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

as two women scurried about the place with plates of bread, butter and cheese—part of the men’s payment for their night’s work.

Sam crouched down beside the man with the injured leg. ‘Help be coming,’ he said.

The man nodded, wincing.

‘What about the rest of us?’ a man next to him asked, holding up his left hand, where only two swollen fingers remained, jutting from a spongy mass of torn skin and ligaments.

Sam stood and surveyed the rest of the men, noticing even more injured among their number. There was no way Doctor Papworth-Hougham could attend to all of them. He hurried over to Ransley. ‘I be knowing of someone—an apothecary who can be helping.’

‘She the one what brung you back to life?’ Ransley asked, downing his beer.

‘That be her, yeah.’

Ransley belched in Sam’s face. ‘Take one of the horses and be bringing her back here.’

Sam nodded and hurried for the door.

In the yard behind the pub, Sam approached one of the three draught horses. He chose a black shire, seventeen hands in height, and unchained it. Hoisting himself up into the saddle, Sam trotted out onto the track by which they had all just arrived.

Holding the reins in his left hand, he pushed the horse into a canter. It would not take him too long to reach Dover, but once he got there he had no idea how he would track her down. A good starting point, he thought, would be the town’s many inns, taverns and public houses.

‘She been barred from here,’ the landlord of the Castle told him when he arrived. ‘Try the City of Antwerp.’

‘Not here,’ he was told in the City of Antwerp. ‘You been to the Plume of Feathers? That sometimes be where she hangs about.’

At the Plume of Feathers his request was met with blank faces. ‘Try the Three Mackerel—by St James’s Church.’

The landlord of the Three Mackerel sneered that he had thankfully not laid eyes on her for several days. ‘I seen her,’ a drunk old-timer propped at the bar drawled, as Sam was leaving. He was standing in ragged clothes with one boot missing. ‘Not long out of prison, she ain’t.’

‘Where does she be now?’ Sam asked.

The old timer jangled his empty beer glass on the bar top.

Sam tossed some coins down in front of him.

‘The Packet Boat,’ the old-timer slurred. ‘Not forty minute ago.’

Sam tipped his head in gratitude, hoping that he had not just wasted money on the advice of a man too drunk to realise that he was only wearing one boot.

 The ride to the Packet Boat Inn on Strond Street took Sam barely two minutes. Inside was noisy, smoky and crammed with inebriated fishermen. Sam barely received a second glance as he pushed through the crowds, searching for her, but there was no sign.

‘You seen a lady here this night?’ Sam shouted at the barmaid. ‘Ann Fothergill be her name.’

The barmaid laughed raucously, revealing the gummy inside of her mouth. ‘Ann Fothergill a lady!’ She laughed again as she poured a pint of beer. She handed the drink to a man at the bar, then pointed at the plump rear end of a woman bending in towards a seated crowd of fishermen. ‘How’s about Eliza, over there?’

‘No, I don’t be looking for… for that… I be looking for Ann—she be a friend,’ Sam clarified.

‘Do that be right?’ the barmaid said. ‘Happen you ain’t seen what be a-lying in your shadow.’

Sam turned quizzically. She was standing directly behind him, beaming from ear to ear, as she tried to balance a pint of rum and water on her head. ‘Ann.’

Ann lowered her drink, took a swig from the glass, then prodded Sam’s right shoulder. ‘All better?’

Sam nodded.

‘What do you be wanting with Lady Fothergill, then?’ she asked, placing one hand on her hip.

‘I be needing your help,’ he said, lowering his voice and leaning in closer to her. ‘I got friends who be hurt.’

Ann pursed her lips and frowned. ‘Friends what got hurt the same way you got hurt?’

‘That be right, yes.’

‘And your fancy doctor—he don’t want to be helping?’

‘He be asking for your assistance personally,’ Sam lied.

At this revelation Ann seemed to drop her act. Her face became serious. ‘If that be right, then I best not refuse a man of such high qualification.’

Sam watched as she tilted her head back, held the glass up to her mouth and sank the drink, as much liquid pouring down her chin and onto her dress as went down her gullet.

Ann positioned her hand in a regal fashion, pushing it towards Sam’s face. ‘Sir?’

Sam took her hand and led her from the tavern back out to the waiting horse.

‘Where do they be—these friends of yours?’ she asked.

‘Hythe,’ Sam answered, ‘Jump on.’

Sam hauled himself into the saddle, then offered his hand to Ann.

‘What pleasure be mine!’ she exclaimed as she pulled herself in behind him and wrapped her arms around his midriff.

Sam kicked the horse into a gentle trot, and they slowly picked their way down Strond Street, weaving around the oblivious drunks and itinerants slumped at the roadside until they reached the quieter streets on the outskirts of the port.

Pushing the horse to go as fast as it could, he felt Ann’s grip tighten around his waist, pleasure at the touch of her fingers stirring in his mind.

The coastal road was mercifully deserted and Sam’s worry that he might draw the attention of a Riding Officer, out in search of the smuggling party, was unfounded. They reached the yard of the Bell just as Thomas Denard arrived with Dr Papworth-Hougham.

‘Miss Fothergill,’ he said, bowing and nodding his head. ‘An unexpected pleasure.’

Ann bobbed her dress comically, clearly not used to such deference. Then, she glowered at Sam. ‘I