Moll

by Alexander Cordell

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sagas; Regency Romance

Synopsis

The raven-haired beauty in the stagecoach looks every inch the French aristocrat she claims to be. But she is nothing of the sort. She is Moll Walbee, and she has left her reputation as a notorious pickpocket far behind her in the slums of Paris. The handsome higwayman who waylays the stagecoach is also not what he seems. He is Richard Carling, recently dismissed from his regiment and now a Gentleman of the Road. But all he steals from Moll is a kiss... And so on the road a partnership is born that will be refined in trust and betrayal, that will lead to danger and high adventure in England, on the ocean wave, and to a dramatic climax in the wilds of Australia.

Release date: September 4, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 480

Sample

It was an era of sparkling eyes and snowy bosoms, the latter expressed by the bulging matron in the rumbling, swaying stagecoach, who fixed Moll Walbee with an eagle eye. The lanky lawyer, sitting beside the matron (so soon to be her lover), did likewise. And Moll, beautifully attired in the stolen clothes of her employer, sat beside a portly bishop who dozed in snorts and starts.

Travelling under the title of Madame Le Roy and accepted by everybody as a member of the French aristocracy, Moll was confident that her reputation as a pickpocket was far behind her in the slums of Paris. Dark-haired, she watched the pastoral country of Shropshire fly past through half-closed eyes. Soon the ancient town of Shrewsbury would raise its spires on the horizon; a night there, then on to London where fortune, thought Moll, would surely smile.

All three of her travelling companions showed interest in Moll; her youth and beauty called to them. The bishop did it with artifice, his rheumy eyes tracing the curves of her bodice and the shadowed divide of her breast. The lawyer, risking detection by the matron, peered through his hooded lids, taking in every item of her dress (all of which denoted wealth) from her broad-rimmed black hat to her white leather boots; vaguely, he wondered, having little knowledge of women, if the black hair that tumbled in ringlets was a wig; if it was, thought he, it must have cost a pretty penny. The matron rejected Moll’s blatant confidence with repressed explosive piety. And Moll, suspecting all this and enjoying every moment, sat back in the cushions and listened to the drumming of the hooves on the flinted road. Not even the Chester post-boy’s comment diverted her mind from her plans for London.

‘Bloody ’ell, Joe – ye don’t get many o’ those to the pound. If she ties her bootlaces, they’ll roll down the hill.’

Dusk and bats were playing in the sky when the stagecoach had left Chester – the Chester to Shrewsbury ‘Highflyer’ was always slow at an average speed of three miles an hour, for the beery driver stopped at every staging station for ale. Now, near midnight, with the moonlit Severn dancing through Montford Bridge like a capricious Welsh maid, the wind rose in expectant anger; blustering in the lonely hedgerows, it drove its shepherd’s fleece across a ghostly moon. Disturbed by the oncoming clatter of hooves and wheels, crows and ravens arose like burned paper in squawking, barelegged quarrels: a bustard, tearing at roadside prey, crouched with a bloody beak, waiting for the monster to pass; from the thickets came shrieks of little things dying. And at a lonely verge emerged a highwayman: long-booted and heavily masked, with his black coat swirling in the wind, he came, and his big mare reared up, her forelegs pawing the air as the stagecoach skidded to a halt.

‘Stand and deliver!’

Thrown to the floor in a tangle of legs and petticoats, the lawyer was up first and back on his seat with his sallow face well down into his starched collar, while the matron, her plump hands upon her jewels, shrieked hysterically. The bishop sat benignly, crossing himself and praying, while Moll, scrambling free, opened the window of the stagecoach, put out her head and cried in a shrill French accent:

‘But monsieur, this is wonderful! C’est magnifique!’

Ignoring her, the highwayman seized the driver by the leg, somersaulting him down into the road. Then, dismounting, he bowed before the open window and his cockaded hat with its red rose of England swept the road. His eyes glittered behind his mask.

‘At your service, mademoiselle.’ This he said in perfect French, which delighted Moll.

‘Parlez-vous Français, monsieur?’ She fluttered an eye.

‘Ah, oui, mademoiselle!’ And in English added, ‘You are truly French?’

‘She’s French, all right,’ said the matron, recovering, then shouted, ‘Oh, we shall all be raped!’

‘If you are lucky, madame,’ said Moll, ‘so stop the snivelling.’

And the highwayman shouted, ‘Out, all of you! Out on to the road – let’s see what you’ve got’, and with his horse pistol, waved them into line. There he began to relieve them of money and possessions, dispensing the matron’s jewels into a small leather bag at his waist. Now, towering above Moll, his fingers toyed with a pearl necklace at her throat.

‘Of paste, mademoiselle?’

‘Of course,’ replied Moll. ‘The real ones are at ’ome with me ’usband.’

‘You are married, yet wear no ring?’

‘That, too, is also at ’ome with me ’usband.’

The moon pulled up her skirts and the country blazed with new light. He asked, ‘Then what does a man demand of one so beautiful? A kiss, perhaps?’ And his eyes moved over her from the dark hair upon her shoulders to the elegant sweep of her over-skirt of white lace and gold. Scarcely the travelling clothes of a lady of quality, thought he – something the matron had already perceived: possibly the French aristocracy often attired themselves strangely, he considered.

The highwayman, knowing many women, had always done his best to leave them contented. Biddy, for instance, the serving maid at the Old Three Pigeons at Nesscliff, had little cause for complaint. Though the lady of royal connections, wife of a Spaniard – she whose amours had forced him to become gentleman of the road – had been unwise to talk at table … But the only French woman he had pleasured was a milkmaid aged sixteen in a barn near Arras, a pert, tearful little creature with hayseed upon her breasts. From the humble to the arrogant he had taken them on the road; most had begged tearfully for their lives and their virtue (usually in that order); others had been subject to the vapours, fainting off in the arms of terrified escorts, when a loosening of the stays (which he always insisted upon performing himself) usually revived them. But this particular French girl showed no fear, and her deportment portrayed excellent breeding.

‘Then a kiss, perhaps, madame, since the pearls are artificial?’

‘Why not?’ asked Moll, and he took her into his arms, and, bending above her, whispered:

‘Actually, I prefer them married. The cheese is that much sweeter when nibbled by another mouse,’ and what began as a kiss of quiet formality ended in heat and gusty breathing.

‘Why, the hussy!’ said the matron indignantly.

‘It is the French,’ explained the lawyer with droll charm. ‘Very handy from the waist down – you know what they are.’

The bishop, however, was smiling at the long embrace. For the lips of Moll, by some strange phantasm, seemed pressed upon his own. Long ago, on the banks of the Liffey back home in Ireland, he had kissed a girl like this, and the perfume of her lingered upon his mouth.

‘I am obliged to you,’ said the highwayman. ‘That was delightful.’

‘For me too,’ answered Moll. ‘One day I would like you to meet me ’usband.’

‘Madame, I’d be charmed.’

‘In a duel, per’aps …?’

This stilled him, and she added, ‘But you can die for two kisses as easily as for one, monsieur. You will please kiss me again?’

‘It will be a pleasure, milady,’ and he bent to her for the second time, which was a mistake, for she bit him. Laughing he pushed her away; still laughing, he swung a leg over his horse while Moll danced like a dervish in the middle of the road, shouting:

‘You call me a nibble, eh? I am not a nibbler nor a cheeses, and my man is not a mouse. Next time I come on coaches I bring a gun, like you, and shoot holes in your arses – you ’ear me? Sacré bleu! I bloody kill you!’ and she picked up stones and flung them after him as, laughing gustily, he galloped away. Now, with her hat off and her hair down, she raced after him in the moonlight, shouting:

‘Bastard! One day we meet again, monsieur. Bastard!’

‘My dear woman,’ protested the lawyer, ‘the man has gone, pray compose yourself.’

‘And shoot holes in your arses, too,’ cried Moll, and got back into her seat.

The coach rumbled on again, and the smiling moon, full and yellow, was sitting on top of Wrekin Hill like a gypsy’s tambourine.

The highwayman, more interested in Moll than profit, reined in his black mare (which now had its forelegs painted white to prevent identification) and tethered her at the Severn Arms, Montford Bridge, where the stagecoach, after shedding a wheel, was being repaired.

Elegantly attired in a gray frock coat and silken breeches, and no longer wearing the mask of a highwayman, Sir Richard Carling (recently cashiered from the 38th Regiment of Foot) knew he was taking a calculated risk. Any of the three old fools in that stagecoach, quite apart from the French girl, might recognize him, he knew, but women and gold, he reasoned, often demanded risk. Also Biddy Boddy, of the Old Three Pigeons at Nesscliff, had gone down with adolescent spots, which had seriously perturbed him; so this delightful French piece had arrived at precisely the right time. Twisting the ear of a passing pot-boy (whose name was Tommy Ructions) he entered the tap-room of the Arms and thumped the bar for ale.

Sir Richard’s entry coincided with the arrival of another coach from Chester, and through the open door of the taproom he saw the Quality coming in: the elders and their bewhiskered sons of muscular virility, square chins and barks; while their shagged out, nasal wives implored the servants to control the scurrying children. And through this assembly came the inn landlord, his fat arms outflung like a herald of Caesar, crying for passage:

‘Room, please, ladies and gentlemen-allow entry for our foreign guest!’ And Moll, looking gorgeous under a pink parasol, inclined her head courteously this way and that to the bows of the men and bobbed curtsies of the servants.

‘By God,’ whispered Richard into his pewter, ‘have they many more like you in France?’ Reaching out, he got the same Tommy Ructions by the ear again, drew him close and whispered, ‘Her name? Quick – her name?’

‘Who, sir? What, sir?’

‘Her name – the French one – I didn’t catch her name.’

‘Not allowed to give names, your honour!’

‘Her name. I also want her room number.’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ said the pot-boy, wriggling, and Richard said softly into the ear he held, ‘You have been to my room, small one?’

‘Aye, sir. Took your bag up, sir, didn’t I, sir?’

‘Then you probably noticed what would appear to be a jar of pickled onions standing on my dressing table?’

‘No, sir!’

‘Next time, look. They are, in fact, not pickled onions, but the little goolies which pot-boys like you normally keep in their trews – they who have refused to give me ladies’ room numbers.’

‘Room number four, ground floor, sir,’.

‘Excellent,’ replied Richard. ‘Here’s a penny, and there’s more where it came from. Now her name?’

‘Madame Le Roy,’ said Tommy Ructions.

Wondering where the next guinea was coming from – having already spent her entire fortune on the coach fare from Chester to London – Moll, now bathed and changed into a clean set of her mistress’s beautiful underclothes (the petticoats were of Chinese silk edged with Alençon needle-point lace, the drawers with ruffles of pink) now sat at her dressing table in bedroom number three and with bright red garters at the knee combed her hair in what was afterwards known as the chignon style. Later, with her parasol at a jaunty angle, Moll sauntered out to the river bank where the stalls were being set for the Calan Mai market, it being the first day of summer.

All here was sun and gold, with burly auctioneers shouting their wares and farmers’ wives, starch-aproned and busty, duffing up butter pats and fishing out golden hot bread from outdoor ovens.

There were cheese stalls, trinket stalls, fruit and vegetable stalls laid out in rows, with apples polished like the cheeks of cherubs; wine from Spain, parrots, perfumes from the East and handbags of the finest Moroccan leather. And, although the market was packed with humanity from gentry to slum beggars, Richard Carling knew, without turning, the nearness of Moll behind him with the instinct of the hunting male. Therefore he held higher the leather bag he was examining, as if for her inspection, and asked:

‘Two shillings? Is it fair, you think?’

Moll replied coldly, ‘It is of real Moroccan leather, monsieur. A man would be a skinflint to pay so little.’

‘You know eastern prices?’

‘Perhaps not, but I know a bargain when I see one,’ and the stall-holder bawled from a toothless mouth:

‘It is indeed, lady. Made from young goat leather tanned in our village in Algiers with imported divi-divi, the dried seed-pods of South America – none other – and decorated by the needles of our wisest people.’

‘That is good,’ answered Moll, ‘but if you stop lying, we will know that they come from England and are tanned with bark.’ She turned to Richard. ‘You are going to buy it?’

‘On your recommendation. You called it a bargain.’

Richard took the bag and paid his two shillings.

‘One for me also,’ said Moll. ‘Sixpence?’ She rummaged in her handbag.

‘Two shillings!’ cried the stall-holder affronted. ‘It was agreed.’

‘He agreed it,’ replied Moll, ‘not I. Argue more and I will demand ten per cent off for cash.’ She gave him sixpence and took the bag.

‘Call the policeman!’

‘Yes, call him, for I know you long-nosed thieves. This leather is stolen, is it not?’ And the hawker moaned at the sky:

‘Foreign lady, do not talk of theft, I beg you!’ And he took the coin, spun it up, and bit it in his teeth, saying:

‘It is always a pleasure to do business with the French. Please come again,’ and Richard protested:

‘What about me? Hers was sixpence and I paid two shillings!’

‘That is the difference between us,’ said Moll. ‘The English may ’ave the Colonies, but one day we will ’ave the world.’

‘It is a topic for discussion,’ said Richard, and they walked off together, each with their Moroccan bag.

Later, Moll put on a nightdress of such exquisite silk that it could only have been afforded by an Eastern princess. Then, opening a bottle of lavender oil, she rubbed some into her small, white hands, especially the left one. For this hand, said she, had to be especially cherished: it was one that could lift a matelot’s wallet from under his nose without the bat of his eye. Now, as she did every night, Moll wrapped this left hand in muslin to keep it tender, and, sitting at the desk in her room, picked up a plume pen and wrote on notepaper, in French. This, being translated into English, read:

My darling Chantelle,

This is the first opportunity I have had to write since leaving Paris, but I cannot allow your eighth birthday to pass without sending you a kiss – here then is a large one from your ever-loving sister.

From Le Havre I came across the sea to a place in England called Dover, and from there journeyed to Wales. Here I worked as a parlour maid in a rich house and, through industry and loyalty, was shown great kindness; I left there after only a month with a purse nearly empty, but with half my generous mistress’s wardrobe. Now I am on my way to London where, without doubt, I shall be shown equal consideration by people richer than I: so rich, indeed, that given good fortune I may soon be able to ask our Uncle Maurice to put you on a ship to England, where we will be reunited. That we will soon meet again is the loving wish of Francesca,

Your devoted sister.

1st May 1839.

PS: it would be unwise to tell you my whereabouts.

Now, before retiring for the night, Moll sat by the French doors (which were level with the garden) and looked out upon the lawns of the inn. The night was black in a gusty blustering of distant trees; beyond lay the quicksilver brilliance of the lovely Severn, the river that had been ploughed by the boats of invading Phoenicians and heard the tramping of the sandalled feet of Rome on their way to Vericonium, for history was Moll’s favourite subject once … during the time of her father’s wealth.

Now, however, she began to wonder how she was going to pay the landlord’s bill when the stagecoach set off in the morning, for once she had taken the role of a French aristocrat the die was cast and she would have to play the drama to the end. Should her plan fail then it would be back to the justice of France, or languish in a stinking English prison such as the infamous Newgate.

She studied her face in the bedroom mirror, turning it this way and that, and said:

‘You are Francesca Le Roy, the wife of the first secretary to the French ambassador in London. Moll Walbee, the pickpocket of the Paris streets who killed her lover, the thief Jean Pierre, is dead, you ’ear me? Dead.’

These words she repeated in French, savouring every syllable the better to understand it.

From bedroom number four, next door to hers, Moll listened to the petulant complaints of the matron who had lost her jewels, and a serving maid’s consoling replies. Somewhere beyond the lawns an owl hooted dismally, its cry increasing Moll’s sudden sense of foreboding, and her thoughts turned again to the handsome young man she had met in the market – it being important for her to find someone with whom to form an alliance necessary to the future plans she had in mind. And best if such a partner was a male, thought Moll, for a man could prove handy in a world of violence.

Of all the men she had yet seen, this one was the most impressive; but strangely, Moll could not banish the impression that she had seen him somewhere earlier … perhaps in the inborn arrogance with which he held himself? she wondered.

Meanwhile the matron in the room next door sat up in her bed awaiting a visitation from her lover-to-be, the lawyer. Earlier, she had arranged her wig to fall upon her great bosom like two sets of curly black candles. And now, with the French windows unlocked to facilitate his entry, she closed her eyes and breathed with mounting desire.

Somewhere in the inn a clock struck midnight and in the tap-room the lawyer, the prospective lover, obliterated the thought with another swill at his brandy.

‘Reckon you’ve ’ad enough, ain’t you, sir?’ asked the landlord. ‘It’s time you was abed wi’ your handsome wife.’

Richard, having slipped out into the stable yard to water and feed his horse, returned to the tap-room to finish his second tankard of ale, and the lawyer, now three sheets in the wind, surveyed him with a glassy stare. In the deep recesses of his befuddled brain, he cursed not only the landlord, the inn itself and the matron awaiting him, but also the highwayman who had relieved her of her jewels on the road – jewels he had planned to acquire for himself, being a lawyer.

Further, he cursed the legal circumstances that had brought him to this pass, for lawyers who absconded with their clients’ money were the legitimate victims of those who shared their deadly secrets. And with over ten thousand pounds of the matron’s capital stacked away where she couldn’t find it, he now had to dance to the jig of her desires, since, if anyone was likely to smell a rat, it was this accursed matron.

Now marriage to a lifetime of her gluttonous obesity faced the lawyer as an alternative to arrest for breach of promise; to say nothing of a gaggle of honking bloody relatives and seven obnoxious brats by previous husbands all deceased through biological deficiencies.

The outcome of his criminality faced the lawyer. Imminently the necessity to prove his virility would be upon him, for the matron, he suspected, would not take kindly to a wilting lover.

Inexpert in the business of copulation with anyone, including large matrons, the lawyer had only the faintest idea of how to set about it. Indeed, his sole experiences in this connection went back nearly fifty years when, enticed into the woodshed by Dirty Girtie, the girl next door, he had stood, aged seven, on a pile of bricks in an attempt to reach her lips in a game she called ‘Mothers and Fathers’. Later, this descended into an exercise named ‘Hunt the Wren’. He never knew if he’d got the wren or not, but discovered that she wore orange-box rope for garters. Therefore, armed only with this primitive knowledge, and with a large lover awaiting him, the lawyer yearned for Girtie’s lisped instructions like a drowning man clutches at straws.

Richard, with his own particular business in mind and anxious to be rid of him, assisted him through the door and halfway along the passageway. But the instant Richard left him, the lawyer, like a man on his way to his execution, shuffled out into the garden and sought concealment in a clump of rhododendron bushes. There he awaited the courage to enter the matron’s room through the French windows.

Richard, in his nightshirt, now tiptoed along the corridors in search of what he thought was Moll’s bedroom and was disappointed to find it locked. But, knowing that women admire persistence, he now entered the garden and, searching until he found the French window, was overjoyed when it opened to a touch. So was the matron, who, believing him to be the lawyer, opened fat arms to him. Meanwhile, the lawyer, concealed in the garden, rubbed his eyes in disbelief, for nothing like this had been described in Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England.

And, while the lawyer stared with drunken incredulity, Richard, his caution banished by such a warm reception, now indulged himself in a rapture so careless that it was a full minute before he realized he was with the wrong lover. Leaping out, still unrecognized, he fled.

The matron screamed long and loud which, as Moll explained later, all hell broke loose at the inn.

Out into the garden came the aristocracy, the men in nightshirts, the ladies carrying shrieking children, with maids yelling, cats being booted and dogs barking all over Montford.

Which gave Moll the opportunity to drift like a ghost around the vacated rooms, lifting a ring here, a necklace there, and shovelling into her little Moroccan bag loose change usually deposited by males when removing trousers. Then she drifted back to her own room, unseen, unsuspected.

And Tommy Ructions, sitting in a broom cupboard under the stairs and listening to the commotion, smiled his toothless smile.

The next morning was bright with sun, but doleful at the breakfast table where long faces complained about the thieving antics of the younger generation, for Moll’s nocturnal expedition had gone well. She, for her part, ate heartily of devilled kidneys and bacon, bowing this way and that in harmony with the morning, with Richard at the next table down in the mouth.

Later, with her luggage aboard the repaired stagecoach, Moll patted the head of Tommy Ructions in the hall and, kissing his angelic face, took her leave of landlord and servants in grandiloquent style. And then, with Richard and she travelling inside, two traders and their wives outside, and Richard’s black mare tethered behind, the postilion awakened the village with his post-horn and the coach clattered over Montford Bridge for Shrewsbury.

‘Monsieur,’ Moll asked Richard, ‘did I not understand that his grace the bishop was to accompany us?’

This occurred half a mile up the road and Richard looked through the back window.

‘You’re right,’ he answered. ‘Here he is now.’

The stagecoach halted, and the bishop, red-faced, staggered up, shouting at the driver:

‘Would ye leave me behind, you idiot? And me guaranteed a safe passage to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in Shrewsbury?’, and with the help of Richard climbed aboard. Easing his great shining backside on to the seat beside Moll, he added:

‘Beggin’ ye pardon for the affront to ye dignity, milady, but I’d just left the yard to perform a natural function when away to hell this thing went carryin’ all me personals,’ and he leaned out of the window and shook a red fist, bawli. . .