Part 2
The tailor stepped back. He could kill two birds with one stone; bed her quickly and relieve her of her gold before the card players got here, he thought. He rubbed his hands together in glee. It was turning out to be a good night after all.
Nickoa swept past him into the dimly lit room. For a moment, the tailor thought the swishing of her heavy cloak sounded like the hissing of snakes. Momentarily, he remembered what the local women had said about his house. Laughing at his own foolish thoughts he turned his face towards her.
Before he could speak the woman unhooked her cloak and hands on her hips turned slowly around to give him the full benefit of her shapely figure. “I want you to make me a silk petticoat,” she said.
The tailors licked his lips. A silk undergarment? This was going to be even easier than he had thought. When she undressed, he would, sleight of hand steal away her virtue – and her gold. He spread his hands wide in agreement. “A silk petticoat it is, my lady.” He hesitated as if uncertain. “There is just the delicate matter of …undressing in my humble abode… and the small matter of payment.”
Nickoa seated herself at the card table. “Your reputation goes before you, sir,”” she said admiringly “I hear that in addition to being a fine tailor you are also a skilled card player.” The lamplight shadowed her face as she looked up at him. “I have a proposition to put to you. It has two parts…” She let her voice trail off.
The tailor felt a prickle of fear like iced water trickle down his spine.
“Two parts,” he said sitting down abruptly.
The woman nodded. “If I beat you at cards you will stitch for me the finest silk petticoat… for free”
The tailor’s mocking laugh cut across her. Damm women, he thought. Nothing is ever as it seems. No matter. The cards were set. He had no fear of losing. But there was the little matter of bedding her. “And if you lose?” He asked.
“I am yours to do with as you wish.”
The tailor’s fear subsided.
“But there is a second part.”
The tailor looked at her impatiently. The card players would be upon them any minute “Yes, yes, what it is,” he enquired sharply.
“You must win the cards by three straight hands”
“And if I don’t?”
“You must agree to let me have your heart and your other organs to sell”
“To the … the Apothecaries?”
The woman nodded.
The tailor threw back his head and laughed uproariously at this ludicrous idea. He was not going to lose. He had the cards loaded. He wiped his streaming eyes. He would keep the card players in merriment relating this crazy woman’s story to them as he took their money.
“Do you agree Tailor?”
The tailor anxious to bring this madwoman’s game to an end nodded as he dealt the cards. Momentarily he glanced at the back wall of the house. He wonders if she had ever been an inmate here in the Workhouse. He doubted it.
“Agreed?”Nickoa said sweetly.
“Agreed,” the Tailor responded eager to get his hands on the gold coins.
For a while he won handsomely. Nikoa pouted at her loss but insisted on continuing to play.
Then, the tailor began to notice a pattern emerging. He would win, one, two hands in a row. Then despite the cards stacked in his favour, he would lose the all-important third game.
He began to wish the card players would come.
The fire burned into ash in the grate; the night grew long and still the Tailor didn’t win the required three straight hands. Nor did he hear the rap of the cards players on his door.
He began to lose more and more. Fear assailed him.
Nickoa smiled a bewitching smile at him as she won two straight hands in a row. And then she won the third.
The tailor bewildered and enraged sprung to his feet and in his haste to get away overturned the card table scattering the cards in all directions.
“I won,” Nickola smiled. “I want what you promised. Your heart and your organs…”
“But I’m not dead,” the tailor bleated just as there came a rap on the door. Wild with relief the he rushed to the door and flung it wide in welcome.
Four black hooded men stood there.
The tailor stumbled back towards his own cold fireside. “Body snatchers!” he gasped out. “You can’t take my organs. I’m not dead”
“You will be …very soon,” the woman said beginning to draw small surgical instruments from the silken purse….Unless…”
“Yes, yes, anything. I’ll do anything you ask,” the tailor gasped begging for his life.
The woman, Nickoa studied for a moment. “We will play one last game of cards – a final gamble. If you should win I will release you from your promise… on one condition…”
“I agree to the gamble. I agree,” the tailor cried out even before she had stopped speaking.
“If you forfeit the gamble I will return. And I will have your heart and other organs as you promised.”
The following nights the card players came rapping on the Tailor’s door as usual. The Tailor, alive and well played on. But gradually the card players begin to dwindle. One by one they died. The Tailor as agreed made their burial shrouds and as agreed, removed their heart and other organs for the body snatcher In exchange for keeping his own.
Gemma Hill 2018 copyright
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