Free A Taste for Nightshade by Martine Bailey Page A

spinning top, rocking on the hard ground. Alone, she made her way up a promising alley, past smoking fires and whining dogs. Hawkers crying their wares clashed with ballad singers and the thumping hammers and creak of heavy wheels. It came back to her, that this was how it was in a noisy crowd, with all the folk distracted you could become anyone you fancied. Patting her pocket, she remembered Flora’s brooch and, after poking free the reverend’s picture, she cajoled another ten bob from a pawnbroker. Pausing to warm her hands at a brazier, she looked quickly over her shoulder, then dropped the tiny portrait into the fire. It burned blue for a moment and then shrivelled blackly into smoke. Fare thee well, Reverend Pilling. And Flora Jean Pilling, and the whole preachifying lot of you.
    On reaching the main street, the crowded mass of it all – people, animals, carriages – was like a hard slap in the face. London was not her territory, and to her eyes it had grown tenfold since she’d last seen it from a prison cart. Exhausted, she stumbled onto the cheapest stage coach just before nightfall, huddling into a corner and settling behind a mask of sleep to avoid her fellow travellers, stinking of wet wool. She dozed there for a night and a day, stirring as the horses were changed, blinking at sudden blazes of light, tossed by jolts, and startled by disembodied yells. There was little conversation, for everyone stood on their rank. England again, she thought sourly, she had forgotten all that codswallop of bowing and curtseying, and kiss my arse.

    As the coach slowed at Rugby she touched the coins in her skirt, but could not bear to part with what was left of the lovely chink. Catching the eye of a pock-faced man with a gold watch, she made a performance of stretching herself awake so as best to show her bosom. Dismounting, she pretended to stumble and grasped his arm, leaning against him as he fussed over her. Inside the inn, she spun him a yarn of a dying sister and a wicked mistress who owed her a year’s wages. Her reward was a supper of hot tea and salty, slippery butter on white bread. At supper time, he insisted on treating her to hot bacon collops. The smoky, sweet pork was so good she found it hard to listen to Mr Reuben Weetch’s ramblings – he had a dull wife and some unfathomable trade up Preston way. Dreamily, she let him stroke her hand in a corner of the parlour, wondering if he would stretch to currant buns.
    Weetch at least reassured her of her power to pull in a gentleman, for the only mirror aboard the ship had reflected back a sun-blistered stranger, her hair a mixture of copper and straw. How had her bonny flame-haired self turned into that?
    Alighting at Manchester, she allowed Weetch a short farewell in an alley by the stables. She let him maul her until the coachman called for all to board. Then she speedily sent her hand on an investigation of his breeches.
    â€˜You must go,’ she sighed, hearing the final call for all passengers.
    â€˜I must see you again,’ he groaned, his head lolling back against the wall. ‘I know it is only two days, but I have developed such a strong affection—’ What a dossuck! She bit back a laugh as she rapidly fabricated a false address. ‘Don’t forget to call, my dear,’ she cried as he hurried to board, blowing her a kiss.
    After watching the coach disappear, she emptied his purse of a grand haul of 17s 9d. Not wanting ever again to risk being nabbed by the Justices, she cast his purse away into the canal.
    Manchester was larger and taller than she remembered it, five-storey brick warehouses and manufactories rising high into the sooty sky. Bustling past the streams of workers rushing hither and thither to the clamour of ringing bells, she wondered at their stupidity. Whey-faced and poor, they were of no more interest to her than the rats scurrying about the heaps of cinders. Instead, she watched herself