by DA Chaney
Ed sneered, leaned over, re-fitted the cap, and then resumed digging as well. Brock was always trying to lash out to inflict some kind of physical pain. He was a big man and liked to push his strength around when he wasn’t standing around complaining. The only reason Ed put up with the man was because the job couldn’t be done fast enough alone, and Brock had been a decent grave robbing partner for going on two years now. They had a history that Ed could trust well enough, and they worked easily together, splitting funds down the middle. Brock wasn’t a double-dealing cheat like some men had been before partnering with him. The combination was good enough to make a bond as business partners, just not quite enough to call each other ‘friends’.
Certainly, the bond would be null and void and likely a different kind of bond altogether if Brock knew that Ed was actually “Edwina”. She didn’t think he suspected at all actually. She had lived so long as male that she didn’t believe that she had made a mistake, but living a constant secret could make anyone nervous. If she didn’t bind her breasts well enough, if she slipped up about her childhood while drinking, if she was injured bad enough to where he’d have to tend to her wounds…
The possibilities were there any time they worked together which caused a good deal of stomach upset until their pairing was over with. In some parts she could get away with being a scrawny teenage boy from nowhere. But there were other parts, like these, where she needed to rely on him for things that she could not do alone. Often his sheer size offered her a good deal of protection. His surly attitude helped that much more.
For all intents and purposes, she was male, but no one else would see it that way if they found out. She could trust no one with the secret. It was too dangerous. Trusting anyone with anything dangerous tended to get people double-crossed and killed. And Ed intended to live to rob another day.
Ed was another casualty of dead parents. She’d lived long enough to have blurry memories of her mother. Unlike Brock, whose parents had died during an attack on his home, her parents died from a fevered disease that had swept through her village. It had taken weeks for them to eventually die, despite Ed’s ambitions to try to pull them through it. After that, the streets became her home in a neighboring town and she learned quickly that girls received the short end of the stick, often turning tricks to stay alive.
She decided early on that it was the kind of life that was just not going to do for her. One day she’d packed her meager belongings and left, preferring to settle down in a bigger town where she could blend in better. She studied boys and men and set her task to be able to dress, talk, walk, and live life in a new way that would give her far more freedom. No dirty winks from old men or pinches on the backs of her legs to make her squeal. No future of lying on her back just to make a living, if one could call that living. The only things that she lacked were the parts to prove that she was male, which became a burden to hide, but so far had worked out. She looked young for her age and managed to escape being a young fifteen easily enough. Not that seventeen was all that much older-but a seventeen year old boy would be expected to have some kind of facial hair. Fifteen was easier to pull off. She planned to move on long before the locals, or Brock, caught on to her lack of facial hair dilemma.
Pushing at the dirt, she hauled up a new batch of soil thinking of the new places that she could move on to. Secluded places after a while, most likely. It was just a matter of time before she’d have to face the truth about the improbability of being able to pull off an older man’s appearance as she also grew older, but for the time being, this was the best that she could do. She’d come to that problem when it came. She could face anything.
She didn’t even really like men. How dirty, underhanded, smelly cheats were able to be dominant in society, she never failed to wonder. Still, to pretend to be one she’d had to become just like them, which she’d probably find ironic if she knew what the word meant.
Ed gave Brock the stink-eye when she caught his sheepish glance in her direction. She knew he was going to start complaining again at any moment. It was a routine lately. “What I know about it is that the more you bust a gut about work, the less you do; ends up being more work for me. That’s what I know. Do ya think my arms aren’t hurting?”
“You’re sure getting uppity to work with. I don’t much like it. Don’t forget who picks the targets and hauls the cart with the bodies, kid. Without me you’d be spinning your wheels in the mud. Good thing I like you.”
“Yeah? You’re not bad when you’re not bitching either. So, let’s get on with the cart hauling then so we both can get paid and can go bugger off for the night,” she grumbled, as her shovel struck a wooden barrier.
Brock grunted in relief, instantly forgetting their brief spat. He looked around twice to make sure he didn’t see anyone patrolling the grounds. When the coast was clear, they started uncovering the box together. It was one thing to be caught digging in an attempted body theft. It was quite another to be caught hauling the actual body. Nodding to Ed, Brock collected the shovels as she jumped down on the closest end of the coffin. With her weight on it, the opposite end of it popped up exposing the corpse inside. It didn’t matter what condition the cadaver was in, the sawbones paid good money as long as there was something left to work with.
She watched as Brock stepped back when the smell of fresh rot wafted up his nose. She smiled, wiping her mouth against her shirt, too, but took more joy watching Brock falter. He missed the gesture entirely as he adjusted the cheap cloth around his face. He gagged, spat on purpose to remove the gnarly taste from his mouth, and then he reached down to grasp the corpse around its cloth-covered feet. “This one should fetch a fine price.”
“He does like the fresher ones the best. He better not hold out on us neither. You remind him how we always gets what he asks for from us.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Tugging on the feet, the body slipped from the coffin easily. He dragged it to the cart as Ed climbed out from the grave. Brock didn’t feel like going over how things went with the kid. The sawbones would take anything, but he paid what he wanted to pay. Usually it was the same price, but occasionally it was less depending on the condition, which meant they had to divide a smaller share. Neither of them liked it, but thieves couldn’t be too picky or they’d find themselves either not paid for their troubles or out of the next job completely.
Standing close to the pile of dirt, Ed bent and had started to lift the corners of the cloth already when Brock returned from placing the body on the cart. Together they began coaxing the loosened dirt to fall back onto the empty grave. It took effort and they were both sweating like it was midday in the hottest part of summer, but it was quicker and easier to do it this way than removing a dirt pile from a mound of grass. When the dirt covered the coffin again, they patted the dirt down using their shovels to smooth it out. Brock reached over and snatched up Ed’s shovel with his, and tossed them into the back of the cart where they fell against the body. Ed collected the cloth from the ground and tossed it in the back as Brock grasped the cart handles and began to lead it away from the scene.
“One more of these tonight and we can afford to eat a good meal and grab a room to stay in for the night. No cattle stall for me tonight. Maybe even pocket a few coins for another day.” Brock looked sharply at a clump of bushes that shook on the ground a little ways beyond them. Must be an animal, he thought as he resumed walking.
“That would be nice for a change. My belly is rumbling at the thought of a filling meal. Sometimes, I dream about eating food, wake up, and there isn’t anything but cabbage from the farm I just stole it from.” Ed had begun to really hate cabbage. Even the smell was starting to make her shudder with disgust.
Brock laughed and nodded his head. “Ach. Cabbage. Nasty stuff. Makes me fart all night.”
“What doesn’t?” Ed sidestepped the expected hand swat and laughed from the safety of some distance.
“I’ll have you know that the cattle don’t mind,” Brock boasted.
/> “You really shouldn’t talk about your girly friend that way, Brock. Sweet girly Bessie loves you.” Ed made kissing noises and smiled as she stared up at the sky above hearing Brock moo and then laugh.
They crested a thick grass-covered hill, and it took a bit of extra effort to get the wheels to get through it. Ed pushed from the back and Brock pulled from the front. Breaking the cart free of the tangled grass around the wheels, they stood against the cart, chests heaving. Sighing, Brock wiped sweat on his dirty shirt and pointed. “The next one is over there. Not too far now. A few days older than the one we have here, but the sawbones doesn’t give two shits as long as the bodies show up. They just open ‘em up for what’s on the inside anyhow.”
Ed made a face and was glad that she wasn’t there when that kind of thing happened. It sounded far too grisly…even if she did help steal them. Pushing onward toward the new site, she found herself wool-gathering about the meal that she intended to have. Some boiled chicken maybe. And fresh bread and decent ale for once. Her stomach growled loudly and she hoped that Brock hadn’t heard it. They might both be hungry but she didn’t want to bring it up to talk about. It would just make the hunger pangs worse to keep talking about something they couldn’t have yet. Bad enough just to think about food especially at a time like this.
Brock hadn’t heard the sound. His hands tightened around the handles of the cart as he tugged, with his mind on other things. He was too busy thinking how much his back was killing him, and he was biting his lip not to say anything more about it.
“What we have here is a criminal act, my friends. Just look at that corpse there. These two are grave robbers. What should we do about this, I wonder?” Came a highly amused voice from behind them.
Completely surprised, the pair spun to watch a group wander close. Five men had managed to come upon them when the clouds had covered the moon above, and they’d obviously been too distracted with their own thoughts. She shook her head, annoyed. How had they let this happen? A stupid mistake like this would get them beaten, robbed, and possibly killed.
“You the law?” She was fuming, and the tone of defiance and outrage didn’t have to be faked.
One man laughed like a donkey and slapped another man’s back. “Good Christ, no, but we would like to relieve you of your good fortune. We, ourselves, were coming just this way to do the same. Scouted a grave out our very selves, but seeing as you already have one...”
“That’s a steaming pile of shit. We got here first and this is our body to sell. We don’t plan on sharing.” Brock didn’t sound tired anymore. In fact his backache vanished at the thought of losing the one body they did have. Brock scanned the men calculating the odds. Five against two, well, one and a half. The kid wasn’t a very good fighter. They weren’t great odds, but he hoped there weren’t more of them, otherwise it’d be a losing fight. They had worked out a routine just in case this happened; and he just hoped the kid remembered and was up to it. It was now or never.
“Ed, do it.” Brock braced his body for a fight and dropped the handles of the cart as Ed darted forward. Wanting to protect their meal ticket as well, she gripped the handle of the blade in her pocket, withdrew it, and lashed out. She jabbed it directly into the leg of the closest man, twisted the blade then darted backwards, knife in hand and light on her feet, ready to strike again. The man howled and dropped to the ground holding his wounded leg.
Brock’s big, heavy fists connected with one man’s face and the sound was satisfying as the man yelled out in surprise and pain. From the sound of it, Brock’s fist may have shattered a jaw. Ed knew her role did not end there. There were three more of them. She gathered all the moisture she could in her mouth and spat it at the closest standing man, kicking him in the shin for good measure. “Why, you goddamned little shit!”
Ed spun and was off and running in the opposite direction of the cluster of men. She couldn’t afford to wait for retaliation as she sped away. She was too small and more easily overwhelmed in a fight. It was her job to draw the men who felt like giving chase to her childish attacks away from their valuable cargo. Any men who stayed behind Brock would then have to dispatch.
Everything depended on stopping that newly acquired corpse from being taken away from them. They would worry about their second selection later, assuming there was time and they had the energy to retrieve another one after this bunch of horse shit.
She sped through the wet grass, her long legs flying over the ground with grace. If there was one thing she was good at, it was running. God knew, she had to have some way of being able to protect herself. Running away might not be the most heroic sort of tactic, but she never claimed to be a hero; just a poor young kid who stole to eat.
Swearing, she glanced down at her feet in the dark. The poorly made boots were literally shredding as she ran. They just could not bear the quick maneuvering, and she almost tripped as the bottoms began pulling apart from her feet. Jumping over a headstone, she lost the rest of the sole and was now running barefoot. The remainder of the boots clung to her shins, sliding up and down her trousers to the rhythm of her movements.
Her feet were steady and strong as she called out taunts over her shoulder when the adrenaline in her body gave way to glee. “Dirty bugger.”
She heard someone trip and the body fell hard on the ground with a loud string of curses filling the air. It wasn’t long before she was far enough ahead to pull an about-face in the dark and drop to her pre-planned hiding spot. Crouching down, she made herself small in the dark and forced her lips closed to breath through her nose. Ed knew that she’d had at least two on her tail, but she wasn’t sure about the rest. The one she stabbed probably wasn’t up for a chase and the man with a busted jaw likely wasn’t either. That left a third man that she wasn’t sure of.
With luck, he was occupied by either being laid out beside his friends or had picked up the chase on her. Which would mean that Brock should be already on his way to their rendezvous point with the body. This would leave her pursuers doubling back for their fallen friends and having been out smarted.
Heavy feet came thudding through the area and the unexpected happened. One of the bastards ran right through the clump of bushes that she had hidden behind like a blind ox. The toe of his solid—and still attached—boot kicked her square in the ribs as he tumbled headfirst over her prone body. Air shot from her lungs and she gagged violently, grasping onto the bushes. The man crashed to the ground face first and didn’t move.
Of all the damned stupid things. It was something she couldn’t have planned. Ed groaned and held her ribs as she tried to remain quiet. Unfortunately, she was unable to be quiet enough; large hands reached and grabbed her around the throat from behind. Squeezing, the hands urged her to stand from her position on the ground. They tightened, feeling like thick bands of iron around her neck as she coughed and bucked trying to escape. Her small body wasn’t much good against his bigger one.
“This will teach you for running, you stupid boy. I wish it were daylight so that I could see your puny little red bastard face when I choke the life out of you. When you’re dead I’m going to piss in your dead open mouth” he whispered into her ear, and his foul breath rushed down the nape of her neck.
Shivering at his excited tone, she came up with an idea. Once, she’d seen a man go from standing tall to going unconscious and it’d taken three men to hold his body weight up when he’d been completely limp. Holding her breath she imagined that she was made of stone and was sinking into a pond and let her body simply fall toward the ground as dead weight.
Used to the struggle and unprepared for the complete lack of movement, she slipped out of his hold. His hands nearly caught her again when he tried to reach for her, but she quickly stopped her descent, squatted in front of him and lashed out with her bare fists punching him in the crotch. He screamed an unmanly sound as he grabbed for his balls and dropped in bewilderment to his knees. Apparently it was the last move that he’d expected. Lucky for Ed, not
so lucky for him.
Gasping and wiping her hands over her throat to erase the feel of his, she walked up to him and pulled her knee up hard under his chin. His teeth clanked together and the force knocked him over sideways. “Bleeding prick sore.”
She had a few moments to catch her breath before feet pounded toward their location. Beside her, she heard the ox who’d tripped over her begin to move on the ground. Sucking in her breath and holding it in against the pain coming from her ribs, she forced herself to get moving. Making out some distant light peeking through the darkness, she sped toward it.
She had been following the two humans and was about to strike when more of them arrived. Two of them would be a chore enough with a heavy belly, but the numbers were now stacked too greatly against her. Even a dumb creature could tell when her chances would be slim if they all banded against her.
Slinking off, she felt the bushes brush against her lean alabaster and purple mottled skin and more sores opened. Climbing down into the hole, she pushed at the walls around the tunnel with her feet, effectively covering her tracks as she descended into the earth. Retracing her journey, she felt the ache of hunger in her womb. The little beast in her stomach was so hungry. She’d find food.
Somewhere.
2
Lockette Estate, 1804
Within the flickering light of a thick drooping candle, Lady Esther Lockette worked quickly with quill and ink, manufacturing the right tone of the letters that she was preparing. The fragile light source let off a small amount of heat to warm her face even as the chill of the room nibbled at her fingers. Forging handwriting was a tough task made more difficult by the shudders that ran up her small frame. She glanced at the handwritten note from her husband and continued. Grab hold of your senses for Heaven’s sake, she thought. Years of educated grace and a well-funded upbringing were lending guidance to her nerves and yet her mental state was in disarray. Glad that she was more or less alone, she let a cold façade take over her features and a steel will begin to bury her fright.
