Wicked Company (15 page)

“Your money and your shoe!” she heard Hunter whisper and smelled the faint aroma of brandy, still on his breath from his evening’s revels. “God speed!” he added.

And before she could answer, she heard the sound of his steps retreating in the distance. She shifted her weight to gain some comfort among Boswell’s thick cloak, linen shirts, and breeches, plus several bulky books. Easing the malodorous horse blanket around her shoulders, she reflected on Hunter’s final words. Oddly, she found herself comforted by his farewell—even if it did invoke the name of the Almighty.

And then, miraculously, she fell asleep.

***

Sophie was jerked back to consciousness by the coach driver’s “Heigh-ho!” and the lurch of the carriage pulling out of the livery yard. The post chaise swayed through sparse morning traffic down the length of the Royal Mile. In a few moments, the vehicle lurched to a halt and she heard Boswell’s voice extend greetings to his fellow-passenger, Mr. Stewart.

The other passenger climbed aboard and soon the coach surged forward, only to be reined again a few minutes later by the driver. Sophie peered through a broken reed in the trunk and saw Jamie Boswell alight and walk ceremoniously toward the Abbey of Holyrood Palace. She repressed a giggle as she watched her friend make a series of deep, self-conscious bows—once to the mammoth palace itself, once to the crown of Scotland above the iron gates in front, and once to the venerable chapel nearby. Then he marched to the center of the paved court and bowed three
more
times to Arthur’s Seat, the lofty mountain that rose behind the ancient home of Scotland’s kings and queens. Without a word of explanation for his eccentric farewell or an apology for the delay, he climbed back into the carriage. Sophie felt the vehicle pitch forward once again, rolling past the gates guarding the city of her birth.

Soon the horses picked up speed, their hooves flinging clods of rich loam to the side of the lane. The two-man chaise rumbled on to the old Eastern Road and headed toward Ayton, Berwick, Durham, Doncaster, and Biggleswade.

Not long after crossing the border into England, the chaise threw a wheel, tossing Boswell and Stewart roughly against the sides of their vehicle. Sophie, wedged tightly within the trunk, was shaken but not hurt by the mishap.

“Blast! Several spokes have been splintered,” Jamie Boswell moaned when he crawled out of the damaged coach, unharmed.

“I’ll have to ride one of the horses to Berwick, sir,” the driver noted gloomily. “They have a proper coaching station to repair the wheel.”

“I saw a rustic inn a mile or so behind us,” Boswell’s fellow passenger, Mr. Stewart volunteered. “Shall we wait there?”

“Splendid,” Boswell rejoined, sounding more cheerful at the prospect of a glass of port. “Call for us there when all’s well.”

Meanwhile, the inside of the wicker trunk had become insufferably hot and stuffy. As soon as Sophie calculated the two passengers were far enough down the road not to hear her cries, she called out to the driver.

“Please, sir! In here! Please open the wicker trunk!”

The coachman was much taken aback at hearing plaintive calls from beneath his seat and took his time freeing Sophie from her small prison.

“Here’s three shillings to take me with you on your horse to the next town and not mention my presence to the gentlemen,” she pleaded, extending her bribe. She thought it better not to chance Boswell’s knowing of her escape from his father clutches, at least, not until they both had safely reached London.

“’Tis no business o’
mine what ye do.” The driver shrugged, pocketing the coins.

Within half a day, Sophie boarded the
London Fly
at a cost of three pounds. She was crowded in among five other passengers and their piles of luggage. Fortunately for all concerned, she had none.

After nine arduous days traveling due south, the carriage finally reached Highgate Hill, providing the travelers with their first glimpse of the capital. Anxious to conclude the journey, the exhausted driver urged the horses on. The sweaty steeds strained their harnesses in an effort to pull the mud-splattered vehicle the last few miles toward the city gates—and toward the uncertain fate that lay in store for Miss Sophie McGann, late of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Book 2

1762-1764

A female Author once again appears

With all the usual hopes and usual fears

With all the flutterings on that dreadful day

That tries the fate of a beloved play.

—James Boswell

Six

Sophie’s back ached and her throat felt like straw after nearly a fortnight of bumps and jolts in the enclosed coach dubbed the
London Fly.
However, she had never endured fumes of the type that assaulted her senses the moment she stepped off the coach at the Dean Street terminus in Soho.

As a lifelong resident of Edinburgh, she was accustomed to the noise and bustle of a city and was no stranger to the stench of rotting refuse in back alleyways or the pungency of human offal in the streets. But wafting from the doors of nearly every London shop, inn, cellar, garret, and public house near the coaching station was the biting scent of distilled grain mash, laced with sweetish juniper berries—a brew that resulted in the infamous brand of spirits known as London Gin.

Having secured directions from the coach driver, Sophie began to make her way the half mile down Charing Cross to Bedford Street, which marked the perimeter of Covent Garden where Aunt Harriet and Uncle John Ashby lived. She pulled the horse blanket around her shoulders to ward off the November chill and attempted to ignore the sense of desolation settling on her like a heavy cloak. Coal-laden fog stung her eyes and lungs as she trudged down a road crowded with every type of wheeled and foot traffic imaginable—all crawling through the overcrowded city of seven hundred thousand souls. She longed for Hunter’s reassuring presence
as she recalled the endless miles separating her from Edinburgh, and she suddenly felt like weeping from sheer homesickness.

“’Allo, luv… a bit of the berry?” leered a bleary-eyed vagabond.

The disheveled creature stepped into her path clutching a half-consumed bottle of gin to his breast. His breath was so rank that Sophie’s nose twitched and her eyes watered. Shoving him aside, she hiked up her skirts and crossed to the opposite side of the road.

Continuing on down Charing Cross, Sophie was forced to bat away children who clutched at her skirts and gazed up at her with imbecilic smiles. They too were completely addled by the liquor given them by inebriated adults. A slovenly young soul sat grinning in a doorway, her legs splayed out on the street. A baby was wedged in the crook of her arm, suckling the teat of its mother’s exposed breast while the harlot herself guzzled gin from a flagon held in her free hand.

Exhausted and apprehensive, Sophie soon found herself on Bedford Street. She stared at the three- and four-story buildings characteristic of the type that had risen a hundred years earlier, after the Great Fire of 1666, and wondered which residence might house the shop and upstairs lodgings belonging to her father’s sister and brother-in-law.

On the corner of the road that had narrowed into a mere alleyway called Half Moon Passage stood a seedy ale house known as Le Beck’s Head. Directly across from this establishment was Bob Derry’s Cider House, where some half dozen unkempt wretches lounged outside. Nearby, Sophie spied a painted wooden sign displaying a half moon and, aptly enough, peeling gold letters that spelled “Half Moon Tavern.” In the middle of this block, squeezed between the two drinking establishments, stood two shops. The left one had a sign declaring it to be “Mrs. Phillips’ Green Canister—Salvator,” and next to it—much to Sophie’s relief—”Ashby’s Books and Gentlemen’s Accessories.” A narrow door leading to a dark stairway separated the two emporiums but she noted with dismay that the entrance to the bookstore was shut tight and appeared neglected.

Glancing at the shop on her left, Sophie entered the establishment known by the enigmatic designation Green Canister—Salvator. Inside, she gazed with awe at a long wall whose floor-to-ceiling shelves were stocked with myriad exotic toiletries—washballs, soaps, scented water, powders, oils, essences, pomatums, cold creams, lip salves, sticking plasters, snuff, and even sealing wax. Opposite these stood an enormous glass-fronted cabinet displaying apothecary jars labeled mercury, oil of peppermint, oil of rosemary, spirit of hartshorn, alum, laudanum, nodyneline, sulfate of zinc, and many more. At the rear of the chamber a marble-topped counter ran parallel to the wall and displayed several sizes of mortars and pestles. On a back wall were more shelves on which were arrayed strange, sheath-like objects in a variety of sizes. Some of these mysterious articles appeared to be made of stiff linen, others of sheep gut.

Several gaudily dressed women Sophie took to be trollops were chatting with a lithe young woman they addressed as Lorna. Without meaning to eavesdrop, the visitor quickly learned that slender, fair-headed Lorna was a dancer at the Theater Royal, Drury Lane. She had come to Mrs. Phillips’s to purchase foot powder to soothe her aching arches.

A plumpish woman of about thirty-five stood behind the counter pulverizing a substance in one of the mortars. She conversed somberly with a young dandy decked out in skintight breeches and a vivid mustard yellow coat whose velvet sheen was complemented, to startling effect, by yards of frothy lace foaming at collar and cuffs. The young peacock wore heavy white face powder with hand-drawn black brackets accenting his dark brows and black hair and sported a black patch plastered to his cheek.

Why, ’tis a genuine macaroni!
Sophie thought, her eyes widening in astonishment at the sight of the flamboyant-looking young man so-named because hordes of young Englishmen had invaded Italy as part of their Grand Tour. Sophie had read humorous accounts of these young coxcombs returning to their native country dressed in garish Italian silks and brocades and affecting a worldliness that seemed ludicrous after so short a sojourn abroad. Some wag had dubbed these outlandish creatures “macaronis” after the national dish of the same name.

“Mix a pinch of this mercury powder with ale to make a tincture and take twice daily for a month,” said the woman Sophie took to be the proprietress, Mrs. Phillips. “Let us hope your gentleman’s complaint will right itself in time.”

“Sink me, madam, at these prices, I most certainly
trust
so!”

“The price of
neglecting
such a dose will be high indeed, sir!” she snapped, tipping the contents of the mortar into a small cloth bag and tying it securely. “I would also recommend that in any future amorous adventures you protect yourself with a French letter.” She pointed to the sausage-shaped objects displayed on the shelf behind her.

“Can’t stand the feel of ’em!” the dandy said disdainfully. “Sheep’s gut gives you blisters and that linen feels like a flannel stocking.”

“’Tis at your discretion, of course, sir,” Mrs. Phillips replied stiffly, accepting the coins he offered her. “I bid you good day.”

As the young man took his leave, the apothecary slipped the coins into her apron, brushed a few specks of powder off the countertop, and wiped the mortar clean with an efficient sweep of a cloth. She then looked up at Sophie. “May I help you, miss?” she asked briskly.

“Aye, I hope so,” Sophie said. “You are Mrs. Phillips?”

“Her niece,” the woman replied, acknowledging the Scottish lilt in Sophie’s voice with a raised eyebrow. “I inherited the Green Canister when Aunt died recently.”

“I am sorry,” Sophie said sympathetically. “That your aunt died, I mean. You are…?”

“Mrs. Phillips will do.” The woman shrugged. “No one seems to want to call me Mrs. Perkins, and I suppose ’tis good for trade to maintain my aunt’s name.”

“Aye,” Sophie agreed. “I, too, have an aunt in trade—Mrs. Ashby, your neighbor. She and Uncle John own the book shop next door, but the door is locked and I—”

“You’re
Harriet Ashby’s niece?” interrupted the woman.

“Aye,” Sophie replied quickly. “Well… actually, I’ve not seen Aunt Harriet and Uncle John for ages… ’tis ten years or so since they were last in Edinburgh. But surely you must know each other? She’s my late father’s sister. Can you tell me where they are and why the shop is bolted tight?”

“Let me assist these customers and then we shall have a word together,” Mrs. Phillips said soberly.

The shopkeeper-apothecary poured musk oil into a small glass vial for one of the two prostitutes and then ground up several unidentifiable substances into a powder for the other.

“Make a paste and put it on the affected area three times a day, and, if you’d heed my advice, Miss Skene,” she added acerbically to a woman whose cheap muslin dress was awash with an extraordinary number of flounces and frills, “you’d better stick to ruffle making. Mother Douglas’s bagnio isn’t a place for amateur bawds, my dear.”

Sophie noted with some amusement that Mrs. Phillips “the second” gave a good measure of unsolicited advice, along with each potion, powder, and pomatum she dispensed to her customers.