Chapter 10 
Chapter 10
Victoria Station hadn’t yet recovered from the damage of the unstable gate, but the worst debris had been hauled away and repairs had begun. Margo, palms sweating, clutched the handle of her frayed carpet bag. Malcolm smiled down at her, causing a sudden trip-hammer lurch under her breastbone. Malcolm Moore, dressed as a wealthy Victorian gentleman, was enough to set Margo’s pulse racing.
He grinned suddenly. “You look nervous.”
“I am nervous. This is real. It isn’t a stage play, it’s real. Do you get used to it?”
Malcolm’s eyes took on a faraway look as his gaze focused on something Margo couldn’t see. “No,” he said softly. “You don’t. At least, I don’t. I could’ve found any number of teaching positions up time, particularly with my scouting-and-time guiding credentials in addition to my degrees. But I don’t want to go back. Stepping through a gate . . .” He grinned again. “You’ll see.”
The air began to buzz. Margo pressed a hand to the bones of her skull. “Ow.”
“Any moment, now.”
Malcolm sounded even more excited than Margo felt, which was saying quite a lot. She checked her “uniform” again to be sure everything was in place. Under a heavy walking cloak, Margo’s deep azure dress and starched white pinafore were immaculate. A pretty white cap and an enormous straw hat mercifully covered her hideous brown hair. Thick-knitted stockings, ankle-length boots, and fingerless mittens completed the ensemble, topped off by a beautiful badge in which a crown and the letters R.M.I.G. enclosed a setsquare and compasses.
‘This,” Connie Logan had told her with a smile, “is a particularly prestigious school uniform.”
‘What does R.M.I.G. stand for?”
“Royal Masonic Institution for Girls.”
Malcolm, it turned out, was a Freemason, both in real life and in his down-time persona.
“I’ve found it helps enormously,” he’d told her. “If you’re in trouble—and it’s very easy to fall into trouble, even for an experienced guide—having a network of sworn brothers dedicated to a creed of helping those in need can literally be a lifesaver.”
“Are all guides and scouts Masons?” Margo asked, wondering with a sinking sensation if this would be yet another barrier to be overcome.
“No, but quite a few are. Don’t worry about it, Margo. Membership isn’t required.”
At the time, Margo had felt relieved, but now, reviewing the details of her costume again, she wondered if anyone down time would expect her to know secret rituals or anything. Maybe this uncertainty had been part of Kit’s plan? To impress upon her how much she had to learn? Margo shifted the carpet bag to her other hand and stiffened her back—although slouching was all but impossible, anyway, what with the horrid undergarments that were already pinching and chafing.
Doubtless physical discomfort was just another part of Kit Carson’s plan to discourage her. Well, it wasn’t going to work.
The air began to shimmer up near the ceiling. Well-dressed men and women stirred excitedly. Then the gate began to cycle. Rather than opening out of the wall, darkness grew out of thin air right off the end of the high, grid-work platform, a ragged hole, a widening maw . . .
Margo gasped. Through it, she could make out the colors of twilight, the twinkle of a high, lonely star. Nearer at hand, a breeze stirred barren, low-hanging branches. She could see—but not hear—dead leaves which gusted into view. A warm, golden glow appeared, then a dark shape occluded the lantern light—
Titters of laughter ran through the crowd when a figure in a tall hat and opera cape stepped through, rushing at them like an oncoming train. The gentleman doffed his hat politely to the waiting crowd below. “Your patience, please, ladies and gentlemen.”
Tourists had begun to emerge from the Britannia Gate. Women in smart dresses, men in evening suits, ragged servants hauling steamer trunks, carpet bags, and leather cases, young women dressed as housemaids, all poured through onto the platform and made their way down the ramp to the Commons floor. Many were smiling and chatting. Others looked grim. Still others staggered with assistance from Time Tours employees.
“Never fails,” Malcolm murmured. “Always, a few come back sick as dogs.”
“I won’t,” Margo vowed.
“No.” Malcolm agreed drily. “You won’t. That’s what I’m here for.”
She suppressed a huff, wanting to point out that she didn’t need a nursemaid, but even she realized she did need a reliable guide. And then, before she expected it, their turn came.
“Oh,” Margo said excitedly, “here we go!” Malcolm gallantly offered his arm. Margo laughed and accepted it, then laughed again when he insisted on carrying her carpet bag. Their “porter,” a husky young man named John, took charge of their hefty steamer trunk. Margo slid her Timecard through the encoder, then hurried up the long ramp at Malcolm’s side while John waited with the other baggage handlers. Margo paused at the very threshold of nothingness, mortified that her hindbrain whispered, “If I step off, there’s nothing there but a five-story drop to the floor.”
She screwed both eyes shut and followed Malcolm off the edge of the platform. For an instant she thought she was falling.
“Open your eyes!” Malcolm said urgently. She opened them—and gasped. The ground was rushing at her—Malcolm steadied her through. “That’s a girl,” he said encouragingly.
Margo shuddered with sudden cold. “Are you quite all right, my dear?” Margo blinked. The smiling, relaxed Malcolm with the easy American voice had gone completely. In his place stood a distinguished British gentleman peering anxiously down at her. “Uh—yeah.”
Very gently, Malcolm drew her to one side, making room for other tourists. “Margo, the proper response to such a question is not ‘Uh, yeah.’ That’s terribly anachronistic here.”
Margo felt her cheeks burn. “All right,” she said in a low voice. “What should I have said?”
“You should have said, ‘Yes, sir, thank you kindly, it was just a passing dizziness. Might I have your arm for a moment more, please?’ To which I would naturally respond by offering to escort you to some place of rest where I might fetch you a glass of water or stronger spirits if such might be required.”
Margo was so fascinated by the archaic speech patterns and the wonderful sound of his voice, she almost forgot to pay attention to what he’d actually said. “All right. I mean, very well. I’ll . . . I’ll try, Malcolm, really I will.”
“Ah-ah,” he said with a smile. “Here, I am Mr. Moore. You are Miss Margo Smythe, my ward. Never fail to call me Mr. Moore. Anything else would be seen as unforgivably forward.”
Behind them, the gate had begun to shrink. Porters rushed through with the last of the luggage, then the gate into La-La Land vanished into a tangle of brown vines and a high stone wall. For a terrible instant, Margo experienced complete panic. We’re cut off . . .
Then Malcolm high-signed John, who joined them and set the trunk down with a sigh. “’At’s good, Mister Moore, sir.”
Malcolm grinned. “Good show, John. Your Cockneys coming along nicely.”
“I been doin a study on it, sir.” John’s eyes twinkled. Malcolm had introduced him as a graduate student who planned to stay down time for several months working on his doctoral dissertation on the London underclass. He and Kit had come to an agreement: John would “work” as a manservant for Malcolm and Margo during their week in London, doing whatever was required of him. In return, Kit would front him the money for the initial gate ticket. He’d provided for his own living expenses and gear.
“Where are we?” Margo asked quietly. She stamped her feet to keep them warm.
“In the private garden of a house near Battersea Park at Chelsea Reach.”
“Chelsea Reach?”
“A stretch of the Thames. We’re across the river from where we shall need to be for most of our stay.”
Gas lights illuminated a garden where the tourists now milled excitedly. Time Tours guides dressed as liveried servants organized sixty-some people into a double line, gentlemen escorting ladies, while the porters struggled with heavy trunks. They carried luggage into a three-story, graceful house where gas lights burned warmly. The interior seemed warm and inviting compared with the damp, frigid garden.
“It’s cold,” Margo complained.
“Well, it is late February. We shall have a hard frost tonight or I’m no judge of weather.”
She tucked her hands inside the cape. “Now what?”
“First, fetch out your ATLS and log, please.” He glanced toward the darkening sky. “We’ll need to take readings and start our trip chronometers running. Remember, Miss Smythe, it is essential that you start your trip chronometer running very quickly after passing a gate. And shoot an ATLS and star-fix as soon as possible. And as I suspect we’ll have fog soon, do hurry with it. London generally does in the early evenings.”
“But we already know exactly when we are,” Margo pointed out.
“On a tour, yes. As a scout, you won’t. You’ll have to determine that as the opportunity arises. Just because your Timecard was logged in for the Britannia Gate, doesn’t mean you may skip this ritual. Most gates you’ll step through as a scout won’t have an encoder available yet, for the simple reason that you’ll be the first one stepping through it. And when you come through in broad daylight, you’ll have to wait until nightfall to update your exact geo-temporal reading.”
Margo dug out her equipment and took the ATLS reading. Malcolm checked her and made a small correction, then showed her how to take a star-fix. She mastered the knack after three tries and proudly entered the readings in her log.
“There! How did I do?”
“Your ATLS reading was off far enough that you’d have placed yourself in the Irish Sea, but not too bad for a first attempt under field conditions. We’ll take readings each night we’re here, to give you the practice.”
Malcolm finished entering data into his own log, made certain Margo had properly initiated the chronometer sequence, then put away their equipment.
“Now what?”
The tourists had lined up along a garden path and were filing slowly into the house.
“Time Tours will have made arrangements for cabriolet carriages to take us to various good hotels for the evening.”
“I thought carriages were called hansoms.”
Malcolm smiled. “Hansom cabs are very popular just now, but they’re small, two-wheeled affairs. Hansoms cannot carry any significant amount of luggage. Hence the need for something a bit sturdier.”
They joined the line and moved steadily toward the house. Margo wanted to rush forward and explore. She found it increasingly difficult to stand still.
“Patience,” Malcolm laughed. “We’ve an entire week ahead of us.”
“When will our cab be here?”
“Our hosts,” Malcolm said, glancing a little coldly at the liveried Time Tours guides, “will serve refreshments while carriages are summoned. We’ll be departing in small groups at least fifteen minutes apart, to reduce the chance that anyone will notice the numbers of people coming and going from this house.”
“How did Time Tours get hold of this place?”
Malcolm said quietly, “I’m told the spinster lady who owned it had a fit of the vapors the first time the Britannia Gate opened in her garden. When it happened several weeks in a row, she sold the place cheaply to a scout and retired permanently to Scotland. Time Tours bought it from the scout.”
Margo hadn’t considered what people down time must think when a gate opened right in front of them. “Who was the scout?”
Malcolm shrugged. “Your grandfather.”
Oh.
“I would suggest,” Malcolm said as they moved across the threshold into a surprisingly chilly drawing room, “that we refrain from discussing up-time affairs for the week as much as possible. You are here to learn, certainly, but discussing anything from up time is very dangerous within earshot of people who understand the language you’re speaking. If you must ask a question, keep your voice down and try to ask it where others can’t hear you. I’ll pass along my advice under the same set of strictures.”
Again, Margo was trying to get the rhythm of Malcolm’s new speech patterns. “Very well, Mal—Mr. Moore.”
He patted her hand. “Very good, Miss Smythe. And now, if you would be so kind as to permit me, I will introduce you to London.”
He led her toward a warm coal fire and beckoned to a “servant” who brought steaming cups of tea.
“My dear, warm yourself while I see about our luggage and transportation.”
He signaled to John, who carried their steamer trunk toward a long front hall where other porters waited. Margo sipped astringent tea, grateful for the warmth; the room’s lingering chill surprised her. Other tourists were talking excitedly, admiring the furnishings, the rugs, the draperies, the view out the windows. Margo was a little envious of the women’s dresses. One elegantly attired lady smiled and approached her.
“That’s a charming costume,” she said. “What is it?”
Feeling vastly superior, Margo said, “It’s one of the most prestigious school uniforms in London, from the Royal Masonic Institution for Girls.” She dredged up Connie Logan’s lecture and added, “It was founded in Somers Town, London, by a chevalier in 1788.”
“It’s delightful. Could I see the whole costume?”
Margo dimpled and set down her teacup, then slipped off the cape and pirouetted.
“Oh, look!” exclaimed another tourist. “It’s darling!”
“Where did you get it?”
“Connie Logan, Clothes and Stuff.”
“I wish I’d thought to dress Louisa like that,” one lady laughed. Her daughter, looking dowdy in a plain grey morning dress, was pouting under a stylish hat decorated rather hideously with dead birds.
“And look at that brooch. What an intriguing design. Is that the school’s crest?”
“Yes. It’s a badge. All the charity schools issued them to identify their pupils.”
“Ladies,” Malcolm smiled, bowing slightly, “if I might rescue my ward, our cabriolet is waiting. Here, let me help you on with that cape, my dear. The night is dreadfully chilly and John neglected to bring along our lap rug.”
A flutter of excited laughter ran through the room.
“Who is that gentleman?”
“Oh, I wish our guide sounded like that!”
“Or looked like him . . .”
“I don’t care what Time Tours says, the next time I come here, I’m going to hire him. I don’t care what it costs!”
Malcolm smiled, murmured, “A moment, my dear,” and handed around business cards with a polite bow and smile to each lady. He then offered Margo his arm. “A moment’s attention to business works wonders, don’t you agree?”
Margo laughed, waved goodbye to her brief acquaintances, then strolled out into the London night on Malcolm’s capable arm.
By the time their cab had swayed through five dark streets, thick fog had left them blind. Swirling, foul yellow drifts blanketed the streets. Even the horse vanished from view. Only the soft clip-clop of its hooves assured Margo they weren’t drifting along by magic.
“London stinks,” Margo whispered. “like a barnyard. And that fog smells awful.”
“London is full of horses,” Malcolm whispered back. “Some hundred tons of manure fall on London streets every day.”
“Every day?”
“Daily,” Malcolm affirmed. “And the fogs have been known to kill hundreds in a single day. If you find it difficult to breathe, you must tell me at once and we’ll take a train for the country until the worst of it clears.”
“I can breathe,” Margo whispered, “it just isn’t pleasant. Are we going to a hotel?”
“Actually, no. We’ll stay at a boarding house near Victoria Station for the night, then rent a flat on the morrow. That will give us privacy to come and go without undue notice. John, here, will be staying on at the flat once we’ve gone.”
“Mr. Carson be terrible gen’rous, Mr. Moore,” John said in the darkness.
Margo giggled. “You sound so funny.”
“He sounds exactly as he should,” Malcolm said sternly. “You do not. Charity-school girls are demure and silent, not giggling, brash things given to rude comments.”
“Well, excuse me,” Margo muttered.
“Certainly not. Study your part, young lady. That is an order.”
Margo sighed. Another domineering male . . . She almost looked forward to trading the schoolgirl getup for the rough clothes of a country farmer or the even rougher getup of a costermonger. Masquerading as a boy, she wouldn’t need to worry so much about observing all these confining social conventions. She began to catch a glimmer of what Kit had meant when he’d insisted women would have a rough go of it trying to scout.
The sound of water lapping against stone and a hollow change in the sound of the horse’s hooves told Margo they were very near the river. The occasional complaining grumble of a steam whistle drifted on the evil yellow fog like the distant cries of dying hounds. “Where are we? I can’t see a thing.”
“Crossing Lambeth Bridge.”
A few rents in the murk revealed a distant, dark wall.
“And that?”
“Millbank Penitentiary. New Bridewell’s not far from here, either.”
“New Bridewell?”
“A rather notorious prison, my dear. You do ask the most shocking questions.”
Fog closed in again the moment they left the open bridge with its fitful breeze. Margo heard the heavy, muted rumbling of not-too-distant trains. A shrill whistle shivered through the foul, wet air, so close Margo jumped.
“Don’t be alarmed, Miss Smythe. It is merely a train arriving at Victoria Station.”
“Will we hear that all night?” Malcolm’s chuckle reached her. “Indeed.”
Fiend. He’d done this on purpose, to leave her groggy and off balance tomorrow. He knew she was already running on virtually no sleep. Well, when you start scouting, you may be short of sleep, too. Consider it part of the lesson. At length, their driver halted. Malcolm left her shivering inside the cold carriage. He made arrangements with the lady who ran the boarding house, then offered his hand and assisted her from the cab.
“Oh, you poor dear, you must be tired,” the plump lady smiled, ushering them up a long, dark staircase. A gaslight at the landing threw feeble light down the stairwell. Margo had to watch the hem of her dress to keep from tripping in the shadows. “Your guardian said you’d come all the way from Honduras and then by train, poor thing, orphaned by them terrible fevers, and now he’s enrolled you in the School, but can’t bear to part company wi’ you yet. Such a nice gentleman, your guardian, watch your step, dear, that’s good, and here’s your room. Mr. Moore’s is directly along the hall, there, second on your right. I’ll have hot water sent up. And here’s your bag, dearie,” she said, taking the carpet bag from John and setting it on a heavy piece of furniture that evidently was meant as a dry sink, judging from the basin and pitcher her hostess took from its lower recesses.
“I’ll leave you now to rest and see you at breakfast, dearie. Pull the bell if you need anything.”
And that—Margo gaped as the landlady left in a rustle of petticoats and firmly closed the door—was that.
And she died more than a hundred years ago. . . .
Margo shivered, momentarily overcome by the unreality of it. It wasn’t at all like watching an old film or even like participating in a stage play. It was like stepping into someone else’s life, complete with sounds and smells and the sensation that if she blinked it would all vanish like a soap bubble. But it didn’t. She sank down slowly on the edge of a feather tick. Bed ropes creaked. The room smelled musty. Gaslight burned softly behind a frosted globe on the wall. Margo wondered how in the world to turn it off. She untied her hat and took it off then removed the cap and the heavy woolen cape. The once-white cap was grey from coal smoke. She shivered absently. The room was freezing and damp. No central heat.
“Now what?” she wondered aloud.
A soft tap on the door brought her to her feet. Margo clutched the cap in knotted fingers. “Who is it?” Her voice came out shaky and thin.
“It’s Mr. Moore, Miss Smythe. Might I speak with you for a moment?”
Margo all but flew across the room. She snatched the door open.
He smiled widely at her expression, then nodded toward the gaslight. “See that little chain on the side?”
Margo peered toward the light. “Yes.”
“Pull it once to turn off the lamp. Don’t blow out the flame or your room will fill up with gas and we’ll all die rather messily.”
Oh. “Thank you. I—I was wondering about that.”
“Very good. Any other questions before I retire for the evening?”
Margo had about a million of them, but the only thing that popped into her head was, “How do I get warm? It’s freezing in here.”
Malcolm glanced around the room. “No fireplace. No stove, either. The landlady is doubtless afraid of fires and rightly so. But there should be plenty of quilts in that linen press.” He pointed to a heavy piece of furniture across the room. “Pile them on and snuggle in. Anything else?”
Margo didn’t dare admit that she wanted—desperately—to say “I’m scared.” So she shook her head and gave him a bright smile.
“Very good, then. I shall see you at breakfast.” He bent and kissed her forehead. “Good night, my dear. Lock your door.”
Then he stepped down the hall and entered his room. His door clicked softly shut. A key turned in the lock. Margo stood gazing down the dimly lit corridor for several moments while her brow tingled under the remembered feel of Malcolm Moore’s lips.
Oh, don’t be ridiculous! All you need is to pull some stupid schoolgirl stunt like falling for a poverty-stricken time guide. He’s too old for you, anyway, and thinks youre silly into the bargain. Besides, you had enough heartache from Billy Pandropolous to swear off men for all time.
She closed her door and locked it, experiencing a swift prickle of tears behind her eyelids. She didn’t want Malcolm Moore to think she was silly. She wanted to prove to him—and everyone else—that she could do this job. Do it and be good at it.
She lay awake far into the night, listening to the rumble of carriages and wagons through London’s filthy streets and wincing at the shriek of steam locomotives. And the whole time she lay there, Margo wondered miserably what that kiss would have felt like against her lips.
Workaday London enthralled.
Malcolm made arrangements for a small flat in western London, several streets east of Grosvenor Square, which was itself just east of the ultrafashionable Hyde Park in Mayfair. The West End was where—according to Malcolm—Britain’s ten thousand or so members of “Society” (some fifteen hundred families) made their London homes. The houses were splendid, but their construction surprised Margo. Most of them were more like condos than individual houses. Immensely long stone and brick facades took up entire city blocks, subdivided into individual “houses” that each wealthy family owned.
“It’s a law,” Malcolm explained, “passed after the Great Fire of 1666. Not only fewer combustible materials, but this construction plan was adopted to help combat the spread of another disastrous fire.”
“How bad was it?”
Malcolm said quietly, “Most of London burned. Only a tiny corner of the city was spared. One of its blessings, of course, was that the fire evidently destroyed the plague, since there haven’t been any outbreaks since then. Cholera, on the other hand, remains a serious difficulty.”
Margo gazed in rapt fascination at the long, mellow facades, the immaculately clean walks, the ladies being assisted by liveried footmen into carriages for their round of “morning calls.” They were gorgeous in heavy silks, furs, and luxuriant feathered hats. Margo sighed, acutely conscious of her charity-school costume and short, dyed hair; but she didn’t let that spoil the fun of watching the “quality” pass by.
“We’re far enough from the heart of Mayfair,” Malcolm told her once they had settled into the six-room flat, “to go unnoticed in our seedier disguises, but close enough to avoid the filth and crime of the East End and allow me to continue my persona as independent gentleman.”
“Have you been here before?”
“Not this particular flat, no; but this general area, yes. I bring my tourists here rather than to a hotel, unless they insist otherwise. Living in a flat and buying vegetables and fish from the markets gives one rather a better feel for life here. Unpack your things, Miss Smythe, and we’ll begin our work.”
He had John hire a carriage and horses for the week while they unpacked. Malcolm arranged with the landlady for deliveries to be made from a reputable chandler to victual them with staples. Once the food arrived, he showed Margo how to prepare a British-style luncheon for a country outing. “A country outing?” Margo asked excitedly. “Really?”
Malcolm smiled. “I doubt it’s what you have in mind. Pack that set of tweeds for me, would you? That’s a dear. And bring along that loose shirt, those trousers, and that pair of boots for yourself. Yes, those. As a scout, one of the most important things you’ll need to know is how to handle horses. I’m going to teach you to ride.”
The closest thing to a horse Margo had ever ridden was a carousel at the state fair. And only then because her neighbors had taken her with their kids, pitying a child whose father spent most of what he had on liquor—and, eventually, worse. “I don’t know anything about horses,” she said dubiously.
“You will.” Malcolm’s cheerful smile removed the hint of threat. The horses John hired—four altogether—came in two distinct pairs. As John shook out the reins over the carriage horses, Malcolm explained.
“Those are cobs, sturdy draft horses used for pulling loads. This isn’t the fanciest carriage available, although it’s smart and very up-to-date in keeping with my persona here.”
“What’s it called?”
“It’s a four-wheeled brougham, with a hard top,” he rapped the ceiling with his knuckles, “which will make it easier for you to change your attire without being noticed. This is the family vehicle of the 1880s, very respectable.”
“And the horses tied behind?” They were much sleeker than the stocky carriage horses.
“Hacks. General riding animals, not nearly as expensive or handsome as hunters, but much easier to manage and cheaper to rent for those who don’t care to feed a horse year-round, pay for its stabling, a groomsman, a blacksmith . . .”
“Expensive, huh?”
“Very. That’s why livery stables do such a brisk business hiring animals and carriages.”
Margo thought about what Connie had said on the subject of class distinction and decided to risk a question. “What do the really rich people think about people who hire carriages and horses?”
Malcolm’s mobile features lit up. “Very good, Miss Smythe! Generally, we’re snubbed, of course. Anyone with pretensions to society keeps a carriage and horses of his own. I am absolved through the eccentricity of my comings and goings from Honduras. Providing I ever acquire the capital, I intend to take out a long-term lease on a small house where I might entertain guests. All my down-time acquaintances urge me to do so, in order to keep a permanent staff rather than relying on the vagaries of agency people.”
Margo wondered how much that would cost, but didn’t quite dare ask. That seemed like an awfully personal question and she was still feeling very uncertain in the aftermath of that harmless kiss last night.
“Speaking of money, do you remember my lecture on currency?”
Oh, no . . .
“I, uh . . .” Margo tried frantically to recall what Malcolm had taught her during their visit to Goldie Morran, one of TT-86’s money changers. “The basic unit’s the pound. It’s abbreviated with that little ‘U’ thing.”
“And a pound is made up of . . .”
She cast back through the confusion of foreign terms. “Twenty shillings.”
“Twenty-one shillings being called?”
Oh, God, it was some sort of bird . . . “A hen?”
Malcolm sat back and covered his eyes, stricken with helpless laughter. “The association,” he wheezed, “is flawlessly logical, I’ll have to credit you that much. A guinea, Margo. A guinea.”
“A guinea,” she repeated grimly. “Twenty-one shillings is a guinea.”
“Now, what else do we call twenty shillings, other than a pound?”
Margo screwed shut her eyes and tried to remember. Not a king, there was a queen on the throne. “A sovereign.”
“Or quid, in slang terms. What’s it made of?”
“Gold. So’s a half-sovereign!” she finished triumphantly.
“And half of that?”
Something else to do with royalty. But what, she couldn’t remember. She lifted her hands helplessly.
“A crown. Five shillings is a crown, or a ‘bull’ in slang usage.”
Margo took a deep breath. “A crown. A quarter-sovereign is a crown. Then there’s the half-crown, or two-and-a-half shillings.” Her head hurt.
“Two shillings is . . .”
“I don’t know,” Margo wailed. “My head aches!” Malcolm produced a card from his waistcoat pocket, hand-written with what was clearly a period ink-pen. “Study this. If you forget and must refer to this, please explain that you’re a recently orphaned American with a British benefactor and you just can’t keep all this straight, then bat your eyelashes and look helpless and the shopkeepers will probably fall over themselves trying to assist you.” Margo couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing at the ludicrous face Malcolm presented. He grinned and handed over the card. Margo settled herself to study the rest of the currency—florins, pence, groats, pennies, farthings, and all the rest—with a much-improved frame of mind.
Horses, Margo learned, were tricky beasts.
Changing clothes in the cramped carriage was easy compared to managing an animal that weighed half a ton and scared her to death every time it blew quietly at the front of her shirt.
“All right,” Malcolm said patiently when she succeeded in bridling the hack without losing a thumb or fingers, “do it again.”
She shut her eyes, summoned up every erg of patience she possessed, and unbuckled the bridle. Then performed the whole terrifying procedure again. They’d been at this an hour and she still hadn’t even saddled the horse, much less gotten on its back. The “riding” lesson had begun with a bewildering new set of terms to learn: withers, fetlocks, gaits, snaffles, cinches, leathers, headstalls . . .
Oh, God, why did I ever think time scouting would be easier than college?
But even she could see the practical necessity of learning to control the mode of transportation from prehistory right down to the invention of the mass-produced automobile.
Margo finally mastered haltering and bridling, moved on to saddling, then spent twenty minutes exercising her hack on a lunge line to learn the difference in its gaits and to judge what it took to control a horse from the ground. By the time she passed muster, she was exhausted. Her toes, fingertips, and nose were numb with cold.
“Shall we break for lunch,” Malcolm suggested, “then try our first ride afterward?”
Oh, thank God.
“Cool out your horse by walking him up and down the lane for about five minutes while John spreads out a blanket. Then we’ll water him and rest a bit ourselves.” At least Malcolm accompanied her on the walk. The horse’s hooves clopped softly behind them. Margo had begun to feel less nervous asking questions. “Why do we have to cool him out? It’s freezing out here!”
“Any time you work a horse, cool him out. Particularly in cold weather. An overheated horse can catch a fatal chill if he’s not properly cooled down afterward. Horses are remarkably delicate creatures, prone to all sorts of illness and accident. Your life literally depends on the care you give your horse. Treat him with better care than you treat yourself. Your horse is fed and watered before you even think of resting or eating your own meal. Otherwise, you may not have a horse afterward.” It made sense. It also sounded remarkably similar to Ann Vinh Mulhaney’s lecture on caring for one’s firearms: “Keep them clean. Particularly if you’re using a black-powder weapon. Clean it every time you use it. Black powder and early priming compounds are corrosive. Clean your gun thoroughly or it’ll be useless—and that can happen fast. Don’t ever bet your life on a dirty weapon.”
“Mal—Mr. Moore,” she amended hastily, “are you carrying a firearm?”
He glanced swiftly at her. “Whatever brought on that question?”
“You just sounded like Ms. Mulhaney, about keeping firearms clean or losing the use of them. So then I wondered.”
“One generally doesn’t ask a gentlemen, ‘Sir, are you armed?’ As it happens, I am. I never travel to London, never mind outside it, without a good revolver on my person.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
His lips twitched faintly. “Not yet.”
Oh.
“There are a few things about down-time cultures,” Malcolm said with a sigh, “that are vastly preferable to up-time nonsense. Self-defense attitudes being one of them. Let’s turn about, shall we? I believe he’s cooling out nicely.”
Margo turned the horse and they returned to the hired carriage, where she tied the reins and draped a warm blanket over his back. She then watered the animal from a pail John produced.
“Thank you, John,” she smiled.
“Me pleasure, miss.”
Margo grinned, but refrained from comment, since they were supposed to stay “in character” as much as possible to avoid slip-ups.
Lunch was simple but good: slices of beef and cheese on crusted rolls and red wine in sturdy mugs. John had built a warm fire and spread out a blanket for them. Margo relaxed, draping her heavy cape around her shoulders and leaning close to the fire to keep from catching a chill. Clouds raced past through a lacing of barren branches above their little fire. She couldn’t identify the tall tree but sunlight filtering down through the spider-work of twigs and branches was wonderful. “Nice.”
Birdsong twittered through the silence. One of the horses blew quietly and let a hind leg go slack as it dozed. Tired as she was, it would have been incredibly easy just to close her eyes and fall asleep to the hush of birdsong and the profound silence behind it. Far, far away Margo heard voices, the words indistinguishable with distance. And beyond the voices, the faint hoot of a train.
Margo hadn’t realized the world before automobiles and jet aircraft could be so quiet. “Ready for that riding lesson?” Margo opened her eyes and found Malcolm smiling down at her.
“Yes, Mr. Moore, I believe I am.”
“Good.” He offered her a hand up. Margo scrambled to her feet, refreshed and ready to tackle anything. Today, she told herself, I become a horsewoman.
The horse—of course—had other ideas. Margo learned the first critical lesson about horseback riding within five minutes. When you fall off, you get back on. Heart in her mouth, she tried again. This time, she rechecked the cinch first, as Malcolm had told her before lunch—and which she’d forgotten in the interim—then clambered back aboard.
This time, the saddle held. She started breathing again and relaxed her death grip on the mane. “Okay, I’m on. Now what?”
Malcolm was busy mounting his own horse. Margo discovered an intense envy of the ease with which he floated into the saddle and found a seat. “Follow me and copy what I do.”
He set off by thumping heels sharply against the horse’s belly. Margo tried it. Her hack moved off sedately with a placid “I have a novice on my back” air about him.
“It works!”
“Well, of course it works,” Malcolm laughed. He reined in to let her pass. “Heels down, toes in.”
“Ow! That hurts!”
“And don’t forget to grip with your thighs. But leave your hands relaxed. You don’t want to bruise his mouth with the bit.”
What about my bruises?
Concentrating on heels, toes, thighs, and hands all at the same time while steering and not falling off was nerve-racking. For the first ten minutes, Margo sweat into her clothes and was thoroughly miserable. The horse didn’t seem to mind, however.
“Keep right on,” Malcolm said over his shoulder. “I’ll follow you for a bit.”
He reined around behind her. Margo’s horse tried to follow. She hauled on the reins, overcorrected, and sent her horse straight toward a hedgerow. She straightened him out after wandering back and forth across the lane several times. Eventually she mastered the knack of keeping a fairly steady course.
“You’re doing fine,” Malcolm said from behind her. “Sit up a little straighten. That’s good. Toes in. Heels down. Better. Elbows relaxed, wrists relaxed. Good. Gather up the reins slightly. If he bolts now, he’ll have the bit in his teeth and there’ll be no stopping him. Firm but relaxed.”
“If he bolts?” Margo asked. “Why would he do that?”
“Horses just do. It’s called shying. Anything can scare a horse. A leaf rustling the wrong way. A noise. An unexpected movement or color. Or a particular item. A parasol. A train. A lawn chair.”
“Great. I’m stuck way up here on something likely to jump at a shadow?”
“Precisely. Tighten your thighs. Heels down”
Ow . . .
After half an hour, Malcolm let her trot. That was worse. The gait jolted her from top to bottom. Learning to post a trot put cramps in her thigh muscles. He brought her back down to a walk again to let her rest.
“I hate this!”
“That’s because we haven’t tried the canter yet,” Malcolm smiled.
“And when we get to do that? Next week?”
Malcolm laughed. “Patience, Miss Smythe. Patience. You can’t fly until you’ve learned to flap your wings properly. Now, the post again.”
Margo held back a groan and kicked her horse into the posting trot that jolted everything that could be jolted. She missed her timing, rising on the wrong swing of the horse’s withers, and discovered that was worse. She jolted along for a couple of paces before she got it right again. Eventually, Margo mastered it.
“All right,” Malcolm said, drawing up beside her, “let’s see if the nag will canter.”
Malcolm clucked once and urged his horse forward with thighs, knees, and heels. He leaned forward—And shot away in a thunder of hoof-beats. Belatedly Margo kicked her own horse to greater speed. One moment they were jolting through a horrendous trot. The next, Margo was flying. “Oh!”
It was wonderful.
She found herself grinning like an idiot as her horse caught up with Malcolm’s. “Hi!”
He glanced over and grinned. “Better?”
“Wow!”
“Thought you’d like that!”
“It’s . . . it’s terrific!” She felt alive all over, even down to her toes. The horse moved under her in a smoothly bunched rhythm, while hedgerows whipped past to a glorious, stinging wind in her face.
“Better pull up,” Malcolm warned, “before we come to the crossroad.”
Margo didn’t want to pull up and go back. Greatly daring, she kicked her horse to greater speed. He burst into a gallop that tore the breath from her lungs and left her ecstatic. Eyes shining, she tore down the country lane and shot into the crossroad—And nearly ran down a heavy coach and four sweating horses. Margo screamed. Her own horse shied, nearly tossing her out of the saddle. Then the nag plunged into a watery meadow at full gallop. Margo hauled on the reins. The horse didn’t slow down. She pulled harder, still to no avail. Freezing spray from the wet meadow soaked her legs. Patches of ice shattered under her horse’s flying hooves. Then Malcolm thundered up and leaned over. He seized the reins in an iron grip. Her horse tossed its head, trying to rear, then settled down to a trot. They finally halted.
Malcolm sat panting on his own horse, literally white with rage. “OUT OF THE SADDLE! Walk him back!”
Margo slid to the ground. Rubbery legs nearly dumped her headlong into muddy, half-frozen water. She wanted to cry. Instead she snatched the reins and led the horse back toward the crossroad. Malcolm sent his own mount back at a hard gallop, spattering her with mud from head to foot. That did it. She started crying, silently. She was furious and miserable and consumed with embarrassment. Malcolm had stopped far ahead, where he was talking with the driver of the coach. The carriage had careered off the road.
“Oh, no,” she wailed. What if someone had been hurt? I’m an idiot . . .
She couldn’t bear even to look at the coach as she slunk past, leading the horse back down the lane. When Malcolm passed her, back in the saddle, he was moving at a slow walk, but he didn’t even acknowledge her presence. When she finally regained the carriage, Malcolm was waiting.
“Fortunately,” he said in a tone as icy as the water in her shoes, “no one was injured. Now get back on that horse and do as I tell you this time.”
She scrubbed mud and tears with the back of one hand. “M-my feet are wet. And freezing.”
Malcolm produced dry stockings. She changed, then wearily hauled herself back into the saddle. The rest of the afternoon passed in frigid silence, broken only by Malcolm’s barked instructions. Margo learned to control her horse at the canter and the gallop. By twilight she was able to stay with him when Malcolm deliberately spooked the hack into rearing, shying, and bolting with her.
It was a hard-won accomplishment and she should have been proud of it. All she felt was miserable, bruised, and exhausted. Whatever wasn’t numb from the cold ached mercilessly. John solicitously filled a basin for her to wash off the mud. He’d heated the water over the fire. Her fingers stung like fire when she dunked them into the hot water. She finally struggled back into the hateful undergarments, the charity gown and pinafore. Then she had to take another ATLS and star-fix reading and update her personal log. When Malcolm finally allowed her to climb into the carriage for the return to town, she hid her face in the side cushions and pretended to sleep.
Malcolm settled beside her while John loaded the luggage and lit the carriage lanterns, then they set out through the dark. As a first-day down time, it had been a mixed success at best. They rattled along in utter silence for nearly half an hour. Then Malcolm said quietly, “Miss—Margo. Are you awake?”
She made some strangled sound that was meant to be a “Yes” and came out sounding more like a cat caught in a vacuum cleaner.
Malcolm hesitated in the dark, then settled an arm around her shoulders. She turned toward him and gave in, wetting his tweed coat thoroughly between hiccoughs.
“Shh . . .”
With the release of tension—and the sure knowledge that he’d forgiven her—crushing exhaustion overtook Margo. She fell asleep to the jolt of carriage wheels on the rutted lane, the warmth of Malcolm’s arm around her, and the thump of his heartbeat under her ear. The last, whispery sensation to come to her in the darkness was the scent of his skin as he bent and softly kissed her hair.
Nothing in Margo’s experience prepared her for the East End.
Not an abusive father, not the crime and violence of New York City, not even the barrage of televised images of starving, ragged third worlders, brandished like meat cleavers by charities desperately trying to stave off global disaster.
“My God,” Margo kept whispering. “My God . . .”
They set out very early in the morning. Malcolm thrust a pistol into a holster under his jacket and pocketed a tin wrapped with waxed cord, then asked John to drive them to Lower Thames Street, near the famous London Docks.
The docks had been cut out of the earth in Wapping to form a deep, rectangular “harbor” filled with river water. The city surrounded it on all sides. Steamers and sailing ships were literally parked at the end of narrow, filthy streets.
They picked up an empty pushcart cart John had procured and began walking through the pre-dawn chill. Margo’s old boots and woolen, uncreased trousers chafed. Her ragged shirt and threadbare pea jacket barely kept out the chill. Swing docks afforded occasional glimpses of the river as they passed the stinking, bow-windowed taverns of Wapping. Sailors accosted everything female with such gusto Margo huddled more deeply into her boy’s garments, desperately grateful for the disguise. Okay, so they were right. She didn’t have to be happy about it, but she could disguise herself. Fortunately, none of the sailors so much as glanced at her twice. Malcolm steered them toward the riverbank, where the stench of tidal mudflats was overwhelming. They watched young kids, mostly barefooted, picking through the freezing mud.
“Mudlarks,” he explained quietly. ‘They scavenge bits of iron or coal, anything they can sell for a few pence. Most children are supposed to be in school, but the poorest often dodge it, as you see. There used to be much fiercer competition down there, before mandatory schooling laws were passed. On Saturdays, the riverbanks are alive with starving mudlarks.”
One romantic illusion after another shattered into slivers on the cold road.
“What are those?” she asked, pointing to a boat mid-river with large nets out. “Fishermen?”
“No. Draggers. They look for dropped valuables, including bodies they can loot for money and other sellable items.”
“Corpses.” Margo gasped. “My God, Malcolm—” She bit her tongue. “Sorry.”
“Dressed as a boy, it’s not such a grave error, but I’d still prefer you said Mr. Moore. People will take you for my apprentice. You’ve seen enough here. We have to get to Billingsgate before the worst of the crowds do.”
“Billingsgate?”
“Billingsgate Market,” Malcolm explained as they neared a maelstrom of carts, wagons, barrels, boats, and human beings. “Royal Charter gives Billingsgate a monopoly oil fish.”
The stench and noise were unbelievable. Margo wanted to cover her ears and hold her breath. They shoved in cheek-to-jowl with hundreds of other costermongers buying their day’s wares to peddle. Liveried servants from fine houses, ordinary lower-class wives, and buyers for restaurants as well as shippers who would take loads of fish inland for sale, all fought one another for the day’s catch.
“Salmon for Belgravia,” Malcolm shouted above the roar, “and herrings for Whitechapel!”
“What do we want?”
“Eels!”
Eels?
After that dinner at the Epicurean Delight, Billingsgate’s eels came as another rude shock. Malcolm filled their cart with the most repugnant, slithery mess Margo had ever seen. Jellied eels went from huge enameled bowls into stoneware pots. From another vendor they procured hot “pie-and-mash” pies, plus a supply of hideous green stuff the screaming fishwife called “liquor.” Malcolm bargained the prices lower in an ear bending accent. The language the fishwives used put to shame anything Margo had heard on the streets of New York—when she understood it at all. Malcolm stacked the pies in their cart, layered them on boards and wrapped them in worn woolen cloth to keep them warm. Margo—under instructions to pay attention to details—tried to keep track of what she witnessed, but there was so much to take in she found it all running together in a screaming blur.
They finally escaped Billingsgate’s scaly stench and set out. Malcolm did a surprisingly brisk business selling eels and pies as they entered the cramped streets of Wapping. Of Malcolm’s colorful patter, however, Margo didn’t understand one word in four.
“Give yer plates of meat a treat,” he called out, “rest a bit, I’ve eels to eat!” Then, another block onward, “Yer trouble and strife givin’ you worries? Tike ’ome ’ot eels, thankee and tip o’ the titfer t’ you, mate.” Then, to a hollow-cheeked lad who eyed the cart longingly, “Wot, no bees ‘n’ ’oney? Rough days but I gots mouths ter feed meself.” And finally, in a completely incomprehensible exchange with a sailor, “Aye, let’s ’ope ain’t no pleasure an’ pain t’day. A penny, an’ enjoy.”
When they moved out of earshot, Margo could no longer contain burning curiosity. “What in the world are you saying?”
Malcolm grinned. “It’s Cockney speech. Cockney’s more than an accent, it’s a way of speaking. Rhyming sales patter and no real attention to grammar.”
“But what does it mean?”
He chuckled and eased the cart over to one side of the narrow street. “All right. I’ll try to translate what I’ve been saying.” He glanced upward, evidently casting back through his patter of the previous few minutes. “Plates of meat—those are your feet. Essentially I said, ‘Give your feet a treat. Sit down and rest a while, have some delicious eels.’ Then let’s see, what did I say next?”
“Something about trouble and strife giving you worries. That made sense, at least.”
“Did it?” His mobile mouth quirked upward at the corners. “Trouble and strife means your wife.”
“Your wife?”
Malcolm laughed. “That phrase meant ‘Is your wife giving you problems?’ Take home some hot eels.’ Hinting of course, that a warm breakfast might soothe her ragged temper.”
“What’s a titfer?” His eyes twinkled. “Tit for tat means hat. Cockney loves to abbreviate as much as any other language. A tip of the titfer—”
“Is a tip of the hat,” Margo finished.
“Right. Bees and honey is money—and without it, you’re sunk if you want breakfast from this cart.”
“What about the pleasure and pain bit?”
Malcolm chuckled. “I told him I hoped it didn’t rain.”
Margo rolled her eyes, “Good grief. How is anyone supposed to learn all this? And what’s that horrible stuff made of, anyway?” Margo asked, pointing to the green “liquor” in the cart.
“Parsley sauce.”
“Parsley sauce? Oh. I couldn’t imagine what it was.” She’d had visions of some Cockney fishwife growing mold in vats and adding gelatin.
“Actually, it’s quite good. Want to sample the wares?”
Margo was starving. “Uh, no. Thanks.”
Malcolm cut up one of the pies anyway and spread parsley sauce on it. “You need to eat. The days cold and it’ll be long.”
She shut her eyes and bit into it. Then glanced up, startled. “Hey, not bad!”
Malcolm grinned and wolfed his own down. “You look too healthy. Suck in your cheeks a little. Better . . .” He scooped up a handful of filth and smeared mud across one cheek. “Yes, that’s it.”
Margo tried to hold her breath. The mud stank.
He smeared his clothes artistically then washed his hands from a bottle in the bottom of the cart. “Next stop, Whitechapel. Watch your step—this is a rough area.”
Whitechapel’s main roads were surprisingly wide—and every last inch of roadway was jammed with wagons and ox-carts. Behind the main streets, however . . .
London’s deadly slum was a sunless maze of narrow alleyways, winding, dangerous streets, and courtyards where nothing green found purchase in the filthy soil. Crowded conditions left some people living on ramshackle staircases. Mud and filth reeked underfoot. Everywhere Margo looked were ragged, filthy people: sleeping on stairs, in puddles of filth, in rooms whose doors sagged so far open she could see drunken men and women snoring in piles of decaying refuse. The stench was overwhelming. Here and there, men and women urinated openly in the streets.
Margo whispered, “Isn’t this where Jack—”
He hushed her. “Not until later in the year. August.”
Margo shivered and eyed ill-kept women, wondering which of them might fall victim to the notorious serial murderer. It was an unsettling thought. Kit Carson’s brutal assessment of her chances in this slum rang in her ears. All right, she grudged him, you’ve got a point. Malcolm sold a few eels, mostly to sleepy women whose clothing still reeked of their previous night’s customers. Everywhere the stench of human waste, cheap gin, and rot rose like a miasma from the ground.
“Are all the women in Whitechapel prostitutes?” Margo whispered.
Malcolm shook his head “Not all.” Then in a cautious whisper, “There are some eighty-thousand whores in London, most trying to stave off starvation.” Margo understood that statement now in a way that would have been impossible two hours previously.
“Do they stay prostitutes?”
“Some yes, many no. Many take to the ‘gay’ life, as prostitution was known, only long enough to find a better-paying job. Northwest of here, up in Spitalfields for instance, a woman can get work in the garment district sweat shops. If she doesn’t have too many mouths to feed, she might eke out a living without going back on the streets.”
They glanced at a yawning fourteen-year-old who eyed Margo speculatively, appraising the “young man” for potential business even this early in the day. She switched her attention to Malcolm and smiled. “Tumble for a pie?”
Malcolm just shook his head, leaving the girl hurling curses at them.
Margo was fascinated and repulsed at the same time. She felt as though she’d stepped into a living play whose author had no real ending in mind. Study your part, study the background. That was what Kit and Malcolm had brought her here to learn.
“With so many women in the business,” Margo asked slowly, trying hard to understand, “isn’t competition fierce?”
“Ye-esss . . . in a manner of speaking. Officially, you understand, sex was considered extremely bad for one’s health. Led to a breakdown of one’s physical constitution and mental faculties. Privately, our straight-laced Victorian gentleman considered sex his natural right—and any woman born lower than his station was fair game. London had several million souls, recall, not to mention seafaring crews. Remind yourself to look up an eleven-volume personal memoir called My Secret Life when we return to the station library. It’s available on computer now. You’ll find it . . . revealing of Victorian social attitudes.”
“What happens to all these women? When they’re too old or ill to work?”
“Some go to the Magdalen for help.”
“Magdalen?”
“South of the Thames,” Malcolm murmured as they trundled their cart along, “you will find four kinds of ‘charity’ institutions, if one can call them that. Bedlam—Bethlehem Hospital—is for mental patients. Old Bridewell was originally a school to train apprentices, but it turned into a brutal prison. Eventually a new school was attached to the prison grounds to house legitimate apprentices. Bridewell apprentices are notorious delinquents, the terror of the city. Then there are protected girls in the purple uniforms of the Lambeth Asylum for Female Orphans, and of course the grey of the Magdalen Hospital for seduced girls and prostitutes. A number of the girls rescued by Magdalen go mad anyway from incurable syphilis.”
Margo shuddered. She’d grown up taking medical miracles for granted. How long did it take the “social disease” to deteriorate a person’s brain into insanity? While she tried to take it all in, they sold eels and pies and moved steadily westward. Then, astonishing her with the abruptness of the transition, the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral loomed up over the dreary skyline. They found themselves abruptly in the heart of the bright, sunlit “City” where London’s Lord Mayor ruled from Mansion House. Margo gaped at the wealthy carriages which jostled for space on the narrow streets.
“It’s amazing,” she said, staring back the way they’d come. “I can hardly believe the change.”
“Yes. It is startling, isn’t it?”
The respite didn’t last long, though. Past Lincoln Inn Fields, they plunged once more into a realm of dark, sagging rooflines which overhung one another. The bright sunlight they’d left behind seemed centuries as well as miles away.
“How can they live and work so close to this misery and not care?”
Malcolm gave her a long, penetrating look. “They haven’t wanted to see it. An effort is eventually made, particularly after Red Jack ensures that conditions in Whitechapel are widely reported upon. And the Salvation Army got its start here a few years ago, so there is some—” He broke off and swore under his breath. “Damn, I hadn’t noticed we’d left Charing Cross Road. Heads up, now. We’ve wandered into St. Giles.”
They’d entered a “traffic circle” marked “Seven Dials” but there was no traffic, pedestrian or otherwise. At the center of the circle stood a dilapidated clock tower with seven faces. Running outward from the tower like mangled spokes from a wheel were seven sunless alleyways and wretched, filthy courtyards. They vanished into a slum that made Whitechapel seem luxurious. A noxious vapor rose from the houses, hanging like fog over sagging rooftops. Broken gin bottles littered the filthy ground. Under layers of filth and dirty ice might have been paved streets.
“Malcolm . . .” She felt as though the blank windows—many of them without glass—were staring at her like malicious eyes.
“These seven streets are the most dangerous place in all of London. Watch our backs until we’re well out of here.”
From out of the gloom in the dank alleyways, rough men in tattered clothing watched through narrowed eyes. Margo kept a sharp lookout and wished they could break into a run. You’ll cope with this on your own as a scout. This is the career you asked Kit Carson to give you.
At the moment, Margo would almost have traded this for another beating at her father’s hands.
Almost.
Then she saw furtive movement in the shadows, the glint of steel—
The man who grabbed her from behind laid a straight razor at her throat. She froze, a scream dying in her throat. Two other toughs materialized in front of Malcolm. Margo realized with a shock, They’re younger than I am!
The feel of sharp steel at her throat left her trembling. Margo’s attacker tightened his arm around her waist. “Look it, ’ee don’ even shave yet.” The boy’s breath was foul. “ ’ow bouts I teach ’im?”
The other boys grinned. Their straight razors glinted evilly. Malcolm had gone very still, trapped between them.
“ ’and over the tike, mate, an’ mibey we let ’im shave ’is own self?”
While Margo tried to sort out what, exactly, he’d demanded, Malcolm reached for the money pouch at his waist.
“Quick, now,” the boldest said. He dropped his gaze from Margo to watch Malcolm pluck at his purse strings.
Margo moved instantly. She grabbed her assailant’s wrist, twisting toward him as she shoved the wicked straight razor away from her throat—then grabbed a handful of his crotch and crushed.
The boy screamed. She continued the turn, dragging his arm up behind him, then kicked the back of his knee. He went down with a gurgling sound and writhed on the ground, holding himself.
She whirled—Malcolm had gone absolutely white. “You little idiot—”
Before either of the other boys could strike, an enormous bull of a man stepped out from the alleyway and shoved them aside.
“You ’urt me boy,” he said, staring at Margo. The bludgeon he held was as thick as Margo’s thigh. His shoulders were twice the size of Malcolm’s. He wore a thick woolen coat that covered him almost to the knees. Rough work pants and low, broken shoes completed the picture of the quintessential murderous lout. He grinned at Margo. “First I cracks your skull.” He licked dirty lips. “Then me nephews cuts up wot’s left.”
Margo was suddenly conscious of other grimy faces in the shadows, watching with inhuman detachment. Malcolm swore and backed away from the trio, turning so they couldn’t see him draw his revolver from concealment. The moose in the center hefted his cudgel. He charged so fast, Margo didn’t even have time to scream.
Malcolm fired three shots and dove to one side. One of the shots hit the man’s right ankle. The would-be killer screamed, lurched, and sprawled into the filth. The teenagers ran clattering down an alley. Malcolm whipped around like a cat and grabbed Margo’s wrist, dragging her in the opposite direction. They dashed the length of a filthy, stinking alleyway and emerged into St. Giles-in-the-Field. Malcolm dodged into a rank, overgrown churchyard and dragged her behind a crumbling gravestone, then pressed a hard hand over her mouth. They waited, hearts thudding, but Margo heard no immediate sound of pursuit.
“Reload this,” Malcolm said brusquely, thrusting his pistol and the tin from his pocket into her hands. He crept out of the graveyard and eased his way to the edge of the churchyard, peering back the way they’d come.
Margo stared stupidly at the gun. The tin was heavy. It rattled. She had no idea how to reload this revolver. It wasn’t anything like the revolvers Ann Mulhaney had taught her to shoot. She was still staring idiotically at it when Malcolm returned.
He took the pistol—then swore in language she hadn’t known he could use. “You didn’t reload!”
Tears prickled behind her eyes. “I—”
“First you pull a stupid stunt like fighting that street tough—”
“But he was robbing us!”
Malcolm’s pallor turned to marble coldness. “I was going to give him the goddamned money! My God, it’s just a few pence! You nearly got us both killed—and I ’ad to risk shooting that lout—”
“You didn’t even shoot to kill!”
If she’d used that tone with her father, he’d have blacked half her face. Malcolm didn’t hit her. Instead, his voice went as icy as the filthy stone against which she huddled.
“We are not at liberty to shoot whomever we please. Getting out of a fatal jam without killing anyone is a time scout’s job. If the Britannia Gate opened up right now and Kit stepped through, I’d tell him to send you packing back to whatever miserable little town you came from. Give me the goddamned bullets.”
She handed over the tin. Her hand shook. Malcolm jerked the cord loose, opened the sliding lid, and dumped three rounds into her hand.
“You’re going to reload this gun right now. Pull up on that T-shaped handle.”
It blurred through hot tears, but she jerked up on it. The whole top of the revolver swung forward and down, revealing the back of the cylinder. Three empty cases and the two unfired rounds popped up slightly. Her fingers shook but she pulled out the spent cases and reloaded the empty chambers. Then she closed the gun up again.
“You were supposed to know how to do this. Skip your lessons again and . . .”
He left the threat hanging. He’d already destroyed any hope she’d ever entertained of becoming a scout. Her whole chest ached with the need to sob. But she held it all inside, except for the hot, miserable tears she could not quite contain.
Malcolm checked the alleyway again, leaving her to huddle against the wretched gravestone. She slid down into the weeds and fought the tightness in her throat. I won’t give up. I won’t. It isn’t fair! She’d only done what Sven Bailey had taught her. Hadn’t she? Know when to quit, Kit had told her. I won’t quit! Not when I’ve come so far! Somehow, she’d find a way to get back into Malcolm’s good graces. She had to. She’d sooner commit suicide than go back to Minnesota a failure.
During the endless walk up through Spitalfields, Margo listened with everything in her, ruthlessly shoving aside humiliation and terror for the more immediate need to learn. She picked up slang, names for items she’d never seen before, tidbits of news and gossip that led her to several startling conclusions about the state of the world in 1888.
“Malcolm?” Her voice quavered only a little.
“Yes?” His voice was still icy.
‘This isn’t an ordinary slum, is it? Spitalfields, I mean. It isn’t like Whitechapel or St. Giles.”
He glanced back. Some of the chill in his eyes thawed into surprise. “Why do you ask?”
She bit her lower lip, then nodded toward women who spoke in a language that wasn’t English, toward men who dressed in dark coats, wore their beards long, and looked at the world through eyes which had seen too much hardship. “These people look and sound like refugees. Who are they?”
Malcolm actually halted. Absently he blew against his fingers to warm them while giving Margo an appraising stare.
“Well, I’ll be suckered. . . .” he said softly.
She waited, wondering if she’d get a reprieve.
“Who do you think they are?” He’d given her a challenge.
She studied the older women, who wore shawls over their hair, watched the younger girls with shining black tresses and shy smiles, the old men with wide-brimmed black hats and hand-woven, fringed vests. The younger people looked hopeful, busy. The older ones seemed uncertain and afraid, suspicious of her and of Malcolm. The language sounded like German, sort of. Then the whole picture clicked.
Yiddish.
“They’re Jewish refugees,” she said slowly. “But from what? Hitler . . . has he even been born yet?”
“Hitler was not the first madman to order pogroms against the Jewish communities of Europe. Just the most sweepingly brutal. Stalin was almost as bad, of course. The bloody pogroms going on all across Europe started about eight years ago, in 1880. Jews are being murdered, driven out of their homes, out of their own countries.”
“Then . . . what went on during World War II was a . . . a sort of continuation of this? Only much worse? I never realized that.” Margo looked up and down the street, where kosher slaughterhouses and butcher shops fought for space with tailors’ establishments and bakeshops. In that moment, echoing down empty places in her mind she hadn’t even known existed, Margo saw connections, running forward into the future from this moment and backward from it. In an instant, her narrow Minnesota universe expanded with dizzying explosiveness into an infinitely larger place with more intricately bound pieces of the human puzzle to try and understand than she had ever thought possible.
She understood, in a flash, why Malcolm Moore was willing to endure grueling poverty and the humiliation of a freelance guide’s life just to step through one more gate.
He wanted to understand.
Margo gazed down those infinite corridors in her mind, filled with endless blank gaps, and knew that she had to fill them in—or at least as many of them as she could before she died trying.
When she came up for air, Malcolm was staring at her in the oddest fashion, as though she’d just suffered a stroke and hadn’t yet found the wit to fall down. The only thing she could think to say was, “They must have been . . . I can’t even imagine what they must have thought when Hitler started bombing London.”
Something far back in his eyes changed, in response to what must have been visible in her own. For a moment, Margo knew he understood exactly what was shining inside her. Sudden, unexpected tears filled his eyes. He turned aside and blew out his breath and cleared his throat. A steaming vapor cloud dissipated in the freezing February air.
“It’s half my own fault,” he mumbled, “if not more. You were already badly upset and I should have made certain you knew how to operate a top-break revolver before we even set foot through the gate. It’s just there’s so much to remember, sometimes even experienced guides forget little things like checking up on what your partner knows.” A crook of his lips and an embarrassed flush surprised her. “And, well, I’m not really used to having a partner along.”
Margo found it suddenly impossible to swallow properly. “I’m starting to understand, Malcolm. Really, I am. I’m studying every minute we’re here. I’m trying to learn how to learn, not just what to learn.”
Malcolm touched her chin. “That’s a good beginning, Margo. We’ll give it another go, shall we?”
Her eyes filled in turn. Scouting was about so much more than just adventure and money, that for the first time, Margo wasn’t sure she had what it took. She dashed knuckles across her eyes and sniffed hugely. “Thanks, Malcolm. Ever so.”
He tousled her short hair. “Well spoken, young Smythe. It’s barely gone noon. You have a good stretch of London left to study.” His grin took any possible sting out of the words.
Wordlessly, Margo set herself the task of trying to understand what she saw around her, rather than just staring at it like a sun-struck tourist.
Margo studied hard for the duration of their stay. She learned—slowly and painfully—but she learned, nonetheless. Malcolm grilled her endlessly in the evenings with help from John, who was amassing quite a wealth of notes for his own research. Margo recorded observations in her personal log each evening, while they were still fresh in her mind. Even she was surprised by the detail she could recall when she put out the effort.
Then Malcolm told her he’d been in touch with some friends who were in town for the Season. An invitation for dinner had been received and duly accepted. She panicked. “What should I do? What should I say?”
“As little as possible,” Malcolm said drily.
She managed a smile. Don’t screw this up, was the message, loud and clear. Of course, a scout wouldn’t have to worry about things like formal social evenings with the British peerage very often. . . . She dreaded returning to the book work she knew would be waiting for her on the time terminal. Learning by doing was so much more interesting. But she clearly needed some of that tedious cultural and historical reading. She held back a shudder. Margo had learned more about Victorian England in three days than she would have in three years cooped up in some stuffy classroom.
“Well,” she said philosophically, “everyone keeps telling me charity girls are supposed to be demure and silent. I can always blush and stammer out something silly and let you rescue me.”
“That’s one solution. In this case, actually not a bad one, since socially you are not yet out. Have you been reading the newspapers as I suggested?”
“They’re weird.”
“And the magazines?”
“No photographs. Just those dull black-and-white etchings.”
“You’re supposed to be reading the articles,” he said, brows twitching down in exasperation.
“Well, I can’t make sense of half of them.”
“Ah,” was all the comment he made.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I have a lot to learn.”
“Yes,” he said, looking down that extremely British nose of his, “you do.”
“Well, you don’t have to rub it in.”
“Mmm, yes, I think I do. We very nearly died in St. Giles and . . . Well, the less said about your first riding lesson, the better. An unprepared scout has a very short career.”
If he was aware of the pun, he wasn’t smiling.
Margo sighed. “Okay. I’m trying. Really, I am.”
“I know. Now, about dinner. Let me explain cutlery. . . .”
Margo’s last three days in London were as glorious as the first four had been miserable and terrifying. She mastered the knack of fluttering her eyelashes and deferring questions with naive requests of her own.
“Oh, but I’m so dull, you don’t want to hear about an orphan. Please, tell me about riding to hounds. I don’t understand anything about it and it seems so exciting. . . .”
In her school-girl mob cap and pinafore, she wasn’t taken seriously by anyone. Even the ladies thought she was adorable.
“Mr. Moore, what an absolutely delightful child. Your ward is a charm.”
“You really must bring her out in a year or two.”
“Oh, no, not back to that dreadful tropical backwater, surely?”
And so the evening went, in a wonderful haze of wine, sparkling conversation, and more food than she could possibly eat, course after course of it, with delicate little desserts between. She floated to bed that night and dreamed of long formal gowns, bright laughter, and an endless round of parties and dinners with Malcolm at her side. . . .
The next day they went riding again, this time in Hyde Park, with Margo sidesaddle in a long riding habit and Malcolm in immaculate morning attire. Some of the women they’d seen last night at dinner smiled and greeted Malcolm, then smiled at her. Margo returned the greetings with what she hoped was a properly humble air, but inside she was bubbling.
Hyde Park was glorious in the early morning sunlight, so glorious she could almost forget the horror of disease, squalor, and violent death such a short distance east. Because she was not yet “out” socially, none of the gentlemen they had dined with noticed her, but that was all right. It meant Margo had been accepted as a temporal native. She’d passed a difficult test with flying colors, as difficult in its way as that lethal little confrontation in St. Giles.
They spent the afternoon window shopping beneath the glass roof of the Royal Arcade on Old Bond Street, which linked the fashionable Brown Hotel to Bond. John trailed along as chaperon. Margo gawked through the windows into Bretell’s at #12 where Queen Victoria herself bestowed her considerable patronage. Margo left the Arcade utterly dazzled.
On their final day, Malcolm took her by train down to Brighton, where they wandered along chilly streets and Malcolm pointed out the myriad differences between the city of 1888 and the city where his family had been caught in the great flood of 1998. They paused within sight of the waterfront. Malcolm gazed out at the leaden spray crashing against the shingle and went utterly silent. Margo found she couldn’t bear the look in his eyes. She summoned her nerve and took his gloved hand in hers. He glanced down, eyes widening in surprise, then he swallowed hard.
“Thank you, Miss Smythe. I—”
He couldn’t continue.
Margo found herself moving on instinct. She guided him down the street to a warm inn and selected a seat in the corner. When the innkeeper bustled over, she smiled and said, “Stout, please, for my guardian and might I have a cup of hot tea?”
“Surely, miss. Is there anything else I can get for the gentleman? He seems a mite poorly.”
Malcolm was visibly pulling himself together. “Forgive me, inn-keep,” he rubbed the bridge of his nose with a gloved hand, “but I lost a dear brother not far from here. Drowned in the sea. I . . . hadn’t been back to Brighton since, you see.”
The innkeeper shook his head mournfully and hurried away to bring the dark beer and a steaming cup of tea. Margo sipped in silence while Malcolm regained his composure.
“I shouldn’t have come back,” he said quietly.
“Don’t the tourists come here on holiday?”
“Not often in February,” he smiled wanly. “If one of my guests desires a holiday at the seaside, I generally recommend the Isle of Wight or even Man. I’ve avoided Brighton. Particularly during February.”
The orbital blowup, Margo knew, had occurred in February, catching Atlantic coastlines in the middle of the night. The loss of life had been devastating even in the relatively sheltered English Channel.
Malcolm sipped his dark stout again. “You did very well just now,” he murmured. “I’m not accustomed to being rescued by someone I’m guiding. You kept me from considerable embarrassment out there. This,” he lifted the glass in a tiny salute and gestured at the inn, “was just what I needed: the shock of staying in persona to wake me up and the stout to deaden the hurt. Thank you.”
“I—It just seemed the right thing to do.”
A faint smile creased wan cheeks. “You’ve a good instinct, then. That’s important. More so than you might guess.” He drained the last of the stout, then took out his pocket watch. “If we’re to make that return train, we’d best be leaving.”
When Malcolm squeezed her gloved hand, Margo felt as though she were flying.
By the time the scheduled re-opening of the Britannia Gate forced them to leave London, Margo knew she’d found what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. I’ve done it; I’ve gone through a whole week down time, and I’ve come out just fine. She had a lot to learn yet, of course—she’d endured humiliation and learned valuable lessons—but now that she’d done it, she knew this was exactly what she’d wanted all along.
You’ll see, she promised an unshaven face in her memory, you’ll see, damn you. I’ll do it. This was harder than anything you ever did to me, but I did it. And I’ll do it again. Just you wait. I’ll prove it to you.
Margo had found where she belonged. All that remained now was to convince Kit Carson. And Malcolm Moore. Margo cast a last, longing glance at the gaslit windows of the Time Tours gatehouse, then stepped boldly through onto the grated platform in La-La Land.
It felt like she’d come home at last.