The Oversight

by Charlie Fletcher

  “Man in The Three Cripples said as how the Jew would pay for screaming girls.”

  The gold ring caught the lamplight as the black gloves flexed open and then clenched tight again, as if she were containing something.

  “So you’ve come to sell a girl?”

  “At the right price.”

  Her smile was tight and showed no teeth. Her voice remained icily polite.

  “There are those who would say any price is the wrong one. The good Mr Wilberforce’s bill abolished slavery nearly forty years ago, did it not?”

  Ketch had set out on a simple errand: he had something to sell and had heard of a likely buyer. True, he’d felt a little like a Resurrection Man skulking through the fog with a girl on his shoulder, but she was no corpse and he was no bodysnatcher. And now this woman was asking questions that were confusing that simple thing. When life was straightforward, Bill Ketch sailed through it on smooth waters. When it became complicated he became confused and when he became confused, anger blew in like a storm, and when he became angry, fists and boots flew until the world was stomped flat and simple again.

  “I don’t know nothing about a Wilberforce. I want to speak to the Jew,” he grunted.

  “And why do you think the Jew wants a girl? By which I mean: what do you think the Jew wants to do with her?” she asked, the words as taut and measured as her smile.

  “What he does is none of my business.”

  He shrugged and hid his own bunched fists deep in the pockets of his coat.

  Her words cracked sharply across the table like a whiplash.

  “But what you think you are doing by selling this girl is mine. Answer the question!”

  This abrupt change of tone stung him and made him bang the table and lurch towards her, face like a thundercloud.

  “No man tells Bill Ketch what to do, and sure as hell’s hinges no damn woman does neither! I want to see the bloody Jew and by God—”

  The wall next to her seemed to blur open and shut and a man burst through, slicing across the room so fast that he outpaced Ketch’s eyes, leaving a smear of midnight blue and flashing steel as he came straight over the table in a swirl of coat-tails that ended in a sudden and dangerous pricking sensation against his Adam’s apple.

  The eyes that had added him up through the judas hole now stared into him across a gap bridged by eighteen inches of razor-sharp steel. The long blade was held at exactly the right pressure to stop him doing anything life-threatening, like moving. Indeed, just swallowing would seem to be an act of suicide.

  “By any god, you shall not take one step further forward, Mr…”

  The eyes swept over his face, searching, reading it.

  “Mr Ketch is it? Mr William Ketch…?”

  He leaned in and Ketch, frozen, watched his nostrils flare as he appeared to smell him. The midnight blue that the man was dressed in seemed to absorb even more light than the woman’s black dress. He wore a knee-length riding coat cut tight to his body, beneath which was a double-breasted leather waistcoat of exactly the same hue, as were the shirt and tightly knotted silk stock he wore around his neck. The only break in the colour of his clothing was the brown of his soft leather riding boots.

  His hair was also of the darkest brown, as were his thick and well-shaped eyebrows, and his eyes, when Ketch met them, were startlingly… unexpected.

  Looking into them Ketch felt, for a moment, giddy and excited. The eyes were not just one brown, not even some of the browns: they were all the browns. It was as if he was looking into a swirl of autumn leaves tumbling happily in the golden sunlight of a blazing Indian summer.

  One look into the tawny glamour in those eyes and Ketch forgot the blade at his throat.

  One look into those eyes and the anger was gone and all was simple again.

  One look into those eyes and Bill Ketch was confusingly and irrevocably in something as close to love as to make no difference.

  The man must have seen this because the blade did something fast and complicated and disappeared beneath the skirts of his coat as he reached forward, gripped Ketch by both shoulders and pulled him close, sniffing him again and then raising an eyebrow in surprise, before pushing him back and smiling at him like an old friend.

  “He is everything he appears to be, and no more,” he said over his shoulder.

  The woman stepped forward.

  “You are sure?”

  “I thought I smelled something on the air as he knocked, but it didn’t come in with him. I may have been mistaken. The river is full of stink at high tide.”

  “So you are sure?” she repeated.

  “As sure as I am that you will never tire of asking me that particular question,” said the man.

  “ ‘Measure twice, cut once’ is a habit that has served me well enough since I was old enough to think,” she said flatly, “and it has kept this house safe for much longer than that.”

  “Are you the Jew?” said Ketch. His voice squeaked a little as he spoke, so happy was he feeling, bathed in the warmth of the handsome young man’s open smile.

  “I do not have that honour,” he replied.

  The woman appeared at the man’s shoulder.

  “Well?” she said.

  The chill returned to Ketch’s heart as she spoke.

  “He is as harmless as he appears to be, I assure you,” repeated the man.

  She took off her glasses and folded them in one hand. Her eyes were grey-green and cold as a midwinter wave. Her words, when they came, were no warmer.

  “I am Sara Falk. I am the Jew.”

  As Ketch tried to realign the realities of his world, she put a hand on the man’s shoulder and pointed him at the long bundle on the floor.

  “Now, Mr Sharp: there is a young woman in that sack. If you would be so kind.”

  The man flickered to the bundle on the floor, again seeming to move between time instead of through it. The blade reappeared in his hand, flashed up and down the sacking, and then he was helping the girl to her feet and simultaneously sniffing at her head.

  “Mr Sharp?” said Sara Falk.

  “As I said, I smelled something out there,” he said. “I thought it was him. It isn’t, nor is it her.”

  “Well, good,” she said, the twitch of a smile ghosting round the corner of her mouth. “Maybe it was your imagination.”

  “It pleases you to make sport of me, my dear Miss Falk, but I venture to point out that since we are charged with anticipating the inconceivable, my ‘imagination’ is just as effective a defensive tool as your double-checking,” he replied, looking at the girl closely. “And since our numbers are so perilously dwindled these days, you will excuse me if I do duty as both belt and braces in these matters.”

  The young woman was slender and trembling, in a grubby pinafore dress with no shoes and long reddish hair that hung down wavy and unwashed, obscuring a clear look at her face. At first glance, however, it was clear she was not a child, and he judged her age between sixteen and twenty years old. She flinched when he reached to push the hair back to get a better look at her and make a more accurate assessment, and he stopped and spoke quietly.

  “No, no, my dear, just look at me. Look at me and you’ll see you have nothing to fear.”

  After a moment her head came up and eyes big as saucers peered a question into his. As soon as they did the trembling calmed and she allowed him to push the hair back and reveal what had been done to her mouth to stop the screaming.

  He exhaled through his teeth in an angry hiss and then gently turned her towards Sara Falk. She stared at the rectangle of black hessian that was pasted across the girl’s face from below her nose down to her chin.

  “What is this?” said Mr Sharp, voice tight, still keeping the girl steady with his eyes.

  “It’s just a pitch-plaster, some sacking and tar and pitch, like a sticky poultice, such as they use up the Bedlam Hospital to quiet the lunatics…” explained Ketch, his voice quavering lest Mr Sharp’s gaze when it turned
to add him up again was full of something other than the golden warmth he was already missing. “Why, the girlie don’t mind a—”

  “Look at her hands,” said Sara Falk.

  The girl’s hands were tightly wrapped in strips of grubby material, like small cloth-bound boxing gloves.

  “Nah, that she does herself, she done that and not me,” said Ketch hurriedly. “I takes ’em off cos she’s no bloody use with hands wrapped into stumps like that, but she wraps whatever she can find round ’em the moment you turn your back. Why even if there’s nothing in the rooms she’ll rip up her own clothes to do it. It’s all she does: touches things and then screams at what ain’t there and tangles rags round her hands like a winding cloth so she doesn’t have to touch anything at all…”

  Sara Falk exchanged a look with Mr Sharp.

  “Touches things? Then screams?” he said. “Old stones, walls… those kind of things?”

  Ketch nodded enthusiastically. “Walls and houses and things in the street. Sets ’er off something ’orrible it does—”

  “Enough,” said Mr Sharp, his eyes on Sara Falk who was stroking the scared girl’s hair. Their eyes met once more.

  “So she’s a Glint then,” he said quietly.

  She nodded, for a moment unable to speak.

  “She’s not right in the head is what she is,” said Ketch. “And—”

  “Is she your daughter?” said Sara Falk, clearing something from her throat.

  “No. Not blood kin. She’s… my ward, as it were. But I can’t afford to feed her no more, so it’s you or the poorhouse, and the poorhouse don’t pay, see…?”

  The spark of commerce had reignited in his eyes.

  “Don’t worry about that blessed plaster, lady. Why, a hot flannel held on for a couple of minutes loosens it off, and you can peel it away without too much palaver.”

  The man and the woman stared at him.

  “The redness fades after a couple of days,” he insisted. “We tried a gag, see, but she loosens them or gnaws through. She’s spirited—”

  “What is her name?” said Sara Falk.

  “Lucy. Lucy Harker. She’s just—”

  “Mr Sharp,” she said, cutting him off by turning away to kneel by the girl.

  “What do you want to do with him?” said the man in midnight.

  “What I want to do to a man who’d sell a young woman without a care as to what the buyer might want to do with or to her is undoubtedly illegal,” said Sara Falk almost under her breath.

  “It would be justice though,” he replied equally softly.

  “Yes,” she said. “But we, as I have said many times, are an office of the Law and the Lore, not of Justice, Mr Sharp. And Law and Lore say to make the punishment fit the crime. Do what must be done.”

  Lucy Harker looked at her, still mute behind the gag.

  Mr Sharp left them and turned his smile on Ketch, who relaxed and grinned expectantly back at him.

  “Well,” said Mr Sharp. “It seems we must pay you, Mr Ketch.”

  The thought of money coming was enticing and jangly enough to drown out the question that had been trying to get Ketch’s attention for some time now, namely how this good-looking young man knew his name. He watched greedily as he reached into his coat and pulled out a small leather bag.

  “Now,” said Mr Sharp. “Gold, I think. Hold out your hands.”

  Ketch did so as if sleepwalking, and though at first his eyes tricked him into the thought that Mr Sharp was counting tarnished copper pennies into his hand, after a moment he realised they were indeed the shiniest gold pieces he had ever seen, and he relaxed enough to stop looking at them and instead to study more of Mr Sharp. His dark hair was cropped short on the back and sides, but was long on top, curling into a cowlick that tumbled over his forehead in an agreeably untidy way. A single deep blue stone dangled from one ear in a gold setting, winking in the lamplight as he finished his tally.

  “… twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. That’s enough, I think, and if not it is at least… traditional.”

  And with that the purse disappeared and the friendly arm went round Ketch’s shoulder, and before he could quite catch up with himself the two of them were out in the fog, walking out of Wellclose Square into the tangle of dark streets beyond.

  Ketch’s heart was soaring and he felt happier than he had ever been in his life, though whether it was because of the unexpectedly large number of gold–gold!–coins in his pockets, or because of his newfound friend, he could not tell.

  CHAPTER 3

  A CHARITABLE DEED

  If the fog had eyes (which in this part of London it often did) it would not only have noticed Mr Sharp leading Bill Ketch away into the narrow streets at the lower end of the square, it would have remarked that the knot of men who had been unloading boxes of candles into the Danish Church had finished their work, and that the carrier’s cart had taken them off into the night, leaving only the burly red-bearded man with the pipe and a wiry underfed-looking young fellow in a tight fustian coat.

  The bearded man locked the heavy doors and then followed the other across the street, heading for the dark carriage still standing outside the sugar refinery. If the fog’s eyes had also been keen, they would have noticed that the red beard overhung a white banded collar with two tell-tale tabs that marked him out as the pastor of the church whose barn-like doors he had just secured. There was a crunch underfoot as they reached the carriage and he looked down at the scattering of oyster shells with surprise. The wiry youth, unsurprised, reached up and rapped his bony knuckles on the polished black of the carriage door.

  “Father,” he said. “ ’Tis the Reverend Christensen. ’E wishes to thank you in person.”

  There was a pause as if the carriage itself was alive and considering what had been said to it. Then it seemed to shrug as something large moved within, the weight shifting it on its springs, and then the door cracked open.

  The reverend’s beard parted to reveal an open smile as the pastor leant into the carriage apologetically.

  “So sorry to discommode you, Mr Templebane, but I could not let the opportunity of thanking you in person pass me by.”

  “No matter, no matter at all,” said a deep voice from inside. “Think no more of it, my dear reverend sir. My pleasure indeed. Only sorry we had to deliver at so unholy an hour.”

  “All hours are holy, Mr Templebane,” smiled the pastor, his English scarcely accented at all. “And any hour that contains such a welcome donation is all the more blessed.”

  “Please!” said the voice, whose owner remained hidden except for the appearance in the carriage window of a fleshy hand carefully holding an open oyster with the smallest finger extended politely away from all the others. The shell was full of plump grey oyster meat that bobbled and spilled a little of the shellfish’s liquor as the hand airily waved the thanks away.

  “You will embarrass me, sir, so you will. To be honest, the bit of business that resulted in me taking over the unwanted deadstock from the unfortunate, not to say imprudent, candle-maker left me with enough dips to gift all the churches in the parish.”

  The fleshy hand retreated into the shadows and a distinct slurping noise was heard.

  “But a lesser spirit might still have sold them,” said the pastor, working hard to make his thanks stick to their rightful target.

  The fleshy hand reappeared as the carriage’s occupant leant further forward to drop the now-empty oyster shell daintily on to the pavement, revealing for just an instant the face of Issachar Templebane.

  It was a paradox of a face, a face both gaunt and yet pillowy, the skin hanging slack over the bones of the skull with the unhealthy toad’s-belly pallor of a fat man who has lost weight too late in life for his skin to have retained the elasticity to shrink to fit the new, smaller version of himself.

  He wiped a trickle of oyster juice from the edge of his mouth with the back of his thumb before reaching forward to grip the pastor’s hand in a brisk, hea
rty farewell.

  “I could, I could, but my brother and I are lawyers not tradesmen, and I assure you our fees in the matter were more than adequate. Besides, money isn’t everything. Now, goodnight to you, sir, and safe home. Come, Coram, we must be going.”

  And with that he released the hand and retreated back into the carriage as the wiry young man sprang up to the driver’s seat, gathered the reins and snapped the horses into motion with a farewell nod to the pastor, who was left standing among the debris of Templebane’s oyster supper feeling strangely dismissed, rather than actually wished well.

  As the carriage turned the corner a panel slid back in the front of the vehicle, next to Coram, and Templebane’s face appeared.

  “Did you draw the reverend gentleman’s attention to the man Ketch and his suspicious bundle?” he asked, all the cheeriness in his voice now replaced by a business-like flatness.

  “Yes, Father. I done it just as ’ow you said, casual-like.”

  If the fog had ears as well as eyes, it might by this time have noted a further paradox regarding Issachar Templebane, which was that the boy who called him Father did not have anything like the same deep, fluid–and above all cultured–voice as he. Coram’s voice had been shaped by the rough dockside alleys of the East End: it dropped “h’s” and played fast and loose with what had, with Victoria’s recent accession to the throne, only just become the Queen’s English. Issachar spoke with the smooth polished edges of the courtroom; Coram’s voice was sharp as a docker’s hook. If there seemed to be no familiar resemblance between them, this was because although Issachar Templebane had many children, he had no blood kin beyond his twin brother Zebulon, who was the other half of the house of Templebane & Templebane.

  Issachar and Zebulon were prodigious adopters of unclaimed boys, all of whom grew up to work for them in the chambers and counting room that adjoined their house on Bishopsgate. It was their habit to name the boys for the London parishes from whose workhouses (or in Coram’s case, the foundling hospital) they had been procured. This led to unwieldy but undoubtedly unusual names: there was an Undershaft, a Vintry, a Sherehog, a Bassetshaw and a Garlickhythe Templebane. The only exception was the youngest who had been taken from the parish of St Katherine Cree and he, it being too outlandish to call the boy Katherine, was called Amos, a name chosen at random by letting the Bible fall open and choosing the title of the book it opened at. If Amos had anything to say about the matter he might well have remarked that he had as well been called Job since, as the youngest member of the artificially assembled family, with brothers who shared no love between them, he got more than his share of grief and toil. He didn’t remark on this because he spoke not at all, his particular affliction being that he was mute. Coram, by contrast, was garrulous and questioning, a characteristic that his adopted fathers encouraged and punished in equal measure depending on their whim and humour.