The Silk Thief by Challinor Deborah

Author:Challinor, Deborah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-01-12T16:00:00+00:00

When Friday dragged herself into consciousness some time after the sun rose, the first thing she did was vomit again, into the bucket this time, the pressure almost bursting her pounding head. Then she turned around, lifted her skirts and, hovering on violently quivering thighs, emptied her bowels into it. The smell was horrific and made her throw up again. She wiped her burning backside with the hem of her shift, stripped off, covered the bucket with the shift, put her skirt and jacket back on, and lay down again, shivering uncontrollably, as far from the bucket as she could get. Her belly hurt, her hands hurt, her arse hurt, her head hurt and she couldn’t remember how she’d got there, but all that paled in comparison to the pain of knowing that Aria had gone. Nothing mattered any more. Nothing. If she had a pistol, she’d happily have blown her own brains out.

She heard footsteps, opened her eyes and saw a man’s boots on the other side of the cell bars.

‘God almighty, you stink.’

Friday said nothing.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Friday Woolfe,’ Friday mumbled.

‘What? Speak up.’

‘Friday Woolfe.’

‘Ha! That was easy!’ the constable said. ‘You’ll be up in front of the magistrate this afternoon, then you’ll be sorry.’

I’m bloody sorry now, Friday thought. ‘What did I do?’

‘You bit my bloody hand, you savage bloody cow. And beat the daylights out of a couple of poor judies in the Fortune of War.’

‘Will you send a message to Elizabeth Hislop on Argyle Street?’ God, it was such an effort to talk. ‘Tell her where I am? She’ll pay you.’

‘Like hell I will.’

Prick, Friday thought, but her heart wasn’t in it.

But Elizabeth arrived anyway, accompanied by Jack staggering under the weight of clean clothes, soap and towels, a hairbrush, a boiling-pot filled with hot water, food, plus — thank God! — laudanum, gin and ale for Friday’s horrors. And a fat five-pound bribe for each of the constables on duty at the watch house. For that, while one stood guard, they allowed Elizabeth into the cell to empty the filthy bucket, and help Friday bathe and make herself presentable, Friday well beyond caring who the hell was watching. The laudanum muffled her headache and other aches and pains, ale replaced the fluids that had shot out of her mouth and backside, and the gin postponed her dreadful horrors. Nothing, however, could be done about her grotesquely bloodshot eyes.

Jack managed to winkle out of the guard the fact that Clement Bloodworth was the sitting police magistrate; unfortunately, not Francis Rossi, as Elizabeth had hoped. Though she’d used up the favours Rossi had owed her when she had asked him to release Adam Green from Port Macquarie, she’d been expecting she could prevail on his better nature to let Friday off with just a warning, but that wouldn’t happen now. She would likely be convicted of assault, and sent to the penitentiary at the Female Factory.

At midday Sarah arrived, Elizabeth having sent word.

‘For God’s sake, Friday, what were you thinking?’ she said, her hands on the cell bars.

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