By a Lady Read online

  “Th-thank you, sir,” C.J. stammered, groping for her best British accent. “I shall be all right in a moment or two.”

  “You suffered quite a dreadful panic, miss,” the good Samaritan said. “Will you allow us to fetch you anything?”

  “No, thank you, sir. You are too kind.”

  The Samaritan’s lady whispered something in his ear, to which the gentleman nodded and smiled. “Here you go, miss,” he said, drawing a silver flask from the deep pocket of his coat.

  “What is it?” C.J. asked hesitantly, inspecting the container.

  “Just a dram or two of brandy to set you on your feet all right.” The man offered the opened flask to C.J., who brushed her nostrils over the top, tentatively inhaling the spirits. The stinging aroma was so pungent it nearly made her eyes water.

  “It’s no trouble. Just take a big swallow,” the man encouraged. “It’ll set everything to rights. Go ahead now, dearie. There’s naught to fear; it’ll not harm you.”

  C.J. put the flask to her lips and took a huge swig of the alcohol. Not having anticipated its degree of potency, she coughed and spluttered as soon as it reached her tongue, practically releasing all of it into her gloved hand. “Holy—good God!” she exclaimed. The brandy was undoubtedly the strongest stuff she had ever ingested. What little she had actually swallowed seared her throat as it made its journey toward her innards. “Thank you, kind sir. And you too, madam,” she said hoarsely, managing a faint smile as she returned the silver flask to its owner.

  After insisting that C.J. demonstrate to them that she was steady enough on her feet to require no further assistance, the Samaritan couple bid her a happy Easter, leaving C.J. to continue the exploration of her new and strange surroundings.

  She continued to walk the length of Great Pulteney Street, her steps taking her to Sydney Place, at the apex of the road, just across from where the formal gardens began. Finding herself in front of number four, C.J. stopped and stared at its façade with the reverence of a pilgrim who has reached his destination. Recalling the research she’d done on Jane Austen before her By a Lady auditions, C.J. knew that the Austens had moved to this address sometime in 1801. The house seemed dark and still. Perhaps the novelist was still a guest of her aunt and uncle, the Leigh-Perrots, in the Paragon.

  Hoping for a glimpse of her idol, she decided to locate the town house at One Paragon, but realized she hadn’t the faintest idea where it was. C.J.’s memories of modern Bath provided a familiarity with some of the most famous locations and streets, but she could not remember ever having come across the Paragon, except in biographies of Jane Austen and Sarah Siddons. But by the time she reached the Royal Crescent, she was exhausted and equally unsuccessful in her attempts to find the Paragon, not even certain whether she was hunting for a street, a square, a close, or a crescent.

  It was dusk when she returned to the main square by the Abbey and the Pump Room. The lamplighters in their dun-colored coats and black knee-length breeches had begun the swift completion of their appointed rounds, their illuminations lending the night air a strangely pungent and unfamiliar odor. Here, now, in 1801, Bath was ahead of London in civil engineering. As the mecca for the ton, the influential Georgian glitterati, the spa city’s streets were fully paved and illuminated, and the sewers had all been placed underground, owing to the tremendous volume of pedestrian traffic in such a small area.

  C.J.’s feet felt brutalized after spending so many hours navigating unforgiving stone walkways in her fragile slippers. A stinging pain accompanied each subsequent step she assayed. Her back ached and she felt grimy and exhausted. If the opportunity had made itself known to her, she would have seriously considered bartering her body for a soft bed and a hot bath.

  By now the streets were quiet, save for the occasional rumble of a carriage. There was no open coffeehouse or shop in which to seek shelter, no bench on which to rest, and she had not realized until that moment just how hungry she was. C.J. reached into her reticule, half hoping again that some miracle of fate would have placed an English coin or two in the small drawstring purse so that she could purchase something to eat; but of course she found only the comb and handkerchief. She slid to the ground in the shadow of the Ionic colonnade by the Pump Room, wondering how—or if—or when—she might ever be able to return to her own century. It had been an extraordinary day trip, but the novelty was now wearing thin. She was tired, scared, and alone.

  Tightly wrapped in her coquelicot shawl, C.J. huddled against the base of the stone colonnade, the magnitude of her predicament resulting in a flood of hot and baleful tears. She was hungry. She was hopelessly broke. And she was homeless.

  Chapter Three

  In which an act of desperation leads to dire consequences resulting in a taste of English justice, whereupon our heroine is delivered into the hands of a crafty rescuer.

  C.J. WAS ABRUPTLY AWAKENED by the rustle of vendors wheeling all sizes and manner of carts into the square, laden to brimming with their several wares. She hadn’t the vaguest idea of the time. As she tried to stretch her knotted muscles, endeavoring to ignore the painful cramps that resulted from sleeping outdoors in a crumpled heap, she heard the church bell strike six times. Squealing pigs and squawking fowl joined the ecclesiastical tolling, creating a cacophonous choir.

  I must look a fright, C.J. thought as she rose and shook her legs, wincing at their soreness when she placed her feet solidly on the pavement beneath her. She limped over to Pelham’s Bookstore, hoping to view her reflection in the emporium’s convex window. Her makeup had worn off, and glancing about at the ribbon vendors and bakers, the milkmaids and flower sellers, she realized that perhaps it was for the best that she bore no traces of rouge and eyeliner. She managed a self-mocking snicker. Yeah, she blended.

  C.J. slid her tongue over her teeth. Her mouth felt as though it were filled with cotton, and she was sure her morning breath was foul. Using Pelham’s window as a looking glass, she removed the delicate linen handkerchief from her reticule and wiped the grime from her face, then took off her bonnet and availed herself of the little silver-backed tortoiseshell comb in an effort to make her hair as presentable as possible.

  Muscle spasms in her neck and shoulders shot slivers of pain into her temples. Not only had she slept all wrong, C.J. hadn’t eaten since the night before she’d left the twenty-first century. Her head throbbed from hunger as well as fatigue. This is a hell of a way to lose weight, she thought. In her lightheadedness, she was barely aware of taking an apple off of a heaping pile of fruit from a Stall Street cart. Turning to walk toward Cheap Street, she had all but finished devouring her meager breakfast when she heard a distinct cry of distress.

  “Stop, thief!” a man shouted. Barreling toward her was a husky costermonger in a coarse white apron worn directly over his shirtsleeves, which were shoved up past hairy, muscled forearms. Startled out of her confusion, C.J. realized that the apple seller was referring to her as the lightfingers. The coster’s accusation engendered a substantial commotion among the other purveyors, who immediately made a grand show of surveying their wares to ensure that they had not been pilfered as well.

  Although a small boy encouraged her to “run!” C.J. was too stunned to take off. Within moments, a shadow was thrown across her path and her upper arm was seized by one of the largest men she had ever seen. The blood drained from her face as she beheld with all the terror of a trapped hare an enormous brute menacing her with a truncheon.

  “Take her in, Constable,” the fruit seller cried. His fellow vendors joined the angry demand in a chorus of belligerent catcalls.

  Just as she had reacted on the previous afternoon when she had nearly been trampled into pudding by a coach-and-four, C.J. fought to find her voice, unable to either whisper or scream. Finally, she managed to ask how the man in mufti could possibly represent the strong arm of English common law.

  The constable laughed, showing irregular, worn-down stubs of tooth, some of which were sepia toned from toba
cco stains; others were black with decay. C.J. had forgotten how dreadful the state of dentistry was in Britain in those days. “Uniform?” the barrel-chested brute guffawed. “His Majesty’s officers need no uniforms to discharge our constabulary duties.” He puffed up with pride. “I’ll have you know, missy, I was one of the finest Robin Redbreasts in my youth; you’ve not come across some untrained country-parish idiot.”

  “Thank heavens!” C.J. replied, her irony lost on her accoster.

  “Name’s Silas Mawl. I was a Bow Street Runner before I decided to seek greener pastures. Yes, indeed, I was quite the sight in my scarlet waistcoat.” Constable Mawl laughed again, displaying his decrepit choppers.

  C.J. cast about helplessly, hoping some chivalrous soul or social reformer would come to her rescue. This was no pastoral fantasy, but rather an ordeal of frightening proportions, even for a nightmare. Mawl refused to relinquish his grip. “You’re bruising me, sir,” C.J. protested meekly, but she was greeted with a grin of remarkable self-satisfaction.

  “You’re lucky you didn’t get greedy and filch yourself a sackful of apples or you’d be looking at a hemp necklace for sure.”

  C.J. shuddered. Could she be hanged in England in 1801 for stealing a peck of apples? What then would the punishment be for taking only one piece of fruit? Shouldn’t she merit merely a stern admonishment not to repeat her thievery—or at the very worst, receive a slap on the wrist?

  “I’m very sorry I took the apple, Constable Mawl. I was hungry, and I had not eaten for nearly two days—”

  “Tell it to the magistrate,” Mawl gruffly replied. He softened momentarily when he noticed C.J.’s look of abject terror. “I’m only discharging my civic duties under the law, miss. Let’s move it along now.” The behemoth commenced to haul her across town, creating a public spectacle as well attended as any perambulation by the Pied Piper. Clearly, the constable was a well-known figure in the city, and the rough treatment of his prey was not only humiliating and painful, but proclaimed to all who witnessed C.J.’s predicament that she was a wrongdoer.

  The route they took was an oddly familiar one. When they reached the Guildhall, the enormous official-looking stone edifice that also housed the grand Banqueting Room in all its gilded Georgian splendor, C.J. remembered that the last time she had visited this building, it was as a curious twenty-first-century tourist, eager to soak up as much “period” atmosphere as possible. She had scarce dreamed that someday she would be presented with a far greater taste of eighteenth-century justice than she had ever expected.

  Once inside the Guildhall, Mawl led C.J. down several flights of steps whose surfaces progressed from marble to polished wood to limestone as they descended deeper into the bowels of the building.

  Mawl lifted a substantial iron key ring from a hook affixed to the stone wall beside the door and escorted the frightened apple filcher down another curving, narrow flight of steps. The gloomy corridor smelled of stale urine, and C.J. was compelled to steady herself by placing her right hand along the damp stone wall. As she realized that her right wrist was equally free, permitting her to maintain her balance as she descended the spiraling stairs, it occurred to her that she had not been placed in irons when she was apprehended, although Mawl’s demeanor—and his truncheon—left no guesswork as to what a thief’s reward might be should he or she try to bolt. Perhaps, C.J. surmised, her own diminutive stature gave him little reason to imagine that she might be foolish enough to attempt escape.

  The jail appeared to be quite an informal arrangement. Four cramped and airless cells, perhaps only six or eight feet across in either direction, were arranged opposite one another like figures in a country dance. The atmosphere, however, was anything but convivial. C.J. was nearly overpowered by the odor of human waste; her hand flew to her mouth to stifle her gag reflex.

  The narrow, matted straw pallets that took up roughly half the floor space of each cell appeared to serve as both bed and bathroom. There was no evidence of a washbasin or bowl. Indeed, the only water to be seen was a puddle of rusty seepage in one corner of the divided room.

  Maintaining his unyielding grip on the upper portion of C.J.’s left arm, Constable Mawl selected another skeleton key from the large iron ring and inserted it into a flat padlock, unlocking one of the cells, then thrust his young prisoner into the tiny room. “Your quarters, your ladyship,” he grinned mockingly. “You won’t find any apples down here, but if it’s hungry you are, you’ll be fed soon enough.”

  She bit her upper lip. “How long will I be here?” she asked the constable.

  Mawl released a sardonic cackle, which gave C.J. no hint of optimism. “Why, you’re a lucky girl, you are, miss.”

  “I? Lucky?”

  “Assizes tomorrow. The circuit judge is on the bench this week, missy. If you was to be filching apples next Monday, you’d be our guest here until he came riding back to Bath.”

  “And when might that have been?” C.J. questioned.

  “Half a year. Maybe more. Maybe less. If you’re acquitted—which you won’t be, as they’ve got more witnesses than spectators at a cockfight to testify against you—you’ll be released on your own re-cogni-zance. If you’re convicted and sentenced, you might consider making yourself comfortable down here.”

  “For stealing an apple? One apple?” C.J. asked, appalled.

  “Thievery’s against the law. There’s those been hanged for not much more.”

  C.J.’s hand flew reflexively to her throat.

  “Jack Clapham will be bringing you your dinner tonight, missy,” he said, leaving her alone. “On behalf of His Majesty, I hope you enjoy it.”

  C.J. slumped down, hugging her knees to her chest so that she might put as little of her person as possible in contact with the cold and slimy slate. It was impossible to tell the time of day as there were no sconces on the walls to hold torches or candles, and there was certainly no window. Once night fell, it would be dark indeed. This realization was father to another set of fears. As if her dread of whatever germs or diseases might lurk in the fetid dungeon wasn’t enough to occupy her thoughts, C.J. shuddered at the contemplation of the other living things that no doubt infested her new lodgings—none with fewer than four legs—and all of them more accustomed to calling her new surroundings home.

  She longed for the creature comforts of her own world: a nourishing meal, her own bed—however lonely—and the safety and security of knowing what the next day would bring. She would no longer rage against the fickle vagaries of her chosen career, nor become impatient when her dial-up connection wasn’t fast enough or her computer took forever to reboot.

  That evening a hunchbacked twig of a man entered the cellar with a rotting wicker hamper. He appeared to be well into his sixties, and his small paunch, combined with the hump, lent him the appearance of a wizened camel. His cheeks and chin were stippled with a coarse red and gray stubble. “Silas said you were a fine one,” he uttered through a harelip. He opened his basket and removed an earthenware jug. “Supper time!” he announced. Clapham poured the thin beige gruel into a rough-hewn trough and regarded C.J. with amusement. “Silas said you were a hungry little lightfingers.” He turned up his nose, as if to scoff at her. “Well, never let it be said that Jack Clapham didn’t look after his guests.”

  The rancid odor of the unappetizing fare caused C.J. to gag, her gullet already prepared to reject it. If she threw up, she’d have to sit there in her own vomit; if she managed to digest it, she’d be expelling it sooner or later, with nothing but the straw mat for a toilet. But hunger had already felled her, and her stomach was crying out for sustenance, however meager, however mean.

  C.J. passed a sleepless night, listening anxiously to the squealing and scuttling of rats as they scurried about the cellar in search of food. She prayed that none would come near her and feared falling asleep, afraid the rodents would find her a worthy appetizer.

  She assumed it was morning only when the solid door to the cellar was thrust open and
Clapham entered bearing a pair of leg irons. C.J. blanched and the skin on her arms pebbled from fear. Surely the ancient turnkey did not mean to bring her in chains before the magistrate. If her memory served, the American system of justice derived from English common law. Could such barbarism exist for the theft of a single piece of fruit? Irons? She had not even been handcuffed when she was apprehended.

  A new terror now overtook C.J. In an age when the sight of a woman’s ankle was reputed to cause a calamity, she hoped against hope that the jailer would have too much propriety to lift her skirts in order to affix the leg shackles. But already as good as convicted, prisoners were apparently accorded no such decency, she soon learned, as Clapham knelt and roughly slipped his hands under her gown. C.J. flinched at his touch.

  Perhaps it should not have surprised her that the jailer took every advantage of his opportunity to explore her anatomy. His gnarled hands closed around C.J.’s ankles as he applied the heavy cuffs, his palms slid upward and kneaded her calves. She was sickened by his touch. When she attempted to pull away, she was astonished at the weight of the irons, and found herself as much a prisoner of the shackles as she was of the roving miscreants that trembled as they inexpertly plied the stockinged flesh beneath them.

  After fastening the shackles, Clapham proffered his palm to C.J., who looked at it uncomprehendingly. “Don’t tell me you’ve got no money, miss,” he said in evident disbelief.

  “I’ve got no money, sir. If I’d had any, I would not have needed to avail myself of that apple.”

  “No need to get bold in your breeches with me, young miss. Now, how do you expect to pay my fee for turning the key for ye?”

  “I have to pay you for letting me out of prison?” C.J. replied, nonplussed by the entirely alien concept. “I’m not even free.”

  The jailer cocked his head. “How do you expect a man to earn an honest living, missy? I’m no elected official. It’s garnish that puts bread on my table and clothes on my back,” he said, drawing attention to his misshapen anatomy. Clapham ran a wrinkled hand through his stringy white hair. “But then, I must be going daft in me dotage—expecting a thief to understand a thing about honesty!”