Sergeant Verity and the Blood Royal (11 page)

‘I never meant that,' said Maggie, hardly audible.

'So y' say, so y' say, miss.' Dacre's hand lightly mapped the fair-skinned smoothness of Maggie's body, stroking over the marble-whiteness of her twenty-year-old belly whose childish flatness had gone and whose first firm outward curve was just perceptible. He brushed the little growth of fair hair at her thighs. The girl lowered her hazel eyes but moved slightly in response. He lifted his hand, touched the side of her waist, and weighed the full ovals of Maggie's bottom. Again she arched backward to him, as if in submissive compliance.

'Now, miss,' said Dacre gently, 'it's no secret that you'd rather have your Jenny doing this for you than me or any man. And tonight you shall decide. When you see your beau, Captain Moore, tonight, you shall give your message and give it well. If he comes to you at a run next week, as he will if you bid him properly, you shall be free. And Tawny Jennifer shall go with you as bride or groom, and a purse of gold for you both.'

Maggie was arching and pushing herself into his palms now, showing an innocent delight and eagerness to redeem the promise.

'But, Miss Mag,' said Dacre with a hint of paternal affection and warning, 'if the message ain't given the right way to Captain Moore, and if he don't come at a run, then things must go otherwise with you and your Jennifer. A fellow like me can't afford losses on all sides and must sell up to pay his way. Now, a Khan girl may be a Moslem beauty but Jennifer's shade of tawny makes her a slave in states not far from here. And that's where she must go, Maggie, to earn her price on the auction block. Now, she may find a kind and loving master who buys her, or she may find a cruel one who delights in what can be done behind closed doors. But whichever it is, she and you must part. It ain't that I wish it, but needs must if you lose Captain Moore.'

Maggie drew forward from his caressing, prepared to turn and push herself into his arms.

'Promise us we may go,' she whispered, 'Jenny and me together, when it's all done. You shall have whatever you ask from us.'

'Then I can't make it plainer, Maggie,' he said gently. 'What must be done is best for all of us. You and I, and your handsome Jenny.'

Well trained in her profession, Maggie began to arch and round her broad young bottom restively against Dacre. Turning in his embrace, she raised her lips to him, so that he caught the warm sweet taste of her mouth, her lips themselves as sensuous as the velvet of a flower petal. She slipped down, kneeling at him in a lascivious gesture of submission, while Dacre brushed back the veil of her blonde hair and held her face between his hands.

Presently they moved toward the bed with its white satin cover, the girl drawing her master after her by his fingers. As she did so, Maggie held her free hand behind her to excite him further by coyly shielding what they both knew she must reveal fully in a moment more. Maggie's stockily seductive figure, the blonde curtains of her hair, were shared with a thousand working-girls in shops and mills. Dacre knew that it was he, as whoremaster, who had endowed her with talents to ensnare men of wealth and intelligence. She even managed a slight blush, beside the bed, as she took the white singlet, the only garment she wore, and pulled it well up above her waist, her eyes watching Dacre to seek his approval for this display. He patted her forward, watching her scramble onto the white satin and then turn on her back to receive him.

Dacre had enjoyed her a dozen times before. Now, as then, he explored Maggie's secrets fully, hearing her murmur at the cool metal caress of his ringed fingers. As their bodies closed together, he observed the dreamy wandering of her eyes, the fluttering of Maggie's eyelids as they opened and closed, shutting at last in a secret reverie as her body matched the movements of his own.

'Why, Mag,' he said, when it was over, 'y' may have chosen a handsome young Khan girl for a sweetheart, but damme, there's more to you than a sapphist, ain't there?'

She turned her head aside, as though from a blow. Then she reached and touched him, as if to lure him down upon her once more. Her voice was soft as she sighed, 'Please!' Dacre laughed.

'Oh no, Miss Maggie! You ain't forgetting what's to come tonight I trust! A doxy may have a taste, but she ain't to make a glutton of herself before the main serving!'

She turned round towards him, shaking back the long golden tresses from her face, and her eyes were so hard that he really thought she might try to strike him with her trim little fists. Dacre laughed, almost good-naturedly, to take some of the sting out of his jibe. He got up and attended to his appearance.

'And there again,' he said ambiguously as he was about to close the door behind him, 'you ain't to forget your tawny Jenny either.'

The lights of the city were close on both sides of them by this time, and Morant-Barham was crushing out his cigar as Dacre returned to the stateroom. Thinking of the two girls and their eventual disposal, Morant-Barham said anxiously.

'It ain't for me to argue the matter, but a lot has to be taken on the trust of Maggie and the Punjabi bitch. They mayn't know much about the caper, but once we're gone they could tell enough for a fellow to find himself in the wrong box.'

'Never a word,' said Dacre, picking up his gloves and stick.

'But young Maggie won't do this except on a promise of a purse of gold and having the Khan girl for her own, free and away.'

Morant-Barham's sun-reddened face with its black moustaches was a study in youthful scepticism. Dacre adjusted his silk hat in the pier-glass.

'Joey, old fellow, I'm damned if after all you haven't lived this far and never learnt the first rules of a gentleman's conduct.'

'Meaning?'

'Meaning,' said Dacre, 'that I never met a man of sense who believed that promises to a whore were ever obligations of honour. And now. my dear boy, we'd best see to the night's business.'

8

The night's business, like most of Lieutenant Dacre's other commerce, was carried on close to the notorious Five Points area of slums and alleys, between Broadway and the river. It reminded him more than anything else of the Seven Dials rookery in London with its lowering tenements, overflowing gutters, and narrow ill-lit footpaths. It was a disagreeable area and Dacre's visits to it were rare as his visits had been to the Langham Place house in London. For the most part, he left it in the capable hands of Joey Barham, ably assisted by Cowhide and Lucifer. No one who knew the well-dressed young lieutenant with his house in Westchester county would have imagined that this could be his source of revenue. They would have found it still harder to imagine why a man who had no need of the revenue should follow such a trade. Verney Dacre's weaknesses were few, but he admitted to himself that there was a real satisfaction to be found in the prostituting of young women. Like many philanderers, he hated his young victims quite as much as he loved them. In his narrow breast and his bitter blood, he felt a savage delight at the debasement of Maggie, Jennifer, and their entire sisterhood. It surprised him that the American nation should, just then, be making such a caterwaul over slavery. A man that could enslave his victims regardless of laws and institutions was the only sort of fellow for Lieutenant Dacre.

In company with Morant-Barham and Maggie, he passed through the narrow ways of the Five Points, the gaslight flaring on the stagnant pools of the choked gutters and the slimy condensation of the cobbles. Coarse and bloated faces scowled at the elegant young men from their narrow doorways. In the succession of decaying taverns, coloured prints of Washington, the American Eagle, and Queen Victoria, showed dimly in the oil-light through the small grimy panes of the windows. A pock-marked girl, about thirty years old, covered with bruises and her upper lip swollen, whined for their attention as she slouched against one of the doorposts. The room behind her was packed with sailors from the nearby wharf, the loud din of the place overlaid by shouts of merriment and the tinkling of a guitar.

The narrow passage opened into a decaying square of houses, their exterior walls blotched by damp and patched against collapse by pale areas of rendering, as though the very fabric had become diseased. Wooden stairs, damp and rotting, led up the exterior of the buildings to the higher floors, where the fugitives from tavern and grog-shop huddled by candlelight. Dacre swung his stick and looked about him.

'Ain't it a regular break-down, though?' he said languidly.

The walls beyond the square bore designs of ships, forts, and flags in coloured chalk. A sign directed the pleasure-seeker to a flight of stairs leading down to a large, smoky basement, where it was just possible to glimpse pairs of negro girls dancing together and awaiting their customers. Outside the place, a dark-haired little man with a barrel organ was grinding out a sentimental song, accompanying a girl of fourteen or fifteen. She was dressed up in clothes that were ten years too old for her, a crinoline and mantle, a straw hat with a flame-coloured feather in it, the entire outfit worn and shabby. Her voice was coarsened by street singing, but it was still strong and appealing.

'The older woman snuffed it,' said Morant-Barham for Dacre's benefit. 'Now he takes his daughter round singing, dressed in her mother's clothes.'

Dacre gave a short hum of disapproval. Maggie, dropping back a pace, fumbled in her pocket, drew out the hollow half-dollar, and slipped it quickly into the girl's hand. Dacre caught the movement, however, and exchanged with Morant-Barham a look of hopelessness.

By now, he was almost on his own territory, where the alleys became less shabby and more gaudy, opening out into courts and little squares which were close enough to Broadway to have been once fashionable and picturesque. Albion House, or the Albion, was as plain-fronted as a prison, except for its one plate-glass window, through which the hesitating customer had a glimpse of the 'Introducing Parlour' with its chandelier and polished floor.

At the opening of the square, towards Broadway itself, Dacre was pleased to see that two of the girls, Pauline and Sue, had been carefully placed. The two young women worked as a pair, Sue with her soft pale body and cropped blonde curls acted the slut. Pauline with a firmer body, dark eyes with long lashes, cropped dark curls, and pretty snub-nose, played the refined whore. Any man who accepted their invitation was accompanied to their room by both of them. He was then made to pay extra either for the privilege of one girl leaving or for having them both at once. Occasionally, he would pay to see Pauline and Sue as one another's lovers, an act which they performed with stupefying lack of conviction.

The most important clients were, of course, received by-appointment. Even so, there was a little knot of men at the plate-glass window, which was protected on the inside by a wire mesh. The plain facade of the house was some indication that it had been built to keep eager intruders out and reluctant girls in. Dacre glanced at the coarse, laughing faces, peering through the glass, and then saw Maggie's features tighten in ill-concealed anger.

The men with their caps and pipes were watching Jennifer. She was an object of curiosity both for her Asian beauty, which was rare in the Five Points, and for the sullen challenge with which she dismissed their gaze. Her high cheekbones gave just a slight upward slant to the outer corners of her dark, deeply expressive eyes. The features of her olive-toned face were straight and firm, sloping to the prominent jawlinc of her type. A sheen of black hair, combed from its central parting, ended in a pretty tangle between her shoulder-blades.

The attraction was that several of the girls were performing tableaux, in tight, coloured fleshings, for the benefit of the clients in the room, who surveyed the young actresses and then made their choice of bedfellow. Outside, the impecunious voyeurs gloated over the sight of Jennifer, the nearest beauty. Like Maggie, the Asian girl was hardly tall enough to carry the softness of breasts and slight heaviness of hips with true elegance. The voyeurs, pop-eyed at her shape in clinging dark blue tights and white bodice, hardly cared. There was a general shifting in the group of men. Some tried to catch the girl's eye, to show her their interest in the soft fall of breasts, the bow of her thighs, the smooth triangle of her lower belly. Others showed her their boisterous amusement as the display required her to turn her back to them and stoop.

Dacre paused, coolly observing the effect of this final derision on the dark contempt with which Jennifer treated her uncouth admirers. Her eyes moved uncertainly and her glance wavered. Soon she avoided the gaze of the laughing onlookers when her performance brought her to face them. Dacre was aware of Maggie's soft anger at his side.

'Stop them! Stop them! Make them go away! Make them leave her!'

'Damme,' said Dacre, smiling over Maggie's head to

Morant-Barham, 'your Jenny had best learn humility, Mag, as a moral principle. If the missioners never taught such lessons, it's quite the best thing she should learn her place from these fellows.'

The door opened at his touch. Like sentries at their posts, Cowhide and Lucifer guarded the threshold. Lucifer, stout and clean-shaven, was Dacre's 'foreman'. He stood in a shabby green evening coat, fair hair cropped short on his large round head, an almost feminine softness in his yellow face. His dark eyes promised a capacity for inflicting suffering equal to any of his master's orders. Cowhide was instantly recognizable for what he was, by the width of his shoulders, the straining of his jacket across chest and back. The slack jaw and wandering eyes held the supreme recommendation of being able to impart pain or death without the distraction of imagining his victim's ordeal.

Dacre's hand brushed back Maggie's almost childlike curtains of blonde hair. He stroked the pale silken skin of her warm neck.

'Now, miss,' he said gently, 'remember what's to be done. If it ain't acted well, you may wave goodbye to your tawny bitch. And if that happens, you know the road she must follow!'