A Broken Vessel (14 page)

“
I
can,” said Sally.

Julian and Dipper looked at her in surprise.

“Don’cha see? I can go to the refuge, like I wants to be reformed. They knows me—I been there once already. If they takes me on, I can twig every nook and cranny in the place. And I can play up to the other gals and find out what they knows. When I seen enough, I’ll broom it back.”

“It’s out of the question,” said Julian, “much too dangerous. What if someone at the refuge really did have a hand in Mary’s death? If you seem too curious, you may be the next victim. And suppose the man from whom you stole the letter finds out you’re at the refuge? If he has an interest in Mary, he may be keeping an eye on it. As matters stand, he has no idea who or where you are, so if he’s worried about your having the letter, there’s not a mortal thing he can do. By going to the refuge, you may be playing into his hands.”

“I ain’t afeard of him.”

“You ought to be. At best, he’s mixed up in something hole-and-corner, and at worst, he’s a murderer. Don’t you see, once you’re inside the refuge, Dipper and I can’t do anything to protect you.”

“I don’t need protection!” she declared, forgetting how sweet the idea had seemed a little while ago. “I can go to the refuge if I likes—you can’t stop me. I’ve as much right to be reformed as any other gal.”

“She’s made up her mind, sir,” said Dipper resignedly “It won’t do no good to tug on the reins.”

“Won’t it?” said Julian. “I can warn Harcourt against you, Sally. And I will, if you cross me in this.”

“Then he’ll be fly to your game,” she retorted. “You wouldn’t want that.”

“I could tell him you were a lunatic escaped from some hospital. Or I could say you were an egregious thief—I even have proof of that.” He held up the handkerchiefs.

“But—but they’d put me in quod!”

“A prison might well be safer for you than the refuge.”

“Why, you bloody—”

“Stash your patter, Sal,” said Dipper.

“I won’t! He may be your master, but he ain’t mine! He’s got no right to tell me what to do! I can look after meself!”

“It isn’t a question of rights,” said Julian. “If I’d interfered sooner to get Mary out of the refuge, I might have saved her. Do you suppose I’m going to let you put yourself in the same danger, knowing what I know now?”

“Well—what if I was to find a way to let you know I was all right?”

“How can you do that? You can’t write.”

“I can, a little. It ain’t my fault I never went to school.”

“I didn’t mean that,” he explained, more gently. “I meant that it’s too dangerous. Mary died the night after you stole her letter, and just three nights after it was written. It may be that she had an enemy who was looking for her, and the letter told him where she was. Whether her enemy was the person she wrote to, or the letter fell into someone else’s hands, is anyone’s guess. But either way, smuggling letters out of the refuge would be far too risky.”

“I could make a sign. Wave a handkerchief out a window, maybe, every day at noon. And if one day I didn’t, you’d know I was in a pickle, and you could come in and get me. Come on, wha’d’ye say? You wants to find out what the gals in the refuge knows about Mary, don’cha?”

“Yes.”

“Well, nobody can find out for you but me. If you don’t let me help you, I’ll pike off. I ain’t going to cool me heels, while you and Dip has all the larks to yourself.”

That gave Julian pause. He had been wondering how he and Dipper were to keep Sally off the streets. Now she had offered a solution to that problem, at least temporarily. And who knew whether a chance to do something brave and useful might not lead to other opportunities for her? Her ordinary life was at least as dangerous as a sojourn at the refuge—her encounter with Blinkers proved that. And the future she faced was bleak. Everyone knew how girls like Sally ended—assuming disease or childbirth or abuse did not cut them off sooner. Picking up men at night in parks and under bridges, where their ravaged looks would not show, performing the vilest acts for a few coppers—

He looked into her vibrant, upturned face, and came to a decision. “Very well. I’ll send Dipper to look for your signal at noon every day. He’ll wait a quarter of an hour. If he doesn’t see your handkerchief at one of the front windows by then, we’ll come in and get you.”

“I dunno why you don’t just wrap me up in cotton-wool and shut me in a bandbox,” she complained.

Julian smiled wryly and shook his head. “Don’t think I’m not tempted, Sally.”

CHAPTER
10

T
hat night, Julian wrote out the advertisement for information about Blinkers’s umbrella. Dipper took it to the printer’s next morning. While he was out, Julian instructed Sally about what to investigate at the refuge.

“Me head’s swimming!” she declared when he was finished. “How do you expect me to remember all that?”

“Because I know how clever you are.”

“Now, that’s the first pretty speech you ever made to me, and it’s only ’coz you wants me to smoke out information at the refuge.” She hunched her shoulders, glowering. “I’ve a good mind not to go at all.”

“I hope you won’t. I never wanted you to.”

“Well, I’m going, and that’s flat!”

He shook his head. Such perversity was beyond him. “What have you told Queen Mab?”

“I told the truth, partly. I said I was going into a refuge to try if I could get reformed. And maybe I will. I don’t think so, though.”

“I don’t think Mr. Harcourt’s methods would reform anyone with a grain of sense or independence. But Sally, you know, I’d do everything I could to help you, if you wanted to—well, to begin a new life.”

“I’m proper grateful to you, I’m sure.” She curtsied mockingly.

“I didn’t mean to offend you. I only thought, if I could be of use—”

“Well, you can’t!” Her face closed up. “I don’t want to talk to you no more. I’ll be waiting downstairs to say goodbye to Dip, if you’ll please to tell him so when he gets home.”

“Wait, Sally, I don’t want us to part like this.”

“Well, maybe you won’t get everything you want. Then you’ll know what it’s like.”

“Would you mind telling me what we’re quarrelling about? Just so that I can argue my side properly.”

“Oh, we’ve nothing to quarrel about—not us! Just ’coz I been telling you every way I knows how that I fancies you, and you been treating me like dirt under your feet, that ain’t nothing for a gal to cut up rough about.”

“That isn’t fair. I think I’ve treated you tolerably well.”

“I know.” She sighed and dropped into a chair. “You been first-rate to me. Any other gentry-cove would’ve turned me out slap off, if he come home and found me here like you done. You can’t help it if you don’t fancy me. I thought you did once, but I was wrong. You has to have everything clean and fine and bang up to the mark—and me, I’m common, and I been on the grind or thieving since I was so high. What would the like of you want with the like of me?”

“Are you finished? May I speak now?”

His tone brought her up short. She stared. “You—you don’t have to say nothing. I told you, I knows how you feel—”

“If you knew anything whatever about how I feel, you wouldn’t talk such utter rubbish as you’re talking now. Sally, if I’ve rebuffed you, it isn’t because of anything to do with you or me. It’s because of Dipper.”

“Dipper?”

“Yes. Don’t you see, he and I are more than master and man—we’re in some sort friends. For me to make free with his sister would be to throw the difference between us in his face. He would have the right to resent it, but not the power. I won’t take advantage of his position. That he’s my servant doesn’t give me leave to make concubines out of his relatives.”

“But—but Dip wouldn’t care if we knocked up a lark!”

“I can’t be sure of that. So the safe course—the only honourable course—is to show his sister the same respect he would have to show mine, if I had one.”

“You’re off your head, is what you are.”

“Then I’m hardly a loss worth lamenting.”

She said slowly, “What you’re saying is, you fancy me, but you can’t do nothing about it?”

“That isn’t precisely the point I was trying to make.”

“But you do fancy me?” She came up close to him, searching his face.

“I don’t see any point in talking about that. Can’t we simply part friends?”

Her wide mouth curved into a smile. “If we’re friends, then you won’t mind kissing me goodbye, now, will you?”

“No, not in the least.” He took her lightly by the shoulders and kissed her cheek.

“That ain’t nothing.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean, it ain’t a real kiss. This is a real kiss.”

She came up on her toes. Her lips found his, softly teasing and questing. He put her from him, but not quickly enough— not before his lips, his hands, his pulse, had given her a better answer than his words.

There were footsteps in the passage. Julian turned abruptly and went away to the window. Sally gazed after him, dazed, triumphant, bereft.

Dipper came in. After one swift look around him, he fixed his eyes opaquely on the opposite wall. “The advertisement’ll be ready by darkmans, sir.”

“Good.”

“Any place else you’d like me to go, sir?”

“No,” said Julian quickly. “Unless you’d like to escort Sally to the refuge. You could stop at the Cockerel on your way back, and ask after Blinkers.”

“Yes, sir. You ready to pike off now, Sal?”

She nodded, her eyes still fixed on Mr. Kestrel. “Goodbye, Lightning. Try not to miss me too much.”

“I’ll endeavour to struggle along in your absence.”

She smiled sweetly. “Kiss me arse!”

Dipper shot her a quelling look and led her out. Julian stayed by the window. A few minutes later, he saw them come out at the street door, Dipper carrying a small, neat bundle of Sally’s things. They walked off companionably in the direction of the nearest hackney coach stand. When they were out of sight, Julian leaned back against the window and drew a long breath. Could it be that, only a few short days ago, he had complained to MacGregor that he was
bored
?

“Your master’s queer in his upper story.”

“No, he ain’t,” Dipper said tranquilly.

“He is, then,” she insisted. Fancy him holding her at arm’s length on account of Dipper—Dipper, who would not care a bean if his master got up her petticoats! Would he?

She studied him, sitting across from her in the hackney coach. He was looking out through the side-glass at the people in the street, with the lively interest he always took in people and their doings. It was partly an animal watchfulness left over from former days—the need of a hunted thing to know where its enemies are. And, partly, he liked people—pretty much all people, except the real stinkers.

She bit her lip. The truth was that, even if he did not care if she had a brush with Mr. Kestrel, still, she would come between them and change their relationship forever. And she had no right to do that. Dip was happy. He was settled somewhere, with a home and a family of sorts—one that did not spend half its time either in the stone jug or playing least-in-sight with the Bow Street Runners. How could she queer that for him? Mr. Kestrel was right. He had been a better friend to Dip than she had been a sister.

They got out of the hackney at the corner of Stark Street. “You’d best not walk me there,” she said. “Somebody might twig you, and ask questions.”

“I’ll be back at noon tomorrow, to watch for you to wave your handkerchief at the window. You sure you’re plump currant now, Sal?”

“’Course I am. Just look at me. You can’t hardly see the mouse no more.” She pointed to her eye, where the bruise was fading fast.

“Goodbye, then.” He handed over her little bundle of clothes. He did not tell her to be careful and not take any risks. He knew he would be wasting his time.

She tucked the bundle under one arm and clasped her other arm around his neck. “Goodbye, Tom.”

He hugged her without speaking, No one had used his real Christian name in years.

“Will you tell Mr. Kestrel some’ut for me? Tell him I sees now what he meant to do, and I’m sorry I cut up rusty.”