He waited impatiently while his driver prepared the carriage for the ride to the train station. With ships coming into port in Bristol, that was a good place for him to start. He would take the train to Bristol and visit a few places that might give him information, or at least a place to start.
Two hours hour later he arrived at a pub in the seedy part of Bristol. The Pig’s Place, on the docks of the Avon river, drew the sort of crowd one would expect, given its name. Nick had been there several times when he needed information that could only be gotten by the underclass he was very familiar with.
“Hey Smith, what brings you to this rubbish dump?” Maggie—no last name that Nick knew of—shouted at him from across the room where she stood behind the bar.
“To see you, of course.” He sauntered up to the bar and placed a coin on the counter. “Ale.” He didn’t trust the liquids, or the glasses that held them to be clean, but he needed something to hold onto to pretend he was here for purposes other than gaining information.
She slammed a glass in front of him and slid the coin into her apron pocket. Leaning her arms on the bar, she came close enough to make his eyes water from the smell coming from her mouth. “I got a couple of clean girls upstairs.” She gestured with her head toward the staircase.
Was it really going to be that easy? He pretended to take a sip of the ale. “How do you know they’re clean?”
She straightened and began to wipe the bar with a filthy rag. “These ain’t your usual wenches.” She winked in a conspiratorial way. Maggie had been behind the bar in the Pig’s Place for as long as Nick could remember. She was dirty, smelly, and foul-mouthed. But if he wanted to know things that were difficult to learn in the world he’d made for himself, Maggie and the Pig’s Place was where he needed to be.
“Oh?” He tried to look skeptical, but his heartbeat stepped up with her words.
Maggie leaned forward again, forcing him to do the same. He held his breath, both in anticipation of what she was going to say and to avoid the stench.
“I have a contact what supplies girls who have never been touched, if you know what I mean.” She continued to wipe the bar and grinned at him. A full mouth of rotten teeth.
He refused to believe that someone who Pamela had described would end up in a place like this. She would be the type of woman who would command a top price, especially if she was a virgin. It followed that the girls Maggie had ‘upstairs’ might have come from the same source, but they sure weren’t the type of girls Pamela’s landlady was selling.
He downed the ale, forgetting he hadn’t planned on doing that. Hopefully it wasn’t something that would kill him before he made it back to Bath. “I might take a look.” He hated even saying that, but he needed to make sure Maggie’s women were not the sort he was looking for.
She winked and waddled over to the staircase. She yelled up the stairs and strolled back to the bar. Within minutes two young girls came down the stairs. They were both heavily made up, wearing a wrapper of some sort. Neither one was more than fourteen years old. His stomach roiled and he thought the ale he just downed would make a reappearance on his shoes.
He’d seen enough abuse of young girls and boys when he was on the streets, trying to survive himself, but this was even worse. He knew the type of man who wanted this sort of entertainment and that made him want to put his fist through the wall.
“How much?” He turned to Maggie.
She grinned, his stomach tightening further. “For one or both?”
“Both.”
“A shilling for the night.”
He nodded and reached in his pocket.
“Each.” She stuck her hand out and licked her lips. He shook his head and dropped the coins in her hand. He turned and grabbed both girls by the elbow and walked them upstairs.
They entered a squalid room with a torn curtain and a bed that he hated to think how many bodies had rested and did other activities there.
Neither girl looked as though she was even aware of her surroundings. He made a bet with himself that they’d been drugged. The one girl who looked like she should be in the nursery doing her lessons and playing with her dolls started to remove her wrapper and he stopped her. “No.” He waved to the bed. “Sit. Both of you.”
They looked at each other and shrugged.
Nick paced in front of them. “We are leaving here.”
The one who looked a bit more attuned to where they were looked up at him. “You’re taking us to another brothel?”
He cringed at just the idea of
taking these little girls anywhere except a warm, loving home where they would be fed, loved and educated. And not abused.
“No. No more brothels. I want you to wait here for a while. I am going out that window,” he pointed to the filthy glass behind him. “I will secure warm coats for you and hire a carriage to transport us to the train station. From there I am taking you to my home in Bath.”
One lone tear ran down the younger girl’s cheek. “Are we to work for you, then?”
He knelt in front of her and took her hand. “No. No more working like this. I will see that you are clothed and fed and perhaps have my housekeeper hire you as maids. If there are no spots in my household, we will see that you are settled safely.”