by C. S. Quinn
Now she was getting older and having failed to snare an aristocrat as a protector had settled for Thomas – a man of adequate if not illustrious means.
Her dress was new, in the style of the King’s court favourites. Thomas didn’t visit often, so she felt she owed him a different outfit for each occasion. The red material made a reasonable show of being silk. It fanned out in a style which she knew Thomas liked to lift up and over her head during ‘The Act’ as she’d come to term it.
She opened the door.
To her dismay he had come in his plague-doctor disguise. It was a habit he’d grown a taste for recently. And there was something else. He carried a squawking bird in a cage. A raven.
She felt a shudder, wondering what he had planned.
Pushing the distaste away from her face, she gave what she hoped was a seductive smile, keeping her lips together to disguise her mottled teeth.
‘Come up.’ She took up her dress with one hand and, holding the candle in the other, made up the stairs. Behind her she heard him follow. She held her skirt up a little higher, so he could see flashes of the naked skin underneath as she ascended.
Antoinette was no fool. She knew that to keep a man prepared to pay her rent required work. Particularly with one obliging enough to make rare visits. Some of her friends in the city were kept by young men who visited several times a day. For double the money they made she had her time mostly to herself.
Besides Thomas’s occasional brutality it was an acceptable arrangement. But she didn’t want it to last forever.
Without his knowledge she had taken on extra work at a gambling club. It was strictly against the rules of their arrangement. But in his line of work Thomas would never mix with the aristocratic high-rollers at Adders. She felt confident she would find another protector at the club.
Only a few more months of deceit and she would be free.
‘I have poured you a cup of your favourite wine,’ she said, leading him into her single bedchamber where candles had been lit.
Thomas grunted in reply. He placed the cage with the raven onto a table. Antoinette swallowed. Clearly he was eager to get down to things.
It was easy to forget, in the weeks between visits, what happened when they came around again. And recently Thomas had started to frighten her more and more.
Antoinette made herself a sudden promise, that this would be the last time she submitted herself to the ordeal. She would take a new protector, even if he paid less and visited more.
She paused to take a much-needed swig of wine and then moved to the four-poster bed, spreading herself out obligingly on the sheets.
Thomas approached, his ugly beaked hood looming over her, his blue eyes winking behind the crystal goggles.
Antoinette swallowed and forced a smile. There was something different in the expression behind the hood. Did he know she was working at the club? Impossible, she decided.
‘I have missed you,’ Antoinette lied as he moved closer.
She noticed a flash of metal. He was wearing a sword.
‘Why did you bring that?’ In her fear the words came out louder than she had intended. Thomas was much too real in his play-acting. She would not be able to explain away cuts so well as she could bruises.
In answer Thomas turned to the birdcage.
Chapter Fifteen
Charlie fled along the muddy banks of The Strand past knife-grinders, coopers and cork-cutters making their noisy trade.
Then the squalid tangle of the Blackfriars slum was before him.
Behind him he heard the two men stop as they realised where he was headed.
‘Let him be murdered in there then,’ he heard Jack Tanner say, spitting onto the floor. ‘I’ll not be beaten to death by slum rats for a shilling reward.’
As the thick of wood-and-cloth makeshift homes closed in around him Charlie made a few feints right and left before sprinting quickly into the depths.
A feeling of unease tightened in his stomach. Though a few slum residents were known to him, there were too many desperate people squatting here to make the journey alone. In the rest of London Charlie was considered poor. But in this lawless half-mile the clothes on his back were valuable enough to murder him for.
His plan was to head dead through the centre and come out by St Paul’s Cathedral. Forced to take the winding route around the outskirts there would be no way Jack Tanner and his friend could get there before him.
Then he would head north to Moor Fields where his brother might be able to help him access his usual sources. He was betting that someone, somewhere, had seen a plague doctor with a raven.
Towards the edge of the slums lived the newest of residents. They slept in rickety tents of sacking and hemp.
But as Charlie headed further inwards the homes became more established. Temporary camps gave way to stranger permanent shelters fashioned from London’s leavings. Broken cartwheels and stolen shop-signs made walls, reeds from the river improvised thatch, and sticks impaling found objects staked out muddy little gardens.
Trees in the slum had long since been pillaged for fuel, so burning horse manure and damp straw fed fires. The sweet fumes hung in the air.
Outside their homes the starving slum dwellers stared at him silently, marking him out as a non-resident.
He tensed, seeing a sudden faster movement. But it was only a slum boy heading south to the tanneries. The ulcers burned into his legs showed him to be an apprentice.
There but for the grace of God, thought Charlie. At the Foundling Hospital all the children were given away in apprenticeships at age thirteen. Ever the nun’s favourite, his brother Rowan had been given choice work as a grocer’s boy, but had soon been laid off.
Not wanting to risk a second apprentice fee with his younger brother, the nuns had promised Charlie to the leather tanneries in Bermondsey – the cheapest of all the placements. Apprentices to this trade worked in a waist-deep solution of corrosive lime and urine, flesh dissolving from their bones as they laboured. The work he’d done for Mother Mitchell had taught him some basic carpentry and domestic work, but not enough to earn a living. With no choice other than beg, Charlie had fearfully awaited his first day in the tanning pits.
To his great amazement Mother Mitchell had arrived at the Foundling Hospital the day before he was due in Bermondsey. The nuns watched open-mouthed as she swooped in like a great exotic bird, face loudly painted and silk dress spanning six foot wide. Her eyes were slitted from the unaccustomed daylight but she still managed to pack them with disdain as she considered the dour nuns.
The boy, she had said, will not be put to work in stinking piss pits. Whatever the apprentice fee is I will pay it. He has some writing and a little music and is well enough in intellect besides, to have a better place.
The foundling children had huddled in, transfixed by the unfolding drama. Sister Agnes, the reigning terror of the Hospital, pursed her lips so tight they disappeared into two bleached lines of outrage. Her reply came as a low hiss.
We do not take money which has been earned by sin.
If you are too holy to attend to the future of your charge I will see to him. Mother Mitchell had said. The boy can come with me as my apprentice.
It is not so simply done, Sister Agnes countered. You are not recognised by a guild to take a foundling as an apprentice.
Mother Mitchell had dropped a purse of coins on the table. It rattled.
If that is not enough, she had said with the smallest of smiles. Send your creditors to my house in Mayfair. We have ample girls to entertain them.
And sweeping Charlie into the great bright folds of her arm she led him away from the Foundling Hospital. One of the smaller orphans had begun to applaud. Sister Agnes slapped the clapping hand back down, spat into the dust and hastily crossed herself.
Charlie had worked in Mother Mitchell’s bawdy house for three years and learned everything about how to get on in the tumultuous, heartless, thriving City of London.
A
nd now, without looking, Charlie’s hard-learned sense for danger alerted him to the fact he was being followed. It was a slum dweller, a teenage boy, barely clothed in stinking rags and bearing a scar which ran from his groin to under his chin. He was a distance away, but his intention was unmistakable. The boy was marking him.
Charlie varied his pace, to check the boy was matching his speed. There was no mistaking it.
The boy was scrawny and no match for Charlie. But there would be others, working with him.
As Charlie considered his best plan of action a high-pitched sound came from the boy’s throat. And suddenly he was flanked on the far left and right by two other slum boys.
The first wore nothing but a grimy flour sack which skirted his filthy thighs. The hair on his head grew sparsely, in clumps, with angry bald ringworm circles covering the rest. The second had only one eye and was bare-chested, but wore a pair of trousers which had once belonged to a far larger man.
At first they tracked behind, and then the boys divided. For a moment two of them were out of sight. And then Charlie caught a glimpse of them blocking the path ahead. One held a squat length of wood, and the other wielded part of a cart wheel.
Behind him another two boys had joined with the first, like wolves closing in as a pack.
Charlie slowed, silently running through his options. Five. If it came to it he knew he could fight off three.
One of the boys peeled off seamlessly, and vanished into the slum. Presumably, the tactic was to station himself further ahead and block the route.
Mentally, Charlie assessed the pack’s movements, searching for a weak spot. He scanned ahead. The rickety slum dwellings were low and crumbling. Nothing to afford much of a hiding place for a slum boy to jump him. And then he saw how the path passed by two close houses, with enough space between for a boy to hide.
It was hardly a military-grade ambush. But Charlie caught a flash of movement and knew he’d guessed right. This would be the place where they would surround him.
Charlie slowed, and then sprinted suddenly. The boys flanking him took a moment to realise what had happened, and then they were running flat out over the uneven slum ground.
But Charlie was too fast. He sped past the back of the close-together buildings and grabbed hold of the boy wedged in between them.
The slum attacker had just enough time to shout in high alarm, before Charlie dragged him out into the open by his neck.
‘I have your friend,’ he called, in a calm voice, as the other would-be attackers filtered into view. ‘I want to see all four of you retreat to beyond the broken wheel in the far distance.’
He indicated with his head, as the slum boy in his grip writhed and bucked.
The nearest boy had the emotionless expression of someone with nothing to lose.
‘And what if we do not?’ he countered.
‘If you do not, I will snap his neck,’ said Charlie. He twisted his elbow to show he was serious, and the boy let out a squeal of surprised pain.
‘Kill him then,’ said the first boy, in a bored sort of way. ‘There is more money for the rest of us when we rob you.’
Charlie retained his grip on the boy and tried for a different tactic. ‘I have only a few coins,’ he said. ‘But you may take it as a fair toll for passing through.’
The other boys had gained confidence now and were beginning to move towards him as one. The first bared brown teeth in an evil grin.
‘We do not want to tax you,’ he said. ‘You might easily return with friends for your revenge. We mean to kill you.’
Chapter Sixteen
Willing his heartbeat to slow, Charlie reached into his pocket. His hands closed on a few forged groats.
‘I have here five guineas,’ he lied, ‘one for each of you.’
The boy with the brown teeth hefted his timber, considering.
Charlie loosened his grip on the slum boy’s neck and set his feet.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘you may have them if you can find them.’
And in a clean movement he released his prisoner and threw the coins towards the nearest house. They hit the canvas wall and fell to the ground.
The sound of the money had an electric effect on the boys. They sprinted headlong in the direction of the coins, pushing and grabbing at one another as they ran in an attempt to reach them first.
Charlie had already broken away, pounding along the dirt tracks of the slum, focusing on the fastest means of escape.
But all too quickly he heard the sound of the boys behind him. They had regrouped and were in hot pursuit. And though Charlie was fast, his knowledge of the labyrinthine slums was no match for the slum dwellers.
He turned sharply into a little encampment and found himself surrounded.
The boys circled him, several still with their weapons.
‘It was a bad trick for that was only groats you threw,’ said the boy with the brown teeth, wiping a line of blood from his nose where he’d fought with another boy to reach the cash.
‘And you will pay for it.’
He eyed the lump of wood in his hand with a smirk.
The boys inched forward, each waiting for the other to strike the first blow. And Charlie readied himself for the attack.
Out of the corner of his eye, he made out a red plague cross, painted clumsily onto a nearby shack. If he could get close enough, he could pull down the nearest wall. It was a long shot, but the threat of plague might be enough to scare the boys away.
A blow came unexpectedly from behind, and Charlie fell sprawling into the dirt. He felt the hands reach inside his coat and pull out the forged Health Certificates.
‘We can sell these,’ he heard a voice say. ‘Take his clothes next.’
In a last, desperate move, Charlie twisted his body towards the plague shack and grabbed at the makeshift wall.
He felt hands grab at his clothes, and he tightened his grip and pulled. He heard hessian tear. And then suddenly, like magic, the assault on his person stopped.
There was a low moaning sound and it took Charlie a moment to see his assailants had frozen in horror.
He risked a glance up in the direction of the noise. His plan to reveal the plague house had worked better than he could have hoped.
The plague shack was now open at the front, where one of the driftwood walls had fallen down.
And inside was the horrendous sight of a dying man.
Charlie and the boys stared.
The man squatted naked inside the broken slum house and beside him was a rail-thin woman, wearing the blue sash of a municipal nurse. Her patient was gripping the rusting end of a sheep-trough to hold himself upright, and every breath he took was a laboured groan. Dark red marks peppered his legs and black veins branched from his collar to his cheeks.
Charlie froze. Fear swarmed so thick and fast that his ears rang with it. He was only a few feet away from a plague carrier.
The slum boys scattered.
‘Let him some dignity,’ said the nurse, tossing a filthy string of hair from her face as she spoke. ‘Do not stare.’ She moved on limbs no thicker than broom handles and her withered face drew her lips up over a single tooth.
A terrible screaming howl went up from the man.
‘It is the insides coming out,’ explained the nurse. ‘That often happens. The pain of the illness does it.’ She stepped outside the exposed confines and started trying to heave up some fallen driftwood to form a partition between the dying man and the outside world. ‘Help me then,’ she said.
Charlie knew he should run away, but he couldn’t bear to leave the man exposed and ashamed.
Rising painfully to his feet he pulled at the driftwood, keeping as far back from the victim as he could.
‘Why has he no family with him?’ Charlie managed, pulling his coat collar to cover his mouth.
‘Ran away,’ said the nurse, grunting with the effort of restoring the home. ‘They talk very brave in the beginning, but when they see the agony of t
he disease they do not stay.’
‘Why should you stay when you have seen such things?’
‘What should I eat without my shilling payment? Them that run have places to go to. I have nothing. I take this work or starve.’
They righted the driftwood. The last glimpse Charlie caught of the man was of him panting, dog-like, his mouth a ragged red hole of agony. He began to make a chirruping insect noise.
‘Like he has another day of torture,’ said the nurse, shaking her head. ‘If they live the first hour their body is fighting it and they must suffer as no human creature should. He has still to have the swellings raise so high on his neck they split the flesh. That is when he will beg me to finish him.’
Not knowing what else to do Charlie pulled out his bag of forged coins. The boys had taken his certificates and they were all he had left.
Charlie placed it in her skeletal fingers.
‘Buy him something,’ he said. ‘A draft of gin. A glass of wine. Something to dull the pain.’
The nurse nodded silently at the gesture and disappeared back in the house. And with his brain in a tumult of horrors, Charlie made fast towards the edge of the slum.
Money he could easily get by without. But he had no Health Certificate. Which meant there was almost nowhere in the city he easily get to. Not to mention he was a wanted man with Newgate guards and vigilantes on his trail.
He mentally mapped the route to Moor Fields. If he kept close by the Fleet River he could get north with no health checks. It would take much longer, but once he was in the country fields of Clerkenwell there would be no guards or trackers. He could at least make his way round to Moor Fields, where Rowan worked, in relative safety.
He sent up a silent prayer that his brother would still be there and set off towards the Fleet River.
Chapter Seventeen
Antoinette’s friend Sophie knocked cautiously at the door. Hearing nothing she pushed and was surprised to find it nudge easily open.
