He finished reading.
“The hand is barbaric, but I’d expect that from a man like White. You are his son-in-law, yes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, lad, your father-in-law is a presumptuous rogue to have written a letter like this to one such as I. I’ve just returned from a private audience with Elizabeth herself. I’d like to know why I should grant the request of a bloody Oxfordshire farmer who seems to be under the impertinent impression that I owe him a favor.”
“Yes, sir. He helped you with a horse, sir.”
“Yes, he did. As he should have done for a superior.”
“He said you’d say something like that, Mr. Hawkyns.”
“Did he now?”
“Yes, sir. And he said to tell you that the horse he lent you came back lame, and is now good for nothing more than a Frenchman’s supper.”
There was silence at that. Hawkyns did not laugh, smile, or rage. He kept his eyes steadily on Billy’s, and Billy did not look away, and perhaps that more than anything meant he did not have to turn around and travel home with nothing. They glared at each other for five seconds, ten, fifteen, but Billy held on, grimly, until Hawkyns’s expression finally softened and he raised one well-groomed eyebrow.
“Extraordinary. Well, one must admire the man’s backbone. Does it run in the family?”
“Sir?”
“You’re married to John White’s daughter?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And who is your father?”
“Now deceased, sir, as is my mother. My father I never knew. He was a Polish sailor.”
“Polish? How does a Polish sailor end up siring a son in Oxfordshire? As far away from the sea as a man can get, I would imagine.”
“He . . . Well, he performed some services for a powerful man in old King Henry’s court, sir. His reward was a small property in Stanton St. John.”
Billy stopped, unsure of how much more he should say on the subject of services and powerful men. Hawkyns caught his hesitation and weighed it up for a second, possibly intrigued.
“No doubt, but a detail I didn’t request,” he said, eventually. “You’ll learn to only respond to direct questions when speaking to a commander, lad.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you sailed before?”
“No, sir.”
“No, sir. Then what bloody use are you to me?”
Billy said nothing. After not flinching from Hawkyns’s gaze earlier, it was the second good decision he’d made that day. Hawkyns sipped his beer, considered something, and then looked at Billy again as if he’d just arrived. The hard face now appeared almost friendly, and Billy once again realized that this man had a certain power to make people do what he wanted just by looking at them the right way.
“You’ve come a long way, lad. And that on itself says something about you. You can join my crew as a seaman. We sail in three days. The Jesus of Lübeck. You can’t miss it.”
Billy worried about this. He was pretty sure he could, actually, miss it.
“If you please, sir, how might I be sure it’s the right ship?”
Hawkyns laughed.
“You’ll be sure because it’ll be the biggest fucking thing you’ve ever seen.”
8 DECEMBER 1811: 2 A.M.
Charles Horton, waterman-constable of the River Thames Police Office, takes almost a half hour to walk from the Police Office building at Wapping Stairs to the Ratcliffe Highway. His errand is urgent, but there is nevertheless the not insignificant fact of the new dock lying between him and the most direct route to his destination.
The shortest way now available thus takes him around the southeastern corner of the dock, through the heart of Wapping itself—along Old Gravel Lane, with its alehouses both respectable and dissolute. Despite the late hour there are still people mulling around on the street. Sunday may have begun, but most of those out are no respecters of religious tradition. Drunken sailors collide into equally drunken lumpers and watermen before collapsing into a thumping heap; prostitutes keep an eye on the alehouse exits in the hope of picking up a lone, lonely seaman who has still kept hold of some of his money; the occasional gentleman picks his way gingerly through the sodden lower orders on his way back from an evening roughing it on the waterfront. It is in most senses a normal Saturday night in Dockland.
But there is something else too, and Horton, a Wapping man (but a Margate boy), can smell the difference as soon as he walks out into the street. He has been working a night shift at the Police Office, something he does rarely unless traffic is particularly heavy out on the river, so it was fortunate that he was there to receive the excitable boy who’d arrived with news from the Ratcliffe Highway. Horton, who has an easy way with children, employs a small network of excitable boys with open ears and watchful eyes throughout Wapping and Shadwell, and has lost count of the times a juicy nugget of intelligence has worked its way down to the riverside office from a backstreet to the north or east.
Now, out in the street, it’s clear to Horton’s finely tuned senses that the same news carried to him by his boy has already begun to work its way into the shared consciousness of Wapping, and soon some of these people (the ones who can still walk, at least) will be making their way in the same direction for a look-see. Only alcohol and the late hour are slowing them down, but before long raw human curiosity will overcome those obstacles. He walks fast to beat them to it.
Horton is a tall man in his forties, dressed tonight for work on the river in a dark peacoat and even darker trousers, a dark shirt and woolen jumper beneath the coat, and a dark hat on his head. His eyes are dark, his skin pale, his hair as dark as his clothes. Despite his size, he has a near invisible quality about him, the same near invisible quality as a watchful excitable boy who wishes to make himself useful. He bumps into no one’s shoulders, trips over no one’s feet, and no one notices him as he flits through the common herd. He walks, and he listens, and he hears the sound of Wapping growling in its cups.
At the end of Old Gravel Lane he turns left onto the Highway, and even from here he can see the beginnings of a small crowd mulling around the house at number 29. As he approaches, he sees that perhaps fifty people have already gathered outside. He starts to push his way through, shouting out who he is as the crowd gets thicker. The smell of gin and ale and unwashed clothes is heavy in the air. Even shouting he struggles to be heard, but still eases his way through.
Finally he breaks through to a clearer space around the front door of the neat little house. The space is a respectful one, left intact by the growing crowd despite their excitement and their intoxication. A young girl is sitting on the pavement weeping in the almost silent, exhausted way of a woman who has been crying for some time and is almost worn out. A group of men is standing around her but somewhat away from her, as if embarrassed by her display. Horton recognizes one of them: Olney, one of the local parish watchmen. He pulls the old man aside.
Olney is drunk, as is to be expected of a watchman at this time of night, but seems to be relatively alert. Horton grabs his upper arm and speaks directly into his ear. The crowd becomes quieter, recognizing the appearance of authority even when it dresses in a peacoat, trying to hear what he is saying.
“Olney—what has happened here?”
“Murder, Officer Horton. Foul, foul murder.”
The watchman begins to weep, and not for the first time this evening, reckons Horton. He has seen the old man cry before. He becomes sentimental and maudlin when he has been drinking, and he drinks most of the time. It is the normal way for a Shadwell watchman to behave, and Horton does not judge him for it.
“In the house?” asks Horton, still gripping the old man’s arm, still whispering urgently.
“Yes. Yes, sir.”
“Witnesses?”
“The girl. And him. Murray.”
Olney, still weeping, points a shaky finger toward one of the men standing around the sobbing girl. The man is looking back over Horton’s s
houlder, away from the girl, gazing at something. His lips are moving and Horton thinks he hears a fragment of prayer. Horton glances back behind himself, in the same direction as the man is looking, and sees the white tower of St. George in the East. He had walked right by it on the way here and had not even glanced up at it, scurrying along underneath its pale gaze.
He turns back to Olney. He is still gripping the old watchman’s arm.
“Anyone inside?”
“No.”
“No constables or magistrates from Shadwell?”
“No.”
“Have you been in?”
The old man looks at him.
“Not for all the world.”
At that, Horton lets go of Olney’s arm, and walks up to the man the watchman has identified. The man’s lips stop moving as Horton steps toward him, but while they are speaking the man keeps his back turned to the house and his eyes keep flicking over Horton’s shoulders toward the unavoidable bulk of the church.
“Murray?”
“Yes. John Murray. I live nex’ door.”
“You’ve seen what has happened?”
“I’ve been . . . inside, is all.”
“How did you get in?”
“Back of the ’ouse. Through the back.”
“Show me.”
Murray’s eyes flicker and focus on Horton.
“I’ll show ye. But I’m not goin’ in again.”
He leads Horton away. As they pass the sobbing girl on the street, Horton sees her glance up at him. A young girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen. Long red curly hair. Her eyes almost as red as her hair with the crying, but at the same time full of a knowledge newly acquired. Her mouth opens in a small “o” as if she is going to say something, ask for his help or his guidance perhaps, but she says nothing, and then the crowd closes around her, eager for a glimpse and perhaps a touch of the eyewitness.
Some of the crowd break off and follow Murray and Horton down the street. A man shouts “Oi, you!” but Horton ignores that. There will be more and more of it before long.
The two men and their small accompanying flock come to a gate between two blocks of houses, which Murray opens and goes through. Horton turns to the small crowd as he passes through the gate and shuts it behind him.
“No one is to follow me, on the authority of John Harriott, magistrate of the Thames River Police Office. Stay here.”
The flock grumbles, with one male voice particularly vocal, the same one as before. But Horton shuts the gate behind him and no one attempts to follow. He and Murray are in the passageway between the two blocks. Murray is waiting for him, silhouetted by moonlight.
“You’re with the River Office?” Murray asks. “Not Shadwell?”
“Shadwell will be here, I’m sure,” Horton says. “Now show me where you got in.”
The end of the passage opens into a semi-private, rather bleak little square, more of a yard really, onto which face the backs of perhaps twenty houses. Murray turns left and walks back past two or three of these trim little houses. He stops at one of them.
“This is it. Timothy Marr’s ’ouse.” He pronounces the name timoffee.
A chest-high fence runs along the back of the Marrs’ yard, broken by a gate, which is open. Horton steps through it, and then pauses. He turns back to Murray.
“Tell me what happened, as quickly as you can.”
The man’s face is white but his voice is steady. A good witness, it occurs to Horton. Should one be needed.
“I live coupla doors away. I ’eard noises from the ’ouse, some shoutin’ and furniture crashin’. It’s no’ uncommon, though. But then I ’eard the girl shoutin’ at the front door. She couldn’t ge’ in, no one was answ’rin’ ’er. The watchman, Olney, ’e came and started ringin’ at the door too. I come round the back ’ere, saw a light on. I shouted back roun’ to Olney an’ the girl that the light was on, an’ she screamed at me to get in ’n’ check they was all right. So I go’ in the ’ouse. And I saw ’em.”
“What did you see?”
“They’re all dead.”
Murray’s voice cracks slightly now, and he looks at the ground. Horton turns away from him and walks through the gate toward the house. A single light is shining from a back room. It seems to be waiting for him.
The back door to 29 Ratcliffe Highway is open, and he steps into the downstairs hallway, out of the cold December air. On his left is the kitchen, then there is an open door with steps leading down to the cellar. Ahead of him, down the hallway, a half-open door beyond which, he supposes, is Timothy Marr’s shop. To his right is a steep flight of stairs, and there he sees the source of the light he could see from the street: a candle has been left alight, at the top of the stairs. He climbs the stairs and picks it up. It is nearly burned out. He wonders if Murray left it there, so deliberately at the top of the stair, and if not Murray, then who? Considering this, he carries the candle into one of the bedrooms. Anyone standing at the bottom of the stairs would have believed they were seeing a miracle, a candle floating by itself down the upper landing, as Horton’s dark clothes make him almost invisible in the gloom.
In the bedroom, the flickering light picks out a heavy implement leaning against the wall, but there is no one in there. Horton tells himself to come back and check on the room when he has examined the rest of the house. He turns, checks the other bedrooms (they are empty), and heads back down the stairs.
A quality of watchfulness has come over him, a close attentiveness to the details of everything he sees and touches. He is not aware of this. He is not aware of anything at all beyond the shapes and textures and patterns of the dark little house. He approaches the half-open door which leads into the shop. It is propped open by a body. Horton passes his candle over the body’s face. It is a young man, maybe even a boy. The eyes are open. The head has been smashed in, and as Horton’s candle moves across the body and toward the shop beyond he catches a glimpse of bloodstains and thick, stodgy matter splattered up the wall behind. It is thick enough to cast its own lumpy shadows in the candle flicker.
Horton steps over the body and into the shop beyond. He can see the shapes of people moving outside on the Highway in the glass above the front door and through the blinds in the window. He discovers a woman dead on the floor between the counter and the door, and a man behind the counter. The woman’s head has also been smashed in, but in the gloom Horton cannot see immediately where the wounds on the man are. He looks around the shop. It is clean and tidy, as if the victims had just completed closing up when they were attacked. The only thing on the counter is a ripping chisel, which Horton picks up. It looks clean and well cared for, even in the gloom. Unused. For anything.
He continues to search. Back in the hallway he opens the cellar door and walks down the steps. He sees a cot in a corner and passes his candle over the top of it. He has to stop himself involuntarily dropping the candle into the wrecked, dead face of the baby within.
8 DECEMBER 1811: 7 A.M.
John Harriott is watching the river as it rolls by his office window. The office of the magistrate of the Thames River Police. His office. It is early morning on a rising tide, the busiest time of day for the river, with new ships pouring into the Pool in front of him and into the dock behind where Harriott stands. Even on a Sunday they continue to appear from downstream, one after another, an endless succession of vessels of different shapes and sizes, squeezed together like horses after a race.
Harriott is a short, stout man approaching seventy. He is dressed in white breeches that ride high up on his solid globe of a belly. The breeches and his white wig are in stark contrast to the redness of his face and the maritime blue of his tailcoat. His jaw juts out of his well-fed face toward the window as he watches the river. He has slept for barely three hours, and looks like what he is: a throwback to a time before Napoleon, to the era of Washington and Jefferson and the elder Pitt, when England meandered magnificently toward an empire.
His eyes may be on the river, b
ut John Harriott’s well-stocked mind has traveled somewhere else. He is remembering his second trip to pre-Revolution America, between his stints as a midshipman in the navy and an officer in the East India Company militia. He is remembering a particular squaw of the Oneida tribe, who had saved him from some jealous braves. He is remembering her tantalizing brown skin and fierce white teeth and the way she leaned into him when they talked, and the places this led to, and the well-founded reasons for the jealousy of the braves. He is remembering the sun through the trees and the sound of happy women chattering in the shadows. He is remembering how much he missed England back then, and is wondering at how much he misses America now. He feels a newly familiar sense of torpor creeping over him, like the Asian illness which nearly took his life forty years ago. His half-dead left leg itches. His mind has temporarily wandered away from the subject at hand, as it does with a frequency he no longer notices.
Behind him, his waterman-constable, Charles Horton, is leaning over a table on which lies a fearsome heavy instrument, which Horton is examining, end to end. It is a maul, a common tool of the waterfront, the same size as an ax, at the end of which is a heavy iron mallet on one side, and a long iron spike on the other. The instrument can be used as both a hammer and a pickax, although on this particular maul the tip of the spike has been snapped off.
It is the object Horton saw leaning against the wall in the bedroom at 29 Ratcliffe Highway. He has carried it back from the house wrapped in a sheet taken from one of the bedrooms, and has presented it quietly but deliberately to Harriott, while describing the scene at Timothy Marr’s house with precise urgency. He has just finished talking.
The English Monster Page 4
