He would have to postpone his journey to Canterbury. Locating Miss Welles before she fell prey to the more unscrupulous and unsavory of London’s residents took precedence over his petition. Darlington rang the damask bellpull. “Whether or not my aunt Augusta wishes to join us is of no concern to me,” he muttered. “But Miss Welles’s safety and well-being are of paramount importance. Mary, tell your mistress that I will offer my coach-and-four for the expedition,” he said, and seizing upon an alternative plan, added, “and if we cannot find Miss Welles in advance of Lady Chatterton’s masked ball, no doubt there will be plenty of my acquaintance in attendance whom I can enlist to aid in our search.”
Mary nearly threw herself at the earl’s feet, thanking him profusely. She knew he would be their champion, just like the ones in the stories about the Middle Ages that Miss Welles used to tell her. With her heart now somewhat lighter, Mary scampered back up Brock Street to give Lady Dalrymple the good news.
“GARDY LOO!” a woman shrieked at the top of her voice, just before the steaming, reeking contents of a brass chamber pot were emptied into the street below. Those who seemed to have taken notice, stepped away from the sidewalk, such as it was, and moved toward the muddy street, only to be nearly overrun by a small child pushing a heavy wheelbarrow laden with nuts.
Never before had C.J. experienced anything like this teeming flood of humans and beasts, of cries and shouts of commerce and of consternation, and of smells both pleasant and assaulting to the nostrils.
At the side of Gun Lane, a young girl baked potatoes over a coal stove that threatened to roast her in the summer heat, while a carman shouted at her, “Stand up, there, you blind cow! Will you have the cart squeeze yer guts out?”
Singing samples of his wares, a ballad seller knocked from door to door of the crowded buildings, best described to modern sensibilities as tenements, while in perfect harmony a tinker cried, “Pots to mend!” banging on a kettle with a hole in its dented bottom.
In Spitalfields Market, as the afternoon drew to a close, merchants, keen to close out transactions and rid themselves of their stock before nightfall, called out bargains on carp and pickerel. “Two for a groat! Four for sixpence! Mackerel here!” A man in black gabardines and a skullcap bought some carp. “For mine wife,” he said to the vendor in a lilting accent. “By you, she says, it’s always good.”
The stench of tanned leather displayed on wooden dowels in makeshift open stalls, combined with that of fish, fresh or otherwise, nearly caused C.J. to retch until the pungent aroma of strong, hot brew from a nearby coffeehouse overpowered the competing odors.
“Knives to grind!”
“Pots to mend!”
“Buy my flounders!”
“Buy my maids!”
A painted ancient announced the availability of her human wares as a well-turned-out wench, full of face and figure, reached for a gentleman’s sleeve. “Come, milord, come along. Shall we drink a glass together before sunset?”
Amid this hurly-burly stood a do-gooder atop a soapbox struggling to be heard above the din. “Gin is the principal cause of the increase of the poor, and of all the vice and debauchery . . .”—he paused to eye the whore, her fresh prey now fully within the grasp of her lacquered talons—“. . . among the inferior sort of people, as well as of the felonies and other disorders committed about London!”
As if to prove his point, the general cacophony was shattered by the cry of “Stop thief!”
C.J. looked up to see the old Jew who had purchased the carp take off through the market after a slip of a lad, but he was no match for the child’s age and speed. Down he went, his precious package trod in the mud by a dozen passersby, eager to catch a good view of the show. “My watch!” the man cried, pointing after the boy, who had slipped into a narrow alley, probably gone forever.
Would no one else help this man? C.J. was amazed at how such a crowd could gather for the spectacle, and yet not one of them offered him a helping hand or a sympathetic look for his plight.
“It’s just a dirty Jew,” a man of roughly the same age said dismissively when he saw the victim’s gabardines. The good Christian spat in the dirt.
Surprisingly unflinching, the robbery victim retorted by releasing a series of epithets in a strange, foreign tongue. She offered her hand to the man, who was trying in vain to brush the dust from his garments. “May I help you, sir?”
The gentleman looked as though he was not particularly keen on taking a woman’s hand. “I am well enough,” he said, getting to his feet on his own. “But I am appreciative of your courtesy. In this town such things are not expected.”
“I have just come to London this afternoon.”
“You’ll learn,” the Jew said bitterly.
Unthinking, C.J. extended her hand again in order to introduce herself. “Cassandra Jane Welles.”
The man looked kindly at her now, but still refused to touch her. “Moses Solomon.”
“Perhaps you can help me, Mr. Solomon.” C.J. recited the address she was seeking.
“Hmmm.” Solomon tugged at one of his peyos, the long curls that he had wound around his ears. “It’s in Old Jewry Street. You’re not far from there. But then again, you’re not near.” He gestured down the road. “To the south and to the west. Cheapside. You don’t know where you’re going, do you?” C.J. shook her head. “Probably where the little pickpocket went with my watch. Mathias ben
