he exhorted his listeners.
“Read
it…
respect it… cherish its nuances… worship its eloquence. English can be the language of guttersnipes or the tool of the noblest in the land. Speak it well, and you can pass for a prince of the land.” Sheridan’s audience was spellbound by the possibilities. “And remember this,” he admonished them in hushed, perfectly articulated tones, “the English language is also the form of expression employed by the finest authors, poets, and playwrights the world has ever known!
”

Sheridan bowed deeply to the enthralled spectators and informed them he would continue his dissertation on the specifics of proper pronunciation, including the mending of all Scottish accents, in his next lecture scheduled for the following week.

Sophie slipped out of the operating theater unnoticed. It would be safer to collect the money Sheridan owed her for her placards the following day.

Daniel was still sound asleep when she crept upstairs to their living quarters. As she shed the breeches and cuffed coat in the darkened chamber, she mused over Sheridan’s thought-provoking concepts.

Could the variety of obscene visual and printed material by which Lord Lemore appeared obsessed merely be
one
expression of language and art?
she wondered. She might revile the prurient nature of those images, but they were, after all, part of the total culture that had descended from Great Britain’s Anglo-Saxon heritage. She could—and did—find the pictures summarily distasteful, but perhaps Lemore’s relish for such rubbish was nevertheless part of “Culture” in the broader sense.

These thoughts somewhat soothed Sophie’s emotions concerning artistic and literary freedom, which were in conflict with her ingrained notion of public decency. Even so, she was disquieted by her certainty that the clerics next door, asleep in their stone cells, would never share such tolerant views.

***

For Sophie, the remaining weeks in August seemed to fly by. Hunter, perhaps motivated by Sheridan’s inspiring lectures, came regularly to McGann’s for his reading lessons and was making slow but steady progress. Sophie noticed too that his speech was laced with fewer Scotticisms such as
dinna
and
canna,
which, in some ways, she rather missed hearing. But she knew that his efforts would be rewarded with larger roles when the Canongate Playhouse’s season began.

On the night of each lecture, she prepared her father’s evening meal earlier than usual and poured him an extra bumper of wine. As soon as he was asleep, she escaped in her borrowed garments and slipped into the back of the operating theater unnoticed. At the lecture’s conclusion, she returned home just as silently, jotting down Sheridan’s most memorable statements while they were still fresh in her mind.

Around eleven o’clock following the last lecture, she was startled by the sound of the shop’s door opening as she was about to put her quill pen away and retire for the night. A tall figure stood in the threshold, his face obscured in the shadows cast by her flickering candle.

“Hunter?” she said, aghast that he should find her dressed in man’s clothing.

“I saw the light, my dear,” a cool voice said from the darkness. “I thought perhaps ’twould be a good time to call for certain engravings I ordered sometime ago from your father.”

Sophie’s heart slammed against her chest and she shivered in the night’s chill air funneling through the open door.

“I-I-I don’t know… I don’t
believe
they’ve arrived from London, m’lord,” Sophie stammered, desperately trying to remember what her father had done about this unwelcome request. She wasn’t certain her father had actually placed the order.

“Since I have taken the trouble to call,” Lord Lemore said icily, “I expect you to do me the courtesy of checking your father’s records, you little trollop!”

Both stung and enraged at this unexpected insult, Sophie remained behind her father’s desk to hide her apparel. She tried to compose her emotions, sensing she was treading on dangerous ground. Lord Lemore stepped into the circle of light cast by the candle on her desk and glared down at her. Sophie tried not to flinch under his gaze and stared back at him as steadily as she could.

“Only my father would know of your request and its disposition, sir,” she said, stalling. “Shall I have him contact you at his first opportunity on the morrow?”

“Oh… he’s not in the shop?” Lemore asked sharply.

“He’s retired for the night,” she answered.

“How sensible of him,” he chuckled. “And a sound sleeper, is he?” Lemore inquired, drawing nearer. He scrutinized her more closely. “What the devil?” he exclaimed as he extended a bony finger toward her man’s shirt and cuffed coat.

Sophie cursed herself for having filled her father’s tankard to the brim at supper several hours earlier. Under normal circumstances he would have heard their voices and come downstairs. She could not tear her eyes away from Lemore’s narrowing stare. She felt like a helpless field mouse cornered by a stable cat at the Red Lion Inn.

“I was chilled, m’lord,” she offered hastily, “and donned my father’s jacket while I sat at his desk figuring our accounts.”

“Your father must have great confidence in you, leaving you alone so often to run the shop,” Lemore said evenly.

“I am merely his assistant,” she said as loudly as she dared, hoping her father would stir. “Some of my late mother’s duties fall to me.”

“Quite a grown up lass, are you now?” he said softly, reaching for her arm. “Despite your mannish garb tonight, you are wise in the ways of womanhood, I expect?”

“Let go of me!” Sophie said, indignantly pulling her arm away from his grasp. Lemore’s slender white hand began clawing at the opening of her father’s shirt.

“Such a little polecat,” he chuckled. “I like that.”

“No!” Sophie heard herself shout. She pounded her fists against his stomach, the only part of his anatomy she could reach from her sitting position at Daniel’s desk.

“Why you little slut—” Lemore growled, slapping her hard across the face with one hand while grabbing her arm once more.

The two wrestled with each other furiously, but Lemore’s superior strength won out as he pulled Sophie to her feet and pinned her buttocks against the edge of her father’s desk. Then he began tearing at her shirt again, ripping the fabric nearly to her waist. His kisses on her neck were actually sharp bites, and his teeth dug into her flesh. One hand fumbled at the waist of Daniel’s breeches while the other held her fast.

“What in the name of—” he panted. “Why the deuce are you in
breeches?”

In this instant’s hesitation, Sophie lifted her right leg and swung her knee as hard as she could into Lord Lemore’s groin. Her attacker bellowed in pain. She pushed against his chest in a frantic attempt to escape.

“Ho! What’s this?” she heard her father cry, and then whirled around to see Daniel McGann standing in his nightshirt and cap, holding a candle in his trembling hand. He was peering about the chamber in confusion.

“Oh, Da!” Sophie sobbed, running to his side. “He tried to—”

Sophie looked back at her father’s desk. Lord Lemore was leaning against it, bent double, one fist pounding his scrawny right thigh, his thin face grimacing in pain. Her father looked aghast, the explanation dawning on him as to why his sleep had been interrupted by such bloodcurdling screams.

At length, Lord Lemore drew himself up, his face now an impassive mask.

“I was happening by after Sheridan’s lectures, McGann, and thought to call for my engravings,” he said stiffly. “I’d like them now, if you please.”

Daniel stared at his daughter and then back at Lord Lemore. The silence in the book shop lengthened until Sophie heard her father say quietly, “I didn’t order them, sir. ’Tis a trade I’ve given up.” He placed a protective arm around his daughter’s slender shoulders.

“What do you mean ‘given up’?” Lemore repeated, his eyes glittering dangerously.

“I’ll not be trafficking in such items in future, m’lord,” her father said in a stronger voice, “so perhaps you’d better patronize some other bookseller.”

Lemore’s face went white with anger.

“I’m warning you, McGann,” he said between clenched teeth, “I’ve means to humble such impudent riffraff as you and this doxy, here! I’ll charge theft! Where are the engravings I ordered!”

“You haven’t paid for the last set I provided you,” McGann declared, “and you put no siller toward the trash you said you wanted this time. ’Tis no case of theft, m’lord. You’ll have to come up with something better than
that!”

Sophie was astounded by her father’s pluck. It was Daniel McGann as she remembered him when her mother was alive—caring and courageous—and she was touched beyond words that he would stand up to this powerful nobleman on her behalf.

“Rest assured, I’ll come up with a charge that will make you
both
wish you’d done me the simple courtesy of providing what I asked for!” Lemore said with a meaningful glance in Sophie’s direction. And without another word, McGann’s best customer whirled on his heel and disappeared into the night.

***

Throughout September, Sophie lived in dread of Lord Lemore’s next move. She jumped each time she heard the shop door open or saw the constable stroll past the Luckenbooths. But, as the weeks rolled by and nothing went amiss, she and her father concluded that Lemore’s dire threats and fulminations had been sheer bluster.

By early October, her gnawing anxiety that something frightful would befall them had abated. In its place grew a sense of excitement that Hunter would soon debut as a member of the Canongate players. He had been preparing for the supporting role of the servant, Whisper, in Susannah Centlivre’s comedy,
The Busybody.

Hunter’s reading lessons had now evolved into sessions in which Sophie tested both his memorization and comprehension of his lines.

“Let’s start today with act four,” she said late one October afternoon. She was settled comfortably on the low stool in front of the small hearth at the back of the book shop. Hunter was sitting cross-legged on a small carpet next to her. “Scene one,” she said dramatically. “‘Outside Sir Joshua Traffick’s house. Enter Whisper.’”

“‘Ha! Mrs. Patch,’” Hunter read slowly from his copy of the play. “‘This is a… lucky… minute to find you so… read-i-ly. My master dies with… im-patience!’”

“Very good!” Sophie interjected. “You did that completely on your own, and with nary a Highland burr! Good show!” she added, using one of the expressions Sheridan had suggested was commonplace in London’s highest social circles.

Just then, the door at the front of the shop opened and in stepped one of the scores of caddies who delivered messages and performed errands around Edinburgh. Sophie rose from her stool and went to greet him, glancing through the square-paned windows. Her breath caught in her throat when she noticed Lord Lemore standing in a knot of elegantly attired gentlemen in front of the Royal Exchange across the road.

“Packet for you, miss,” the caddie announced. “From London, by the looks of it. Franked from there, so there’s nothing owing.”

“Thank you,” Sophie murmured as the messenger handed her the thinnish package.

“Books?” Hunter asked, standing up to stretch his long legs.

“P-probably,” Sophie stammered, her heart beginning to thud painfully. The only items ordered from London in recent months had been those demanded by Lord Lemore.

She glanced up again, watching the caddie cross the High Street and head down the Royal Mile. Lord Lemore swiftly stepped out of his circle of companions and halted the messenger’s progress. Sophie then saw the caddie nod affirmatively at Lemore as he pointed across the road in the direction of the book shop. The nobleman fished into the pocket of his waistcoat, pressed something into the caddie’s hand and waved him on his way.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” Hunter asked, interrupting Sophie’s preoccupation with the tableau she’d just witnessed.

“Oh… I’ll let Da see to it when he gets back,” she replied faintly. She forced herself to walk calmly to her stool and sit down. “S-shall we continue?” she asked.

As soon as Hunter departed for a rendezvous with James Boswell at the Pen and Feather to celebrate the law student’s twenty-first birthday, Sophie ripped open the recently delivered packet and stared in horror at its contents. Her hands trembled as she flipped through the lewd caricatures illustrating the amorous adventures of the infamous Fanny Hill. After Lemore’s late-night intrusion, Daniel had admitted to Sophie that despite his denials, he had indeed placed an order for the engravings from his agent in London. He had explained ruefully that the Fanny Hill engravings had sold nearly as well as the book itself for more than a decade, even though the government had made countless attempts to suppress both.