Page 3 of The Wolf in My Tavern

“No, please. I will work harder. I can make more coin.” The pitiful words pour out of me. I want to tell him to rot in hell, but my pleas turn desperate and continue to fall from my lips.

His laugh is nasty. “Yer asking for a sound beating if ye keep up this backtalk. Don’t want to leave more marks on yer face lest it lower yer worth, but there are other places I can beat as will help ye keep ye trap shut.”

He’s my only source of protection, but now he’s about to betray me. I question what I did wrong. Maybe I could have worked harder… or left and tried things on my own. I tell myself he can’t really mean to do this and that I’m mistaken, but he’s already dragged me into the building. And as he nods to the two beta males standing at a door and stalks straight into an office, I can deny the truth no more.

He thrusts me forward and slams the door shut behind us.

A dirty, barred window lets weak winter light in from the left. Directly opposite the door, a bald man sits behind a sturdy wooden desk. His jowls are heavy, and his eyes have a greedy, unpleasant quality as they rake over me. A pipe hangs from the side of his mouth, and the air is clouded by the sweet scent of tobacco and the stench of stale sweat. The chipped desk surface bears a messy jumble of scrolls, a broken pipe, a leather tobacco pouch, and a small string-bound sack. Two more men, rough-looking, stand flanking his desk.

“The lass is ready, Bone,” my father says. “Ye promised me good coin.”

Bone, the man behind the desk, inspects me as he puffs on the pipe. I’m shaking. I would try to run, despite the two thugs, but my father is holding my arm tight enough to make my fingers numb.

“Ten.”

“Ten?” My father sneers. “Fifteen, and not a penny less.”

Bone sets his pipe aside and nods to the thug on his right, who steps forward, a menacing glint in his eyes. I try to shrink back, but my father keeps a firm grip. All too easily, the thug grips my bodice and tugs, tearing it down and exposing me to his eyes.

My free hand flies there. He slaps it away and steps to the side, allowing Bone to look me over. Heat fills my cheeks, the shame and humiliation of being exposed like this before strangers, while my father waits in anticipation of more coin.

“I’ll give you twelve,” Bone says. “Best I can do. Been a lot of fresh meat, and prices are down. She might look better after she’s been cleaned up. Some like ‘em skinny,” —he shrugs— “but most prefer a little more flesh on the bone.”

A long silence follows as my father mulls this over. My heart pounds in my chest as I pray he might find this deal unacceptable and decide to send me back to work.

“Fine,” my father says.

I feel the heat leech from my face as the second thug surges forward to take my father’s place.

“Father, no,” I cry, clinging to his coat before my fingers are snatched away.

He doesn’t spare me a glance. He is already holding his hand out so Bone can drop a small pouch into it.

I fight with everything I have. The thugs barely notice. They don’t even bother to subdue me with their fists. Nothing I do stops them as they take me from the room and down a long, sloping stone corridor.

The stone walkway is lined on both sides by doors, behind which I hear sobbing. They stop at one. The man on my right takes a giant keyring from his pocket. He jangles a key in the lock before swinging the sturdy wooden door wide.

I’m thrust inside. The door slams shut, and I hear the jangle of the key again before their footsteps move on.

I sink to my knees, numb, trying to work out what I did wrong that my father would do this—trying to make sense of this. My dress is ripped down the front, but that humiliation seems of little consequence as I grapple with the enormity of my fate.

Hearing shuffling, I lift my head to find another girl approaching me from a shadowy corner. She is blonde and pretty, with freckles across her nose. Her dress is still whole, and although grubby, I can see immediately that it is good quality wool. She kneels beside me and puts her arm around my shoulders.

“I’m Betsy,” she says.

“Ada,” I reply. That is all I can manage before a sob breaks from my chest.

She draws me closer, and I hear her crying too. We cling to one another, strangers brought together through terrible circumstances.

“My pa runs a tavern,” she says. “Someone snatched me off the streets as I returned from the market. He’s going to get us out. I promise you.”

I wish I had the kind of father that might come for me. But mine is very different: the kind of man to sell out his only child.

I wish I could believe her words.

I wish I could cling to the hope that they raise in me, but I fear that it is false.

We hold one another in the frigid cell, awaiting our fate.

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