The Original Miss Honeyford

by M C Beaton

  She left Honey a pile of fashion plates to study and then took herself off in a cloud of lace and perfume.

  Honey threw down the fashion plates as soon as Lady Canon was out of the door, and paced restlessly up and down. She decided to walk around to the mews to see how her servants had fared and to wish them Godspeed on their journey home on the following morning. Lady Canon would have expected Honey to summon the servants to the hall to make her farewells there, but Honey was itching to get out of the house.

  Wearing her old brown silk and covering it with her sage-green cloak, she skipped down the stairs. She met her first setback in the hall. Beecham, the butler, loomed up out of the shadows.

  “Are we going out, Miss Honeyford?” he said reprovingly, eyeing her hatless head and ungloved hands.

  “Only around the mews, Beecham,” said Honey. “I must say good-bye to my servants.”

  “Then I will send the second footman to fetch them here.”

  Honey ran past him to the door. “No, no, that will not be necessary,” she said breathlessly. She opened the door and darted out into the street.

  Beecham wondered whether to send a footman after her.

  Then he decided to wait about fifteen minutes, and, if she had not returned by then, he would send John, the second footman, to fetch her back.

  Honey whistled like a boy as she strolled around to the mews, the whistle dying on her lips as the full flavorsome smell of a London mews caught at her throat.

  She found Jem, Abraham, and Peter just setting out to enjoy their last day.

  “Where are you bound?” asked Honey wistfully.

  “Over to the City,” said Jem. “We wants to see the beasts at the Tower.”

  “Oh, take me with you,” pleaded Honey, “and then I will leave you to enjoy the rest of the day.”

  “’Twouldn’t be fitting,” said Peter. “T’other servants say as how you’re to be a fine lady now.”

  “And I am so weary, so bored,” cried Honey. “Just let me come with you, just a little way. I have forgot what freedom is like.”

  “Can’t see it would do any harm,” said Abraham, shuffling his feet. He had a soft spot for Honey, and he hated to see his young mistress look so miserable.

  “Yus,” echoed Jem. “S’pose it won’t do no harm. You run back, Miss Honoria, and ask her ladyship.”

  “She won’t even know,” said Honey triumphantly. “She’s gone for the whole day.”

  The three brightened. “Then off we go,” said Abraham.

  “And we will pretend we are friends,” said Honey. “Equals!”

  “That’s going too far,” said Jem severely. “Them that doesn’t know their place is flying in the face o’ Providence.”

  “Jem, you are just as bad as Lady Canon.”

  “I know what’s right,” said Jem stubbornly, “so if you wants to come, you walk two paces ahead and we’ll follow you up as we should.”

  As they were about to leave, one of Lady Canon’s grooms strolled up. “Off again, are you?” he said jealously.

  “Going to see the beasts at the Tower. Do you know of a good place we could get a bite to eat on the road?”

  “The Cock at the head o’ Fleet Street, opposite St. Dunstan’s, is as good as any,” said the groom. “Maybe I should get a place in the country, then I could go jaunterin’ around for weeks like you lot.”

  “Come along,” called Honey from the entrance to the mews.

  They set out walking in the direction of the City, that great mercantile hub of London: the real London it had been before the Fashionables moved west. Along Oxford Street they went, peering into the shops, stopping to stare at the acrobats and tumblers performing at the side of the road.

  They turned down the Haymarket and then through the Strand, stopping to see the wild animals at Exeter Change, which they all voted a poor shabby lot and hoped the ones at the Tower would be better. They darted across the busy road to look at the prints in Ackermann’s Repository of the Fine Arts.

  They stopped at The Cock in Fleet Street and had roast beef and salad and several bottles of canary wine, Honey paying out of the pin money her father had given her, and comforting her conscience with the thought that he would have behaved the same way in her shoes. Sir Edmund was more father than master to his servants.

  Honey had had nothing stronger than tea to drink since her arrival at Lady Canon’s, that lady having been so shocked over the description of the brandy drinking and, fearing Honey might be cursed with a Fatal Tendency, she had given her no alcoholic drink at all.

  The wine went straight to Honey’s head, engendering a light-headed, floating sensation.

  As they went over Fleet Bridge, leading to Ludgate Hill, Honey quickly pulled out her scented handkerchief to block out the smell rising from the Fleet. Alexander Pope’s lines swam through her tipsy head:

  To where Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams

  Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames

  Her servants had forgotten their rigid code of etiquette and were walking along beside her as they went up Ludgate Hill. A great crowd of people were hurrying in the same direction. Jem went over to one and asked where they were all going.

  He came back, his eyes gleaming with excitement.

  “There’s a hanging at the Old Bailey,” he said.

  “A Lunnon hanging,” said Peter. “But would it be right to take Miss?”

  “Course it would,” said Jem, pointing to carriages bearing several finely dressed ladies in the same direction.

  The wine had now hit Honey with even more force and so she was not quite able to understand where they were going or what was happening, and so, before long, she found herself jammed in a swaying, shouting crowd outside the Old Bailey in Newgate.

  Two men were being hanged for murdering a gentleman at the eleven-mile stone on Hounslow Heath, and a woman for stabbing her husband in the eye with a penknife.

  Honey stared up at the gallows and felt sick. She wanted to escape, but she was pressed so tightly by the crowd that she could not move an inch.

  The three condemned mounted the scaffold. Honey shivered, thinking of their plight, thinking of the dreadful night that had just been endured by these wretched people.

  The bellman would have stood outside the condemned hole intoning:

  All you that in the condemned hole do lie,

  Prepare you, for tomorrow you shall die.

  Watch all, and pray: the hour is drawing near

  That you before the Almighty must appear.

  Examine well yourselves, in time repent

  That you may not to eternal flames be sent.

  And when St. Sepulchre’s in the morning tolls,

  The Lord above have mercy on your souls.

  They used to take the condemned to Tyburn where they were hanged just outside the gates of Hyde Park. Honey remembered her father telling her that it was quite common to see twenty-one people hanged at once.

  “Boom!” went the great tenor bell of St. Sepulchre’s. Honey groaned and closed her eyes and began to pray.

  Then disaster struck. The crowd, anxious to hear if the prisoners were going to confess, surged forward. At the same time, a cart over-laden with people trying to get a better view, broke and collapsed. People falling from the vehicle were trampled to death. More people fell under the feet of the crowd as panic set in. The screams of the dying and wounded were dreadful. There were cries of, “Murder! Murder!”

  The three prisoners kicked their lives out in the air above the screams and groans and curses of the crowd which surged forward and backward like the waves of some nightmarish sea.

  Honey was separated from her servants. She felt she was being crushed to death. Her head swam. She was terrified of fainting, for she knew once she went down, she would never be allowed to rise again.

  She thought of her father. She thought that all his care and concern were going to go unrewarded as his daughter met her end by being trampled to deat
h at a public hanging.

  “Nonsense!” said Lady Canon. “Gone to a hanging! I’ll not believe it. It is too late in the day for a hanging in any case.”

  “This one was delayed, my lady,” said Beecham, “on account of repairs to the scaffold. When Miss Honeyford did not return, I sent John around to the mews to find out what had happened. He learned that she had left with her servants but could not find out where they had gone. Then, after an hour, that groom, Perkins, volunteers the information that they’ve gone to see the beasts at the Tower, and that he had recommended The Cock in Fleet Street as an eating place. I did not like to trouble your ladyship with this until your return because Miss Honeyford was protected, and it seemed an innocent place to go.

  “But just to make sure, I sent John after them, although they had a very good head start on him. He saw them ahead of him just as they were leaving Ludgate Hill to go to the hanging. He ran back here as fast as he could and I sent him on to Mrs. Osborne to call your ladyship home.”

  “He should have stayed with them,” snapped Lady Canon. “He should have taken Miss Honeyford away.”

  “Begging your pardon, my lady, there’s more. I had gone out on the step to send John on his way to tell you when Lord Alistair happened to walk past, and, seeing my evident agitation, he demanded to know what was amiss.”

  “Dear God, you never told him that Miss Honeyford had gone to a public hanging?”

  “I am afraid I did, my lady. Lord Alistair said he would go in that direction and see what he could do.”

  “I do not see how he can possibly find one girl among thousands,” said Lady Canon. “This is a wretched business. At least Lord Alistair will not talk. We must simply wait until she comes home. Do not look so worried, Beecham. I am not angry with you. You did everything you could.”

  And since the news of the terrible crowd deaths at the hanging had not yet filtered to the fashionable West End, Lady Canon decided to pass the time until Honey came home by preparing the lecture she was going to give that young miss when she eventually returned.

  * * *

  The screams of the crowd were deafening. Honey twisted her head, desperately seeking escape, and seeing only panic-stricken faces as everyone pushed and shoved and bit and clawed, trying to make their escape.

  She knew she could not keep her senses for very much longer. She raised her eyes. Far above was the blue, blue sky.

  There was another great surge as the people in front of Honey turned about and tried to push to the back. She stumbled backward against the buildings, feeling the black mass of the crowd beginning to press the life out of her.

  And then she saw a rope dangling in front of her face.

  She seized it tightly and screamed for help, her scream being lost among the screams and roars of the rabble.

  Slowly Honey was pulled up above the crowd, although for several agonizing moments she thought she would never be free of the press around her. Her arms felt as if they were about to be pulled out of their sockets. A man jumped and struck at her but was knocked back by the stumbling and grabbing of the people about him. The blow sent Honey spinning out over a sea of upturned faces. Then she swung back toward the buildings and stuck her feet out to brace herself for the impact. The jolt when it came was severe, but she held on tightly to the rope and “walked” her way up the side of the building, praying her unseen rescuer would not let her drop.

  “Hold the rope and let me get her,” came a familiar voice. Lord Alistair’s head and shoulders appeared out of the window. His strong arms seized her and pulled her in over the sill.

  Honey fell in a heap on the floor. Lord Alistair eyed her with dislike.

  When he had arrived at the scene of the hanging, he had been appalled at the chaos. There was no way of finding Honey among all these people. The screams of the dying and wounded were dreadful. The worst scenes were over at the corner of Green Arbor Lane, near Skinner Street. By vaulting over a wall which led to the back of the house, followed by his groom, Ben, he was able to bribe his way into the second floor of a house which overlooked the worst of the chaos. He hung out of the window and scanned the crowd below. Like a kind of mockery, the sun was shining brightly. Lord Alistair watched helplessly as a pieman dropped his tray, and, bending to retrieve the contents, was trampled to death. Several others went down with him, never to rise again.

  He looked immediately below, attracted by the screams from those who were being crushed against the buildings.

  That was when he saw the sunlight glinting on a head of short chestnut curls.

  “A rope!” he called over his shoulder to his groom. “Fetch a rope, Ben.”

  Ben was soon back with a stout rope. Honey was rescued. And now she was sitting on the floor at his feet and all he wanted to do was shake her until her teeth rattled.

  “Do you know you were nearly killed?” he said furiously. “Don’t you—”

  He broke off as Honey struggled to her feet. “Give me the rope,” she cried. “My servants! Oh, Jem and Abraham and Peter.”

  “Find them first,” said Lord Alistair curtly, pointing to the window.

  Honey leaned out, desperately searching the street below. “Jem,” she cried. “He is there. He must have been quite close to me. Hurry! He is sore pressed, and Abraham and Peter are with him.”

  Lord Alistair and Ben lowered the rope carefully until it was dangling in front of Jem’s face. Like Honey, he seized it, but, as he was being dragged clear above the crowd, Abraham grabbed his boots and held tightly.

  Lord Alistair had removed his coat, and, in the middle of all her fear for the safety of her servants, Honey could not help noticing with surprise how his muscles bulged under the thin cambric of his shirt as he and Ben took the strain of two men dangling on the rope.

  It had been an easy matter to lift a slip of a girl like Honey clear, but getting a heavy coachman with a sturdy groom hanging onto his legs over the windowsill seemed nigh impossible to Honey. But soon Lord Alistair and Ben dragged the coachman in and along the floor until Abraham catapulted through the window, still holding tightly onto Jem’s legs.

  “Now, Peter,” said Honey, jumping up and down.

  Lord Alistair gave her a sour look, but asked her to point Peter out, and to direct the rope. But the crowd about Peter were now anxious to get out by the same route, and they had to hoist up two strangers before they succeeded in netting Peter.

  “Now,” said Lord Alistair, “I think we should all get out of here as soon as possible.”

  There was a murmur of agreement, but Honey stood with her back to the window, her eyes flashing. “There are women and children down there,” she said. “We should not forget them.”

  Lord Alistair looked at her wearily. He wanted to point out that his muscles were already cracking, that any woman who went to a public hanging should know to expect a riot, but there was something touchingly gallant about the small figure in the sage-green cloak, so he called to Ben and to Honey’s servants to help him.

  They rescued four women and five children before the crowd below suddenly began to make their escape as the mob on the outer fringes of Newgate began to disperse.

  “Thank you,” said Honey, impulsively stretching out a hand to Lord Alistair. “You were magnificent.”

  “I cannot return the compliment,” said Lord Alistair icily. “I will return you to your aunt.”

  They had to walk as far as High Holborn before Lord Alistair could reclaim his carriage from the inn where he had left it.

  “Make your way on foot, Ben,” he said to his groom. “I would have a word with Miss Honeyford in private. As for the rest of you,” he said, staring coldly at Honey’s servants, “I am sure Lady Canon will have a few words to say to you.”

  Jem, Abraham, and Peter stood by miserably as Honey was helped up into Lord Alistair’s high perch phaeton. They were in no doubt that Lady Canon would dismiss them from her brother-in-law’s employ, and then write and give him the reason.

 
Lord Alistair started his lecture as soon as they were on their way along High Holborn. “Miss Honeyford,” he said, “you are a most ungrateful girl. Your aunt has gone to considerable expense to furnish you with a wardrobe and to train you in the ways of society, and this is how you repay her.”

  “My father paid for my clothes,” mumbled Honey.

  “Don’t interrupt,” he snapped. “As I was saying…”

  Honey sat and fumed. She had nearly been killed, and yet he had not offered one word of concern. He preached on and on about her lack of femininity, and yet he treated her worse than a man.

  There was a great press of traffic when they reached Oxford Street. Lord Alistair let the reins drop and allowed his horses to edge their way forward.

  Honey reflected that she would have enjoyed the novelty of sitting high above the crowd in this dashing open carriage at any other time and with any other companion.

  Then she saw Amy Wetherall with her father and mother approaching in an open landau.

  Lord Alistair stopped in mid-lecture and looked down at Honey in amazement. For she had started to laugh, a very charming laugh, and she was gazing up at him with a warm, flirtatious light in her eyes. He suddenly found it very amusing that he, of all people, should be playing the heavy father, and smiled back.

  Amy Wetherall looked up and saw them—as Honey meant her to do—apparently on the best of terms. The traffic halted.

  Amy remembered Honey because of her outrageously short hairstyle. “Miss Honeyford!” she called. “It is I!”

  Honey looked down and raised her eyebrows with a pretty show of surprise before smiling and waving her hand in welcome.

  Then both carriages moved on in their opposite directions.

  “Who on earth was that ravishing creature?” asked Lord Alistair.

  “Miss Amy Wetherall.”

  “Ah, the reigning belle. She is exquisite.”

  Honey folded her arms and glared straight ahead.

  “Mama,” Amy was saying plaintively, “do you not think my hair is unbecomingly long?”

  “No, darling,” said Mrs. Wetherall. “You are the most beautiful girl in London, and you do not need to alter your appearance.”