The Major and the Pickpocket. Lucy Ashford

her shoulders, guessing now was not the best of times to tell him she was seventeen. ‘How should I know how old I am? Do you really think anyone used to celebrate my birthday?’ No, indeed. Painful memories flashed through her mind. The big old house where she’d spent her early childhood. The long days spent locked in her room, learning her letters or struggling over hateful stitching with frozen fingers. The endless fear of punishment. She’d run because she felt that nothing, anywhere, could be worse.

      She realised now that she’d been more than lucky to be found by good-hearted Georgie Jay, who still lived by the honourable code of the travelling folk, and insisted that his followers did the same. He’d stoutly declared that Tassie had a place with them for ever; but even he, it seemed, was now having his doubts. And so, perhaps, was she.

      ‘All the same,’ he was saying now, ‘we need to have a talk, lass.’

      Tassie gazed at him steadily. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you don’t want me with you any more?’

      Georgie Jay looked unhappy. ‘We’ve been doin’ a bit of thinkin’ and Moll’s got a grand idea that might suit you just fine!’

      Tassie’s eyes flashed warningly as she looked at the older woman. ‘Oh, has she now?’

      ‘Moll’s got a brother,’ Georgie pressed on. ‘He and his wife, they’ve got a small farm—Kent way, isn’t it, Moll?—and they could do with some help around the place—’

      Tassie turned on Moll incredulously. ‘You think that I’d go as a servant to your brother? The one you were going on about the other night, saying he was a miserable skinflint and a tyrant?’

      Moll coloured and looked angry. ‘There’s a good opportunity for you there, young madam, and don’t you scoff at it!’

      ‘I’ll scoff at it all right,’ Tassie breathed. ‘You’d better think again, Moll, if you want to find your brother a—a cheap skivvy.’ And, holding her head high, she marched to the door that led to the stairs, and closed it with a resounding bang behind her.

      Once in the inner hallway, though, Tassie stopped, fighting to control the emotions that were now shaking her body. Despite her words of bold defiance, there was a huge lump in her throat, and her heart ached sorely. She’d known for some time that things couldn’t go on as they were. But if Georgie Jay and his comrades didn’t want her, she had no one. No one.

      She heard them all getting up. One by one the others—Lemuel, Billy, and kind old Matt who played the fiddle at country fairs, who’d all been her friends for years—traipsed out through the other door to the taproom to have their meal, until only Moll and Georgie were left in there. Tassie bit her lip. Moll and Georgie. Usually Georgie Jay and his friends kept pretty much on the move, taking rooms at various inns or lodging houses depending on the work they found. But this winter they’d spent all of the last two months at the Blue Bell—because Georgie Jay had taken to sharing landlady Moll’s room, and Moll’s bed. And now Tassie could tell by the sound of clacking little heels on the flagstones that Moll had moved towards the jar of gin that she kept for herself on a high shelf near the door. Georgie Jay must have followed her; he was saying, in a low voice so that Tassie could only just hear, ‘I did warn you she wouldn’t like the idea, Moll.’

      ‘Such a fuss about a silly girl,’ Moll snapped back. Tassie heard the rattle of gin jar against beaker; and could just picture Moll drinking it down in one greedy swallow. ‘All right, then. I’ll not interfere! But you’ll have to think of somethin’ for her, Georgie Jay. Sakes alive, you must have seen the way men are starting to look at her! Lemuel worships the ground she walks on, and that big simpleton Billy watches her all the time. She’s becomin’ a real pretty piece, and there’ll be trouble soon if you don’t look out…’

      Tassie could stand to hear no more. Horrified to find that her eyes were smarting with tears, she almost ran up the rickety staircase to her tiny attic room, where she was greeted by the loud squawking of a brightly coloured parrot gazing at her from its perch by the window. Georgie Jay had bought Edward for her seven years ago in Dorchester market, and now she angrily dashed away her tears with the back of her hand and stroked the bird’s beautifully-crested head, whispering, ‘How can Georgie Jay be so taken in by that—that strumpet, Edward? Moll’s fat, and she paints her face, and she pickles herself in gin!’

      Edward cocked his beady eye at her. ‘Who’s a pretty girl, then?’ Tassie almost smiled. But she couldn’t ignore the fact that what Moll had said was right. Tassie couldn’t go on pretending to be what she was not for much longer. ‘If only I were a boy!’ she went on in anguish, jumping up to pace the little room while at the same time trying to resist the temptation to chew her fingernails, something she always did when she was distressed. Edward just put his head on one side, his bright eyes blinking, and crunched steadily on the remains of a crust. Tassie drew a deep breath, then flung her big coat on the bed.

      Soon after she had joined Georgie Jay’s band, she’d taken to dressing like a lad because it was easier, and when her breasts had started to swell she’d worn loose shirts buttoned to the neck and hoped no one would notice. When her monthly courses began, a kindly serving girl at the farm where they were working came to her rescue and gave her some strips of linen to use, and into the bargain gave her an earthy lecture on how men were fiery creatures, and likely to be aroused beyond reason by the presence of a young, pretty maid. So Tassie tied up her bright golden hair with a piece of twine and pushed it under a cap; as she grew she continued to dress in loose breeches and boots and a rough cambric jacket several sizes too big for her that concealed her swelling curves; and season after season she tramped the dusty roads in the cheery company of Georgie Jay and his band, never complaining of weariness, always hoping that things would remain the same, because in truth she had no other life to turn to.

      But she knew, in her heart of hearts, that things were changing fast. Moll had spotted the trouble with Billy already.

      Billy was big and strong, but he was simple-minded. His family had been turned out of their cottage when the local landowner wanted to pull it down to make more space for sheep, and Billy had attached himself to the company like a faithful dog, invaluable if there was any kind of hard physical work. Tassie had always felt quite safe with him, as she did with all the others in their little band. But a couple of weeks ago, a little after midnight, Billy had knocked at the door of Tassie’s bedroom. ‘Tass,’ he called out. ‘Let me in, will you? I want ter tell you somethin’.’

      She’d opened the door, and instantly smelled that he’d been drinking. Big Billy, with his thatch of wiry black hair, had always been a little over-fond of his ale. So she told him that she would talk to him in the morning; but he’d muttered something and a strange, hot look had spread across his face as he gazed at Tassie, with her hair loose past her shoulders, and dressed only in her thin cotton nightshirt.

      He’d tried to kiss her then, grabbing her shoulders and pulling her close. Tassie struggled desperately to push him away, but Billy wrapped one arm around her waist, trapping her, while with the other hand he began to fumble at her breasts. She could feel the hardness of his arousal pressing against his breeches while his hot lips smothered her mouth; and Tassie, gasping, twisted violently and used her knee, very hard, in the place where she knew it would hurt him the most. Billy had whimpered with shock and gone limping off to his room. Tassie hoped fervently that the hateful episode had vanished into the shadows of Billy’s slow mind; certainly he’d not troubled her again in that way, and she didn’t think he would. But it had been an unpleasant reminder that Moll’s warnings were only too true.

      And now, they thought they could just pack her off to Moll’s brother in the country! Oh, never. Suddenly she remembered the wallet she’d stolen from the gent in Half Moon Alley. Pulling herself up on the dingy little bed, she sat cross-legged in her boots and buckskin breeches and her man’s shirt, and tossed back her long blonde curls from her face. Then she eased the slim leather wallet from her hip pocket; but her heart sank again, for there wasn’t much in it. A few coins, amounting to little more than two guineas, and a pencilled note, folded up. The coins she put carefully into a little locked box hidden beneath her bed;