The Wicked Trade (The Forensic Genealogist Book 7), Nathan Goodwin [little red riding hood ebook TXT] 📗

‘You be a-knowing this,’ Hester called, as she marched back up the stairs, ‘Dreckly-minute my Sam wakes from his fever, you be back out on them streets.’ Hester had reached the top of the stairs and stood with her hands on her hips.

‘I be welcoming it, Mistress, I really do.’

‘Back to prison. Oh, yes, I be a-knowing all about you. Thirty times in gaol.’

‘Thirty-six by my reckoning,’ Ann corrected with a half-smile.

‘Thievings, beatings, drunkenness, lewdness—God forgive me what I brung under my own roof. You just be a-keeping your distance from my boy,’ Hester bawled, with a glance upwards, before thrusting an open palm towards Ann. ‘Here.’

‘What be this?’ Ann asked suspiciously, seeing three guineas in her outstretched hand.

‘It be all I got. Be a-taking your bath and rum someplace else—not here.’

Ann snatched at the money, barged past Hester and strutted down the stairs and out of the street door.

Knowing that Hester was certain to be peering out through the cracks in the shutters, Ann did a fancy twirl, holding her skirt and circling round and round, just as she had once seen the Parisian dancing troupe doing at the Royal Theatre in Dover. She laughed gaily as she pirouetted from the cottage, clutching the guineas tightly in her fist.

The cold cloaked and wrapped itself around her body just as assuredly as if it had been a layer of imperceptible clothing. Her fingers, having turned a peculiar hue of light mauve, were burning from where the blood had retreated, as she pushed down the iron latch to enter the Walnut Tree Inn.

She walked haughtily inside, as though she were royalty, and marched towards the bar, where she propped herself up on one elbow on the wooden bar top. This being her first visit here, she took stock of the room. For such a rural tavern it was fair lively, the tables filled with the usual agricultural labourers cotchering over an ale or two. She inhaled blissfully, the hot smoky air thrusting out the last vestiges of the wintry outside from her lungs.

‘What do you be wanting?’ a short, bearded man asked from behind the bar. His hair was ragged and straw-like and he wore a smock stained to such a degree that it was impossible to identify its original colour.

‘Three pints of rum and water, thank you, landlord,’ Ann ordered, stretching out her throbbing fingers, as the blood began painfully to restore them to life.

‘Three, you say?’ the man repeated, taking an exaggerated look around her. ‘You got two friends tucked somewhere I can’t see ‘em?’ he asked, cocking one eyebrow.

Ann studied him for a moment. He was making no effort to get even one of the drinks, never mind the three which she had ordered. She had met men like him before now. He would most certainly be the landlord of this establishment. ‘Listen, I ain’t no lushington, I just be needing a drink, is all.’

‘That right?’ the man said, running his tongue over his decaying front teeth. ‘What be your business in Aldington?’

Ann’s gaze shifted from the red brick floor to the beamed ceiling, taking her time to respond. She thought on giving any one of several answers that tumbled into her head, none of them true. Her propensity for lying stemmed from the triviality and tedium which often came attached to the truth. She doubted any story—true or made up—would sway this landlord from his decision; he was either going to serve her or he wasn’t. For no reason, other than it was the simplest answer in this case, she chose to relate the truth. ‘I been up at Braemar Cottage—Samuel Banister’s dwelling-house after he were shot smuggling at the Battle of Brookland.’

The landlord scowled, turning his head this way and that. ‘Don’t be blethering so loud, Miss,’ he told her. ‘What do you be knowing about smuggling?’

Ann raised her eyebrows. ‘Nigh-on all there be to know, I shouldn’t wonder. The loose tongue of a delirious man don’t be having no boundaries. I be knowing all about Cephas Quested and the Aldington Gang. The landing spots all along the Marsh. The lookout places from certain public houses perched high on the Aldington knoll. The landlords what be selling the contraband.’

‘Whist your tongue,’ the landlord hissed across the bar. ‘Three pints of rum and water and I want no more talk of smuggling—do you hear? You be having no business talking this way.’

Ann nodded indifferently, passing a guinea coin across the bar, and waited for her drinks.

‘How does he fare?’ the landlord asked eventually, seizing the money and placing one glass of rum on the bar in front of her, before then placing down her change.

‘Who?’ Ann asked, knowing full well about whom his enquiry was directed.

‘Sam Banister,’ he said quietly.

‘He be doing well. Some fancy surgeon—Doctor Popham-Hopworth or some such—visited today and said he’d be out of bed soonest.’

‘Papworth-Hougham,’ the landlord corrected. ‘He said that, did he?’

‘That he did,’ Ann confirmed, sinking the first rum in one go and pushing the empty glass back across the bar.

‘Then you be moving on your way, I shouldn’t wonder,’ he said, holding a sneer, which exhibited his two black upper teeth.

It was not a question, but rather a boorish statement, so she didn’t answer. ‘Don’t suppose you be having a bath here, landlord?’

He looked at her silently as he poured the second pint. ‘You think this to be a public wash-house?’

Ann placed another guinea down onto the bar and, using one finger, slid it across to him.

‘Rose!’ the landlord yelled through an open door behind him, placing the second pint of rum and water before her.

A young girl, who Ann thought to be around seventeen and slightly younger than she, sauntered out and glowered at the landlord.

‘Run this lady an ‘ot bath, will you,’ he