‘You again.’ He looked down at the basket. ‘For the Major again?’
Charlie nodded.
‘Well, take it up. You know the way.’
Charlie had been thinking of leaving the basket here, and then walking away. But now, faced with the soldier, whose face he did not like, it was not so easy. He was not a nervous boy, but he was certainly imaginative.
Little scenes darted in and out of his mind. Now, he seemed to feel the soldier digging his gun into his back to push him on. Or the soldier might open his mouth wide — and wider and wider. Charlie could almost hear the shouts and feel the soldier’s hot breath on his own face.
Somehow this steadied him, because he knew that this scene was horrible, but not real; and horrors needed to be real to be truly frightening.
He did not put this into words, but he knew inside him that true horrors were solid and walked around this earth on two feet.
So he picked up the basket and laboured up the path. He certainly did know the way, and if he did not, there was Major Mearns walking towards him, another man with him.
They were not looking at him, but talking quietly to each other. The legs they had been puzzling over had remained unburnt and unburied and were hidden in a wood store outside where they lived; but they could not stay there long …
‘We could get Mindy to help us. What do you think, Denny? No one knows the inner cellars and caverns of the Castle like she does … We could bury the legs and no one would be the wiser …
Denny thought about it. ‘We would know.’
‘You’ve buried men before, Denny. This is just legs.’
‘Then where is the rest of him?’
Charlie spoke: ‘Please Sir.’
The Major looked down at him, recognising the boy. ‘This is for you, Sir.’
Charlie put the basket down before the Major.
Mearns looked from the basket to Denny. ‘You shouldn’t have said that, Denny. I think that Traddles is coming home to us in bits.’
Charlie stood there, waiting. Neither of the two men seemed to take in that he was there, or that he had carried the basket up a hill.
He had not been paid very much for his labour. Not enough.
Charlie stood there, legs apart, four square. He held out his hand.
‘Please Sir, I want some more.’
Chapter Three
The head stared up at them, eyes open but cloudy.
‘I knew it was a head inside that basket,’ said Denny.
‘Knew it at the first look. Round, heavy, what else could it be?’
A cannon ball, a load of coal, a piece of statuary?
The Major said nothing for a moment while he studied his undesirable and unwanted present. ‘Where did the basket come from?’
‘From the fishmonger in Market Street. Joliffes … He uses such to carry his fish around. He sells them when they get too smelly.’ He added gloomily: ‘Poor Traddles, dead like that and dished up like a stale fish.’
He looked accusingly at the Major. ‘He was a good soldier once. Think of him.’
‘I do think of Traddles,’ Mearns said. ‘But I also think of me. What have I done to deserve this foul honour?’
Into the silence, he said: ‘I think it’s a case for Tosser.’ Denny looked doubtful. Tosser, as he knew, was drinking more than ever. Not that Denny wondered at this or begrudged him the relief from his life.
‘He’s buried more than one body. Burnt as well, I daresay, other things too – ways we’d rather not think about,’ said the Major grimly, remembering a story about hungry dogs and rats. ‘And not on the battlefield like you and me. He can put this one to join ’em.’
One of Tosser’s jobs, although not his only one, was to manage the town mortuary – a task he performed silently but efficiently on his own lines; the dead were not allowed to inconvenience him. Rather otherwise – as a stiff arm could support a beaker of ale or a ham sandwich.
Denny shook his head. ‘You’d hate to leave even a dead body with Tosser.’
‘Which we are not about to do,’ Mearns reminded him.
Denny thought that the sad bits of a man that they had were worse. He had liked Traddles – not a good man, but honest in his way.
Tosser, the old villain, lived in one room in a house tucked away not far from the Castle. This room was squalid, but comfortable nonetheless. It made you realise, Denny thought, that the Major was right when he said, ‘Never underestimate Tosser; he is cleverer than he looks.’
‘Don’t bang on his door,’ ordered the Major. ‘Better to take Tosser by surprise.’
However, they were the ones to be surprised; Tosser was not alone.
A small, shabby figure was crouched by him, holding a beaker to Tosser’s lips while drinking from his own. A bottle by his side suggested that he had brought with him what they were drinking. Rum, Mearns thought, by the smell. Both men were well on the way to being drunk.
Tosser was drinking and at the same time stirring a pot on the fire. He was not pleased to see Denny and the Major.
‘Not at home,’ he said. ‘Only stew enough for two.’
‘We haven’t come to eat.’
Tosser gave a flourish with his wooden spoon so that a strong savoury smell floated out.
‘What is it you are cooking?’
Tosser thought for a moment. ‘Hare,’ he said.
‘That smell is never hare,’ put in the knowledgeable Denny. One of his army tasks had been to scout for food and then see it cooked. He would cook it himself if necessary. He and the Major knew the value of provender to the foot soldiers. The Cavalry could always eat horse – of which in any battle, victory or defeat, there were always a few dead around.
‘Rat, cat and squirrel for flavour,’ said Tosser with a rum-inspired giggle.
The Major looked at Denny, then studied the room. There was a bloodstained roll of newspaper in one corner that reminded him unpleasantly of what had come to him that morning.
‘I’ll cook you for flavour if you don’t tell me what you are up to,’ he said crisply.
Tosser’s little friend put down one of the drinks. ‘One of the King’s pheasants,’ he said.
The Major looked sceptical. Not a likely marksman, he thought.
‘Not shot, caught. They are tame.’ He stood up and introduced himself. ‘William Wisher.’
‘Willy Wish,’ said Tosser. ‘Old friend.’
‘Mearns,’ said the Major, giving Wisher a bow.
‘Ah, you got your parcel? I spoke to the young lad who was delivering it,’ Willy announced.
‘How did you know where it was going?’
‘Read it on the parcel: “To Major Mearns”. Did it say “with love”? I forget that bit.’
‘Do you indeed.’
‘Can read. Tosser can’t. I can. And write. Latin, French …’ It sounded like Willy was beginning a list.
‘I can read and write!’ protested Tosser. ‘My name. No more indeed.’
The Major ignored Tosser; he wanted to draw more out of Willy. ‘Did you see who gave the basket to the boy?’
‘No,’ said Willy. ‘Didn’t see. The boy came from the Theatre though.’
‘He’ll be in trouble there then,’ said Tosser with an evil smile. ‘One or two down there are partial to lads.’
Willy shook his head. With a chuckle he said: ‘He knows how to deal — he knows how to deal!’
There was not much doubt what he meant. The Major turned away; he had his prudish side.
‘Tosser … Outside if you please.’
Tosser considered, then stood up. ‘Willy, watch the stew and don’t let nothing burn.’ He handed the wooden spoon over to Willy.
Outside the door, he was less amenable with the Major. ‘You are getting on, old man; not so young as you were.
The Major ignored the pleasantry. ‘I have something I want you to look after.’ Carefully, he handed over to Tosser the basket and a bundle – two bundles, in fact, bound together into o
ne – they were the limbs that had been sent to the Major.
‘To bury?’ Tosser had performed this service before. Always charging, of course. Nothing came for free in Tosser’s world.
Except death. That very often came when you were not expecting it, in Tosser’s experience.
‘No, not yet; just to keep somewhere chill and quiet.’
‘It’s dead then.’ Tosser spoke with gloomy foreboding. ‘What is it then? A baby?’
‘Not exactly. No need to go into that. Just keep it safe for now.’ The Major turned to leave.
‘Not a baby, then,’ thought Tosser, meaning to open up the bundle and take a look inside as soon as he was alone with it.
‘Don’t dig into them, Tosser!’ called out Mearns over his shoulder as he left. ‘I shall know!’
Tosser was silent – and cross.
‘And if you do feel you must look, then wash your hands afterwards.’ Mearns warned.
‘You’re in a mood,’ said Tosser. ‘In love again, are you?’
‘I’m never in love.’
‘Saw Mindy with Felix down by the river.’ Tosser, no longer able to stay silent, was still cross.
Major Mearns marched off with a straight back.
Tosser summed up the situation. ‘He’s jealous of Felix and Mindy. Know the signs,’ he said to Willy Wish. ‘Seen it before. Makes him bad tempered.’ He gave Willy a slap on the shoulder. ‘Let’s eat the stew, then have a look at what Mearns has left us.’
‘He won’t like it.’
‘Shan’t tell him. Thinks he can give orders, Mearns does.’
They ate quickly, both of them hungry and both curious to see what the Major had left with them.
‘Do you trust him?’ Willy Wish had his mouth full, but he got the words out.
Tosser thought about it. Finally he decided, ‘Well, you have to.’
‘You don’t think he’s killed someone?’
Tosser thought again. ‘He could have.’ He knew something of the Major’s military career (gossip passed freely inside and then out of the Castle), and guessed what he would do to defend the King. ‘He’s a soldier.’
‘It’s his job? But not all the time and everywhere, Tosser.’ Willy was earnest. ‘Even soldiers can’t just kill.’
‘He works for the King in his Castle,’ said Tosser with the air of one explaining much.
Willy gave a nod. ‘Have you ever killed anyone, Tosser?’
Tosser considered what to say. ‘Not sure. Might have done. A fight. But I think he got over it. Think I saw him in the market.’
‘It was a man?’
‘You don’t kill women,’ Tosser said simply.
‘Oh.’ Willy considered again. He thought he could have killed a woman if he felt obliged to. ‘I think you are a nicer man than I am.’
Silently, the pair went outside to the courtyard where the parcels lay.
‘He wanted us to have them,’ said Tosser.
‘You do look after the dead.’
‘Only till they are buried …and not in bits. It’s been years since we’ve looked after oddments. And then it was a suicide in the Great Park that the foxes got at.’
‘Let’s see what we’ve got.’
Silently and with some care, the two men unwrapped the bundles.
The legs came first; by this time the flesh was blue and swollen – decay had set in.
They stared, then passed on. You cannot, after all, identify a dead leg. One of the stray dogs that hung about the mortuary, forever in hope, began to howl.
Without a word between them, they went on to the round object in the basket, which proved not hard to undo.
The face stared back at them, swollen, stained with decomposition, the lips twisted. Willy did not know the features, so he turned to Tosser.
Tosser didn’t lose colour or show much emotion, but his expression showed fear. At least, Willy thought it was fear; it might just have been unhappiness.
‘It’s Traddles,’ whispered Tosser. ‘My friend Traddles.’
Willy crossed himself in a throwback to the habits of his childhood. ‘You know him?’
‘Traddles,’ repeated Tosser. ‘Would you say he was smiling, Willy?’
‘No.’ Willy had no doubt. ‘No, I wouldn’t.’ It would be worse if he were smiling. It was a death grimace – movement of the mouth as he died. But it was better not to say this to Tosser. He touched Tosser gently on the shoulder. ‘Come away, friend. I’ll wrap …’ he hesitated for the right words … him? the bits? …What should he say? So he said nothing, but pushed away the hopeful dog, and got on with the covering up, leaving Tosser to sit watching.
‘The Major will know we looked,’ said Tosser glumly.
‘I expect he knew we would.’ Willy finished the job — not well, but as well as he could. ‘Come inside again now my friend, and have a drink. This has been a shock for you.’
He led Tosser inside.
‘You’re a good soul, Willy.’
Once inside the stuffy, smelly but warm room, Willy poured some whisky for Tosser, then took some himself. It was his whisky, so he felt able to be generous.
‘How well did the Major know Traddles?’ he asked.
‘Soldiers together. Traddles helped Mearns in his work here in Windsor when he was sober.’
Willy considered. ‘So what does the Major do?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Tosser vaguely.
The whisky sharpened Willy’s mind. ‘I bet you could guess, though.’
‘I think he watches all that goes on in the Castle and tells someone back in London … Don’t know whom, but it would be someone high up. It’s an important place, the Castle.’
‘Does the Major think it’s because of him that Traddles was killed?’ asked Willy. ‘That, or he killed him himself?’
Another pool of silence.
‘The boy who brought the parcels up to the Castle,’ Willy went on, ‘do you think he knows anything?’
‘He knows who gave him the bundles, and what he got for the job.’
‘So we could ask?’
‘If we could find him.’
Willy thought he might know where to start. ‘I saw him near the Theatre.’
The Theatre was one of Willy’s haunts. He knew most of the performers by sight – as they knew him. Even when he could not find the money to buy a ticket, he managed to creep into a seat, and no one turned him out. ‘Our Willy’, he was called. Not a lot was known about his past. Perhaps he had been an actor himself once and so felt at home in the ambience of a theatre.
‘And do you think he’d say?’ asked Tosser.
Willy had another of his moments of consideration before he answered. He had in fact more than a flash of jealousy of the lad for establishing himself in the theatre – something which he, Willy Wish, had never accomplished.
‘I think he’d tell what he knew,’ Willy said at last. ‘He seemed an honest lad to me. And bonny. He’d described the woman.’
‘It was a woman, was it? You did see then?’ Tosser was surprised.
‘I was looking that way. Very tall …thin …hard.’ Willy did not miss much.
‘You’ve got good eyesight.’
‘I have,’ agreed Willy with some complacency. ‘Right eye, left eye. I always trust my left eye … what it sees is true.’
" Tosser did not take up the left eye/right eye problem, about which Willy had spoken before. Often, in fact.
‘Be good to find the boy,’ he said.
‘What’s his name?’
Tosser shook his head. ‘Might know in the Theatre.’ Willy nodded. ‘I might find out there. I am known.’
Charlie plodded through the town, down the hill from the Castle, deep in thought. He was angry. He had been made use of.
He walked round the Market Place because he found comfort there. The small shops with their bow-fronted glass windows looked cheerful and prosperous. It was the sort of world he would like to live in, but he knew this was not going to hap
pen. He would be caught and dragged back to London. To the blacking factory – unless he managed to run away again.
He would escape again, of course, and again if necessary. He could not be tethered forever; he knew he was clever. He knew that inside him was a force that could not be beaten. But age came into it; at the moment he was too young to have the use of all his powers.
He hated being a child.
‘I’ve been done,’ he said with resentment as he walked on, back to the Theatre. ‘I was picked on to carry those bundles to the Castle to give them to the Major. I could go to the clink or be transported.’
Miss Fairface saw him entering the Theatre. ‘You look glum.’
‘Feel it.’
The actress put her hand in the bag she carried. ‘Have a humbug.’
Charlie accepted the sweetmeat which he popped at once into his mouth. Then he smiled. ‘Thank you.’
She took one herself. ‘So, what’s up?’ He was silent. ‘Or anything more than usual?’ she asked with sympathy. She realised that he had had a lot to make him wretched; life was not being kind to him. And she knew how it felt; life often pinched her too.
‘Women and children,’ she thought, ‘we get it worst.’ It was sex, really; she would stay with that disability on her shoulders all her life. But Charlie, if he lived that long, would end up triumphant – a successful man. She could see it in his face, hear it in his voice; he knew how to use words. But now something had happened to him which he couldn’t work out.
‘This isn’t just a story,’ she thought. ‘He’s a lad that attracts stories.’ She was sensitive to such things; it was what made her a good actress. She knew she had it in her to make a great actress, but life had to offer you the opportunities.
She looked in Charlie’s face; in another decade or so, perhaps less, he would be the sort that no woman could resist. And he would certainly have a story to tell — more than one, if she was any judge.
She was surprised that any lad so young could have such a perceptive stare.
‘Charlie …’
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t you think you should go back to London? To your family?’
‘If they want me.’ Charlie thought about his father; he might come looking for him, or had perhaps done so already …although it was more likely in another week or so. After all, he had only been missing from his workplace two weeks, and who was going to worry about that? Not the man who employed him, and only his father when he wanted to borrow some money off Charlie. ‘Always keep some money aside and in your pocket,’ his father had said when he got him the job in the blacking factory, not revealing that he wanted the pennies there so he could borrow them.
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