But in a brief clear moment I saw the driver pull the nose bag from the horse, swing himself up onto the cab and they set off, not very steadily. They had been in the inn for a long time. I had to hope that drink would make following them a bit safer, less noticeable. I called to our driver.
‘’Bout time,’ he called back with a shiver and we were off.
Their carriage continued to weave about the road, meeting shouts from other drivers. We were heading into the main part of town. After a while it was clear we were moving into a more expensive area. Larger houses with their own lights outside.
‘Better smelling too,’ said Jenna.
‘You want me to go on?’ our driver called down and sounded nervous. Perhaps this wasn’t a part of town to be caught following people. We followed them into a side street and this definitely wasn’t so posh. The road had an empty dangerous feel to it. We weren’t too far away from the river but the fog was less thick and we could easily see the other carriage pull up outside a well-lit house. It wasn’t the only carriage. There was a noise of singing in the air, the sound of a piano.
‘I’m not hanging around here.’ Our driver climbed down and opened our door. ‘You can pay me for this and I’ll be off.’
‘What’s so wrong here?’ I asked.
The man pointed at the house. ‘If you find your girl in that place, then she’s in trouble.’
I hadn’t explained about Demelza to the driver, but he would have overheard Jenna and me talking. I still couldn’t see what the problem was with this house.
Two women came out, supporting or half carrying a man. From their clothes it was pretty clear what was happening.
‘It’s a brothel,’ Jenna confirmed what was obvious. ‘They’ve taken her there. Probably sold her.’
If I had been alone I might have left with our driver, but Jenna persuaded me. Or at least held on to me just in case I might leave. I couldn’t see any way we could get into this house with any safety.
Until Jenna said, ‘Staggering time.’
Jenna took hold of me and we lurched out across the road. I had no idea what she was up to but followed her lead as we heard our carriage disappear.
‘Drunk and looking for fun,’ Jenna said loudly in my ear just before we barged through the door and without hesitation Jenna winked at the two big men guarding the place and said, ‘Room please, I need to get some money from this country lad.’
They laughed and pointed to a door. I realised from our last trip that Jenna had probably learnt a lot from her time on the convict boats, and maybe even more from pretending to be one of the prostitutes when she went to visit Demelza on the prison hulks. Possibly learnt a bit too much.
Falling in drunken fashion through the door we found ourselves in the tiny room. Empty, except for the bed and a small table laid out with a messy mixture of powders and puffs.
‘What now?’ I suggested.
Jenna raised her eyebrows. ‘Don’t you remember anything that Mrs Wilks told us in Sex-Ed?’
The Idea
-6-
This didn’t all go to plan, mostly because there wasn’t really a plan, just Jenna’s idea. And we weren’t really some sort of secret agents, just Jenna and me.
‘We need to find out where she is before we do it,’ Jenna said, and she hadn’t really explained what the ‘it’ was. But I wasn’t asking because of her previous comment. After which, despite being in a mess and in the wrong century Jenna had collapsed in laughter on the bed.
‘You looked so scared,’ she said, in between hiccupped laughs.
I didn’t reply. When she had finished poking fun at me about Miss Wilks’ lessons – which were as bizarre as school Sex-Ed can get – she told me her idea.
This small room they’d let us have must have been used by other women to do their makeup ready for work. Jenna really had learnt a lot when she had visited Demelza on the prison ships. Learnt from the other girls she met.
‘That’s how I knew about getting a room,’ Jen explained. ‘The girls on the ship used to pick up a man and they didn’t have anywhere of their own so they’d bring them to a place like this. Rent a room – they’ll expect you to pay,’ Jenna laughed again.
‘Oh,’ was about all I could say. Jenna hadn’t told me the whole story of what happened after she had been dressed up as a working girl to get onto the boats – prison hulks. She had really looked the part and I went red every time I thought about her. It was difficult to think straight when she was made up like that.
Her idea meant we needed to do it again. She had moved over to the table and after examining all the stuff on the table she set about doing her face.
‘I need to look the part to go out and ask questions,’ she said, having picked up a large powdery thing and started dabbing her face.
I was looking around the room to see if there was anything we could use for what I knew of her idea. There was nothing. I tried the windows to see if there was any way we could escape because escaping was always going to be a better idea. We didn’t have enough money to pay for this. Those men at the door had looked real trouble. The windows didn’t move.
Jen turned around, pulled up her skirt, gave me a twirl and asked me if she looked alright.
To be honest she was scarier than even Miss Tregarthur had managed. Scary in a different way.
‘You can shut your mouth now.’ Jenna leant over and gave me a kiss. I caught a glance in the mirror over the table. I had a bright red mark across my face. Dad’s drug dealers frightened me less.
‘Right,’ Jen turned serious. ‘I’m going to see what I can find out. I’ll leave the door open. Any trouble come and save me.’
‘W-what,’ I stammered.
She laughed again, ‘Anyway give a shout, something to get me back in here if it sounds like I’m having trouble. Otherwise I don’t know what might happen.’ She left.
I wasn’t sure what I was meant to shout and I didn’t want to picture what the trouble might be. Jenna was the expert here. She left the room and I heard her conversation with the bouncers.
‘He’s passed out,’ she laughed to the men. ‘No stamina these country boys.’
I heard the laughs of the two men, along with their own comments of how they thought Jenna could spend her time. That did sound like real trouble but not something I could necessarily do anything about.
‘Before I go back and take his money I need to get a message to one of the girls,’ Jenna said, after she had turned down their offers.
‘Difficult,’ one of the men said. ‘No idea who we’ve got in here. We just mind the door. You don’t want to talk to Vanderaly about that. She’ll throw you out if you’re doing anything other than usual business here.’
‘That woman’s fiercer than the dogs she keeps, bite your arm off, that’s how she runs this place,’ the other man added.
There were other laughs and noise in the hallway. I heard another girl taking someone into a room further away. A door opened and the sound of music spilled out. The two men were letting people in and out all the time.
‘You might know her, new girl, brought in by two men in a carriage. They’re waiting over there,’ Jenna said, when it became quieter.
‘Oh, that one,’ the men laughed together.
‘They dragged her in,’ the first man continued. ‘Must have given her something to keep her quiet. Had to carry her up the stairs. She’s up there.’
I hoped the man had made it clear where Demelza had been taken.
‘Up there with George,’ the second man added more: ‘He’s a regular, not that George is his real name. Not the name his wife calls him by.’ And all of them including Jenna laughed at that.
‘Best be getting back to check on my country boy first.’ I wished Jenna had sounded more convincing, she sounded as though she was losing her courage.
‘Stay with us if you like, we’re up for anything free.’ It sounded as though the men were closing in on her. Time for my shout.
‘W
here is she?’ I called out angrily. ‘Get my woman in here.’
And with more laughs Jenna came back into the room.
‘About time,’ I shouted, hoping I sounded convincing. Jenna was shaking. I held her while she recovered. She might look the part but I could see this had frightened her. Frightened her, terrified me, as did the next part of her idea.
Jenna told me more about her plan. I was to go out.
‘It’s easier for the paying people, there’s some sort of entertaining area. I could see it further down the corridor,’ Jenna said, and she was still shaking. ‘We know where she is. You can find the one-armed man, offer him money, show them the gold belt, tell him they’ll get extra money if they help get Demelza.’
I sat on the bed, probably scratching my head. This was Jenna’s idea and I didn’t want to rubbish her plan, but it was a crazy idea, couldn’t work. The men would see the gold and just take it. If they needed help the two bouncers at the door would probably join in. Anything for a bit of extra money. Even if none of that happened we’d still get stopped. This Vanderaly woman didn’t sound as though she’d let us walk out with one of her women – especially if it might mean lost payment. Overall the chance of death was just as high as all the other threats we’d been through – more because there wasn’t any sign of rescue.
I had been trying to come up with a better idea while Jenna was flouncing about in the hallway with her two bouncer friends. I guess that’s what Jenna had expected. Maybe she thought I needed a bit more pressure – a high chance of dying was quite persuasive.
‘Fine,’ she said, after hearing my suggestion. ‘Let’s do it.’
It didn’t take too long. This room might not contain any lethal weapons, nothing to blast my way out. But what it did have, as well as the table and bed, were two gas lamps. In fact, for what I might have expected in a brothel the room was quite bright. Maybe it was mostly used by the women to do their makeup. Gas lamps burning bright.
‘Fire!’ screamed Jenna. ‘FIRE, FIRE! He’s set the place on fire. HELP!’
Flames and smoke billowed from our room. Fire retardant not yet invented, the feather mattress erupted. We had to get out fast.
Mayhem. At the end of the hall there was a ballroom or bar and it was packed. There had been music and dancing, all part of the brothel. The room emptied out in a frantic rush of people – some scantily dressed and some, well, not actually dressed at all. The building was all wood and it was panic as they rushed for the door. This lot knew the danger of fire in a building with no fire escapes. The management had never been keen on letting people out in a hurry. Now there were trampling, wailing, howling bodies that fought their way out. No one helped, many fell to the floor. The two bouncers were the first to leave.
‘Quick,’ Jen pulled me to one side at the bottom of the stairs.
Most of the people had made it downstairs so it wasn’t difficult for us to get up. No one was interested in anything we were doing, only interested in escape and staying alive as the flames reached the hallway.
Jenna charged upwards. ‘In there,’ she shouted, rushing to a door. ‘That’s where they said she’d be.’
The door was locked but I smashed against it and the wood came apart easily. I supposed that Miss Vanderaly sometimes needed to get into locked rooms.
Inside a man, small and with a look of total confusion – must have been George – sat with his head in his hands. Demelza hadn’t made it as far as the bed and was slumped over another chair and snoring.
‘She won’t wake up,’ George moaned, almost as though he hadn’t heard the screams of fire.
‘We need to get out FAST.’ Jenna pointed at the snoring Demelza. ‘Get her,’ she yelled.
We made for the door.
George followed as if locked in a trance. ‘She kept asking for the telly and her phone and would I turn on the central heating,’ George said, in a slurred bewildered way. ‘Then she just passed out. What’s a phone?’ George seemed more interested in Demelza’s words than escaping with his life. He had hold of Jenna’s arm and was demanding answers.
‘Tell you when we get out,’ Jenna shrugged him off and we went out on to the landing.
Down below the fire had really taken hold. The whole hallway was in flames. There was no way we could escape. The fire had reached the bottom of the stairs, flames and smoke coming up to meet us.
‘Back to the room.’ I carried Demelza into George’s room.
George had done nothing but stare at us with his mouth half open, a hopeless look. His room was larger and more upmarket than the one we’d used downstairs. Probably one for the regular customers. I tried the window but it wouldn’t budge, I smashed the glass with a chair and looked out, we were one floor above the ground, only just visible in the dark. Something below glistened in the faint light. This might be the only way out – jumping. Still a long way down, jumping would be dangerous, probably break a leg.
Jenna was shaking George, ‘Come on. Is there another way out?’
‘No idea,’ he said, slowly shaking his head. ‘You can call me Herbert if you like, no point in pretending if we are all going to die.’
‘That’s not going to happen,’ Jenna shouted.
Dumping Demelza I rushed out to the smoke filled landing, checking other rooms, they were all the same, bedrooms with no escape route.
‘There’s no other way out,’ I said, returning to the others and sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘Wait for the fire brigade?’ It wasn’t a serious suggestion.
‘They won’t bother coming here.’ George seemed a bit more alive now death was near.
‘Sheets,’ cried Jenna. ‘Tie them together and we can use them as a rope.’
We rushed from room to room dragging off none too clean sheets from the other beds. Soon we had a pile of them. But tying them together was hopeless, our knots wouldn’t hold, the sheets were too coarse, any rope we might end up with was too short.
‘No good, should have tried this before we set the place alight,’ I said, throwing the sheets to one side. ‘Get some of the mattresses off the beds.’
Choking and coughing, we dragged two heavy feather mattresses to George’s room. After that thick smoke drove us back. Smoke was starting to come through the floorboards into the room.
‘Keep them out of the flames,’ Jenna shouted, her voice almost drowned by the sound of the building coming apart. ‘The last mattress almost exploded when we set it alight.’
‘You did that?’ George/Herbert didn’t really sound surprised but still did nothing to help.
‘I need to smash the rest of the window.’ I was finding it hard to see.
‘This.’ Jenna grabbed at a small wooden chair by the bed and threw it to me.
I crashed the chair into the window, broken glass flying everywhere.
‘Quick,’ Jenna dragged one mattress and I heaved it out while she pulled the next one towards me and finally the one from George’s bed. I hoped I’d made a pile for us to jump onto, I couldn’t see enough to be sure.
‘Her first,’ Jenna pointed to the partially conscious Demelza.
She groaned and tried to struggle when I lifted her but I just pushed her through the window. I heard a screech and a splash and another screech.
‘Must be the river,’ I shouted. ‘Go … go,’ as I pushed Jenna out. There was more light from the fire as I saw her hit the mattress pile and bounce into the air sideways. I heard the splash as she hit the water and let out a yell.
George was next. I could have left him, but the flames were through the broken bedroom door, he wouldn’t have survived long, so I heaved him out. As he bounced towards the water he was shouting something about not being able to swim. Behind me the fire broke through the floor, the bed disappeared into the furnace below. I leapt.
It wasn’t the real river, just a smelly cold backwater, a sewer, didn’t need to swim just stand up in the squelchy mud. We waded to the side, away from the building but into a crowd that had gathered to
watch. Flames shot high in the sky, the building was a broken shell of blazing timber.
‘Good thing,’ I heard one woman say. ‘Needed clearing out.’
The crowd started to shout and jeer at us. Not sure if it was because they thought we’d been customers or because we stank and dripped with foul smelling mud.
‘Get out of here,’ a bruised Jenna called while wiping mud from her face and pulling at George’s arm.
I threw Demelza over my shoulder. She’d stirred a bit in the water but had gone back to snoring. Whatever the one-armed man had given her it was powerful, something we could have done with on those occasions when an unconscious Demelza would have been helpful.
We pushed through the crowd. They kept away, nobody was likely to stop us – we looked like creatures from a horror movie and smelt like it too. We didn’t stop until we were on our own and had reached the edge of the main river – I guess it was the Thames.
Apart from bruises and cuts, we had survived; nothing broken as far as I could tell. Although the water wasn’t much cleaner we scraped off the worst of the stinking mess that clung to us. I suggested we chucked Demelza into the water but Jenna was determined to save her, although that was getting a bit over-repetitive. I still gave her a good dunking but she was beyond complaining.
George/Herbert became a different person after we cleaned him up. I guess his dip in the water might have sobered him up. He had sounded rather slurred in the brothel.
‘Need a cab,’ George said, looking around. ‘Get to the road.’ We followed him, still carrying Demelza.
Personally if I’d been a cab driver, even a horse drawn one, I would not have stopped for one nearly unconscious and three other dripping stinking passengers. But George stepped into the road and raised his hand. Perhaps cab drivers around here were used to taking people who’d fallen in the river.
I was even more surprised when George said, ‘Where to?’ and looked at Jenna for directions to tell the driver.
Tregarthur's Crystal: Book 4 (The Tregarthur's Series) Page 6
