K Jeter - Infernal Devices

It struck me where I had encountered an incivility similar to this before, from people who were the urban counterparts of these unsightly rustics. In that London borough of Wetwick; there had been a remedy as well, for their bad manner towards a stranger. A token commanding respect; one that I still had upon me, in my waistcoat pocket. My fingers dug into the sodden garment, and drew out the Saint Monkfish crown.

"Your attention, please!" I held the coin triumphantly aloft; anger at my shabby reception sent my voice ringing to the far walls. "Do you see what I have here? Eh?"

The voices fell silent again; the protuberant eyes were fastened on the glittering object.

I thrust the coin under the nose of the nearest man, who a moment before had pushed me away with the flat of his beefy hand. His trembling fingers took the bit of metal; his companions at the table crowded about his shoulders to gaze down at it. Throughout the room, a general hubbub broke out. Men and women swarmed around the table, gesticulating and jabbering. The coin was the focus of their excitement.

Smiling to myself with satisfaction, I stood apart from the noisy pack. The token had worked its still-inexplicable magic, shattering the villagers' sullen indifference. The rising clamour, as the coin was passed from hand to hand, was more to my liking; I awaited the deference it had wrought before, and the speedy offering of the assistance I had requested.

The Dampford villagers looked up at me. One of the women shouted an angry curse; a thrown tankard struck me on the forehead. En masse, they churned up from the table, scattering chairs and benches behind· them, and were upon me. Dazed from the blow, I was lifted backwards as though by a wave. Arms pinioned, I was borne out the door, above the heads of the shouting crowd.

My head was still ringing when my vision cleared well enough to see that the population of Dampford had formed a surging ring about me. I discovered that my hands had been bound behind me; a rough hempen rope had been tied around my neck and looped over the branch of a gnarled tree in the village's centre. One old crone marched up to me, thrust the Saint Monkfish sovereign into my shirt, and spat in my face. A debate had broken out amongst the men holding the other end of the rope; from their violent gestures I quickly discerned that one party advocated dragging me up into the air forthwith, the other group maintaining that I should be placed on a wooden bench that could be pulled out from under me.

"Wait!" I cried. The rope burned across my throat as I twisted about. "There's some mistake! I haven't-" My protests only fuelled the villagers' anger; their shouts and imprecations grew louder; torches and lanterns were thrust higher, the yellow glare serving to make the contorted faces uglier still.

One viewpoint had prevailed among the men. I felt the knot tighten at the back of my neck as they pulled the rope.

For a moment, I was lifted up on tip-toe, the abusive crowd swimming in my sight; my tongue seemed suddenly too big in my mouth, stifling me from any further call for mercy. Then, through the blood roaring in my ears, I heard a distant volley of explosions. Another woman's scream cut through the clamour, as the rope went slack and I pitched forward on to my hands and knees.

Gasping for breath, I stared at my fingers clawing into the trampled ground. Above my head, the villagers' excited jabbering mounted into frenzy. The noise came again; I could recognize it as pistol shots now. I looked up and saw the villagers scattering towards the inn and the other low buildings, leaving me in the middle of the deserted space.

"Here you go, mate – how's your windpipe, then?" inquired a jovial voice. I was lifted up on to my feet by hands underneath my arms. Two men supported me on either side; they were such as I, even if unshaven and considerably more muscular in build, and not of the repellent physiognomy of the Dampford villagers. A third man facing me was the one who had spoken; all three of them were dressed in rather stained and greasy velvet jackets over dirty frilled shirts. Though still of imposing physique, with the coarsened features and calloused ears of former pugilists, the buttons of their vests were now strained with the swelling gut that heavy drinking puts on such men.

My interrogator prodded me with the muzzle of his pistol. "Did them bloody fish-faces bang you about much, then?"

I coughed to clear my throat, and shook my head. "I'm – I'm all right."

The two others withdrew their grip on my arms, leaving me wobbling but still upright. They stuck their own pistols inside their waistbands.

"We'd best be away from here," said the leader of the small band. "Afore them pop-eyed coves get their knobs up and see as there's more of them than there is of us. Steady on; this way, right smartly now." He turned me by the shoulder towards a path leading out of the village; in a close bunch we struck off for the countryside.

"Fresh up from London, then, are you?" In the darkness, the leader bent close to peer at my face as we marched along the boggy road.

I took my hand away from massaging my chafed neck. "That's right," I said. Though they had come as angels of deliverance, the men were of an appearance sufficiently rough that I refrained from volunteering any more information about myself until I was sure in whose agency they were employed. An innate trust was an element of my nature that had been dissolved through harsh experience.

He nodded sagely. "I thought as I didn't mark you from the bunch Mollie Maud brought out with herself. But seeing as she set out a general call for every brothel bully from Whitechapel to Marylebone, I'm not surprised there are a few new faces in the crew."

Discreetly, I cast a glance at the other two bringing up the rear of our party. My initial impressions were confirmed upon this less hurried examination: the three of them had that brutalised aspect, smirking dull and sly at the same time, of those guardians seen slouching in the doorways of houses of ill repute, charged with the profitable intimidation of those unfortunate women whose erring footsteps on the pathways of shame had brought them under the exploitation of a brothel-keeper, and the maintenance of a riotous order among the inebriated hedonists who sought their carnal pleasures in such dives. Bully was the name such men earned by their bulk and careless violence; and here I was surrounded by a party that had assumed me to be one of their squalid number. Outraged decency would have occasioned an outcry against such an insulting presumption, if caution had not dictated a more circumspect quietude.

"New at this here dodge, are you?" The leader was in a talkative mood, his face flushed with drink and the military triumph over the villagers. "Not been out on one of these recruiting drives, I takes it."

Recruiting? Another mystery to be added to the mounting list. "Ah… yes. Quite." I drew myself up and attempted to ape their rolling swagger, to add conviction to my performance. "Rather jolly fun; I think it."

"'Jolly'?" spoke up one of the others. "I can't bear it until we're back in the city, meself. This muck they call country – trees and bogs and shite-" He spat at the side of the road to express his opinion. "If the toffs want their mackerel-mugged green girls so bad, they should bloody well come out here and get 'em themselves, says I."

"Green girls" – my memory shifted itself, casting up the voice of the London cabby who had taken me to Wetwick; he had mocked me with those words in the low alehouse.

"Aye, and where would us lot be then?" The leader sneered over his shoulder at his compatriot. "They pays for their pleasures, them fine gentlemen do. And it's jingling coin in Mollie Maud's purse, and a bit of it into our pockets, because they do. What do I care if them swells are so jaded they prefer these fishy delights – green girls and such-like – to a good, honest roundheeled lass? As long as they puts their rhino up front, then Lor' bless their wicked hearts, says I."