hae a wee keek inside that fine valise you carry, eh?’
‘Let me past ye auld bitch!’
Rachel losing temper and accent tried to hurtle her way through, but a flash of steel she remembered only too well stopped her momentum as the razor blade landed unerringly on the same spot just beside the eye.
‘This time I’ll draw blood girlie,’ said Hannah softly. ‘Now turn yourself round and save that pretty face.’
Little did Hannah guess that these words might well be the last she spoke; a clenched fist hammered down on the back of her neck to send the old woman face first down on to the gravel.
The razor blade spilled out of flaccid fingers and Oliver Garvie looked down in some dismay at his handiwork.
‘Is she dead?’ he remarked in some concern; smashing Mulholland over the head with a poker would have been fair play, and he could look with equanimity upon a putrid burnt body, but felling old women was perhaps not a gentlemanly act.
In response, Rachel drew back her foot and kicked Hannah hard in the ribs. A low moan came in reply.
‘Not yet,’ said Rachel Bryden.
For a moment they looked at each other, then the animal attraction that bound and deluded each into thinking they were the only two in the world truly alive, swept them into a carnivorous embrace, lips, tongue and teeth, as if they could eat each other like a plate of liver.
‘You took your time,’ she panted.
He, in fact, had been skulking in the undergrowth and about to step out and greet her when Hannah beat him to the punch
‘It was the very devil creeping in those damned bushes. I am not a Navaho.’
She giggled. He looked at the case she held.
‘How much did you get?’
‘Everything I could. And you?’
Hannah groaned again and Rachel considered another kick, but perhaps one was enough. She contented herself with putting a foot on the back of the woman’s head and shoving her face harder into the gravel.
Garvie thought to protest the action but then what if this old crone had sliced through the precious skin? That sweet countenance was both their fortunes.
‘And you?’ she repeated, when he did not answer.
Oliver shrugged apologetically.
‘I have the cash I carry and that is all.’
‘You are certain we are discovered?’
‘Yes. And now doubly so.’
For a moment a cold hard reality hovered in the air between the two and then the insanity of mutual obsession claimed them once more.
One more kiss.
Such is love in all its guises.
To escape discovery, they pulled Hannah off the path and hid her under some nearby bushes; the old woman made no sound. Rhododendrons cover a multitude of sins.
For just a second, Oliver Garvie had a pang of conscience over the fate of the crumpled heap of herringbone but it vanished for want of support.
As Rachel hurled the razor into the bushes and then gave a last shove with her foot to bury Hannah even deeper in the underbrush, he spoke thus.
‘There is a place we can go. I have made a plan. No one will find us.’
This assurance brought a smile to her face and she pressed briefly against him loin and breast, while Hannah lay like a dead thing at their feet.
‘Then my darling boy,’ she breathed softly, ‘we had best run for our lives.’
As they moved off he warned her, ‘But after that, we will have to pay for passage.’
‘I can pay the price.’
This grandiose statement provoked her into a reckless peal of laughter and she shook the travel case so that the contents rattled and clinked together.
‘We both will,’ she affirmed as they disappeared into the darkness. ‘We shall both pay the price.’
Hannah Semple was not spared a backwards glance. She had already paid a considerable cost in the defence of her mistress and whether it was to be an ultimate one, might be a matter of conjecture. It was a cold night and getting colder.
25
For what’s a play without a woman in it?
THOMAS KYD,
It was more flesher’s shop than bawdy-hoose when Jean Brash entered in through the salon door.
The girls were also screaming blue murder and with good reason.
Big Isabel Tasker, who was as tall as Annie Drummond but lacked the latter’s colossal width and
Drips of the precious fluid were escaping to run in rivulets down her neck on to the favourite pink gown that Isabel thought most becoming but in Jean’s private opinion did nothing for her face or figure.
Like a boiled dumpling.
Isabel had Italian looks, dark auburn curly locks, a rather blousy dissolute air and it is possible the later years would not be kind to her; but though Jean had a few times read Isabel the riot act, because the girl was a bit of a bully and somewhat predatory as regards the younger magpies, she was more than useful in her ability to take the lead in whatever jinks and capers were requested by a certain tranche of clients who relished a deal of buffeting and horseplay; some of them in fact taking the role of that animal on all fours with a bareback – in all senses – rider to hand. However, though enjoying a drummed heel in the ribs and a firm bit between the teeth, they drew the line at profound and experienced agony.
Which led to the woman standing opposite Isabel, a stiletto yet clutched in her fist.
Francine the Frenchwoman; her dungeon in the cellars was well stocked with instruments for inflicting the desired suffering on those who worshipped at the altar of Odyne.
The goddess of pain.
An artiste to Isabel’s rough and tumble, specialist in erotic flagellation and the craft of hook and pulley, Francine was rarely seen above ground at this time of night but, as has been noted, business was on the slack side.
The Frenchwoman had a slim sinewy body, often clothed in black leather, self-designed apparel that she based upon the temple vestments of an Egyptian goddess, enabling both thighs to be revealed and active; her skin was usually white as alabaster though two hectic spots of red rage now burned in the high cheekbones.
She had black hair, cropped short in a mannish fashion, and cut a dramatic figure in the frankly voluptuous colours and furnishings of the salon.
Francine had also obviously cut Big Isabel, but not to the bone Jean hoped. Not too deep.
All this she had taken in at the moment of entry before stilling the injured party who was leading the chorus of howls, by smacking her across the already anguished face.
Isabel let out an astonished yelp then shut up abruptly as did everyone else except for Francine who already maintained an icy silence, eyes focused on her target.
The other silent person was Francine’s lover, and good right hand when dishing out the stripe and squeeze of inflicted pain and pleasure, little Lily Baxter.
Lily was a deaf mute, a cheerful sweet-natured bundle of curves, blue-eyed, snub-nosed, normally a smile
