"Hah! No, Tony brought me, whoever else? He brought me with a sack of sovereigns, and dealt with Dr. Marigold himself, I guess. Sir Arthur made him swear he would be secret with my whereabouts, and Tony is a man I'd gladly trust, would you? What other steward, I wonder, would have found it such a place and not insisted that he test the bed with me? Or not gone back to his master and said I was a whore again?" She caught the look that slipped across his face. "Will." She said it earnestly, like a solemn child. "Will, since I've come here, I..."
She stopped, thinking of Wimbarton and all the things she'd had to do with him. She wondered if Will knew, or guessed, and if he'd think it shameful in her, or just a shame. She dropped on to her knees in front of him, and put her arms around his legs, then laid her head upon his thighs. Ten minutes later they were almost naked, Deb in a fine lawn shift, Will in his shirt, when a man opened the door they had not bolted, and entered with a long-nosed pistol. Deb, who knew she'd seen an apparition, locked in fright and could not scream, but croaked. When Will turned, he was looking down the barrel of the gun. It was held by Marcus Dennett.
There were men abroad for William in the London streets this night, but the mountebank had not been one of them. His target was Deborah, as it had been for a long and weary time, since indeed, he had struck Milady with a cudgel in the face and been shot for it. The ball had caught him at the join of neck and shoulder, and was still inside him somewhere, for it certainly had not come out that he knew of. It must have glanced a bone on going in, considering the pain was so severe and he had bled a deal, but since recovering he'd had no pain. Sometimes, absent-mindedly, he checked his stools, but so far had found no lead.
In the chaos and confusion after the firing he could have got away with Deborah, a matter that he cursed himself for rather often. But truth to tell he had been badly hurt, and for near an hour afterwards could hardly stand, or talk. Wimbarton had proved himself a man of steel exceeding quickly, and his men had cleared the women out, beating a few to make them hold their tongues about the episode. Milady, when the smoke had cleared, was gone, and Marcus Dennett never saw her on earth again. In later days he feared to go near the Wimbarton estate or household, but he heard that she'd been buried and he wondered how she'd died. The steward Jeremiah, who had conveyed him twenty miles away hand-tied to a horse when he was fit enough to jog, had told him very plainly that he would hang if he was found in the vicinity again, there was a murder warrant out. He should count himself lucky, the ex-soldier added, that Mr. Wimbarton had not ordered him to kill him on the spot, which he would have much preferred to do. Then Dennett, penniless despite all he had done for the good magistrate, was cut from off the horse, kicked in the injured shoulder for good measure, and told that he was free to go and starve.
Without a pretty maid to earn his bread for him, without his wagon home for sleep and shelter, without even a pack of cards to gull the stupid, Dennett fell to brooding and self-pity. He quickly decided that Deborah was to blame for all misfortunes, and further, that she had plotted it beforehand, she had had a scheme. The first long night, freezing in a shallow cave scraped in a rain-soaked banking, furious with hunger, he convinced himself that she would soon become a courtesan to some very wealthy man, she would soon have money of her own, in cart loads So that was two people had cheated him out of what was rightly his. The difference was that Wimbarton was powerful and dangerous, and Deb a silly little whore. The thoughts of what he'd do to her gave him a meaning and a purpose back again.
It had been a hard time though, even for a man as strong and single-minded as the mountebank. When he'd risen in the morning to steal his breakfast he had been almost savaged by a farmer's dogs, in the middle of that day he'd dined on hard bread thrown out by an innkeeper's wife for her pig, and he'd laid his head at nightfall in a draughty barn with only rats for company. As things got worse his determination that Deb should pay grew stronger. On the third day he was back in Wimbarton's area, building a shelter in the woods where Sam and Will had come across him first, and at nights began to rob food from lonely cottages that he'd noted long before as dog-free and owned by the old and vulnerable. He frequented roadside alehouses much like a wraith, and heard quite soon that Deb somehow had ended at the local baronet's, but then back with the justice of the peace. The rumour mill came up with several reasons, which rendered down in Dennett's mind to this: she was a concubine, possibly a shared one, and the men who used her were both exceeding rich. His maid, his money, his chance to lead a full and happy life. And then he learned she'd disappeared one day, gone northwards, and the steward who had took her had returned alone. To the north was London, there was no other place, it was obvious. Deb was a whore and whores would gravitate, that was their nature, it could not be changed. Whatever else men knew London for, they knew it for its whores.
He did not relish London, Marcus Dennett, because in parts of it he was known for things he'd done before, well known but not well looked on. Inevitably, these were the parts where Deb would be indeed he guessed that Dr. Marigold's, from whence he'd torn her off the night poor Cec had died, might be the very place he'd find her and the chance was high he could be taken by the law, or shot like a dog. He had no doubts, though, that he would hunt her down and claim her, and little fear. He was secret, good, and fast, and if she were to be at Marigold's, he already knew the ground. He heard the news she'd gone at a public house one night, and by two days later he had burgled his way into a store of cash not big, but adequate and tried to steal a horse from the stable of a coaching inn six miles up the high road. He'd failed in that, but got a pistol from a drunken groom, and a good thick coat, for winter was starting to chase off the autumn with a vengeance. For the rest of it he'd walked, and hidden in the day times and asked questions clandestinely when he'd got to town. It had cost him dearly to get into Marigold's this time, but he'd opened up Deb's door with utter confidence. Until he'd seen her face above a shoulder, and a naked bum.
For a long and aching moment, Will Bentley looked at the gaping barrel, bereft of speech. His head was cocked round across his shoulder, and underneath him Deb was rigid as a plank. She was making a noise, a sort of mewing, which he realised was the sound of shock. He could not believe it, either, because the man there was the mountebank, and the mountebank was dead.
"Then Christ," said Dennett, voice firm and confident, and not without amusement. "Young Deborah is the queen of harlots, and she's got a paying guest! Continue, sir, continue. You can give the fee to me!"
Beneath Will, Deb began to squirm, and he heard a roar of anger rising in her chest. He moved his hand to stop it at her mouth and dropped his head to mutter urgently into her ear. "He does not remember me. Be silent and he may not shoot." It occurred to him that Dennett could only really see his arse, but he made no move to cover it.
"This is mortal rude in you," he said. "Sir, this is not a harlot's bedroom, but is fairly rented. Dr. Marigold will hold you guilty for this work. His men go armed, you know."
Dennett had closed the door when he'd come in, but deftly leaned back and slid the bolt across.
"She is a harlot and she's mine," he said. "You may finish what you came for, sir, then instead of payment you may walk outdoors with us and I will take your horse. Am I not generous? She is a runaway and will be soundly beaten, but in the meantime Ah, that is the way, Deb, wriggle about a bit, it's what these gentles like!"
Deb's fear had turned to fury, mixed with shame. Underneath Will she writhed and arched, however hard he tried to keep her down in safety. One leg got free and lashed across the bedside, missing Dennett's pistol by a hair's-breadth. This enraged him, and from treating it as some sort of bedlam lark, he let out a savage snarl. He lunged towards the bed, grabbing for Deb's ankle, the pistol in his right hand held above his head. Deb, touched but not caught, rolled herself convulsively away from him, displacing Will from off her, exposing herself quite naked from where her shift was pulled up to the waist. The mountebank, ignoring Will entirely, then leapt for her throat, bringing his gun hand down to clout her across the cheek and temple. As his hand came back for another blow, Will seized his wrist from behind, to be dragged across both Deborah and the mountebank by the unexpected strength with which he twisted his whole body round to face the new attack. Milady's wound almost unmanned him then, for as he jerked his arm to bring the gun to bear on William, he let out a sharp cry of agony, and his face drained white.