Children of the Tide

by Jon Redfern

  “Done then?” asked Nell.

  “Not even a goblin could find them,” whispered Catherine.

  Little Mag shivered. “Me, I hate the likes of goblins. Too many of’em for my needs.”

  Catherine smiled, reached over and patted Little Mag on her shoulder.

  “If Matron comes, let us sit so still only our arms move,” Nell said.

  “She’ll fart at us,” Little Mag giggled.

  “Dog farts,” squealed all three.

  Nell and Little Mag began to mend. Catherine threaded her needle and thought back to her village near Frogmore. She pictured again the bright carriage of the old princess riding up the main street and on toward her grand house. She pictured the slim figure of her dear uncle, his nose and chin so like his sister’s, Catherine’s sweet mother. How Catherine had loved Uncle’s jokes and especially his nicknames. Her childhood nickname for him was just a simple sound and she began to whisper it to herself in time to her stitching hand.

  “You dreamin’?” asked Little Mag.

  “Remembering. ’Tis nothing,” said Catherine. “About my darling uncle.”

  “Tell us the story again,” asked Little Mag. Catherine put down her needle and the sheet.

  “He was my mother’s brother. So kind, so gentle. He told me once he had been brought up in a workhouse. A cruel place.”

  “No worse than this,” grumped Nell, pulling at her thread.

  “He found a trade, loved to read books from the village lending library. When my Poppa went off to serve in his regiment, Uncle always came to live with us. He would clean our house, cook. And always buy me things.”

  “He bought you a pony, didn’t he?” marvelled Little Mag.

  “Oh, yes. A sad little thing. He reminded me of Uncle.”

  “Don’t be daft,” sniffed Nell.

  “I mean, he was gentle and quiet. Uncle liked to read by himself. One time I caught him weeping at a story he had read.”

  “Sounds like a soft head to me,” Nell scowled, lifting up her sheet to check her stitching.

  “I like the part about your mother and him,” whispered Little Mag.

  Catherine had to wipe her eyes before going on. “Yes, Momma always said he suffered so much, especially inside his head. He was too tender of feeling, she always said. He could break so easily. She saw how Uncle felt pained when Poppa teased him too much.”

  Matron Pickens stomped so suddenly into the laundry room the three girls jumped. She was dragging a small weeping boy behind her. “This be a weaklin’.” she explained. “Master says he has the cough so cannot go choppin.’ You filth here, you tend ‘im. Mind, no tweakin’ no gigglin’,” she said, her slash of a mouth breaking into a dry chuckle. Matron Pickens marched off. The boy fell to the floor. He coughed and coughed until Catherine raised him up, dried his forehead with the hem of her shift and sat him down on a basket of soiled sheets. Nell, meantime, found a bucket and pumped it full of water. She hauled it over to the boy where Little Mag washed down his face and made him take a drink. The boy caught his breath.

  “I shall always thank you,” the boy said, his voice soft like the feeble blowing of a whistle. “My mother and father died in a fire,” he said. Then without pause he slumped over and fell asleep on the mound of sheets.

  “He’ll be carried out soon,” Nell said, her voice without sentiment.

  “Nell, sssh,” Catherine said. “He may hear you.”

  “Yes,” said Little Mag. “Like a goblin hears you from under the floor.”

  “Mend,” Nell said, hitting the other two on their wrists. “Mend, and think of our path. The open fields.”

  Catherine and Little Mag nodded. “I love your story,” Little Mag then said in a low voice.

  “Me, too,” replied Catherine. “I hope Uncle is alive and well.”

  “To be sure,” said Little Mag.

  “Work on, you two,” snapped Nell. The three girls bent over their sheets. The little boy moaned in his sleep as Catherine quickly pulled her thread into a steady rhythm. She let thoughts of her uncle fade as she concentrated on the day ahead.

  “We got little time left in here,” she then said to Nell and Little Mag.

  “So we do, Catherine,” Nell said, her voice full of determination. “Little time before we are free!”

  On Tuesday night past, Catherine Smeets had sat alone very late, a quill in her right hand. There’d been enough fire from the hearth in the ward for her to see. Her chilly legs were spread out on the cold floor beside an inkwell and a piece of soiled paper, items allowed her by the head matron. Catherine read and wrote well for a girl of ten years: her uncle had taught her when she was four. Every Tuesday, she would write a letter. Not a real one. Not one she could actually post. It was one she composed even though she had no pennies for stamps and no address. It was always to her dear uncle, a pretend letter to him to tell him about herself, as if he were still with her, as if he were alive. Catherine remembered the terrible things done to him. The constable dragging him to the public prison cell in the village square, the bruises around his eyes from the fists and truncheons. She remembered running out in the night and handing him through the prison bars a letter she had carefully written herself. He had read it and held it to his heart and thanked her. He had put it in his pocket. “I will guard it forever,” he had said. Catherine hoped one day he would read all the letters she had written to him.

  Matron Pickens had once said her uncle was a convicted felon, words Catherine did not quite understand. Matron Pickens once said he had been hanged and quartered, but Catherine did not believe such nonsense. He was her only hope. She recalled seeing him in the village’s courtroom standing before the man in the long grey wig. She was told her uncle was to sail away on a ship. Perhaps the ship sank, but Catherine would never allow that idea into her head. All her pretend letters she kept under her pallet mattress, wrapped in brown paper. No one touched them. Not even Matron Pickens. On this Tuesday night she wrote a short letter since she was very tired:

  Dearest Uncle,

  Such cold winds today. I have not much to tell! I worked in the latrines all the morning. I don’t mind. Dear Mama would hate the smell. Nell says I am very strong. She is my best friend. I miss you so much, dear Uncle. You are on the sea now? Will you see elephants? Will you see strange beasts under the world? I pray for you. God will be kind! I must to bed.

  Your Catherine

  Chapter Six

  Lardle and Co.

  At this same hour in fashionable Bedford Square, a distinguished-looking gentleman opened up the back door to Number Sixteen. The house was a three-storey brick affair with an iron gate and silk curtains at the windows. Number Sixteen lay a world away from Drury Lane, where the St. Giles Workhouse stood in early afternoon gloom. The gentleman’s name was Josiah Benton, a physician and regular church-goer. He had not slept the whole night. He looked again at the clock in the hall behind him. “Where in blazes is the filthy man?” he mumured to himself. He felt a constriction in his throat. He brushed down his velvet waistcoat, his front pocket stuffed with coins ready to pay his hireling, Mr. Lardle, if the wretch would ever return from his search.

  Dr. Josiah Benton was a proud man, highly respected for his accurate diagnoses of his patients’ symptoms. Today, like all others in his work week, he had to ready himself for the exigencies of his surgery. No doubt, given his restless night, he would have to fill his stomach with coffee to keep his mind alert. A solitary gentleman one year short of forty, he had enjoyed being the son of a wealthy father and had learned much from his fine education; he had taken full advantage of his youthful travels, relishing the pleasures of drink and rich food. Fortunate he had been, but he was plagued these days by a pervading loneliness ever since his wife had decided to leave him two years before. Dear Dorothea. She had accused him of unnatural appetites, a phrase which frequently had amused Dr. Benton. For without doubt, Josiah Benton was a man of peculiar passions. He frequently gave in to his penchant for s
ecret games — behaviour which his wife argued had undermined her notions of a proper marriage.

  The one true tragedy in Dr. Benton’s life was his lack of children. Dorothea had been barren. The absence of offspring had been another motive in the dissolution of their marriage.

  “Ah, dear little ones,” Dr. Benton now sighed, the chilly air catching his breath. Pushing thoughts of his wife from his mind, Dr. Benton stepped back inside Number Sixteen. He went downstairs to the area kitchen in the basement where his cook was preparing his lunch. This sudden change of venue lifted his spirits. He nodded to Mrs. Wells, then walked up the servants’ stairs into his surgery and looked through the list of patients he was to greet within the hour. His was a thin, well-formed body, carefully nourished except for the occasional glass of sherry and a monthly visit, incognito, to one of the opium houses in Soho. He brushed his waistcoat again, then with sudden delight marched out of his panelled office. He had heard, at last, the light tapping on the back door.

  “No need,” he said to his eager butler who was rushing to raise the latch. “I shall attend,” Dr. Benton said. In fact, he must attend, given the business at hand. Of course, the hour was too late now for him to take advantage. If in fact the scum man had been able to do his duty. Often, the man arrived empty-handed. All Dr. Benton knew of him was that he was poor, and was once an orphan brought up in a workhouse. Pulling open the back door, the doctor viewed his hireling.

  “The hour, Mr. Lardle,” scolded Dr. Benton. “I have been up all the night. I must to my surgery soon.”

  The bedraggled fellow bowed his head in reply. He wore long unwashed hair; his face was masked by a poorly kept beard; a large black hat — a dredgerman’s hat, the doctor surmised — covered much of his face, and if truth be told, he so often arrived in the dark that Dr. Benton had never had opportunity to look long or close enough at the man’s rough features. This morning his hands were smudged. To the doctor’s eye they suggested Lardle had been washing in coal dust. As always, the man had a stink; more likely his rotten teeth or his unwashed torso, Dr. Benton concluded.

  “Nought to yer taste, Doctor Benton.” Lardle’s head hung low, his face shadowed by his hat.

  “What in blazes do you mean? None on the streets, by the bridges?”

  “ Fled, sir. Dashed away when I comes close.”

  “Donkey,” the doctor retorted. “You’ve smashed your knuckles?”

  “Yes, sir. All night I been up and down, in and out. Searched every which ways, I did. Found two but not right they were, sir. Not for you. Scarred one of ’em was, not right. Not a fit, sir.”

  “And the nanny houses?”

  “As I been tellin’ you, sir, they keep ’em indoors. Up the stairs. You must go to ’em.”

  “How many times have I told you, Lardle, that is impossible.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the man in a hoarse whisper.

  “I suppose you want coin for your trouble tonight?”

  “If it be no bother, sir,” replied the man, trembling in the afternoon drizzle. “And if yer wishes it, I found one last minute, near Covent Garden.” The dirty man raised his left hand and pointed to the brick archway leading into the courtyard of Dr. Benton’s private lot. A woman in a bonnet, a face soured by poverty and illness. Damp feathers in her bonnet, hands gloved in shredded muslin.

  “You are a mad dog,” snapped Dr. Benton. “Why bring me a scull, sir?”

  Mr. Lardle signalled to the woman with his hand. She stepped forward and pulled with her a short, light-haired girl, no older than thirteen, thin, rouged, her tattered dress made of blue cotton. “Says her daughter is a good ’un, sir. Makes her mum a few coin a day for food. Been at it a couple o’ years now.”

  “Good God, Lardle.”

  Dr. Benton stepped into the courtyard, waving the two figures to go back under the arch. He surveyed the upper and lower windows of his house to be sure there were no gawking house maids peering down at his doings. In the dimness of the archway, Dr. Benton examined the face of the young girl. She had been pretty but life had already hardened her face and taken two of her front teeth. The girl’s mother stretched out her hand. “For my trouble, guvnor, if you’d be so pleased.”

  “Come here,” Dr. Benton called to Mr. Lardle, who came hobbling over to the archway.

  “Never humiliate me nor women of this ilk ever again, Lardle, and never at this daylight hour. You know what I want. You have done it before. When you search, you must put effort into it. Pay these pathetic creatures and then get yourself off to home.”

  “But sir,” Lardle said, “I ain’t got but tuppence.”

  Dr. Josiah Benton grasped the coins in his pocket and tossed them toward the man. “Take these and go away,” he commanded before turning and moving back toward his back door. As he entered the house, Dr. Benton could hear the two street females giggling in a mocking fashion as they bent down to grasp the coins. “Come away, come away,” Mr. Lardle growled at the two of them. From the kitchen window, Dr. Benton watched them go and gave out a sigh of relief. He despised the tone his voice had taken, but it was the only way to deal with such people. Mr. Lardle most times could be trusted to be discrete. As long as he was paid.

  “Sir?” said a female voice behind him. Dr. Benton turned to see his cook holding a wooden spoon.

  “Your luncheon, sir, is ready,” she said.

  “Good,” snapped Dr. Benton.

  The woman gave a quick curtsey as Dr. Josiah Benton made his way toward the dining room. Sitting down alone, he said grace. An ache of despair filled his chest; such disappointment after his night vigil. “Now what to do?” he asked himself. “How desperate must I become? What must I do to find another?” he whispered, his mind full of doubt.

  Chapter Seven

  A Coincidence of Catherines

  Inspector Owen Endersby’s first words on meeting Sergeant Caldwell at Fleet Lane Station House were precise. “We have before us, sir, a coincidence of Catherines.”

  The two men shook hands as professional gentlemen and stepped inside the arched portal of the station. From within came the sounds of men’s voices. Doors were opened and shut, but the sense of calm that pervaded the halls relieved Endersby after the panic and clamour in Shoe Lane. Caldwell had arrived at five minutes past one with the look of a man who needed a mug of beer. However, the business of the investigation was of greater importance for the moment and so his sergeant listened, eyes wide with disbelief, to what Endersby told of the murder in Shoe Lane, the coroner’s session, and the frightening comparisons to the crime in St. Giles.

  “There is a pattern, I fear, Caldwell, which presages a repetition of this foul act.”

  “So it seems, sir,” Caldwell replied, his face showing concern. Endersby ruminated for a second then turned again to his sergeant-at-hand.

  “We must assume both our Catherines were carried out of the workhouse to afford the villain time to look more closely into their faces. What he found was not suitable to his purpose.”

  Caldwell then said: “But how can we alert all of London? Workhouses abound, as do the houses of correction.”

  “Sergeant, ‘this sore task will not divide the Sunday from the week.’ Mr. Hamlet, once again, Caldwell. There is much we must do! We shall set a strategy. First, we need to convince Superintendent Borne of its necessity.”

  “Can we conclude a motive, sir?”

  “Well, Sergeant, I have come to think the villain not only wants to find a singular child, but that his two murders — so far — may be a sign, a signature act, in the same manner as a name written on paper. These two murders show us a planning mind.”

  Sergeant Caldwell pondered these words in silence while around him and his superior the halls of the station house continued to echo.

  “To protect the innocent, Caldwell, I suggest we first mark out the locations of all the workhouses within walking distance of St. Giles and Shoe Lane and give them warning. I assume our villain is poor, lacking the means to travel too
far, and he appears to have a halting limp. If he uses logic and if he has such intimate acquaintance with institutions of this kind, he might strike others in the most convenient fashion.”

  “It does seem likely, sir.”

  “Therefore, let us anticipate the monster. Sergeant, go into our registry of addresses within southern Finsbury district. We can draw out a circle of possible next ‘hits.’ Visit each institution and check the ledgers! The workhouses are required by law to record births and deaths and other pertinent business. Most certain, the first names of the males and females will be noted down. We cannot eliminate, however, a workhouse where the name of Catherine is not recorded. But we can warn matrons to be vigilant. When and if we find more Catherines, we must speak with each child as soon as possible.”

  “It is, sir, an uncommon name for the times. I have a question.”

  “Certainly, Sergeant.” By this time, Endersby and Caldwell had strolled into the inner courtyard of Fleet Lane Station House. It was a narrow enclosure inside what was centuries ago a medieval fortress. “Might our villain,” Caldwell asked, “become desperate enough to strike during daylight hours?”

  “Might he, indeed, Sergeant? Which would mean he may still be out in the streets, gaff in hand. With the workhouses opening their doors for deliveries of coal and food — it may be possible. We need to act with great speed.” Endersby’s mind began constructing mental bridges going here and there. Walking farther on, their hands held behind their backs, the two men circled in unison the perimeter of the courtyard. The smell of London wafted into the courtyard — sewer stink and the usual pungent odour of the Thames.