Free Dead Water by Barbara Hambly Page B

over her breasts while the men tried to pull her hands away.
    Rose stood in front of them, spectacles flashing.
    “Git on outa here, bitch.”
    Rose didn't move. Only looked at the men with calm disdain.
    “Git on outa here,” said another. “'Fore we take a switch to you, too—or some other rod you won't like so well.”
    Rose stood her ground. From the darkness behind her emerged Miss Skippen's tall, lush-breasted young maid, and the stout nursemaid who'd chased the Tredgold children around the deck, and a little white-haired woman whom January recognized as the mother of Eli the cook . . . all standing with their arms folded, simply watching the men with jeering eyes. Behind them in the dark the deck-hands began to emerge from the engine-room door, not offering any word or deed that could be termed as insolence, or punished as rebellion. Just simply staring.
    That ring of watching eyes, January reflected, would be enough to make any man's drink-induced interest in rape stand down.
    Mrs. Fischer's maid twisted free of the men's grips and ran to join the little group of women.
    “Goddam bitches!” yelled the taller of the boatmen. “I got me a mind to buy the goddam lot of you, fuck the lot of you till you begs me for mercy!”
    But the women merely turned away from them and faded into the darkness.
    “Bitches!” yelled the tall man.
“Hoors!”
And his shorter companion, who had a yellow beard like a louse-ranch, took his arm and tugged him toward the piled wood that separated them from the chained slave women. “C'mon, Sam, somebody gonna be down here
in a minute. . . .”
    As the three men vanished through the gap between wood and rails, January heard one of them snarl, “What
you
lookin' at, bitch?” The words were followed by the meaty thud of a kick, a woman's stifled gasp, and the jingle of chains.
    “Are you all right, honey?” Rose asked the maid in French as January came to join the women near the stern rail. They were little more than shapes in the dense shadows of the 'tween-decks, save for the flash of Rose's spectacles. Beyond them, moonlight flickered terrifyingly on the shapes of snags and towheads, bobbing in the water nearer shore.
    “Thank you, yes, I'm fine. Thank you so much, Madame. . . .”
    “Vitrac.” Rose used the name under which she'd bought her ticket. “Rose Vitrac.”
    “I am Sophie Vannure.” The girl's voice shook with sobs she couldn't control. January wondered whether the little maid had been so well-treated all her life that this was her first experience with molestation, or whether some earlier wound had been opened. In either case, he saw Rose put her arm around the girl, supporting her lest she fall.
    “These yours, honey?” The stout Tredgold nursemaid Cissy came over from the wood-piles, carrying a couple of big shawls that had been dropped there. Sophie held out her arms.
    “Thank you, yes. My mistress . . .”
    “She turn you out to sleep down here?”
    “I know why
my
missus turn
me
out,” sniffed Miss Skippen's maid in the rough cane-patch French of one who'd probably cost a good deal less than the refined little Sophie. “With no more than ‘Julie, I'll want coffee in the morning.' Don't tell me m'am high-and-mighty Fischer got a gentleman friend comin' to visit her, like my Miss Theodora does?”
    Sophie Vannure pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulders, still shaking with fear and humiliation. When she spoke, her voice dripped resentment and betrayal. “What other reason would
Madame
have, to tell me to go sleep outside on the deck like an animal?”
    “Could be worse.” Julie's tone quirked with a bitter knowledge. “She could keep you in there to make up a three.”
    Sophie's laugh was a spiteful sob. “Not with Mr. Weems,” she said. “Madame, she's not about to let anyone think she so much as knows what a man
is,
but she wouldn't share him—or anything else—with any other.”
    “You mean Mr. Weems, the little man in the check