Belle - Lesley Pearse [41]
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘There’s always questions with you,’ he said, looking irritated. He caught hold of the back of her head and held it while pressing the glass to her lips. ‘Drink!’ he ordered.
Belle sensed he would hit her if she didn’t comply so she sipped at it cautiously. It tasted very like the aniseed medicine Mog gave her when she had a bad tummy ache, only very much stronger. ‘Go on, all of it,’ Kent prompted.
There was nothing for it but to do as he said. As she drank it down she saw Sly had a brace and bit tool in his hands and he was making small holes in the trunk’s sides.
Some quarter of an hour later, having been taken upstairs by Sly to use the lavatory, Belle was carried back down and put into the trunk. Sly removed the rope around her ankles, then took off her boots. He put a blanket beneath her, placed a cushion at her head as a pillow, and then laid another blanket over her. Terrified as she was, she was also touched that Sly was trying to make her comfortable. She didn’t think Kent would care if she was in pain, cold or hungry.
‘You’ll be fine in there,’ Sly said gently. ‘You’ll be asleep in no time, and we’ll be there by the time you wake.’
‘Just tell me what you are going to do with me,’ she pleaded.
‘We’re taking you out of the country, that’s all you need to know,’ he said. ‘Now, shush.’
Belle was still awake when they carried the trunk with her in it back to the carriage. She felt the carriage move forward, she could hear the rumble of the wheels, smell Kent’s pipe and even hear the two men’s voices, although they weren’t speaking loudly enough for her to hear what they were saying. But all at once she felt as if she was being sucked down and down into some dark place and was unable to stop herself.
‘Try the smelling salts,’ Kent suggested.
Sly pulled the small vial out of his pocket and pulled out the cork, then leaned over the open trunk and wafted it under Belle’s nose. Her nose twitched and she involuntarily turned her head away. ‘You gave her too much,’ Sly said accusingly. ‘A child like her only needs a few drops; she could have died in there.’
The ship had been delayed by three hours because of bad weather and the crossing took much longer than they had expected. Sly had tried to waken Belle once they were in the cabin on the ship. He had intended to give her a hot drink and some food, but she wouldn’t wake up and he’d begun to fear she never would. They had left Calais in a hired carriage, and as it was now two in the morning, they were worried that the brothel would be closed for the night by the time they got there.
‘She’s coming round now,’ Kent said, moving the candle he was holding closer to the trunk. ‘Look, her eyelids are fluttering.’
Sly breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Kent was right. ‘Belle!’ he said, patting her cheek. ‘Wake up now, wake up!’
He so wished he’d refused to help Kent with this girl. He might have known he hadn’t told him the whole truth. Before they’d snatched her, Kent said she was a whore who’d witnessed him kill her friend and she just needed removing from London for a time. They had arrived in the carriage near the brothel half an hour before the dead girl’s funeral, Kent expecting that the girl he wanted would go to the funeral. But only two older women in black clothes came out carrying a wreath, and just as Kent was saying they’d wait a few minutes and barge in and grab the girl he wanted, she came out.
Sly only saw her from a distance, enough to see she was lingering near the Ram’s Head, as if waiting for someone, and there were too many people around to snatch her there. Then she went down towards the market and they couldn’t follow her in the carriage. But Kent said she’d be back before the two older women returned from the funeral, and so they waited.
It was only during that wait that Kent told him of his plan to sell the girl to a French brothel. Sly wasn’t averse to that, after all they’d taken girls to France and Belgium before, and he assumed that the whore in question was eighteen or more. By the time Kent announced she