The Oversight

by Charlie Fletcher

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  For Margaret Fletcher, with all my love

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  THE OVERSIGHT

  Sara Falk–keeper of the Safe House in Wellclose Square

  Mr Sharp–protector and sentinel

  Cook–once a pirate

  The Smith–smith, ringmaker and counsellor

  Hodge–Terrier Man and ratcatcher at the Tower of London

  Emmet–a golem

  Jed–an Old English Terrier

  The Raven–an even older bird

  IN LONDON

  Lucy Harker–a lost girl

  Bill Ketch–a ruffian

  Issachar Templebane, Esq.–lawyer, broker and twin

  Zebulon Templebane, Esq.–lawyer, broker and twin

  Bassetshaw, Sherehog, Vintry, Undershaft, Coram and Garlickhythe

  Templebane–adopted sons (unimpaired)

  Amos Templebane–adopted son (mute but intelligent)

  Reverend Christensen–pastor of the Danish Church in Wellclose Square

  Lemuel Bidgood–parish magistrate

  William George Bunyon–innkeeper and gaoler of the Sly House

  Bess Bunyon–his daughter

  The Wipers–cutthroat gang from the rookery at Seven Dials

  Magor–their leader

  Lily–a rentable girl from Neptune Street

  RUTLANDSHIRE AND LONDON

  Francis Blackdyke, Viscount Mountfellon–man of science turned supranaturalist

  The Citizen–a sea-green incorruptible, thought dead

  Whitlowe–a running boy

  IN THE COUNTRYSIDE

  Rose Pyefinch–travelling show-woman

  Barnaby Pyefinch–travelling showman

  Charlie Pyefinch–their son

  Na-Barno Eagle–stage magician, self-styled Great Wizard of the South

  Georgiana Eagle–his daughter, an entrancing beauty

  Hector Anderson–stage magician, self-styled Great Wizard of the North

  Charles John Huffam–a showman and owner of an Educated Pig

  Harry Stonex–bargee

  Ruby Stonex–bargess

  The tinker–a larcenous pedlar

  AT THE ANDOVER WORKHOUSE

  M’Gregor–superintendent

  Mrs M’Gregor–his wife

  The Ghost of the Itch Ward–female inmate, real name unknown

  BETWEEN THE WORLDS

  John Dee–known as The Walker between the Worlds

  BEYOND LAW AND LORE

  Moleskin Coat, Woodcock Crown, Bicorn Hat, The Hunchback–Sluagh, also known as Shadowgangers or the Night Host.

  The Alp–a breath-stealer from the Austro-German borderland

  A Green Man–run mad

  A BENEFIT OF MONGRELS

  The natural and the supranatural inhabit the same world, intersecting but largely unseen to one another, like lodgers who share a house but keep different hours, only occasionally passing on the narrow stairs. They do not speak the same language, their customs are different and their views of the world and the laws and behaviours that govern it are wildly and mutually opposed.

  It is only when they bump shoulders that they take note of each other, but when they do so, arcane and infelicitous things will happen. Because of this, it is necessary that the tight spaces where such friction may occur are governed by rules, and that those rules are policed.

  For centuries there have been few more crowded nests of humanity than the great beast of a city which sprawls on either side of the Thames, and it was to regulate interaction between the natural and the supranatural that the ancient Free Company known as The Oversight of London was formed.

  It is a paradox perhaps of passing interest only to those who collect quaint ironies that this shadowy borderland is best patrolled by those who carry the blood of both types in their veins… or to frame it differently: the unseen picket line which prevents one world from predating on the other is policed by mongrels.

  from The Great and Hidden History of the World by the Rabbi Dr Hayyim Samuel Falk (also known as the Ba’al Shem of London)

  PROLOGUE

  She sat in the sun making daisy chains, happy in her own world, enjoying the warmth on her face and the simple spring beauty of the white May blossom tumbling overhead against a clear blue sky.

  Her fingers moved steadily and expertly, a thumbnail splitting a short green stalk, then feeding the next one through the hole and splitting that one, then threading another. It was repetitive work but, as is the way with some manual labour, it freed her mind to think of other things, such as the little lost ones for whom she made the chains and how pleased they should be to be garlanded with them when they were all reunited. They would feel the tickle of the daisies round their necks and know she had never forgotten them, and they would also know she had always kept on believing that, no matter how violently the happy promise of past once upon a times had been betrayed and no matter how sharp the sorrow of the present, the future might still lead to a shared happy-ever-after.

  In the other world, the unhappy one that was not her own, she sat in shadows, almost invisible, frequently forgotten (especially at meal times) on a wooden stool propped in that dusty corner of the Itch Ward reserved for the weak-brained and the addle-pated, the ones M’Gregor the superintendent called the moaners and dribblers. She neither moaned nor dribbled but just sat there, head angled slightly as if trying to catch some imaginary or distantly remembered sunlight, face slack and unexpectant and grey, her hair pulled loosely back from her forehead, her only movement a tiny repetitive business made by her fingertips working against each other, as if–said M’Gregor’s wife–she was hemming her own grave-cloth.

  She was well enough behaved, and only when given to shrieking fits (which afflicted her occasionally) was there any pressing need to discipline her, customarily with beatings and overnight solitary exile in the Eel House, on the other side of the water meadows.

  She ate her slop when prompted, and washed and took care of her own privy needs according to some inner timetable, but she did nothing else, neither cleaning nor stone-picking nor bone-grinding, which made her a Useless Mouth in the account book and thus one that the M’Gregors visibly resented feeding.

  “She does nothing,” they said bitterly. “Nothing, by God. She does not even speak.”

  And it is true that as the world turned and the months and years ground away, she did not do anything at all. But one of the things that she didn’t do, even in the depths of the coldest winters or the loneliest dead watches of the night, was this:

  She did not die.

  And that was the reason she did nothing else: the living ghost of the Itch Ward needed every ounce of strength in her body and mind to just remember to keep on living.

  And who to kill.

  FIRST PART

  THE SCREAMING GIRL

  CHAPTER 1

  THE HOUSE ON WELLCLOSE SQUARE

  If only she wouldn’t struggle so, the damned girl.

  If only she wouldn’t scream then he wouldn’t have had to bind her mouth.

  If only she would be quiet and calm a
nd biddable, he would never have had to put her in a sack.

  And if only he had not had to put her in a sack, she could have walked and he would not have had to put her over his shoulder and carry her to the Jew.

  Bill Ketch was not a brute. Life may have knocked out a few teeth and broken his nose more than once, but it had not yet turned him into an animal: he was man enough to feel bad about what he was doing, and he did not like the way that the girl moaned so loud and wriggled on his shoulder, drawing attention to herself.

  Hitting her didn’t stop anything. She may have screamed a lot, but she had flint in her eye, something hard and unbreakable, and it was that tough core that had unnerved him and decided him on selling her to the Jew.

  That’s what the voice in his head told him, the quiet, sly voice that nevertheless was conveniently able to drown out whatever his conscience might try to say.

  The street was empty and the fog from the Thames damped the gas lamps into blurs of dull light as he walked past the Seaman’s Hostel and turned into Wellclose Square. The flare of a match caught his eye as a big man with a red beard lit a pipe amongst a group standing around a cart stacked with candle-boxes outside the Danish Church. Thankfully they didn’t seem to notice him as he slunk speedily along the opposite side of the road, heading for the dark house at the bottom of the square beyond the looming bulk of the sugar refinery, outside which another horse and carriage stood unattended.

  He was pleased the square was so quiet at this time of night. The last thing he wanted to do was to have to explain why he was carrying such strange cargo, or where he was heading.

  The shaggy travelling man in The Three Cripples had given him directions, and so he ducked in the front gates, avoiding the main door as he edged round the corner and down a flight of slippery stone steps leading to a side-entrance. The dark slit between two houses was lit by a lonely gas globe which fought hard to be seen in murk that was much thicker at this lower end of the square, closer to the Thames.

  There were two doors. The outer one, made of iron bars like a prison gate, was open, and held back against the brick wall. The dark oak inner door was closed and studded with a grid of raised nailheads that made it look as if it had been hammered shut for good measure. There was a handle marked “Pull” next to it. He did so, but heard no answering jangle of a bell from inside. He tugged again. Once more silence greeted him. He was about to yank it a third time when there was the sound of metal sliding against metal and a narrow judas hole opened in the door. Two unblinking eyes looked at him from behind a metal grille, but other than them he could see nothing apart from a dim glow from within.

  The owner of the eyes said nothing. The only sound was a moaning from the sack on Ketch’s shoulder.

  The eyes moved from Ketch’s face to the sack, and back. There was a sound of someone sniffing, as if the doorman was smelling him.

  Ketch cleared his throat.

  “This the Jew’s house?”

  The eyes continued to say nothing, summing him up in a most uncomfortable way.

  “Well,” swallowed Ketch. “I’ve got a girl for him. A screaming girl, like what as I been told he favours.”

  The accompanying smile was intended to ingratiate, but in reality only exposed the stumpy ruins of his teeth.

  The eyes added this to the very precise total they were evidently calculating, and then abruptly stepped back and slammed the slit shut. The girl flinched at the noise and Ketch cuffed her, not too hard and not with any real intent to hurt, just on a reflex.

  He stared at the blank door. Even though it was now eyeless, it still felt like it was looking back at him. Judging. He was confused. Had he been rejected? Was he being sent away? Had he walked all the way here carrying the girl–who was not getting any lighter–all for nothing? He felt a familiar anger build in his gut, as if all the cheap gin and sour beer it held were beginning to boil, sending heat flushing across his face. His fist bunched and he stepped forward to pound on the studded wood.

  He swung angrily, but at the very moment he did so it opened and he staggered inward, following the arc of his blow across the threshold, nearly dumping the girl on the floor in front of him.

  “Why—?!” he blurted.

  And then stopped short.

  He had stumbled into a space the size and shape of a sentry box, with no obvious way forward. He was about to step uneasily back out into the fog, when the wall to his right swung open.

  He took a pace into a larger room lined in wooden tongue-and-groove panelling with a table and chairs and a dim oil lamp. The ceiling was also wood, as was the floor. Despite this it didn’t smell of wood, or the oil in the lamp. It smelled of wet clay. All in all, and maybe because of the loamy smell, it had a distinctly coffin-like atmosphere. He shivered.

  “Go on in,” said a calm voice behind him.

  “Nah,” he swallowed. “Nah, you know what? I think I’ve made a mistake—”

  The hot churn in his guts had gone ice-cold, and he felt the goosebumps rise on his skin: he was suddenly convinced that this was a room he must not enter, because if he did, he might never leave.

  He turned fast, banging the girl on the doorpost, her yip of pain lost in the crash as the door slammed shut, barring his escape route with the sound of heavy bolts slamming home.

  He pushed against the wood, and then kicked at it. It didn’t move. He stood there breathing heavily, then slid the girl from his shoulder and laid her on the floor, holding her in place with a firm hand.

  “Stay still or you shall have a kick, my girl,” he hissed.

  He turned and froze.

  There was a man sitting against the back wall of the room, a big man, almost a giant, in the type of caped greatcoat that a coachman might wear. It had an unnaturally high collar, and above it he wore a travel-stained tricorn hat of a style that had not been seen much on London’s streets for a generation, not since the early 1800s. The hat jutted over the collar and cast a shadow so deep that Ketch could see nothing of the face beneath. He stared at the man. The man didn’t move an inch.

  “Hoi,” said Ketch, by way of introduction.

  The giant remained motionless. Indeed as Ketch stepped towards him he realised that the head was angled slightly away, as if the man wasn’t looking at him at all.

  “Hoi!” repeated Ketch.

  The figure stayed still. Ketch licked his lips and ventured forward another step. Peering under the hat he saw the man was brown-skinned.

  “Oi, blackie, I’m a-talking to you,” said Ketch, hiding the fact that the giant’s stillness and apparent obliviousness to his presence was unnerving him by putting on his best bar-room swagger.

  The man might as well be a statue for the amount he moved. In fact—

  Ketch reached forward and tipped back the hat, slowly at first.

  It wasn’t a man at all. It was a mannequin made from clay. He ran his thumb down the side of the face and looked at the brown smear it left on it. Damp clay, unfired and not yet quite set. It was a well made, almost handsome face with high cheekbones and an impressively hooked nose, but the eyes beneath the prominent forehead were empty holes.

  “Well, I’ll be damned…” he whispered, stepping back.

  “Yes,” said a woman’s voice behind him, cold and quiet as a cutthroat razor slicing through silk. “Oh yes. I rather expect you will.”

  CHAPTER 2

  A WOMAN IN BLACK AND THE MAN IN MIDNIGHT

  She stood at the other end of the room, a shadow made flesh in a long tight-bodiced dress buttoned to the neck and wrists. Her arms were folded and black leather gloves covered her hands. The dress had a dull sheen like oiled silk, and she was so straight-backed and slender–and yet also so finely muscled–that she looked in some ways like a rather dangerous umbrella leaning against the wood panelling.

  The only relief from the blackness was her face, two gold rings she wore on top of the gloves and her white hair, startlingly out of kilter with her otherwise youthful appearance, which
she wore pulled back in a tight pigtail that curled over her shoulder like an albino snake.

  She hadn’t been there when Ketch entered the room, and she couldn’t have entered by the door which had been on the edge of his vision throughout, but that wasn’t what most disturbed him: what really unsettled him was her eyes, or rather the fact he couldn’t see them, hidden as they were behind the two small circular lenses of smoked glass that made up her spectacles.

  “Who—?” began Ketch.

  She held up a finger. Somehow that was enough to stop him talking.

  “What do you want?”

  Ketch gulped, tasting his own fear like rising bile at the back of his throat.

  “I want to speak to the Jew.”

  “Why?”

  He saw she carried a ring of keys at her belt like a jailer. Despite the fact she looked too young for the job he decided that she must be the Jew’s housekeeper. He used this thought as a stick to steady himself on: he’d just been unnerved by her sudden appearance, that was all. There must be a hidden door behind her. Easy enough to hide its edges in the tongue and groove. He wasn’t going to be bullied by a housekeeper. Not when he had business with her master.

  “I got something for him.”

  “What?”

  “A screaming girl.”

  She looked at the long sack lying on the floor.

  “You have a girl in this sack?”

  Somehow the way she asked this carried a lot of threat.

  “I want to speak to the Jew,” repeated Ketch.

  The woman turned her head to one side and rapped on the wooden wall behind her. She spoke into a small circular brass grille.

  “Mr Sharp? A moment of your time, please.”

  The dark lenses turned to look at him again. The silence was unbearable. He had to fill it.