Wicked Company (16 page)

When the shop was finally deserted, Mrs. Phillips withdrew a large key ring hanging on a hook beneath her counter and bid Sophie follow her out of the shop. She locked her premises and hesitated in front of the door frame that led to the wooden stairway separating her establishment from the book shop.

“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but your Uncle John died last winter and your aunt’s been poorly since before he was taken.”

Sophie let out a sigh. She had virtually no memory of her uncle, but it made her sad to think that what little family she did possess had probably been suffering recently as much as she and her father.

“I warned Harriet ’twould all come to a bad end,” Mrs. Phillips confided, “but no, she wouldn’t touch my infusion of mercury, more’s the pity. Perhaps ’twould have eased her a bit.”

“Is she ill?” Sophie asked anxiously. “Is that why I found the shop shut up tight?”

“I expect you’d better know the worst,” Mrs. Phillips said ominously. But without revealing the nature of her dire news, the shopkeeper gathered up her skirts and led the way to the darkened landing. She fumbled with several heavy keys before she slid one into the lock on the door to the right. “I live just there,” she indicated with a nod over her shoulder. “I’ve taken to keeping her locked up when my shop’s open, to prevent the poor dear from coming to harm,” she whispered. “If
you
hadn’t tipped up, I’d determined to send her to the charity workhouse within the fortnight. I’m too good a Christian, of course, to send her to that dreadful Bedlam where—”

Before Mrs. Phillips could finish her sentence, the door creaked open to provide a sweeping view of the Ashbys’ living quarters above their shop. Sophie glanced around the gloomy chamber whose only sources of light were one small window in the ceiling and a casement overlooking Half Moon Passage. Piles of books and stacks of prints, etchings, and engravings were strewn everywhere, leaving only space for a bed in one corner, two chairs standing sentry in front of a cold hearth, and an armoire with one of its doors dangling loose on its hinges. A curtain to Sophie’s left appeared to lead to a back room.

“In there’s the old print shop,” Mrs. Phillips revealed, responding to Sophie’s inquisitive look, “with a circular stairway that leads down to the book shop. I put planks over it so Harriet couldn’t go down there and make mischief like the
last
time!”

Before Sophie could question the woman about the incident, she was startled by a scuffling sound punctuated by low, piteous moans.

“What
is
that?” Sophie asked, alarmed.

“Better light a candle,” Mrs. Phillips replied, reaching high on a bookshelf for flint and a small brass candlestick containing a taper less than two inches high. “I keep these out of harm’s way,” she said as she managed to strike a light. “Don’t want her burning down the place.”

Holding the lighted candlestick in front of her ample bosom, Mrs. Phillips motioned Sophie to follow her. She pulled back the curtain and stepped aside, allowing Sophie to pass through to the other room. In the adjoining chamber stood a wooden hand press of a design similar to the one her father had owned, but slightly larger. Dust and cobwebs cast a shimmering net over piles of paper stock stored on the floor. Sagging ropes, hung in parallel lines, stretched from wall to wall where a few stray placards, broadsides, and other printed works had been pinned up to dry in better days.

Sophie sank to her knees in the corner of the chamber to examine a form curled up and shaking in abject terror. A haggard old woman with Daniel McGann’s aquiline nose and with gray hair streaming past her shoulders stared up at Sophie, her eyes black with fright. Scattered in disorganized piles nearby were stacks of engravings so obscene, the kirk elders at St. Giles would surely have demanded the ultimate sacrifice from anyone attempting to sell them.

“Jesu!”
Sophie said on a long breath.
So this was the source of the lewd prints her da had sought when he was so desperate for money!
She wondered that she had never fathomed the obvious connection. Her father had made no secret of the fact that he did not care for his sister’s husband, but the two families had seldom kept in touch once Harriet had married John and moved to London years earlier.

Sophie stared with revulsion at her aunt, who sat huddled on the floor. She knew Harriet Ashby to be about fifty-two, but she looked twenty years older.

“Poor dear,” Mrs. Phillips clucked. “She’s gone a bit balmy.”

“How long has she been this way?” Sophie asked, aghast.

“Only a short time, really,” the woman replied. “But quite unable to see to herself, poor thing, and ’tis all
his fault!

“Uncle John’s?” Sophie asked, glancing at the printing press and some copper plates that leaned against one wall. She wondered if Ashby’s Books had made a specialty of actually reproducing and distributing such vulgar work as that which she found staring her in the face.

“Who else?” Mrs. Phillips demanded. “The pox carried the whoring blighter off to his just reward last January—no loss
that…
but not before he gave it to his lady wife! Syphilis is
bad—
not
like the clap or the drip—’tis
bad
as it gets.”

“Aunt Harriet has
syphilis
?” Sophie exclaimed, staring at the disheveled creature who seemed unaware she was the subject of such frank discussion.

Mrs. Phillips nodded.

“No cure for the syph that
I’ve
ever heard of, and I’ve heard of ’em all, you can be sure of that!” the loquacious woman said, shaking her head. “I’ve got nothing but a few poor poultices and some foul brews to offer, but they don’t help.” Mrs. Phillips leaned forward discreetly, as if she didn’t wish Aunt Harriet to hear, although the poor woman seemed far beyond understanding. “It goes to the
brain,
y’know,” she whispered hoarsely, tapping her head with a finger discolored from years of potion mixing. “The syph’s what’s ailing your aunt, the poor dear. The pox is starting to eat her brain like mice nibblin’ cheese.” She straightened upright, putting her hands on her broad hips. “She has good days and bad…”

Judging silently that today was obviously one of the latter, Sophie merely nodded as she stared at her aunt cowering in the corner.

“But now she’s got a dear niece to look after ’er, and that’s a blessin’, isn’t it?” Mrs. Phillips declared.

And with that, the proprietress of the Green Canister spun on her heel and disappeared down the stairs.

With sinking heart, Sophie’s gaze swept the squalor and disorder surrounding her aunt and wondered what further misfortunes lay in store.

***

Throughout December and into the first month of 1763, Sophie attempted to bring order out of the chaos at Ashby’s Books and Gentlemen’s Accessories, and do what she could for her aunt’s health and mental state.

Her first task was to bathe the poor woman and dress her in clean clothes. Then Sophie began the overwhelming assignment of straightening out the inventory of books, periodicals, and engravings strewn all over the shop and living quarters.

Most days her aunt sat silently in a chair facing the hearth while Sophie worked long hours attempting to set her new home to rights. Every so often, Harriet Ashby would start to sob heartbrokenly, telling Sophie repeatedly what a blessing it was to have her in London.

“If only I’d not been barren,” her aunt moaned one dreary winter morning a month after Sophie had arrived. “If only John and I had been blessed with a child as good and kind as you. If I’d had a child, John wouldn’t have sought out…”

Sophie put her arms around her aunt and allowed her to have another good cry. For a few hours, Harriet Ashby seemed almost to have recovered her spirits and did what she could to help Sophie with the enormous effort of making the shop presentable. Soon, however, the poor thing appeared to slip back into a mental fog that sometimes rendered her mute for hours at a time.

As the self-appointed manager of Ashby’s Books, it took Sophie nearly two weeks to sweep layers of dirt and cobwebs from every nook and cranny of both her lodgings and the shop. In a leather trunk, she discovered a sinister collection of short whips and riding crops, velvet bonds, and reproductions of male organs whose uses she could only imagine. However, these peculiar finds explained the “Gentlemen Accessories” in the shop’s name. On one dark, moonless night—and without consulting her aunt—Sophie gathered the goods into a sack and deposited it on a pile of other refuse thrown into the alley behind the Le Beck’s Head.

She also spent long hours browsing through the shop’s books, engravings, and prints. As much as Sophie abhorred many of the images in this collection of erotica, she could not deny the drafting skill of several celebrated artists whose ordinary illustrations were known and appreciated by the general public. Nevertheless, she tossed many drawings into a fire kindled from Aunt Harriet’s dwindling supply of coal and stored the rest in the leather trunk.

At first, Aunt Harriet seemed indifferent to the improvements in her creature comforts. Nevertheless, Sophie stubbornly continued to bathe the woman and delouse her hair and saw to it she had a bowl of broth and bread from the tavern at least once a day, paid for by parceling out a few coins from the last of the money she had brought with her when she departed from Edinburgh in the wicker trunk. Before long, however, her efforts were rewarded to the degree that Aunt Harriet would occasionally show flashes of her old self.

“I so regret not having seen Brother before he passed on,” she commented one morning in a perfectly normal tone of voice. “But he urged you to come be with your old auntie, and that’s a comfort.”

“Aye.” Sophie smiled tiredly. “He often told me of the lively debates the two of you had in your youth over books in the shop. Now, finish your broth while I just have a go at those filthy windows downstairs in the shop.”

An hour later, Sophie pushed a strand of hair off her perspiring forehead as she surveyed the glass panes she’d been polishing with gusto. Recalling the journey to London—part of which she’d endured in Boswell’s trunk—prompted her to think of Hunter Robertson. She felt a sharp stab of loneliness, momentarily overwhelmed by the unhappy circumstances that had befallen her in this huge metropolis.

“Have you sold any books since you reopened the shop?” Mrs. Phillips demanded one gloomy morning in early January.

“A few,” Sophie replied reluctantly, pausing in her attack on a shelf with her feather duster.

The truth was, she’d only sold one book and a Hogarth drawing. Ashby’s clientele was no doubt accustomed to racier fare than the merchandise Sophie had restored to the shelves. In addition, Ashby’s suffered the same problem as had McGann’s in Edinburgh: a shortage of capital to buy the latest publications.

“This is not the neighborhood for a literary salon, my dear,” Mrs. Phillips pronounced dryly. “’Tis the theater district, frequented by rascals and rogues and populated by more harlots per block than any other borough in London! Have you gotten rid of your uncle’s entire stock of those nasty drawings and bawdy books?”

“Much of it,” she admitted. “I’ve stored what I didn’t chuck out in my aunt’s trunk,” she added reluctantly.

“Well, my advice is to dust off at least
some
of those tomes you’ve packed away, or you’ll not be able to pay the rent on this place.”

Sophie sighed and nodded her head, discouraged.

“I know, I thought to solicit some print work to add to the till.”

Mrs. Phillips considered her words and then nodded sagely.

“But until you do… pray, don’t dispose of
all
your naughtier merchandise.”

Sophie smiled polite acquiescence, but had no intention of selling that filth; she was determined to forge her own path as manager of Ashby’s Books.

However, after Mrs. Phillips had left, Sophie’s spirits sank nearly as low as when her father had died. A familiar wave of bitter loneliness engulfed her as her eyes swept the deserted book shop. There was no Daniel to consult about inventory and new purchases, only an ill and failing old woman upstairs who seemed to grow more disoriented with each passing day.

Sophie’s thoughts drifted to Hunter once again and she felt tears welling in her chest. He had never written to her in care of Ashby’s Books and she forced herself to accept the truth that she might well never see him again. His final kindness to her had merely been that of a casual acquaintance and not a symbolic link in a permanent chain of friendship. She stared at several rows of odd-size books awaiting her attention and determined that for all intents and purposes she was now an orphan. Glancing out at the narrow, rainswept Half Moon Passage, Sophie had never felt more alone in her life.

***

One mid-afternoon in late January, Sophie peered out Ashby’s front window at the steady sleet slanting across the road. She was startled to see a familiar figure heading for the entrance of the Green Canister. Excited, she flung open her door and hailed the pedestrian.