Why Dora's Establishment Don't Generally Welcome Soldiers

A "Taken by the Highwayman" bonus extra

In which we learn a little more about the indomitable Dora, who is afraid of nothing, except a scarlet coat, a pair of twinkling eyes, and a wicked grin

British Garrison, Gibraltar, 1727

(Note, this extra contains a few hints about what happens in the next episode of “Taken by the Highwayman,” but they’re more teasers than spoilers)

“Come with me, Dora!” he’d said, and gawd love her, she did.

She oughter have known better, of course she should. No girl brought up around the dockyards of Deptford trusts the word of a soldier. They’re almost as bad as sailors. But the way his brown eyes sparkled, all gentle and soft, as he held her hand out of sight of her mother’s keen glare, it turned all her common sense to jelly. And when he leant across the sticky table to kiss her, she felt drunker than a Jack Tar on shore leave.

So when he asked her to meet him at the commons, at the edge of the woods, at midnight, Dora went.

Lar, her head swam at the thought of it now! He could a’ been a cut-throat rogue an’ left her for dead for all she’d known. But she’d gone anyway, slipping out through the back after her ma had closed up for the night, tiptoeing over the drink-sodden souses asleep in the gutter like it was a feather bed, as if anything short of a cannon-shot could have woken them.

Between the dockside houses, cranes, and the hulks of ships with their new ribs still bare, Dora glimpsed snatches of the sea. The moonlight glinted on the dark water like silver coins rolled on a conjurer’s fingers. On the thin, salty breeze, the only noise that came was the creaking of ships at anchor. The whole world seemed snoring, and only her awake; her heart fluttering in her chest, half-longing, half-fear. And then she was running over the grass, to where he waited for her under the trees, his arms outstretched and his scarlet coat spread on the ground for a bed.

Archie wasn’t her first, but he was the first she ever loved. The only. And when he moved inside her, the stars danced in the sky.

Rubbing a rough cloth over a tankard, Dora smiles at the green girl she was, then raises her eyes to the upstairs room where the injured lass is sleeping, quiet for the moment, though her fever comes and goes. When she wakes up, if she has her senses still, she’ll find that young sergeant at her side, like as not. He’s been here every minute he can steal away from his orders, it seems. Dora sighs. Young love’s as irresistible as it is reckless.

She looks about her tavern with satisfaction. It’s mid-morning, and the place is swept clean, the pots and cups winking bright in a rare April sunbeam, the barrels all freshly filled. Down in the cellar, she can hear the pot-boy clanking the mop about, and in the scrubbed kitchen, the maid she’s bringing on to be a cook is frying onions for a steak pie. Here, in this tavern, Dora is queen of her domain, and she likes it that way. What need does she have of a man to unsettle things?

And yet, when she’d laid eyes on that captain yesterday, his shirt all tattered and open at the throat, plastered to his chest with the rain, something had stirred in Dora that’d slept silent for years. And now she can’t help but remember the last time a soldier burst into her life.

“Come with me,” Archie had said, and she left everything — her mother, her friends, her home — to follow him across the sea and halfway over the Spanish main and back again.

Dora pauses in her polishing, her eyes resting on her own fingers, but her mind on the hand that held them once, squeezed them gently as she hesitated, her foot raised above the gangplank with the water dark beneath it, whispering its promises.

“Now!” he’d whispered, looking about to check the watchman was still dozing, the deck silent, and they’d crept on board like a couple of scared little mice, their ears twitching at every creak of the planks beneath their feet. She’d thought that he would send her to join the other women – camp followers, they called ‘em — in the lower deck, but he’d caught her hand.

“No,” he’d breathed, “here!” and pulled her down into the shadows behind the pilot’s boat. He’d made love to her all night long, while the ship rose and fell beneath them, and the waves sang on the wind. Her head swam, even now, as she remembered.

If you’d asked her how many days and nights it took them to cross the sea she couldn’t have told you. All that stayed with her was blue sky with gulls, the motion of the waves, and the press of his mouth, the warmth of his body on hers, the sparkle in his eyes. Even now, the thought of it turns her insides to jelly. Silly old woman, she scolds herself, but she’s not old, not really. Only her heart.

When she’d peeped over the side of the ship and seen the broad, deep sea it should have struck fear into her, and her all alone in the middle of it, with a man barely more than a stranger the only one as knew she was alive. It didn’t, though. What she felt was alive, maybe for the first time ever. Free.

The babble of tongues in Le Harvre oughter have turned her head too, but all she saw was a port that did what it was supposed to do, just like the one she’d left in Deptford. All she felt was her heart doing flips when Archie winked at her with those sparkling eyes, and grinned his wicked grin.

Then the open country stretched out in front of them, and the camp women complained and wept and some of ‘em fainted away at the thought of the miles between them and home, but all she could think of was the night to come, of a cosy tent, and Archie’s hands on her body, his skin on hers, sticky with sweat when she peeled away his scarlet coat, his white shirt that she’d keep clean as Sunday for him.

“Come with me,” he’d said, and she’d followed him. She’d have followed him across the world, if he’d asked.

It warn’t all as romantic as you’d think, of course. The first battle he fought in, she’d been sick as a dog the whole time, bent over behind the baggage tent, heaving and heaving ‘til her stomach felt raw. She warn’t the only one, neither. They huddled there, the women, with the lads too young to go into the fight yet, their eyes like saucers at the sounds of it: the booms and cracks of the guns, the clashing of steel, and the cries. The horrid, horrid cries of the men. All but the most battle-hardened wives cowered there with her, where the tents blocked their view of whatever was a’going on down below.

That’s where Archie found her, after it was all over. She can see him now, striding over the grass, barely a scratch on him, his hair a little mussy, his shirt coming untucked from his trews. Patches of red on him, here and there, but even from that distance she could tell it warn’t his.

She’d flown to him, thrown herself into his arms crying like a babe, and he’d held her for a while, not saying a thing. When she’d calmed down a bit, he’d pulled back to inspect her, his eyes all a-twinkle and that wicked grin on his lips.

“Blimey, Dora girl!” he’d laughed, like he hadn’t a care in all the world, “you look like you fought a worse one than I did!”

She’d lifted her hand to knock him a good one, stood there grinning like that when she’d been frightened near out of body and soul for him, but he just caught her wrist, and wrapped her up in his arms.

“There, love, it’s all over. Nought to fear anymore.” And he’d kissed her, warm, and solid, his heart beating strong against hers, so that she had no choice to believe him. Nought to fear when he was with her. Nought at all.

After that, Dora learned her lesson. When the next battle kicked off, she took herself to the surgeon’s tent and made herself useful. Growing up in a tavern, she knew about patching up wounds, and the surgeon found her handy with a needle, not afraid of the sight of blood. Dora didn’t mind a bit of hard work, as it went. It took her mind off things.

But Archie had the luck of the devil, and he stayed lucky, in every battle at home and on the main. So lucky he was, the other soldiers teased him about a deal with Old Nick. She’d patched up and prayed over hundreds of men by then, always with her heart in her mouth, wondering if the next torn body stretchered into the surgeon’s tent would be his. She became a fixture, so that the old Leech in charge said he couldn’t manage without her. Said she worked as hard and as bravely as any man under him.

So that was where they brought Archie in the end, when the gunners cut him down at Vigo, his shirt all bloody, and his red coat in rags.

“I’m sorry, love,” he’d murmured, as his breath went out of him, and the colour drained from his face.

“Stay with me, Archie,” she’d said, and her eyes had sparkled with tears, as she’d held his hand, and leant across the table to kiss him, all sticky with blood. But he’d just smiled up at her, a sweet, longing smile that turned her heart to jelly. And then he’d gone where she couldn’t follow.

There’d been other men since, a whole troop of ‘em. Useful men. Kind men. Men who brought her the coin to build this tavern. Men who outdared the Watch to supply her with liquor, as much for the promise of her warm bed as for the coin she paid ‘em for their smuggled wares. None of them wore a red coat with buttons that shone like the sparks in Archie’s eyes. None of them had a smile more lethal than a musket. But Dora lived in a sort of hopeful terror that one of ‘em, one day, might.

And that is why Dora’s establishment don’t generally welcome soldiers. People think it’s on account of the brawling, but a man don’t need a red coat to pick a fight, and a few broken bar stools are easily mended.

Give her a rolling pin or a fry-pan and Dora can break up a scrum of half a dozen men. She can stitch a wound better than any barber surgeon. Dropped on a rock in the middle of the ocean, miles and miles from home, she’d found a way to thrive. But a soldier’s uniform, a pair of sparkling eyes, and a mouth with a grin that curves just so – no. There’s nothing she can do to save herself from those.

For a moment she’d felt it, when that young captain had stood in her doorway yesterday, rage and daring thrumming off him like an animal’s hot scent. The old wildness, pumping through her blood, stronger than any liquor. She’d stretched out her hand to him, but he’d thrust them toward her instead, the sergeant and the lass, wounded and bleeding, and she’d taken it as a deliverance.

Later, she’d stitched the gash in the muscles of his thigh, and though her fingers never trembled, her heart had flamed up like a rebel’s beacon. Lost in his own misery, he never knew, and his eyes had no sparkle, his lips no grin to undo her. And thank the merciful heavens for that.

Still, though, Dora wondered. If he’d asked her to come with him, would she have gone?

Copyright notice

© Moll Moonlight. All rights reserved.

In the next episode of “Taken by the Highwayman”:

• Why does Jack have a gash on his thigh?

• What has happened to Maria-Luisa?

• What has the dastardly Bolingbrook got to do with it all?

Find out on Friday!

All images courtesy of depositphoto. Yes, even that foxy grin, sadly.