Dark Shadows (6 page)

Chapter Six

“What if she’s meeting someone?” Sam asked with growing uneasiness.

“Well, she’s been in there for near enough a good half hour. If she was meeting someone, they’d have showed up by now. No, this little gem is alone and ripe for the picking. She’s a good catch, Sam. The missus will be pleased.” Eddie said this in his usual overconfident manner.

“But we’ve already got nine,” Sam argued. “Do you really think we need another one? This is risky, and we don’t know the area. It might be hard getting her to walk round the corner, and I’m not bringing the carriage any closer to the square. I don’t even like it sitting where it is. We should be on our way out of the city by now. Maybe we should just forget it. I’ve had enough anyway. I just want to get the fuck out of London. It’s been a hard few days. I say we just pack it in and get ourselves home.”

Eddie scratched his bristled chin. Sam had a point. “You might be right, but I still think we should take her. Did you get a good look at her? Bloody hell, she’s a blinder – better than the rest of them by miles. The missus will be over the moon with this one. We might even get to use her one day down the line. We’ll definitely get a bonus. C’mon, Sam.”

Sam looked again at Mercy through the restaurant window and finally nodded in agreement. “You’re right. Face like a bloody angel. And that body! Christ, what I wouldn’t do to get her to open her legs for me.” His laugher was laced with sarcasm. “We’ll never get to use this one, though. Only in our dreams, Eddie boy. What do you reckon – seventeen, eighteen?”

“Don’t know, but who cares? She’s young. I’d say about seventeen. She’s definitely one of the best we’ve seen for a long time. So are we going to do this or not?”

Sam finally agreed. “Okay, but I’m not taking chances.”

“Right. Then snap to it. Get the coach.”

“Done. You just make sure you’re ready for her when she comes out of there. We don’t want this all sloppy-like. I’m for it, but there’s a lot of hustle and bustle around here, and I’m not sure of the route out of this fucking square we’re in. You’ll have to be quick with her. I’ll bring the coach a bit closer to the corner, just at the entrance to the side street behind us. It’ll only be a few feet closer but might make all the difference. I’ll get the carriage as close to the wall as I can, and I’ll have the drug ready.” Sam turned and then added as he reached the corner, “If this goes bad, we’re making a run for it out of here, right?”

Eddie nodded absently. Sam could be like a bloody old fishwife when he wanted to be. Eddie continued to stare at the restaurant’s window. The girl was still sitting there, but he’d seen her ask for the bill.
Sam better bloody hurry up,
he thought. Time was short.

Mercy stepped into the sunlight. It was almost two o’clock, so the waiter had told her. She had ample time to look inside the cathedral, light a candle for her mother and father, and then get back on the road home. All that she had imagined in the tea room were just that: imaginings. She would go home at the end of the day and marry Big Joe.

St Paul’s sat just to the right and across the square from where Mercy stood. She had to walk to the corner and then cross the square. She pulled her bonnet down at the front, to shield her eyes from the sunlight and from the dust being kicked up by horses’ hooves, and started walking.

Eddie watched her and quickly looked to the corner. The carriage was now in position. He could see the horses’ heads.
Right, Eddie; this is it.

He poured two drops of eye solution in each eye. He’d never asked what was in this stuff. Madame du Pont had never told him. But it stung like the devil and made his eyes tear up, turn red, and swell like a bee sting. He bloody hated this part. Christ, he would end up going blind if he carried on using it. It was like fucking acid!

He approached Mercy as she walked towards his position. His head was bowed. He was crying like a baby and sniffing loudly. He stepped to the right, deliberately bumping into her, and then looked up apologetically. “I’m so sorry, miss. I wasn’t looking … My wife …”

Mercy looked at the man’s face. His eyes were red rimmed. Tears ran down his cheeks. He seemed to be in terrible distress. “Your wife?” she questioned.

“Yes. She’s in my carriage – she’s so sick. God help me, I don’t know what to do. I got lost.” He cried some more.

Mercy looked around her. People were going about their business, walking and talking, carriages and horses everywhere. There were comings and goings in and out of the cathedral, and no one was taking any notice of the poor man. “Where is the nearest hospital?” she asked.

“I don’t know. We were visiting relatives. Oh God, help me. She’s going to die, my Sarah. You’re a woman. You’ll know what to do. Please help me!”

Mercy stared at his frightened tear-stained red face. His expression of hopelessness melted her heart. She suddenly thought about her father. “I’ll help you if I can,” Mercy blurted out without hesitation. “Where is she?”

“Bless you. Bless your kind heart. She’s just around the corner. Follow me. The carriage is just a few feet away.”

They were at the corner now. Mercy saw the four horses and strange-looking carriage. “Is this it?”

“Yes, miss. She’s lying in the back.”

Mercy nodded. She didn’t know how yet, but she was going to help the poor woman inside. It was the grown-up thing to do. She’d be contributing something, she thought, even if she just held the woman’s hand whilst her husband went for help. She walked speedily behind the man.

The narrow alleyway was not big enough for two-way traffic. The man just in front of her turned and gave her a grateful smile, and she smiled back. He led her to the rear of the carriage and opened one of the thick wooden doors. He let her pass to stand in front of him. Mercy looked into the semi-darkness. She saw the tied and gagged girls. Her eyes widened, and her stomach lurched.

Just inside, behind the one closed door, a man appeared. She turned, terrified and confused, instinctively knowing she was in danger.

Eddie, standing behind her, shoved her into the back of the coach with great force whilst Sam pulled her the rest of the way in by her armpits. He proceeded to cover her nose and mouth with a smelly wet rag. Eddie closed the door, bolting it from the outside.

Mercy’s eyes began to water. She choked on the smell and taste running down her throat. Who were all these girls? she wondered through her misty, dull mind. There were so many of them. She couldn’t comprehend what was happening. She felt herself floating and then hitting the hard floor. The smell around her was horrible. She was choking on it. She tried desperately to grab the rag with her flailing arms and hands, but she had no strength to move any part of her body. She tried to shake the rag way with her head, but it was growing darker and darker around her until there was nothing. She was being consumed by the darkness …

“Right, stick some more of that chloroform on the other bitches’ gags,” Eddie told Sam after opening the door an inch. “We need them kept under till we get into the suburbs. C’mon, tie her up quick  and make sure her gag’s on nice and tight. It’s time to get home. We’ve done well, Sammy boy, but we’ve a long road ahead of us.”

Chapter Seven

Mercy’s body rocked back and forth and bounced up and down with the coach’s movements. She was falling in and out of consciousness, shivering with cold yet otherwise unable to move her relaxed muscles. She didn’t know where she was. As much as she tried, she couldn’t keep her eyes open.

Time passed in a blur of dark shadows. She slept again. Then she finally managed to open her eyes and keep them open long enough to take in her surroundings. The horrible taste and smell were still deep in her throat, and she tried to cough them out. Her body ached. Her wrists and feet were hurting, as were her shoulders and back. She tried to focus now that she no longer felt herself spinning. She was fully conscious. The terrible dream she thought she’d just had became reality.

From her position on the floor, she could see shadowy figures, billowing skirts, and shoes of all colours. She saw the ropes tied around bare ankles first. She tilted her head back on the floor, looked left and right, and saw arms tucked behind backs. With her neck arched as far as it would go without breaking, she saw faces of terrified girls. They were all gagged with white cloths. The top of the gags sat just under their nostrils and completely covered the girls’ mouths.

Mercy felt her own gag more keenly and suddenly thought she might suffocate. She couldn’t breathe through her mouth. She couldn’t move her lips. The gag was knotted so tightly at the back of her head that it dug into her cheekbones.

Some partly covered faces stared back at her, whilst a few still slept. She tried to count how many girls were in there with her. She was on the floor with one other body, which was not moving. The girl lay directly behind her. Mercy could just see the tip of her bright pink walking boots.

There were four girls slumped on one long bench to the right and another four on the bench to her left. Some heads bounced on their neighbours’ shoulders. One girl was in an awkward position, with her body twisted and her head on another girl’s lap. None could speak, but a couple of girls were persistently moaning through their gagged mouths. Some were unconscious, as she had been earlier, but those who were awake did not attempt to untie themselves or struggle against the ropes in any way.

Mercy looked above the faces. Her eyes scanned the walls until she saw the soft golden glow of dusk coming through a tiny window, covering the wooden ceiling in an orange hue. How long had she been lying here? Where was she? What was the carriage’s destination? Questions converged on her all at once, making her pounding headache even more severe. Hours had passed; that much she did know. It would be dark soon. Was she still in London? And her final question, which should have been her first: why was this happening to her? What did they want with her and the other girls?

The pain of tightly knotted ropes became more intense. She struggled to loosen the rope that bound her wrists, which were behind her and pressing into the hard floor that bumped every time the coach hit a stone or dip in the road. She shook her feet in an attempt to free herself, but to no avail.

Exhausted, she stared up at the ceiling and felt the first tears fall. They were a strange sensation, those tears. She allowed them to fall freely for the first time in her life. As she did so, muffled sobbing left her gag-bound mouth. She was crying, and it felt good.

Chapter Eight

“How far is it now? My bloody arse has gone to sleep. You know how much I hate those bleedin’ pins and needles when it starts waking up again,” Sam complained.

“I reckon it’s about another two miles or so. Why the fuck are you asking me? We’ve done this often enough. Christ, Sam, I can tell just by looking at the trees where we are. You sleep too much instead of paying attention. When we’ve finished at this rest stop, you’re taking the reins. I’m knackered.”

“All right, ya moaning git, stop your griping. Just get a move on and don’t spare the horses. I need a drink.”

It had taken the carriage an hour longer than usual to reach the London outskirts. There had been work going on everywhere. They’d been turned away from side streets and main roads, and they’d ended up on the south side of the city instead of the north.

They arrived at their rest stop seven hours after starting out and three hours later than usual. The horses were labouring now, but this inn always kept spare horses for them, as did all the other inns where they routinely stopped.

The madam paid retainers, and the men with the horses never crossed her. A couple of years earlier, a man had taken her money and then hadn’t shown up with the animals. He’d ended up decapitated, his head stuck on a tree branch with her anonymous compliments.

Sam and Eddie always got a free meal and ale wherever they stopped. They took their time, for after they’d had their fill, they then had the tedious task of watering the whores in the back of the coach. They never fed the girls. It delayed Sam and Eddie too much and was hard work. They didn’t need food, the madam told them. As long as they were periodically watered, she believed there would be no harm done to their bodies – and starving them would stop shit flowing out of them every five minutes. “Just make sure you keep them watered. I want soft skins, not bloody prunes – that’s the most important thing,” Madame du Pont reminded them whenever they left for London.

Sam and Eddie felt better after they’d eaten a stew with bread, accompanied by a pitcher of ale. It was time to change the horses. They unhitched the four from London and led them to the stables just behind the inn. Their man was waiting, as always, with four fresh horses. He hitched them up to the carriage and then disappeared.

Eddie carried two buckets of water to the rear of the carriage and set them down. Sam was already inside. He picked Mercy up from the floor and threw her untidily onto one of the benches. She moaned, and he slapped her across the head. He then did the same to the other girl who’d been on the floor with Mercy. She was now conscious and kicked out, hitting Sam’s shin. For her cheek, she was punched on the side of the head. “Try that again and I’ll fucking choke the life out of your scrawny neck. Now shut it!”

He told all the girls, “Not one sound do I want to hear come out of your mouths. Next one will get more than these two got. You hear me?”

Eddie handed the water buckets to Sam, stepped up, and slid inside the crowded carriage, closing the doors behind him. He carried a gas lantern and set it down.

They shared the work. Each man untied a gag, poured water into a girl’s mouth from an iron ladle, and gagged the girl again straight after.

Eddie pulled a face, an ugly scowl. Watering the whores got harder as the journey went on. It was so bloody tiring. Most, if not all, girls usually peed themselves a couple of times before they reached the first stop, and tonight was no exception. The carriage stunk like a cesspit with vomit included. It was common for a girl to vomit when the gag was removed. He hated the smell of vomit and how it looked. The fucking sight of it had put him off eating porridge for life. Christ, it was like working in a fucking zoo, tending to stinking animals by the time they got within striking distance of Liverpool. He went back outside for some fresh air.

Sam was finishing off inside. He made sure every gag was tight enough and securely knotted. Then he put chloroform drops on the top part of the cloth, just under the girls’ nostrils. A sleeping captive was a good captive, as far as he was concerned. He took one last look, and right enough, they all conked out one after the other before his very eyes.

Outside, Eddie looked at his pocket watch. It was almost ten o’clock. Nineteen hours to go, he calculated. They had about nine and a half hours of night travel in front of them. It was always as black as a bottomless pit, with only a small, dimly lit lantern on the front of the carriage to guide them along the uneven and sometimes treacherous path.

They only ever came across one or two other carriages during this part of the journey. Highwaymen were not much of a threat nowadays. They had all but given up on that employment, what with night traffic on the road a rare sight, thanks to the railways.

Eddie and Sam stopped periodically to water and cool down the horses. They always had two full buckets of water attached to the rear end of the coach for this very reason. When they moved on after a half hour or so, the horses were slightly fresher and just about able to reach the next stop.

Their habit was to rest up just before dawn or thereabouts. At the inn, they went through the same routine, ate what seemed like the same watery stew, and drank another pitcher of ale. They were both convinced that the same cook travelled from inn to inn, covering the length of England.

They changed horses again, watered the captives, and afterwards moved on to their third and final rest, which was during daylight hours.

The day was coming, Eddie believed, when these ventures would stop altogether. Inns were closing at night for lack of traffic, and it was harder to get someone to have the horses available, even though the men who did this job for them were well paid. The railway was going to finish off the madam’s long-standing business, and that worried Eddie, for if she closed down this part of her operation, he’d be out of a job.