by Ian Weir
1
The Spanish boy has a name: Miguel. The monkey is Jack. It is not a Spanish name — though this is neither here nor there — because Jack is not a Spanish monkey. He was brought back from some far-flung place by a sailor, who sold him for a shilling to a man in a public house, who soon grew tired of him. So Jack ended with another man who ran a string of beggar children, and rented out animals to help them.
Miguel has returned to Crutched Friars this particular evening, in his cap and bottle-green weskit, with Jack at the end of a leather strap perched shivering on his shoulder. They had attempted to beg at a busier corner near Trinity Square, but were driven off with rocks by a sodger with no legs who claimed that pitch for his own. Beggars are jealous of their pitches, and Miguel has no one to stand up for him.
Both his parents are dead. He came to England some months ago, with a man claiming to be his uncle, whom he had met at the docks in Madrid. Here in London this “uncle” had passed him on to the other man, who ran the string of begging boys. There are any number of such boys in the Metropolis, appearing for a time and then often enough disappearing again, to another part of London, or somewheres else. There is nobody to miss them when they do. Miguel sleeps nights at a doss-house full of runaways and orphans. Girls too. Sometimes there are eight or even ten of them in the same bed, all tangled together; you can’t imagine what goes on in a bed like that. Or possibly you can.
It is not a busy place, this pitch of his in Crutched Friars. But people go by, and some of them are generous. The tall man with golden hair — the one who has been pointed out to Miguel as a cirujano — passes nearly every day, often in a coach but sometimes walking, especially now that the weather has grown fair, and he always gives a coin. Yesterday it was half a crown — a hand upon Miguel’s shoulder with it, and a gentle word. Miguel didn’t understand the word, which was in English, but the voice was unmistakably kind.
This particular day is a Friday. It is the day of Meg Nancarrow’s sentencing, though of course Miguel knows nothing of that. It is getting on for evening. An hour ago, a young man had come out of the house where the cirujano lives — a diminutive youth with a dark triangle face. He spoke a few words of Spanish, urging Miguel to go away. But who is he to tell Miguel where to go? Miguel has had quite enough of this, of being told where he may go, and where he may not. He has the sweetest olive face, but a mule-stubborn look can creep across it.
Still, it is growing dark, and Miguel is deciding that he will go now, of his own choosing. Take Jack the monkey back to his owner, who will keep him for the night, and make his own way to the doss-house. But now someone else comes out of the house of the cirujano: the long grey man. He has a hard face, but he is smiling. People very often smile when they come upon Miguel, with his monkey and that sweet olive smile of his own. He says English words, the man, and offers Miguel a bit of bread and cheese, which Miguel accepts gratefully and shares with Jack. The man gestures towards the house, still smiling, by which Miguel understands that there is more food in the house, and that he is being invited.
And why would he not follow, after all? The bread and cheese are very good, and he and Jack are hungry, and the long grey man is a nice man, once you begin to know him.
A Crossing-Sweeper works regularly on the next corner. He worked quite late, on that particular evening. When asked a number of days later, he will recall seeing Miguel go into the house — the boy in his cap and bottle-green weskit, with a monkey on his shoulder, escorted by Odenkirk. And does he recall seeing them come back out? He will frown in recollection, and shake his head. No, he does not recall seeing either come out, nor has he seen either one of them again.
“Why should you want to know?” he will ask Your Wery Umble, warily.
“It is in connection with an investigation,” I will tell him.
“A inwestigation? Whose?”
“Mine.”
2
If a man describes a battle to you, then he is a liar. Not one of the great battles, I mean — the genuine article, between two armies — and not if he took part in it himself. Oh, it’s possible to piece together afterwards what must have taken place — comparing notes with other sodgers in the days and weeks to follow, magpieing shards and scraps of who-seen-what and fitting them into a pattern. But when you’re right there in the middle then it’s nothing but shouts and confusion, with a fog of musket-smoke hanging as thick as a London Partic’lar in the depths of November. There’s wraith-shadows lurching out of it, and roars and screams, and all you know for a fact is you’re still alive — though this can change in the next half-second, with the hum of a musket ball like a ghostly beetle — and all you can see quite clear is the friend dropping down right next to you.
You can see the field much clearer at night, after the battle’s done. The haze of smoke has gone and it’s just the darkness now, with a silvering perhaps from a moon and stars overhead. There are lights reflecting upwards from the ground as well, thousands of tiny points: the pinpricks of reflection from the buckles and breastplates and sabres and guns of all the men lying broken and dead. Moans and cries and the lamentations of horses. Here and there trudge stretcher-bearers, carrying one or two of those as might still be saved — but you don’t usually bother, you know; there’s no point in going out at night to bring more of them back, cos the field hospitals are full to bursting already, with the surgeons overwhelmed and the saws no sharper than butter-knives. So soon enough the field is left to those who fell, and the scavengers who’ll come out with the darkness, scavengers human and otherwise. Quick, sharp movements on the periphery of sight: the hopping of ravens and the hunched stealth of larger shapes. The glint of a blade and a swallowed gasp as some poor sodger not quite gone is finished off.
The field at Quatre Bras was like that on the night of 16th June last year, when I went out to look for Danny Littlejohn. Marshal Ney had thrown half the French army at us here, while Napoleon led the remainder against the Prussians at Ligny — two days it was before Waterloo. There was a boy with no arms sitting in woeful contemplation who was not Danny Littlejohn, and scores bent higgledy who were not Danny neither, and hundreds more yet for me to sort through as I stumbled over limbs and called out his name. Corpses stretching on into the night, corpses strewn and maimed, on and on and on and on, as if an ocean wave of unimaginable size had dashed them onto an endless shore and then receded hissing.
A man begins to be a little mad, I think. Begins to think: too many. Too many have died here, on this field and on this earth. The world has surely reached its limit, and so have I. I cannot stand the thought of one more death.
All of this was somehow mixed up in my thinking as I ran towards Newgate on the morning — one year later — when they hanged Meg Nancarrow.
I have bits and flashes of memory from that morning, though these are as partial and fragmented before the beating as afterwards. The sea of humanity stretching out as I pell-melled down the hill; the stick-figure of Meg on the far-off gallows platform, and her tiny white face before the hood went on. The suffocation of the press, and the desperation to fight through — limbs and elbows and “Oi, feck off!” The sudden sick impact as I felt myself slammed to the cobbles, and the blackness of an Under-Sheriff’s boot looming to fill every inch of my vision.
I recollect arriving at Janet Friendly’s house later, though not how I got there. I believe my conviction was that I must see Miss Smollet directly, and explain to her what had been done. I remember the look of shock on her poor face as I stood swaying in the doorway, and the phizogs of Janet and Mrs Sibthorpe too, cos it seemed that I was blood all over, with my coat ripped from my back and one of my boots — the fine Hessian boots of which I’d been so proud — missing entirely. “Couldn’t stop ’em,” I remember saying, over and over, hearing the words slurred like an old prize-fighter’s, who has taken one too many grave-diggers to the nob. “Too many.” They convinced me to lie down, though I kept wanting to get up again, despite the pain that was throbb
ing now in every inch, daggers of it stabbing with each movement. They must have sent to Cripplegate for Mr Comrie; I remember him arriving some while later, and exclaiming as he saw me.
“God’s bollocks!”
“Been attacked,” Janet was muttering. “That’s all we can smoke out of him.” Evidently I’d been murky about the details.
They managed to get me sitting on a stool while Mr Comrie probed my skull for fractures, and tried to ascertain whether my glims would point themselves in the same direction instead of wandering asunder like two drunkards reeling home. Janet stood glowering with a cloth and a basin of bloodied water — she’d been doing what she could to clean me up — while Miss Smollet and Mrs Sibthorpe hovered nearby in a flutter of distress.
I asked Mrs Sibthorpe what was the time, and she said past one o’clock. This was a considerable startlement: evidently Your Wery Umble had been staggering about London for hours, bloody as Banquo’s Ghost, with scant recollection of any of it. But I was beginning to remember a few things clearer, and managed to explain to Mr Comrie. Arriving at the hanging and fighting through the crowd, desperate to tell them what I had discovered, and what a terrible mistake was being made. Finally reaching the scaffold, only to be battered down.
“They wouldn’t listen,” I told him. Weeping openly now, but no longer caring. “I fought them, but they were too many.”
They were staring at me slack-jawed, Mr Comrie and the women. I expect they’d been thinking that I’d been set upon by villains in an alley — the usual explanation for such an appearance as Your Wery Umble had presented.
“Wait,” said Janet. “Wait, now. The Under-Sheriffs at the fucking hanging?”
“Janet,” said a small voice. “Language.”
“Oh, Will,” breathed Miss Smollet, whose glims — I do recollect this detail, despite the general confusion of the moment — were wide and shining.
And Mr Comrie was looking at me as he might through the bars at Bedlam Hospital, at a poor shitten lunatick chained naked to the wall.
“God’s mighty swinging bollocks, William. Why?”
And it was imperative that they should know. All four of them, but Mr Comrie most of all. It was too late for Meg Nancarrow; she was dead — and more than dead, dissected. They’d have had her to one of the hospitals by half past nine, and laid out in the Death House five minutes after that. While Wm Starling had been reeling about London, raving about fearful injustices, Meg had been lying as naked as Eve while surgeons and students commenced to carve. Sparrows and rats and the guttering light of those reeking unspeakable candles.
But I couldn’t think like this. I must be clear in my head, cos Mr Comrie must know.
“She never killed Cheese,” I said.
“I know you believe that, William. I wanted to believe it too, but — ”
“It was Atherton.”
“What?”
“I have witnesses.”
“William!”
Cos I was rising from the stool, and pushing away his restraining arm. My nob swam with it, and I almost fell again, but they had to know. I had to show them.
“Come with me!”
Then through the door, and into the blinding light of afternoon.
It has always amazed me, what men can do when the shock of injury is still upon them. I recollect a black-haired lieutenant at Vitoria who was carried into the field hospital with a shattered leg, and had it taken off above the knee. After we’d finished, he refused all assistance, saving only a tot of brandy, which he gulped down with a thick slurred mutter that losing limbs was thirsty work. Then he shook us off and heaved himself from the table to his feet — or to his foot, which is more to the point. And when I pointed him to the cart that was come to bear him off behind the lines, he hopped to it unassisted like a derelict crow. My last sight of him was sitting in the back of it, straight-backed and chalk-faced, rattling into the setting sun with an air both ruined and regal.
It was the same that day with Your Wery Umble — or so I suppose, looking back. My injuries were hardly as grave as an amputated trotter, though they were quite enough to lay me low for three full days afterwards, and leave me creaking subsequent like the image of my own great-grandfather. But as I staggered northwards onto Fleet Street and turned east, I scarcely felt the pain at all, so intent was I upon my destination. Mr Comrie bandy-legging beside me, and Janet Friendly and Miss Smollet hurrying after.
Where the Devil were we going? That’s what Mr Comrie kept asking, and I told him: Flitty Deakins. Miss Deakins had come to me with the proof, and now the others should hear it from her very mouth.
“Atherton’s sairvant?” Comrie was demanding. “The one addicted to laudanum?”
“This way.”
“Whaire is she?”
A confusion come upon me then, and a dawning realization: I did not know.
“William?”
I had trailed to a stop, and now I looked to Mr Comrie, as if perhaps the answer might be written across his own furrowed phizog. But it wasn’t there, or in the faces of Janet Friendly nor Annie Smollet neither, staring back at mine. I looked about me then, feeling myself begin to totter, but the answer was nowhere upon Fleet Street, nor on the faces of the houses looking down.
Miss Deakins had appeared to me out of the morning. I had turned away from her and run, all the way to Newgate. But where had she gone?
“She’s here,” I stammered.
“Whaire’s here?”
“Somewhere in London. And she knows — she can tell you.”
A look exchanged between them, then. Janet and Mr Comrie.
“Will,” said Janet, carefully. “It’s all right.”
“It isn’t! Atherton wanted her dead — and he’s killed before.”
“Will, you’ve taken a fearful knocking on the head.”
“Wait!”
Cos it came to me then, in a flash of hope rekindling. Flitty Deakins wasn’t the only one — there was a second witness who could corroborate my story.
“He seen Buttons on the night of the murder — the night Uncle Cheese was killed. Seen him with Odenkirk. Conspiring with Atherton’s man!”
“No, listen to him,” Miss Smollet was exclaiming, cos she saw Janet Friendly shaking her head. “I have a Belief in Will Starling.”
I wanted to seize her hands in mine, and pour out my heart’s gratitude. I wanted to wrap her in my arms. But first I must show them.
“He knows the truth,” I cried. “Charley knows!”
Eastwards again, hurrying through the crowds. Pain throbbing cruelly now; the sunlight splitting through my nob, and I recollected my missing boot with the stab of each sharp stone. But we came to the bottom of Ludgate Hill at last, and there amidst the crowds and the clatter sat Gibraltar Charley with his hat upturned, while Tim danced dutifully on his two hind legs.
“Charley!” I heard the ragged elation in my voice. I’d brought them, and now they’d know, even if I should drop down dead with pure exhaustion. Cos in truth it was harder each moment to catch my breath, and Ludgate Hill was beginning to spin. “The man outside the Three Jolly Cocks — the man who was talking to Buttons that night — tell them!”
Charley lifted his milky eyes. “Pray encourage him now, my tender-hearted Christians. Pray show encouragement to Tim, the Real Learned French Dog.”
“No, look — Charley, it’s me. Will Starling. We spoke . . .”
But Charley’s eyes looked blindly off towards the distant rooftops.
“A copper would give him joy, my tender-hearted Christians. A copper for Tim, the True Genuine Learned French Dog.”
In my bewilderment I looked to Mr Comrie. I saw a great sadness in his face, and felt his hand take my arm.
“Come, William,” he said quietly. “I’ll take you home.”
I believe I tried to pull away. But there was a rushing sound then and a darkness rising with it, which is the last thing I remember.
Letter to Mr Comrie from Miss J Friendly
15th May, 1816
Sir:
You said to me yesterday, when I come to visit Will: could I tell you anything obtaining to his state of mind, prior to the lamentable events of the day previous, which could of led to them? I recollect answering shortly, and saying that you might be better placed than I to offer such information, considering as I had not ’til t’other morning seen Will Starling once since leaving the Foundling Hospital six-odd years ago, whereas you been with him every day. I expect my mood was also affected by the sight of him, battered and swole as he was, and moaning senseless in his bed with fever. You ended in saying I might send you a note if I should think of anything, presuming of course that I knew how to write.
I’m sure this was very thoughtful in you, to consider that I might be an eejit.
Yes, Mister Comrie: I can write. This is me writing now. If you will come by the shop some evening, you may see me reading as well, and doing sums, and even counting up beyond one hundred.
But you also asked me something else, before I left. You asked: What was Will like, when he was a child? And there was something so very sad in you as you asked it, that last night I began to think you deserved a reply.
Let me start by saying this.
Will’s father was a sea-captain — which possibly will surprise you to hear — though not of the philanthropical sort like Thomas Coram. He had been called from his bed in the chill of a December dawn, Will’s father, and sailed from Southampton the following evening, leaving nothing for his unborn son but his blessing and a brass chronometer, the which had been given to him by his own father under circumstances remarkably similar, thirty years before. Thus Will revealed one day to a clutch of breathless foundlings, for Will could always tell a tale. He would say no more, leastways not at first, for Will was not at liberty — so he give us to understand, from certain cryptic looks and utterances — to divulge further details. But we naturally winkled them out.
