“Ah yes,” Brommett said as soon as the clattering footsteps of his offspring had faded into the floors below. The table in front of him was full of glass jars, and he inspected each one in turn. “You say you are making enquiries about the death of a child?”
Hawke nodded. “A girl. Found murdered in a sewer. Mutilated. Her face cut away most cruelly.”
Brommett looked up, keen eyes crinkling. “Curious.”
“How so?”
“You told my wife,” the apothecary said, glancing in the direction of the doorway through which Mrs Brommett had earlier departed, “that you were a hospital porter.”
Hawke read the glint of challenge in Brommett’s gaze, and met it with his own hard stare. “I am.” At least that had been true a couple of months back.
Brommett licked his lips, pausing for thought. He regarded Hawke closely for a few seconds, evidently considering what risk this unexpected visitor might pose. Suddenly, he said, “And you believe I might in some way prove helpful? I am not a physician, you understand. Nor an anatomist.”
“I do not ask you to look at the body, Mister Brommett, for it is already under ground.”
“Then you are here because?”
“She was wrapped in vines. Or, rather, plant stems.”
Brommett picked up one of the jars. It appeared to be moving independently, its black contents a writhing swirl. “Wrapped?”
“As if it were a death shroud,” Hawke said, realising the jar was full of leeches. He snaked his arms around his own midriff. “Like so.”
“What kind of plant?”
Hawke reached inside his coat. “These cuttings were taken from the corpse.” He held out the stalks for Brommett to inspect. “I hoped you might answer your own question.”
The apothecary set down the vessel of glistening leeches and took the two items, sniffing them in turn. Then he made his way across the rickety boards to one of his lopsided shelves. He took up a lamp, squinting in its warm light as he began to peruse the books lined before him, tracing a finger over their spines to score a trail through the dust.
Hawke stood, feeling his back crunch as he arched a touch, then went to the only window in the stuffy loft. It was small and unglazed, and the cold breeze wafted through to stir cobwebs in the dark rafters. Adjacent to it, benefiting from the weak daylight, was a trestle table so wide it set Hawke’s mind to wondering how on earth it had ever been brought to this high, slanted chamber. Its surface was littered with objects, from what looked to be a rodent’s skull, to a bell jar that seemed to contain a desiccated toad, and a chalky long-bone that Hawke supposed had come from a cow or horse. At the far side of the table, arranged in line against the wall, was a phalanx of delicate glass vials, each containing measures of dark liquid that looked ominously akin to blood, and at intervals there were stacks of papers weighted down with grey pebbles. On the floor, beneath and beside the table, were piles of what looked to be body parts, and Hawke had a moment of horror as his mind caught up with his eyes. In a breathless couple of seconds, he realised, with a gush of relief, that the objects, limbs mostly, but a few ears and noses too, were possessed of an unnatural smoothness, free of the blemishes of real flesh. They were hewn from wood in the main, some hammered out of plate metal, and all finely sanded and polished.
“A passion of mine,” Brommett said, looking up from the book.
Hawke arched his brows. “Whittling an occasional leg from an oaken bough?”
Brommett frowned. “Oak would not be practicable, Mister Hawke. Goodness me, no. Fruit-wood is best, I find, though I am ever searching for the perfect material, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
Hawke stooped to pick up a leg. It was long and pale, surprisingly light, the toes rendered in exquisite detail, the ankle hinged so that the foot would move. He grasped the limb at thigh and shin, bending it at the knee, for that joint was articulated as well, a robust metal pin allowing the parts to shift up and down. He looked at Brommett. “A peg leg.”
“A prosthesis,” Brommett corrected irritably. “More than a simple peg, I think you can allow.”
Hawke nodded, still working the hinged knee, and feeling certain his awe was etched over his face. “You are skilled, sir.”
“Were you in the Peninsula, Mister Hawke?”
“No.”
“Too young, I suppose. Lucky for you. That cruel conflict was a blight upon the human race. An outpouring of evil.” Brommett paused, apparently needing to steady himself against the memory. Hawke sympathised.
“You fought?”
Brommett shook his head. “Tended the wounded.” He smiled sadly. “Lopped off arms and legs mostly. Stitched up wounds, only for the flesh to fester and turn bad.” He blinked hard, dragged himself back to the waiting book. “Gave me an interest in artificial limbs. I could not help those poor bastards in Spain, but I can help them at home.”
Hawke put the leg back and went to the dusty windowsill to stare down at the street. The tavern was not a single structure, but a large cluster of buildings around a fan-shaped courtyard that nestled at the corner of High Holborn and Drury Lane. The spire of the parish church dominated the skyline to the west, and all around were the narrow, twisting alleys that formed the arteries of the sprawling rookery. Those ominous passageways stretched like the tentacles of some malevolent kraken, enveloping vagabonds, wastrels and refugees alike. Good people, Hawke thought - people like Brommett - came to St Giles, but they rarely left. Their respectable lives and their honest intentions corrupted by the very place they called home. He felt suddenly sorry for the apothecary and his young family.
He looked up, noticing dried herbs tied in bundles and hanging from the rafters. It gave his memory a jolt. “What do you think to the plants?”
Brommett had plucked a thick, leather-bound tome from the shelf, carefully placing the stems in its stead, and now seemed deeply engrossed within its yellowish pages. He did not look up as he said, “One of these plants is fennel. If you are to make a good intelligencer, Mister Hawke, then you should have known the scent.”
“I am not an intelligencer,” Hawke said, trying to remain impassive before the shrewd thrust, “but I did identify one as fennel.” He ignored Brommett’s wry smirk. “The other, though, eludes me.”
“It is sorghum. A kind of grass. Yields good grain. The ancient Egyptians were partial to it, I believe.”
“Is it grown here?”
Brommett shook his head. “Requires more warmth than the British climate will allow.” He turned back to the book. “Here we are. Italy.”
“Italy?” an exasperated Hawke echoed.
Brommett jammed a forefinger at a particular place within the book, and he trained his eyes on the handwritten text. “Curious. Most curious indeed.”
“What, Mister Brommett, is curious?”
“Have you heard of the Benandanti, Mister Hawke?” Hawke indicated that he had not, prompting Brommett to return to the inky scrawl, scanning a paragraph or two with impressive speed. “Now then. The Benandanti; a pagan cult, most often encountered within agrarian communities, driven to extinction by the Inquisition. It was claimed they fought nocturnal battles with Malandanti; evil witches.”
“Fought?”
“Indeed. For the success, or otherwise, of their crops. The Benandanti were armed with stalks of fennel. In their night battles, if they won, there would be abundance, but if the witches prevailed, there would be famine.”
“And the sor...?”
“Sorghum,” Brommett repeated. “The weapon of choice for the evil doers.”
Hawke glanced incredulously at the dry stalks on the shelf. “You jest.”
The apothecary closed and replaced the book, handing the fennel and sorghum back to Hawke. “Did you, or did you not, discover a corpse wrapped in fennel and sorghum?” He waited for Hawke to nod slowly. “Then witchcraft is your first consideration.”
“I came to you for your knowledge of remedies,” Hawke said, unable to disguise his incr
edulity. “That you might identify the mysterious plant.”
Brommett grinned. “My reading is, as they say, fairly broad.” Colour climbed through his cheeks. “Fairly deep.”
“Then...”
“Then why am I a penniless potion-pusher?” He gave a mirthless laugh. “I was rusticated from Trinity College, for reasons that shall remain my own.”
“Rusticated?”
“Shown the door, Mister Hawke.”
“Trinity College, Cambridge?”
“Oxford. Returned, albeit fleetingly, to my native Kent, but war turned fortune’s wheel, as it did for so many. Portugal, Spain and France became my destiny. After Bonaparte’s defeat, we came here.” The pleasant odour of hearty cooking filled the room. The apothecary looked at the open door, through which the smell wafted. “Mrs Brommett’s famous stew calls to me, sir. Alas, I must take your leave.”
Hawke tried to conceal his lingering intake of breath, swallowing back the saliva that was relentlessly filling his mouth. “I thank you for your time.”
Brommett essayed a quick bow. “I will investigate.” He nodded towards his packed shelves. “I may have been slung to the wolves by Oxford University, but still I have many books. Visit us again and I will tell you what more I’ve learnt. If a warlock prowls my city, I should like to assist in its demise. While I read, perhaps you would be well served by speaking with our Latin friends, Mister Hawke. The Benandanti were a sect from the northerly territories of Italy, after all.”
“I am not a native of London,” Hawke said, suddenly embarrassed.
“Lancashire, by your accent.”
Hawke nodded. “Aye. My understanding of this city is not as it should be. Where would I begin to look?”
Θ
When Hawke returned to his lodgings, mind swirling with images of cackling witches and supernatural warfare, there was a boy waiting for him. The lad leaned casually against the damp wall at the top of the echoing stairwell, sucking on a briar pipe that looked bizarrely over-sized in his hand, and he stepped into Hawke’s path, blocking the way. He was snub-nosed and bright-eyed, smartly dressed for a rookery snipe and bearing a belligerent haughtiness that instantly betrayed the identity of his employer.
“What does he want?” Hawke asked.
“You.”
“Why?”
The boy blew a trio of immaculate smoke rings, peering up at Hawke through the last as though it were a port hole. “Couldn’t say. You’re to attend upon Mister Szekely forthwith.”
The message - or, rather, summons - was not something to ignore, and Hawke turned on his heels without bothering to enter his home. The boy had vanished before he reached the foot of the stairwell, which was a merciful thing, he reflected, for he did not much fancy a journey in the company of one of Szekely’s puffed up brats. Such imps were the very strands by which the gang master had woven his web. They were his loyal acolytes, his mouthpiece, his eyes and his ears. The cogs in a vast, lucrative machine. And they knew it, right enough, which made them objectionable in the extreme.
A thin, bitter rain saturated everything as he strove northward, heading for Bloomsbury, St Giles’s more respectable neighbour. Turning up his collar to give some protection to his ears, he pulled the brim of the topper down so that the biting wind would not send it twirling down the road. He was forced to run across Great Russell Street to avoid a stagecoach that raced in a cacophony of jangling traces and cracking whips, its quartet of horses whinnying madly as diluted muck sprayed their fetlocks. Pale faces peered from the windows, eyeing Hawke suspiciously from within the bouncing coop. Funny, he thought, how the sight of such folk made him feel like he was the one in a cage. There were smaller hackney carriages too, now that he was out of the rookery and into London’s wider civilisation, and between their trundling progress and the scores of people on horseback, the dung-filled road was quickly becoming a mire.
Once he was on the north side of Great Russell Street, he turned right, heading east, towards the imposing façade of Montagu House. In a city not his own, Hawke had learnt that navigation by landmark was the most expedient means of making one’s way through the metropolis. The tactic was not foolproof, of course, for, in the poorer districts, one sprawling row of tenements was often identical to the next. Indeed, it was this homogeneity that made London’s slums so dangerous to outsiders. But its grander areas, its traffic-clogged thoroughfares, shopping arcades, great mansions and smart parks, were beacons to a man like Hawke. Montagu House was one such place, a lighthouse by which a traveller might make his way.
The building itself was huge. A century and a half old, it was no longer a private residence, having been home to the British Museum since the 1750s, but it remained one of the capital’s grandest piles, dominating the Bloomsbury area. Its plot was expansive, a boundary wall surrounding immaculate lawns and fountains, while the house itself had two main storeys, sectioned into seventeen bays, and was flanked by spacious servants’ wings. Hawke walked to the west of the house as he made his way up Charlotte Street, twisting back a touch to marvel at the mansion’s large domed roof. Once he had crossed beyond the wide expanse of Bedford Square, he checked briefly for prying eyes, then hooked a left into Great Store Street. There was a haberdashery situated roughly fifty yards in, and Hawke ducked under the lintel.
“Ladies,” he said, acknowledging the manageress and her assistant with a perfunctory doff of his hat as he made for a narrow side door that was almost invisible in the gap between a pair of sentry-like dressers. There was no need to conceal his action, for the shop was empty of patrons, and he pushed open the door without delay.
“Where have you been?” Colan Szekely said.
The chamber beyond the secret entrance was well appointed, panelled in dark wood, with soft skins on the floor and furniture of high workmanship and vigorous polishing. The rooms above, Hawke knew, were a deal more opulent, being Szekely’s private lodgings, the king’s privy chamber, but this was his office, his day-to-day headquarters, and an expensively functional theme prevailed. The space had aways reminded Hawke of a lawyer’s apartments, and the irony was not lost on him as he offered his employer a respectful bow. “Having a tooth pulled.”
The Hungarian was seated in a high-backed, luxuriously upholstered chair, and he crossed his thin legs, resting his chin on his knuckles. “Where?”
Hawke glanced at the faces he knew so well. Blackbird was here, as ever, with Goaty, Gilroy Penley and Corissa. He tapped his jaw. The rotten molar smarted at his touch. “Very back.”
Szekely’s expression tightened, the white scar arcing to a crescent shape between mouth and eyelid. “Not which tooth.”
“Down on Clements Lane, Mister Szekely,” Hawke lied. Blackbird was standing closest, so he moved towards the glowering man, opening his mouth wide. “Want to see?”
Blackbird recoiled. “Christ, you stink!”
“You wanted to see me, Mister Szekely?” Hawke said, content that further interrogation would not be forthcoming.
“My mother would wear a chain about her neck,” Szekely said in his soft, strange voice. “She hung a pair of mole’s feet from it as a charm against toothache.” He yawned suddenly. “The baiting. What did you learn?”
Corissa was perched on the edge of a desk hewn from gorgeous walnut. Hawke looked quizzically at her, but she failed to return his gaze. “Has not Miss Lott relayed all that transpired?”
Szekely’s face was impassive. “May I not hear it from you, Sólyom?”
“We went to The Bell, like you said. The Giltspur Boys were there. But then Butcher Milne walks in, making threats against the resurrectionists.”
“And?” Szekely prompted.
“The Giltspurs made themselves scarce.”
“After that?”
“We followed them to Hockley beargarden.” Hawke’s pulse quickened as he relived the night. The fury of the dogs clamoured again in his ears, the stench of the blood and the horror of the moment the Giltspurs had challenged hi
m. He met the cold blue eyes, his own anger spurring him to ill-considered impertinence. “Where we almost got ourselves killed.”
The scar quivered like a plucked harp string, betraying a barely perceptible twitch at Szekely’s thin mouth. “Oh?”
“Careful now, Hawke,” Blackbird growled at his flank.
Szekely made a steeple of his fingers, propping his delicate chin on the manicured point. “And still you went. Still you walked into the lion’s den like Daniel. But you did not do it for God, Sólyom. I am honoured.”
Hawke stared resentfully down at the gang master. “You’re welcome.”
Szekely’s mouth creased in a smile that did not reveal his teeth. “Saved my Corissa’s life, so she tells me. She also tells me you fought as though you were born to it.”
“You know I can fight.” Hawke spared a glance for Goaty, for it was always worth reminding him of the fact.
Szekely licked his lips. “This was particularly impressive, by Corissa’s account.”
Hawke looked at her, feeling a pang of longing when this time she met his eyes. “She flatters me.”
“I was not certain of your loyalty after Lucas’s untimely demise,” Szekely’s voice sliced through his wistfulness. “Now, I confess, I am more unsettled than ever.”
“How so?” Hawke asked, nervous, suddenly horrified that he might have been spotted with Ruthven or Brommett. “You said I proved myself.”
Szekely regarded him coolly, letting out a long, lingering breath. After a few moments he said, “Harlowe is dead.” He traced a line across his own neck with a pearly white finger, then took a pair of cream coloured gloves from his pocket, pulling them on as he spoke. “Throat slit, ear to ear.”
Corpse Thief Page 8
