'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.'
'Unnatural blighters,' muttered the other, wrinkling his nose in a show of distaste.
A tentative hypothesis began to form in my mind: perhaps the 'green girls' were the young daughters of the Dampford villagers, that these employees of Mollie Maud – evidently a brothel-keeper of some import in the city had come to this rural district in order to enlist as prostitutes. Such practices as this, the seduction of the countryside's innocents into London's sordid netherworld, were common, by all informed reports. As to what qualities the Dampford girls could possess, that would make them particularly attractive to rakes no longer excited by normal female charms, I shuddered to hazard a guess.
'I expected you was fresh at this game, when Nigel-' The leader pointed his thumb at the third in the band, 'he said he'd seen you through the window of them lot's scabby inn, a-trying to pass off a rum couter on 'em.'
'Pardon?' I said, puzzled.
He stared at me as we continued walking. 'You know a couter, a crown, that is. He saw you flashing one of them dicey coins, with the phiz of the fish-face pope on it.'
'Fish-face… You mean, Saint Monkfish.'
'Who else, indeed? It's no wonder they mobbed you like that. Hadn't ol' Mollie given you the skilamalink on that, then?'
I hazarded a small confession of ignorance: 'No…'
'Well, then, me lad.' He brought his beefy face, smiling with lubricious secrets, close to mine. 'You see, we gives these silly country lasses, as what doesn't know any better, one of them bright shiny coins to come with us to London town., where they'll soon see a fair parcel more of 'em. It reassures 'em, like, to get such a precious bit with the bust of someone who looks just like 'em stamped on it. And a saint, too! Makes 'em think London must be a respectable sort of place – we tells 'em as much – where they'll come to no harm. What we don't let on is that all they'll see of this Saint Monkfish when they're working on their backs in Mollie Maud's cribs, is if some spiff gentleman drops the coin he uses to show that he's a member of the discerning clientele what appreciates a spot of green.' The bully smirked, obviously self-satisfied with his inside knowledge. 'Clever, eh?'
I nodded, feeling a general distaste welling in my throat. If not all, a few mysteries – such as the cabby's jocular remarks – were illuminated.
My informant pursed his thick lips in a pantomime of thoughtfulness. 'It's grown a bit shiny with use, I personally think. Harder and harder to find one of these goggling bints who hasn't tumbled to it; and sure all their parents know what the Saint Monkfish coin means!' He laughed and slapped me on the back. 'They'd got their clammy hands on a seducer of their fair virgins all right, when you waved that silver bit around – if Nigel there hadn't seen it, and come and fetched us, you'd have been in a deal of trouble. Mollie should've warned you to keep it on the hush.'
'Yes…' I managed an abashed smile. 'I rather suppose so.'
'More 'n likely, she'll say it's your own bloody fault, for being such a gawp. But you can make your own complaint to her, if you care to. Here we be.'
The path had slanted upward from the surrounding marshland to a rise of relatively dry ground. A team of horses grazed the coarse vegetation at the limit of their tether; the carriage to which they had been harnessed stood at one side, sheltering a simple fire. Near a dozen more brothel bullies roistered in a semi-circle around the
