Saraband for Two Sisters

We set out early in the Pondersby coach. It was misty down by the river, which gave an aura of enchantment to the scene. There was a blue haze on the trees which I found entrancing and I felt my spirits rising as high as they could, oppressed as they always were by anxieties about what was happening at home. We came to St. Paul’s Walk and I was again fascinated by the people there. I was listening to a moneylender with whom a languid gallant, most extravagantly dad, was trying to arrange a loan; then my attention was caught by a horse dealer who was explaining to a prospective buyer the points of the animal he was leading; there was a man writing a letter at the dictation of an anxious-eyed woman and I found myself wondering what tragedy had brought her there. Carlotta was busy with the lace seller and had moved around to the side of the stall, and as I stood there a woman approached me, her eyes full of anguish.

“Lady,” she said in a hoarse whisper, “spare me something. My husband is dead ... drowned in the river when his boat overturned. I have six starving children and not a bite has passed their lips these last two days. You have a kind face. You’ll give, I know.”

And I knew that if I turned away as Carlotta would have bidden me I should never be able to forget her face, so I took out my purse and opened it but at that moment a boy who could not have been more than eleven years old darted up and snatched the purse from me.

I cried out, but he was already disappearing, and without thinking I ran after him.

I could see him darting in and out of the crowd and I followed, calling, “Come back!

Give me back my purse!”

The crowd impeded the thief’s progress as well as mine and I kept him in sight until he broke free and ran down an alley.

Without thinking I followed. He ran round a corner and I went after him, but he had already turned another corner and when I followed I could no longer see him. I stopped short. Two men were corning toward me and I felt myself go cold with fear, for they had such evil looks. Their unkempt hair fell over their faces, their ragged garments hung loosely, and through the rents in them I caught a glimpse of dirty skin. They were smiling in a way which was horrifying.

I turned to run but I was too late and I realized in that moment that I did not know where I was.

There was one of them on either side of me, their leering faces close to mine. One pulled at the chain about my neck, which my mother had given me, and I cried out in protest.

My arms were pinioned and I started to scream loudly.

“You’re caught, my pretty,” said one of the men, his face so near mine that I smelled his foul breath and saw his ugly broken teeth.

“Let me go! Let me go!” I shouted wildly.

“Not yet,” said the other and they began to drag me toward the door of a dwelling which I had not noticed before.

I began to pray to myself because I had never been so frightened in my life and I knew that these men meant to inflict on me the worst of all evils and possibly death; and it had all happened so suddenly, for one moment I had been thinking of laces and ribbons, letter writers and moneylenders, and now here I was captured. And even in such a moment I thought of my mother when she would learn what had happened to me.

Then I heard a shout from behind: “Hold. Hold, you villains, hold!” A man was running down the alley. I had a fleeting glimpse of him and I cried out in thankfulness, for there was something about his appearance which told me that I could trust him to help.

He was elegantly clad, but not foppishly so, and there was a sword in his hand which he was brandishing menacingly. The change in my captors was immediate. They did not wait to face him. They simply released me and ran.

I was trembling and could not keep my voice steady as I stammered, “Oh, thank you ... thank you.”

“I saw it all,” he said. “The boy snatching your purse and your attempt to catch him.”

“I am so grateful.”

“You are new to London, I am sure. Let me escort you from this warren. It is not good for you to be here.”

He returned his sword to its scabbard and, taking my arm, led me through the alley the way I had come.

“It was unwise,” he said, “to follow the boy.”

“But he had my purse.”

“It was equally unwise to take out your purse as you did.”

“The woman had six starving children.”

“I doubt that. She’s a professional beggar. Tomorrow she will have a dying husband or a dying mother. They vary their stories, you know.”

“I see that now, but I believed her.”

“Next time you will be more skeptical. Tell me your name.”

I told him and that I was staying at Pondersby Hall.

“I have made the acquaintance of Sir Gervaise,” he told me. “I am Richard Tolworthy, a soldier of the King’s army.”

“I can only say again thank you, sir. I have never been so terrified in my life.”

“It is a lesson learned. Look on it that way.”

“But if you had not seen ... if you had not been there to save me-“ “I was and it was my pleasure. Where do you wish to go?»