by Eoin Colfer
“A brisk morning, so it is.”
“It is wot?”
This from malevolent bludger two, who still had both eyes given to him by God and his parents, but was marked as a thug by the scarlet vest that he wore sans chemise, despite the much-mentioned briskness of the morning and the mores of common decency. On a more genteel street, a bare-backed man would find himself in prison quick smart.
Figary changed tack.
“It is a good day to make money…”
“So it is,” said Purple Skull, who was possibly displaying a sense of humor.
“It is always a good day for chink,” added Scarlet Vest.
Figary slipped them both a sovereign, which was an extortionate entry fee for any gambling den, but it did ensure that he had made two new friends, if not for life, then at least for the length of his visit to the Hidey-Hole—unless their shift finished, or they got drunk, or they got a better offer.
I should have at the very least one half of an hour before they turn on me, thought Figary. It pained the butler to part with a deuce of sovereigns now that his situation was honest and he knew exactly how many hours of toil were required to earn such an amount, and so he lifted a small whiskey flask from Scarlet Vest’s sash to compensate himself somewhat and skipped through the doorway into the belly of the beast.
That beast being, of course, a Ram.
The interior of the Hidey-Hole was an extraordinary feat of architecture. Extraordinary in that it did not collapse in on itself despite the fact that most of the building’s supports, struts, chimneys, and internal walls had been pulverized to make way for gaming tables, animal pens, food stalls, a hog spit-roast over a sunken brick fire, an entire pub that could have been transported from the Strand, two boxing rings, and a full-sized cannon, which according to Ram legend had been stolen from the militia on a drunken lark and was now marooned with a busted axle on an island of weight-warped planking and scattered cannonball.
“Charming,” muttered Figary to himself, his eyes instantly springing leaks from the combination of smoke and alcohol fumes.
It was heading toward midday, and the brethren were emerging from their sleeping spots. There was much passing of wind—the louder the ceremony, the better—to the delight of small groups of dancing girls and serving ladies who drifted from table to table. Rams made their way down to the ground floor by way of rickety stairs, makeshift rope ladders, or even toeholds kicked into the walls. Even Figary, who was not the prude he had pretended to be for his employer, could not help but be a little shocked.
I have never witnessed this concentration of depravity, he thought, and from a man who’d worked the Monto, this was quite the jolting realization.
To the pig, then! became his immediate plan. Because nothing calms the soul of an anxious Celt like his mother’s voice, and failing that, a plate of bacon.
Figary walked with feigned swagger to the pig boy and circled the roasting pig, checking the meat from every angle.
“Nice-looking pig, so it is,” he said to the young chef who was ladling grease over the carcass.
“I ain’t allowed to discuss the pig,” said the youth through lips that sheltered but a single pair of widely spaced teeth, which stood forlornly on his bottom gum like the pillars of some long-collapsed bridge.
“No pig talk, it is,” said Michael Figary. “Slice me off a plate, and don’t spare the crackling.”
“Crackling be extra,” said the sulky boy.
Figary guessed that the boy had good reasons to sulk, with his dental shortcomings and employment tending pig for the criminal class. He knocked a knuckle against a wooden price list on a pole stuck directly into the floor. “I can read, my boy, so I can. Meat, if you please.”
The pig boy commenced butchering with an army knife, and skillful he was too, dropping thin slices directly onto a tin platter.
“You want grease?”
“Grease be extra?” asked Figary innocently.
The boy sucked his teeth and gave Figary a suspicious glare. “Right you be, little man. Grease do be extra.”
“Let’s have some, then,” said Figary, dropping some pennies into the money jar. His daily fare was generally more refined now that he bunked in Grosvenor Square, but every now and then nothing hit the spot like a feed of pork and grease. “Tell me, bucko. Why is pig talk forbidden?”
The young butcher did not answer until Figary added two more pennies to the pot.
“On some occasions the pig do not be pig exactly,” he confided.
Figary sniffed the animal’s haunch. “But not today?”
“No,” said the boy, handing across a heaped plate. “Today be kosher pig. Stole it meself special for the meeting.”
Figary’s ears pricked up. “What meeting? I didn’t hear about any meeting.”
The boy shrugged. “’Course not. You ain’t no Ram.”
Figary sampled a sliver of pork, and it was wonderfully juicy and tender. If he closed his eyes for a moment, he could be in Lord Brass’s Monto tavern.
“No, I ain’t no Ram. What I am is a guest from the Monto.”
The boy’s sigh whistled through his teeth. “I has me money. You has yer pig. I ain’t allowed to talk about a ’strordinary meeting viz meeting the new king.”
“I quite understand, so I do,” said Figary, and he sidled away, holding the plate at chest level for everyone to see. For he had found it to be a universal truth in any company that a man who has succeeded in obtaining food is presumed trustworthy and never questioned, except for general rhetoricals about the quality of his meal.
An extraordinary meeting about a new king, eh?
This was momentous news indeed. The appointment of a new Ram king had far-reaching consequences that would affect everyone dwelling in the city, from rookery to Parliament, via docks and train station.
“Nice pile o’ pig here, ain’t it?” quoth one Ram to Figary. It was plain that this cove was indeed a Ram, for he had gone beyond the call of duty and had the Ram symbol tattooed on his bare chest.
“It is, so it is,” replied Figary, stuffing his mouth with pork to prove the point.
The room was filling up now, and Figary felt it would be prudent to find a shadowy spot and observe. He sidled off toward a church pew that was by the wall and piled high with an army’s worth of cutlasses and bayonets, and he wiggled himself in at the end. He was far from invisible behind the carelessly stacked pile of glittering blades, but he did not stand out like a cat at a dogfight either. The second advantage of this positioning was the window at his shoulder, which could be hopped through should the need arise.
Now, Michael Figary, hold your whisht and see what you may see, he told himself, wiping his greasy fingers on the sailcloth nailed as a makeshift curtain across the window.
Unlike most spy jobs, where forbearance was the chief virtue required since events tend to roll out slowly even in the greatest adventure, Figary found that his patience was not tested even for a moment. For no sooner had he picked the last of the crackling from between his teeth—with a wooden pick that he carried in his wallet for such occasions—than a focused hubbub heated up by the doorway and spread like a wind across a field of Irish barley.
What ho, something is up, Figary thought. Make yourself small, Michael.
Figary hunched down behind the tower of swords, finding himself a triangle of crisscrossed blades to peep through.
The room that had been sluggishly shaking itself awake for the day’s entertainment seemed suddenly to accelerate the procedure, with Rams lining up for access to the ropes, ladders, and rickety stairs that led from the upper levels. A tight bunch of Rams moved with purpose toward the center of the room where, upon a raised dais, sat a large gilded chair. Upon the chair’s high backrest hung a ram’s fleece, with long curling horns. The Ram king crown. Otto Malarkey’s crown.
Figary felt the tension rise with the temperature. Voices were raised and punches were thrown. Around the room swells and silks were taken by the elbow and escorted from the premises, for this was to be a members only sort of gathering.
Figary felt that perhaps this would be a good time to leave, but the moment quickly passed, and the butler realized that he was now committed to the mission, whether his mother would have approved of it or not.
Make yourself smaller, Figary told himself. You are a dormouse, so you are.
Farley was at the head of the incoming bunch. He separated himself from the crush of Rams pressing him for information and mounted the dais in one bound. This act in itself was mutinous, as the king’s square was for him alone and those he invited. The tattooist was taking liberties. But while many men would have been spiked or bludgeoned before they could open their mouths, the Rams had a special affection for Farley, as he had pricked the skin of many of them. A good tattooist was vital for any gang if they preferred to not lose an arm to infection or gangrene, and the amount of arms Farley had lost to a dirty needle could be measured on one hand. So the general muttered consensus was to let the old duffer have his speak; after all, he had been by Malarkey’s side when whatever occurred had occurred.
Farley raised his arms for silence. “Rams. Brethren. Your attention, if you please.”
On most days some jokester would fire comments into the spaces between sentences, but when Farley asked for silence, that is what he got, and without the usual gradual sputter out. The room fell instantly quiet, except for the insistent crowing of one cockerel, who was given half minute to shut his beak before one of the Rams clocked him with the butt of his knife. At another time the cockerel’s surprised final squawk would have raised cheers, but not on this day.
“I know you have all heard the rumors regarding Otto,” said Farley. “And I am here to tell you that the good ones are false and the bad ones are true.”
This brought on a hubbub of mumbling and many shouted versions of the same question.
“Is King Otto murdered, then?”
“He is,” replied Farley, reckoning this could already be true and if it wasn’t, then it soon would be.
“You seen him go down, Farley, with yer own peepers?” This from Scarlet Vest, who had obviously abandoned his post at the door.
Farley nodded. “I seen…I saw Otto killed. And Inhumane. Noble and Jeeves, too.”
If the silence before had been one of anticipation, this new one had a sense of disbelief about it.
Otto, Barnabus. Jeeves and Noble. All dead. It was akin to losing the entire royal family in one fell swoop.
“The war council gone. The top table killed. How, in the name of Dastardly Dick Turpin, did this happen, Farley? It would take an army.” This from a Ram who for some reason known only to himself wore a paper crown with the word BAH scrawled on it in charcoal.
Farley swallowed. This was the crucial moment: wooing the Rams. Buying their loyalties.
“Before I answer your questions, let me show you something.” Farley reached into the pocket of his shabby overcoat and drew forth a heavy pouch, and from this pouch he selected one gold sovereign, which he flicked into the air. The coin tumbled and flashed lustrous beams into the eyes of the transfixed Rams. With each spin, it reeled in the Rams more than a thousand entreaties ever could. So by the time the sov fell into greedy fingers, the crowd was halfway converted to Farley’s cause, though they did not know what that cause might be.
“All I ask is that you listen to my pitch, and for that alone I will pay ten gold sovereigns to every man jack here from this bag and a dozen like it. Once I have said my piece, you can either sign up and take a slice of the Empire itself, or you can decide to have a go at the new top man. It is purely up to you.”
He stood silent then, so that the assembled might chew on his offer. The sovereign was passed around, bitten, spat on, and finally handed to an old Welsh man known as Duds, who was acknowledged as the greatest faker of currency who had ever stamped a lead shilling.
Duds ran a series of tests, which included pinging the coin with a tuning fork, setting it spinning on a table, and giving it a good licking.
“It’s a good ’un,” he said at last. “Sure as my name is Admiral Nelson.”
This drew a fond little chuckle from the Rams, as no one had the faintest idea what Duds’s real name was. Each moniker he used was as fake as the monies he passed.
The Rams turned back to Farley with a synchronized swivel of heads worthy of hungry seagulls following the meaty slide of fish guts down a slab.
Tell us, said their ravenous gaze. Tell us how we may earn the gold.
Farley saw they were satisfied to let him continue, so he rolled on with the script prepared for him.
“You asked me if Malarkey is dead, and I tell you he is. And how do I come by this information? How am I so certain? I am certain because it was I who pulled the trigger.”
“That must have been one hell of a trigger, old man,” said Scarlet Vest, who seemed to have appointed himself spokesman.
“It was, and more besides, for it went on to do for the rest of the war council. All with one weapon. And one load.”
This was an incredible admission. Here was one of their own stumping up to the murder of the century.
“Whoa, Jameson,” said Scarlet Vest, referring to Dr. Jameson’s plucky invasion of the Transvaal. “Wot you are telling the brethren is that little old you did the big job on our entire war council, all by your lonesome, with a single barker?”
Farley met Scarlet’s eyes and held them until the man dropped his gaze. “That’s what I am telling you.”
The Rams could keep silent no more. Why, if this were true, then it was the one of the bloodiest coups in the history of the brotherhood. Not since Franz Flowers, also known as the Golem of Warsaw, treated Ram king Albert Spade and his top three bludgers to a Viking funeral by setting Spade’s riverboat alight, had such a brazen power grab occurred.
And this had been accomplished by the tattooist? It beggared belief.
Scarlet Vest spoke for the house. “I would like to take me a look-see at this barker, Farley; that’s what I would like for a first. And for a second, I would like to pay my respects to King Otto, face-to-face. Because I ain’t believing that you put down not one but two Malarkeys.”
Farley was unruffled. He had been expecting some back and forth from the Rams. They would learn discipline soon enough, when the colonel held sway.
“Very well, boys. You would like to see my weapon, is that it?”
“For a start,” said Scarlet Vest, all puffy with his new spokesman responsibilities.
Farley reached again into his bag. “Well, by all means, let’s make a start.” He drew out his machine pistol, flicked on the laser sights, and shot Scarlet Vest and one man on either side of him directly. Three dead in half a second, and not a Ram reacted until the deed was done. Farley continued to make his point by transcribing a semicircle of bullet holes in the floor before him.
“I take orders from one man,” said Farley, then he pointed his smoking barrel at the fallen Scarlet Vest. “And that ain’t him.”
The Rams were a little anxious, but not overly upset, as Scarlet and his mates were well-known muck-snipes who would rob a fishwife of her fish and a fish of its wife.
Farley allowed the gun to dangle at his side, but it was clear that it could be easily raised. “Now, hear this, Rams. There is a new army in London: the army of Colonel Box, and we have big plans for this town. If you are with us, then together we will wreak vengeance on all who have wronged us over the years: the police, the army, the jailers, the bailiffs, the politicians, the crown itself. My master, the colonel, will put these magical weapons in your hands and make you invincible. You will reap the spoils of war and be lords in the new country. Those who say no will never leave this buildi
ng alive. We will set upon them and close their mouths forever. So, the choice is yours: you can be rich as kings, or dead as martyrs. Which is it to be?”
Farley’s speech was followed by a ragged cheer, which gathered impetus and spiraled about the room, joined and strengthened by stamping and clapping and even pistol shots. There were no words in the cheer, just a halloo of support for the idea of finally going to war for pure profit. No more queen and country, no more blessed book and holy land. Just honest fighting for honest cash.
Farley caught the mood of the cheer, and he smiled even as the sight of these men turned his stomach.
Once the city is ours, we will recruit from the army and toss every one of these criminals in a deep dark hole.
But he was relieved that his gamble had paid off. The colonel had advised him to take a squad with him into the Hidey-Hole, but he had respectfully disagreed.
I know these men, Colonel. They are donkeys. All I need is a shiny carrot to lure them into our den, and then they will be ours. The squad stays outside.
The colonel had agreed but made one suggestion.
May I suggest a few cracks of the whip also, just to let them see for themselves what we are capable of.
Farley looked down at the three corpses laid out before him like sacrificial offerings at an altar.
The whip has been cracked, Colonel, he thought. You have your army. The Ram is dead.
But Malarkey yet lives, said the voice of doom in his head. And you killed his brother.
The Pig Boy was tired of being the pig boy. He had fought his way into the Battering Rams with dreams of strutting down the Haymarket with the other swell bludgers. A fine powder-blue bowler he would purchase, to set off the navy vest and sapphire rings that would be lifted from a toff’s gaff in Mayfair or the like. On the night of his acceptance into the brethren, Pig Boy had borne the sting of Farley’s needles and watched the blood seep from the Battering Rams tattoo on his shoulder and said to himself: Now. Now at last things will be different.
And he had been proven right. Things were different. They were blooming worse. Before taking the ink, he could at least tuck away in his own poke whatever he stole. Now a good slice of it had to be forked over to the Rams’ treasurer, who was a stickler for every ha’penny.
