City of Darkness

City of Darkness - By Kim Wright


PROLOGUE

August 7, 1888

2:25 AM



She saw the coins first. She always did. A palm filled with silver and copper, extended from the shadows, held by a man dressed in dark broadcloth. A man whose hands were clean.

This was a lucky turn, for Martha had not secured a single gentleman all evening. She’d been roaming the pale gray streets of Whitechapel since ten, looking for a last-minute sailor – even a drunken or aged one, perhaps, for who could afford to be choosy with the hour so late and the stomach so empty? She’d smiled hopefully at each man she’d passed, and now, just as she’d been on the verge of turning back, her persistence had finally been rewarded.

She took the arm he offered her with dignity, as if she were being led to the center of a ballroom. Martha suggested the lodgings she shared with a half-dozen other girls, for they weren’t far away, but the stranger declined, steering her instead toward one of the innumerable alleys which flanked the waterfront. A gentleman, yes, but apparently a gentleman in a hurry. The men who wore black broadcloth were often in a hurry, Martha had noticed. They never seemed to need much preamble, rarely expected her to open the front of her dress, didn’t request a name or a kiss. All the better. She’d be at the pub within minutes, money in hand.

The man breathed something into her ear and extended an arm around her waist. Liked taking it from the back, he did, as was often the case with men who could afford wives and carriages and Mayfair homes and perhaps even a bit of a conscience, the greatest middle-class luxury of all. This was doubtless why they turned the faces of the whores away from their own, why they arched their backs and concluded the matter so fast. Martha didn’t mind. She’d always figured that whatever a gentleman pictured when he closed his eyes was no business of hers. She let the man turn her. She pressed both hands against the chipped brick wall and bent forward obligingly, giving him access to what he’d paid for, her mind on the coins and what they would buy. Beer and bread and stew, enough to fill her and perhaps a friend, because Martha Tabram was a generous sort, never able to enjoy her own supper while another went hungry, quick enough to give an extra twist or a moan if the man had clearly gone lacking for a while. We’re all in this dark world together, she figured. None of us saints.

But the man did not lift her skirts. Instead, he murmured some words that Martha didn’t quite catch, and then she felt a strange tug at her throat. He had begun to laugh, a low uneven chuckle.

Something was wrong.

She tried to scream, but all that came out was a gurgle and, looking down, she saw the front of her gown turning dark. Her lungs ached for a breath that was not there, and the weight of her own body began to feel impossibly heavy. She raised her hand to her throat and felt blood spurting out, running through her fingers like water from a pump. Red, warm, and sticky.

He released her. She fell at his feet. A light flared from above – was he striking a match? - and dimly illuminated the cracks of the cobblestones. The pools of blood grew larger and blacker around her until she could no longer see, but the other senses were still with her and she could smell, yes, the sulfur of the stranger’s match and the rich warm earthiness of his tobacco. It was the smell of her father and if Martha could speak she would have said “Papa?” She would have asked her father to pick her up and carry her away from this place, carry her like a child. There was a sound, the clink of metal against stone. Once, then again and again. Silver coins rained down into the street and the last emotion Martha Tabram felt was surprise.

He was paying her.