The Tender Days of May (The Belle House Book 1)

by Vlad Kahany

  He left Charles at Haymarket and hired a horse carriage to East London. It was close to midnight and quite a ride away, but there was no right or wrong time to be in the slums, for the sinners were awake round-the-clock.

  Gambling and drinking. Pimps and whores. Drugs and absinthe. Theft and murder. Perverts and quacks. Beggars and madmen. The crippled old and the shameless young. Even the children there were different, void of any trace of innocence.

  Oh, the great Londinium!

  The better parts of London had their fancy bathhouses, circuses, glamorous theaters, restaurants and parlors, beautiful gardens and squares, outrageous dresses and jewelry worth a fortune. The slums of Bluegate Fields, the Old Nichole, Whitechapel, and many more, were full of human spiders that crouched from every corner of its darkness, the orgies that never had a break, the slave girls “chained” for services, and the poor souls bound for most painful ways of dying. The light never quite fully reached the streets even on the brightest days, but at night, it was as if the monster woke up from sleep, and the evil that was hiding in its dungeons and locked doors started seeping to the outside.

  It took almost an hour to get there, the driver demanding double fare. Lord Ashbee didn’t blame him. No sane man ever came here unless for a reason, a particular vice that could only be satisfied in the slums and dreadful places of the East End. If one was found here, he was believed to be either in trouble and hopelessly hitting rock bottom, or the one preying on the darkness of humanity. At different points in his life, Lord Ashbee had been both.

  It was on one of these streets that Lord Ashbee stopped the carriage and walked. It was dark, but the darkness of the slums was like no other. One said that the streets of East London were full of monsters. One didn’t understand that once you were on the streets of the slums, you were inside the monster, swallowed, any moment sent to its deepest corners without the prospect of getting out.

  Lord Ashbee knew the area too well. Even in the darkness, he knew the way around, could navigate the streets and alleys and archways and passageways if not by memory, then by some strange sense that one possessed when one spent enough time in the dark. As if one could sniff things out, guided by the senses, the little signs here and there, sounds, smells, others’ expressions.

  He found the establishment quite quickly. To his delight, the bear fight was to begin soon, and he ordered the drink at the bar, studying the crowd. He wasn’t surprised to see familiar faces, wasn’t surprised at how many well-dressed gentlemen he saw around. The hypocrisy of the upper classes was right here in this establishment that swarmed with the hungry barking of the dogs in the cages that lined the walls and the stench of blood, piss, and fear, mixed with the tobacco and cologne scent of the men that fled here in search of new temptations and sensations. They were the elite and the rich guests of the city that were brought here for the finest entertainment. It wasn’t the matter of bear-baiting but the fact that they were in the center of the slums. As if observing the worst of human fates was the most exquisite entertainment invented. Lord Ashbee smirked at the thought and ordered another drink.

  When the bell rang, the masses shifted to fill the space around the big tall arena, fenced off by the wired mesh.

  It was the bear that entered first through the long passageway that came from a black gap that led to its prison. The crowd cheered, and Lord Ashbee made his way closer. The bear, the majestic but enslaved creature, walked around, roaring, whether from pain or hunger or anticipation. That was what the elite paid big money for. The bear wasn’t sedated, nor was he weaponless, still had his teeth and claws. At the first roar, the dogs in cages went wild. They were fed once in three days, and not before the fight, so that their hunger for blood was at its peak.

  Another bell rang. The crowd roared now, and the gate rattled. As if on cue, or by reflex, the bear jerked his head towards it and growled, and suddenly several dogs sprung up in front of him, barking and growling, and walking around like hyenas, until one of them made a jump, clacking its teeth, and then all hell broke loose.

  Who knows how many dogs were killed when they ended up in the bear’s den. The men let more of them in as the fight progressed. The bear tore them apart, pounded them with paws, threw them around, tossed them like useless pieces of garbage, splashing saliva and blood. In their turn, the small feisty animals surrounded him, sinking their teeth in its flesh as the room filled with cheering, barking, yapping, howling, and squealing. The success of the spectacle was just a matter of how many fights the bear had gone through. The beast’s lifespan wasn’t long. If he survived at all. Being injured in the fight made him weaker. The clever owners kept several bears, letting the injured ones heal, prolonging their work-span. But Lord Ashbee had seen enough of the fights to know when the bear was on his last stretch. The beast was weaker, went down faster, let himself be attacked by the yapping monsters that tore him apart as if finding relief in death was a better prospect than putting all the strength into the fight. Such fights were bloodier. More savage. More horrific. They excited the spectators more.

  Lord Ashbee despised this kind of entertainment. The only reason he came was to experience the shock and horror of the massacre, to see what people enjoyed, to know what people did to others, animals and themselves, for the sake of money and entertainment, the lust for blood in their eyes stronger than anything else in this world.

  He didn’t finish watching the fight—he knew the ending. It bothered him this time. Instead, he walked out onto the dark streets, greedily gasping for fresh air, disgusted and in an even worse mood. This idea might not have been the best, he thought, disappointed. He thought of going home, but changed his mind and walked in the direction of the port instead.

  A filthy tavern full of roaring people pulled him in, and he had a couple more drinks to sedate his mind. A whore appeared next to him, flashing a smile with the mouth full of teeth though her skin was covered in scabs, her clothes stained and soaked with all of humankind. He bought her a drink and told her to get lost. But sure enough, there was another one that wanted to offer her services. Lord Ashbee downed his last drink and made his way out.

  Soon, he reached the port area, found a filthy lodging house, and got a room. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t get lice. If he was lucky, he would feel better tomorrow and return to the world with a fresh perspective. If he was lucky, the thoughts about the young woman in the Belle House would stop bothering him.

  He wasn’t lucky enough and stayed up till dawn. Saw the light of dusk lick the horizon. Heard the steam-whistles of the ships and the howls of the port dogs. He lay in his clothes on top of the stale sheets and studied the smells around him. The salt of the water. The rotten smell of the seaweed. The stench of the unclean room, the old wet wood, and the chamber pot. They brought memories, the exciting and the grim ones. The alcohol fogged his mind, but it could not erase the image of May. If anything, it was sharper, more insistent. Her beautiful face—an exotic dream compared to what was around. She was the reason he wanted to go back. But she was the reason he came here in the first place.

  —————

  He finally fell asleep and woke up in the afternoon with a familiar headache and dizziness. He went down to the street and into the closest port tavern, tried to have some food, took several bites, pushed it away, and ordered gin.

  There was something pleasant in plunging yourself into low life. Revitalizing. It nurtured gratitude to the fortune the fate brought to him. This time he sat at the table watching the workers and sailors and felt indifferent.

  At dusk, he went to walk along the piers, stepped down onto the bank of the Thames, inhaling the stink of the seawater. The gulls shrieked above his head. Even they were more ferocious in these parts of the city.

  The muddy pink of the sky sank into the horizon as if being sucked into the darkness that existed somewhere behind the agitated waters. He couldn’t imagine the places on earth worse than this hole.

  He made his way underneath the pier and walked
among the homeless and the beggars that made this corner their home. Someone had a fire going, cooking a dog, or who knows what to feed themselves. A madman tried to start a fight, but Lord Ashbee didn’t flinch. He was no stranger to dealing with garbage. Someone offered him absinthe, and he pulled out the money to the delight of the owner of the bottle and a toothless grin. He sat right there, with the beggars, watching them crouch, sleep, quarrel, talk, and grill the roadkill. He shared the absinthe with them, listening to their stories. He didn’t care if his mind would go blank, which was usually the effect of the drink. He didn’t care much for anything.

  From time to time, the beggars shot curious leers at him, then stopped altogether. It could be the strange fire that blazed in his eyes, and only the residents of these parts knew it wasn’t from alcohol or drugs—it was the madness for darkness. There were many lost here, no matter the status and wealth. Lord Ashbee wasn’t lost. He found his way here again, as he usually did to soothe his soul. He sat there till darkness, absorbing the scent of the saltwater and the stench of the homeless. Until his clothes reeked of smoke and filth. Until it was too dark to see the ground. Until there was a chance of being stabbed and thrown into the water just for the fun of it.

  He made his way back onto the streets.

  Another tavern.

  He made small talk with a sailor, young and aggressive. Then made a bet and lost. Bought him a whore from the street, got them a room and paid extra so he could sit on the chair and watch them go at it. Sometimes humans were no more than animals, he thought. He left before the young sailor finished the whore and decided to visit the dungeon of pain.

  Bronagh Morton.

  It was dark, and he could smell smoke from the firepits. The streets were suffocating him with despair and a sense of hopelessness. A man with a lit-up torch stomped by, followed by a shabby-dressed old hag who dragged by the hand a little girl in a lacy white dress. The little thing trotted along, barely catching up. She almost seemed to float and threw a glance at Lord Ashbee as she passed by. In the yellow light of the torch, her face revealed fright, panic, and submission to whatever was to come. She was the young bride to some dark, sinister soul.

  Lord Ashbee shook the vision away. Too many tormented souls in this darkness. Bargained. Bought. Sold. This was not the place for peace. It was torture, whether willing or by fate.

  It took him a while to find the place in the dark, the small door with the iron handle that he banged several times until it opened, and a gas-lamp lit up his face.

  “I’m here to see Bronagh.”

  He was led down the steps, dark and moldy. It smelled of something sweet and sour. A stench but of a different kind. Only those who had been deep in the dungeon knew that it was the stench of torture. Sometimes willing. Mostly not. When one thought you couldn’t go any deeper, the stairs continued until Lord Ashbee followed the giant bulky man twice his size through another door and finally into a large open space of the dungeon.

  The dim lamps lit up the place, damp and dirty. The walls and the ceiling were covered with hooks that chains and shackles hung from here and there. Contraptions conjured by the most deranged minds. The torture weapons. The hooks that could suspend a human in the most intricate and dreadful way, pulling one apart until one was torn into pieces. The lamps threw shadows more horrific than the metal monsters. A moan came from a distant black hallway that disappeared into the darkness. The disturbing sound of it ricocheted off the walls and seemed to linger in the air. The cells, Lord Ashbee knew. The screams came from there.

  “Wait here,” the man said in a low voice, and Lord Ashbee felt the usual jitters. Moisture dripped from the ceiling.

  Plink.

  Its hollow sound echoed through the catacombs. Other liquids dripped from the chains that hung next to where Lord Ashbee stood. He walked closer and squinted at the metal, shiny in the dim light that concealed the doings. He ran his finger on the cold chain and looked at the dark smudge left on his fingertip—blood, fresh blood. A familiar shiver ran down his spine.

  Plink.

  The puddle under the chain stared at him with its sinister darkness.

  “Hello, Ray,” the low, raspy voice behind him echoed through the stone walls, and he turned to look at the woman in black. Her eyes pierced him with their familiar coldness, and he tried to smile while the face studied him. She moved silently, like a shadow, as if she was the night herself.

  The mistress of darkness.

  The queen of pain.

  Bronagh Morton.

  —————

  “Death is the simplest concept there is. It has no end or beginning. It is not continuous. It is unknown and will never be explored, for one can not know anything about something that is the irreversible end in itself. It is the most unique concept that no one wants to find out first-hand. Everything else has a hierarchy. Shades. Gradation. Levels of intensity. The same goes for sins. And even darkness. Only death is whole.”

  These were the words of The Man, the person that had taught Lord Ashbee everything he knew. His teacher. Almost a father. His only true friend that got to know death first-hand long time ago. When Lord Ashbee was young, The Man was his guide to darkness, for right after the young man’s study of women, the depth of human nature became his main curiosity.

  His descend into the slums of the East End started a long time ago when he was barely twenty. Young and daring, hungry for life, and driven by curiosity, he took his first trip with The Man.

  Bear-baiting. Fighting cages. Innocent entertainment! He even tried his hand at it. Barely made it out alive one time and spent a month healing his body and face so he could go out into the public again. The Man laughed at him.

  “It is the best lesson. First-hand. Remember, my boy. Most things need to be seen first-hand to know their meaning. Not everything should be tried.”

  The recovery was painful, but young Ashbee felt proud.

  “Why?” Charles cried out in horror when he saw his friend on the sofa bruised and mutilated by the swollen skin and cuts.

  “Ah!” young Ashbee answered with the dreamy look in his eyes that scared Charles back then. “If only you knew how much it revives your spirit! When you realize what you are capable of! It is in those minutes that you feel alive the most—when the pain shoots through your body, when the opponent is ready to smash the life out of you. The mere idea—that your life can end right there, right then—fills you up with a much bigger desire to live!”

  “Madman!” was Charles’s verdict.

  Then, there were brothels but of a different kind.

  The cheap ones, where women served at ten-minute intervals, one man after another, like a never-ending reel, a rotatory action, on repeat. The darker ones, where women were taken by many at the same time as if a flock of vultures descended on a still-breathing creature tearing it apart to death.

  Once, in a dungeon, young Ashbee attended a manhunt, observed it with shock, but never dared to come back, for he couldn’t understand how one could hunt humans like they did animals, shooting them to death.

  There were women who performed tricks, making things disappear in the wombs between their legs. Contortionists, naked and painted in the most horrifying way so that when they bent backwards and wrapped their arms around the legs, they looked like the most gory monsters.

  Flagellation dens and ceremonial bloodletting in the most savage fashion. Not the sophisticated ones of the West End but with the tools intended for excruciating pain. Whips of all sizes and shapes, with thongs, cat-o’-nine-tails, some with needle points. Canes and brushes. Nail boards and knuckle-busters. Burners and pinchers. One could be whipped, tied, strangled, brushed, scourged, pricked, hung, and tortured in various manners. Choose your weapon!

  Next were the opium dens.

  “You can’t know the power of addiction until you fell into it. With one foot, my boy. Not two,” The Man said.

  But young Ashbee dove head-first. Oh, did he get to know the power of addiction! The
filth, the despair, the loathing of oneself and everyone around. There were times when young Ashbee could spend several days in a row in one of the backrooms of the slums smoking the venom. Getting lost in the world. Sinking into the filthy sheets next to some poor soul that was spending the last money to sink into the sleep of death. There were many shades of addiction—none for death. At times, he drove himself to such madness that he didn’t know where he was. His butler Gordon would come searching for him, den after den until he found him and dragged his exhausted, trembling body back to light. Gordon would lock him up and keep him that way for days, feeding him, cleaning him, listening to the obscenities, pleadings, screams of anguish, until the opium loosened its hold on his master, and he knew young Ashbee would not run back for the fix.

  Those were pathetic moments. The rare times when young Ashbee was low on hope, bored with life and life, in its turn, was disappointed with him. That’s when he learned that no matter the will and the character, a man could sink into the lowest of lows, and no sense of reason and intellect could save him. He tipped over several times. If it weren’t for Gordon, he would be long dead. The butler saved his life, and Lord Ashbee repaid tenfold.

  There were other “entertainments.”

  He went to underground slave auctions to watch how humans were traded and sold like cattle. He watched women sell their bodies and lives for children, family, or a piece of food. And little children, some toddlers, being sold into slavery, for even toddlers and infants were of value to some. He didn’t enjoy it. In fact, those left him with nightmares. No opium could save him from the dark visions that followed him for weeks.

  “You can’t possibly know about the life of the poor until you feel their despair,” The Man said, “and that you have to know first-hand.”

  Young Ashbee spent weeks in the slums of Whitechapel, with no money or means to survive except his wits and the willingness to try what others had to do for survival. Random jobs and errands, if he could get any, did not even pay for a decent meal. He slept in ‘doss houses,’ where for several hours, you could rent a filthy bed that dozens had slept in. When the money didn’t permit, he sank lower and shared the life of the homeless. Even the lowest of the low had a hierarchy, he found out in shock! In the homeless shelter, he spent a night in one of the ‘four-penny coffins’ that lined up the building like a sight of a post-war mass funeral. The next night he downgraded to the ‘two-penny hangover’ and tried to sleep hanging off a rope from which human bodies drooped no better than old used-up rags. The lower option was to pay a penny for a chair or a bench, but one was not allowed to sleep. Eventually, he spent several nights on the street, shivering from cold, hunger, and exhaustion. He was spat on, yelled at, and kicked. And he cried. A grownup man, sunken in his own tears and misery! Not from self-pity, no—he had a home to go to. This self-inflicted suffering was just a masochistic test, some strange field research. No! He thought he was indifferent to others’ suffering until he saw humanity downgraded to a speck of nothingness. His heart bled from the despair that humans could let each other fall so low. That even animals had more dignity in their behavior than the residents of the civilized world.