Chapter II: Just One Dance
Previously, on Calamity's Trinket
Nell Bartlett is newly rich, newly independent, and has a new haircut. She persuades her mother to have a night out and meets a handsome stranger.
943CE, somewhere in Baghdad
Getting past the city guards had been simple. She wondered for a moment if it was too simple, but then what reason would the city guards have for being on high alert. It was the security of the main house that would pose the greatest risk. But then that’s why she was the one who’d been sent. She didn’t need to go anywhere near them.
She walked with a stoop through the market, leaning heavily on her cane, her brightly coloured robe trailing in the dirt. Excessive, perhaps, but her uncle had always insisted on this kind of disguise. Give them something to look at that isn’t your face. Only let them remember that which is easily discarded. It had been her habit now for fifty years; why change it now. Besides, she enjoyed the theatricality.
She found a stall where she could buy sanbousaj, and carried it to the square across from the house. She sat and ate, letting a slack grin settle over her wrinkled face. That too was deliberate. A strict regime of getting as much sun as possible. People would probably underestimate her based on her actual age, but looking twenty years older than that helped too. She let her beady eyes follow the people crossing the square. The image of a curious old lady, people watching while she ate her lunch. But her attention was on the house.
There was no one guarding the front door. They’d be too careful for that. No, the security would be hidden. She lingered over her meal. Small bites, chewed slowly, justifiable by her missing teeth, allowing her to watch for almost two hours. She watched figures moving past the windows inside. She saw servants leave on errands or an afternoon off. Finally she finished eating and slowly pottered off in the opposite direction.
After a few blocks she turned, carefully skirting the house with a wide berth until she found a suitable spot. An empty alley. The buildings either side had no windows, but were weathered. It would do. She dropped her robe and cane over a wall into someone’s garden. Let someone else find use in them.
Underneath the lavish robe she was dressed simply. A brown that would sink into the clay of the houses. She looked quickly around to made sure she wasn’t being watched before she stared her climb. The walls were old and in places threatened to crumble beneath her fingers. As she pulled herself onto the roof, she heard broken pieces of stone falling to the ground behind her. But she was already moving on.
Crouched low she moved from rooftop to rooftop until the house she wanted was just one small jump away. She hesitated for only a moment, and then she was landing without a sound. She crept to the edge of the roof and slowly lowered herself over the side. There was no sound from within. She edged towards a window and peered carefully inside. The room was empty. They would be expecting someone to try and get in through the ground floor. They would be expecting one of her nephews, probably. Large, loud, aggressive men who would try to fight their way in.
There was a large, chest against the wall of the room, with a heavy lock gleaming in the late afternoon sun. Showy. Ostentatious. She ignored it.
She eyed instead the battered chair in the corner. She slid her hand under the seat and felt wad of fabric sewed to the underside. She used a hairpin to careful pick away the stitching and then – yes – she had it. And with luck they wouldn’t notice it was gone for hours.
She slipped back up to the rooftops and swiftly crossed to the edges of the city, slipping past the guards once more and making for home.
She travelled for miles before finding a place to make camp. She slept peacefully. She didn’t even feel the cold steel of the dagger between her ribs.
1923CE, somewhere in Chelsea
The stranger danced with Nell for almost two full minutes without saying anything, which she found strange. She was accustomed to chatting with her dancing partners. Not about anything of substance, naturally, but something. Some words at least would be exchanged about the quality of the weather recently, or which garden parties they’d both attended recently. Whether or not the hostess had ordered the appropriate amount of food or if this lord or that was likely to be in town for the season. She was used to talking to the men she danced with and she was just now realising for the first time that she was used to the men she danced with being the ones to start conversations.
They all started them the same way, of course, they all led off with you’re looking very well, Miss Bartlett, but that’s really all it took to get a conversation started. But the stranger made no such overture and Nell began to worry that she would have to be the one to start talking. She wasn’t entirely sure she knew how to do that. This is understandable, really. Well born, passably attractive young women are seldom required to initiate anything at all, even something so mild as chitchat.
So we will be patient with Nell as she tries to think of something to say to the stranger and we will not judge her too harshly when she finally opens with, ‘I suppose you’d like to know my name.’
The stranger looked down at her, blinking slowly. She felt suddenly a little dazed. He was not at all like the men she was used to.
For one thing, he had not shaved in what appears to be several days. He didn’t have the carefully shaped and groomed moustaches some of the men of Nell’s set adopted, simply a careless stubble, as if daily grooming was not high on his list of priorities.
His hair was dark, and unfashionably long, curling over an unpressed shirt collar. He had a reasonably swarthy complexion; Nell suspected several of the society mamas would whisper about exotic origins behind their fans – that is, if they deigned to acknowledge the existence of someone dressed so haphazardly. There was a pale scar running across the warm skin of his face, carving a curved path through his eyebrow.
Nell had been warned against rakish men before she made her debut. Cautioned about the risk to her precious reputation, she’d soaked up stories about dangerous men who’d talk to her with silken words so they could ruin her and leave her desperate. There had always been something tantalising about the prospect. Some thrilling fantasy about gilded danger.
But when she’d finally entered society and come across men who behaved like rakes, they all seemed so small. So petty. So obvious. She found their words less silken than slimy, and they seemed to her so often extremely rude. They would focus their attention on her, acting like she was the only person in a conversation that included several others. It seemed designed to make her feel important, when really it embarrassed her.
There was nothing silken about this stranger. Nothing gilded. She could see the danger of him written all over his face – or at least she thought she could. We cannot expect her to have understood the real danger he represented. She would learn about that soon enough. But she could see that he was someone who paid no respect to the rules that had governed her life and that itself was danger enough.
‘Why would you suppose that?’ he asked.
Nell’s eyes widened in surprise.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you’re American.’
‘Why is that always the first thing you people say?’
‘You people?’
‘Yeah. You English always seem to think being American is the most interesting thing about me?’
‘Well I didn’t say it was interesting,’ said Nell.
‘Ah,’ the stranger said. ‘You remarked on it because you think it’s boring?’
‘I suppose I remarked on it for lack of other things to remark on.’
‘Right,’ said the man, and lapsed into silence.
Nell decided that she would stop trying to have a conversation with someone who didn’t seem interested in having one and this resolution lasted one minute and twelve seconds.
‘It’s Nell, by the way,’ she said.
‘What is?’ he asked.
‘Are you aggravating on purpose? My name, naturally.’
‘Your name naturally? Which you supposed I wanted to know?’ he said. ‘And I didn’t realise I was aggravating.’
Nell narrowed her eyes.
‘I’m quite sure you did realise. And is it not natural to introduce oneself to the person with whom one is dancing?’
The stranger raised an eyebrow. ‘Well if one is dancing,’ he said.
There was silence again, briefly, but Nell was becoming less patient and the song they were dancing to was coming to the end.
‘Are you going to tell me your name?’ she asked.
The man stepped back from her as the final notes faded away.
‘Well if it’s customary…’ he said.
Nell waited.
The stranger smirked.
‘Then no.’
He turned and walked away.
Nell stared after him. He was walking towards the bar – no, to a door behind the bar. She set her jaw and strode after him, grabbing him by the arm as he opened the door.
‘What was that?’ she asked.
‘What?’ he said. ‘The song ended, we stopped dancing.’
‘You refused to tell me your name.’
He blinked down at her and shook his head slightly.
‘And?’
‘And…I…it…’
He was smirking at her. She took a sharp breath in through her nose.
‘I think you’ve been very rude.’
His smirk deepened.
‘Ok,’ he said and turned away from her again.
‘It is not ok,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what your—‘
His head dropped back for a moment and he turned to face her.
‘Lady, I did not want to know your name. I don’t want you to know mine. I just came in here to pass the time for a bit and now I have somewhere else to be. I don’t care if you think I’m rude. I don’t care what you want from me. The portion of my life that involved being in this bar and talking it you has come to an end. I’d wish you a good evening but I clearly don’t have the manners.’
And as Nell stood there in shock, he walked through the door and was gone.
The dance with the rude American stranger ruined the next twenty three minutes of Nell’s night and then, with some effort, she squelched the experience down in her soul, had one more drink than was wise, and continued to dance and carouse with the best of them.
In fact she caroused so well she didn’t notice the night creeping into the morning. It was after one before she made her way back to the table at which her mother still sat – chatting animatedly to one of the musicians.
‘You see, mother,’ Nell said, as they stepped into the cool of the night to find their driver. ‘I told you you’d enjoy being improper.’
Her mother laughed a little and sighed a little as she often did these days.
‘I suppose it is nice, isn’t it? Being a little reckless.’
‘It definitely can be,’ said Nell.
They walked slowly, contentedly down the quiet street. The car would be waiting around the corner. This, too, was something they would never have done in a previous era. They would have sent someone to have the driver meet them at the door.
Of course, having a driver at all hadn’t been possible for the last few years. They’d spent the last few seasons relying on cabs and the kindness of their friends. Nell had revelled in the independence of having her own car again, and had even secured a promise from Joe, the chauffeur, that he would teach her to drive herself.
It was into the quiet, satisfied reflections that the sound of running footsteps intruded into Nell’s mind. They were coming from behind her, and gaining ground.
Nell turned, suddenly afraid – it might be gloriously improper to walk through the streets of London in the middle of the night, but it was driven home to her now that it was also truly dangerous.
A figure was running towards her, stooped over, clutching at something. She drew back in fright, but the figure merely pushed past her and went on. It went on for just a few steps, then slowed, stumbled and fell to the ground.
‘Oh dear,’ her mother said, and rushed forwards to help them.
‘I’m not sure that’s wise,’ Nell said, following after her, but as she drew closer she gasped in recognition.
The rude American stranger lay sprawled on the ground, his breathing shallow, a hand pressed to his stomach. His eyes were closed but they fluttered open for a moment as Nell’s mother knelt beside him and took his hand.
‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Sir? Sir, we need to—’
She gasped and turned back to Nell.
‘Nell,’ she said, ‘run. Get Joe. Get the car.’
She was holding out her hand. It was covered in blood.
Next time, on Calamity's Trinket
Nell and her mother become secret nurses, and Nell finally learns someone's name.