CHAPTER SIX

WAPPING, LONDON—1717

BY THE DISTANT ROARING THAT WAS GROWING EVER CLOSER, MARY WAS sure the cart would be rolling past on its way to Tyburn from the Old Bailey at any moment. The crowd was hot and surly, and she was glad she hadn’t tried to get any closer to the gallows, opting instead to find a spot for her and Nat in the tight streets near the rookeries of Saint Giles. Several people had died in the crush at the last hanging.

The condemned would be completely drunk by now, promising a good show. She craned to see over the crowd and thought she could make out the city marshal on horseback, surrounded by a thicket of staves carried by those charged with beating back the crowd. Almost here!

She twisted around, trying to spot Nat, but the crowd was so thick that Mary doubted he’d make it back. He’d heard someone hawking the Old Bailey handbill and pushed his way after the sound, insisting he get one so Mary could read him all the wretched details of the condemned.

She was grateful to get away from Mum for the day, whether Nat kept her company or not. Granny’s gout had finally gotten bad enough that she’d asked Mary to come be her footboy, and Mum had been crowing about it for days. This is it, Mark! Next thing you know, she’ll be leaving everything to you! Then she’d look up from her bottle, as though remembering who her child really was, and her mood would start to darken. She’d begin to wonder why God left her with her bastard daughter, instead of the golden son who would have let her live such a life honestly.

If anyone finds you out we’re done for. We’ll both be sent straight to Newgate, to be hanged or transported.

You are impulsive, thoughtless. You don’t take enough care.

You’ll be found out, one way or another.

Mum was right. Mary was impulsive and thoughtless and—worse—a girl, not the boy she pretended to be. It was ridiculous to think she could live in a house full of servants and her shrewd grandmother and fool them all.

She took a deep gulp of air, trying to calm her breath, but her ribs were constricted by her new binding. Mum had bound Mary’s slight curves up tight with a strip of linen, and she eyed her suspiciously every time she saw her now, as if trying to discern any visible hint of their secret.

“Got it!” panted Nat, pushing through a narrow opening in the crowd next to her and brandishing a small pamphlet. “You owe me a ha’penny.”

“Do I, now?” she said, grinning. “It wasn’t my idea for you to go after it!”

“The chap selling it told me the gist,” Nat said, handing her the pamphlet and settling into the press just behind her. “Wait till you hear this! Sodomites, all of them. Apprehended near Saint James wearing women’s togs. Apparently they fooled crowds of fellows into thinking they was ladies, until one clever chap tipped off the Society!”

“Disgusting,” spat a woman next to Mary. “Did you hear that?” she asked the man next to her. “They’re hanging mollies today.”

Mary’s stomach turned over as she trained her eyes on the pamphlet. She was jostled so much by the crowd she could hardly focus on the words. “‘A full and true account of the discovery and apprehending of a notorious gang of sodomites in Saint James,’” she read aloud slowly. “‘Taken in for wearing the dress and affecting the mannerisms of women.’ They’re being hanged for that?” She felt sick.

“That ain’t the worst of it,” Nat said over her shoulder. “A man dressed in women’s clothing—he’s fooling men for one reason only, as you might imagine. Keep reading, would you? I want to hear all of it.”

Mary flipped through the pages of cramped print, the words blurring before her eyes. Lurid details jumped out: COQUETTISH LAUGH, BRANDISHED FAN, LIFTED SKIRTS …

“Go on, what else does it say?”

A roar drowned Nat out as the throng surged around them so tightly, it lifted Mary off her feet. The city marshal was just passing now, the crowd tightening like a vise as people were beaten back off the street. There was no way out. Everyone was screaming, even people leaning out of the windows above.

“Hanging’s too good for sinners like you!”

“The likes of you condemn us all to Hell—”

“Disgusting, evil, immoral—”

Though Mum fretted about what would happen if anyone found out, she always insisted that Mary dressing as her brother had God’s blessing. But it sounded like He’d send Mary to Hell for it, from what these people were screaming.

“Would you look at that cheek!” Nat’s voice was right in her ear, his chest pressed against her back. “Some of them wore dresses to be hanged in!”

Not all the men who rode the coffins stacked on the cart wore dresses, but many of them did, their faces painted too, red lips blowing kisses as they hung off the cart drunkenly. Others were catatonic, their lips moving slightly, eyelids occasionally flickering. All of them were skin and bones from their time at Newgate. People flung rotting vegetables, mud, a dead cat. One of the condemned took a flask someone in the crush of bodies held up and drank from it. “Thank you, lovey!” he sang. “I’ll pay for it on me way back!” The crowd laughed uproariously at the joke, but the insults kept coming. The man flinched as an apple struck his cheek and left behind a streak of rotten pulp, but then he was back to winking and waving, ducking the thrown filth, swaying with every jolt of the cart.

Mary couldn’t breathe; she had to get away, she had to—she fumbled against the crowd, trying to find a way to escape. She pushed in all directions, a frantic sob escaping her—

“Here now, it’s all right,” Nat said in her ear. She’d turned herself around and her face was mashed into his shoulder, her newly bound chest pressed against his. She struggled to push away but it was no use, the crowd was too tight—she let her body sag against him, her tears soaking into his shirt. If he didn’t figure out her secret right this instant, he’d at the very least never let her hear the end of how she cried over a bunch of mollies. “It’s all right,” he said again, his hands coming up to her shoulders. “I know. Sometimes it hits you, how wrong it is. But there’s nothing you can do.”

Mary took a few gulping breaths of air.

“They’re completely soused,” he soothed. “They won’t feel a thing. They’re blacked out drunk already.”

“I didn’t know you could be hanged for wearing the wrong clothes,” Mary murmured.

“I don’t think it’s right either,” Nat said quietly. “You’d think a stint in the pillory would be punishment enough. It’s not like they killed anyone.”

Mary breathed in the smell of him, slowly becoming aware of the breadth of his shoulders, how he’d filled out in the past few months, all of a sudden standing half a head taller than her. The feeling of his hands resting on her shoulders. The curl of his hair that tickled her cheek. They were both sweaty from the crush of the crowd. It was useless to try to move away, so she didn’t, and he didn’t move either, until the cart had passed, trailing men with javelins who threatened those who came too close.

The cart turned a corner up ahead, and the pressure around them abruptly softened.

She didn’t want to let go.

“All right, there’s enough of that,” said Nat, a teasing note in his voice as he squeezed her shoulder. “Else they think we’re sodomites, and throw us up on that cart along with the others.”

She looked up sharply as she pulled back—but when her eyes met his he smiled. His face was so close. That freckle on his lip, like a smudge of dirt she always wanted to wipe off—she felt as though she couldn’t stop herself from reaching out and pressing a finger to it.

She stepped back suddenly, her heart pounding.

He dropped his gaze. “Seems like we’re both losing our taste for this sort of sport,” he said, taking the crumpled pamphlet from her fist and tossing it in the mud. “Come on, let’s find something better to get into.”

She watched him push through the crowd and disappear. She didn’t want to move from where he’d held her. She could still feel the echo of his chest against hers.

Impulsive, thoughtless. You don’t take enough care.

If anyone finds you out …

Nat reappeared, straining over the crowd to look for her. She shivered, then ducked and pushed toward him before he could see how long she’d lingered, staring after him.