Hudson's Kill

by Paddy Hirsch

  The bodyguard stared. Justy stared back. It was like trying to look through a wall, or a cliff face. The man stood, loose-limbed and easy, holding the long, brutal blade across his body, blade upwards, the handle in his right hand, and the back of the blade cradled in his left.

  Justy turned to Kerry. “Are you all right?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Come to save me again, have you?”

  The anger flared in him. “Jesus, Kerry! Do you not know what’s happening here?”

  Her eyes burned with contempt. “I ken a sight more than you do, ye clunch. You haven’t the first bloody clue.”

  The look she gave him, fear and anger mixed, was like a bucket of cold water. The low cot squeaked as he sat down.

  The guard stepped backwards, pushed open the door with his shoulder and stepped into the dark passage outside. The latch clicked into place, and the door creaked as the man leaned his weight against the wood.

  “Does he speak?” Justy asked.

  “He has no tongue.”

  “Well, at least we don’t have to worry about him prattling on at us.”

  Her mouth twitched slightly, and he saw her relax a little. She was wearing the same dress he had seen her in at the gathering. It was a little more crumpled, and a little grubbier, but she still looked good. “So are you all right?”

  She shrugged. “No harm done. Except to my pride.”

  He watched her, until he was sure she was telling him the truth. “I’m glad to see you.”

  She smiled a little. “Aye, well. Me too.”

  He glanced at the door. “So how long is it since you practiced your Irish?”

  “Is fearr Gaeilge briste, na Bearla cliste.” An old phrase: Broken Irish is better than clever English.

  “You’re right about that,” he said, in the same language. “So did you find anything out?”

  “You mean, did I do your bloody job for you?”

  It was his turn to shrug.

  “Well, I did, as it happens,” she murmured. “The girl is from here. Her mother spoke to me.”

  “What did she say? Why didn’t she come to claim the girl?”

  Kerry snorted. “She’s a woman, is why. And women aren’t allowed to do anything in this place except sew shawls, cook food, and launch kinchin. They sure as mutton can’t go strolling about the streets, visiting with nuns and Marshals and the like.”

  “And the father?”

  Kerry raised her eyebrows. “Her father is the man himself.”

  “Umar? But why would he not want to claim her?”

  “Because he doesn’t want people sniffing around this place. And certainly not the law.”

  “But his own daughter?”

  Kerry scowled. “She stopped being kin the moment she filled her pannier. She was worthless to him. And a traitor to his religion. Or his way of practicing it, at least.”

  Justy sat and thought for a while. “Does the mother know who killed her?”

  “No.”

  “Might it have been Umar?”

  “I’d not put it past him, what with all the other things he does in here. But she says not.”

  “And what does he do in here?”

  “It’s a baby mill.” Her voice was flat. “He has a crew of women go out and recruit young doxies who want to get away from their pimps. White girls. He gives them a load of patter about the true religion, and says they’ll have more money than they could dream about. Then he makes them cut with charas, and shuts them up in here.”

  “Charas?”

  “Some kind of drug. You put a ball of it in a silver dish, and heat it with a candle. The smoke makes you feel candy, like you’ve drunk a whole bottle of geneva at once. And when you wake up the next day, it’s like your napper’s been cracked wide open. The only thing that makes you feel better is more charas.”

  “They’re drunk on it.”

  “As David’s sow. So Umar can do what he wants with them. And what he wants is little white kinchin.”

  “What does he want white babies for?”

  “Because white ones fetch a higher price, you fool.”

  “Jesus.” His head was reeling. He sat for a while, staring at the door.

  She put her hand on his. He was surprised by how cool it felt. How smooth her fingers were.

  “We have to get out of here,” he said.

  “You don’t think I’ve been thinking about that since I got shut up?”

  “You don’t understand. Your cousin’s coming for you. And my uncle. They’ll have a hundred men or more. But Umar has set a trap, he’s got men with muskets. It’ll be a bloodbath.”

  “We’ll be safer in here, then.”

  “You think? If things go his way out there, there’s no reason to keep us quick. And the way the Bull is fixed, I don’t think he’ll be in the mood to accept a ransom. I can’t speak for Owens.”

  “Depends on how many men he loses.”

  “Aye. And Umar has fifty barkers. Maybe more.”

  She was quiet.

  “What?” he said.

  “I can’t go. Not without Tanny. The girl I came in with. Umar has her locked up somewhere. If I pike, he’ll hurt her. Badly.”

  “Where is she?”

  Kerry shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Justy went to the door and put his ear against it. He could hear the sentry breathing on the other side.

  “We can’t sit here, Kerry. It’ll be dark in an about an hour, and that’s most likely when Lew and the Bull will attack. We can’t be here when that happens.”

  “But Tanny…”

  “Tanny is going to be the last thing on Umar’s mind when it starts. You’ll be the first. He’s going to come down here and get you, and you don’t want to be here when he does. I’m not saying we forget her. We’ll try and find her, but we have to leave here now.”

  Her face seemed to ripple in the weak light, softening and then hardening. She nodded. “Right, well. How do we get past your man?”

  “Is there anything we can use as a weapon?”

  “Not unless you fancy breaking up the bed and using the boards.”

  “I may do just that.” Justy smoothed his hand over the wall of the cell. It was the same color as the floor, and appeared to be made of the same hard-packed earth, but as he pushed on it, he felt it give slightly under his palm, and the surface flaked away.

  “Roll up the mattress,” he whispered. “Double it over, and lay it in front of the door. Then stand to the side.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to use a plank to make a hole in the wall.”

  “Just like that?”

  “I saw some wattle frames outside. They use them instead of bricks, I think. They’re pretty flimsy. It shouldn’t be too hard.”

  She made a face. “You don’t think he’ll hear you?”

  “I’m counting on it. He’ll be expecting me to try and get a weapon. And he knows the only weapon available to me is the timber in this kip. So he won’t come in if he hears me breaking it up. But I’d say me breaking through the wall will be a surprise. He’ll try to put a stop to that. And then we’ll have him. Is there anything in that bucket?”

  She looked at the covered pail in the corner. “Two days’ worth.”

  “Well, let him get halfway in. The mattress will slow him a bit. Make him turn towards you. Scream or something, and then throw that lot in his face. Then I’ll crack him one on the napper.”

  She shuddered. “But that degen of his.”

  “It’s only a knife. Don’t look at it. Right now we’re worth more to Umar alive than dead, so he won’t want to use it. Are you set?”

  He stared at her. Her eyes tightened as she gripped herself. Her chin tilted up. “Just make sure you put him down.”

  “I will.”

  They tilted the bed over gently. She folded the thin mattress, and heaped it up beside the door. Justy nodded. The guard might trip on it or he might not, but it would definitel
y slow him.

  The cot was a frame made of pieces of old salvage wood, nailed hastily together, with loose planks nailed on top. The wood was oak, but it was thin and weathered, with smears of old pitch on the edges.

  Justy wanted one of the sides of the frame of the cot. They were the sturdiest, hardest parts, and therefore the best for use, both as a bludgeon to punch a hole in the wall of the cell, and as a weapon. He gripped one of the stubby legs of the cot and wiggled at it. It squeaked and groaned as the nails worked their way out. Kerry was standing beside the doorway, the pail in her hand.

  The leg came free. Sweat poured down Justy’s face. He pulled off his damp coat and went to work on another leg. The squeaking seemed impossibly loud in the small space. The second leg came free, and now he had a five-foot length of oak in his hand. He kicked away the flimsy nailed planks and thrust the end of the spar at the wall. There was a loud thump, and the mud cladding splintered around the end of the spar. He hammered again, and the spar punched into the wall, through the frame and the mud and the wattle behind it and into the space beyond.

  A woman cried out. Justy pulled hard, but the spar was stuck fast. The remnants of one of the loose planks had snagged in the hole. He wiggled the spar up and down, and a long crack appeared in the wall, but the spar would not move.

  The door to the cell slammed open. The guard rushed inside, and tripped on the mattress. He went sprawling on the remains of the cot, but rolled quickly to one side and was on his feet in an instant. Kerry flung the bucket at him, but he barely blinked. He stood, Kerry’s waste running down his face, his cutlass in his right hand. He had fallen on his right shoulder, and the nails from one of the loose planks had gone deep into the muscle. The plank hung loose along his arm. He reached up with his left hand and pulled the plank free. Blood soaked his shirt. His eyes never left Kerry’s face.

  Justy reversed his grip on the spar that was stuck in the wall. He tilted the spar up and leaned on it as hard as he could. There was a cracking, tearing sound, and the whole wall seemed to fall in. Dust filled the room, snuffing out the candles. It was suddenly pitch black. Justy threw himself across the cell. His left shoulder hit the far wall, and he quarter-turned to where he thought the door might be and hurled himself forward again.

  He was gambling that the guard would go for him first, to get rid of the threat and subdue Kerry after. But now he was no longer where the guard thought he would be. Instead, he was behind the guard, bearing down on his back. Hopefully.

  He launched himself into the air, his hands in front of him like claws, blindly raking the darkness. His left hand glanced off the guard’s back. His right hand missed. His head did not.

  It had Justy’s entire weight behind it. The solid plate of Justy’s brow, backed by one and a half hundredweight of bone and blood and muscle, slammed into the side of the guard’s head. The man’s ear cushioned the blow a little, the skin splitting like a soft fruit, but the sheer force of the assault threw him onto the ground.

  Justy fell with him. Something struck him hard on the back. Someone was screaming. His hands were scrabbling at where he thought the man’s head should be. His nails splintered and broke. He felt soft tissue under the index finger of his right hand. An eye. He jammed his finger into the socket and pulled hard. The man reared backwards, making a clotted, guttural sound, and Justy’s knees thumped into his side as he scrambled to trap his right arm and the cutlass. He wrenched backwards again, and the eyeball burst under his finger. The man bucked again and screeched and flailed backwards with the cutlass, but Justy was on his back now, and hard to hit, and the blade clattered against the floor and the walls.

  It was pitch dark, but Justy squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating on what he was doing. He could picture himself behind the guard, his legs wrapped around him, clinging on like a child playing pick-a-back. He changed his grip, hooking the first and second fingers of his left hand into the man’s eye sockets and hauling backwards. He felt the mess of one destroyed eye under one finger, and empty space under the other.

  The guard was weakening. He was moaning, but there was still fight in him, as he tried to buck Justy off, and hack at him with the blade. Justy’s right hand was free now, and he waited until the guard chopped back, and then caught the man’s wrist. He pulled it back until he could feel the man’s elbow against his knee and leaned hard until, with a crunch, the joint gave way.

  The man made a choking sound, and his arm flopped loose. Justy grabbed the cutlass, tore it loose and hacked it across the man’s chest, over and over, until he could feel the blood gushing warm over his hand and the man lay still.

  He rolled off, gasping. He was bathed in sweat. He could feel the slime of the man’s ruined eye on one hand, his blood on the other. He smelled the iron stink of fresh blood, the stench of shit. He dropped the blade and crawled backwards, away from the body. He rolled over and vomited until his stomach was empty.

  “Get up!” Kerry was pulling at his shoulder. She held one of the thick candles in one hand. She looked like a nightmare, her hair in rats’ tails, her face and clothes covered in dust.

  Justy got to his feet. The guard’s body was sprawled in the passage. His chest was a black hole. His eyelids, mercifully, were closed. Kerry pushed her face close. “Are you hurt?”

  He shook his head. The light from the candle glinted on the dull blade. He bent to pick it up.

  There was a muffled cough. Kerry held up the candle. The light reflected on the eyes of someone in the adjoining cell. She stepped forward, and Justy saw a young girl, dressed in a thin shift, hugging her knees to her chest. Her pale face looked jaundiced in the wan light. Her hair was copper. She looked dully up at them.

  “You’re all right,” Kerry said, softly. “What’s your name?”

  “Martha.”

  “Come on, then, Martha. Up you get.”

  The girl stared, blank-eyed. “Do you have my baby?”

  Justy and Kerry looked at each other.

  “We can’t take her,” Justy said.

  “We can’t very well leave her here. In the dark. With a bloody corpse. She’ll go spare.”

  “What about the other cells? Can we put her in one of them?”

  Kerry shrugged. She put her arm around the red-headed girl, and led her carefully out of the ruined room, down the passageway. The girl’s legs looked like they were made of matchsticks. Kerry opened the door to the next cell. A dark-haired girl was lying on the bed, the blanket pushed back, her hands folded over her distended belly. Sweat stained the armpits of her shift. She had a cloth laid over her forehead.

  “What’s all the noise?” Her voice was thick, as though her tongue was swollen.

  “Nothing.” Kerry pushed the red-headed girl into the room. “This is Martha. She’ll be staying with you for a spell.”

  She closed the door before the girl could speak, and led the way down the passage, away from the storeroom. Justy limped after her. The blade was heavy in his hand. His entire body ached. His eye was swollen where the guard had caught him with the back of his head. And his knee felt as though it had been pulled apart and roughly reassembled by a drunken plumber.

  He began counting doors. The passage seemed impossibly long.

  “How big is this place?”

  “A lot bigger than you think,” Kerry said. “They’ve been building for years, draining the marshland yard by yard.”

  “How many of them are there?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve not seen the whole place. Just the outbuildings. And this hellhole.”

  They had come to the end of the passageway. Her candle reflected on another resin-varnished door. She waited until he had caught his breath. “Ready?”

  THIRTY-SIX

  The rainclouds had cleared, and the evening sun had almost slipped below the horizon. It was dusk, but after the pitch black of the cell block, it still took a moment for Justy’s eyes to adjust to the light. The door opened onto a small courtyard. Four high walls, with a wooden plat
form that ran the whole way around the yard, four feet below the top. The platform overhung a number of benches arranged against the walls of the yard, and on the benches sat a group of women, perhaps twenty of them, in robes of every shade of red and blue and brown and green. The women sat silent, their faces covered.

  “Umar’s womenfolk,” Kerry whispered. She was covered from head to foot in dried mud. She looked like one of the witches the old Irish folk told about in their fairy tales. Justy looked down at his own clothes. The entire right side of his body was soaked in blood. The blade was streaked with it. His hand had what looked like raw egg smeared over the back of it.

  He followed Kerry, limping on his damaged knee, feeling the eyes of the women on him. This was a second compound. He could see it now. The high walls of the space Umar had shown him screened this second area from view, both from the Broad Way and from the stream north of the marshes. It meant Jericho was twice the size he thought it was. Perhaps even bigger.

  They were halfway across the courtyard, and still not one of the women had made a sound.

  “Why don’t they speak?” he whispered.

  Kerry shook her head. “Just keep moving.”

  He limped on towards the door in the far wall.

  It opened, and Gorton stepped through into the yard. He had his coat off, and his sleeves rolled up, and his shirt open at the neck. He had untied his hair, and it tumbled in a gray wave over his shoulders. There was a half smile on his face, a pistol in his belt, and one of the long, crude blades in his hand.

  “Evening, Marshal,” he said.

  Kerry looked back.

  Gorton shook his head. “I wouldn’t, if I were you, girl. There’s a whole platoon of lads back that way. I can’t vouch for your safety if you run into them.”

  Justy was cold. His head was singing. “You scum. You bastard traitor.”

  “Traitor to who, Marshal? To you? To the great city of New York?”

  Justy used his own blade to point at the door behind him. “Do you have any idea what’s going on in there? What he’s doing?”

  “Course I do, jack. It’s one of the perquisites.” Gorton grinned. “As your titter will be, once I’ve made you easy.”