The Innkeeper's Daughter Page 16

  There was nothing to be done for it, then. He advanced, guiding her behind him with one arm, hopefully to safety. “The lady asked you a question, gentlemen. What is this all about?”

  The man on his left swung behind him, wrenching his arms behind his back. Shackles bit into the bones of his wrists. Johanna’s cry stabbed his heart.

  “Stop it!” She skirted them all then whirled to face them, the silhouette of an avenging angel the way the sun blazed in from outside.

  A shove to the small of his back pushed him forward. “Move along!”

  “Step aside, miss.” One of the men by the door reached toward her.

  A roar ripped from his throat. “Leave her! You asked for me, and so you’ve found me.”

  Johanna arched away from the man’s grasp. “Mr. Morton is a guest here. You have no right! Where are you taking him?”

  The man swiped for her again. “As I said, miss, step aside, or we’ll take you in as an accomplice.”

  She dashed just beyond his fingers, a cloud of dirt and questions in her wake. “For what?”

  “Treason.”

  Alex’s heart quit beating. It was bad enough that Ford wouldn’t be able to get him out of this.

  But worse was the disillusion bleeding from Johanna’s gaze as he was led off.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Sun burned Johanna’s cheeks as she set the pony cart’s brake and alighted in front of Tanny Needler’s shack. Even so, she shivered from a cold gust driving in from the Channel behind it. Must the weather be as contradictory as she felt, as what she was about to do? As the hundred swirling thoughts about Alexander Morton that wouldn’t leave her alone? Clearly the man was capable of many things. Compassion. Strength. Looking entirely too handsome in a tailored suit. But treason?

  She could not reconcile the indictment with the man, no matter how hard she tried—and she’d tried the entire journey out to Tanny Needler’s Hemp and Oakum.

  She reset her skewed bonnet, tired of the mystery and exhausted from the swing of emotions Alexander created in her. For a moment, her gaze followed the circling route of a seagull, screeching overhead. Her own collection of screeches welled in her throat. She hated what was to come, hated even more that there was no escaping it. Were she to look in a mirror, surely she’d see the same wild blaze she’d seen in Alexander’s eyes as he’d been led off in shackles.

  The gull dove, disappearing behind the carcass of wood and nail that made up Tanny’s shack. So be it. She shoved down all her misgivings and advanced on a path of gravel and broken shells. Coils of rope, barrels, pallets—some whole, others in pieces—littered the yard. The closer she drew, the stronger the stink of tar and washed-up seaweed. She tried not to breathe, not to think, to simply do what must be done. With a whispered prayer for forgiveness, she rested her palm on a door she vowed she’d never again touch, then shoved it open. She crossed the threshold before she could change her mind.

  “Awk! Hands on deck! Hands on deck!” A birdcage swayed in the front window, the hook-nosed parrot inside hopping from one branch to another as he squawked.

  Ahead, a grey shape turned from behind a counter. How could a man she’d not seen in half a decade look exactly the same? Though truly, she should not expect any different. Other than the covering of skin upon bone, Tanny Needler’s appearance would not change were his corpse uncovered ten years after his death.

  She shuddered. What a horrid thought.

  Deep-set eyes stared her down, nearly lost in the shadows of the sockets were it not for a wet glisten at the corner of each.

  “Well, well.” Tanny’s voice crawled up his Adam’s apple, over his teeth and past his lips, all the gruffer for the effort. “Look what the tide washed in. Haven’t seen the likes of you for what … five? Six years now? Din’t think I’d live to see this day.” He nodded, a colorless cap atop his skull sliding back and forth with the movement. “Missed ol’ Tanny, have ye? They always do. They always come back.”

  She stopped midcenter of the small room, clutching her hands in front of her. “I am not sure of whom you speak, sir.”

  “Oh? It’s sir, now, is it? I likes that. I likes that real well. Learned you some manners, eh?” He slipped out from behind the counter and circled her, his joints cracking with each step. “Filled out a bit too, I’d say.”

  “Awk! Filled out!” the wretched parrot repeated. “Filled out!”

  Johanna stiffened, enduring the observation. Barely.

  Tanny stopped in front of her, close enough that the odor of the fish he’d eaten for breakfast fouled the air she breathed.

  “You know the routine, girl.” The widening of his stance was a mandate.

  She bit the inside of her cheek so hard, the salty taste of blood filled her mouth. That pain was nothing, however, compared to the full weight of understanding beating her down.

  Tanny hadn’t changed at all.

  Slowly, she lowered to her knees in front of him. He held out his hand. Beneath translucent skin, veins crisscrossed like worms unearthed by a spring rain, the gangling mess looking as if that was all that held his bones together. Not that she didn’t know this was coming, but still … she’d rather kiss a thousand worms than rest her lips on that cold flesh.

  “I’m waiting.” A sneer coloured his voice.

  She bent and touched her mouth to the back of his hand.

  “Oh, that’s good. That’s very good.” Tanny’s laughter filled the room, violating her in ways that ached in her teeth.

  Recoiling, she fisted her hands at her side to keep from wiping her lips. She’d done that once. The scar behind her ear burned white hot with the memory.

  Tanny laughed all the way back to the counter, taking his creaking skeleton with him. “What is it you want, girl?”

  “Your Grace.” She clipped out the words in even measure. Better to focus on steadying her voice than on the anger throbbing in her temples. She lifted her face, but not her body. To stand before he allowed would merely earn her another scar. “I have come here to do business. I heard Diggery is laid up and perchance you might need a replacement.”

  “That’s right.” He paged through an overlarge ledger while she waited. And waited. Outside, waves crashed. Inside, the parrot’s claws scratched. Johanna held her position, regardless of the way the hard floorboards ground into her knees. This was a power game, nothing more.

  But this time she’d win.

  Eventually, Tanny slammed shut the book and looked up. “I might be able to take you on, depending.”

  “Dependent upon what?”

  Leaning sideways, he reached for a switch of briars hanging from a hook.

  “Your Grace,” she amended quickly. “Dependent upon what, Your Grace?”

  “Awk! Your Grace! King of the land! King of the land!”

  Tanny tapped the switch on the countertop in time to the parrot’s squawks. “Things didn’t go so well last time you were under my employ.”

  She clenched her hands in front of her. “No, Your Grace. They did not.”

  “You can’t expect to frequent a gaol yard, girl, and not take on a pinch or two.”

  The unfairness of it all stole her breath, leaving behind a sore throat. “About that … I was wondering, Your Grace, if you might have a different task for me this time. I’ve become proficient in figures. I thought maybe I might help you with your ledgers? That would free you to make the delivery.” The switch slapped the countertop, loud and sharp. “No one looks at my ledgers, especially not a snippet of a surly wench like you.”

  She shrank as he rounded the counter, switch in hand. Oh, God. Oh, please. Why had she come here? Stupid, stupid idea. She averted her gaze to the warped floorboards. Hopefully a bowed head might appease him until she could escape.

  His scuffed boots stopped in her circle of vision, the switch dangling next to them. She held her breath. Surely he would’ve struck by now if he were going to. Maybe he had softened, leastwise a little. Slowly, her muscles started to unc
lench.

  “Awk! Surly! Awk! Wench!”

  The parrot’s voice struck at the same time the switch stung the tender skin between bonnet and collar. Once. Twice. She held back a whimper. To do so would only encourage a frenzy of strikes.

  Thrice.

  She gritted her teeth. She’d been wrong. Terribly wrong. Tanny had changed—and in the worst possible way.

  “Aah. I’ve missed this, I have. Flogging’s been a might scarce since you left.” The switch lowered to the side of his boots once again, where she was forced to look upon the wicked barbs up close.

  But better that than to gaze up into the black pits of his eyes.

  Tanny spit again, the splotch landing next to her skirt and splashing up a dark spray. “It’s delivery or nothing, girl, for three weeks. Be here at sunup. Bring a load of tarred oakum to the gaol, reload with the cleaned, then bring it back here, same as always. Pays a penny pound. Take it or leave it.”

  “Awk! Take it! Awk! Leave it!” The parrot’s voice pecked at her back.

  She stared at the switch. Three weeks. Only three. Her shoulders drooped, along with her spirit. Three would feel an eternity. She’d hoped for a larger wage, but what choice did she have? If they lost the inn—if she lost the inn—what of Mam and Thomas? The workhouse was worse than delivering oakum.

  She drew in a deep breath. “I’ll take it, Your Grace.”

  “Knew you would. Like I said, they always do.” His empty hand shot out.

  This time she barely felt his skin beneath her lips, for it was nothing compared to the chill settling in her soul.

  The wagon lurched to a stop, the movement snapping Alex’s head and releasing a fresh, warm trickle down his temple. He bit back a wince—and a smirk. Fitting that they’d pulled up in front of the black bones of a scaffold. Ford’s words replayed with stark clarity …

  “If this operation fails, I shall refute any knowledge of this conversation, to the point of watching you swing from a gibbet.”

  His throat tightened. Perhaps instead of the mantle of the law, the magistrate ought don the robes of a prophet.

  “Move!”

  A boot to his back jerked him forward. Flanked by two men, Alex edged himself toward the open gate at the back of the wagon, where two more men stood, all wearing scowls and angry, red bruises—except for the fellow on the right. A deep gash bloodied his lip, and the lump on his nose promised to grow into magnificent proportion.

  Alex glowered at the men, but inside his heart, he smiled. Truly, he ought not take such satisfaction in the ripped fabric and flesh he’d caused. Wicked? Likely. But not as wicked as the sharp pain cutting from foot to knee when his feet hit the ground. Aah, but that had been some escape attempt. Five to one normally wasn’t a problem, but with his arms shackled behind him, it had been an unfair disadvantage. Still, he’d given it a champion try.

  Too bad he’d failed.

  Standing this close to the Market Place Gaol, he recanted of ever having thought the Blue Hedge Inn a run-down hovel. Sunshine soaked the building’s bricks, but the life had been drained from them long ago. If not for the blanket of soot wrapped tightly around the place, the walls would lie down and die, buried beneath the weight of guilt and age. Windows were barred in uneven rows, and the roof curved earthward, like an eyelid shutting for eternity. This was no gaol. It was a pox. A leper’s spot. A gangrenous limb of justice that should have been cut off long ago.

  “I said move!”

  A shove between his shoulder blades thrust him forward. Each step up to the scarred front door shot a new agony through his ribs. One was broken for sure. Hopefully, only one. But that wasn’t the only thing cracked. For the entire ride, he’d tried to piece together the fragmented logic of hauling a supposed traitor away from Dover castle—where one accused of sedition would face a military tribunal—and instead depositing him here, at a municipal gaol. Clearly, someone wanted him out of the way for a while. But who?

  And why?

  The prison swallowed them all in a gulp—him, the four men, light, air, all that was good and true. The stench of death and despair punched him in the gut. In truth, though, losing his breakfast on the shoes of the brutes beside him would be gratifying. Aah, yes. He was wicked, indeed.

  Lord, forgive me.

  They entered a vestibule the size of a large crypt, which opened into a small, circular room. Farthest from them stood a tall desk, marred with nicks and blackened in splotches by the blood of frantic prisoners. It sat like a sentinel in front of a stairwell leading up into darkness. At either side were two doors. One would be the home of hapless debtors or vagrants, snared into working their way to freedom. The other—oh, that it may be so—the one he’d go through. The door to a holding room for prisoners able to pay their way out of humiliation.

  “This the man?” The turnkey’s voice boomed from behind the desk. He was perched on a stool, unless the man was of freakish stature. Surely the fellow had been born with a nose, but only two slits remained. His left eye slid halfway down his cheek, and no wonder his voice boomed. He could not close his mouth, for one lip was gone. Completely. Either the fellow had taken a devastating fall from a horse and landed on his face, or he’d been shot in the head with a blunderbuss at close range.

  The brute to Alex’s right answered the man. “Aye. He’s the one.”

  The turnkey’s gaze studied one guard after another, his good eye widening as it travelled from bruise to cut. Finally, it rested on Alex. “Bit of a troubler, are ye?”

  Alex’s lips parted, but a strike from behind drove him to his knees, knocking the air from his lungs. Sucking in a sharp breath, he fought against pain and doubled vision.

  “Not anymore.” The brute chuckled at his own joke.

  “Right, then take him up.”

  A yank to his collar nearly choked him. Half-stumbling, half-dragged, he was propelled forward, bypassing the door of hope. Before he fully rounded the backside of the desk, he twisted and launched forward, planting his body against the blemished mahogany. His blood added to the stains left behind by countless men before him. “Wait! Who brings charges against me, and what of the registry? Or the garnish? I can pay, and pay well.”

  “Oh? Regular jailbait, are ye?” The turnkey leaned sideways, tipping his stool onto two legs. From this angle, his body appeared whole—and wholly knotted with muscles. “But there ain’t nothin’ regular ’bout this, guvnor. Take him up, boys.”

  “No! I demand a—”

  A cuff to his head knocked him away from the desk, and he staggered like a sailor on leave.

  The turnkey laughed, long and throaty. “Save yer demands for yer new playmates. Like as not they’ll be interested. Real interested, and that’s a promise.”

  The men closed in on him, herding him around the desk and up into the blackness of the stairwell. Nothing was right about this. No writ served. No documentation of his stay. Only a verbal charge, but from whom? He could rot here, die here, and the only one who would know would be his nameless accuser, the thugs that led him upward, a turnkey who’d never once spoken his name … and Johanna.

  He gritted his teeth. Merciful heavens. What she must think of him.

  There were eighteen treads up. Add that to the twenty from front door to desk, and give or take nine from desk to stairwell. Fifty. Just fifty paces to freedom. He’d hold on to that number like a beacon, lighting some kind of scheme to break free.

  The stairs opened into an antechamber hardly bigger than a wardrobe. Again, two doors punctuated the walls on either side. Thick ones. Pocked with nail-heads and reinforced with iron bands. Women’s weeping and hysterical cries leached out from the door on the left. The man with a ring of keys opened the one on the right. The stink of sweat and urine poured out, barely doused by an afterthought of vinegar.

  “In you go.” Another jab to the back hurled him forward.

  He wedged himself against the doorjamb. “For God’s sake, take off the shackles.”

  “God
don’t live here.”

  He landed flat on his face, pain riding roughshod along every nerve. The lock clicked behind him. Darkness extended a calling card, one he pushed away. He staggered to his feet and retreated toward a wall, refusing to be circled like a carcass on the side of the road. Near the ceiling, sickly light crept down from barred windows, so thin and ruined, they reminded him of the turnkey’s nose. In the shadows, ten pairs of eyes raked him over, measuring, judging, cataloging his weaknesses, assessing his strengths. Some of the prisoners were gaunt, marking them as longtime residents. Others were wiry, built of sinew and possibly madness, for their breathing sounded beastlike. And one of them truly was a beast. All thick and hairy. Only half the men posed any real threat—but a very real one at that. These were convicted felons.

  What was one more murder to their credit?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Stop! You’re killing me!”

  Lucius Nutbrown cried out as he flailed for a moment, taking his puppet on a wild ride, then righted himself from a near-slip on the gravel. He jerked his puppet to within inches of his face and eyed the little whiner.

  “I’ve had enough of your grumbling, sir,” he shouted at Nixie. As much as he hated to stifle his friend, he really had had enough. He opened his great coat and stuffed him inside. “You’ll ride it out there, my friend.”

  He’d also had enough of this horrendous trek up a barely discernable path in the darkness before dawn. Even so, he continued to pick his way, step by step, along the crushed rock trail, glad it was fashioned from the white stone of the cliffs and not the darker flint of the shoreline. Curious choice of venue. Strange time for a business meeting as well. Mr. Charlie and Mr. Blackjack certainly conducted an interesting operation. Their last meeting, two days ago, had taken place on a Saturday afternoon up near Deal, and he still wore the blisters on the back of his heel to prove it. Maybe it was a good thing Miss Langley had declined that one.

  Twenty paces to his right, far below, surf crashed against rock, covering up the sound of his footsteps. The path was narrow, but at least it wasn’t on the edge of the drop-off. Small miracles did happen sometimes—leastwise that’s what his mother had always said. But not big ones. Never big ones. He knew that for a fact.