They waited until it was dark, and while they waited Elizabeth insisted that they fashion her a crutch. Her dignity, which had been so under assault during the past week, would not allow her to be carried that last mile to the front door of her own home.
An hour after the sun set and it had gone full dark and there were no lights to be seen anywhere-no fires, no lanterns, no orange glow of pipes-the four of them emerged from the woods and covered the last mile back to Marlowe House.
Elizabeth had never in all the time she had lived there, as Mrs. Tin-ling and as the widow Tinling and as Mrs. Marlowe, been so happy to climb the steps of that porch and throw open the big front door.
She thanked the men for bearing her back home, asked them if there was anything more they might take back with them, but they said there was nothing they needed. She pressed one of Marlowe’s telescopes on them, instructed them to keep an eye on the house, and they promised they would. She might be gone for a while, she told them, but when either she or Marlowe was back they were to send someone for news.
They would be able to return to their homes, she assured them, to their former lives as free men and women under Marlowe’s protection.
The black men thanked her. They did not seem too certain.
For a full day she rested, let her ankle recover from its wrenching, let herself recover from her unwelcome sojourn into wilderness living. She watched from the window as Dunmore led his hunting party into the woods again, and then back out, with nothing that she could see by way of accomplishment.
They left Marlowe House unmolested. They did not even approach. Even in his absence, Thomas Marlowe’s reputation as a dangerous man threw a net of protection over his home, at least.
Around midnight she left Marlowe House. She had no notion of when she might return.
Nothing moved on Duke of Gloucester Street. At various irregular intervals buildings loomed up, square patches of black against the stars, inns and ordinaries, mostly, and taverns and a few shops and homes.
She looked down the length of the street. A light appeared, how far off it was impossible to tell, a yellowish, bobbing light. A lantern, carried no doubt by a man on horseback. The night watch, she imagined.
Elizabeth stepped into the side street that ran like a tributary off Duke of Gloucester, pressed herself against the high wooden fence that separated some private garden from the traffic. She stood silent, watching the light approach.
The rider went past on Duke of Gloucester Street, the light of his lantern illuminating his face from below. The night watch, on rounds. He looked bored, as well he might be on that uneventful night.
Once he was well past, Elizabeth stepped from the gate and hurried up the side street, past the back gates of private homes, past the blacksmith and the familiar brick wall surrounding the Burton Parish Church.
She turned again at the next corner and walked down that street, more of an alley, really, to where it joined with the streets bordering the long strip of village green. To her right, the church loomed high against the stars. To her left, and half a block distant, was the King’s Arms.
She stepped quickly up the street to the front door of the inn, looked up and down, saw nothing, and so stepped inside.
The King’s Arms was not the finest inn in Williamsburg, but neither was it some mean hovel. Across the wide front room, scattered with tables and chairs, was a huge fireplace, clean and unused in those summer months.
A couple of candles burned in sconces on the walls, providing light for any of the inn’s patrons that might come stumbling in at that late hour. They illuminated the place with a dull light and left deep shadows in the wake of the furniture. The ceiling was low and made up of heavy beams with wattle and daub between. The smell of pipes and roast beef and rum still hung in the air.
There was a desk in one corner, and on it an inkstand, paper, and a ledger that Elizabeth hoped would give her some idea of which room Billy Bird occupied, or indeed if he was still there.
She moved across the room and flipped the book open to the last written page, angling it so that the light of the candle fell across it. Names, rooms, receipts, all in neat columns. She squinted at the words, turned back a page, squinted again. There was Billy’s name and “Room Five” beside it and no amount yet received so she had to imagine that he had not yet left.
A footfall creaking on the floor and she froze, held her breath. Another, and the sound of a doorknob turning and she shut the book and stepped quickly back, finding the dark hall, stepping back and back into the shadows.
A door opened, another flickering light was added to the front room, and Elizabeth could see the proprietor in his nightshirt frowning and looking around. She pressed herself against the wall, silently pleading with the man to forgo making a complete tour of the premises.
What would that do for her reputation, to be found lurking around an inn at four o’clock in the morning? Whore. Whispers of Marlowe the cuckold. Would he believe her?
Then to Elizabeth ’s vast relief the proprietor shook his head and turned and went back the way he had come, satisfied that nothing was amiss. She closed her eyes and threw back her head and took several long and silent breaths, waited for the pounding of her heart to subside.
When at last it did she proceeded down the hall, the light from the front room reaching far enough that her now-accustomed eyes could see the numbers painted in white on the doors. One, two, three…
Four was the last on that floor and where five might have been there was instead a narrow staircase. Elizabeth climbed, slowly, easing her weight down on each tread to avoid creaking and avoid damaging her tender ankle. After what seemed a long time she came to the top of the stairs, the second floor, and there right across from her was a door with the bold number five.
She glanced down the hall, but it was dark and deserted, so she stepped across and paused at the door. She was not sure what to do, so she just stood for a moment and then gave the door the lightest of raps, not enough, she imagined, to wake Billy if he was asleep.
She listened, heard nothing from within, and then tapped again. Still nothing. She doubted that Billy had even heard her, but she did not dare knock louder. She shook her head, then felt for the latch on the door and slowly lifted it and swung the door inward.
A single candle on the washstand gutted in the last of its melted wax, but compared with the hall the room was brilliantly lit. A sleeping form lay under the cover of the bed, back to Elizabeth. She closed the door behind her, softly and slowly, then stepped across the floor. She put a hand on the shoulder, shook gently, whispered, “Billy? Billy?” She did not want to startle him. It was never a good idea to startle a man such as Billy Bird.
Then the figure rolled over-long, thick brown hair, a pretty young feminine face, pert, milky white breasts-looked up through half-closed eyes, and said, “Billy?”
Elizabeth jumped back in surprise. “Damn,” she said, and then from behind, the click of a flintlock and Billy’s voice saying, “One move and I shall blow you away.”
She froze, knowing that Billy was quite capable of doing so. The girl in the bed pulled the blanket up over her, recoiled, began to scream, but Billy said, “Silence!” and she bit off her cry.
“Let me see your hands.”
Elizabeth held her hands out from her side. She guessed that in the muted light Billy could see no more of her than a dark, hooded shape.
“Turn, slowly.”
She turned, saw Billy standing quite naked in the corner, the pistol held straight out. “That is not the only gun you have been fooling with tonight, I take it?” she said.
Billy stared for a moment, unmoving, and then the gun dropped to his side and he smiled and said, “Lizzy, dear, you are likely to get yourself killed, sneaking into a man’s room like that.”