Pax Britannia: Human Nature

by Jonathan Green

  "So," Ulysses went on, when the refreshed tankard of gin had been placed in front of the boy, "you were telling me about the Whitechapel Irregulars."

  "Was I?" the boy asked, innocently, raising the pewter to his lips.

  Ulysses' reply was an arching eyebrow, pregnant with meaning. The monkey glared at him before starting to nuzzle the boy's ear, chattering and chirruping in its shrill simian voice.

  And then, seemingly under the influence of the eyebrow, Sidney relented at last. He might have little or no education to speak of, but he wasn't stupid; he knew when he was beaten.

  "Like I said, best gang in the East End." Ulysses said.

  "Then you 'eard wrong. Best gang in the whole of London more like."

  Ulysses smiled in the face of the boy's indefatigable bravado. "Been running with them long?"

  "Four years, give or take," Sidney announced proudly, "ever since I hopped spike."

  "And how exactly did you get away from there?"

  "Got meself taken out with the rest of the shit when the night soil collectors did their round, along with Nobby Clark, didn't I?"

  "Very resourceful," was all Ulysses could think to say. He had thought the boy smelt bad before, but now the aroma of unwashed bodies and the street suddenly seemed that much worse.

  "Yeah, bin one of thieving Magpie's boys ever since."

  Ulysses' ears pricked up at the mention of a name at last - at least at the mention of what was as close to a real name as he felt he was going to get.

  "Who's Magpie?"

  "That's Mr Magpie to you, if you don't mind," the boy said curtly, his former anxiety regarding the workhouse having apparently evaporated.

  "So, who is he?"

  "You've not heard of the Magpie?" the boy mocked, as if he was as well-known as Queen Victoria herself.

  "Humour me," Ulysses continued in the same calm manner but with an edge of steel to his voice now; the same tone in which he had addressed the informant known as Rat.

  "Well that's why he's the master, ain't it! He's so good he don't get caught." Sidney took another swig from the tankard in his hands. "I doubt Scotland Yard even knows 'e exists, but 'e's got fingers in all sorts of pies." He was beginning to noticeably slur his words. "But if they ever found out about the thieving Magpie, if they ever did catch 'im, they'd probably be able to solve an 'undred cases in one go. Not that they will ever catch 'im though!" The boy suddenly riled, real venom in his voice.

  Whatever hold this Magpie had over the boys in his - to put it loosely - employ, it produced a powerful sense of loyalty among the Whitechapel Irregulars. If the rest of the urchins were like Sidney, Ulysses wouldn't be surprised if they would in fact be loyal to their master - the one who had 'rescued' them from the streets, taken them in, given them a home - even unto death. That thought sent a shiver down his spine. The way Sidney spoke, Ulysses could well believe that the Magpie was like some Messianic figure to his boys.

  "'Is boys 'e calls us; 'is bonny darlin's. Princes of the street, that's what 'e calls us. 'Is lovely boys." Sidney's mouth was starting to run away with him.

  Sidney suddenly looked anxious, a look that suggested that he had only just realised what Ulysses and Nimrod already knew, that he had said too much.

  "But they won't catch 'im, will they? Not the Magpie."

  "Who won't?"

  "The Peelers, Scotland Yard, them robo-Bobbies in blue," Sidney pressed, the anxiety clear in his voice now. "They won't find out about 'im will they?" The boy started to scan the snug nervously, shooting darting glances into the shadows of booths and unlit corners. "You won't tell them, will you, sir. I'll be brown bread if you do!"

  Sidney was nothing more than a scared child again. Who was this man, this Magpie, Ulysses wondered that he could instil a religious fervour in one of his 'lovely boys' one minute and have him fearing for his wretched excuse for a life the next?

  "Your Mr Magpie... Do you know if he had anything to do with a certain missing mermaid?"

  "I wouldn't know, sir," Sidney said in a small voice, apparently unphased by the mention of an aquatic impossibility. "'E sends us out on all sorts of errands. It's 'ard to keep track sometimes; so many jobs on the go. Like I said, fingers in lots of pies."

  The boy was now distractedly rubbing at his ribs, the sparse flesh covering them hidden beneath his ill-fitting attire, a distant look in his watery eyes, as if he were remembering past punishments. But were they ones received at the hands of the beadles or his new messiah?

  "But what if the Magpie were to, fly the nest, shall we say? He couldn't hurt you then, could he?" Ulysses stated calmly, letting the implications of what he had said sink in, watching the boy's face intently as he processed what the dandy was suggesting.

  The monkey had been watching the exchange with its own intense simian scrutiny. As Sidney considered Ulysses' words, the ape started shrieking and jumping up and down on the boy's shoulder again, attracting the attention of a number of nearby drinkers.

  Nimrod glared at the monkey, raising his handkerchief-bound hand, as if he was about to slap the primate from its perch.

  The monkey abruptly stopped its screeching and settled down beside the boy's ear and returned to foraging within his messy mop of hair, looking for any choice, wriggling morsels that might be hidden there.

  Ulysses watched the creature for a moment as the monkey chattered into the boy's ear. If he hadn't of known better he might have said that it was actually talking to the young scallywag.

  "I could take you to 'im," the boy suddenly announced, his whole face lighting up under its coating of grime. "I could lead you to 'is lair. 'E's cocky, 'e is, the Magpie. 'E'd never suspect anyone 'e didn't want snooping around could find 'is way into the rookeries." Sidney boasted, his face aglow.

  "You'd do that for us, Sidney?"

  "Well, you know 'ow it goes. You scratch my back... Deal?" The boy wiped a filthy hand on his even filthier trouser leg and then, hawking a gobbet of phlegm into the back of his throat spat on it noisily, and held it out to Ulysses.

  The finely-turned out dandy looked at the boy's palm with obvious discomfort but after only a moment's pause, he took hold of it in a solid grasp.

  "We have a deal."

  The boy led them through the labyrinthine side-streets and half hidden, built-over alleyways of Whitechapel's slum rookeries. After countless twists and turns, double blinds, cul-de-sacs and doubling back through cellars and under arch-spans, Ulysses didn't know where he was or how far they had actually travelled. He had lost all sense of direction, the sky and its pall of ever-present choking cloud was no longer visible, hidden as it was beyond a roof of timbers and brick archways.

  They came at last to an enclosed octagonal space between the crumbling ruins of a huddle of tenement housing. The structures could have been there since the 18th century Ulysses supposed, looking at them, only they were so rundown now that there were no discerning features by which to date the basic architecture of the place. A forest of bamboo scaffolding had been raised before the facades of the buildings, strung with rope and timber walkways, ladders leading ever upwards towards the canvas awnings that formed a roof over this place.

  These were the rookeries; there could be no doubt. The crumbling square smelt of damp, mould, rotting wood and ammonia. A stream gurgled under the planking at their feet, a steady flow of piss and effluent sloshing its way along the boarded-over drain emptying out of the seemingly lifeless slum around them - an indication that there must be some life here, despite initial appearances - on its way to join the Thames or one of the capital's lost waterways, like the Fleet, or the Effra or the Wallbrook. Ulysses might have had an idea as to which if he had had a better notion of where the boy had led them.

  The boy stopped beside a dusty tarpaulin, abandoned on the ground and covered in a dusting of broken plaster. He looked back at Ulysses and Nimrod, who looked the most uncomfortable, picking his way through the dust, filth and wreckage. Ulysses knew, however, that he had put u
p with much worse in his time.

  Perched on the boy's shoulder, the monkey scratched its arse and then nibbled at something it found there. Sidney watched the progress of the other two with a look akin to delight on his face.

  "At the risk of sounding trite, are we there yet?" Ulysses asked, suddenly conscious of how loud his voice sounded in the muffled near silence of the octagon. You wouldn't have known you were at the heart of the largest metropolis on Earth, not here.

  The quiet unnerved him. There was the steady drip-drip-drip of a pipe overflowing somewhere, or a tear in an awning letting in overspill from the Upper City way overhead. There was the distant, inescapable rattle and clatter of the Overground system. There was the creak and groan of the awnings as they were pulled by unseen breezes and changes in air pressure. But the presence of any sound to suggest that anything lived here - even pigeons or rats - was absent.

  And yet, even here, there was another of those cheerful advertisements for the latest restorative drink - Dr Feelgood's Tonic Stout.

  Ulysses suddenly felt very exposed. This was hardly the way to go about creeping up on such a supposedly elusive criminal mastermind.

  "We're nearly there now," Sidney said, pointing through a broken doorway, a network of smashed timbers just about visible in the shadows beyond. "We'll need to be quiet from 'ere on in. We're not exactly goin' in the front door, if you know what I mean - it's not even the tradesmen entrance - but 'e's got eyes and ears everywhere."

  "I can well believe it," Ulysses said. "Can't be too careful in his line of business, I'm sure." He turned to his manservant, still a few steps behind him. "As they said in the Boy Scouts, be prepared, and all that, eh, Nimrod?" and he took out the pistol he kept holstered under his left arm and checked the chamber. On cue, Nimrod produced his own weapon and readied it.

  Sidney acknowledged the presence of the guns with a widening of those puppy dog eyes of his but said nothing. From here on in, silence was key.

  "Sir, if you don't mind me saying so, I don't like this," Nimrod whispered at Ulysses' shoulder.

  "Don't worry, old chap," Ulysses blustered, instinctive bravado covering up the doubt he felt on his part. "This is our only lead."

  "I'm just saying, sir. That's all."

  "Duly noted," Ulysses hissed. "Now, can we be about our business?"

  They followed their urchin guide through the doorway, their progress slowing considerably as they clambered over the web of broken beams whilst trying to keep their weapons aimed ahead of them, just in case. The underdeveloped boy had no such trouble, scurrying through the spaces between the beams at their feet, his monkey, loosed from its string-leash, bounding ahead, as if scouting a way through the tangle of fallen floorboards and roof supports.

  The two men followed as best they could, as quickly and as quietly as possible, which with stealth being of the utmost importance, meant that their progress was not quick at all. And then they were past the hindering obstacles.

  As they progressed, a soft orange glow grew in intensity ahead of them, the passageway they were following steadily lightening until the three of them stood huddled at the entrance to a wide open atrium within the rookery. They were on the ground floor, which was covered in rough planks, the space opening up to a height of at least three storeys above them.

  Daring to peer further around the edge of the door jamb, Ulysses saw a spider's web of wooden walkways, suspended rope bridges and ladders of one sort or another. From somewhere near his waist Sidney whispered: "It's all right, they're not here."

  Ulysses looked again. The web of walkways was slung with glowing hurricane lamps and guttering torches, even the occasional caged halogen light. He could see little in the dark spaces between the hazy spheres of light but still his senses told him that the situation hadn't changed and that the potential threat facing them was no different than when they had started on their journey into the rookery

  "Are you sure?" he asked, just the same.

  "Sure I'm sure. They'll all be out dipping the pockets of the rich."

  "So where will we find the Magpie?"

  "'E'll be in 'is counting house," Sidney said, his voice a breathy whisper. "Come on, it's this way."

  "Feathering his nest, I suppose," Ulysses said, trying to make light of the situation, but it was a poor attempt to hide how he was really feeling.

  The boy started out across the middle of the floor beneath the walkways, scampering ahead as before, only something had changed. Halfway across the void Ulysses realised what it was.

  He stopped and Nimrod halted too. A moment later, realising Ulysses' footfalls over the boards behind him had come to a halt, the boy stopped and turned.

  "Come on, guv'nor!" he hissed. "Whatcha waitin' for? Bleeding Christmas?"

  "Where's your monkey?" Ulysses asked, his voice still quiet but nonetheless commanding for all that.

  "What?" the boy asked, his face a picture of pure incomprehension.

  "Where's your monkey?"

  Ulysses could feel the dull throb of his hypothalamus swelling to a subconscious ache. Something wasn't right.

  His head snapped back and he looked up into the glowing constellation of lamps suspended above them. There was movement at the corner of his eye. He followed it and saw another scampering shape elsewhere at the periphery of his vision.

  Squinting, he began to see shapes forming amidst the contrasting shadows and sunspots.

  And then, there on a walkway ten feet above his head, he saw, quite clearly, a lithe black and yellow shape run along a rope stretched taught across the void, seeming to defy gravity with its inverted aerial run. It wasn't Sidney's missing companion, but another simian altogether.

  And then there were more. As if he now knew what he was looking for, Ulysses could hardly miss them. There were rhesus monkeys dangling from ropes and walkways, gnawing nuts and bits of fruit; spider monkeys by the dozen, family groups gathered on shelf-like perches attached to the walls; mandrills scaling vertically suspended ropes. He even thought he could make out the squatting shape and orange fur of an orang-utan on one of the higher levels, half-hidden in shadow behind a balcony.

  "Don't bother answering that," Ulysses said coldly, his hind-brain hot with alarm, his grip on the gun in his hand tightening to knuckle white. "Where's the Magpie?"

  Preternatural awareness flashed through his brain like a migraine.

  "Right here!" came a cackle from the rafters above them. "As is you, Mr Quicksilver, as is you. Right where I wants ya!"

  Chapter Six

  One for Sorrow

  "Welcome to the House of Monkeys, my fine gentlemen."

  Ulysses peered up at the rows of balconies above them, shielding his eyes with one hand to try to cut out the glare from the myriad lamps hung from the network of walkways.

  His whole body was tensed, ready to spring into action, although Ulysses didn't rate their chances; he and Nimrod were like sitting ducks where they stood out in the open.

  "Mr Magpie, I presume," he called up to the galleries, trying to locate their welcomer, his own voice bouncing back to him from the crumbling plaster walls.

  "You presume right, Mr Quicksilver," the voice confirmed. "At your service, sah."

  "I highly doubt that," Ulysses muttered under his breath.

  He was struggling to place the accent. The metropolis of Londinium Maximum was a melting pot of cultures and nationalities, even if outwardly it appeared to be British to the core. But in reality there wasn't a more cosmopolitan city on the planet. Off-planet, that was a different matter, but on Earth the empire of Magna Britannia ruled supreme, governed from the seat of power that was old London town.

  Ulysses continued to try to penetrate the dark spaces between the swaying lights. He could see that the apes that obviously gave the place its name were everywhere, larger orders of primate, including whey-faced chimps, slouched on the higher walkways or with their over-long arms wrapped around the supporting pillars of the tiered balconies, while the sma
ller simians scuttled and bounded between swinging rope ladders and branch-like perches with gay abandon. None of them seemed particularly interested in the presence of the two interlopers.

  When Ulysses said nothing else, the master of this den of thieves spoke up again instead.

  "So, Mr Quicksilver, what can I do for you?"

  "I thought you said you had me right where you wanted me," Ulysses pointed out, scanning for ways out, should the opportunity arise for them to make their escape.

  "So I did, Mr Quicksilver. So I did." The Magpie chuckled.

  And there he was. A shadow, a silhouette, no more. The Magpie had positioned himself directly in front of a bright electric light, legs apart, hands on hips, surrounded by a suffused angelic glow. It was a stance that screamed confidence. It said, you are in my domain. I am king here. Here my word is law. Watch your step.

  The master thief's tone only served to enhance the idea that this was an individual you didn't want to mess with. Not here, not anywhere.

  Nonetheless, trying to avoid making any obvious sudden movement, Ulysses slowly angled the muzzle of his gun upwards, aiming it at the silhouette.

  "I should watch where you're pointing that thing, if I were you, Mr Quicksilver," Magpie warned, his intent as clear and as lethal as arsenic.

  As if on cue, a myriad pairs of simian eyes turned and locked on him from out of the darkness, the flickering light of the oil lamps reflecting redly from their corneas, tiny coals in the semi-darkness. A raucous chattering and screeching swelled from every corner of the space, reverberating from the enclosing walls and setting Ulysses' nerves on edge. He took his eyes off Magpie to glance at where his manservant stood tensed behind him; he looked just as perturbed as Ulysses was feeling. There was also the unmistakeable fleshy thumping of simian fists beating their chests.

  Ulysses' hand stopped moving.

  Gradually the cacophony subsided, but the inhabitants of the House of Monkeys had made their feelings plain.

  "Tell me, Mr Quicksilver. What did you hope to achieve by coming here?"