Ghost of the Thames (16 page)

He stepped between her and the men,
and ordered her into the carriage. “Until the driver gets
back.”

Before he could even open the carriage
door, though, Sophy saw her.

“Wait.”

The specter glowed like a moon through
a mist. She was walking away from them toward a line of
warehouses.

“We have to go . .
.
now
.” Sophy
didn’t hesitate, but hurried off in the direction that her guide
had gone.

The captain called after her, but she
couldn't stop. Weaving her way across the pier, past barrels and
piles of broken crates and bales of merchandise stacked high, she
tried to keep sight of the young woman, afraid of losing
her.

The apparition stopped in front of a
large brick and timber warehouse that sat amid a jumble of similar
buildings. Like the others, this one loomed several stories above
the deserted street. It was completely dark, and the three double
doors facing them at street level were shut. A moment later,
Sophy’s guide went around the corner of the building and
disappeared down a narrow alley.

“You don’t know how to take orders,”
Captain Seymour growled over her shoulder. “If you were serving on
my ship, I would be forced to drown you.”

“We need to go down that alley. I
believe there is another entrance.”

“Why are you trying to get
into
this
building?” he asked, frowning at the dark structure and
following her.

As they moved between the buildings,
the sound of activity from the docks disappeared entirely and
silence prevailed. Captain Seymour pushed Sophy behind him and led
the way. At the very end of the alley, the ghost took a right turn.
Sophy whispered directions to him.

As they started to round the corner,
the captain suddenly paused. Blocked by his wide shoulders, she
tried to move past him, but he stopped her and pressed his fingers
against her lips. She nodded and he took his hand away. As she
started to peer around him, Sophy heard the voices.

A small trash-strewn enclosure was
formed by the backs of several buildings. A low arch led to a dark
alley at the far end. Behind the warehouse, three men were standing
by a half-dozen wooden stairs that led to an open door. One was
holding a dim lantern that cast a feeble circle of light around
them. She could not make out their faces, but one of them was
dressed in a cloak and top hat. The others appeared to be working
men from the docks or the warehouse. Top Hat was giving
directions.

“. . . Shill’s orders. Do ye hear me?
We’re not running a charity here,” he said. “If the little bastards
don’t want to work, then ye teach them a lesson. Simple as that.
Set an example of a couple for the good of the rest.”

“Half a dozen of them are sick.
Running fevers, the missus says,” the one holding the lantern said.
He was a burly man with a high-pitched voice that did not match his
body.

“Good. Thrash those in front of the
rest. Haul ’em up and whip them bloody. If they die, then so be it.
But don’t take the bodies down. Let the carcasses be a reminder
what refusing orders will mean for the rest of ’em.”

Top Hat raised a walking stick and
tapped it on the chest of the fat man.

“And listen to this good.
I bloody well don’t
ever
want to be called up here because a few brownie
whelps are causing trouble. Ye take care of it, or ye’ll be taking
the whipping. Do ye
hear
me?”

Sophy felt her anger boiling to the
surface. The children were in there. She tried to step around the
captain but his strong arm restrained her. He pushed her back
against the wall and glowered down at her, motioning to
wait.

As they looked back into the yard, Top
Hat was just disappearing into the darkness beneath the archway.
When he was gone, the burly one turned to the other and shoved him
up the stairs. In a moment, Sophy and the Captain were
alone.

He looked back in the direction they’d
come. “It’s too dangerous to send you back to the carriage on your
own. You will need to wait here. I can take care of them. If you
see anyone come out before I return, then I want you to run back
and find my driver.”

“But you have no idea how many might
be inside. I can help you.”

“I’ll be better alone. Worrying about
you will put me at a disadvantage,” he said, taking off his cloak.
“Try not to be noticed.”

“I have no means of protecting
myself.”

He took a pistol from his belt and
held it out to her. “I have no time to show you how to use this
but—”

“I know how to use it, Captain.” She
took it and felt the familiar weight in her hand.

Then, without warning, he took her
chin and forced her face up until their gazes met.

“I need to rely on you to follow my
directions and stay right here.”

She nodded, saying softly, “Be
careful.”

As soon as he disappeared into the
warehouse, she began to fret about everything they didn’t know.
What if there were a dozen men inside? She had brought Captain
Seymour here and was letting him walk into a very dangerous
situation. She looked around her. Naturally, there was no longer
any sign of her ghostly guide. The young woman liked to lead her
into the middle of danger and then simply disappear.

Sophy froze at the sound of
voices.

“. . .better ’ave taken care of the
lazy little buggers. With nothing gettin’ done last night, I’ll
need twenty of ’em now. Them rats is tearing up the stock . . . and
I ain’t payin’ for the damage, dammit. I ain’t!”

Sophy pressed her body against the
wall. Two men were coming down the alleyway from the docks. She
couldn’t stay there. She decided to take the chance.

Moving quickly around the corner
toward the open door, she climbed the steps and slipped inside the
building and moved into the shadows. Voices came from above. Along
the back wall, a narrow set of stairs led upward. She could hear a
high-pitched voice shouting threats, and a child was screeching in
pain while others were crying out to stop.

The sharp crack of a whip cut through
the voices, causing even more screams to ring out. Sophy scrambled
up the steps.

The upper floor of the warehouse was
dark except for the dim light of a lantern spilling out of an open
door at the far end of the building. As she looked through the
door, she could see the broad shoulders of the captain, his back to
her. Beyond him, the fat man stood with his whip raised, ready to
inflict another wound to the body of a child that had been stripped
and hung up by his wrists from a cross beam under the buildings
eaves. Another guard stood by the lantern, and in its light she
could see the shining eyes of dozens of dark-skinned boys sitting
shackled together on the floor along one wall. Even from this
distance, the stench coming from the room was
overpowering.

“Belay that!” The captain’s clear
voice cut through the cries of young boys, and the fat man and his
henchman whirled around.

“And who the bloody ’ell. . . .” The
fat man’s words were almost involuntary. His eyes focused on the
pistol and the cutlass in the Captain’s hands. Then, he turned to
the guard. “Get him!”

Before anyone could move, Sophy heard
the sound of footsteps on the stairs behind her. The men from the
alley were coming up.

As the guard started across the room,
the captain fired his pistol, and the thug spun to the ground. The
man holding the whip swung it toward the captain, but Edward
sidestepped him and struck him on the side of the head with the
butt of his cutlass, dropping the man like a sack of
grain.

There was no sound of the men from the
alley, but she knew they were still there on the steps. At the
sound of the pistol shot, they’d stopped dead in their tracks. She
knew they were trying to decide what was in their best interest.
Then they decided, and she was ready.

As they nearly reached the top of the
stairs, she stepped in front of the first and aimed the pistol
directly at his chest.

“Stop right there!” she
shouted.

The man stopped short, causing the
other to pile into him from behind.

“Just a bloody woman,” he muttered
with surprise.

He climbed another step and she pulled
the trigger.

Though the pistol misfired, the flash
of powder in his face was enough to send both him and his companion
tumbling backwards down the stairs.

“Sophy, look out!”

She stepped back in time to see the
fat man fly with surprising speed past her. Taking advantage of the
commotion she had created, he had slipped past the captain and out
the door. The burly villain hardly seemed to touch even one of the
steps as he descended. At the bottom, there was a scramble as the
three men exited the warehouse.

She turned around. No assailants were
left standing. In a moment Sophy was in the captain’s arms, and she
believed she had never felt so secure. Coming to their senses, they
both turned and looked into the sea of stunned young faces, waiting
to be rescued.

CHAPTER 17

“I do not want you to be involved in
the police inquiry,” Edward told Sophy. He looked at the line of
pallets, filled with sleeping boys. The lantern in the hallway
landing cast a warm, golden glow on their freshly scrubbed faces.
“And I’ve taken the necessary steps to keep any mention of you out
of the newspapers.”

After the skirmish, he had been able
to enlist the services of his former crew members to help settle
the boys in a parish house attached to All Saints Church, not a
stone’s throw north of the Docks. A doctor was already on the
premises, and had seen to most of them already.

“Will they be able to stay
here?”

“I have spoken with the vicar and made
arrangements to keep them. The boys are welcome for as long as it
takes to figure out where they’re from and how they ended up at the
warehouse. No one will put them on the street afterwards,
either.”

Earlier, Edward had sent his driver to
the house with a message for Reeves, and the butler had made
additional arrangements. There were already two servants of
Edward’s here, helping to oversee things.

The man he had felled at the warehouse
was not dead, and that was a good thing, for there were many
questions that needed to be answered as to whom the building
belonged and why those children in shackles were there. The
constable from Blackwall had taken the man into custody, and by
tomorrow he hoped to have some of the answers. As of yet, though,
he wasn’t ready to tell who the man in the top hat was or who this
Shill was that seemed to wield so much power.

“Can I come back and see
them?”

She looked dead tired. There were dark
circles under her eyes. “You can come back after you’ve had some
rest.”

“All right,” she said, accepting his
hand and preceding him out to the landing and down the
stairs.

Edward was relieved that she made no
issue of leaving. And in the carriage a few minutes later, she sat
next to him and did not seem to be in a hurry to take her hand out
of his.

“Incidentally,” he said
softly. “I believe I owe you an apology. You were right about the
children
and
about the imminent danger. “But I still don’t know how you
knew. Did you know any of the boys?”

She shook her head. “No. Not even one.
But does it matter? One child is just as precious as
another.”

“I heard you speak to some of them in
their native tongue.”

“Yes. I could not speak to all of
them. They are from different parts of India. Several of them may
not even be from there. Some were just recently brought here, but
some have been here longer. The ones that I could speak with told
me they were separated from their mothers as soon as they arrived
in London.”

“Did they say anything
more?”

“They have been kept like slaves. They
have had horrible things done to them.”

She fell silent, and Edward could only
imagine the tales they had to tell.

“Why were they there in the
warehouse?”

She stared at him as the question sank
in. “These boys are all small and thin,” she said finally. “They
can crawl in narrow places, so they were ‘rented’ out to others in
the dockyard to catch rats in between floors of the different
warehouses. That was the job they were expected to do. But most of
them hated it; they were afraid. So they were punished.” She looked
up, concerned. “What those men were doing to these boys cannot be
legal. Is it?”

“No,” Edward answered. “The laws that
protect children in this country are dreadful and most of them only
apply to the textile industry. Restrictions on their age and hours
and such. But this is something else entirely. This – this is
slavery. And the people who were running that business will be
punished.”

When he looked back at her, he could
see there was a haunted expression in her face. It was clear she
would not easily shake off the tragedy she’d witnessed.