Salem's Daughter

by Maggie Osborne

  Was that courage? Once she and Jean Pierre had discussed courage. Her snowy brows met in dim concentration, but she couldn’t remember the conversation about courage. She did recall Jean Pierre had thought her brave, and she wouldn’t disappoint him. She’d not die with frozen tears on her cheeks. Life had given her much to be thankful for. And she’d lived long enough to know a woman’s rapture. Bristol yawned, glad now of the warmth tingling through her body.

  Jean-Pierre had needed her, and she had responded. A violent fit of shivering quivered through her small frame. There was no way to have foreseen Diana’s cruelty; Bristol’s mind did not function in that manner. If she had the moment to live again, she’d do as before—run to fill Jean Pierre’s need, real or imagined. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably. She stared into the shimmering white curtain as if she might see him just beyond the icy fall. “Jean Pierre,” she murmured, her lips barely moving. “I love you.”

  Bristol tilted her head and listened, but she heard no answer, only the peculiar stillness of falling snow. It didn’t matter as much as she’d thought it would. Nothing really mattered. She yawned, her hand bumping against her wooden lips. Bristol stared at her red fingers in surprise. A tiny giggle escaped her lips.

  It was time to sleep now, to curl into a ball and doze for a minute or two. She felt an itching, burning in her toes and fingers; her face hurt. A small inner voice vibrated with warning, but Bristol ignored it. She wished she were home, in her bed in Salem Village. She felt sleepy and warm, almost burning, too warm almost. And so sleepy.

  20

  Someone was hitting her. Methodically slapping her burning cheeks back and forth, calling her from the edges of a deep sleep. “No,” Bristol murmured drowsily, “don’t. Just let me sleep.” She tried to pull away from the stinging slaps, but she felt strangely weak, and the slaps followed where her head turned. It seemed as if she moved in slow motion, hearing the sound of the slap before she felt the stinging jerk of her head.

  “No. Please,” she protested. Her lips stung, her hands and feet burned unbearably; her entire body tingled as if a thousand needles pricked he skin.

  “Well, now. She do be coming around.” A harsh croaking wheeze spewed gin fumes against her cheeks. “Get her a tankard of warm whiskey and pail of warm water.” The voice paused, then roared, “Move, woman!” Someone tapped across a wooden floor, and the slaps continued.

  In a moment the footsteps returned and a woman curved Bristol’s icy fingers around a mug. Bristol thought she’d never felt anything more wonderful. Her eyes fluttered, and she bent her head, lifting the mug to her mouth. Choking and coughing at the fiery whiskey, she caught her breath and swallowed again, letting the welcome heat curl in her stomach. Everything rushed in on her—Diana, the storm, falling—and then a sense of release, of letting go, and...

  But she wasn’t dead. She wasn’t dead! Bristol glanced up from the edges of a warm tattered blanket. Blinking rapidly, she stared around her. She was in a small room with one wide window looking out at the raging storm. A glowing coal stove threw sulfurous fumes as well as soot and heat into the air. A scarred settle leaned against one wall; a long table flanked by benches nearly filled the room. Despite the white glare from the window, the room appeared dark and dingy. Small and used, smelling of poisonous coal, perspiration, and gin.

  Ending her rapid survey of the room, Bristol turned her eyes to the man squatting before her stool. Red eyes sunken in fleshy hollows returned her stare. Once, years ago, that face might have had character, a certain dignity even, but now it wallowed in the ravages of strong drink and bitterness. Tiny purple veins crisscrossed sagging cheeks, mapping a life of poverty and ruin. The puffy, twisted nose gave testament to years of brawling.

  The man stood, and his knotty hands fisted on the hips of a muscular body gone to slack. “Well, now,” he repeated, and Bristol read a flicker of calculation in the reddened eyes. He coughed and spit a glob of dark phlegm against the stove. It bubbled and dried with a hiss. Bristol lowered her eyes. Even though he stood a few feet from her, she could smell the heavy sweetness of gin. “Let’s have a look at ye, girlie.”

  “Leave her a bit longer, Cutter, can’t you see she ain’t right yet?”

  Bristol lifted her eyes to the woman. Thin, rawboned, the woman stood a full two inches above the man’s dripping cap. She might have been thirty, she might have been fifty—it was a face that had been old at childhood. The forehead protruded, the chin receded, and hair of uncertain color strayed from a bun at her neck. But her dark eyes were kind when she leaned to help Bristol lift the cup of whiskey. “Here, a tot more. Do your hands still sting?”

  “They’re better now.” The whiskey burned down her throat. “Who are you? Where did you find me?” That wasn’t right. She should begin by thanking them. “You saved my life. I can’t thank you enough.” The coal stove threw off a stifling heat, and even though she still felt a chill deep in her flesh, Bristol shifted beneath the blanket and let it slip from her shoulders.

  The woman smiled, a tired worn smile. She sat on a bench at the table and jerked her thumb toward the man. “He found you. Cutter Rumm.” She lifted an expressionless face to the man, then back to Bristol. “He went out to buy more gin and found you in the lane. Managed to get you and two bottles back here without breaking either.” Her thin mouth twisted.

  Easily, without moving his body, the man flicked his hand out and slapped the woman’s face. Hard. She made no sound, didn’t lift a hand to the red mark flaming on her cheek. “And ye’ll be happy for them bottles come dark, slut.” The lack of passion in his voice alarmed Bristol more than his anger would have. Violence without passion chilled the blood.

  She swallowed another draw of whiskey, willing her body to thaw, to function. The sooner she left this dark place, these two people, the better. “Mr. Rumm, I thank you for saving my life.” She forced a smile to her warming lips, but she didn’t meet his eyes.

  “The question, now, is what to do with ye.” He sucked a long pull from a gin bottle, and his shrewd little eyes slowly moved across Bristol’s face, stopping at the blanket opening with a speculative stare.

  Instinctively Bristol tightened her fingers on the blanket. “I hope you’ll see fit to extend your help further, Mr. Rumm, and assist me home.”

  He laughed, a rasping abrasive sound. “Ye hear that, Kitty? She hopes I’ll ‘extend’ my help and ‘assist’ her further.” He drank from the bottle, wiping his stubbled chin with the back of his hand. “Now, don’t she talk pretty. A regular toff she be.” He hawked another glob at the stove and leaned against a wooden counter. Rows of nearly empty bottles stood on sagging shelves behind. “They be money in this business, Kitty, I smell it.” He stared at Bristol. “Stand up, Queenie, and let us have a look at ye.”

  Bristol’s fingers tightened around the mug, and she cast a frightened glance at the woman. “Do it,” Kitty said in a low voice, not meeting Bristol’s eyes.

  Slowly, her aching body protesting, Bristol stood.

  “Drop the blanket.”

  The blanket fell near her feet.

  “Now the cloak.”

  Bristol hesitated, her mind racing. Frantically she inventoried her person. She had no purse, was wearing no jewelry. She had nothing to offer the man to take her home, nothing with which to tempt him.

  He laughed. “Now, there, Kitty me girl, is how a woman ought to look.” He reached a hand toward Bristol’s breast, missed, and tried again. This time his bruising fingers squeezed her flesh. She cried out and stumbled back a step. His hand slapped across her face as dispassionately as earlier he’d struck the woman called Kitty. And as hard.

  Bristol reeled, nearly falling over the stool. She felt her cheek beginning to swell. Deeply frightened, she looked at them both, blinking at a film of pain. Cutter Rumm was very drunk; she couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed earlier. “Sir. Mr. Rumm.” Bristol steadied her voice, keeping her tone deceptively calm as the woman had done. She seized on his
earlier words. “My family will pay you pay you well, if you take me home.” Sensing pleas would go unheard, she deliberately fought any hint of begging. Instead, pretending this was a normal situation, she returned to the stool and folded her hands in her lap. She would not, absolutely would not, raise her hands to cover the exposed mounds of breast pushing at her low neckline. She knew that to do so would only distract the man’s sodden brain.

  He shifted against the counter and drank from the bottle. “Pay me to return ye.” Gazing at the ceiling, he turned this in his mind. Kitty sat absolutely still, her face blank and waiting.

  “Yes, sir.” Eagerness lightened Bristol’s voice. “They’ll pay well to have me back. Very well!”

  His small red eyes lowered and settled on her face. Perhaps he wasn’t as drunk as she’d thought “If they be so anxious to have ye back, then how comes it to happen someone threw you out in the snow? And where do these fine folk live, anyways?”

  Bristol’s mouth suddenly went dry. How could she explain it so he could understand? She answered the easiest question first. “Hathaway House in Pall Mall.”

  Cutter Rumm slapped his knee and howled in laughter. “Pall Mall! Ye hear that, Kitty? Pall Mall!” He swept the snow-wet cap from his head and threw it across the room, exposing thin graying hair. “Ye expect us to believe the rich toffs in Pall Mall drove all the way down here to throw ye out in the worst storm in ten years... and they’ll be paying a ransom to get ye back?” The laughter died from his eyes, and they glittered dangerously. “I don’t be knowing yer game, Queenie, but ye ain’t dealing with no fools! Nobody on Pall Mall be paying a cent for ye. More likely, ye be some whore’s serving wench what did wrong. Instead of putting a blade to yer throat like decent folk would do, she pushed ye out to freeze.”

  “No.” Bristol choked. Her heart fluttered and seemed to stop. “No, please listen... I can explain.” Words babbled past her lips, a stream of words, words of explanation, words of desperation, words that sounded too fantastic, too contrived to be true.

  At the finish, when the rambling speech died on her lips, they looked at her in disbelieving silence. Kitty’s eyes softened dreamily. “Cutter, what if all that be true—fires in every room, plenty to eat every day, servants and fine gowns...” She looked at Bristol’s soaked skirt and took the hem between her thumb and forefinger. “I never seen anything this fine up close,” she murmured. No envy lay in her voice; such a miracle lay beyond envy; she felt the cloth and admired it.

  “If it be true.” Cutter wheezed and snorted. He waved the bottle, nearly empty now. “A crazy lady! Running out in a blizzard dressed like that to help the crazy bitch’s husband! Dead cats and a spinster aunt married in secret!” He glared at Kitty, and involuntarily she drew back, dropping Bristol’s hem. “Kitty, if ye believe this slop about lords and fine ladies, ye’re as batty as Queenie says that crazy woman is!” He finished the bottle and tossed it behind the counter, where it shattered in a tinkle of glass. “No, they’s no coins to be made hiring a wagon and riding to Pall Mall. Like as not get a knife in the ribs for bringing back the trash they threw out.” He stared at Bristol. “If that part about Pall Mall was true at all.”

  Bristol’s green eyes pleaded. “Oh, please.”

  Cutter Rumm pushed from the counter and weaved toward Bristol. He stopped, panting gin into her face, and he blinked at the wide green eyes, at her hair, down the front of her trembling breasts. He tried to thrust a finger between her breasts, missed, tried again and missed. Giving it up, he laughed. “I know what ye be good for, Queenie. And it’ll bring a shitpotful of coins into this house!” Swinging toward Kitty, he grinned, showing a broken row of black teeth. “Know what I mean, slut? Queenie here will earn more than ye ever brung in a year of street work.”

  Kitty’s thin face remained expressionless. She met his red eyes with a steady blank stare. “And what if she’s telling the truth, Cutter? What if a fat ransom is waiting in Pall Mall?”

  Bristol interrupted, her voice rising in hope at Kitty’s support. “I’ve told the truth, Mr. Rumm, I swear it!”

  Kitty’s fiat voice spoke again. “You’ll never claim that purse if you put her on the street. Rich folks ain’t paying for damaged goods, Cutter. More likely they’d hang your head on a pike.”

  He looked unsteadily from one face to the other, confusion dimming his eyes. “Shut up! Both of ye! Ye’re making me head spin. I need to think this out!” He half-fell, half-sat on the bench at the table and rested his chin in his hands. “Get me something to eat, and bring me another bottle.”

  Obediently Kitty rose and brought another mug and more gin. She gestured for Bristol to follow, and disappeared through a door at the rear of the room. Bristol cast a despairing glance from the muttering man to the darkening window. Night was falling. Cutter Rumm was too drunk to take her anywhere, even if the snow had stopped, which it had not. Fighting her fright, battling a rising sense of panic, she hastened through the door after Kitty.

  The room beyond was small, dirty, and cramped. The only thing in its favor was a log fire in the hearth, less stifling than the coal fire in the outer room but also less generous, obviously for cooking, not for warmth. Kitty leaned over the flames, ladling a thin lumpy stew onto a cracked wooden trencher. She waved Bristol to a wobbly stool near the hearth. “Sit and rest.” She returned in less than a minute, a grim smile on her face. “He won’t eat it, but he likes the smell, and sometimes, when there’s meat, he’ll chew a piece.” Her mouth twisted. “Not that there’s ever much meat. You feel any better? You want some food?”

  Bristol’s skin continued to tingle and itch, but she sensed no permanent damage had been done, thank God. To her surprise, she felt a rumbling of hunger, even though Kitty’s stew looked less than appetizing. Bristol thought of Maggie O’Hare’s rich thick stews and lowered her face in shame. Kitty offered to share what they had. “Yes, please,” she murmured.

  Kitty filled two trenchers and took a stool near Bristol. They ate in silence, and Bristol tried not to think about the origin of the limp vegetables floating on her trencher. They appeared neither fresh nor wholesome. She lifted the spoon to her lips and swallowed.

  Kitty scraped the scant leavings back into the pot over the fire and dropped the trenchers into a tub of cold greasy water. Sighing, she arched her spine against her hands and sat down. But before she could speak, Cutter Rumm’s voice roared from the front. “What kind of hellhole is this? Get your arse in here, slut, and light me a candle! Who are you to leave a man to eat in the dark?”

  Scrambling from her stool, Kitty snatched two stubs of tallow and hastened into the front room. Bristol heard the sound of a heavy slap, and when Kitty returned, one cheek blazed.

  Saying nothing of her swelling face, Kitty sank to her stool and gazed into the small dying cook fire. “He’ll never let you go,” she said in a low voice. “Hope kills. Don’t hope. He won’t never let you go.”

  Bristol wrung her hands. Calm, she told herself, quelling the rising frenzy in her mind. Calm, be calm. There was a way out of here, she simply had to find it. Steadying her voice, she looked at Kitty’s sloping profile. “I told the truth. When my aunt and my... cousin discover I’m missing, they’ll be frantic. I know they’ll pay well for my return.” If only she’d tucked a few coins in a purse! Then she could hire a hackney and go home herself. She couldn’t bear to think how totally dependent she was upon the two people in this house. So completely at their mercy.

  “Cutter ain’t going to believe your story,” Kitty said. She turned sad eyes toward Bristol’s ashen face. “It’s easier not to.” Kitty looked at Bristol’s gown and the damp remnants of a once-elegant coiffure; she shook her head. “Cutter’s mind is gone to gin. By the time he decided there might be truth in what you said...”

  Bristol closed her eyes, and it was an effort to keep her voice steady and low. “But, Kitty, what has Mr. Rumm to lose? Couldn’t he take me to Pall Mall and discover the truth for himself?”

&nb
sp; Kitty stared. “What has he got to lose? The hire of a wagon, for one thing. Look around you, miss; do you see any evidence of extra shillings? And suppose this family of yours—not parents, mind you, but an aunt and an uncle and a cousin—what if this family thinks you’re worth a whole lot less than you think you are? They might pay, aye, but will they pay as much you’d earn for Cutter if he keeps you here spreading your legs for coins over the next few years?”

  “Spreading my... Oh, dear God!” Bristol’s face turned chalky. She swallowed, her eyes not leaving Kitty’s sad, sober face. “Oh, Kitty, please help me! I have to get home!”

  Kitty’s scraggly brows rose in horror. “Me? Go up against Cutter?” She shrank on her stool. “No. Don’t go looking to me for help. He’d kill me.” Her eyes shifted to the fire, the tub of greasy water, the floor. “No,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, but whatever Cutter decides... you and me, we got to live with it.”

  “He’d kill you?”

  “In the blink of an eye! He don’t be called Cutter for nothing; ain’t nobody quicker with a knife.” Kitty watched Bristol’s shudder of revulsion. Softly she added, “Aye, it’s not a pretty world down here. But was yours better? Wouldn’t a blade have shown more mercy than leaving you to freeze to your death?” Her thin hand touched Bristol’s drooping shoulder.

  Looking into the small fire with dull eyes, Bristol asked, “Can you at least tell me where I am?”

  “Almsbury Lane.”

  The name meant nothing. Bristol might have been a short distance from Pall Mall, or she might have been in another country. She didn’t know. “Is it too far to walk?” she asked.

  Kitty laughed. “Queenie, you wouldn’t get a hundred paces before somebody grabbed you. Maybe someone who’d give you a worse life than you’ll have here.” She pointed to Bristol’s slippers. “And how far do you think you’d get wearing them? They’s ready to fall off your feet now.” She shook her head. “No, there’s no possibility to walk.”