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These were rapidly subsumed by the blasphemies being flung by the two ladies—if that was the word, Grey thought grimly—in an incoherent barrage of insults.
The pistol-shot sound of a slapped cheek rang out, and then the alley erupted in high-pitched shrieks as the women closed with each other, fingers clawed and feet kicking. Grey grabbed for the other woman’s sleeve, but it was torn from his grip and he was knocked heavily into a wall. Someone tripped him, and he went down, rolling and rebounding from the wall of the shed before he could get his feet under him.
Regaining his balance, Grey staggered, then landed on the balls of his feet, and snatched out his sword in a slashing arc that made the metal sing. The thin chime of it cut through the racket in the alleyway like a knife through butter, separating the combatants and sending the women stumbling back from each other. In the moment’s silence that resulted, Grey stepped firmly between the two women and glared back and forth between them.
Assured that he had put at least a momentary stop to the battle, he turned to the unknown woman. A solid person with curly black hair, she wore a wide-brimmed hat that obscured her face, but not her attitude, which was belligerent in the extreme.
“May I inquire your name, madam? And your purpose here?”
“She’s a class of a slut, what else?” Mrs. O’Co
“I asked the lady herself—if you please, Mrs. O’Co
“That would be Mrs. Scanlon—if youplease, my lord.” The apothecary’s voice was more than polite, but held a note almost of smugness.
“I beg your pardon?” Taken by surprise, he turned completely round to face Scanlon and the widow. Evidently, the other woman was equally shocked, for beyond a loud “ What?” behind him, she said nothing.
Scanlon was holding Francine O’Co
“I have the honor to introduce you to my wife, sir,” he said gravely. “Wed yestereen we were, by special license, with Father Doyle himself doing of the honors.” He nodded at the tall Irishman, who nodded in turn, though keeping a wary eye on the tip of Grey’s rapier.
“What, couldn’t wait ’til poor old Tim was cold, could you? And who’s the slut here, I’d like to know, you with your belly swole up like a farkin’ toad!”
“I’m a married woman— twicemarried! And you with no name and no shame—”
“Ah, now, Francie, Francie . . .” Scanlon put his arms around his incensed wife, lugging her back by main force. “Let it be, sweetheart, let it be. Ye don’t want to be doing the babe an injury now, do ye?”
At this reminder of her delicate condition, Francine desisted, though she went on huffing beneath her hat brim, much in the ma
Grey turned back to the other woman, just as she opened her mouth again. He put the tip of his rapier firmly against the middle of her chest, cutting her expostulations short and eliciting a brief and startled “Eek!”
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, patience exhausted.
“Iphigenia Stokes,” she replied indignantly. “How dare you be takin’ liberties with me person, you?” She backed up a step, swatting at his sword with a hand whose essential broadness and redness was not disguised by the black shammy mitt covering it.
“And who are you?” Grey swung toward the small clergyman, who had been tranquilly enjoying the show from a place of security behind a barrel.
“Me?” The clerical gentleman looked surprised, but bowed obligingly. “The Reverend Mr. Cobb, sir, curate of St. Giles. I was asked to come and deliver the obsequies for the late Mr. O’Co
“You what? A frigging Protestant?” Francine O’Co
“Interment is to be in the churchyard at St. Giles, ma’am—if you and your husband would care to attend?”
At this, the entire Irish contingent pressed forward, obviously intending to seize the casket and carry it off by main force. Nothing daunted, Miss Stokes’s escort likewise pushed eagerly to the fore, several of the gentlemen uprooting boards from a sagging fence to serve as makeshift clubs.
Miss Stokes was encouraging her troops with bellows of “Catholic whore!” while Mr. Scanlon appeared to be of two minds in the matter, simultaneously dragging his wife out of the fray while shaking his free fist in the direction of the Protestants and shouting assorted Irish imprecations.
With visions of bloody riot breaking out, Grey leapt atop the casket and swung his sword viciously from side to side, driving back all comers.
“Tom!” he shouted. “Go for the constables!”
Tom Byrd had not waited for instructions, but had apparently gone for reinforcements during the earlier part of the affray; the word “constables” was barely out of Grey’s mouth, when the sound of ru
Seeing the arrival of armed authority, the warring funeral parties drew instantly apart, knives disappearing like magic and clubs dropping to the ground with insouciant casualness.
“Are you in difficulties, Major?” Constable Magruder called, looking distinctly entertained as he glanced between the two competing widows and then up at Grey on his precarious roost.
“No, sir . . . I thank you,” Grey replied politely, gasping for breath. He felt the cheap boards of the coffin creak in a sinister fashion as he shifted his weight, and sweat ran down the groove of his back. “If you would care to go on standing there for just a moment longer, though? . . .”
He drew a deep breath and stepped gingerly down from his perch. He had rolled through a puddle; the seat of his breeches was wet, and he could feel the split where the sleeve seam beneath his right arm had given way. Goddamn it, now what?
He was inclined toward the simplicity of a Solomonic decree that would award half of Tim O’Co
Grey sighed, sheathed his sword, and rubbed the spot between his brows with an index finger.
“Mrs. . . . Scanlon.”
“Aye?” The swelling of her face had gone down somewhat; it was suspicion and fury now that narrowed those diamond eyes of hers.
“When I called upon you two days ago, you rejected the gift presented by your husband’s comrades in arms, on the grounds that you believed your husband to be in hell and did not wish to waste money upon Masses and candles. Is that not so?”
“It is,” she said, reluctantly. “But—”
“Well, then. If you believe him presently to be occupying the infernal regions,” Grey pointed out, “that is clearly a permanent condition. The act of having his body interred in a particular location, or with Catholic ritual, will not alter his unfortunate destiny.”
“Now, we can’t be knowing for certain as a si