Belle

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘What made you go from farmer to helping a murderer?’ she asked boldly.

  He hesitated for a second before replying, and she hoped that was because she’d pricked his conscience. ‘I would suggest you didn’t ask that sort of question,’ he said, looking stern. ‘Or say anything which might make Kent mad. He’s got a short fuse.’

  Belle’s hands were tied again before the carriage left the farm, and she was placed by the window facing the front. The blind was pulled down so she couldn’t see where she was going. Once again Kent sat beside her. Sly sat opposite, but he had his window blind up so he could see out.

  The rolling of the carriage and the constant clip-clopping of the horses’ hooves made Belle sleepy, but although her head kept drooping she was sufficiently awake to hear the two men talking quietly. Mostly they were discussing things which meant nothing to her, but she pricked up her ears when she heard Sly mention Dover and a ship.

  ‘I’d have preferred to sail at night, and just say she was tired or sick,’ Sly said.

  ‘This is better, no risk at all. We just take her straight into the cabin and keep her there,’ Sly replied.

  From that little exchange Belle gathered not only that they were taking her out of the country on a ship, but that they were worried about someone seeing her and guessing she was being abducted. While the thought of being taken out of the country made her as frightened as she’d been on the previous night, knowing they were anxious pleased her. She thought that meant there might well be an opportunity to get help or indeed to escape. She continued to pretend to be asleep in the hope that they would say more. But nothing more was said, and Belle braced herself to shout and scream when a good opportunity came along.

  All at once the carriage rolled on to gravel, then stopped. Belle continued to pretend to be asleep, but when she was hauled out of the carriage by Kent, she struggled with him and screamed.

  ‘Shut your noise,’ Kent hissed at her, putting his hand over her mouth.

  Belle saw they weren’t at Dover docks as she’d expected, but on the short drive of a small but very pretty clapboard house which was painted white with a blue front door. She’d seen such picturesque houses depicted on chocolate boxes, the garden usually bright with flowers as though in high summer. But even in January this garden was still attractive, with hedges cut into different shapes and several bushes covered in red berries.

  At first glance she’d thought the house was isolated, but now as she looked around she saw it was sandwiched between two others, just a fence separating them. Clearly Kent was afraid someone would hear her and come to see what was going on. But he held on to her mouth too tightly for her to scream again as he dragged her towards the front door.

  No sooner were they in the house than Kent gagged her with a white scarf. ‘I can’t trust you to keep quiet,’ he said.

  Belle was left standing in the hall, gagged and still bound hand and foot, while the two men went upstairs. She thought it must be Kent’s house for he’d pulled a keyring from his pocket and selected the right key out of a bunch just by looking at it. If this was the house he’d been intending to take Millie to, she would have liked it, for it was a very pretty place.

  Belle couldn’t see the whole house of course, not from just standing in the hall, but what she could see was lovely and quite feminine in style. The hall had a shiny polished wood floor, with a shaggy blue rug in the middle, and there was a glass dome with little stuffed birds perched on a tree inside it. The stairs had a thick blue and gold carpet and a small crystal chandelier sparkled above her head. She shuffled forward a few steps so she could see into the sitting room, which was decorated and furnished in shades of blue and green, with hundreds of books in a floor-to-ceiling bookcase.

  It didn’t seem right for a brute like Kent though. Puzzled, she was just about to shuffle forward again so she could see more, when the men reappeared at the top of the stairs, carrying a big red trunk between them. Belle’s heart sank because it was obvious what it was for. Shuffling backwards towards the door, she begged Sly with her eyes not to do it.

  ‘It won’t be for long,’ he said apologetically.

  They brought the trunk right down the stairs, then opened it in the hall.

  ‘There’s no air holes,’ Sly said, looking at his companion.

  ‘Then make a few,’ Kent said churlishly and walked off towards the back of the house.

  Just the thought of being locked into a small space sent Belle into a panic and she could hardly get her breath. She could see she’d need to keep her knees bent to fit in it, but if they were prepared to go to these lengths to conceal her on a ship, what were they going to do with her when they got her to France?

  Kent came back up the hallway with a glass of something in his hand. He put it down on the hall table, nudged her towards a chair, then removed her gag. ‘Drink this,’ he ordered, holding the glass to her lips.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘There’s always questions with you,’ he said, looking irritated. He caught hold of the back of her head and held it while pressing the glass to her lips. ‘Drink!’ he ordered.

  Belle sensed he would hit her if she didn’t comply so she sipped at it cautiously. It tasted very like the aniseed medicine Mog gave her when she had a bad tummy ache, only very much stronger. ‘Go on, all of it,’ Kent prompted.

  There was nothing for it but to do as he said. As she drank it down she saw Sly had a brace and bit tool in his hands and he was making small holes in the trunk’s sides.

  Some quarter of an hour later, having been taken upstairs by Sly to use the lavatory, Belle was carried back down and put into the trunk. Sly removed the rope around her ankles, then took off her boots. He put a blanket beneath her, placed a cushion at her head as a pillow, and then laid another blanket over her. Terrified as she was, she was also touched that Sly was trying to make her comfortable. She didn’t think Kent would care if she was in pain, cold or hungry.

  ‘You’ll be fine in there,’ Sly said gently. ‘You’ll be asleep in no time, and we’ll be there by the time you wake.’

  ‘Just tell me what you are going to do with me,’ she pleaded.

  ‘We’re taking you out of the country, that’s all you need to know,’ he said. ‘Now, shush.’

  Belle was still awake when they carried the trunk with her in it back to the carriage. She felt the carriage move forward, she could hear the rumble of the wheels, smell Kent’s pipe and even hear the two men’s voices, although they weren’t speaking loudly enough for her to hear what they were saying. But all at once she felt as if she was being sucked down and down into some dark place and was unable to stop herself.

  ‘Try the smelling salts,’ Kent suggested.

  Sly pulled the small vial out of his pocket and pulled out the cork, then leaned over the open trunk and wafted it under Belle’s nose. Her nose twitched and she involuntarily turned her head away. ‘You gave her too much,’ Sly said accusingly. ‘A child like her only needs a few drops; she could have died in there.’

  The ship had been delayed by three hours because of bad weather and the crossing took much longer than they had expected. Sly had tried to waken Belle once they were in the cabin on the ship. He had intended to give her a hot drink and some food, but she wouldn’t wake up and he’d begun to fear she never would. They had left Calais in a hired carriage, and as it was now two in the morning, they were worried that the brothel would be closed for the night by the time they got there.

  ‘She’s coming round now,’ Kent said, moving the candle he was holding closer to the trunk. ‘Look, her eyelids are fluttering.’

  Sly breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Kent was right. ‘Belle!’ he said, patting her cheek. ‘Wake up now, wake up!’

  He so wished he’d refused to help Kent with this girl. He might have known he hadn’t told him the whole truth. Before they’d snatched her, Kent said she was a whore who’d witnessed him kill her friend and she just needed removing from L
ondon for a time. They had arrived in the carriage near the brothel half an hour before the dead girl’s funeral, Kent expecting that the girl he wanted would go to the funeral. But only two older women in black clothes came out carrying a wreath, and just as Kent was saying they’d wait a few minutes and barge in and grab the girl he wanted, she came out.

  Sly only saw her from a distance, enough to see she was lingering near the Ram’s Head, as if waiting for someone, and there were too many people around to snatch her there. Then she went down towards the market and they couldn’t follow her in the carriage. But Kent said she’d be back before the two older women returned from the funeral, and so they waited.

  It was only during that wait that Kent told him of his plan to sell the girl to a French brothel. Sly wasn’t averse to that, after all they’d taken girls to France and Belgium before, and he assumed that the whore in question was eighteen or more. By the time Kent announced she was coming and told Sly to get out and grab her, darkness had fallen.

  It wasn’t until she was in the carriage and Kent hit her for screaming that Sly saw she was little more than a child, and a very pretty, well cared for one at that. He wanted to demand that Kent stop the carriage and let her go, but Kent had pointed out earlier that if he was to be charged with murder a great many others’ crimes would surface too, many of which Sly was involved in. He felt he had no choice but to go along with it, and hope that later he could talk Kent out of it.

  Last night, after the girl was locked upstairs, Sly had pleaded with Kent not to go ahead with his plan. But he could not be persuaded. He said there was too much money at stake, and besides, if they did back out they’d have no choice but to kill her as she knew too much.

  It was bad enough that they were taking her to France, but Sly was sickened when Kent wanted her put in the trunk. Waiting so long at Dover had been one of the most agonizing times he’d ever known. If she’d woken up and started hammering on the trunk and alerted people, Sly knew he’d be facing a very long stretch in prison.

  But looking at her now in the candlelight, his heart ached and he wished to God he’d never got involved with Kent. She was very pale now, but he still thought he’d never seen a prettier girl. She had such shiny dark hair, curling delightfully all around her face, and plump red lips. But it wasn’t just her looks, he admired her pluckiness too, for most girls of her age would have cried continually from the moment they were snatched. She hadn’t been afraid to try to appeal to his better nature either, and now, when he thought of what lay in store for her, he wished he’d been brave enough last night to help her escape from his farmhouse.

  Kent hadn’t told him how much he was going to get for her in Paris, but Sly knew that young virgins were worth a great deal to anyone who had such tastes. And one as pretty as Belle, who still had a childlike, underdeveloped body, would fetch a small fortune.

  Sly’s personal taste was for well-rounded, grown women with some experience and he had no time for men who wished to ravish children. But he could guess that the kind of brothel owner who was a party to this unpleasant trade was likely to be cruel and mercenary too. She would almost certainly pass Belle off as a virgin several times, then later, when the girl was just another whore, and an unwilling one at that, she was likely to be beaten, starved, drugged and constantly ridiculed until her spirit was broken.

  His stomach lurched and he had to take deep breaths to avoid being sick.

  ‘Where are we?’ Belle asked as she opened her eyes.

  ‘In France,’ Sly said, and put his hand beneath her back to help her sit up in the trunk. ‘Are you thirsty?’

  She ran her tongue over her lips and frowned. ‘I don’t know. I feel very strange.’

  Sly made no comment. He wished that he could be a real man and stand up to Kent. But he averted his eyes from Belle’s pretty face and tried to tell himself that it wasn’t his fault she was here.

  It was some time before they reached a town, Belle couldn’t guess how long as she’d kept dropping off to sleep, but she knew they were in a town for the carriage slowed right down, which suggested it was going along narrow streets. She could hear laughter, bursts of different kinds of music, singing and shouting, and there were also pungent cooking smells.

  ‘Will anyone speak English where I’m going?’ she asked.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Kent said, and smirked as if that thought pleased him.

  Because she’d been so groggy after she woke, she didn’t really feel scared, but all at once she was jolted out of her doped state by Kent’s smirk. It said that he had something lined up for her that was really bad. Her terror came back tenfold, and when she looked to Sly for reassurance he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  ‘You might as well admit where you’re taking me,’ she said, her voice quivering with fright. ‘After all, if they don’t speak any English I won’t understand them, so how will I be able to do whatever it is you are planning?’

  The men exchanged glances.

  ‘Am I to be a servant?’ She directed her question at Kent, and when neither of them answered she asked, ‘Or is it something far worse than that?’

  She waited for some response, but there was none. Sly was living up to his name and looking everywhere but at her.

  ‘Do you think because you’re leaving me here in a strange country I won’t be able to find my way back to England and go to the police and tell them you killed Millie?’ she said to Kent, trying to sound braver than she felt. ‘I bet I could even work out where your house was, those clapboard houses are unusual. People in Seven Dials will break their normal code of silence for my mother, you know. They’ll soon talk about who this man the Falcon is and his stooge called Sly. They won’t like it that you snatched me off the street.’

  Kent reacted then, reaching out and slapping her hard around the face. ‘Shut your mouth,’ he hissed. ‘Where you’re going you’ll do exactly as they tell you or you won’t live to be disobedient a second time. As for getting back to England, you won’t ever get the chance.’

  Belle’s face stung, it felt as if it was swelling up, and she wanted to cry, but she was determined not to give him that satisfaction.

  ‘Don’t be so sure,’ she said.

  He moved to hit her again, but Sly leapt forward and stopped him. ‘Don’t damage the merchandise,’ he said.

  That word ‘merchandise’ told Belle everything. She was just a commodity to these men, like a bale of cloth, a crate of whisky or a joint of meat, to be sold on to someone else. What’s more, she could guess who they would be selling her to. She might have only recently worked out what brothels were really about, but she knew with utter certainty she was going to one. She wanted to believe that she would just be a maid to the girls, as Mog was, but no one would smuggle someone on a ship and drive them so far just for that. So the reality was that she was being sold to be a whore!

  She wanted to scream out her terror and to lash out at the two men, but she knew that would only antagonize Kent further and he might even throttle her if he was mad enough.

  Mog had always claimed she had more tricks up her sleeve than a magician, so she took a deep breath to calm herself. She wasn’t going to be killed, and she didn’t think anyone would beat her, not if they wanted her to look good. All she had to do was use her wits to find a way to escape. Not protesting or making a fuss would be a start – maybe then they’d give up watching her constantly.

  Only a few minutes later the carriage stopped. Kent got out first and reached up to lift Belle down, holding her arm very tightly so she couldn’t run off. Sly followed immediately. They were in a gloomy, gaslit terrace of tall houses, but around fifty yards away down the street light spilled out on to the cobbled street from the windows of a bar. The place was almost pulsating with music, dancing feet and laughter.

  ‘No one sleeps here, it seems,’ Sly said, and he sounded relieved.

  Kent said something to the driver. Belle presumed he was speaking French because she didn’t understand a word. Then
, with Kent still holding her right arm and Sly her left, they led her down a narrow alley and into a small square. Belle looked questioningly at Sly, but he turned his face away.

  Another small bar in the square was still open, golden light spilling out from the small windows, but all the other shops were closed and there was no one around except a couple of men staggering drunkenly across the square. Simultaneously both men tightened their grip on Belle’s arms and Kent slapped his other hand over her mouth.

  The house the men led her to was in the corner of the square and set back from its neighbours. The square was dimly lit by just a couple of gaslights but even so Belle could see the house well enough to feel chilled. It was larger than most of its neighbours, with four floors and pointed, gothic-looking eaves. The windows were long and narrow and most of them appeared to be shuttered. Sitting on the two posts which flanked the five or six steps up to the front porch were stone griffins. A dim red light shone above the front door in the gothic-style porch. It reminded Belle of a witch’s house she had seen in a picture book when she was small.

  The door was opened immediately they rang by a big man in evening clothes. He looked down at Belle in some surprise, but Kent spoke in rapid French and the man indicated they were to come in.

  Belle could hear music, chatter and laughter coming from the room on their left, but as the door was closed she couldn’t see who was in there. The man who had let them in disappeared into the room on her right; Belle got the briefest glimpse of a dark blue patterned carpet, but nothing else.

  Waiting in the wide hall with an ornately carved staircase straight ahead of her, Belle noticed that the hall and stair carpet was threadbare, and that the dark wallpaper was stained with age. Only a chandelier above her was impressive; it was twice the size of the one back home, and the crystals were quivering and twinkling in the draught from the front door, but no one had bothered to fill all the holders with candles. Belle found the paintings on the walls very odd; they were all of naked women, but the artist had given them animal faces.