Windsong

by Valerie Sherwood

  ‘No, I - I thank you, but the marriage ceremony will be enough,’ said Carolina, flushing under Rye’s derisive look.

  It was swiftly over. Their vows were spoken firmly before a worried-looking Virginia and a completely puzzled Andrew, the five shillings paid, and a grubby piece of parchment with a completely illegible signature was stuck into the bride’s hand.

  ‘’Tis your proof, my lady, that ye are now legal wed!’ the ‘minister’ with the gravy-stained shirt said with a chuckle.

  Carolina flushed again and turned away, hurrying to the waiting carriage.

  ‘Satisfied?’ asked Rye sardonically as he reached out an arm to help her ascend into the carriage.

  ‘Yes,’ she said defensively, tucking the scrawl of parchment into her velvet purse. ‘And now should the landlord demand proof that we are man and wife - ’

  Rye snorted. ‘Should our landlord be so imprudent as to demand proof that we are man and wife, I’ll rearrange his teeth for him!’

  ‘Carolina,’ said Virginia hastily. ‘Rye has forgotten to kiss the bride.’

  ‘The bride ran away before she could receive her wedding kiss,’ said Rye, bending over to press a light kiss on Carolina’s hot cheek.

  ‘And we forgot the ring!’

  Carolina held up her finger with the large square-cut emerald conspicuously displayed.

  ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said Virginia, who had been upset by the whole odd ceremony. ‘I forgot you already had one!’

  And then they were dropping Rye at the waterfront near where the Sea Waif lay at anchor. Before they could tell him goodbye he was hailed by a jolly ship captain from Jamaica whose acquaintance he had made the day before.

  ‘Did ye hear what has happened to me?’ cried the captain, aggrieved. ‘I spent the night ashore. My ship was anchored upriver a ways and during the night she was cut adrift by the River Pirates. They ran her aground, they did, and while the mate slept they broached the barrels of the rum I was carrying and did siphon if off into skins! I’m told these blasted River Pirates have special funnels for the work and can do their mischief in dead of night while the crew sleeps all unknowing! I’m missing a quantity of rum,’ he added, ‘and the owners will be sorely tried to discover I’ve come up short. Mind you,’ he cautioned, ‘that it does not happen to you!’

  Rye’s grim smile betokened what would happen to a crew of ‘River Pirates’, however seasoned, if they were so unlucky as to try such tactics on a ship manned by buccaneers fresh from their wars with Spain in the Caribbean.

  ‘I am sorry to hear of your trouble,’ he sympathized. ‘But my crew sleep like cats with one eye open and would pounce upon these River Pirates before they had a leg over the railing!’

  ‘I am glad of hear it.’ The captain from Jamaica shook his head in wonder - and went his way.

  Carolina, who had been a bit shaken by the tawdriness of her Fleet Street wedding, which had seemed - once it was underway - a very mockery of the wedding vows, had regained her composure and flashed a smile at Rye as the carriage left him and turned and went its way.

  Its ‘way’ meant to the book stalls around St Paul’s, for this was the place Virginia most yearned to see in all of London and Andrew too was eager to view the publishers’ newest offerings. He diverted them by telling them how all the publishers had carefully stored their books in St Paul’s for safekeeping when the Great Fire had raged through London. And how they had watched in horror the resultant holocaust as the great cathedral burst into a veritable inferno, its lead roof tiles running red like molten lava cascading down Ludgate Hill, its stones bursting and booming like cannon as the belching flames consumed church and statues and books alike in its uncaring red grasp.

  Carolina was hardly listening - she had other fish to fry. There was one place she had wanted to go ever since they had arrived in London - and she had no desire to take a disapproving Virginia or a worrisome Andrew along with her.

  ‘I think I’ll just let you two browse around St Paul’s,’ she told them, ‘and let this carriage drive me about the city for a while. After all, ’tis been a long time since I’ve seen it and then only as a schoolgirl!’

  Virginia gave her a doubtful look, but such was her interest in the offerings of the book vendors that she would have accepted practically any excuse to have a go at them.

  ‘Will ye be all right. Mistress Carolina?’ wondered Andrew doubtfully, not sure he should allow her to wander about unchaperoned.

  ‘I’m sure I will be,’ Carolina told him sweetly. ‘I’ve walked these streets by night - and in men’s clothing at that!’

  She was delighted by Andrew’s shocked expression but the carriage driver turned to give the blazing beauty in the back of his carriage a sharp look and she heard him chuckle. He at least was well aware that some of the wilder London ladies occasionally went out on the town dressed in satin breeches and tricorn hats!

  Carolina had determined that she would stop by Mistress Chesterton’s school - that school that had since become a gaming house when scandal had roiled about wild Jenny Chesterton’s pretty ears. And she had been certain that Virginia - and certainly Andrew as well - would violently disapprove of her visiting a gaming house even in the morning!

  As a matter of fact, she wasn’t sure how Jenny Chesterton would receive her. She remembered all too well how irritated the young schoolmistress had been when Thomas had somehow got around her and had managed to take Carolina away from the school on all sorts of delightful excursions.

  She remembered Thomas now with a sudden pang. She had been so in love with him then - and he had turned out so badly. But now she had Rye and - her brows lifted wryly as she glanced down at the velvet purse containing her marriage ‘certificate’ - now she was at least a Fleet Street bride!

  MISTRESS CHESTERTON’S GAMING

  HOUSE LONDON, ENGLAND

  SUMMER 1689

  16

  Sure that Rye would disapprove, Carolina hesitated a little to go calling on Jenny Chesterton. As she puzzled over whether to do it, she stopped the carriage and bought some gilt gingerbread from a bawling street vendor whose cries overrode even the din of London. But she blushed and shook her head when another hawker dashed up to offer her some Venus cockles. ‘To please y’er man if not y’erself!’ he urged her with a leer - for Venus cockles were said to arouse lust.

  ‘Drive on,’ Carolina told the driver firmly, munching the gingerbread as he threaded the carriage warily through the medley of vehicles that surrounded them. Not only every sort of conveyance but every sort of person seemed to be out on this brilliant day of summer sunshine: smiling farm girls come to market with a goose or a brace of chickens or a basket of eggs; drunken rakes just roused from a rendezvous and sent home, or cast out by gaming houses that needed to sweep and clean up before another day’s ‘business’ began; clerics in robes and an occasional monk or nun; bankers in long velvet cloaks too heavy for the weather; tradesmen and hawkers and chimney sweeps - and here and there an occasional well-dressed lady like herself who got more than a passing glance from the men as they rode by.

  Finally, tired of driving aimlessly about, Carolina directed the driver to that familiar brick building where she had attended school when first she had come to London, a green girl from Virginia’s Eastern Shore. So much had happened to her since . . . She sat for a few moments studying that plain brick façade where one snowy night, dressed in a borrowed ice-green satin coat and breeches she had been let down by a bevy of schoolgirls upon a rope to the icy street below. And gone to an inn to look for Thomas - and found Rye instead.

  She had been but a schoolgirl then. She was so much wiser now.

  A group of children carrying paddle-shaped wooden hornbooks skittered by, the boys laughing and throwing their caps in the air, the girls more circumspect, pattering along with bright eyes sparkling and petticoats flying. Had she ever been that young? wondered Carolina, remembering the unhappiness of her early years on the Eastern Shore.

&nbs
p; As she watched, two giggling off-duty chambermaids came out of the servants’ entrance of the house. They gave the handsomely dressed young woman in the carriage a speculative look, then passed on by, talking and smothering their laughter. They were wearing so much cheap red ochre on their faces that they looked like prostitutes. Caroline remembered her roommate Reba’s oft-repeated remark when viewing such girls: ‘Ochre costs but a penny,’ she would murmur, ‘but would you think they’d use so much of it?’

  Reba . . . she wondered what had happened to Reba. Had her termagant mother forced her into marriage at last?

  Well, there was one way to find out. Carolina alighted from the carriage and bade the driver to wait. Yet still she found herself hesitating. Jenny Chesterton might have greatly changed . . .

  As she stood there uncertainly looking up at the building, a handsome coach drew up - one she recognized immediately. That green and gold coach with the Ormsby arms painted in gilt on its side with its resigned-looking liveried coachman and two footmen - both of the latter just alighting - were well-known to anyone who had attended Mistress Chesterton’s school. For Jenny Chesterton was Lord Ormsby’s long-time mistress and every girl in the school had watched bright-eyed for that coach - since it usually meant that they were to be sent out for some outing while Jenny Chesterton entertained dissolute Lord Ormsby.

  Thinking it might be easier to breeze into the hall along with the two footmen, who were both wearing Lord Ormsby’s green and gold livery, Carolina hurried forward just as the first footman banged the heavy iron knocker.

  The door was opened immediately by a neat little maidservant whose eyes rolled as the clamour within the house burst out upon the street.

  Carolina took in the whole scene before her in a single dizzy moment. The lower floor of the house had been handsomely converted to a gaming establishment - and no doubt the second floor as well - for there was a tipsy gentleman in pea-green satin perilously hanging on to the banister at the head of the stairs.

  ‘Milord!’ cried one of the footmen, racing past Carolina and up the stairs towards the gentleman who waved a vague hand at him and toppled slowly forward to be caught - just in time - in a pair of muscular arms.

  Lord Ormsby’s weight, however, was not inconsiderable and the footman staggered backward as his master’s body plummeted down upon him. For a moment the two teetered like dancers on the stairs.

  Before they could well right themselves, Jenny Chesterton’s form appeared behind them. She was clad in her favourite peacock-blue - this time a robe that had fallen open in the front to reveal a shockingly sheer chemise. And she was holding in each hand a highly polished boot.

  ‘And you may tell Lord Ormsby, when he is sober enough to take it in, that the next time he leaps into my bed with his boots on, I shall tear off his wig and hurl it through the window into the street!’ she cried fierily, lifting her skirts dramatically to display a bruised lower calf. ‘You may tell him I’ll not endure such treatment!’

  The other footman, who had not been so fast to move as had his companion and so had missed the impact of Lord Ormsby’s falling body, now leapt nimbly forward to catch Lord Ormsby’s boots which the lady at the top of the stairs hurled down with some force, one by one. He was young and Carolina could see how red his face was and how shocked his expression - probably new-hired. It came to her with some amusement that the poor lad would not keep his innocence long in Lord Ormsby’s employ!

  To her left was what had once been the drawing room of the establishment where elderly Mistress Chesterton, who had established the school - and after her death her niece Jenny Chesterton, who had inherited it - had stiffly entertained the parents of the students over tea. Now Caroline saw that a fancily dressed young fellow in crimson was lying beneath one of the tables. He had obviously slid there from his chair last night, drunk. Now, aroused by all the commotion, he was shaking his head and endeavouring without success to rise. As he moved, his foot struck an empty wineglass which rolled across the floor until it came to a halt at a table leg. Not all of last night’s patrons had been cleared out, it seemed . . .

  Carolina would have left at that point, but as she turned to go she found her way out was blocked by the two footmen supporting Lord Ormsby, wig askew, whose bones seemed to have turned to butter and who was now tittering uncontrollably.

  At that moment, the former headmistress, peering down the staircase, discovered her.

  ‘Who is that?’ she called. And then, with a gasp, ‘Why, ’tis Carolina Lightfoot, is it not?’

  Carolina, just beating a hasty retreat, paused and admitted it was she. She realized a shade too late the folly of her having come here - since she was known at the Horn and Chestnut, which was, after all, not so far away, by the name of Smythe.

  ‘Well, do come up, Carolina,’ the former headmistress said laughingly. ‘Things have changed a bit here, have they not?’

  Carolina, lifting her pale blue linen skirts to move reluctantly up the stairs, agreed that they had. ‘I think one of your patrons is trying to leave,’ she said as she reached the head of the stairs. ‘But he’s under a table and can’t seem to find his way out.’

  ‘The servants will take care of him,’ said Jenny airily. ‘Poll!’ she shouted down the stairs. ‘Poll, we’ve a leftover from last night - get him up, get him out!’

  Running her gaming establishment had coarsened Jenny Chesterton, thought Carolina. The headmistress she had known had kept a semblance of good breeding at least. Jenny looked much the same, yet there was the puffiness of dissipation under her eyes, and her figure had slipped a bit; her bustline which had been so trim hung lower now, her waist was not quite so slim.

  ‘Do you - ever see any of the girls?’ Carolina asked awkwardly when Jenny did not invite her into one of the gaming rooms to sit down but simply leaned against the banister considering her and scanning with an appraising eye the rich lace that spilled from her sleeves.

  ‘You mean my former students whose parents withdrew them in such a hurry?’ Jenny Chesterton shrugged. ‘Very rarely - they don’t come calling at gaming establishments!’ Her mobile mouth quirked into a wry smile.

  ‘I thought perhaps Reba - ’

  ‘Oh, you mean the Fleet Street bride?’ chuckled Jenny, still lolling against the banisters.

  ‘The - what did you say?’

  ‘“The Fleet Street bride” is what I call Reba. Yes, of course I see her. Or didn’t you know she’s staying here?’

  ‘Reba? Here?’ gasped Carolina, amazed at her good luck for it was really Reba she had come to inquire about. ‘Oh, where is she? Can I see her?’

  ‘Certainly.’ The former headmistress made an expansive gesture and pointed. ‘Her room is upstairs at the back and she doesn’t get up early - she’ll still be in bed.’

  ‘Oh, thank you! I’ll just run up and say hello.’ Relieved that her awkward interview was at an end, Carolina picked up her skirts and dashed up the stairs.

  She found Reba quartered in a shabby little room at the back of the house. It brought to mind the days when Reba, who had been the fashionable school’s wealthiest student, had commanded the best front room. Times had certainly changed!

  Carolina knocked on the door. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about Reba, who certainly hadn’t stood up for her in Essex. And when a sleepy irascible voice, unmistakably Reba’s, said, ‘Go away, whoever you are, and let me sleep!’ she almost did just that.

  Then curiosity overcame her.

  ‘Reba,’ she said hesitantly. ‘It’s Carolina. I - ’

  'I said go away!' Reba’s voice rose savagely and something struck the door. Suddenly her tone changed to disbelief. ‘Carolina, did you say?’ There was the patter of feet slipped hastily into slippers, and the latch was lifted. ‘Carolina, it is you!’ she cried and grasped Carolina by the elbow and hurried her inside.

  One look about that drab little room, and all Carolina’s resentment towards Reba fled - she remembered only Reba’s generosity wit
h her wardrobe at school and felt dismay that she should have sunk so low. She was so startled to find that Reba was actually living in what once had been the servants’ quarters that Reba had to ask twice, impatiently, ‘How on earth did you get here?’

  ‘I was in London and I thought I’d stop by and say hello to Jenny Chesterton and ask her about you,’ Carolina said. ‘And she told me you were upstairs!’ She could see that Reba was still her slender fashionable self, wearing an elegant embroidered satin robe which seemed strangely out of place with her drab surroundings in this tiny bare room. Her thick auburn hair was dishevelled from sleep but her brassy bright russet eyes were shining with interest as she studied her friend.

  ‘You look wonderful, Carol!’

  Carolina had to bite back the urge to say. ‘You don’t,' for there was a sullen expression around Reba's mouth, and her pretty face - never soft at any time - looked hard in the morning light. Instead she said vaguely, ‘Oh, that’s probably because this dress is new. I bought it yesterday.’ She looked deprecatingly down at her pale blue linen with its big white lawn sleeves and flowing lace. ‘I was surprised to find you here at Jenny’s, Reba,’ she admitted.

  ‘Yes - well, it’s a long story.’ Reba was dressing rapidly as she talked. ‘Let’s go out to a coffeehouse, Carol, and talk over the cups. I hate this place.’ She looked around her with distaste at the dingy walls, low ceiling and bare floors. ‘Here, will you help me with these hooks in the back? Now that I no longer have a maid to help me, some of these dresses are just too much! I don’t know what the dressmakers were thinking of!’

  They were thinking you'd always have a maid to dress you, thought Carolina. So what matter if you couldn’t reach the hooks? She was dying to find out why Reba was living in a gaming house instead of in her parents’ elegant home in Essex, but she bent her energies to getting Reba’s green silk dress decently hooked and soon they were clattering down an empty stairway. Jenny Chesterton and the maid who had let her in had both disappeared somewhere, and so had the man who had been crawling around the floor half-drunk, Carolina noticed as they went out.