Kathleen Winsor - Forever Amber

Black Jack grinned. “Never mind. She will.”

Amber was as angry with Black Jack as she was with Mother Red-Cap. For he could have paid her bill—and the debt too—at no hardship to himself. She was so resentful over his refusal that she had lost all sense of gratitude at being out of Newgate. She would have pawned some of the jewellery he had given her, but it was not enough to clear the full debt and if part of it disappeared she knew that she would get no more. It seemed to her that she would be in Whitefriars forever.

And so when Michael Godfrey came the next afternoon and asked her again to go away with him she agreed without hesitating an instant.

“Wait here and I’ll be right down. I want to get my cloak and I have a new gown—” She was already out of the room.

Michael called after her: “Let it go! I’ll get you another!”

But she pretended not to hear him and ran on, for there were several things she wanted to take with her—a, lace fan, a pair of green silk stockings, the imitation gold ear-rings, and her parakeet. She rushed about the room—the house was empty and she wanted to get away before someone should return—flung everything into a sheet and hastily tied it. “Come on,” she said to the parakeet. “We’ve had enough of this damned Sanctuary.” And with the cage in one hand, the tied-up sheet in the other, she hurried out and down the stairs. Halfway to the bottom she stopped with a gasp, for the door swung open and Black Jack Mallard stood there, his great frame blocking out the light.

She gave a gasp of dismay. “Jack!”

It was dark down there and she could not see the expression on his face, but his voice was deep and hoarse. “So you were going to scour!” Slowly he started up the stairs toward her, and she could only stand there helplessly, watching him and waiting. All at once she was afraid of him; she had seen him lose his temper with Bess and knew that he could be violent. “You ungrateful little bitch, I should break your head for this—”

Amber’s courage came back with a rush. “Get out of my way!” she cried. “I’m leaving this filthy place! I’m not going to stay here and hang with the rest of you!”

He was just below her now and she could see his face, the thin upper lip drawn tight against his teeth, his eyes dark and glittering. “You’ll stay here as long as I want you to stay. Go on upstairs now. Go on, I say!”

For a long moment they stood staring at each other. Then suddenly she kicked out at his shins and threw herself against his arm, trying to break through. “Michael!” she screamed.

Suddenly Black Jack laughed. He picked her up with one arm, threw her over his shoulder, and started back up the stairs. “Michael!” he repeated contemptuously. “What good d’ye think that jack-straw could be to you?” He laughed again, a thunderous roar that echoed up the narrow stairwell, and he seemed scarcely to notice that Amber was screaming furiously, kicking and beating at him with her fists.

When he reached the bedroom he set her down, so forcibly that the jar went from her heels up into her head. She recovered quickly.

“God damn you, Black Jack Mallard!” she yelled at him. “You’re trying to kill me, that’s what you’re doing! You’ll make me stay here till we all get caught! But I won’t do it, d’ye hear? I’ll get out if I have to—” She started for the door again, so furious that she would have run out of Whitefriars and into the arms of the first constable who saw her.

He reached out a hand and caught her as she would have gone by, jerking her to him as easily as if she were one of the dolls bought at Bartholomew Fair. “Stop it, you little fool! You gabble like a magery prater! You’re not going out of the Friars —not while I’m here. When I’m gone, do what you damned please—but I didn’t give three hundred pound to get you out of Newgate so some other man could have the use of you!”

She stared at him with angry amazement, for she had always believed that he was in love with her; and it had long been her opinion that it was very easy for a woman to take advantage of a man in love. Now she realized that the only distinction he made between her and Bess was that she was newer and more ornamental and evidently pleased him better in bed. It was a sharp and humiliating cut to her pride, and all of a sudden she despised him.

When she answered him her voice was low and tense, full of enraged scorn. “Oh, you gormandizing vermin, Jack Mallard, I despise you! I hope you do get caught! I hope they hang you and cut you up in pieces—I hope—Oh!” She whirled about and flung herself on the bed, bursting into sobs, and in a moment she heard the door slam behind him.

She stayed in her room the rest of the day, refused any supper, and was still sulking the next morning when someone knocked. Thinking that it was probably Black Jack, coming with a gift to beg her pardon and try to make up the quarrel, she called out for him to come in. She was at the dressing-table, cleaning her nails, and did not glance around until she saw Bess’s face appear in the mirror. Then she turned swiftly.

“What are you doing here!”

Bess was unexpectedly sweet and agreeable. “I only came to wish you a good morning.” Amber thought she had most likely come to gloat because Black Jack had spent the night with her, and she turned away. But now Bess leaned over, close to her shoulder.

“I heard you and Jack yesterday afternoon—”

“Did you now!”

“If you really want to leave the Friars—if you’ll promise to go away and never come back—I can get that money for you.”

Amber jumped to her feet, one hand reaching out to grab Bess’s wrist. “If I’ll promise to go! My God! I’ll go so fast I’ll—Where is it?”

“It’s mine. I’ve saved it up to have if Black Jack should ever need it. Mother Red-Cap keeps it for me, but I can get it by tomorrow night. I’ll put it in the food-hutch in the kitchen.”

But the money was not there and when next Amber saw Bess she had a purple bruise across one eye, and the side of her face and her lower lip was swollen—obviously Black Jack had discovered their plot. After that Bess never troubled to conceal her hatred and jealousy and only a few days later Amber found the house-cat with turquoise-coloured feathers clinging to its jowls and paws. Bess insisted that she was completely innocent of any connection with the cat’s crime, but Amber had always kept her parakeet’s cage safely out of reach and knew the little bird could not have been caught without help from someone.

THOUGH SHE AT first intended to, Amber discovered it would not be possible to stay on bad terms with Black Jack forever. She depended on him for too much. And so—even if she continued to harbour her resentment against him—within four or five days after the quarrel they seemed as close as before.

She had declared to Mother Red-Cap and all of them that she would never venture her carcass again for so paltry a fee-twelve pounds was her share from the first night—but she soon did. For it was the only possible chance she had of ever getting out of the Friars. And in spite of the danger she enjoyed their escapades: playing at being a fine lady, venturing up into the City, even the excitement of running great risks.

For the most part their luck was as good as it had been the first night. It seemed that every young coxcomb in London was ready to believe a beautiful stranger had fallen in love with him at the play or in Hyde Park or the Mulberry Gardens, and was more than eager to help her cuckold her foolish old husband. Both Black Jack and Mother Red-Cap attributed much of their success to Amber’s own skill at portraying a fashionable woman. Bess, they said, had too often spoiled the whole scheme by being taken for a whore in disguise—which made the gentlemen wary, for it was well known that those ladies were frequently in league with a gang of bullies.

One of their most consistently successful tricks was the “buttock and twang”—a simpler form of what they had done the first night. Amber would go masked into a tavern, find her victim and lure him outside into some dark alley. When she had picked his pocket a cough or sneeze summoned Black Jack who would come staggering along and pretending to be drunk, knock him over, and make off with whatever she had stolen. Concealed by the darkness she would also disappear, join Black Jack, and return to Alsatia. A time or two she went “upon the question lay.” Dressed well, though discreetly, and carrying in her hand an empty bandbox she would go to some great house and pretend to be the ’Change-woman come with the ribbons my lady had bespoke the day before. While the maid was gone to see if the lady was awake she could put a few small valuable objects into her box and depart.

But Amber did not care for that kind of sport. She preferred to play the lady of quality herself and told them flatly this dodge was a trick better suited to Bess’s talents than her own.

Once Amber went into a house in Great Queen Street where a masquerade was in progress, and after a while she and one of the young men sought a quiet room. But as they were walking down a dark hallway she felt stealthy fingers at the nape of her neck and moved swiftly away. “You’re a thief!” she whispered, afraid to cry out for fear a constable actually would come. He protested and was about to run off when he discovered that the buttons on his coat had been cut. They both laughed, he admitted he had been mistaken in her too, and so they parted, to cast for other fish.

She had only one serious scare and that occurred the night she went to an upstairs-room in a tavern with their victim and found that Black Jack had not yet arrived. For more than half an hour she was capricious and teasing, holding him off; but at last he grew impatient, began to suspect what she was about and when he tried to pull off her mask she grabbed up a pewter candlestick and struck him with it. Then, not stopping for his sword or watch or even to see whether or not he was dead, she rushed out of the room, down the hallway and the stairs and was halfway through the tap-room when she heard a voice bellow: “Stop that woman! She’s a thief!” He had recovered consciousness and come after her.