Searcher

by T J Alexander

  Ever since Raphael read her the stories of Harriet Magnis and Catherine Creamer, one word has preyed incessantly on Adah’s mind: twins. Not one child, but two. Two children, of just the same age and appearance, who have perhaps run away or been stolen away together. But only one child is dead. If there were two of them, then maybe the other is still out here somewhere, lost, abandoned, terrified, confused.

  ‘You stupid, stupid woman,’ Adah berates herself silently, as she straightens her skirt and the bonnet that has slipped sideways on her head as she ran. ‘To believe in ghosts, at your age.’

  It is dreadful to think that the little scratching she heard at the door may have been the sounds, not of a ghoul or ghost, but of a poor lost child, alone in the cold and dark night. But for her own ridiculous fears and superstitions, Adah might have opened the door at once, let the child in, fed and comforted her.

  ‘Call the officers,’ yells the street seller, still trembling with anger. ‘I’ll have her arrested. The varmint. Thieving from a poor man like me. That’s the third time she’s done it. The last two times it was carrots. Now it’s my apples!’

  ‘Just a moment,’ says Adah.

  She opens the bag she is carrying over one arm and carefully extracts a roll of paper, tied up with a frayed blue ribbon. Unrolling the scroll, which contains Annie’s ink sketch of the dead child, she holds it up for the old man to see.

  ‘Is this what she looked like, the girl who stole your carrots and apples?’

  The man squints and peers closely at the curling page. His rheumy eyes seem to be almost as blind as his legs are crooked.

  ‘Hmmm,’ he mutters. ‘Well, her hair’s not like that. It’s all long and wild, like a little savage. But the face … Maybe. Yes. I think that looks like her … Mouth’s not quite right, though.’

  Adah carefully rolls up the paper again and returns it to her bag, and turns to set off towards Golden Lane.

  ‘Oy,’ shouts the man. ‘Where are you going? Call an officer! Arrest that urchin!’

  Adah turns back reluctantly, and then fishes in her bag and brings out a threepenny piece which she put on a corner of the poor man’s crate.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘I am the Searcher of the Liberty. I’ll find that child.’

  Adah makes her way along Primrose Street, peering into every corner she passes. Wherever she looks, she half expects to see a face identical to that of the dead girl staring at her from a doorway. But she sees no familiar faces, nor even many children of the right age. Meanwhile, her mind again rehearses the story that has been running through her brain for the past three days. If she tells herself the story over and over again, somehow perhaps the stray pieces will come together, and then everything will begin to make sense. But the pieces never seem to match up. There is always something that doesn’t fit. It is not so much that there is a gap in the picture, but rather that there always seems to be one piece too many.

  There were two children: Catherine Creamer’s twins. One child was stolen by a sailor’s wife almost eight years ago, when she was just a baby, but the kidnapper was caught and sent for trial, so surely the baby would have been returned to the Creamer family. Yet Catherine would have endured days, perhaps months, of fear and grief, from the time her baby was stolen to the time it was returned. The memory of that fear and grief could explain the mother’s frenzy – her certainty, when it all seemed to be happening again, that her child or children had once more been stolen away, perhaps even by the same miscreant.

  Could two identical twins have run away together, or been lured away and then escaped from the clutches of a would-be child stealer, and found themselves lost in an unfamiliar part of town? Could they both have taken shelter in the ruined stables behind Magpie Alley, and then one of them, little Rosie (or perhaps it is not Rosie, but the other still nameless twin) tripped in the dark and struck her head on the stone and died? Might the second twin – confused, frightened, perhaps not even recognizing the sight of death when she saw it – have placed her cloak over the dead child’s body to keep her warm? Worse still, might the sounds that Adah heard in the abandoned stables have been the sounds of a child, cowering frightened and confused in the darkness?

  If so – oh, the poor living twin! How terrible it would be to have lost her sister, and to find herself alone in this strange world, not knowing where to ask or who to turn to for help. Like a ghost indeed.

  It all makes sense. But something does not fit.

  The hateful, sneering voice of the innkeeper at the Green Dragon still rings in Adah’s ears. She can hear him mimicking Catherine Creamer’s voice: ‘They’ve stolen my child again, they’ve stolen my child again! Take me out to the ship!’

  Not ‘my children’, but ‘my child’. If twins had gone missing together, why did Mrs Creamer not say ‘my children’? Why only ‘my child’? Why speak of ‘my little Rosie’ and never mention the other twin’s name?

  Is it possible that little Rosie ran away from home first, and her twin went in search of her after Catherine Creamer herself had already set out on her frenzied quest for her missing child? Yes, that could be it. But when did Rosie go missing? And when did Catherine set out in search of her daughter? Adah curses herself for not having asked more questions in Shadwell, while she had the chance.

  The shadows are lengthening as she passes the Artillery Ground, and she can see how the limbs of trees torn down by the winter gales still lie scattered on the grass. But today, for the first time since the start of the year, there is a faint feeling of approaching spring in the air. The sky is clear and dappled with pale clouds, and along the edges of the playing field, the plump green spikes of crocuses and daffodils are pushing their way up through the earth. After the rainy winter, spring will come early this year.

  Adah’s tongue probes the scalded spot in her mouth, which is not as painful as she thought it was going to be. She quickens her step towards her destination. If there are any answers to be found to her questions, they must lie there, with the surviving members of the Creamer family. She recites the address once more to herself to make sure that it is firmly fixed in her mind: Swan’s Court, Cowheel Alley, Golden Lane.

  Beyond the Artillery Ground, Adah passes the corner of Bunhill Fields, where William and his parents and grandparents lie buried. But today she is not thinking of them. Instead, she thinks of the small child buried in the unmarked grave in the darkest and outermost corner of the graveyard.

  Rosie – is that your name? Or are you the other child, Rosie’s twin? Or some other child altogether?

  Then she turns into Chiswell Street, and the leaf-shadowed silence of park and graveyard give way to the clamour of the city again. The street is hemmed in by the great soot-streaked walls of the brewery, and Adah’s senses are overpowered by the smell of yeast and hops. The air rumbles and reverberates with the roar of the brewery and the clatter of the long line of dray horses pulling their empty drays back into the brewery at the end of the day’s deliveries.

  By the time she reaches the Golden Lane markets, darkness is starting to fall, and many of the stall-holders are already packing up their wares, but the streets and alleyways are still crowded with people. Adah passes a fortune-teller’s stall, where a shabbily-dressed woman and her little son are peering intently at the stall-holder’s wheel to see what their future holds. A tinker, his shoulders laden with pots and pans, pushes past, shouting over the clattering and clanging of his wares, ‘Who’ll buy my saucepans? Last chance for the day!’

  Adah stops to ask a boot mender the way to Cowheel Alley. The man scratches his balding pate with a grimy hand and then gestures towards to the end of the lane.

  ‘I’m new here meself so I can’t be sure,’ he says, in a strong Irish accent, ‘but I think it’s somewhere over yonder, behind the dairy.’

  The dairy, with its mooing cows and cloying smell of warm milk, takes Adah’s thoughts back to the days of her childhood, when her father would send her out with a pail to fetch milk fr
om the Fulham dairy. She remembers the sense of pride and importance she felt, aged perhaps seven or eight – just the age of that dead child – as she strode down the narrow way between high banks covered with cow-parsley, pail in hand, and as she watched the thick creamy milk froth into the pail, and then solemnly handed the dairyman the penny that her father had tied into a knot in her shawl for safe-keeping.

  Behind the Golden Lane dairy, she finds herself in a confusing rabbit-warren of little narrow alleyways, cast deep in shadow by the fading light. Here and there a candle glitters behind a grimy uncurtained window. To her right, on one side of a narrow archway, she can just make out the painted words WAN’S COUR. The first and last letters have been weathered away by the years. Inside the archway is an enclosed cobbled space, its pavement slippery with moss. As Adah enters the courtyard, a door swings open and a woman flings the contents of a pail of slops out onto the cobbles. The windows next door have been boarded up, but beyond, at the far end of Swan’s Court, Adah can see a gleam of light behind a partially open window on an upper floor, where washing hangs from a pole above a rickety front door. She goes to the door and hammers on it as loudly as she can, and almost at once, the window above is flung wide open and a woman’s face appears in the gloom above.

  ‘What is it?’ shouts the woman.

  ‘I’m looking for the Creamer family. I heard they live in this court,’ says Adah.

  ‘They do,’ replies the woman. ‘At least, they did. You won’t find them. They’re gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’ asks Adah.

  ‘Liverpool,’ snaps the woman, slamming the window shut.

  Adah feels her heart sink: the answer to this mystery is disappearing again into darkness.

  Desperately, she hammers on the door once more, shouting up at the window, ‘Please! I need to talk to you!’

  Rather to her surprise, the window opens again and the woman’s head reappears above her.

  ‘What now?’ barks the woman.

  ‘Please,’ implores Adah. ‘I have some very important questions about the Creamer family. I must speak to you.’

  There is a loud clack as, without answering, the woman slams the window shut again.

  Adah stands on the doorstep, feeling lost. It seems futile to try knocking a third time. A large marmalade cat slinks out from the neighbouring doorway and starts to rub its furry body against Adah’s legs, and then to lick her left boot. She is tempted to kick it away, but lacks the heart to do so.

  Then suddenly the door swings open, firelight from the room within floods out into the street, and there stands the woman. She has a face as big as a cooked ham, which is surmounted by a wild mass of grey curls, and she is wearing what seems to be a man’s greatcoat tied around the waist with a length of red tasseled rope that looks as though it came from a bell-pull.

  ‘You’d best come in. Never mind the mess,’ says the woman.

  The room inside is indeed one of the untidiest that Adah has ever seen. Every table and chair and spare corner of floor in the cramped space seems to be covered with bulging sacks and piles of ancient clothing of every colour of the rainbow. Perhaps the woman is a rag picker, thinks Adah. There is a slightly rank smell in the air, but the fire is burning brightly in the hearth and a blackened kettle, hung over the flames, is boiling merrily. The woman lifts an armful of clothes from a stool and dumps them unceremoniously onto one of the random piles on the floor.

  ‘Sit down, sit down. Make yourself at home,’ she says, ‘It’s not often I have visitors these days.’

  ‘You must know the Creamer family well, Mrs …’ hazards Adah.

  ‘Murray’s my name,’ says the woman breezily. ‘Elizabeth, but you can call me Lizzie. Everyone does. Lord, yes. I’ve known poor Catherine Creamer for years, ever since we were both newly-weds.’

  For an uneasy moment Adah wonders if the woman knows about her neighbour’s untimely death, but her doubts are soon allayed, for Lizzie Murray continues with barely a breath, ‘Poor Catherine. Drowned in the river I heard. What a terrible end! How can the good Lord send one family so many misfortunes? First little Molly taken away, then little Rosie goes missing, and now Catherine. They may not be angels, them Creamers, but they never deserved this. Catherine, she was never quite right in the head again after her baby Molly was stolen. She kept thinking that child-stealer Sarah Stone was going to come back and snatch her other children. Many’s the time I’ve said to her, “They’ve sent that Sarah Stone to Botany Bay, where she belongs. She ain’t going to come back here no more, dear,” but she’d never listen. And then when little Rosie vanished – just before last Christmas it was, when we had all that rain and them floods by the river – well, it seemed like poor Catherine was losing her wits altogether. I said to her, “Just you wait and see. Little Rosie’ll be home any day. Run off for a lark, she has, just like my Tom did when he was that age, the rascal.” He had me that worried. But sure enough, he was back again two weeks later, my Tom, soon as he started getting cold and hungry. “Your Rosie’ll walk right in through that door any day now, you mark my words,” I said. But no, Catherine wouldn’t listen. Kept saying that the woman who stole little Molly had come back again.’

  She pauses for a moment as a fit of coughing robs her of breath, and then continues. ‘It was the strangest thing, you know. She kept saying said she’d seen that child-stealer again, right here in the street, the very day little Rosie vanished. “She’s come back and stolen our Rosie. It’s God’s punishment for my sins,” she kept saying. “Nonsense, my dear,” says I. “You’ve done no wrong. You’re no more a sinner than the rest of us. And that Sarah Stone is ten thousand miles away in the colonies, getting the punishment she deserves.” But Catherine was past listening by then. She had to go out to the docks, day after day, hunting for Rosie. But she never found her, did she? Just fell in the river and drowned, God save her. Poor Matthew (that’s Catherine’s husband, but no doubt you’ll know that), well, he was in such despair when he heard the news. Didn’t know where to turn. So as soon as they’d laid Catherine in her grave last week, he was off to his family in Liverpool. I said to him, “You should bide here,” I said, “Who knows but little Rosie might yet come home looking for you. She doesn’t know her own mother’s dead, poor dear. You should stay in case she comes home.” But he wasn’t having none of it. Rosie’d been gone for almost two months by then, and he’d given up hope that she’d come home. As soon as Catherine was buried, he was off to Liverpool where he comes from, taking the other children with him, except the eldest boy, young Matt. He’s still about here somewhere, as far as I know, but you’ll be lucky to find him. Always was a harum-scarum rascal, that one—’

  ‘Mrs Murray,’ Adah breaks into the torrential flow of words. ‘I am afraid I am the bearer of bad tidings. My name is Adah Flint, and I am the Searcher of the Liberty of Norton Folgate. We had the body of a dead child brought to our watch-house last month. I fear it may have been the body of little Rosie Creamer.’ As she speaks, she bends down to her bag and brings out Annie’s portrait of the dead girl. ‘This is a likeness of that child. Can you tell me, does this look like Rosie?’

  As soon as Lizzie Murray sees the unfurled portrait, she gives a little shriek and, snatching up a ragged apron at random from the pile of clothing nearest to her, holds it to her face.

  ‘Oh dear Lord in heaven! That’s Rosie Creamer as ever was! Oh no! Not poor little Rosie too! Brought to the watch-house! Never tell me she was murdered!’

  ‘No, no,’ says Adah gently, ‘nothing like that. It seems it was just an accident. The poor child had been wandering the streets and sleeping in an old stable, and she tripped and hit her head on a stone. I’m so sorry to distress you, Mrs Murray.’

  Tears are running down the other woman’s face, and the hand that clutches the tattered apron is shaking.

  ‘Oh my dear Lord! Poor Rosie dead too! What will poor Matthew say when he hears the news?’

  ‘Mrs Murray,’ says Adah, ‘do you know h
ow I can contact him? Did he leave an address of the place where he has gone?’

  But the woman shakes her head, and smears away her tears.

  ‘Liverpool. That’s all he said. Didn’t leave no address. He never was much of a one for reading or writing, Matthew Creamer. I suppose young Matt, his son, might know where they’ve gone, but I don’t know where he’s got to, either. I can speak to them if any of them come back, but God alone knows if they ever will. Oh Lord! It’s one tragedy after another. I blame that harlot Sarah Stone for this. If she hadn’t stolen little Molly, all them years back, none of this would have happened. They should have hanged her, if you ask me, or worse. The gallows was too good for the likes of her. They hang ’em for stealing a chicken or a silk handkerchief, don’t they? Why don’t they hang ’em for stealing a child?’

  Lizzie is seized again with a fit of weeping that gives way to wracking coughs.

  Adah waits for a moment or two for the wave of grief to subside, and then asks, ‘Mrs Murray, can you tell me about the infant who was stolen? Little Molly. She was Rosie’s twin, wasn’t she? Were you here at the time when she was stolen?’

  ‘Oh heavens, yes,’ replies Lizzie, ‘I was here that very day. I’ll never forget it. Out in the street, I was, looking for my eldest, Tom, who was up to some mischief again. I saw poor Catherine walk into the lane that very morning with her two little twin babies in her arms. Such bonny babes, they were, little Molly and little Rosie: very alike except Molly was a bit bigger than her twin, and her hair a bit paler and thicker. Just three or four weeks old, the pair of them. And Susannah, Catherine’s older girl, was with them too. Four or five years old she would have been at the time; little Susannah, running along behind them. Well, poor Matthew Creamer, he was down on his luck that year. Hadn’t had no work for weeks, and had gone off north for a few weeks to look for a job. And Catherine had all them mouths to feed. Twins had come as a shock, of course. She hadn’t expected two new mouths at once. So she’d been going out begging. Some days she’d come back with next to nothing, but some days she’d been down to St. Paul’s Cathedral and sat on the steps there, and the people going in and out had given her a shilling or more. “I’m off to St. Paul’s again, Lizzie,” she said that day.’