‘I have it,’ says Raphael, turning towards her, his face suddenly animated with excitement. ‘Here is the story. Just as I remembered. Let me read it to you.’
He draws his chair closer to hers, sets the 1815 volume of the Aldwych Almanack on his knee, and begins to read.
The Story of Thomas Dellow
In all the dark annals of crime which have disturbed the sentiments of the citizens of this and neighbouring boroughs these past years, some of the very darkest chapters have concerned the heinous act of child-stealing. It will perhaps be recalled in this regard that a curious failing in the laws of the land was brought to light a mere four years ago by the pathetic case of Master Thomas Dellow.
Young Thomas Dellow and his little sister Rebecca, having been left in the care of a neighbouring shopkeeper while their mother sought the attentions of a physician for a minor ailment, were playing (as children are wont to do) about the doorstep of the premises, when they were accosted by a female person who tempted them away with promises of apples and penny plum cakes. No sooner were the children beyond sight of prying eyes than the woman seized the little boy and made off with him, leaving his sister alone in the street, whence she was soon rescued by the shopkeeper. Imagine the horror of the unhappy mother when she returned soon after to find her precious only son had vanished, as it would appear, into thin air!
Hand bills were printed, and Master Dellow’s uncle, a Mr Shergold, in the employ of the East India Company, made inquiries far and wide, distributing the hand bills in the company of officers. At first it seemed that a happy conclusion to the mystery might soon be at hand, for several shopkeepers in the neighbourhood of St. Martin’s Lane and Fish-street Hill (where the felony had occurred) attested to having seen a certain lady in the company of the two Dellow children at the very hour when Master Dellow disappeared. From such information, the child’s uncle went to No. 7 Trafalgar Place, where he found a lady whose visage and deportment answered to the description given by witnesses. Indeed, when this lady was brought to the Town Hall, young Rebecca Dellow, asked to point out the person who had given her plum cakes and who had stolen her brother away, pointed without hesitation to the lady in question. Yet here, as it would soon appear, the investigation had taken a false turn, for when this lady was sent to trial at the Old Bailey, it quickly transpired that the memories of the witnesses were mistaken, and that the accused was a respectable person of impeccable character. Moreover, the law as it existed at this time possessed no remedy for the crime of child-stealing, so the suspect could only be tried on the charge of stealing Master Dellow’s clothing, of which she was found to be innocent.
But what of the child himself? His loving parents were perhaps close to despair when, a full year after his mysterious disappearance, a wholly unexpected development occurred. A citizen of Gosport, having chanced to read the hand bill which described certain identifying marks upon Master Dellow’s body, recognized him as being the boy whom one Mrs Harriet Magnis, the wife of a Gosport sailor, was claiming as her own son. The case by now had made an immense sensation in the metropolis, and this sensation was only heightened when the circumstances of Mrs Magnis’s crime were revealed.
It appeared that, while her credulous husband Richard Magnis was away on one of his long voyages, the artful wife had sought to extract money from his savings by persuading him (through her letters) that she was with child, and that a long hoped-for first born offspring would soon be born. The ruse was well planned, and Richard Magnis generously sent his wife a sum of no less than 300 pounds in preparation for the happy event. Compounding the deception, Mrs Magnis next announced to her spouse that his first born son had indeed arrived in the world. All this while, Richard Magnis remained at sea, and even upon his homecoming, the innocent husband was persuaded to believe that his infant son was alive and well, and merely temporarily absent, having been sent away with a nurse for his health. At length, however, the deception became impossible to sustain, and so Mrs Magnis betook herself to London in search of a likely child. It was the misfortune of the Dellow family that her eye fell upon their son Thomas, who was spirited away to Gosport and disguised as the child of Harriet and Richard Magnis.
Happily, his discovery by the sharp-eyed acquaintance resulted in his being returned, unharmed, to the bosom of his own family. But once again the weakness of the law was made clear. Harriet Magnis was committed to Winchester Gaol on the charge of having stolen Master Dellow’s clothing, but escaped even the small punishment that this charge would have incurred, because her counsel protested that, the crime having been committed in London, her incarceration in Winchester was unlawful.
The public anger which this case provoked led to the passing of new laws, allowing the prosecution of child-stealers, and these were soon put to use, for in October 1814 (a mere half-year after the new laws had reached the statute book) another heinous crime occurred which was remarkable for its similarities to the case of Thomas Dellow. This time the victim was a poor woman by the name of Catherine Creamer of Swan’s Court, Cowheel Alley in Golden Lane [‘Ah ha, here she is’, exclaims Raphael, ‘here is Catherine Creamer.’] who was begging in St. Paul’s churchyard with her infant twins in her arms, when she was approached by a woman who lured her away with promises of money, and then seized one of the two babies from its mother’s arms. Once again, the issuing of hand bills led to the discovery of the miscreant, and once again the child-thief proved to be the wife of a gullible common sailor, whose vessel was moored upon the Thames. But in this case justice prevailed, and the offender, one Sarah Stone, was sentenced to seven years’ transportation.
Raphael falls silent for a while, and then says, ‘That is it. I remember this story clearly now. This was much talked of at the time, this story of Catherine Creamer and Sarah Stone.’
But Adah, disconcerted by the abrupt end to the story, can only seize upon the word ‘twins.’ ‘Twins. Of course. Why did I not see this at once? Not a ghost but a twin.’
The Child’s Story
December 1821
MAMMA WAS ILL. SHE sat propped up in the big bed, her hands moving restlessly on the surface of the grey silk counterpane. Her hair, falling loose around her shoulders, had lost its shine. Her cheekbones protruded above her sunken cheeks, flushed with a strange colour.
‘Come closer, little Grazia,’ she said softly to the child. ‘Let Mamma touch your hair.’
But the child was afraid, and as she slowly approached, Mamma was seized with a fit of coughing, and turned her head away.
Sully took the child firmly by the shoulders. ‘Come away, dear,’ she said. ‘Mamma must rest now.’
The house, always quiet, seemed more silent than ever now. The child walked from one room to the other. She sat in the scullery and played at being a mouse. Then she wandered into the sitting room, where the fire was dead in the grate, but the golden clock still ticked on regardless, chiming the quarter hours. She looked through the long windows into the garden. She would have liked to go out, but the rain was falling as though it would never stop. The last time she walked down the pebble path and through the green gate at the far end, she had seen how the river below had grown swollen and brown, swallowing up the meadows on either bank.
The child heard the sound of a carriage in the driveway, and a sharp tap at the front door, then Sully’s rapid footsteps, and the sound of subdued voices.
‘She’s no better, Doctor,’ said Sully, ‘I am glad you came. I’m so afraid …’
The child picked up the big shell on top of the cabinet and held it to her ear. The roaring sounded louder than ever, not like the sea but like the sound of an angry river in flood. There was a fine bluish layer of dust on the top of the black lacquer cabinet, and when she put the shell back in its place, little filaments of dust drifted up into the still air.
After the doctor had left, the child waited to see if Sully would come to find her. She was feeling hungry. The golden clock chimed one o’clock, but no-one came. She walked softly
up the curving staircase and stood outside the closed door of Mamma’s bedroom. She could hear low voices inside, but could not hear what they were saying.
She was about to turn away when Sully’s voice behind the closed door suddenly cried out, ‘No! No! I cannot do it!’
She had never heard Sully speak to Mamma like that before.
‘You must,’ said Mamma, firmly but more quietly. ‘You must try to find her. It’s the only way.’
Suddenly frightened, the child ran down the stairs and back into the sitting room. She pressed her hands and face against the cool black surface of the cabinet. She ran her fingers over the objects on its surface. The painted Indian elephant gazed at her patiently with unwinking eyes. She picked up the white jade button engraved with its writhing dragon, took it to the window seat, and curled herself, as small as she could, into one corner behind the heavy brocade curtain, gazing out at the rain that swept in waves through the branches of the leafless trees beyond. A robin landed on a branch just outside the window, puffing its body to shake the rain from its feathers, and then flew away and disappeared over the garden wall.
‘We’re going in a carriage,’ said Sully, first thing the next morning. ‘You’d like to go on a carriage, wouldn’t you? You’ve never been in a horse carriage before, have you? At least, not that you’d remember.’
They were in the child’s bedroom, putting clothes into a portmanteau. The child picked up the white dress with the stiff lace collar, but Sully shook her head. ‘That’s too small for you now, dear. Besides, it will never fit in the bag. We’ll have enough difficulty shutting it as it is.’
There was something wrong with Sully’s face. It had gone a red blotchy colour, and her voice sounded strange, the way it sometimes did when she had a fit of sneezing.
The child had tucked the jade button into the waist of her petticoat. She could feel its round surface pressing into the skin of her stomach. It was uncomfortable, but comforting at the same time. Only she knew that it was there.
‘Go and say your goodbye to Mamma, dear,’ said Sully. ‘We’ll take a little journey, so you won’t be seeing her for a wee while.’
This time, Sully didn’t go with her into Mamma’s room. The room smelled of medicine and something strange, and the curtains were drawn. Mamma’s eyes were closed at first, so the child waited by the bed in the half-dark room, uncertain whether to speak. She touched the grey silk counterpane very cautiously, feeling its coolness. There was a big porcelain jug beside Mamma’s bed, and a cup with dark liquid in it. Then Mamma’s eyelids flickered, and her eyes opened just a little, as though she were still half asleep. She didn’t raise her head, but her hands fluttered on the silk bedspread like butterflies. Mamma was smiling.
‘Luce della mia vita. Luce della mia vita,’ said Mamma.
‘Goodbye, Mamma,’ said the child.
It was warm inside the carriage. Sully and the child had a fur rug wrapped around their legs. The seats of the carriage were made of red leather, shiny and cracked with age. There were two horses, one dappled grey, and the other the colour of ginger biscuits. The child liked the ginger horse better. She liked the way it tossed its head, making the harness jingle. At first she looked out of the window at the tall houses and the bare leafless trees on either side of the road and the glimpses of the river beyond, but soon the creaking and rocking of the carriage made her feel sleepy. She dreamed that she was being held in someone’s arms, and the person holding her was running. Her body was rocked back and forth, faster and faster, and as they whirled round a corner in the street, they came face to face with an elephant, which winked at them …
It was the coachman’s voice that woke her.
‘That’s the start of Golden Lane market,’ he barked, glancing back over his shoulder at his passengers. ‘That’s as close as I can take you. You’ll have to find the rest of the way on foot.’
Golden Lane. The name sounded full of light, but when the coachman opened the door of the carriage to let them alight, the child felt the blast of cold wind outside, and did not want to go out into the strange noisy street where nothing seemed to be made of gold.
‘Come along, my dear,’ said Sully. ‘Wake up. Down you come. Help me carry the bag.’
Outside in the street, everything was grey and icy, and the world swirled around her like an eddy in the river. There was roaring and shouting and banging and clattering. A cart pulled by huge black dray horses thundered past, laden with barrels. The ground was littered with horse dung and cabbage leaves. There were people everywhere. Strange people. Staring people.
People shouting, ‘Mind out of my way there!’
‘Who’ll buy my fine apples?’
‘George! George! What you got in that sack of yours?’
‘Twelfth-day cakes! Buy my twelfth-day cakes’.
Wherever she looked, there were people and houses and walls and doors. An ancient crone with a black bonnet and a withered hand sat grinning in a doorway. Cows were mooing and milk-churns clanging in a dairy, where the sickly smell of warm milk mingled with the smells of dung and yeast and soot from a hundred chimneys. Through the window of the building next door, the child could see a pinch-faced tailor with his mouth full of pins, staring at an armless, half made jacket. The armless jacket seemed as maimed and frightening as the black-bonneted crone. Until now, the child had known only the stillness of the house and the garden, and of the quiet evening walks along the lane through the woods. This world of Golden Lane seemed more terrifying than any tale of dark magic from a storybook.
‘Hold my hand tight,’ said Sully.
The child wanted to close her eyes, but she had to keep them open to watch the ground she was walking on. They passed a dead rat, with something spilling out of its stomach, dark red like patterns on the carpet in Mamma’s parlour.
‘Can you tell me the way to Cowheel Alley?’ said Sully to a passing woman carrying a basket full of chickens. The woman jerked her free thumb in the general direction of the dairy, and then spat into the dirt at their feet.
Round behind the dairy, the streets grew narrow. Bricked up windows stared blindly into the alleyway.
‘Wait here just a moment,’ said Sully, letting go of the child’s hand. ‘I won’t be two minutes.’
The child’s mouth was dry with horror. She wanted to say, ‘Don’t leave me,’ but no sound came out.
Three children were squatting by the side of the alleyway, throwing something like small handfuls of pebbles into the air and watching them fall on the ground. As Sully hurried off through a narrow archway into the courtyard beyond, all three looked up and stared at the child with strange expressions on their faces.
The child closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears to shut out the world with all its sights and sounds. She thought about the dragon button, pressed against her skin under the band of her petticoat. She waited, staring at the darkness behind her own eyelids, for what seemed like eternity.
Then a hand tapped her softly on the shoulder, and she turned her head.
And opened her eyes. And saw that her imaginings were reality, and her dreams had become flesh.
Adah’s Story
March 1822
Golden Lane
SHE CHOPS THE TURNIPS hastily into rather clumsy chunks and throws them into the big cauldron of soup for their supper. The fire is burning strongly in the hearth, and she has brought in a scuttle of coal from the shed at the back, and scrubbed her hands roughly clean of coal dust. At least the tenement into which they have moved is so small that there’s not much cleaning to be done, though it is difficult to find space to hang all the washing, and Adah worries about the grey mouldy marks that keep appearing on the back wall. She has gulped down her mug of scalding tea too quickly, and can feel a blister of scalded skin forming inside her cheek.
Sally has the croup and is curled up under a blanket, unusually subdued and snivelling.
‘Don’t go out, Mammy,’ she whines.
‘I won’t
be long, my love. Annie, keep an eye on her, will you? I should be back by six or not long after.’
But no sooner has she set out to walk to Golden Lane than Adah finds her way blocked by a diminutive but furiously angry figure. It is the little wizened man who sells fruit and vegetables on the corner of Blossom Street. She has passed him several times, and once (out of sympathy) even bought a string of mouldering onions from him, but has never learnt his name and never seen him standing up before. Today he is on his feet, and she sees that his thin legs are like crooked sticks: one sagging outward at the knee, the other with the lower leg bent as a strange angle. The poor man can barely walk.
His face, usually ashy pale, is now scarlet with rage, and his tufty grey hair stands on end. He is pointing a shaking hand towards the far end of the street.
‘That varmint! That wretched thieving urchin!’ he yells. ‘She’s gone and stolen my apples. Catch her! Catch her!’
Adah can just see the blurred shape of a small child who is running at full tilt across the cobbles and has already reached the far end of Blossom Street. There is no-one else around, and the poor man is obviously incapable of running himself, so Adah hitches up her own skirts and sets off in pursuit of the fleeing figure, but has only gone a few dozen yards when she realizes that the chase is futile. The little girl is so quick on her feet that she has disappeared round a corner before her pursuer is a third of the way down the street. Adah can no longer run as fast as she could in her younger days. By the time she gets to the end of Blossom Street, the girl will already have vanished into the thronging crowds on Bishopsgate, or into the maze of alleyways beyond.
But the image of that small fleeing figure remains burned into her brain as she walks slowly and breathlessly back towards the street vendor, who stands, still cursing and shaking his arms in the air, beside his depleted pile of apples. The apple-thief is just the height of the dead child who was brought to the courthouse; just the size of the dark shadow she saw flitting along the nighttime street beneath her bedroom window.
Searcher Page 6
