Pink taffeta bobbed as the carriage jolted over cobbles, but the bargaining light in her eyes remained undisturbed.
‘How much?’
‘Guineas, sir,’ murmured Betsy. She went along with the maxim that if a labourer was worthy of his hire, so was a girl.
‘Ah, so you ain’t brought an empty head with you,’ said the captain. Well aware of how the mere sight of a golden guinea could cure her every qualm and quake, he drew one from his pocket. In the shaded light of the cab, it gleamed as brightly as Betsy’s eyes. ‘That, my fluttering partridge, is a single guinea.’
‘And it be a sweet thing in its own right,’ said Betsy.
‘Four more would be even sweeter, I warrant,’ said the captain.
‘Five in all, sir, five?’ Betsy glowed. ‘For asking and showing, tripping and disarranging?’
‘And screaming.’
‘Oh, you be very fair, sir.’ Betsy snuggled closer. ‘But I won’t think about it until I’m doing it, that I won’t, or I’ll give myself terrible frightening turns. I never did know any gentleman more of a pleasure to me, nor more set on making me shiver all over. And when you’ve done with the Irish gentleman, sir?’
‘Then, Betsy, to Vauxhall Gardens, to the love nest of a bowery alcove and refreshments of your choice.’
‘Vauxhall Gardens?’ Betsy sat up and sparkled. ‘With all the lords and ladies?’
‘And with the Lord Chancellor’s permission,’ said Captain Burnside, and the carriage swayed, creaked and jolted over the cobbled streets.
They reached Aldgate and passed through it to a quarter by no means salubrious. Betsy, a country girl, had an inherent distaste for the grime of cities and for people who let poverty render them sluttish. The rundown look of this district came very unappealingly to her discerning eye, making her turn her nose up. The children seen from the carriage appeared to be urchins and ragamuffins. Shabby men sat on doorsteps, doing nothing about littered gutters, and shawled women, neglecting their homes, stood gossiping. Betsy was sure, even with the carriage windows closed, that the streets exuded a smell like boiled cabbage. But there was one street at the end of a cobbled lane that was an improvement on the rest. The doorsteps looked swept, there was only a little refuse in the gutters, and the windows of the houses seemed actually clean. As the cab passed the street, Captain Burnside rapped on the roof and the driver brought his horse to a stop.
‘Oh, Lor’, it’s here we be getting out?’ enquired Betsy nervously.
‘Yes, here, clever puss,’ said the captain. He alighted and gave her a hand down. The dainty delicacy of her new Sunday gown accentuated for Betsy the grimy condition of the surroundings. The captain asked the cabbie to wait, perhaps for twenty or thirty minutes. He would be paid for the waiting time. The cabbie, recognizing a gentleman of potential generosity, declared himself willing and trusting.
‘Come, Betsy,’ said the captain, and walked back with her to the corner of the street. ‘Now, my fine accomplice, it’s the third house on the right. The Irish gentleman is lodged on the first floor. Go up the stairs, turn left on the landing, and his door is immediately opposite you.’ The captain had received this basic information from Jonathan, though the latter’s gift for making people talk had availed him nothing in the face of the tight-mouthed Irishman. ‘Knock with anxious gentility, Betsy, and then proceed as arranged. But don’t come to your scream as if you needed to bring down the Tower of London, for we don’t want the whole city to be roused. I shall be near enough to hear a little ladylike scream.’
‘Lord help us, already I hardly knows if I’m coming or going, sir,’ breathed Betsy, ‘but seeing you said five minutes ago that it’s all for the sake of His Royal Highness, I aren’t going to lay down and die of fright, not considering you’re going to give me ten guineas.’
‘Four, puss.’
‘Oh, you promised five,’ protested Betsy, neatly tricked.
‘Five it is, then. Now, when I arrive to enquire into the reason for your agitation—’
‘My which, sir?’
‘Your ladylike squeak of distress equals agitation, puss. I shall need to address you in front of the Irish blackguard. It won’t do to call you Betsy. Who knows how quickly your name might reach ears it shouldn’t reach? Like Mr Erzburger’s ears.’
‘Oh, save us, not his, sir,’ begged Betsy. ‘Or Mr Pringle’s.’
‘I shall address you as Polly.’
‘You be a thinking gentleman, sir, and understanding. I’ll do the scream very ladylike.’
‘Good puss. Off you go, then.’
The terraced house had a fairly neat look, its curtains threadbare, perhaps, but clean. The front door was not locked, for it yielded as Betsy turned the handle. On the ground floor lived a solicitor’s poorly paid clerk and his family. They were at Aldgate church for the Sunday morning service. Betsy, hitching her gown, climbed the stairs.
The Irish gentleman, answering a light knock on his door, found himself looking into the hopeful eyes of a young lady in summer pink. ‘Oh, begging your pardon, sir,’ she said a little breathlessly, ‘be you sharing this lodging with Mr Henry Bullivant?’
‘The divil I’m not,’ said Mr Joseph Maguire, ‘nor did I ever hear of him.’ He made to close the door, for he was not encouraged to talk to strangers, male or female. Betsy, however, simulating appealing anxiety, pushed forward, and the door was forced to stay open.
‘But I were to meet him here,’ she said worriedly, ‘and I daresn’t like to think I be at the wrong address, for close by it aren’t a respectable neighbourhood to look at. Mr Bullivant’s my gentleman friend, and tall and handsome, with—’
‘So he might be, that he might,’ said Joseph Maguire, who was small and wiry himself, with curly black hair, ‘but it’s sure I am I don’t know him, nor where he lodges.’
‘But, sir,’ said Betsy, expression worried and gown whispering anxiously, ‘it be this address I were given by him, I’m sure. I’ll show you, and beg you’ll help a girl.’ She dipped her fingers into her cleavage, drawing Mr Maguire’s eyes to her bosom, and extracted the piece of paper. She unfolded it under his reluctant but mesmerized gaze, and in what seemed like an eager wishfulness to secure his help, she moved forward. Her foot struck his, and she tripped and tumbled, executing the manoeuvre with all the credibility Captain Burnside had anticipated she would. As a preliminary to a scream, she uttered a little cry as she fell, though her tumble was a gentle one, for she feared for her new gown. The tumble took her to her knees. She then collapsed, and when she turned over and sat up, her bodice was so disarranged that the startled Mr Maguire was confronted by the alarming sight of a bare breast. The scream came then, and she followed this by gasping, ‘Oh, I be in for ravishment!’ The scream was just loud enough to be heard in the passage below. At once, someone came bounding up the stairs, and the astonished and bewildered Joseph Maguire was further confronted, this time by a tall and slender gentleman carrying a cane and wearing an expression of anger and disgust.
‘By God,’ breathed Captain Burnside, ‘you damned scoundrel!’
‘Henry, oh, it’s you,’ cried Betsy. ‘Look what he’s done to me!’
‘Twice-damned satyr,’ said the captain in fury, ‘you shall be brought to capital account for laying your perverted hands on a young lady dear to me.’ He closed the door smartly to guard against possible interruption, and put his back against it. Betsy came to her feet, turning aside to adjust her bodice with the trembling agitation of a young lady whose modesty had been grievously wounded. Nor did she forget to breathe noisily.
The room, the captain noted, was furnished only with essentials, a little table, a chair, a crude chest of drawers and a truckle bed. But it was neat and tidy, and so was the Irish gentleman himself. He was also pale and aghast. ‘Yer Honour, ye’re mistaken—’
‘Mistaken?’ Captain Burnside looked dangerously outraged. ‘My young lady floored, her gown savaged, her bosom uncovered? Offspring of Satan, if you’ve escap
ed the hangman before on like counts, you’ll not escape him this time.’ He gripped his cane as if determined to use it. ‘Polly, as soon as you feel less distressed, go and find a boy who will bring a Bow Street Runner here, while I keep this fiend detained.’
‘Yer Honour, for the love of God, don’t do that,’ gasped the fearful Ulsterman, ‘for I swear I niver laid a single finger on the young lady, nor would I, not if the divil himself was at my back and in my ear. Ask her, sir …’
‘Oh, you terrible man,’ breathed Betsy, ‘tripping me up, putting me on the floor and spoiling my gown to make me show – oh, Henry, I be so thankful you were close by.’
‘Hush, don’t cry,’ said the devious captain tenderly, ‘I’ll wager you’ll never be at such risk again with this libertine. Nor will other young ladies, for I’ll see the law has him dangling at Tyburn within a week.’
‘Yer Honour, I beg your belief in me own true self,’ gasped Mr Maguire, appalled at what was overtaking him. ‘’Tis the way it looked, not the way it was. ’Tis circumstantial, so it is, and may I niver receive the blessing of my Protestant faith if I had any wish to harm the young lady.’
‘Damn my eyes and ears,’ said Captain Burnside ferociously, ‘I heard and I saw. You are damned and doomed: there, you villain, see what you have run yourself up against in your unbridled depravity.’ He whisked a card from his coat pocket and thrust it under Mr Maguire’s nose. Mr Maguire, further appalled, read the printed words.
HENRY J. BULLIVANT Attorney-at-Law
No. 25 Cheapside, London
‘Yer Honour, ye’ll not see a God-fearing man hanged by reason of the way it looked …’
‘I’ll see you hanged, be sure I will,’ said the captain. ‘In my profession as a servant of the law, I find no villains worthier of Tyburn’s gibbet than those who subject innocent young ladies to carnal abuse.’
Joseph Maguire’s thin, dark face paled with fear, though not with guilt. ‘Sir – Yer Lordship – ’tis meself that’s as innocent as a babe new-born,’ he breathed.
Betsy, shrewdly guessing that her gentleman wished to have the Irishman eating out of his hand, said with credible protestation, ‘Oh, if you be innocent, then I be guilty of bawdiness, which I never could be. Henry, I be ready now to find a boy and send him for the Runners.’
‘If you are recovered enough, dear Polly, then between us we shall deliver this licentious miscreant into the arms of the law,’ said Captain Burnside, and the panic-stricken Orangeman paled to whiteness.
‘I swear, ’twas the way it looked, no more,’ he said desperately. ‘If Yer Honour hands me over to the Runners, it’s meself, me own mother’s innocent son, that’ll swing at Tyburn, and not inside a week, oh Lord, but a day.’
‘You’re Irish,’ said Captain Burnside, as if he had only just deduced this.
‘So I am, sir, but no papist. I’m an Orangeman, and swear there’s none more loyal to the King. ’Tis God’s truth.’
‘A likely story,’ said Captain Burnside sternly. ‘I’ll bandy no more words with you, but send my young lady to—’
‘Yer Grace, ye’d not do that which would hang an innocent man, Joseph Maguire meself, who’s a faithful subject of His Protestant Majesty, King George.’
‘Faithful subject?’ said Captain Burnside scathingly. ‘Do you dare to suggest His Majesty would accept a libertine as faithful?’ He was wearing Mr Maguire down. ‘You may mock me, reptile, and make your case no better than it is, but you mock His Majesty at your peril.’
‘Henry,’ said Betsy, ‘am I to go?’
‘No, I beg,’ gasped the unfortunate Mr Maguire, ‘carry a message to His Protestant Highness, the Duke of Cumberland, for me. His own royal self will speak for me.’
‘His own royal self will watch you topped,’ said the captain. ‘Go on your way, Polly.’
‘No!’ gasped Mr Maguire. ‘’Tis meself that’s a boon and a blessing to the royal family, and can prove it, so I can.’
‘What’s that you say?’ asked the captain curtly.
‘True it is, sir, I swear.’
‘Is it possible there’s something in your favour that may mitigate your heinous sin of attempted ravishment?’ asked the captain, frowning.
‘No sin was in my mind, Yer Honour, but if it will make Yer Honour forget it looked like sin, and Yer Honour being a servant of the law and His Majesty accordingly, I’ll give ye that truth, though I’ve been sworn to silence.’
Captain Burnside took on the look of a servant of the law giving due and fair consideration to the plea, while the unhappy Mr Maguire looked at him in hope.
‘Polly, my dear,’ said the captain eventually, ‘pray wait outside.’
‘Oh, I’ll be glad to,’ said Betsy fervently, ‘I be all of a quiver in here.’
‘I’ll not keep you waiting long, I hope,’ said the captain, and Betsy went out to wait on the landing, leaving him alone with the Orangeman who, psychologically bruised and battered, seemed to be in hope that he could save his neck. It was all of a puzzle to Betsy, save that she knew by now that her gentleman friend worked in ways mysterious, and she could not but admire his performance.
Among other things, Mr Maguire confided he was being guarded and watched by a man lodging in the house immediately opposite. Mr Erzburger had said it was for his own protection. Accordingly, when Captain Burnside emerged into the street with Betsy, he glanced casually about. If there were eyes watching him, he could not determine them. But as he and Betsy approached the corner of the street, a man carrying a jug of ale appeared. He turned into the street. He gave the captain and Betsy an interested look. The interest was mainly in Betsy’s gauzy gown. He was full of drink, his face mottled with it. The captain and Betsy turned into the lane. They saw their cabbie waiting, standing beside his horse. The captain stopped, retraced his steps to the corner of the street, and took a discreet look. The man with the jug entered the house opposite that in which Mr Maguire was lodging. Luck, thought the captain, had played its part. While he and Betsy had been with the Orangeman, his watchdog, deserting his post for a spell, had been in a tavern.
The cabbie drove his passengers to Vauxhall Gardens, where he was generously paid off. There, Betsy took refreshments with her audacious and pleasurable gentleman in the pavilion. She was almost too breathless to pay proper attention to her food, though she drank wine thirstily. She was breathless from her own performance in helping to reduce that poor little Irishman to a frightened wreck, breathless in her intense curiosity to know why it had had to be done, and breathless, finally, in being in these Arcadian surroundings with her gentleman, and among members of the quality. Her gentleman assured her that what had had to be done to Mr Maguire was for the good of the King’s realm, and also for the good of Mr Maguire himself. It was not necessary for Betsy to know more than that; it was sufficient for her to understand that their arrival in Mr Maguire’s life had probably saved it.
‘Saved his life?’ Betsy gulped more wine. ‘Oh, it’s all razzle, dazzle and fourpenny ones to me, sir.’
‘You have my permission, and His Majesty’s, to forget all about it. Not a word, puss.’
‘His Majesty?’ Betsy looked awestruck. ‘Oh, I never did know a gentleman more flummoxing than you.’ But since she could be the essence of discreet silence when silence was so gainful, she declared an oath of dumbness. Her fine gentleman was as rewarding as the golden goose. ‘You be giving me the guineas now, sir?’
‘Now, Betsy? Here?’ Captain Burnside shook his head at her. ‘Do you wish the lords and ladies to see you accepting money from me across the table? It would at once change you in their eyes from a shy young lady of sweet innocence to a trollop.’
Betsy was so overcome by her faux pas that the blush mantling her cheeks was a true one. The bright, colourful pavilion was full of ladies and gentlemen spending as much time studying their neighbours as pecking at their food.
‘Sir, I’m a good girl, liking pleasuring, that’s all.’
�
�Why, of course,’ said the captain kindly, ‘and I shouldn’t have been allowed to make an accomplice of a trollop. Eat your food now, and drink up your wine.’ He refilled her glass, and not for the first time. ‘The wine, pretty kitten, will bring you to well-being. You have my fond regard, you deserve well-being, and I shall see that you come to it.’
‘Nor don’t I mind coming to kissing with you,’ said Betsy, ‘for I never did meet any gentleman more kind, or who said nicer things to me.’ She filled her mouth with food and washed it down with more wine, all under her kind gentleman’s encouraging eye.
After the meal, he took her to a restful alcove in the Gardens, leafily screened from prying eyes. The strains of orchestral music reached their ears. Betsy, in wine-induced languor, reposed in pretty sleepiness amongst the cushions on a long cane chaise longue. Well-being had arrived. But if her lids were heavy, her lips, still dewy from wine, were wakefully expectant of kisses.
‘Your guineas, Betsy,’ murmured the captain, and that caused her to lift her lids in delight. Five golden guineas spilled into her eager hand.
Saucily, she drew her gown up to her waist, uncovering her Sunday pantaloons, their delicate lace frills threaded with pink ribbons. She slipped the coins into the waist pocket of the pantaloons, then wound her arms around her gentleman’s neck and kissed him dreamily on the mouth. ‘Oh, you be a delight to a girl,’ she whispered.
‘The gold given was gold earned, Betsy,’ he said, and he drew her gown back into place, covering up her limbs.
Betsy’s sleepy lids blinked. ‘But I don’t mind,’ she said, ‘not if it be a pleasure to you to look.’
‘I’m sure you don’t mind, puss, but pleasuring ain’t encouraged in the Gardens, d’you see. I ain’t inclined to let you be disapproved of.’
Betsy, reclining in the dreaminess of well-being, gazed up at him. He smiled, waiting for the wine to send her to sleep. Betsy, with her fondness for cuddling and kissing, would be less of a problem asleep.
‘Sir,’ she murmured, ‘I be full of sweet feelings.’ A little true colour touched her again. ‘It’s not the guineas, nor that you be such a pleasure to a girl; it be you, sir. Even if you go hammer and tongs together, you and your lady wife, like married couples do sometimes, I be certain sure she be glad to be your wife. Sir, you don’t mind I’ve come to love you?’
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