Chapter 1 #2
Katie transferred her chin to her other palm.
“No. But Zack, perhaps if you thought very hard, you might remember the lady’s name?
I mean, this is an emergency. I’ve been evicted from our cottage in Essex for nonpayment of rent.
Not only do I not have a penny to my name, I’m monstrously in debt to the tune of ten thousand pounds to that man with the gold tooth who came to the cottage and said that he would put Papa in prison if I didn’t give him the money immediately.
I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t given me this job in your shop.
I know you didn’t want to on account of your not hiring women, but thanks. ”
“I could hardly throw you out on the street, could I? Your old man did keep my mother in style for a few years. While the winnings lasted.” Zack took a coin from a customer’s grubby hand and slid a glass of gin across the bar.
A lanky, doe-eyed girl with a red kerchief on her head came up and leaned over the bar with one hand on her hip, a saucy smile revealing the lack of one front tooth.
Zack leaned over the bar on his elbows and met the new arrival’s offered lips with a quick kiss of greeting. “Hullo, Winnie. How goes the revolution?” said Zack.
“Not as good as th’ gin business looks. ’N ya can stop makin’ fun o’ me chosen avocation. Ain’t ya interested in th’ struggle fer th’ rights o’ man?” replied Winnie.
“There’s only one man’s rights I’m interested in,” said Zack. “My own.”
“Aye, it’s a ’eartless self-seeker, y’are,” said Winnie, mischievously.
She turned to look at Katie. “Oi see ya changed genders since oi left this afternoon. Are ya all rested up from yer ride out from Essex this day on ’at rattle-trapsy stagecoach?
Was a fair piece ta come by yerself, wasn’t it?
So. You talked Zacky around ta employin’ ya ’ere. ”
“Yes, with difficulty. Now Winnie,” said Katie, with a quick glance toward Zack, “tell the truth. Zack says people will be able to see through this disguise and be able to tell I’m a girl. Even with my hair up under my hat like it is. Is he right?”
Winnie subjected Katie’s trim form to a critical appraisal. “Oi’ll tell ya, sis. Yer so blisterin’ pretty even as a boy ’n there’s some ’at come in ’ere won’t matter to ’em one way or t’other.”
Katie was shocked. “It seems to me, Zack, that you’ve set up your business in an awfully wicked part of London.”
Zack shook his head. “That’s what I’ve been telling you, Mousemeat. It’s no place for the likes of you. There’s some bad people down here.”
“Ooh, my, speakin’ o’ bad people,” exclaimed Winnie. “Lookee there who jest walked in th’ door. It’s Nasty Ned Fabian ’n ’is nasty friends.”
Katie followed Winnie’s gesture to the front of the shop, where a rough-looking bunch of foul-mouthed, dirtily dressed men were wading their way through sloshing tankards and sloshed customers and hailing a barboy for some gin.
They set themselves up at a table near the gambling aristocrats and immediately began spitting gin on each other, “accidentally” dropping and breaking their flagons, and creating a loud disturbance.
They were led by a nasty-looking brute indeed, well over six feet tall, with a crude, heavy face, glowering red-rimmed eyes, and a muscular, top-heavy look.
“Damn,” said Zack in a low voice. “Why does he have to pick my place?”
“Who is he?” asked Katie.
“Those lads likes t’ mill, oi’m tellin’ ya,” Winnie informed her.
“See ’at big bloody rampsman in th’ middle, there, talkin’ louder than even th’ rest o’ ’em?
That’s Nasty Ned. ’E’s tried fer years ta make it in th’ ring ’n was almost top man a few times, but they say ’e played too rough ’n never really caught on.
Now ’e’s got nothin’ ta do but lead ’is bloody gang o’ troublemakers ’round ’n bust up gin shops.
’E’s so mean ’e’d spit in ’is own mother’s eye! ”
“He’s a lot more than mean,” said Zack. “He’s a hired fist. If he’s in here, that means only one thing, that he has some business with someone.
Katie, if he calls for anything, let me or one of the boys handle him.
You stay away.” He glanced worriedly toward Katie.
“If I had any sense, I’d send you up to your room now. ”
“Zack, you can’t send me upstairs every time the clientele gets a little rough, or how am I going to be able to work here?”
Katie brushed past Zack, who watched as she walked through the hinged gate out of the bar and made her way across the crowded shop to the customer.
“Plucky, yer little friend,” said Winnie, making her fingers walk lightly up Zack’s bare arm.
A group of students had vacated the table near the aristocrats, leaving a crop of half-empty bottles and thumbprinted glasses.
Katie set her tray down and began a clinking harvest. It was a pleasant chore because Lord Linden sat no more than four feet from where Katie was working, and she was in a good position to observe him.
Hankering, she thought. Myself and every other girl in London.
She watched as he caught the dice thrown to him.
He shook them in one long white hand and tossed them into the center of the table with a negligent graceful flip.
A nearby companion rallied him at the unfavorable result of the toss, and Linden responded with a slow, attractive smile that caused Katie to take in a quick breath of the reeky air.
She reflected ruefully that she had been pierced by a foil not meant for her.
A bottle crashed from a nearby table and Katie turned toward the sound.
“ ’Ey, wot’s a bloke ta do ta get some service around ’ere!” Nasty Ned bawled. He was gazing angrily at her, conspicuously waving the neck end of a broken gin bottle.
Katie took a hurried step backward. “I’ll go call Zack,” she said hastily.
Ned snaked out one hairy, muscular arm and pulled Katie in front of him. The tray she had been carrying was upset; the glasses and bottles dumped and rolling on the floor.
“Wot do we want wi’ ’im?” Nasty Ned growled. “Yer all th’ ’elp oi need.” One finger of his left hand was gone to the first joint, and he roughly caressed her cheek with the stub, “Oi’ve ’ad me eye on ya, me boy. Oi likes yer looks. We could go fer a walk in th’ alley.”
His fingers dug into Katie’s wrist through the wilted cloth of her coat.
She looked down the length of the room toward Zack and Winnie, who were still deep in conversation with their friends.
It seemed as if the walls of the room were expanding, carrying her farther and farther away from them.
She tried to call Zack’s name, but the words were without force, inaudible above the raucous buzz of conversation. Her mind searched for an escape.
“All right, sir. But, um, first let me take off this apron,” said Katie hesitantly.
Ned relaxed his grip for an instant, and Katie broke from him and began to race toward the bar.
She was brought up short by one of Ned’s companions, who stood grinning evilly, blocking the narrow pathway.
She turned to see Ned rising from his chair to follow her.
Her foot knocked against a metal slop bucket, and as if in a dream, she took it in hand, and reaching up, overturned the disgusting contents upon the surprised features of Nasty Ned, placing the bucket over his ears as she did so.
The fulsome mess that habitually lurked inside the slop bucket oozed and dripped down the clothing and person of the ruffian, who roared hollowly in the bucket like a wounded bull.
Ned disentangled himself, revealing a besmirched countenance ugly with vein-popping rage.
“Oi’ll cut yer heart out ’n eat it, ya young wretch!
Talk ta me blade ’ere if ya won’t talk ta me!
” he roared, the repulsive slime from the slop bucket dripping from his eyebrows.
From out of his pocket, he produced a thick-bladed butcher knife.
He lifted it into the air and sent it whirling at her.
Katie, her legs weak from fear, stumbled sideways and she felt the blade’s steely breath as it passed very close to her ear.
Lord Linden had been concentrating on his dice when the silver gleam of the knife whipped on its path through his field of vision to land with a crack in the wall in back of him.
This drew a roar of disapproval from the crowd, which had been indifferent to the little argument until now.
Linden looked casually toward the blade where it jutted from the wall.
He directed a short, indifferent glance at Katie and then a slightly longer, slightly less indifferent glance at Nasty Ned.
“Hey, slum rat,” said Linden, and pulled the knife out of the wall with a backhanded jerk. “If you want to practice your aim, don’t place your target in front of me. There’s more room for this kind of game outside.” He tossed the knife negligently toward Nasty Ned, who caught it in one hand.
“Oi’ll go outside, all right, ’n oi’ll take this little barboy wi’ me. We’ll play a game ’e may never’ve played before.” Ned looked viciously at Katie, who quailed and clutched frantically at Lord Linden’s arm as though to anchor herself to the relative safety of The Merry Maidenhead.
Linden placed a hand on Nasty Ned’s chest and gave him a quick powerful shove. Ned fell backward heavily, upending a table in the process. He rose to his feet again, the blade gleaming.…