Kathleen Winsor - Forever Amber

Amber had already reached the door and pulled it open. “Temple Bar!” she cried. “And quick!” She jumped in and slammed it shut, so glad to be safe inside that she scarcely noticed how it smelt.

He drove so fast and so recklessly that she could only try to keep her seat as the coach careened along. The wooden seat on which she sat was covered with a thin hard pad and the jarring and vibrating of the springless compartment shook her to the heels. At Temple Bar he stopped. Almost before the wheels had quit turning she was down and off on a run toward the Temple, for she had not a farthing with her.

“Hey!” he yelled furiously. “Come back here, you cheating drab!”

And then as she ran on, disappearing into the darkness, he climbed down and started after her. But at the sight of a party of gay and drunken students, he apparently decided it was not worth the risk of losing his coach-and-horses for a one-shilling fare. He got back up on his perch and started off again.

Amber ran down Middle Temple Lane and cut into the Pump Court. Many lights were still burning, there were sounds of music and singing and laughter, and people were going and coming everywhere. Her head was down, because she was now too tired to hold it up, and she ran headlong into a group of some half-dozen students, one of whom caught her in his arms.

“Hey, there, sweetheart!” he cried gaily. “Where’re you going in such haste!”

Amber did not answer him but began to struggle frantically, pounding at his chest with her fists, crying with exhaustion and terror. But the more she struggled the tighter he held her. And all the others had gathered around now, laughing and joking, thinking that perhaps they had caught a whore, since no respectable woman would be running about the streets at eleven o’clock in only a thin silk dress, and that torn and wet.

He bent her head back to kiss her and Amber felt them crowding closer and closer until such a terror swept over her she was close to fainting. Every one of them looked like a constable. At that moment she heard a familiar voice.

“Hey, just a minute! What’s going on here! I know this lady—Let her go, you varlets!” It was Michael Godfrey, whom Amber had not seen for more than four months.

Reluctantly the young man released her. Amber looked up at Michael with tears streaking down her scratched and dirt-stained face, but she did not speak to him. Giving a quick shove she broke free and started off, but he followed her. When he caught her they had reached a dark corner leading into Vine Court, away from the light of the torches.

“Mrs. Channell! For God’s sake, what’s the matter? What’s happened? It’s Michael—don’t you remember me?”

He grabbed hold of her arm and brought her to a stop but she jerked at him furiously, sobbing. “Let me go! Oh, damn you! Let me go or I’ll get caught!”

“Caught by who! What is it? Tell me!” He gave her a little shake for she was not looking at him but tugging to free herself, trying to pry his fingers loose from her wrist, wild and desperate.

“The constables, you fool! Let me go!”

He turned suddenly, dragging her after him, and entered a doorway, which he closed. Amber slumped against the wall.

“Where’s Black Jack?” he demanded.

“They’ve caught him. We were at Knightsbridge and the constables came—I got away but they’re coming after me—” She made a sudden lunge. “Let me go! I’ve got to get back!”

He grabbed her shoulders, thrusting her against the wall, and she felt his arms go about her. “You can’t go back there. Mother Red-Cap’ll send you out again, and someday you’ll get caught for sure. Come with me—” His mouth sought hers, his arms held her close, and Amber relaxed gratefully, so tired she could struggle no longer. He picked her up and started through the dark hallway toward the stairs.

THE THREE MEN, Black Jack and Jimmy the Mouth and Blueskin, were all hanged from the same arm of the three-cornered gallows, just ten days from the night they were taken. When the processes of justice worked at all it was with devastating swiftness; they left him no time to pay his way out. Bess was sent to Bridewell, the house-of-correction for female offenders, to improve her morals. Pall, who pleaded her belly, was sent to Newgate to await the birth of her child and probable transportation to Virginia.

At the time of the execution Amber was alone in Michael Godfrey’s rooms in Vine Court. Michael had gone to watch and when he came back he told her that all three men had been cut down and taken to lie at a tavern—where they might be viewed by mourners or whoever had a curiosity to look at them. All the corpses had been treated with respect and not, as often happened, carried through the streets and tossed about until mangled beyond recognition. Black Jack, he said, was very nonchalant to the end, and the last words of his farewell speech were: “Gentlemen, there’s nothing like a merry life—and a short one.”

But even then she could not believe it.

How could Black Jack Mallard be dead when she remembered him so well, everything he had done and said over the months she had known him? How could he be dead when he was so big, so powerful, so obstinately indestructible? She remembered his six feet five inches of male strength, hard-muscled and hard-fleshed, covered with wiry black hair that matted on his chest. She remembered the thunderous rumble of his laugh; his enormous capacity for wine—he had said that his nickname originated one night when he won a wager by drinking a blackjack of Burgundy without once putting down the vessel. She remembered a thousand things more.

And now he was dead.

She remembered how some of the men had wept at Chapel the day before they were to be executed. And, though she thought she had forgotten, she could, all too well, recall the expressions on their faces. She wondered how Black Jack had looked—and how she would have looked herself had she been sitting there beside him. She suffered agonies thinking of it. Whatever she was doing—enjoying her dinner, brushing her hair, leaning on the windowsill and laughing at the pranks of the young men down in the courtyard—the thought would come like the sudden shocking impact of a physical blow: I might not be here! I might be dead!

At night she would wake up, crying with terror and clutching at Michael. She had seen two of her cousins die, but this was the first time that any personal realization of death had come to her. She became very pious and repeated all the prayers she knew a dozen times a day.

But for the grace of God I’d not be here right now but in Hell, she would think, for she knew she had not been good enough to get into Heaven. Even before she had left Marygreen Uncle Matt had not thought it likely that Heaven was her destination. She believed in the existence of those two places with superstitious intensity, just as she believed that a hare was a witch in disguise, but the prospect of eternal damnation could not deter her from anything she really wanted to do.

For almost a month she did not once leave Michael Godfrey’s apartment of two rooms. He bought a second-hand suit of boy’s clothes for her to wear and she strutted about, swaggering, clacking her heels on the floor in imitation of the young fops she had seen in the streets, while he roared with laughter and told her that she was as good an actor as Edward Kynaston himself. She was supposed to be Tom, his nephew from the country, but none of his friends who visited them were very much fooled, though they all made a great jest of it and obligingly called her by that name.

He told her, however, that it would probably not be a great deal longer before her presence there became known and that when it did they would be forced to leave. But that threat did not trouble him for he seldom studied as it was and had no more interest in learning law than did most of the other young men whose fathers sent them to the Inns of Court. Now, more than ever, life was too distracting for a young man to give much time to books and lectures.

She told him her own name and the story of her misfortunes, though she omitted altogether Lord Carlton’s part in it and pretended that the baby had been gotten by her husband. Luke Channell’s name, since she had used it in Whitefriars, was no longer of any value to her and she made Michael promise to keep secret the fact that she had ever been married; she considered that that mistake was over and done and absolutely refused to think of Luke as her husband.

About a fortnight after Black Jack’s death Michael went down to Ram Alley to visit Mother Red-Cap and convince her that Mrs. Channell had gone from London and would never return. He went partly out of curiosity, to see what the old woman’s reaction to the recent events had been, and also because Amber begged him to get the imitation gold ear-rings she had left behind, telling him that her aunt had given them to her just before she had gone away. He brought them back, and some news as well.

“She’s satisfied you’re gone. I told her I’d had a letter from you and that you were back with your family and would never so much as think of London again.”

Amber laughed, taking a bite out of a big red apple. “Did she believe you?”

“She seemed to. She said that you should never have left the country in the first place—and that London was no place for a girl like you.”

“I’ll warrant she’s running distracted to have lost me. I made her a mighty good profit, let me tell you.”

“Sweetheart, Mother Red-Cap wouldn’t run distracted if she lost her own head. She’s got another girl she’s training to take your place—a pretty little wench she found somewhere who’s with child and unmarried and full of gratitude for the kind old lady who’s promised to help her out of her difficulties.”