Fall From Grace (23 page)

Not only had she betrayed both bawdy-hoose and mistress, she had robbed as well and Rachel did not intend to experience the due process of punishment for either.

She slipped quietly down the stairs, nodded politely to the two men as if she wished them a pleasant evening, bull to cow, and, on closing the front door, was lost to sight.

One of the farmers pursed his lips disparagingly at the slim body previously presented.

‘No’ for me,’ he pronounced sagely. ‘I want something I can find in the dark.’

The other nodded.

‘The nights are drawin’ in, right enough,’ he replied.

So they stood. And waited.

Outside indeed, the aforesaid night had drawn in a cloak of blackness heavy clouds obscuring the moon, as Rachel walked swiftly, footsteps crunching on the gravel path that led to the wrought-iron front gates.

With any luck, as her lover had promised in the note, he would be waiting inside the grounds concealed by the bushes.

But it was quite another figure that stepped out from the rhododendrons.

‘Where are ye going, girlie?’ said Hannah Semple.

The old woman, the place being as quiet as a morgue, had left Annie Drummond in charge while she went out ostensibly to take the air but, in fact, too restless to stay inside and wondering where in God’s name Jean Brash had landed up that she had not yet returned.

Common sense dictates that no one will arrive any earlier back home, if a body goes out on the streets searching for a sight of them, but Hannah had persuaded herself to walk halfway down the hill before, in fact, the returning carriage had swept past.

Neither Jean who was lost in thought, or Angus the coachman who stared straight ahead, had noticed the searcher and, to tell truth, Hannah had not particularly advertised herself, fearful of appearing like some auld granny out looking for the children.

So, under her breath, she had cursed herself for a fool, Jean Brash for a hippertie-skippertie creature, then stomped her way back up the steep brae.

It was a long haul, neither gravity nor virtue being on her side.

Jean would go round the back as usual, Hannah thought as she puffed laboriously up to the front gate, her breath fogging up in the freezing night air.

She rehearsed in her mind severe words of exprobation to her mistress that she doubted she would ever quite utter but then, on entering and moving up the path, noticed the figure of a woman departing the door of the Just Land.

This was not usual and so Hannah had ducked out of sight to observe the approaching mystery, and then nipped back out to confront the recognised identity.

And if there was one person out of the mouth of hell that Rachel Bryden did not want to see, it was the spectre before her. She had been delighted to note the old woman’s absence from the bawdy-hoose after the message was delivered at the front door, but had not reckoned on the possibility of an inopportune return.

‘Where are ye going, girlie?’

The question echoed in the still, cold night, the fracas in the Just Land being contained within solid walls.

‘I received a note,’ said Rachel, improvising round some of the truth. ‘My mother. My mother has suffered an attack of some pestilence. I must go to her at once.’

‘I didnae know ye had a mother,’ replied Hannah who was not inclined to believe a word of this. ‘I thought ye just arrived out of the blue.’

‘I must go to her.’

Rachel made as if to step past but Hannah moved sideways to block the movement, her hand going to the inside pocket of the large, herringbone tweed coat she wore for outdoors. A man’s cut, it had belonged to a client who left in a hurry one night, called back to his ship, captain of a whaling boat, Norwegian, never came back, maybe the whale got him.

But the coat was roomy and had a convenient pouch for her razor, the handle of which she held at this moment.

‘Where abides this poor auld bugger?’

‘Aberdeen,’ blurted Rachel picking the furthest away city that came to mind.

‘How will you get there this hour? Are ye a besom rider?’

Indeed the idea of being a sorceress and swooping off on a broom would have appealed to Rachel, anything to get her out of here, but she bit into her lip and made sensible response.

‘Waverley Station. The night train.’

Hannah nodded slowly as if this made sense and then stood aside, but as a relieved Rachel moved to get past, Hannah checked her by the sleeve for one more question.

‘Did the mistress give permission?’

‘I did not see her.’

A calculated risk, but a wrong calculation.

‘You’re a liar,’ Hannah retorted.

‘She’s been out all night, you know that to be so!’ was the haughty response.

Hannah smiled bleakly.

‘The mistress passed me on the hill not ten minutes afore, and she would be back. You saw but you did not speak to her.’

The truth of that registered for a brief moment in the other’s eyes and Hannah noted that Rachel lifted the travel case and pressed it tightly against her body as if it were a bulwark between her and rough seas.

‘Now why would that be?’ the old woman mused. ‘We’ll just go back and ask her, shall we not? And maybe hae a wee keek inside that fine valise you carry, eh?’

‘Let me past ye auld bitch!’

Rachel losing temper and accent tried to hurtle her way through, but a flash of steel she remembered only too well stopped her momentum as the razor blade landed unerringly on the same spot just beside the eye.

‘This time I’ll draw blood girlie,’ said Hannah softly. ‘Now turn yourself round and save that pretty face.’

Little did Hannah guess that these words might well be the last she spoke; a clenched fist hammered down on the back of her neck to send the old woman face first down on to the gravel.

The razor blade spilled out of flaccid fingers and Oliver Garvie looked down in some dismay at his handiwork.

‘Is she dead?’ he remarked in some concern; smashing Mulholland over the head with a poker would have been fair play, and he could look with equanimity upon a putrid burnt body, but felling old women was perhaps not a gentlemanly act.

In response, Rachel drew back her foot and kicked Hannah hard in the ribs. A low moan came in reply.

‘Not yet,’ said Rachel Bryden.

For a moment they looked at each other, then the animal attraction that bound and deluded each into thinking they were the only two in the world truly alive, swept them into a carnivorous embrace, lips, tongue and teeth, as if they could eat each other like a plate of liver.

‘You took your time,’ she panted.

He, in fact, had been skulking in the undergrowth and about to step out and greet her when Hannah beat him to the punch

‘It was the very devil creeping in those damned bushes. I am not a Navaho.’

She giggled. He looked at the case she held.

‘How much did you get?’

‘Everything I could. And you?’

Hannah groaned again and Rachel considered another kick, but perhaps one was enough. She contented herself with putting a foot on the back of the woman’s head and shoving her face harder into the gravel.

Garvie thought to protest the action but then what if this old crone had sliced through the precious skin? That sweet countenance was both their fortunes.

‘And you?’ she repeated, when he did not answer.

Oliver shrugged apologetically.

‘I have the cash I carry and that is all.’

‘You are certain we are discovered?’

‘Yes. And now doubly so.’

For a moment a cold hard reality hovered in the air between the two and then the insanity of mutual obsession claimed them once more.

One more kiss.

Such is love in all its guises.

To escape discovery, they pulled Hannah off the path and hid her under some nearby bushes; the old woman made no sound. Rhododendrons cover a multitude of sins.

For just a second, Oliver Garvie had a pang of conscience over the fate of the crumpled heap of herringbone but it vanished for want of support.

As Rachel hurled the razor into the bushes and then gave a last shove with her foot to bury Hannah even deeper in the underbrush, he spoke thus.

‘There is a place we can go. I have made a plan. No one will find us.’

This assurance brought a smile to her face and she pressed briefly against him loin and breast, while Hannah lay like a dead thing at their feet.

‘Then my darling boy,’ she breathed softly, ‘we had best run for our lives.’

As they moved off he warned her, ‘But after that, we will have to pay for passage.’

‘I can pay the price.’

This grandiose statement provoked her into a reckless peal of laughter and she shook the travel case so that the contents rattled and clinked together.

‘We both will,’ she affirmed as they disappeared into the darkness. ‘We shall both pay the price.’

Hannah Semple was not spared a backwards glance. She had already paid a considerable cost in the defence of her mistress and whether it was to be an ultimate one, might be a matter of conjecture. It was a cold night and getting colder.

25

For what’s a play without a woman in it?

THOMAS KYD,
The Spanish Tragedy

It was more flesher’s shop than bawdy-hoose when Jean Brash entered in through the salon door.

The girls were also screaming blue murder and with good reason.

Big Isabel Tasker, who was as tall as Annie Drummond but lacked the latter’s colossal width and
avoirdupois
, stood in the middle of the room with a bloody cloth pressed to her contorted face.

Drips of the precious fluid were escaping to run in rivulets down her neck on to the favourite pink gown that Isabel thought most becoming but in Jean’s private opinion did nothing for her face or figure.

Like a boiled dumpling.

Isabel had Italian looks, dark auburn curly locks, a rather blousy dissolute air and it is possible the later years would not be kind to her; but though Jean had a few times read Isabel the riot act, because the girl was a bit of a bully and somewhat predatory as regards the younger magpies, she was more than useful in her ability to take the lead in whatever jinks and capers were requested by a certain tranche of clients who relished a deal of buffeting and horseplay; some of them in fact taking the role of that animal on all fours with a bareback – in all senses – rider to hand. However, though enjoying a drummed heel in the ribs and a firm bit between the teeth, they drew the line at profound and experienced agony.

Which led to the woman standing opposite Isabel, a stiletto yet clutched in her fist.

Francine the Frenchwoman; her dungeon in the cellars was well stocked with instruments for inflicting the desired suffering on those who worshipped at the altar of Odyne.

The goddess of pain.

An artiste to Isabel’s rough and tumble, specialist in erotic flagellation and the craft of hook and pulley, Francine was rarely seen above ground at this time of night but, as has been noted, business was on the slack side.

The Frenchwoman had a slim sinewy body, often clothed in black leather, self-designed apparel that she based upon the temple vestments of an Egyptian goddess, enabling both thighs to be revealed and active; her skin was usually white as alabaster though two hectic spots of red rage now burned in the high cheekbones.

She had black hair, cropped short in a mannish fashion, and cut a dramatic figure in the frankly voluptuous colours and furnishings of the salon.

Francine had also obviously cut Big Isabel, but not to the bone Jean hoped. Not too deep.

All this she had taken in at the moment of entry before stilling the injured party who was leading the chorus of howls, by smacking her across the already anguished face.

Isabel let out an astonished yelp then shut up abruptly as did everyone else except for Francine who already maintained an icy silence, eyes focused on her target.

The other silent person was Francine’s lover, and good right hand when dishing out the stripe and squeeze of inflicted pain and pleasure, little Lily Baxter.

Lily was a deaf mute, a cheerful sweet-natured bundle of curves, blue-eyed, snub-nosed, normally a smile never far from her face, in fact the complete opposite of any common held perception of a mistress of castigation.

But now there was little cheer on her countenance; she was huddled on one of the plush divans so beloved by men of the cloth by dint of its Cardinal-red colour, and sniffed dolefully as the tears ran down her face.

In the hush, Big Annie Drummond stepped forward; all this had happened on her watch and plump graceful fingers, more used to stroking chords from the nearby piano, waved in the air as she attempted to explain.

‘Whit happened, Mistress Brash, Isabel was cuddling up to Lily, and Lily was enjoying it, everybody likes a wee change now and again –’

Annie stopped when Francine let out a vicious hiss and up came the knife hand.

‘Put that away,’ said Jean calmly, ‘or I’ll stick it in your heart.’

She turned back to Annie not even waiting to see Francine slowly replace the knife in the sheath near the top of her white thigh, and, with a look invited continuation of a story already discerned.

But while Annie blethered on it would give Jean time to dwell upon events and find a solution.

And where the hell was Hannah Semple?

‘It’s been quiet as the grave mistress, and the devil finds work for idle hands, eh?’

Annie’s large genial face was creased with unaccustomed thought as she ploughed onwards.

‘Anyway, it’s cauld as buggery in that cellar and Francine came up to get a wee warm and find Lily.’

‘And what was Lily supposed to be doing?’ Jean asked.

‘She was to bring me down some hot chocolate!’ Francine proclaimed, shooting a malevolent glance at the snuffling figure on the divan.

It always intrigued Jean how the mundane inserted itself into moments of high drama; a betrayed love, flashing blade and now hot chocolate.