Children of the Tide

by Jon Redfern

  “Good morning to you, my lovely. Rest quiet, child,” he then said in a kindly voice, before locking the door behind him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  New Quarters

  Catherine Smeets sat up quickly. Her first breath pulled in the coarse cloth that encased her head, its ties in bulky knots too hard to undo.

  “Quiet, now. Rest child.”

  The woman’s voice sounded sharp at first, not unlike one of the matron’s at St. Pancras Workhouse. The cloth was untied; it rose from over Catherine’s head. Her eyes blinked at the morning light, which poured into the window of a small clean room. Catherine felt her stomach churn; she held back her tears; was she really alive or was this a dream? Worse, would she soon die at the hand of this tight-mouthed woman with shiny brushed hair and a golden ring on her finger? The woman stood before Catherine. She spoke again, this time her voice softer, like a mother’s: “I know you are neither dumb nor deaf, child. I see your eyes are curious as well. You may be in luck if you are obedient.”

  Catherine began to shiver. A door opened behind her. She turned and saw a younger woman in a starched white apron step into the room. In her hands she carried a tray. On it were a cup and saucer with blue birds painted on its surface. A plate covered with a silver dome sat next to a stack of buttered toast. “Put it here, please,” said the older woman, her gold ring catching the sunlight as she waved her hand toward a small table. “Come, child,” the older woman commanded. She took hold of Catherine’s thin hand. “My, you are a stick of a child. No doubt your ghastly frock is the uniform of a charity house.” Catherine was breathless. Her guts ached and her mouth watered. “Yes, hurry child. This is for you.” The dome was lifted from the plate. Two fried eggs shone yellow and slick. A piece of fried ham curled pink beside them. The woman in the apron poured perfumed tea into the cup and saucer. “Speak something at least, will you?” said the older woman. “I know you are able.”

  Catherine wiped her eyes. “Yes, Mistress,” she whispered.

  “There now, I was right. Now do not hold back. Hurry, child. There is much to do with you yet, and I cannot stretch my patience much longer.” Catherine gobbled the two eggs, gulped the hot tea, tore into two pieces of toast. Her mind now lost any fear for the moment as her stomach began to feel good. When had she last tasted such sweet, juicy ham? The older woman dismissed the servant. She then stood behind Catherine and watched her eat. “Manners, child, manners. Take your fork. Is this what our money pays for in these institutions? To turn young innocents such as you into ravenous wolves?” Catherine did not listen to the older woman’s prattle. It reminded her of the raspy nattering of Matron Pickens. Once she had finished, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “Oh, no, dear me,” the older woman cried. “Take this, take it in your hand. That’s it. Now ... oh, I see child, you can use a proper napkin. You are not such an urchin after all.”

  Catherine folded the napkin in spite and laid it beside the plate to show the witch — for now Catherine believed she had somehow ended up in a fairytale house with a witch who no doubt would soon lock her in a cage and feed her sweets until she burst with fat. The woman’s hand took hold of Catherine’s shoulder. “Stand up, child. You cannot dash away. I have had the servant turn the lock. Hurry, now.” The woman led Catherine toward a door. As she passed by the window Catherine spotted a well-kept courtyard. Dashing through it was a young man in a frock coat. He had thick hair. Catherine could not see his full face. “No gawking, child. If you are a bright one, in no time you shall grace the presence of the dead very well.”

  Catherine pulled back. The woman rushed toward her.

  “Leave me be, old hag!” Catherine yelled. The woman folded her hands in front of her. “I see,” she said with a cool tone. “You are an ingrate. Your stomach is full now. You have nothing to fear from me. Look ahead through that door. Tell me what you see?” Catherine looked around. She could smell steamy water. She remembered the copper tub she once bathed in at home in her snug village, her dear departed mother squeezing a sponge over her head. Oh, that this place could be a cottage in a dream, Catherine wished. The older woman had not budged from her position. A thin smile broke upon her lips. “Look, child. Tell me what you see.”

  Catherine allowed herself to take one step. There it was, sitting in the centre of the room. Beside it a chair. Hanging on the chair a large white sheet and a clean towel.

  “I see a bathtub, Mistress,” Catherine replied.

  “Yes, child. Ready and waiting for you. Now come along. Young Mary will bathe you and then bring you to me.”

  Reluctantly, yet eager for the pleasure of a warm bath, Catherine gave in. She entered the far room. The young girl helped Catherine out of her smock. She laughed a little. She whispered “hello” and took hold of Catherine’s hand. The water was clear, the copper bottom shiny. Catherine knelt down. Young Mary poured water from a jug. Soon suds filled the water. Mary’s hand was gentle. She hummed as she pressed the brush up and down Catherine’s dirt-smudged arms and legs.

  “Such a lucky one, you are, dear one,” Mary said, her words lilting, reminding Catherine of the Irish apple seller back home in her village. As she was dried, Catherine’s fears returned. Was Mary really an elf in disguise? Would she be like old Rumpelstiltskin in her uncle’s story and demand a reward, or blind her? These thoughts began to grow until Catherine was shivering. “What’s this?” said Mary. “Here, take this. You shake like a frightened pony.” From her pocket, Mary pulled out a toffee wrapped in red paper. “Go on, silly one, take a chew. You’re thinking it’s poisoned?” Mary laughed. She went to a chest and pulled out a fresh white under-frock and helped Catherine put it on before buttoning up the back.

  “Follow along now, by me.”

  Mary lifted a ring of keys and opened a door leading into a dark passageway. Onward, up a set of stairs, she led Catherine into a room full of cupboards. “Sit down, dear.” Mary pulled open one of the cupboards. She pulled down a box. Walking across the room, she whistled as if she were merrily sewing. How cheerful she was, thought Catherine. Her heart quickened. What was this room? Mary opened the box. Catherine gasped. She began to shiver again. Mary turned to her with a sweet smile:

  “Oh, dear one. You shall look so fine in one of these. I can imagine the tears. The moans. Such a lucky one you are. So very lucky.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Soldier’s Pay

  What preoccupied Endersby’s thoughts at this very moment was a counter-idea. It acted like a mirror “held up to Nature” — as Prince Hamlet says. To test himself, Endersby challenged what he knew and what he had surmised. Had he been rash in his initial conclusions, he wondered as he jostled from left to right behind the trotting horse pulling his cab.

  This morning he faced another dilemma. Were all his gathered facts illusory? The confessions, the clues, deliberately misinterpreted by his need to tag a culprit? How could the lace seller in Rosemary Lane have recalled accurately the man culpable of killing the two matrons? Rum had blurred his mind; the desire for a sale prompted him to say anything to receive a coin. For that matter, was the sketchy description given by the children and the matter of the lace only coincidental? And Malibran! Let alone his pity-man — was he nothing more than another scarred denizen of London’s underworld population? How many men bearing the so-called culprit’s facial features could be found in the city? What other proof was there but words?

  “Old fool,” Endersby whispered to himself. “Strutting about with your feathers ruffled.” All of detective work, he sadly reminded himself, all of it is misapprehension and fickle luck.

  The broad gate to St. Pancras opened. Here stood London’s largest workhouse, north of St. Giles and near to the slum called Seven Dials. It reminded the inspector of one of the new steam ships he’d seen docked at Land’s End: two large black chimneys in a row spewing smoke, a long lean central building like a great hull, and two small additions to its sides. To the east of the buildi
ng flowed the Regent’s Canal, while to the west spread the trees and grand passages of London’s pride, Regent’s Park. Endersby had forgotten to bring his cane and while stepping down from the cab he felt as if poor Caldwell’s dental agony had transferred itself into his large toe.

  “Sir?” The timid voice belonged to Constable Rance.

  “I beg your pardon, Rance. My thoughts were elsewhere,” responded Endersby. “My mind is out of joint. Let us proceed.”

  Flowing out of the windows of the workhouse came the sounds of clashing dishes, gongs being struck. A low murmur succeeded the initial racket, that of rote prayer. St. Pancras housed families, the mad, boys, girls, teenagers. Some criminal, many simply poor or lost. One wing held boys whose violence had to be checked with hard labour. “It’s the alcohol in ’em,” a master had once explained. “Suckled from their mothers’ tits — gin-soaked milk. Makes ’em restless, bullying.”

  The present visit of the inspector and his two constables took place not in any wing of the huge structure but outside in the stable yard under a canopy covering the horse stalls. Ten feet away, the grey stone washhouse emitted steam and the clacking of the hand-driven paddles used to agitate the water in the washtubs. Accompanying Inspector Endersby, besides his two constables and the gaunt master, was a fine-boned woman dressed in blue. Her bonnet rode atop her hair somewhat like a helmet might upon the brow of a warrior. However, when the woman spoke, a wistful voice issued from her throat. A south county accent shaped her vowels: “A live body most certainly, Mr. Endersby. A soldier, if his tunic be true,” the woman explained. “Please be so kind as to address me as Head Matron Dench. Rhymes with bench.”

  Endersby smiled. His fatigue had slowed his pace. But the head matron’s touch of humour enlivened his spirit. “I am born a Dorset gal, sir,” the head matron continued. “But a mere country girl as you see. Parents drowned and set me adrift and here I came, first as orphan. Fate carried me forward into the position of a captain of all she surveys. If you follow my track, sir.”

  “Indeed, I do, madam,” Endersby answered. He brushed away his dark thoughts. Surely if this woman, whose life had been one of loneliness and terror, had raised herself to manage a workhouse, he could spare some energy to admire her.

  Sitting on a chair next to a pile of straw was the man himself. Endersby watched him closely as he and the group approached. The man was short, scruffy. His filthy hands were black with smut. His high military boots revealed their age — cracked and uncared-for. The man’s hair had grown long, quite out of regulation length required of a member of Her Majesty’s Military Service. He was un-shaven. Across his face a long red slash of something — the dim light of the stable tricking the eye at first. Was it a scar? Had this red inflamed streak been perceived as a scar in the dark of night? Standing closer now, Endersby watched the man raise his head toward him. How belligerent his eyes; how pinched his turned-down mouth. On closer inspection, the red slash now resembled a ragged birth mark. The man’s hand rose toward his cheek. Its long black nails began to peck and scratch at the scabs on his skin.

  “Stand up please, sir, and step forward into the light,” commanded Endersby.

  “Wot for? I be plenty comfortable here, thank you. Who are you? ”

  “Sir,” replied Endersby, “I am Detective Inspector Endersby of the Metropolitan Police Force. I understand you paid St. Pancras a visit last evening. One which quite alarmed those who run the place.”

  “That so? Wot pigeon told you that? Nay, I am with Her Majesty’s. Just takin’ a bit of holiday here in London. Stopping here, as is my wont, on public property to rest my weary legs.”

  “You have tales to tell, I am sure, sir,” Endersby said, quietly amused by the man’s bold insolence. A thought flashed: could this belligerent man be fond of disguises? A bandaged street beggar one day, a soldier out of pocket the next?

  “Now if you please. I wish to return to my slumber.” With that, the man got up from the chair and lay down on the pile of straw. Endersby came up to him. “My good fellow, you are a fine soldier, if your boots and unpolished buttons are an indication. But you are under command, sir. To step up and rightly so.”

  The man stirred. He sat up. He spat at the ground and wiped his palm across his chin. “You, Mister Inspector, I take no orders from you. Leave me be, I say.” Endersby was so tempted. His heart began to thump, his fists clenched. If he could, he would have breathed smoke and fire. But to his credit, he held his “demon” in check. Stepping back, he calmly instructed Rance and Tibald to lift the soldier and walk him into the light. What followed was worthy of a fight scene in one of the Coburg Theatre’s melodramas. The soldier jumped to his feet just as Rance and Tibald arrived with arms outstretched. A shout, a warning, a grabbing for a sword in its scabbard, a sword no longer in evidence nor attached to its belt. Then a show of fisticuffs — feints, strokes and full left hooks put into motion. Rance, the braver of the two constables, took off his hat, handed it to Tibald and raised his arms, fists held in tight ball formation. “Onward, sir,” the constable shouted to the soldier.

  Gin, however, soon slowed down the fighting spirit in the intruder. Fists faltered and knees soon smacked down against the wooden boards of the stable. While watching the soldier’s pathetic attempt at boxing, Endersby wondered about the man’s early life: a brutal, hardscrabble childhood, restlessness rather than disciplined routine leading to drink, fighting, whores, cheap cures, and finally recruitment in the land army of Her Majesty’s. The uniform was only a cover, a thin veil hiding an indulgence in profligate ways.

  “Come, Sergeant,” commanded Endersby. “At attention, sir. Inspection.”

  Into the morning light the soldier was dragged. He stood slumped, head forward. Looking him over, Endersby noted his calves had been rubbed raw by his military boots. On closer view of the soldier’s face, the red slash was neither a birth mark nor a wound. It was an angry rash. Pustules and welts, a symptom perhaps of the pox. It blared red. Was this, then, the “pink worm” the second young Catherine had described yesterday morning? The barkeep in Rosemary Lane had hinted at a rapier wound, but this redness resulted from some force inside the man’s body. From the soldier’s clothes there rose a stink of dung and horse piss.

  “You have been staying in the finest inns, have you Sergeant?” Endersby quipped.

  “You, sir, you bastardly gullion,” the soldier replied, spite returning to his voice. “A beefer you are. I ain’t no runner, I got papers.”

  “Surely, sir, Her Majesty’s has been just in its judgement and fair in its payment to you as a stalwart fighter?” Endersby was starting to enjoy his baiting of the man but another pang in his foot told him he must retreat into calm reason. “I imagine, Sergeant, you are no deserter.”

  “Relieved, I was, of duties, gullion. Papers are in m’tunic if your beak’s snout needs to sniff’em out.” The soldier spit and teetered a little. Constable Tibald was ordered to go to the wash house and find the soldier’s tunic. “And any other items, Constable, he may have carried. A sack, perhaps. A gaff, a weapon.”

  Head Matron Dench stepped forward. “Inpsector, I have taken the liberty to have food brought out for the chap. He is sore hungry after his journey.” Entering the stable yard came a parched-looking woman carrying a small bowl. The soldier stood at attention as if to mock her. “Allo, young peach,” he said. “You here for some splittin’?” he smirked, raising his arm in a vulgar gesture. The woman moved cautiously toward him. He snatched the bowl from her outstretched hand and set to gulping its contents. He spat out a grey stream of fluid. “This be pig slop, you slammy scab.” The man threw the bowl down, smashing it on the yard’s cobbles.

  “Matron Pickens,” said the head matron. “I thank you for your pains.” Matron Pickens curtsied to the head matron, her face marked by a sneer. “Come, Sergeant,” said Endersby, an edge of impatience lining his words. “I been on a wee walk,” the soldier then said. “From Scotland north; ten toes to every mile and a
split or two on the way.” He laughed and rubbed his crotch. Constable Rance was commanded to take hold of the man but the soldier stepped away. He thrust his hands on his hips and began to swagger. “Devil’s arse-hole be my name, gulls. A fancy man am I. Can split any wench who’s willin!’” He guffawed. “You, Bobby, and you Ladybirds. Here stands a fellah for you. Beau-nasty before you, smart if soiled.” Stumbling, the soldier lost his balance but after a twirl of his arms, stood firm again.

  “Yes,” he cried. “To your liking. My military leathers? In my brass, the scrags called me Buckle-beau. Nay, uncle, ’tis true. A fine turn I was!”

  “Your name, sir,” asked Endersby. His mind rapidly fitting together the gathering puzzle before him.

  “Bingo Boy to you, gull. Or if it sits, Beezlebub.”

  “Perhaps,” Endersby said, hesitating a little, “Mr. Buckle-beau?”

  “Nay, git,” replied the soldier. “I ain’t neither fop nor beast. Uncle Beau. Now there’s a ring.” Constable Rance took hold of the soldier’s arm and led him back, limping, into the shade of the stable. “Matron Dench,” said Endersby, his mind now keen with anticipation. “What drew your attention in the night to alarm your guards?”

  “Inspector, I had word of the murder in St. Giles and thought it best to set up masters on watch and to secure all doors and gates. Such banging at the front door after midnight caused us all to rise. The children became restless. Then, worse, a great clanging.”

  “T’was this beast at the coal chute, ma’am.” Matron Pickens stepped forward. “Master Cox ran into the yard and saw this fellow hitting the iron lid of the locked coal chute.”