Unraveled (Turner #3)
Courtney Milan
Chapter One
Bristol. October 1843.
“WELL, BILLY CROGGINS, WHY are you here again?”
The petty sessions had already started when Miranda Darling slipped into the dingy hearing room. She ducked her head and contemplated the floor, trying not to attract attention. She was playing a young lady today: posture erect, eyes cast demurely down, elbows at her sides. A young lady wouldn’t fuss with her hair. Especially not to scratch where her wig drove an errant pin into her scalp. Today, her future rested on her performance.
Nothing new in that. The future was a perpetual burden, weighing her down. Sometimes she felt like one of the acrobats her father had taken her to see at Astley’s as a child, dancing atop a bareback horse. One foot put false on a backflip, and she was like to come crashing to the ground. Like the acrobat, she could only pretend her footing was secure, do her best, and smile for the audience no matter what came.
There was a bit of a crowd today, maybe ten or fifteen men and women seated on the wooden benches of the hearing room. Her palms prickled with an edgy energy. She smoothed her hands against the fine muslin of her borrowed gown and counted breaths until the tension inside her faded to a passive lump of nerves.
The white-haired man at the front of the room—Billy Croggins, he’d been called—didn’t seem nervous at all. His face was red, and he shrugged, unembarrassed, at the question that had been put to him.
“Why, Your Worships, I’m here for the same reason I’m always here. I had myself a little bit to drink.” He raised his hand, miming. “I ended up a bit disorderly. You heard what my daughter had to say.” Croggins flashed an ingratiating grin.
He had nice teeth for a drunkard. Miranda sidled down the aisle and slipped into an empty spot in the front. Billy Croggins had a nice nose, too. His white, disordered hair gave him an air of respectable eccentricity. Useful, if you were a layabout.
Nobody noticed her as she arranged her skirts. All eyes were trained on the unfolding drama, insignificant though it was.
These weren’t the quarter sessions, where murderers and burglars would be sentenced to death or transportation. The magistrates here judged little thefts, brawls gone bad, acts of public lewdness. Fines were levied; men were imprisoned for a few days. The stakes were low, and the crimes were interesting only because a neighbor had committed them.
She’d not yet allowed herself to look in the direction of the magistrates. Old superstition, that—one didn’t peek through the curtains at an audience before a performance. That spelled ill luck.
The austere white walls seemed to magnify the autumn chill, but Miranda slipped out of her worn cloak and removed her straw bonnet, taking care not to disturb the blond wig she’d donned that morning.
“What is this?” one of the magistrates asked. “The fifth time you’ve appeared before us?” His voice was familiar. Too familiar.
She mustn’t look up at him in betraying consternation. Miranda’s hand clenched around the wool of her cloak instead; she forced it open before the gesture could betray her.
“Correct as always, Your Worship,” came Croggins’s cheery reply.
At her immediate right, the clerk sat, his pen arrested over the inkwell. He hadn’t written a thing in minutes.
Miranda leaned over and spoke in an urgent whisper. “Sir. I happened to witness one of the crimes today. The accused is a boy, perhaps twelve years of age—”
He glanced at her, frowning, and then looked away. “Tell me when he’s up,” he whispered gruffly. “I’m busy now.”
He didn’t look busy. The register before him read only: Drunk. Admits he did it. Convicted. Billy Croggins hadn’t been convicted yet, but she couldn’t blame the man for prematurely recording the result.
“If we keep convicting you, why do you keep at it?” This voice, thin and reedy, came from the left. “Turner—what is the punishment, again?”
Turner. So she had recognized that earlier voice. Another flash of nervousness traveled through her, this one tinged with a hint of fear. Still, she kept her gaze trained on Croggins.
The defendant grinned unabashedly. “I wager I know the punishment by now. Ten pounds for the repeat offense, which I haven’t got—and so six hours in the stocks instead.”
“Don’t worry, Billy,” someone called from the audience. “We’ll make sure all the turnips are nice and rotten before we throw them, so they don’t scratch your pretty face.”
The room erupted into laughter.
“Gentlemen,” another voice said, “it’s a conviction, then?”
Everyone else shifted to look at the magistrates to the left of the room. It would seem out of place if she didn’t follow their lead, and so Miranda raised her head. The three men tasked to hear the sessions today sat behind a heavy oak bench. They were dressed identically: curled, white-powdered horsehair wigs atop, and heavy black robes beneath. The man in the center with the red face was the mayor. On his left sat a fellow she’d never seen before. That man’s wig was askew.
“Indeed,” Croggins was saying, “what’s another conviction amongst friends?”
On the right, sitting a good two feet from his compatriots… “Perhaps,” this last magistrate said, “I might ask a few questions before we rush to judgment.”