The Return of the Warrior

by Chris Bradford

  Rose glanced at Jack. ‘Doesn’t say much, does he?’

  Realizing his friend was somewhat overawed by Rose, Jack replied, ‘He’s taken a vow of silence.’

  ‘Really?’ said Rose, intrigued. Then seeing that Jack was kidding, she began to laugh. ‘Don’t worry, Yori, I tend to have that effect on a lot of boys.’ She returned her gaze to Jack. ‘So where have you been hiding these past years?’

  Jack took a swig of his drink. ‘The Japans.’

  Rose looked him up and down. ‘I suppose that explains the dress.’

  ‘It’s a hakama,’ sighed Jack, too tired to explain any further.

  ‘You were always the great explorer,’ said Rose with a smirk. ‘You made your fortune yet?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  Her eyes went to his hip. ‘Judging by the heavy purse you carry, you must have had some success. I hear the Far East is a land of silver and gold!’

  ‘That depends on what you are seeking,’ Jack replied. ‘It’s an easy place to lose your head.’

  ‘Or a finger, by the looks of it!’ she said, nodding at his left hand gripping the tankard awkwardly.

  Jack glanced at the stub of his little finger, the nail and first joint missing. ‘Yubitsume,’ he replied bitterly.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ said Rose.

  ‘My taijutsu master, Sensei Kyuzo, sliced it off as punishment for an alleged crime.’

  Rose winced. ‘I suppose it’s better than losing your head. Is he responsible for the scar on your cheek too?’

  Jack’s hand went absently to the thin white line marking his left cheek. ‘No, that’s courtesy of Kazuki, the bane of my life in Japan.’ He scowled, recalling all the bullying he’d suffered at the hands of his school rival. Kazuki had mercilessly taunted and tortured Jack from the very first day at the Niten Ichi Ryū, victimizing him for being a foreigner, a gaijin. They’d fought on numerous occasions – even duelled one another during the Battle of Osaka Castle, despite being on the same side! His rival had pursued him across Japan for over a year on the orders of the Shogun who wanted him dead … and to satisfy his own bloodlust.

  ‘Is that why you’re back?’ asked Rose.

  Jack shook his head. ‘Kazuki’s in prison now. He’s no longer a problem. I came back to find my sister –’ he put his tankard down, the heavy weight of grief returning – ‘only to discover she’s died … from the plague.’

  Rose blinked and stared hard at him. ‘Jess? She ain’t dead, as far as I know.’

  ‘What?’ exclaimed Jack, jumping up.

  ‘No, she left the area before the plague hit,’ replied Rose. ‘Your father’s cottage was seized by some well-to-do gentleman – bad debts or something. He rented it out to three families. They’re the ones that died.’

  Jack fell back into his seat, stunned, his sorrow at the fate of the three families eclipsed by his relief at hearing his sister had survived. ‘Where did Jess go, then?’

  Rose shrugged. ‘No idea. One day here, next day gone. But I bet you a silver coin that that old biddy, Mrs Winters, knows.’

  ‘She didn’t die of the plague either?’ asked Jack breathlessly.

  Rose shook her head. ‘But she may as well have! After Jess left, I saw her around Limehouse a few times, quite a desperate look on her old face. I heard she helped care for those three families in your cottage when they caught the plague. Nasty job, but well paid.’

  Jack leant eagerly across the table. ‘Where’s Mrs Winters now?’

  ‘Now that I do know,’ Rose replied, taking his half-empty tankard and draining the contents in one gulp. ‘Bedlam!’

  They heard the screams and howls long before they reached the entrance to the notorious asylum. A former priory, Bedlam was a cluster of decrepit brick buildings situated just beyond the city walls in Bishopsgate.

  ‘It looks more like a prison than a hospital,’ Yori remarked, craning his neck upwards to see the small barred windows high in the wall.

  ‘And so it should be,’ said Rose. ‘You wouldn’t want any of the nutters inside it roaming London’s streets. I pity poor Mrs Winters. If she wasn’t crazy before, she will be by now.’

  Jack stopped in his tracks. ‘Are you telling me Mrs Winters is mad?’

  Rose twirled a forefinger against her head. ‘As a cuckoo!’

  He frowned in dismay. ‘I thought when you said she was in Bedlam that you meant she was helping to care for the patients. Not that she was one of them!’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Rose with a shrug. ‘Thought that was obvious.’

  Jack’s shoulders slumped. How would he get any sense out of a madwoman?

  ‘Perhaps her time in hospital may have helped her?’ Akiko suggested hopefully.

  Rose gave a dismissive snort. ‘More likely made her worse! I hear they treat ’em worse than animals.’

  Akiko’s lips thinned in barely concealed annoyance at Rose’s off-hand reply. The two of them had hardly exchanged a word since they’d first met, but Jack put that down to a clash of cultures. Rose couldn’t be any more different from Akiko. Bold, brash and uninhibited, she was a typical London city girl; whereas Akiko behaved in the more reserved, calm and thoughtful way of the Japanese.

  As they approached the asylum’s front gate, a squat man with a balding head stepped out. Resembling a toad more closely than a gatekeeper, he had a large red boil on his neck and a bulging left eye that gave him a permanent squint. He studied the four of them with curiosity, evidently unsure what to make of this disparate band of a monk, a warrior girl, a serving wench and a boy in foreign dress. ‘Are we visiting … or staying?’ he chuckled.

  ‘We’re here to see Mrs Winters,’ replied Jack.

  The gatekeeper sniffed. ‘You family?’

  ‘No,’ said Jack. ‘Friends.’

  The gatekeeper licked his dry lips. ‘Then it’s tuppence each for entrance.’

  ‘Entrance?’ queried Yori, leaning on his staff. ‘Isn’t this a hospital?’

  The man nodded, limp strands of hair falling aside. He combed them back with his fingers. ‘Aye, it is, but if you wanna have a laugh at the patients, you gotta pay.’

  ‘We’re not here to laugh,’ said Jack indignantly.

  With a dismissive snort the gatekeeper thrust out a greasy hand. ‘That’s what they all say. Now cough up.’

  Reluctantly Jack paid the money. The gatekeeper gave them a black-toothed grin and waved them through.

  Jack and the others entered the courtyard. They weren’t the only visitors. A group of well-to-do young gentlemen stood round a bare-chested man, who was repeatedly knocking his head against a post.

  ‘He beats a good rhythm!’ scoffed one gentleman, clapping his hands. ‘One could dance to this.’ And he began a jig in time to the man’s hammering. The others laughed and joined in taunting the poor patient. Jack didn’t know who seemed crazier: the man bashing his head or the morbid spectators dancing round him.

  Akiko and Yori looked on in shock but made no comment as they filed past the sorry scene into the main building.

  The asylum was one long dark corridor with a series of small shadowy cells leading off on either side. Some of the doors were wide open; others were barred with iron gates. Two ladies in fashionable frocks, fluttering silk fans in front of their faces to keep away the stench of the blocked sewers, were peering into the nearest cell. A skinny hollow-cheeked man in rags stood behind the bars. He glared down his beaked nose at the paying guests and pompously declared, ‘Bow before me, loyal subjects, for I am the King of England!’

  The two women tittered behind their fans as the man strode regally round his tiny cell, oblivious to their ridicule. Jack eased past the women and headed further along the corridor. But any hope that Mrs Winters would still be of sound enough mind to tell him where he could find Jess diminished with every step.

  The next cell contained a young woman chained to the walls. As they passed by the barred doorway, the woman leapt and spat at them like a wildcat. In the cell op
posite, a shirtless man with festering sores all over his back was curled up and shivering on a bed of straw, while another patient was barking like a dog.

  ‘Do people pay to see this?’ said Yori, appalled.

  Rose nodded. ‘Not a bad day out. Once you see these sorry fellas, you realize your own life ain’t so grim!’

  ‘This is a hell on earth!’ Akiko remarked, as the constant cries, screechings and rattling of chains threatened to drown out all sanity.

  They eventually found Mrs Winters in a dingy cell at the far end of the corridor. The old woman, as sallow and scrawny as chicken’s legs, wore a soiled nightgown and had a dull, defeated look in her grey eyes. She knelt in the corner of the room, her hands clasped together, rocking and weeping and muttering to herself.

  Jack exchanged a doubtful glance with the others before addressing the old woman. ‘Mrs Winters?’

  She continued to rock back and forth. Either she hadn’t heard him or she was beyond making sense of what he’d said. Jack entered the cell and crouched down beside her. She stank of stale sweat and urine. ‘Mrs Winters? It’s Jack … Jack Fletcher.’

  The old woman broke off from her muttering and glanced up. Despite looking in his direction, she didn’t seem to see him at all. ‘Beware the red wolf at your door! Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves!’

  She returned to her muttering, wringing her hands as if in desperate prayer. ‘You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so, every …’

  ‘Mrs Winters!’ persisted Jack. ‘Where’s Jess?’

  His sister’s name seemed to stir something deep in the old woman’s mind, for she stopped dead. ‘Jess? Dearest Jess? Is that you?’

  ‘No, I’m her brother, Jack,’ he replied, feeling a glimmer of hope at having got through to the old woman. ‘Do you know where Jess is?’

  Mrs Winters’ eyes grew wide as full moons, her wrinkled skin turning pale as her whole body began to tremble. ‘Beware the red wolf at your door! Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves! Beware the red wolf … the wolf in sheep’s clothing … You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so …’

  She repeated her incantation over and over. In spite of further attempts to communicate, Jack could get no sense from the old woman. She was lost to her ravings.

  ‘Told you she’s crazy!’ said Rose, leaning against the cell door. ‘And who’d blame her? Being locked up for months in a plague house as people slowly died and decomposed all around you. It’s enough to send anyone mad!’

  ‘What does she mean by “the wolf in sheep’s clothing”?’ asked Akiko.

  ‘That’s from a sermon in the Bible,’ said Rose. ‘The Gospel of Matthew.’

  Jack turned to Rose. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I do go to church,’ said Rose, adopting an offended air before a mischievous grin broke through, ‘despite my sins!’

  Jack asked Mrs Winters again about his sister, but only got more babbling of scripture. ‘You’re right, Rose,’ he sighed. ‘This is a waste of time. She’s just quoting from the Bible. Even if she does know where Jess is, she’s in no state to tell me. Let’s go.’

  As Jack stood to leave, Mrs Winters grabbed his arm, her grip surprisingly strong. ‘Beware the red wolf!’ she hissed as she shoved a small hard object into his hand.

  Jack slowly unfurled his fingers to reveal a silver locket. He prised it open. Inside was a tiny watercolour portrait of a young woman with hair like spun gold and eyes as blue as a midsummer sky. Jack instantly recognized her. ‘Jess!’ he gasped.

  He took hold of Mrs Winters by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Where is she? TELL ME, WHERE IS JESS?’

  But Mrs Winters had once again reverted to weeping and rocking. He shook her harder, but she only wept more and babbled her sermon.

  ‘Jack …’ said Akiko, gently pulling him away. ‘That’s enough. You’re going to hurt her.’

  Jack let the old woman go. He realized she was little more than an empty shell, her mind having long departed. In a daze himself, Jack allowed Akiko and his friends to guide him out of the asylum. He felt almost as deranged as some of Bedlam’s patients. Having got so very close to discovering Jess’s whereabouts, yet unable to unlock Mrs Winters’ madness, he wanted to bang his own head against a post.

  The next morning Jack lay on the sagging bed in a grimy room at the Bunch of Grapes, turning the silver locket over in his hand. He examined the intricate flower engraved on the front, then peered at the smooth polished surface of the back. He opened the locket and ran his finger over the soft blue cloth lining of the lid. Holding the locket up to the light, he studied the portrait of his little sister, who was no longer the little girl he’d last seen. Over the course of seven years she had changed so much. He remembered Jess as a slight girl with a button nose, wide eyes and a mischievous grin. Now she looked so grown up, so elegant, so beautiful.

  ‘Do you really think the locket can lead us to Jess?’ asked Yori, who sat in the corner of the room, his legs crossed in a lotus position.

  Jack weighed the locket in his hand. ‘It’s the only thing we have to go on.’ He propped himself up on the bed. ‘Judging by how old Jess looks, the portrait was painted recently, within the last year. And I’m pretty certain my mother, God rest her soul, didn’t own anything this fancy. Which means this locket must be a gift.’

  ‘From whom?’

  Jack shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. But whoever it is, he has to be rich. The locket’s solid silver! And the portrait is expertly done. Only a master painter could’ve produced such fine work.’

  ‘May I have a look?’ asked Yori, holding out his hand.

  Jack passed him the locket. Yori admired the engraving, then closely examined the miniature portrait inside.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked, pointing to two tiny marks along the bottom edge.

  Leaning over Yori’s shoulder, Jack squinted at the painting. ‘I think it says … N … H …’

  Yori frowned. ‘The artist’s initials?’

  The bedroom door opened and Akiko entered. Her straight black hair was glistening, still wet from her bath. ‘I’ve never bathed in such brown water!’ she complained. ‘How do you English ever get clean?’

  ‘We don’t,’ replied Jack in all seriousness. ‘I’m afraid this tavern isn’t known for its high standards. The water was likely taken from the Thames – and who knows what’s dumped in there!’

  Akiko grimaced. ‘Well … at least it was warm this time.’

  ‘That’s what worries me!’ said Jack, triggering another shudder of revulsion from Akiko.

  She perched herself on the edge of the bed and began vigorously drying her hair with a cloth. Then she noticed the locket in Yori’s hand and smiled at Jack. ‘Your sister’s very pretty,’ she observed. When he didn’t smile back, she added, ‘Jack, I know you’re disappointed not to have found Jess yet, but there’s every chance she’s still alive – and you’ve got a picture of her now. Perhaps we can show the locket to some of the Limehouse locals and see if they recognize her? They might know where she is.’

  ‘It’s certainly worth a try,’ said Jack, although privately he thought the task ahead of them insurmountable. London was a big place, some two hundred thousand citizens, and he realized they probably had a greater chance of finding a needle in a haystack than finding Jess. ‘If only Mrs Winters hadn’t gone mad!’ he mumbled to himself.

  Yori looked at Jack, his brow furrowed. ‘Mrs Winters didn’t strike me as mad, though … more scared.’

  Jack frowned. ‘Scared? Of what?’

  Yori shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But she was going on about a red wolf. Maybe she has nightmares of the plague? Or perhaps it’s just living in that hellhole Bedlam. Whatever the reason, she was definitely scared of something.’

  ‘Or someone,’
said Akiko darkly.

  Jack exchanged a worried look with his friends. ‘Do you think Jess is in trouble?’

  ‘I pray not,’ said Yori, his hands coming together, ‘but it might explain her abrupt depart–’

  All of a sudden the door burst open again and Rose bustled into the bedroom. She dumped two packs on to the bed with a triumphant flourish.

  ‘You’re in luck!’ she announced. ‘That old battleaxe at the Mermaid Inn still had your belongings.’

  Jack and the others stared in astonishment at their missing packs. He’d honestly expected the authorities to have confiscated them after their arrest.

  ‘Well, don’t all thank me at once,’ said Rose, planting her hands indignantly on her hips. ‘It took some doing, I can tell you. I had to sweet-talk that runt of a serving boy before I found out where his landlady had hidden them. She was planning to sell the contents at tomorrow’s market.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Jack quickly, searching his pack. His hand soon touched the familiar oilskin binding of his father’s logbook and he breathed a deep sigh of relief. At least the rutter was back in his possession.

  ‘Cost me a half-crown to bribe him, though …’ and Rose held out her hand and beckoned with her fingers.

  Jack pulled out a gold coin from his purse and tossed it to Rose. She caught it nimbly in mid-air.

  But Akiko narrowed her eyes at Rose. ‘That much? I thought you didn’t steal from your friends.’

  ‘I don’t … though I might steal Jack’s heart again,’ Rose added, throwing a playful wink in his direction.

  Akiko’s jaw tightened. She snatched her pack off the bed and headed for the door. ‘I’ll be in my room. Let me know when you’re ready to go, Jack.’

  As Akiko shut the door firmly behind her, Jack wondered why she seemed annoyed. They’d got their belongings back after all. So what, if Rose made a little profit on the side? She’d brought him back the rutter and, to him, that was worth a half-crown.

  Yori got to his feet and handed Jack his locket. ‘Er … I’ll get ready too,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Akiko will probably need my help re-bandaging her shoulder.’