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“Shall I explain?” Annie said gently. Lizzie lifted her head briefly from where it was buried in her lap which Annie took as permission to go ahead.
“Lizzie saved enough money from her plague ‘earnings’ to buy a small place in Cheapside near the Royal Exchange. She had the idea to let out one of the upstairs rooms for lovers’ trysts, meetings, that sort of thing. It earns better money than having a lodger. That’s how we met. One of my regulars likes to keep things discreet and has me meet him at Lizzie’s place. It was all going well until two days ago. A man came to look at the room. His face was covered by a cloak, which is not unusual, given how the room is purposed. Then when Lizzie turned to close the shutter to show how private it was, he slammed the door shut and grabbed her from behind.”
When Annie reached this point in the tale, Lizzie’s sobs grew deeper but strangely quieter, as if the pain of remembering sucked all the air from her lungs. Annie stroked the back of Lizzie’s head, her red hair a cascade of curls that shook with each chest-wracking sob. Lucinda’s own gut tightened, and her heart ached almost willing the story to stop.
“He put a sack over Lizzie’s head, tied her hands behind her back and her feet to the bed and when he was finished, that’s how he left her. I know because I am the one who found her.” Annie’s face had remained as stony as a crypt, her cornflower blue eyes fixed and steely. Finally she reached into her bodice and pulled out a length of rope. “Here is the rope he tied her up with. I stuffed it in my dress. God knows why I did that. Perhaps to remind me that women need to stick together and learn to fight back.” The rope was scrunched in her fist which she raised and shook in an outburst of anger. “There are so many men who think they can treat us worse than dirt.”
“Can I see the rope?” Annie tossed it at her and Lucinda caught it with one hand. Turning it over and feeling its texture something niggled at the back of her mind. “It might help us to catch him and bring him to justice,” Lucinda explained.
“Fat chance of that.” Annie spat back, ejecting a stream of spittle with the force of her retort. She kissed Lizzie on the top of her head. “Sorry. Must go. Duty calls. My talents are in great demand.” She made a lewd gesture with an accompanying grimace, pulling off her cap and unleashing her blonde tresses. “Look after her, won’t you?”
“I promise,” Lucinda said.
“I shall walk her home. No one messes with me,” Moll added.
Before she left, Annie crouched in front of Lizzie and pressed Moll’s new rapier into her hands. “What did I tell you?”
Lizzie sat up and shook the hair back from her face. It was blotchy and tear-streaked but glowed with a fresh bloom of defiance. “You told me I could rely on the Sisters of the Sword.”
Lizzie held the sword out in front of her, hilt at the top, blade pointing down, in a high guard position. Her sleeve had ridden up from where she had buried her head in her arms, exposing her wrists as she hoisted the sword. That was when Lucinda spied the line of bruises on her wrists. From a distance it looked like a bracelet but would have been caused by the imprint of the rope. A niggling memory at the back of her mind suddenly surged to the forefront. A woman alone. A man with a cloak. Bruises on the wrists like a bracelet. The more she looked at those bruises, the more she knew the troubling niggle could not be ignored.
Lucinda was very careful when leaving the building, making sure the breeches under her dress were well covered, the rapiers wrapped up, and everything incriminating hidden beneath her outer cloak. She slipped through the door when no one was looking, her head down and her hand occupied in bunching and turning the short length of rope. If her mind had not been on Lizzie and the rope marks, if her wits had not been distracted by the spark of a plan, if rage at the injustice inflicted upon women had not consumed her, then she might have been ready for what hit her next.
As she passed a shadowed alleyway not fifty yards from the Cardinal’s Cap, a figure stepped out of the darkness. Instinctively she flexed her knees and raised her hand, ready to fight, flicking the rope at head-height as a warning to keep away. “You, again!”
“Rope tricks now? Whatever next?” Jumping back out of range Robert McCrae stared at her with one eyebrow cocked.
“What are you doing here? Have you been following me?” She folded her arms and tapped her foot, watching guilt steal over his face. If McCrae was a spy, he was lamentable at his occupation. Her eyes narrowed, and her foot tapped faster. “You must have been following me to ambush me like that. Give me one good reason why I should not throw you to the ground again and make you eat dirt.”
“I am wearing my best doublet and ruff. You wouldn’t want to go and ruin it,” he said with a beaming and thoroughly fake smile. “The more important question is what are you doing coming out of that place? Again?”
“Same as last week,” Lucinda said blowing air upward to blast a strand of hair from off her face. “I have deliveries to make. For my grandma.”
“I thought we discussed this. It is too dangerous a place for a young woman to be alone.”
“I beg to differ.”
“If it is not dangerous, then why carry swords?” He had her there, and he knew it, his smugness evident in the way he put his hands behind his back and rocked on his feet.
“It is not dangerous because I carry swords,” Lucinda countered. “It would only be dangerous if I did not.”
McCrae slowly shook his head from side to side. “I shall have to have words with your grandma––”
“No! Please. There is no need for that.”
His eyes swiftly narrowed as if sighting a target. Unfortunately she was the wood hen about to be shot. “My grandmother...she...and I...we are exploring another arrangement,” she said, contriving a reason on the spot. It was just as well she could think quickly. Would she ever shake this man off? He was worse than a bloodhound. He must have deduced her trip to Southbank was a recurring arrangement, same time, same place, each week, and then hatched this little scheme to root her out. He was so proud of his efforts he was purring. Now thanks to his meddling she would have to find another time, or another place to hold the fencing classes, preferably somewhere he could not go poking around.
“That is good to hear,” McCrae said, “I would hate for anything to happen to you.” Why should he care? He barely knew her. Why was her business suddenly his affair? “I would be delighted to accompany you home once again,” he added with a flourish of courtly manners and a disarming smile. “As long as you promise not to wrestle me to the ground. Eating dirt is not to my taste.”
She smiled back. Her most dazzling insincere smile.
“That would be delightful, I am sure, but I was not planning on going straight home. I have another errand, so please do not let me inconvenience you...” With a curt nod she started to walk on, but he kept up with her.
“That can be accommodated. I have plenty of time before I am to meet with your father and my uncle.”
Lucinda’s hackles stiffened to attention. He had a meeting with her father? And his uncle? Separately, or both at the same time? What was he up to, for surely, he was up to something? McCrae’s mention of the meeting flagged a warning of something afoot as surely as a pirate ensign atop a mast.
“I shall accompany you on your errand and then we can proceed to the fencing academy together since, after all, we have the same destination in the end,” he continued. He had her cornered and knew it, his body bristling with victory all bar the chest thumping and slapping himself on the back.
Curse McCrae and his wretched persistence. She really did have another errand in mind. The idea had come to her just as she left the Cardinal’s Cap. She wrapped the rope in her hand around her wrist, pulling it as tight as she could stand without stopping the blood flow. The last thing she wanted was McCrae as her shadow when she had a small suspicion to confirm. There were no two ways about it. She must shake him off.
“I am afraid I cannot accompany you on a wherry crossing as my errand takes me to Billingsgate docks which is out of your way and necessitates walking over the bridge.”
“Even more reason for me to accompany you. The docks are not a fit place for a young woman to wander about.”
She smiled again through gritted teeth. What was he? Her mother? Her guardian angel? Her nemesis more like. A veritable pain in the neck.
“Very well then,” she conceded before retreating into a silence. She might have to walk with McCrae, but she did not have to talk to him. Far from disturbing him, he seemed to find her silence very amusing, watching her with sidelong glances as she set the most cracking pace possible while cradling a bundle of rapiers. She did not bother to mask the clink and the clunk. He had already alluded to their presence. Now where exactly was that ropemaker’s she had gone to with her grandma? If she could not find the place, she would look like a fool.
