Wasp (3 page)

‘Be patient. We are almost there.’

The coach rattles to a halt. A few moments later the dwarf stands framed in the light, eyeing Beth. Perhaps he thinks she might run. Despite her earlier bravado, Beth doubts her legs would carry her a dozen yards.

Kingfisher stands, huge in this cramped space. ‘Stow the carriage once we’re inside,’ he tells the dwarf. ‘I doubt our foundling will put up a fight.’

He offers Beth his hand. ‘Only a short walk now. You are perfectly safe.’

‘Where are we?’

‘A place where there is food and warmth, and a chance to be free of those filthy rags. You will be in a soft bed before the night is out.’

She shrinks back against the seat. ‘It’s a trick.’

‘It is no such thing. This has been a hard journey. The worst is over. I shall help you if need be.’

She grasps the hand. Warm and soft. Without thinking she rubs it between her palms, feeling the creases, the hard nub of each knuckle.

‘See,’ he says, gently pulling free. ‘I am a man like any other. This way.’

The rain has died altogether and the air is losing its bitter edge. He leads Beth along a lane squeezed between two houses, his legs taking big bites out of the path. Lights glimmer behind curtained windows. A stink of bitter smoke hangs over everything. Beth coughs and presses a sleeve over her nose and mouth. She struggles to keep up, forcing her escort to slow his pace.

Concentrate,
she tells herself.
Don’t get fooled again.

A lamp burns in a holder beside a door reinforced with iron bands. Kingfisher slips a key out of his waistcoat pocket. A soft click and the door swings open. He takes the light and beckons. Beth follows, arms wrapped tight about her. Figures stare at them in the gloom.

‘Who’s there?’

‘We are alone,’ Kingfisher says.

‘No. I can see others. I knew this was a trick.’

His feet are heavy on the wooden floor as he crosses the room, light falling in puddles around him. He puts a taper to the flame and ignites candles set in sconces on the wall. Shadows melt away. Tall mirrors, spaced at regular intervals, throw back a dozen reflections. Beth eyes herself from beneath a thatch of stringy hair. Both feet are caked with mud. She is thin enough to snap.

Is that me? Is that really me?

‘Welcome to the House of Masques,’ Kingfisher says.

She plucks at one of the holes in her ruined gown. ‘I have no money.’

‘You’ve no debt of that nature to settle under this roof.’

‘Then what is this place?’

‘This is your new home. Do you understand?’

‘My
 . . . 
home.’ Her lips work the words over. ‘Does it belong to you? I didn’t know darkies could own things.’

‘It is the property of the Abbess. You will meet her in time. First I must fetch the Fixer. He will treat your discomforts. He may also ask you some questions. Answer as honestly as you can.’

‘You are going to leave me here?’

‘I shall only be gone a moment. You do not intend to harm yourself or break anything, I take it?’

‘No
 . . .
’ Her head sags. A clump of still-damp hair falls over her face.

Is this merely a sweeter hell?
she wonders.

Life Pieces

The horses are settled by the time Kingfisher crosses the yard, his business in the mirrored hall concluded. The room above the coach house is plagued with damp, but tonight the wind sent the rain in another direction and his walls have escaped the worst of it. He removes his clothes and hangs them in the wardrobe. The laundry girl has already laid out tomorrow’s shirt and breeches.

Kingfisher walks naked within his chamber. He dislikes wearing the clothing these people have given him. Even the finer materials rub his skin like gorse. The bed dominates the corner and not once has he used it in the years he’s lived at the House, preferring instead the bare floor in front of the hearth. Three times a week a maid comes in to change his bedding, the linen she takes away as clean as the blankets she puts on. Nothing is ever said. The daily business of the House goes on, and demons, quirks and eccentricities keep their affairs to themselves.

The girl. A risk. He recalls the way she stood in the downpour, revelling in it. Not like the rain he knew at home. The air surrounding these people’s dwellings always smells of old food and ashes. Clouds of a different kind swirl behind the newcomer’s eyes, yet a bigger menace is brewing under the House’s own roof. The Fixer knows it too.

Kingfisher runs his hands over the bangles, necklaces and other pieces arranged on the table by the window. Jewellery he had bought and bartered for. Pieces of home. Shards of his people. Some are from tribes he recognises, others are new. Each one he touches speaks to him of a life stolen, a nation scattered across the markets and hawkers’ stalls of this country. The only connection with his past life, he collects them as if doing so could draw his land back around himself.

He fingers the armband under his shirt. Her name meant
gift from god,
something his father told him long before the wedding. ‘I see the way you look at her,’ the old man said, grinning.

‘Nanyanika, I am sorry,’ Kingfisher whispers to the empty room.

A Common Cargo

A boat was coming in.

The potboy banged on the door. He was up with the rooster, or earlier if the Mango captain wasn’t willing to anchor offshore ’til dawn. The Fixer was already awake. The plank hut he lived in caught all the muck the sea threw inland, and last night the rain hadn’t let up.

‘Fire up your pot,’ the Fixer called. ‘I’ll be down within the hour.’

He turned on his back and stretched arms and legs, flexed fingers, turned feet this way then that. Shrugging off the blanket, he eased himself out of bed and laid out the leather jerkin and breeches thrown over the chair beside the bed. A piss-poor day. Waxy light filtered through the cracks in the plankwork. Dark stains on the floor marked where the roof had leaked again. Plug one and another sprouted. A hard storm would have the lot off and then the Mangoes would have to let him sleep in their precious warehouse and never mind the cargo.

He elbowed the nearest shutter open. The rain had eased into a gasping drizzle. Below, the harbour front seemed out of focus, the edges softened by the weather. The Mango boat had reached the harbour wall. He fancied he could catch its stink already. Beyond that was nothing but a leaden murk.

The Fixer checked his stove, blew some life into the embers, and threw on the last of yesterday’s wood. Fragments of old barrels, broken crates, anything he thought might burn. A cough cut his lungs in two. The spasm lasted a few seconds. Afterwards he rubbed his chest and breathed in. Another cough. He spat into the bucket beside his bed. No blood in the spittle. Good. Mornings here could shrivel the lungs.

He threw handfuls of water over his face, picked up his razor, strapped it, then shaved off his body hair, starting with his head. Harbour folk claimed the darkies carried lice but he got ’em from the Mangoes. Dirty bastards were worse than their cargoes.

When finished, he tipped the water out of the window and onto the warehouse roof. Shrugging on leather shirt and breeches, he crammed both feet into his work boots and picked up the Judicator. A three-foot length of thick knotted rope. He’d learned about the darkies fast.

‘Even after months at sea some still carry a bit o’ fight,’ the slave agent had explained. ‘If one eyes you hit ’im right away. Don’t worry about killing ’im. A darkie with too much spit in ’is gut can’t be sold.’

‘I thought I was here to heal them?’

‘You don’t heal slaves,’ the agent had said. ‘You fix ’em. There’s a difference. Don’t forget.’

A sharp wind kicked up, filling the harbour with seaborne murk. The steps leading down from the Fixer’s cabin were treacherous when wet. The warehouseman who used to live there had ended up at the bottom in a gin-sodden jumble of shattered bones.

The Fixer recognised the ship’s figurehead.
The Bo’sun’s Lass.
John Stark’s tub. The harbour men were quick in tying her up. They were Sabbath breakers and wanted the Mango’s bribe.

The potboy slept in the tar shed. The Fixer went in and found a good fire burning. The air was thick with the smell of hot tar. ‘Almost done, sir,’ the boy said, pulling his forelock. His bare forearms were streaked with old burns.

‘Let’s get this done,’ the Fixer said.

The cargo was unloaded equally fast. Some of the buggers could barely walk. Their gaze flicked over everything.
Probably wondering what this godforsaken place is,
the Fixer thought. They were forced into a shivering line, chains jangling, men and women bound indiscriminately.

‘Clean them up.’

The potboy fetched the hand pump and ran the pipe into the harbour. Cold water sprayed across exposed backs. The Fixer walked down the line while Stark stood by. Months at sea had given him a bleary face that knew no change between sun and rain.

‘How many lost this time?’

‘Only twelve thrown overboard.’

‘Your cargo’s always the worst, Stark. Pack ’em loose. More will live. Won’t need so much fixing when they get here.’

‘Tight pack weeds out the weak. Saves time later. Strong stock means good money.’

‘It’s like you to bring your barge in on the Sabbath.’

‘Those who choose our trade can’t be o’er concerned with their immortal souls. I’ll wager there’s not a church pew felt the weight of your rump in years. We both work outside the circle.’

‘You’ll do no selling today.’

‘I don’t aim to. The cargo can go in the pen tonight and the agent can take them up to Liverpool on the morrow. Cur takes too fat a slice but I’ve no notion to keep my ship idle.’

‘I wouldn’t keep sick dogs in that.’

‘As well we ain’t talking about dogs then. You’d best get fixing my cargo if you want paying.’

‘The boy put a flame to the tar as soon as he spied you at the harbour wall.’

‘As well he might. I need to get down the coast and resupplied.’

‘You push your crew too hard.’

‘Think so? The bastards are as greedy as me. ’

The Fixer walked back up the line of darkies while one of the Mangoes kept a musket levelled. Usual sores in the usual places. All would survive. The dead weight had been culled. He felt bones, fingered a few faces. Checking mouths was a formality. The darkies always had good teeth. He thought of the society girls laughing at him with their rotten stumps.

The cargo had quietened. They were more bearable with the shit washed off, but Stark would have to burn sulphur in his hulk all night to quell the stench. Most stood, quivering, eyes down.

Apart from the big man at the end. The one with the look on his face.

The Fixer’s fingers tightened around the knotted rope. He shifted, ready to swing. He’d seen that look before and often it meant trouble. The darkie’s eyes didn’t even twitch. Something bad, something beyond fear of chains or whip, was going on inside his head.

‘That one’s prime meat. Fix him good,’ Stark said.

‘I don’t need telling. I’m a doctor. ’

‘You might be many things, my friend,’ Stark laughed, ‘but you ain’t a doctor. Not any more.’

The boy lifted the cover off the tar pot. The Fixer dunked the brush and started applying it while the Mangoes kept the slave chains tight. The potboy laughed as the darkies squealed. The Fixer wondered how much he’d like his arse rubbed raw after weeks at sea bound to wooden slats. Let sores fester and they’d gnaw a body into the grave piece by piece.

The big man didn’t flinch when he felt the tar. Not once did he glance at his fellows, nor they at him. Everyone, it seemed, had their politics.

‘Can you understand me?’ the Fixer said.

Still no reaction.

‘Got a wife?’

The eyes swivelled, fixed.

Aha.

Wind blustered and cursed the wooden planks of the watchman’s cabin. Rain, thick with spite, pummelled the roof. The night was black as the tar boy’s pot.

The Bo’sun’s Lass
had made it out of harbour and a good lick beyond the coast before the foulness set in. Stark had offered the Fixer a belly warmer in return for keeping a watch on the cargo, but he was having none of that. He clipped the potboy’s ear and told him to put food and pails into the pen. ‘I put buckets in but they just shit on the floor,’ he complained. The Fixer told him to do it anyway.