The Westminster Workhouse was a three-storey, red-bricked building taking up over half an acre of land between the cathedral and the river. Its windows were tiny, like the scars on the face of a smallpox victim.
Titus and Hannah stood on the pavement, in front of an arch in the outer wall that led into a dreary courtyard. After the excitement of the songbird Hannah had lapsed back into listless silence, her head bent.
Through the arch came a biting north wind that tore around the courtyard and whipped at the clothes of those queuing for admittance. Beginning at a door on the far side the queue snaked all the way around the wall, under the arch and out here onto the pavement. Though there was a great diversity in those hoping for a bed – old, young, male, female, crippled, able-bodied, respectably dressed and filthily ragged – all were united in silence. The only sound was a monotonous clanging that came from the darkest corner of the yard, where men chipped at boulders with hammers.
They joined the end of the queue.
By the time they neared the front, the stonebreakers had been summoned away and the sun had fallen behind the building. The only light came from the glowing bowls of pipes in the queue behind him and the dim candlelight in the windows surrounding the courtyard. Shadows passed slowly behind the glass and there was a faint murmur of prayers.
Hannah had fallen into a doze against his shoulder and he moved carefully, so as not to wake her. They were third in line when the door burst open and a young woman was thrust out onto the courtyard.
‘I am not drunk,’ she cried. ‘It’s just that my legs is so cold they won’t work properly!’
The door slammed shut.
‘Bastard!’ she shrieked, but after a moment her defiant stance slumped and she began to weep. As the door opened to admit the next pauper the woman turned and walked, perfectly steadily, back out of the archway.
Though good sense told Titus it was a good thing that even the suspicion of drunkenness was enough to exclude a person, his heart shrank at such callousness and he clung more tightly to Hannah.
Now they were second in line. Panic rose in his gullet. Was this place as bad as they said: where starving paupers fought one another for the rotting marrow from bones they were supposed to be crushing? Where the newborn babies of unmarried mothers were sold into slavery? Where children who answered back had their tongues branded with an ‘I’ for Insolent? He had scoffed at Stitcher’s wide-eyed tales, but here in this shivering darkness they seemed all too plausible.
The door opened and the next pauper was summoned. Behind him a woman was telling her two children that, whilst they would not be allowed to see one another, she would be thinking of them every moment. ‘Look out at the moon tonight,’ she said in a soft Irish accent, ‘and I’ll look out too, and in that way we shall be together.’ The youngest child began to cry.
Titus stared at the door. Minutes passed. Hannah’s heartbeat was slow and steady against his shoulder. He was surprised the wild leaping of his own did not shake her awake.
‘Next!’ roared a voice as heavy as a sledgehammer.
Titus pushed open the door and a blast of chill air ruffled Hannah’s hair. He half carried her through and it banged shut behind him. The sudden change in atmosphere woke her and she looked around, wide-eyed.
Behind a desk in front of them a face as cold and round as the moon’s glowed in the light of a candle.
‘Name.’
‘Titus Adams.’
‘Age.’
‘It’s not me. It’s my sister. I wish to give you my sister.’
‘What?’ Hannah said.
‘Name.’
‘Her name is Hannah Adams.’
‘Age.’
‘Nine.’
‘What?’ Her voice rose in pitch. ‘You said both of us!’
He stared resolutely in front of him as the man recorded her details.
‘Titus!’ She tried to pull his face around.
Several small huddles of people were gathered in different corners of the room. A door he had not noticed opened behind the moon-face and a young man appeared.
‘Able-bodied Men Under Sixty!’ he barked, and one of the groups detached itself from the corner and followed him out.
‘Grounds for admission?’ the moon-face snapped.
He was in his fifties, large-framed and strong-looking.
‘Our parents have recently died and we have nowhere to go. As soon as I have gained employment I will be back to collect her.’
‘Don’t leave me here!’ Hannah shrieked, tearing herself away from him.
‘It won’t be for long . . .’
‘NO!’
She backed away then dived for the door. Titus caught her by the shoulder and muttered desperately:
‘It’s the only way. You will be here a matter of days, I swear!’
She twisted and lashed against his grasp, then he felt stronger arms than his take over.
The porter towered so far above him that Titus’s nose was level with the chain of his pocket watch. With surprising gentleness he bent down to Hannah’s level and held her arms to her sides. Immediately she grew still.
‘Hush, my darling,’ he said softly, ‘you will come to no harm here.’
Her mouth trembled.
‘Your brother has lied to you and forsaken you, but we will not.’
‘Forsaken her?’ Titus cried. ‘You’re the liar!’
A moment later he was flying backwards through the door, his skull cracking against the flagstones.
‘Better the poor lamb be abandoned,’ the porter roared, ‘than grow up in the care of such a worthless piece of filth!’
Now Hannah was screaming, imprisoned by the porter’s embrace but stretching her arms towards her brother.
‘It’s all right!’ Titus cried over laughter and jeers from the other paupers. ‘I’ll be back for you soon. I swear!’
‘The devil you will!’ a voice cackled.
He scrambled to his feet and tried to reach his sister but the porter kicked him away. Now Hannah was writhing and spitting like a wild animal.
‘Careful, my lovely!’ the porter bellowed. ‘Don’t hurt yourself!’
‘It’s all right, Hannah! Everything will be all right!’
He would have tried to tear her from the porter’s arms if he thought he’d any chance, but now a young woman in a starched white apron came through the inner door. Hannah was bundled over to her, and the porter stood, an edifice of granite, between them.
‘Get out, if you care at all for her distress.’
The nurse pressed Hannah’s face to her bosom, muffling her screams. She managed to twist her head round and one wild eye, round as a calf’s about to be slaughtered, stared from the folds of the woman’s dress, before the door was slammed.
Titus lay where he was on the stones of the courtyard, as if every bone in his body was broken, until the last pauper had been devoured by the cold little room.
8
He read the note through one last time and winced at the now obvious spelling mistakes. He’d written it in a hurry on a scrap of newspaper for fear that the Inspector would have gone home. The words were crammed as neatly as possible into the blank space around an advertisement for face cream.
It would have to do.
The bell tinkled as he walked into the station but the duty officer was engrossed in his paper and didn’t look up.
Titus cleared his throat.
The duty officer jumped as violently as if it had been a bomb going off.
‘Good God, lad,’ he puffed, laying his hand on his chest.
Titus apologised and slid the paper across the desk, blushing with shame as the duty officer picked it up with his fingertips, as if it were a soiled sock.
‘It’s a letter, sir,’ he mumbled, ‘for Inspector Pilbury.’
‘The Inspector’s very busy. Is it urgent?’
Titus nodded, avoiding his eye.
‘Very well,’ the man sighed. ‘Wait here.’
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br /> Titus sat down on the bench. Somewhere in the distance a woman was singing a song Titus remembered from his babyhood, something to do with an apple and a worm.
Hannah would be in bed by now. Would she be sleeping? He doubted it. She would be cursing him and weeping and, if she’d continued to cause a commotion as they led her away, nursing the welts from a thrashing. He went over to the door and stared at his own reflection in the glass.
The singing had stopped, there was only the silence: oppressive and accusing.
The duty officer’s paper still lay on the desk and, to distract his thoughts, Titus flicked back to the front page. It was about the prisoner he had seen arrive the previous night. The woodcut depicted a huge hairy beast swinging police officers around like rag dolls.
‘The Inspector will see you.’
The duty officer was holding open the internal door for him. Titus put down the paper and followed him up the corridor to the first office.
‘Here he is, sir,’ the officer said and pushed Titus through the door, closing it behind him. Pilbury did not look up from his writing but motioned for Titus to sit.
A copy of the Standard lay on the desk – Pilbury must have read the words questioning his ability. Next to it was a rusty tin, the lid half closed. A wisp of fair hair stuck out from under it.
Pilbury set down his pen.
‘So,’ he said, smiling wearily, ‘you want a job.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Sit down, you look tired.’
‘I am not. I have a great deal of stamina.’
Nevertheless he sank into the chair on the other side of the desk.
A commotion from the courtyard made Pilbury look behind him out of the window. The officer Titus recognised as Sergeant Samson was emerging from the stables, slapping his hands together to try and dislodge some of the hay that stuck to them. One of the other men stood in the courtyard waiting for him with a file of papers.
‘For God’s sake, man, can’t you see I’m up to my eyes in horse shit?’ Samson barked. The younger man stood his ground with admirable bravery.
‘Samson has been minding the horses this week,’ Pilbury said, ‘but his wife is all in a tizzy over the early mornings and late nights. Go and find him and tell him you’re the new stable boy. Just until the usual lad recovers, mark you.’
For a moment Titus just stared at him.
‘Well, go on, lad, before I change my mind. And tell Samson to get you a pair of decent hobnail boots. You can’t be paddling in horse piss all day with bare feet.’
Titus sprang from the chair, leaned over the desk and pumped the Inspector’s hand until the older man laughed.
‘Thank you!’ he panted, then bolted for the door. Halfway down the corridor Titus stopped, ran back and poked his head through the door.
‘When will I be paid?’
Without lifting his eyes from his paperwork, Pilbury said, ‘End of the month, like everyone else,’ but then his pen paused and he looked up. ‘Hannah’s well, I trust?’
‘Oh, very well,’ Titus said breezily, ‘she’s staying with a relative in the country.’
Pilbury nodded and smiled. ‘Excellent.’
Titus turned and sped off in the direction of the stables before Pilbury could notice he was blushing.
If Samson was pleased to see him he didn’t show it.
‘’Bout bloody time,’ he snapped as he swept horse dung into a steaming pile in the corner of the yard.
‘The market boys’ll be round for that tomorrow. Now, what do you know about horses?’
The animals were called Leopold and Beatrice. They were both friendly, though rather skittish, and pricked up their ears at every noise from the courtyard.
‘They don’t like him,’ Samson said, his voice low as if the prisoner might be able to hear him from his cell. ‘The sooner he’s shipped off to Newgate the better.’
‘When will that be?’ Titus asked.
‘How should I know?’
‘Only I was just wonderin’ if I might be allowed to sleep in the stables. To . . . er . . . make sure the horses are ready whenever they’re required.’
‘Well, of course you’re sleepin’ in the bloody stable. Where else did you think you was? You can go home on a Friday but you must be back at dawn on Monday.’
‘Great!’
Titus beamed and Samson glared at him suspiciously.
‘Now,’ he went over to the door, ‘I’m going home to my poor wife. The other lad used to bed down over there.’ He pointed to a pallet and straw mattress in the corner. ‘You got a blanket?’
Titus shook his head.
‘I’ll get you a couple from the cells. If it gets too cold go into the kitchen: the door’s always open.’
He took the lantern and crossed the courtyard, his heavy boots rapping against the cobbles.
‘Who’s that trip-trapping across my bridge?’ cackled a voice from cell three and Beatrice whinnied in the darkness.
Titus sat down on the mattress. At the bottom of the bed, where the horses could not get at them, were sacks of feed. One of them contained hazelnuts. He’d eaten nothing for two days now. Shuffling to the end of the bed he scooped out a handful of nuts and began pressing them into his mouth.
To his intense embarrassment Samson came back while he was bending over the sack. He didn’t say a word as Titus gulped down the last mouthful, the corners of the nuts scraping down his dry throat.
‘Right . . . well . . . here you go.’
The policeman laid a pile of blankets at the end of the mattress and hung a lantern from a nail on the wall. ‘If you don’t know what you’re doing ask one of the stable boys at the Rose and Crown. I don’t want the horses lamed by your ignorance.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, goodnight, lad,’ the older man said, more gently. ‘And try and keep warm.’
‘Goodnight.’
He went out, closing the lower half of the door behind him. This time his footsteps were quieter and he entered the station via the kitchen instead of walking past the cells.
Titus sat down on the mattress and looked around his new home. It could have been a lot worse. In fact, in many ways it was better than the house in Old Pye Street. It smelled sweeter, the horses were warm and companionable, the walls were clean and dry. So dry, in fact, that the mortar had crumbled entirely from one of the bricks and he was able to slide the whole thing out. The stable boy had clearly used the little cubbyhole as a receptacle for his own treasures for Titus pulled out a dog-eared postcard whose subject matter made him blush. He pushed the postcard to the back of the hole and then took from his pocket the lock of his mother’s hair. After tying it in a strand of hay he tucked the hair into the hole and replaced the brick.
Then he dimmed the lantern and lay back on the mattress. It had a comfortable smell of sweat and horses. Suddenly he felt crushingly tired. He mustn’t sleep, he told himself, not when Hannah would be wide awake and terrified, thinking he’d abandoned her for good. He forced his eyes to stay open and gazed out through the open half of the door at the moon, a hazy greenish circle through the smog. Perhaps she was looking at it too. His eyelids grew heavier and heavier until it was so much effort to keep them open he decided to rest them by closing them just for a few minutes.
The next thing he knew it was morning.
As soon as he was up and washed he had to prepare the carriage for cell three’s prisoner to be transferred to Newgate. A hush descended on the station as the six officers obliged to take the Wigman filed out into the courtyard. But this time there was no struggle. The prisoner walked calmly out of his cell into the semicircle of armed men and allowed himself to be handcuffed.
‘Ahhh, what a beautiful morning,’ he said, inhaling deeply. ‘Now,’ he smiled at each one in turn, ‘which one of you had honey on his toast this morning?’
Not one of the men would catch the eye that passed over them, except Samson who jerked him roughly by the arm towards the cart.
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‘I do so love honey,’ Rancer sang, as he sauntered across the courtyard, ‘especially with eggs.’
Titus stood by Leopold, murmuring words of comfort into his ear. Through the wisps of hair that sprang out from the horse’s ear he took a look at the prisoner. He was tall and spindly, like a spider reared up on its back legs, and this impression was intensified by the uniform black of his clothing. His shirt must have been torn in the arrest for it flapped open, revealing a bone-white chest sprouting coarse black hairs like insect legs. His face had the same pallor and his eyes were red-rimmed.
Before stepping inside the box he gave Samson a smile. His teeth were long and yellow against the white of his lips.
‘Keep my bed warm for me, handsome.’
Samson swore and kicked him up the backside so hard that he tumbled into the cart. Samson slammed the door then wiped his hands on his jacket, as if they might have picked up some contagion.
The horses were back by noon and while Titus was grooming them Samson came outside and informed him gruffly that he should join them for lunch from now on.
‘We each of us pays a penny a week for the pies but the men have agreed to put in a farthing each every fortnight so’s you can be fed.’
Titus’s grip on the grooming brush tightened.
‘I don’t need charity, sir.’
‘Oh pipe down. The pie’ll be there. If you don’t come and eat it you’ll only be pulling it out of the bin later, stone cold and covered in pipe ash.’
Later, when he heard Samson’s bellow announcing the arrival of lunch, Titus slunk into the kitchen and nibbled his meal at a shameful distance from the rest of them. After twenty minutes, however, he was sitting at the table choking on a piece of kidney at one of the constables’ lewd story about a girl he’d arrested in Clerkenwell who he first thought was a child prostitute but who turned out to be an ancient dwarf.
‘She tried to pinch me arse but couldn’t reach no higher than the back of me knee!’
They stopped laughing as Pilbury entered but the half-smile on the Inspector’s face made Titus wonder if he’d been listening at the door.
The Hanged Man Rises Page 6
