Helen Dickson - The Earl and the Pickpocket

Hearing heavy footfalls on the stairway, she got up and lit her one remaining precious candle—the rats had made a meal of the rest—watching as the meagre yellow flame cast a soft glow around the cheerless room. She started when the door burst open to admit Jack. A man of medium height, thickset and with heavy features, he wore a tall, battered black hat, and the crow’s feather stuck into its brim hung limp like the tattered lace at his wrists. His stained dark-green velveteen coat, which strained across his bulky shoulders, had seen better days.

‘So here you are, Ed,’ he muttered. Pulling out a chair, he sat down, stretching out his legs, his thick calves encased in wrinkled, dirty grey stockings. Placing his hat on the table, he combed his sparse brown hair over his shiny skull, and his deep-set black eyes under bushy brows had a hard glitter when they fastened on her. ‘Wondered where you’d got to. It’s been a bad day,’ he growled in a deep voice. ‘Hope you’ve got more for me than the other lads—a fine watch, perhaps, or a jewelled snuff box…a pretty fan, even, or a lady’s purse.’

‘No, nothing like that today…but I do have a couple of lace handkerchiefs—and some money.’

Jack’s face jerked sideways and his small black eyes fixed her with an investigative stare. It was the quick, sharp movement of an animal watching its prey. ‘Money, you say! How much?’

‘Five guineas—and there will be more if we help the man who gave them to me to find a boy he’s looking for.’

Jack’s heavy brow creased in a frown. ‘Boy? What boy?’

‘His name’s Toby.’ Edwina gave him a full description of the boy as Adam had given it.

Interest gleamed in Jack’s eyes. ‘Who is this man? What’s his name?’

She shrugged. ‘Adam. That’s all I know.’

‘How much will he give for the boy?’

‘He didn’t say—only that he would be generous.’

Jack considered this and nodded. ‘I’ll ask around. Is this man trustworthy?’

‘Yes, I’m sure of it. He—he’s nice.’ Taking her courage in both hands, she said, ‘After this I will make my own way, Jack. I told you from the start that when I have enough money I will go to France to look for my mother’s people.’

This didn’t suit Jack at all. ‘So, you’re scheming and plotting to run away from me, are you, Ed?’ he thundered.

‘No. I’m being straight with you. I don’t want to do it any more,’ she said in a rush, before her courage failed her.

‘Not do it?’ Jack echoed incredulously, jerking his body in the chair. ‘After I went to the trouble of teaching you all you know? Not do it?’

Edwina shook her head, gulping down her fear of him. ‘I’ve thought about it a lot, Jack. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful—but I want to stop. I don’t want to go on stealing.’

Jack was watching her closely through narrowed eyes. He had dozens of boys working for him. He was their absolute master and he demanded loyalty. They had to steal when he bade them, or be hanged for refusing after Jack informed them on about some former crime. He would also reap the forty pounds’ reward the government offered for anyone providing evidence that would convict a thief.

Ed was good, the best he’d got, but Ed was no fool, and that was the curse of it. Jack knew nothing about him, about who he was or where he had come from. He wasn’t interested in that, but Ed was good at picking pockets and Jack was thinking of moving him on to work with the older youths; no matter how many high-falutin ideas he had about going to France, he had no intention of letting the lad run out on him.

‘Don’t think you can run out on me. It’ll do you no good. We’re in this together.’ Clutching the purse, he folded his arms on the table. ‘Sit down. I think you and I should have a little talk. I’m disappointed in you, Ed. I thought you and I understood one another. It seems I was wrong.’

Edwina faced him across the table, seeing his true character much more clearly now since she had got to know him. She feared him, and knew him to be deadly. He spoke softly, but she could see his anger simmered. He sat regarding her with dilated nostrils and heaving breast. She held her hands in her lap so he wouldn’t see them tremble. She had turned pale, and she knew that if he roared at her and she broke down and cried he would have the mastery of her.

Taking a deep breath, she looked at him directly. His rugged features were impenetrable, but there was a pitilessness there that repelled her. ‘We do understand one another, Jack. I want to end it, that’s all.’

‘So, you’ve had enough of picking pockets. Ungrateful wretch, that’s what you are—and there was I, thinking you were fond of me.’

‘I—I needed you Jack.’

‘And now you don’t? Is that what you’re sayin’?’ His eyes narrowed suspiciously and he leaned across the table, his face close to hers. ‘Hope you’re not playin’ a double game with me, boy, and keepin’ some fancy trinkets for yourself. If you are, I’ll tell you this: I’m the boss in this game—always have been and always will be. My God, I’d like to see the lad who dared to double-cross me.’

Edwina raised her head resolutely, choosing to protect herself from Jack’s closeness as much as to hide her fear. Her pride ached, but the fear of what lay in store for her if she remained stealing for Jack threatened to reduce her to a trembling, shaking coward. ‘I haven’t, Jack. I’ve always been straight with you.’

‘You’ve had an easy time since I took you in and set you to work, and you ought to go down on your knees and thank me for it. I’ve always had a soft spot for you, Ed,’ he said, ‘you’ve got spirit and pluck. Because I liked you and you were cleverer than the other lads, because you were quick to learn and kept your mouth shut, I’ve treated you like a lamb and let you alone to do pretty much as you please, and if you hadn’t had that honour you’d have perished before now.’

‘And I’m grateful, Jack. But I need more money if I’m to make my own way.’

Jack glared at her, leaning forward. His face was vicious, and his breath stank of sour rum. His deep, grating voice filled the silence that had fallen between them. ‘Are you telling me you’re not getting a fair deal?’

‘Apart from that time when I took my spoils to another fencer—what you give me scarce covers the food I eat. You haven’t been over-generous, Jack,’ she said accusingly, emphasising the words to defend her actions, as she fought to prevent the shattered fragments of her life from slipping into an abyss.

Fire blazed in Jack’s eyes. ‘You young whelp. I’ll bring you to heel or hand you in,’ he threatened savagely. ‘Do you think you can stand against me with your damned impudence? I haven’t heard the others complaining.’

‘No, because they fear you,’ she told him truthfully.

‘No harm in that. That way they’ll do as they’re told.’

‘I know,’ she said, standing up, her voice threaded with sarcasm. ‘Charity and sympathy are not in your nature, are they, Jack?’

‘What’s charity and sympathy to me?’ A sneer twitched the corner of his surly mouth. ‘They can be the ruination of many a good man.’ Scraping his chair back, he stood up and eyed the youngster narrowly, thoughtfully. ‘I’ll give you more,’ he offered suddenly—after all, a tasty morsel had been known to keep a whining dog quiet.

‘It’s too late.’ Edwina was adamant. She had come this far and would not back down now. ‘I’ve made up my mind. I’ve had enough.’

Jack blustered angrily, making Edwina’s cheeks flame considerably as she listened to the curses and insults he flung at her. She wanted desperately to retaliate, to tell him to go to the devil and be done with it, but she knew the folly of doing that. It was far better to let him say what he had to and let him go. Then she could think what to do.

He grasped her shoulder and twisted her round, thrusting his face close. ‘Listen to me, boy, and listen well. Don’t try to run from me, because if you stray I swear I’ll find you and break every bone in your body.’ Seizing her wrist, he doubled her arm behind her back. He laughed caustically when she cried out from the pain of it, thrusting her from him so forcefully that she fell against the table and toppled a chair over. ‘That’s a foretaste of the punishment you can expect if I have to come lookin’ for you.’

Jack’s parting words seared into Edwina’s memory with the bitter gall of betrayal. The fact that she could have been so stupid as to believe she could go on her way when the fancy took her, that Jack would simply let her walk away, showed her weakness of character, in her mind. Her thoughts traced over the events that had led up to her present predicament, seeking to find the exact moment when she had become Jack’s property, and she knew it had been right from the very beginning.

She was thrown into a dilemma as to what to do next. Its solution concealed itself in the chaotic frenzy of her thoughts. With nothing to her name but a few coppers, where could she go? There was no one she could turn to, no safe haven she could seek, and if she ran from Jack her fortune would be what she could make herself.

Feeling a bone weariness creeping over her, she sat and placed her forearms on the table, lowering her head upon them and sighing. ‘Oh, Father,’ she whispered. ‘Why did you have to die? Why did you have to leave me to the mercy of Uncle Henry?’

Gordon Marchant had been a good father to her. She recalled how, handsome and proud, he’d smiled down at her from the saddle that last morning when he’d left Oakwood Hall, their fine Hertfordshire home, with his brother Henry, prepared to meet his creditor Silas Clifford, the Earl of Taplow, and beg for more time to pay back what he owed, and how she had stood on tiptoe to meet his parting embrace. The warmth and safety of his tone enclosed her for a moment.

‘Promise me you’ll have a care,’ she’d said.

‘Don’t worry, Edwina.’ His voice was quiet and he released her gently. ‘I’ll be back, and, if not, you can trust Henry. He’ll take care of you.’ Those had been his last words to her.

Henry had brought him home across the saddle of his horse, his fine clothes stained dark crimson with his life’s blood. Her heart hardened. He had claimed her father had had a run in with a thief on the road to Taplow Court. She had believed him. Henry had smiled and promised to handle everything—and he’d handled it very well…the blackguard.

Together Henry and the Earl of Taplow had drawn up a marriage contract. The Earl had proposed to disregard his losses and marry her without a dowry. Anger welled up in her, anger at Uncle Henry, at the Earl of Taplow. They had done this to her. She would never forgive them, either of them, ever!

In her mind’s eyes she saw Silas Clifford. To a seventeen-year-old girl, at fifty he was an old man. He was thin, his skin pale with prominent veins. His hair was white and he gave the impression of deformity without any obvious malformation. In fact, she had found everything about him displeasing. When he had come across her riding her horse along the lane near Oakwood Hall, his attention had been sharply and decisively arrested.

She recalled how he had called on her father soon after, how he had run his eyes over her, examining her face and figure as he would a prize cow. His hissing intake of breath as he did so had reminded her of a snake, and she had been glad when his business with her father had been concluded and he had gone on his way.

But following his visit her father had been uneasy and nervous, and to this day she did not know why. Soon afterwards he had been killed and Henry had become her guardian, and with it came the suspicion that he had killed her father. His odd behaviour, and the way he had of avoiding her eyes and refusing to speak of the tragic incident that had occurred on the road to Taplow Court, fuelled this suspicion, until she became certain of it.