by Paul Stewart
We arrived at the hospital ten minutes later. The place was busier than ever, with the cold foggy weather – coupled with the increase in coal-smoke as people struggled to keep themselves warm – resulting in countless new cases of bronchitis, pleurisy, pneumonia and other assorted ailments. The tall vaulted ceilings echoed with the insistent clamour of rattling coughs and thunderous sneezes.
‘I’ll catch you later,’ I told Will, as he headed off to the pharmacist’s, the package of Tilling’s Patent Lung Lozenges he’d brought with him clamped beneath one arm.
I took the stairs to the second landing and made my way along the corridor to the small room where Nurse Lucy Partleby had dressed my wound a week earlier. I knocked softly on the frosted glass panel and opened the door without waiting to be called – and immediately wished I hadn’t.
‘Excuse me,’ I blustered, blushing furiously as I quickly pulled the door to.
‘Barnaby,’ came a voice behind me, and I turned to see Lucy smiling up at me, those beautiful green eyes of hers sparkling mischievously. She cocked her head to one side. ‘You’re looking a bit pale.’
‘I … I just …’
‘I do sympathize,’ Lucy laughed. ‘Old Ma Scanlan having her boils lanced isn’t the prettiest sight in the world,’ she said, crinkling her nose. ‘Would you like me to check that arm of yours?’
I nodded. ‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ I said. ‘And I brought you this,’ I added, pulling the sphagnum moss from my pocket.
‘Ooh, flowers,’ said Lucy. ‘You shouldn’t have.’
We both looked at the bunch of damp, bruised greenery hanging limply from my hand, and laughed.
‘It’s—’ I began.
‘I know what it is,’ she said. ‘That moss your professor swears by.’ She led me into the adjacent room and sat me down on a low-backed chair. ‘Right,’ she said brightly, ‘if you’d like to roll up your sleeve please, Barnaby …’
I did as I was told. Lucy looked at my arm, an eyebrow arched in surprise.
‘You’re sure it was this arm,’ she said.
‘My left arm,’ I said. ‘Of course.’
She shook her head in amazement. ‘But this is incredible,’ she said. ‘It’s healed perfectly.’
‘Perhaps you should apply a moss poultice to old Ma Scanlan’s boils,’ I suggested.
She smiled. ‘There really wasn’t any need for you to come back at all, was there?’ she said.
‘Oh, there was,’ I said earnestly. ‘I’m here on a matter of the greatest importance.’
‘You are?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said, reaching into the uppermost pocket of my waistcoat and pulling out two black and gold tickets. ‘I have two upper-circle seats at the Alhambra Music Hall for tomorrow evening. Florrie Boyd, the Hightown Nightingale, is topping the bill …’ I added.
Before she could say anything, the door to the surgery flew open and a forbidding-looking matron burst into the room.
‘Come quickly, nurse,’ she commanded, giving me a withering look as she spotted the music-hall tickets in my hand. ‘Your social arrangements will have to wait. We have a crisis in the admittance hall.’
Lucy gave me an apologetic smile and hurried after the matron, who bustled quickly along the corridor, recruiting more nurses as she went. Soon a regiment of white-aproned angels of mercy was marching behind her down the stairwell towards the sounds of raised voices and angry cries rising up from below.
Curious, I followed, only to find the great hall of St Jude’s – usually so orderly – in a state of confusion. At a glance it looked as if half the gangs of the Gatling Quays lay sprawled in disordered heaps on the tiled floor or propped up on benches, supported by the other half.
Sumpside Boys in battered straw caps and blood-stained bearskin coats shouted insults across the prone bodies of Fetter Lane Scroggers at the Ratcatchers, who returned the compliment. Injured Spike-Tooth Smilers shook bruised fists at the Tallow Gang, while the Joinery Blades formed a protective circle round their leader, who lay in a pool of blood, clutching his head.
‘And I’m telling you, there’s going to be all hell to pay if you have,’ Thump McConnell was shouting. ‘The whole of Gatling Quays’ll be up in arms. You’ll be finished.’
Across the hall, the new leader of the Sumpside Boys, Lenny Dempster – a hulking great thug with indigo tattoos and a shaved head – bellowed back at him. ‘If I have! For the tenth time, McConnell, it’s them grave-robbers what done it, not us. Don’t you read the papers?’ He squinted at the boss of the Ratcatchers. ‘I take it you can read.’
Thump McConnell shook a bloodied fist. ‘And who are they anyway, these grave-robbers, eh? I notice that cousin of yours is doing very nicely …’
‘Yeah,’ said Flob McManus, head of the Flour Bag Mob, being helped to his feet by several of his cronies. ‘Always flashing the readies, is old Louie, but I ain’t never seen him do nuffin’ to earn it.’
‘Are you saying my cousin’s a grave-robber?’ Lenny Dempster demanded, his hand hovering above the knife at his belt. ‘Eh? Are you calling him a grave-robber?’
‘If the cap fits,’ came a squeaky voice, from the crowded benches.
It was Mad Maddox Murphy of the Fetter Lane Scroggers, a second-rate leader of a third-rate gang, who would do anything he could to drive a wedge between the big boys. Thump, Flob and Lenny were having none of it.
‘Shut it, Murphy!’ they chorused.
Suddenly, Thump McConnell lost patience. He brandished his ham-like fist. ‘Let’s finish this once and for all now!’ he roared. ‘Ratcatchers versus the Sumpside Boys – or should I say, dirty lowdown graverobbers?’
‘Come on, boys,’ replied Lenny Dempster, gathering his gang around him. ‘Let’s put the new Emperor in the ground …’
‘What is the meaning of this?’ The imperious voice of the matron cut through the air like a hot knife through hog-fat. Behind her, the ranks of the nurses surveyed the chaotic scene impassively.
Instantly, the gang members turned in her direction. The matron on the stairs towered above them, the flickering lamp in her hand casting shadows on her heaving bosom and round face.
‘Tobias McConnell,’ she boomed, ‘is that you?’
The leader of the Ratcatchers swallowed and unclenched his fist sheepishly. He looked round. So did everyone else.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he admitted.
‘I did not sit up half the night, nursing you through the bloody-croup as a baby, so that you could run amok in my hospital,’ she said, her unblinking eyes boring into his.
‘And you. Leonard Dempster. Two broken legs, wasn’t it?’ Her eyebrows knitted together. ‘What would your poor dear mother say?’
‘Dunno, ma’am,’ Lenny muttered. ‘Sorry, ma’am.’
‘Phoebus McManus! Maddox Murphy. Lawrence Patterson …’ One by one, she shamed them all. ‘That I should live to see the day when you come back to St Jude’s, a place of healing, and display such disgraceful behaviour!’
As cowed as whipped puppies, the gang members stared at their boots, their shoulders sloped and heads hanging. The matron crossed her arms.
‘My nurses shall dress your wounds and admit the more serious cases to our wards. The rest of you may leave … Now.’
The nurses, including Lucy Partleby, sprang into action, efficiently assessing the injuries and treating them as the matron looked on. Meanwhile Thump, Lenny and the other uninjured gang members sloped out of the hospital, muttering under their breath. This clearly wasn’t the end of the matter.
Looking down, I saw that I was still clutching the two tickets, and I scanned the hall in search of Lucy, who had yet to answer my question. What I saw banished all thoughts of a romantic evening at the music hall from my mind.
Striding across the hall was a young doctor, a wooden stethoscope in his hand. He wore a long black cape trimmed with ocelot fur and a swanky high hat with a dark-red band. As I watched him make his way through the crowd, Ada Gussage’
s words from that nightmarish night came back to me.
‘He’s one of them graverobbers, I’d bet my last brass farthing on it …’
The doctor strode towards the door, the metal tips to his boot heels clicking on the polished marble. I followed at a safe distance behind. As I emerged through the doorway, I looked down and saw him at the foot of the steps, climbing into an elegant two-wheeler that a hospital orderly had brought round from the carriage park.
It was being pulled by a fine grey, and my gaze was drawn to the wealth of highly polished brasses which had been attached at the horse’s forehead, behind the ears and at the shoulders, with half a dozen more hanging from its martingale. Usually, these days, horse brasses were mere decoration, but I knew that there were still those who believed the amulets could distract the ‘evil eye’.
Pools of fuzzy light, thrown out by the two magnificent brass lamps which were fixed to the front of the carriage, spilled out over the pavement. The doctor tipped the orderly with a silver coin and climbed into the carriage. Taking the reins, he gave them a light twitch. The horse whinnied – two long plumes of mist pouring from its nostrils – and, with a lurch, trotted off briskly along the narrow road, the clopping of its hooves and clatter of the carriage wheels echoing back and forth between the buildings on either side.
I gave chase, running down the steps of St Jude’s and off along the pavement until I spotted a conveniently positioned drainpipe that offered me a simple and unbroken climb to the rooftops. Thankfully, a thickening fog had slowed the traffic down and as I pulled myself up onto the corrugated iron roof, the carriage was just reaching the junction at the end of the street. The two great lamps shone through the fog like saints’ halos as the carriage swung round to the left. I picked my way along a long brick parapet wall, then cut back at an angle over the top of a pitched roof, finding myself directly above the cab when it arrived at the next junction.
All round me, the icy fog swirled, as yellow and sulphurous as a witch’s brew. It softened the edge to every building, blurring the rooftops and blotting out the chimney stacks. It smudged the lamplights and muffled every sound. It numbed my fingers, stung my eyes and left a rank metallic taste on my tongue. With the temperature still below freezing point, I needed to heed the advice I’d given Will earlier as I highstacked after the carriage, one eye on the treacherous ledges and drops, the other on those two fuzzy lamplights far, far below me.
At the junction of Gradely Street and Whitlow Lane, I came to a jump that would normally have given me no problems, but that I simply didn’t dare attempt given the treacherous conditions. I quickly assessed the alternatives. There was a stepped gable to my left, but that would have taken me away from the road; there was a square chimney stack to my right, but I could see that the staple-like steps sunk into the mortar were treacherously rusty. Ignoring both, I lowered myself onto a narrow ledge and, with my back and palms pressed against the wall, edged myself along it until I came to the framework of scaffolding I’d spotted.
Manoeuvres involving scaffolding are called Hangman’s moves – there’s a Hangman’s Climb, a Hangman’s Descent, a Hangman’s Swing and a Hangman’s Grapple. Sometimes – when rotten beams of wood were used or when the scaffolders failed to knot the ropes properly – the sinister names of the moves lived up to their reputation. Pat Johnston, a tick-tock lad from the other side of town, had been killed the previous month when he tumbled from badly erected scaffolding.
I eased myself gingerly down onto the upper boards, taking care not to skid on the frosty wood. From there, it was a simple matter to swing one of the planks round till it rested on the roof opposite. I balanced my way along it, arriving safely at the other side and congratulating myself on having invented a new manoeuvre.
I called it a Hangman’s Bridge.
A quick glance down confirmed that, below me, the carriage lights were still in view, bearing left onto a broader street. I followed them, keeping pace across the rooftops as the carriage and its mysterious occupant travelled through the fog-bound city, until at last I found myself atop the familiar ridged roof of Sunil’s tea warehouse and realized that we were on the Belvedere Mile.
A moment later, my heart sunk. We’d come to Gatling Quays!
To my right was the front of Adelaide Mansions, the light from Ada Gussage’s window hazy in the thick mist. The carriage pulled up in front of the building, and I saw the doctor jump down, wrap his cape around him and tether his fine carriage horse to a lamppost. I wondered whether Ada was watching him as well.
Under the cover of the swirling yellow fog that wound itself round me like a mortician’s shroud, I descended the building and followed the doctor. He crossed the road and went through the cast-iron archway into the graveyard. I hesitated, my heart thumping fit to burst in my chest.
Could I summon up the courage to enter that fearful place a third time? I asked myself. Was this doctor meeting his accomplices? I wondered, or simply returning to the scene of his ghoulish crime?
There was only one way to find out for sure. Swallowing hard, I forced myself to enter Adelaide Graveyard once more.
Darting along from yew tree to yew tree, I kept myself hidden both from the doctor and from anyone who might be passing. From somewhere close by, I heard the bells of St Angela’s toll. It was midday – though as far as visibility went, it might as well have been midnight. At the far side of the graveyard, I thought I was going to get spotted as the doctor abruptly doubled back – but instead of returning the way he’d come, he squeezed through a gap in the fence where one of the upright rails was missing, then stumbled down the steep slope on the other side.
I held back a minute, waiting for the sounds of slipping and sliding to subside, before going after him. At the bottom of the slope, I looked round me, trying to see which way he’d gone. His footsteps trailed across the wet mud, then disappeared in the direction of the great sewer mouth of Gatling Sump.
Head down, I crossed the upper shoreline.
The tide was out and I could see the shadowy figures of mudlarks scratting out on the flats. Scuffle-hunters and long-apron men were roaming the quaysides, taking advantage of the fog to search for any unattended goods; and in the distance I saw the flashing light of a wrecker trying to lure a passing barge onto the mudflats. Ahead of me, the doctor’s bowed body was next to the sewer tunnel, his head and shoulders swathed in shadow. I crouched down behind an upturned crate.
The doctor was inspecting what at first glance seemed to be a fallen tree trunk that the ebb and flow of the tide had buried, then revealed in the mud. But as I peered through the gloom, I saw that it was in fact some sort of primitive boat or canoe, fashioned from a single tree. The doctor studied it carefully, from blunt stern to rough-hewn bow which, on its underside, bore tell-tale impressions, seemingly seared into the grain of the wood.
I have to confess that bile rose in my throat at the sight of what I knew to be the bite marks of none other than the black-scaled lamprey - that fearsome sea serpent I had battled in the harbour. At last, the doctor seemed to be satisfied. He rose from his crouching position and returned along the mudflats.
Anticipating his movements, I darted up the bank and vaulted over the railings. I hurried back through the graveyard, hardly daring to look at the gravestones on every side. One thing was for certain, I told myself as I reached the gates, just visible in the freezing fog: there’d be no more highstack carriage-chasing for me. When the mysterious doctor got back to his fine two-wheeler and twitched the reins, there’d be an extra passenger coming along for the ride.
Reaching the carriage, I ducked down and employed a neat trick I’d picked up from the street urchins of Hightown. ‘Cobble-grazing’ it’s called, and involves grasping the wheel springs beneath the chosen vehicle, and hanging on for dear life. In some of the potholed streets in the rougher districts, it’s a recipe for disaster, but on the smooth thoroughfare of Hightown and Carriage Way, it can be exhilarating, believe me.
Gras
ping the curved springs behind the wheel axle, I wedged my toes into the iron brace of the carriage frame and made myself comfortable. A few moments later I felt the carriage buck and sway as its occupant climbed inside.
The carriage leaped forward, skidded round the corner at the end of Adelaide Mansions and hurtled on down the Belvedere Mile. I glanced down at the bumpy dark-grey road surface speeding past in a blur beneath me. I held on as tight as a barnacle on a barge-hull and tried to determine which way we were going. We turned left, then left again, then right … and before I knew it, I’d completely lost my bearings. Once, I fancied I caught the whiff of chestnuts roasting on a brazier, which suggested we might be passing through the Theatre District. A while later, I thought I heard the great Bowman bell toll the hour. If I was right, we were heading due north.
I wedged my toes into the iron brace of the carriage frame.
A few miles and a lot of arm-jarring potholes later, the carriage clattered over an iron grid and onto the flags of a paved courtyard. Behind me, I heard the creaking of heavy gates rattling shut and the jangling of keys being turned in several locks. The doctor climbed out of the carriage and I saw his muddied boots striding across the courtyard towards a black front door.
Carefully, I unjammed my feet and dropped to the ground. The sound of heavy bolts being drawn back greeted the doctor’s knock on the door of what I saw, as I peered from between the spokes of the carriage wheel, was a magnificent town house, screened from the street by a high-walled courtyard of impressive size, and dominated by a large fountain.
As I watched, the door swung open and out sprang a pair of enormous watchdogs, Tannhauser blues, by the look of them. In two great bounds they were beneath the carriage, their slavering jaws inches from my face as I parried them away with my swordstick.
‘Walther! Wolfram! Heel!’ came a barked command, before an arm reached beneath the carriage, seized me by the collar and dragged me clear.
Looking up, I found myself staring down the barrel of a large-bore hunting rifle.
