The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins

by Antonia Hodgson

  Budge pondered this. ‘I’d say the apprentice had the most to lose.’

  ‘True. But I shared a bowl of punch with Ned the night of the murder. He wasn’t angry with Burden because of the money. He was angry because Burden had broken his word. All those years of lectures, teaching them how to be good, honourable souls. He taught them too well.’

  Budge snorted. ‘He was killed for his sins?’

  ‘No, not that. Think on it for a moment. Once Judith found him with Alice, he gave up the pretence. We heard him through the walls, Budge. He forced Alice to cry out so that everyone might hear. Gah . . .’ I dashed my spent pipe to the floor and broke it beneath my heel. ‘But still he expected them to obey him, as though nothing had changed. That is why the attack was so ferocious. It was not the beatings and the lectures that drove one of them to stab Burden to death. It was his hypocrisy. It wasn’t fair.’

  Budge touched my arm, a subtle warning. I stopped, chest heaving. I must have been shouting. A couple of young beaux strolled past, smirking at one another. I knew one of them from the gaming houses, the youngest son of some lesser nobleman. Did he recognise me? Oh, very good. Another piece of gossip for the coffeehouses. I say, did you hear about Hawkins, shouting like a lunatic on the Mall? The fellow’s gone half-mad with guilt, no doubt . . .

  I feared I was pouring my own feelings too deep into this story. My own father was a strict and sober man. He had lectured me on my wilfulness and wickedness on countless occasions, made me feel as though I were a sinful child . . . and then later I’d discovered I had a half-brother, Edward. Younger than my sister and me, but born while our mother was still alive. While she lay dying of a long illness, in fact. Even now, I could summon the anger in a moment. The furious sense of injustice. That said, I had never felt the urge to pick up a dagger and stab my father through the chest for it.

  ‘Why did he become so reckless? After all those years?’

  Budge had no answer. And I was back at the start again, running about in circles. Ned, Judith, Stephen.

  We had reached Charing Cross. This was where I’d had my first encounter with Charles Howard, when he’d almost run me down in his sedan. Now one of his chairmen was dead. A memory surfaced from the night before. The blade ripping fast across his throat, blood spurting from the sudden gash. His expression, puzzled, then terrified. A terrible noise in his throat, a choking wet sound as he tried to breathe.

  Had he been the one holding the back of the chair? The one who had nodded his apology as he passed, and smiled at me? God help me, I couldn’t even picture his face. Only his eyes, at the very end. Pleading. I’m dying. I’m dying – help me.

  I rubbed my face. And Howard survived. Worse. The bastard had won. ‘Did you know that Burden was a brothel bully, twenty years ago?’

  Budge was amused, but not surprised. No doubt he had heard of a thousand such secret hypocrisies.

  ‘Ned told me he worked there to pay off his debts.’

  Budge closed one eye, searching his memory. ‘Don’t remember him. And I visited a fair few brothels back then . . .’

  I cast my mind back. Howard had talked about the place last night, had he not? What had he said about it . . .? It had unsettled me at the time. ‘Seven Dials, I think. Devilish place, by the sound of it.’

  Budge came to a sudden halt. ‘Aunt Doxy’s.’

  I shrugged. Howard hadn’t mentioned the name. ‘He said there was a room for every vice.’

  Budge spat the last of his tobacco to the ground. ‘Fuck. Burden was the bully at Aunt Doxy’s . . . That was . . . have you not heard the stories?’

  ‘Only what Howard told me last night. He said that if a girl was badly beaten or cut, Burden would keep quiet – for a price . . .’

  Budge gripped my arm, shaken. Budge was not the sort of man who allowed himself to look shaken. ‘Wicked things happened in that place, Hawkins. There was rumours . . . A man could ask for anything he wished. Anything. More of a club than a brothel. Invitation only. Then one night, it burned down to the ground. All the whores escaped, and the customers too. They stood on the street and watched the flames tearing up the place. Then they heard the screams. Man and a woman. Aunt Doxy, for certain. The man . . . No one knows. They was burned alive, Hawkins, slowly. Bad way to die. Very bad. You could hear ’em screaming way over on Castle Street. They found the bodies later, what was left of them. Chained together in death.’

  ‘They never found who did it?’

  ‘The whores knew, but they was too scared to say. Or too glad, maybe. I heard it was revenge. Some young jade, got her face all cut. Foreign girl – Spaniard, I think.’

  My heart dipped. The truth began to circle about me, wheeling like a bird of prey. ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Don’t know. She died, maybe. Maybe not.’ A shrug.

  Maybe not. Maybe I had seen her just this morning. Maybe she had saved my life last night.

  Gabriela.

  I made a hurried excuse and abandoned Budge in the middle of the street. He must have guessed from my countenance that something was troubling me – I was too disturbed to hide it. I wandered the streets for a long, wretched hour, scarcely noticing where I was headed. Surely I must be mistaken. There must be countless women with scars upon their faces.

  And then I thought of little Bia, clambering on to the bed this morning. Tracing a pudgy finger down my face. Bad man gone. I’d thought she meant Howard. But she’d been tracing a scar. Her mother’s scar. Bad man. Burden. They did not sound so very different.

  Somehow I found myself outside the familiar green door of the Cocked Pistol. I opened my watch. Not yet ten o’clock. I must speak with Gabriela – but not now. Not until I could be sure that her husband was out on his own business.

  A night visit to St Giles, God help me. I would be damned lucky to survive it.

  Sam was sitting on the stairs, sharp chin resting on his knees. He grabbed my coat as I passed him. ‘Mr Hawkins—’

  ‘Not now, Sam.’ Not now. And if my darkest thoughts were true – not ever.

  Kitty waited for me by the fire in our room, her father’s journals in a stack by her arm. I was struck by the sharp hinge of her life. Nathaniel Sparks had been a distinguished physician and a gentleman, and the family had lived in great comfort. But he had died, and Kitty’s mother had lost herself to grief. Lost herself to gin too in the end, falling further and further until she was selling herself for it. Kitty had escaped, or had been abandoned – it was hard to say as she refused to speak of her mother. She might even be alive yet, though I doubted it. Half the town knew that Kitty had inherited a fortune when Samuel Fleet died, and from what I’d heard, Emma Sparks would have been the first in line demanding a hand-out. It was five years at least since Kitty had seen her mother. How she had survived on her own was a mystery. All I knew for certain was that she had somehow remained a maid, and could fight like a demon. No doubt these two facts were connected. I had tried to coax the truth from her, and she had bitten and snapped like a vixen until I gave up.

  I had thought there would be time. We had only met last autumn and there had been no rush. And now I had more pressing concerns. Seeing Nathaniel’s medical papers reminded me how little I knew about Kitty Sparks. I knew her heart, at least – and I suppose that in the end that was all that mattered.

  Alice brought us a late supper and then we retired to bed, exhausted by another troubling day. I held Kitty in my arms and we talked drowsily of small things. She had slipped the queen’s ring onto her wedding finger, where it twinkled softly against the sheets. I was tempted to ask her again to marry me, but I knew she would refuse. Tomorrow. I would ask her again tomorrow.

  Chapter Seventeen

  A soft pressure on my shoulder. ‘Sir. It’s time.’

  I opened my eyes. Alice tiptoed out of the room and downstairs while I dressed haphazardly in the dark. I could hear Kitty breathing deeply against her pillow, quite still. I leaned as close as I dared and touched my lips to her hai
r.

  I had asked Alice to wake me at four o’clock. She had stayed awake down in the kitchen, cleaning by candlelight. She poured me a bowl of coffee, which I drank quickly, feeling it sharpen my senses. She didn’t ask where I was going. It was not her place.

  Sometimes, when I looked at Alice, I saw her as she had first arrived in this house, covered in blood. Red smears on a ghost-white face, and blue eyes staring fixed in terror. A gruesome palimpsest, the Alice of that night placed in front of the one she had become. Our Alice, always scrubbing and mopping and sweeping as if there were layers of dirt that only she could see.

  Some part of me had always wondered if we had accepted her story too readily, but now I knew she was innocent and was glad Kitty had brought her here.

  ‘Keep the doors locked and the windows shuttered. Don’t let anyone in until I return. And don’t let Miss Sparks out.’

  If Kitty knew where I was going tonight, she would insist on coming with me. I would not risk it, not after Howard’s attack on the boat. Let her curse my name and tear out her hair in fury, I didn’t care.

  ‘How will I stop her?’

  A good question. ‘Just try your best, Alice.’

  She nodded, frightened. I was sorry for it – Alice had suffered enough these past weeks – but it could not be helped. At least she did not know where I was going.

  St Giles – in the dead of night. A short stroll into hell. But first I needed a guide.

  The previous morning, Fleet had told his men that I worked under his protection. The word was passed about the gang. One small benefit of our agreement and one I had not expected to need so soon.

  Fleet had said that if I needed to speak with him, I should leave a message at the Coach and Horses on Wellington Street. I headed there now through the ink-black streets. The tavern was empty, but a message was sent. Ten minutes later, one of Fleet’s men arrived and motioned me towards a dark corner of the room.

  ‘The Captain’s working.’

  I nodded. In fact, I had depended on it. ‘It’s urgent.’

  ‘He won’t come here tonight, Hawkins.’

  I lowered my voice, though there was no one to hear us. ‘Then take me to Phoenix Street. I can wait for him there.’

  He chewed his cheek, thinking. ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Not your business.’

  He frowned at that, but it was the right thing to say. He wouldn’t trust a man who spilled his secrets so easily. Thought some more. ‘I’ll take your pistol.’

  I feigned reluctance, then handed it over. I had kept my dagger, hidden in the lining of my coat. Fleet’s man gave my pistol to the landlord for safekeeping and said I would collect it later. Later. An imagined time, when the night was over and I was safely home again. We would see.

  We carved a straight route through St Giles; none of Sam’s scampering back and forth. I knew where Fleet lived and there was no need to hide it now. We sauntered down streets that would have throbbed with danger had I walked through them on my own. I still felt fierce eyes watching us, heard the whispers in the walkways above our heads, but I had been granted safe passage into the heart of the stews. How I would come out again I wasn’t sure. I never was very good at planning ahead.

  We came into Fleet’s house through the square this time, instead of Sam’s preferred route over the rooftops. Ducked into a mean timber house and then out again through a narrow passageway to the back yard. We had reached the centre of the hidden square. Candles burned at the top of Fleet’s home, but otherwise all was still. It was four-thirty in the morning. Most of the gang would not return until dawn.

  A few men stood guard inside, drinking and playing cards to pass the time. They nodded as I passed them. The message had reached them long before we had.

  Gabriela sat by the fire, in the room at the top of the house. Her hair was loose around her shoulders and she looked very tired. Another night keeping vigil for her husband. How could she stand such a life?

  I bowed quickly and rubbed my hands to warm them. It was a bitterly cold night. There were a few flakes of snow sparkling on my coat. It had begun falling as we entered St Giles and now the world beyond the windows was a blizzard, bright white and silent.

  Her lips puckered in amusement. ‘You blue with cold again, sir?’ She drew up another chair close to the fire. ‘We wait here. James will be home soon.’

  Not too soon, please God. ‘I was hoping we might speak, Mrs Fleet.’

  ‘Gabriela. Sit. They have taken your weapons, yes? I am sorry, I must ask. We are alone.’

  She poured me a cup of hot wine. We were not alone, of course. Fleet’s men were close by. Did she guess that I might have a dagger, hidden about me? It would be a mistake indeed to underestimate her: James Fleet’s wife. No doubt she too had a blade somewhere, tucked beneath her skirts. I let my gaze wander across her gown. It was plain and grey, but it fitted neatly to her figure. If it had been stolen, someone had restitched it very well. Her waist was thick from bearing her six children, but she was still a fine, handsome woman, save for the scar. And even that seemed to suit her, now I had grown more used to it.

  A golden brooch glinted at the centre of her chest and I thought of Eva’s red gauze scarf, threaded with gold. Her mother, it seemed, allowed herself at least one small trinket.

  I had been studying Gabriela, but she was watching me too, her eyes a warm, coffee brown, fringed with thick lashes. She looked very much like Sam, but she was less awkward, more comfortable in company. ‘The wine is good?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘Is what they give on the road to Tyburn.’ She drained her cup, sucked the wine from her lips. ‘Last drink of the damned. You stare at my scar, Mr Hawkins. Calma, calma,’ she laughed as I flustered my apologies. ‘I know why you have come. I am not bird-witted.’ The last word was pure St Giles, the tt lost somewhere in the back of her throat. She leaned forward. ‘There are men downstairs. I call them, they slit your throat. So we speak quiet and you leave. Yes?’

  I stared at her. I had not ventured a single word about Joseph Burden, or the brothel in Seven Dials.

  She touched a finger to her scar, traced the line down her ruined cheek. ‘This is my life. My story. I know when a man want to hear it.’ She tucked her bare feet beneath her gown. ‘I am a Jewess, you know this? My family lives in Portugal for hundreds of years. We convert,’ she fluttered her hand, showing the shallow extent of that conversion. ‘The Inquisition does not trust we are faithful. You know what they do to such people? Burn. Torture. So we run – sail for England and freedom. My mother and father, my two brothers. My sister. This is . . . twenty-one years ago. I am thirteen.’ She gazed into the fire, eyes hollow. ‘There is a storm. They die.’

  She stopped. It had taken a great deal of strength to say those few stark words. Her loss hung between us, unspoken. After a moment, she continued.

  ‘I am thirteen and alone in London. Pretty. No one to care for me. I have only a few words of English. What do you think happens to such a girl?’ She shrugged at the ways of the world. ‘I am starving and afraid. A kind woman take me in. “Poor little Gabby. Call me Auntie”. She gives me clothes and food, a bed. And then she make me work for them.’

  ‘Aunt Doxie.’

  She poured us both another glass of hot wine, blood-red liquid splashing from the jug. ‘You hear of Joseph Burden, I think?’

  So much venom in her voice when she spoke his name. ‘Ned Weaver told me . . .’

  A sharp tilt of the chin. ‘His son. Yes. I know this.’

  ‘He said Burden worked at a brothel in Seven Dials. Charles Howard told me the same story last night.’ I frowned at the memory, and reached for my pipe.

  ‘I remember him. He used to visit.’

  ‘He said it was different from other brothels. Nothing was forbidden.’

  She curled her lip, mimicked her old bawd. ‘Whatever you want, sir. If you can pay. Whatever you want. And Mr Burden standing out on the front step, so tall, his arm
s like this.’ She clutched her own slim arm and gripped hard, as if it were solid oak. ‘A bully should protect the whores, you understand? He is paid to stop the customers when they grow too wild. Mr Burden, though – he takes money from the customers and he lets them do whatever they wish. Sometimes he watches. Sometimes he joins them.’

  ‘He cut you.’

  ‘This?’ Gabriela touched her scar again. ‘No, sir – let me tell you what Mr Burden did.’

  But then she stopped and said nothing for a long while. Her breath was shallow and very fast. A slick of sweat shone on her face, though it was still snowing. She pressed her palms together and held her hands to her face as if in prayer. When she looked up once more, she had returned to herself. Calma. ‘There was a man. I will not say his name; he does not deserve to be remembered. He was old, very ugly. Very cruel. All the girls are afraid of him. He likes to frighten them, you understand?

  ‘One day he ask for me for the first time. Points at me as if I am some animal at Smithfield. That one. Aunt Doxie does not want to sell her little Gabby – some time he leaves marks and I am so pretty, worth so much to her. But . . . Whatever you want, sir. If you can pay. She names a fee – enough to buy every whore in the brothel. He laughs and pays double. It is a game to him. He likes to play games.’ She closes her eyes for a second. ‘He takes my hand. He feels that I am shaking all over and he laughs again. He likes that I am afraid. He knows I have heard the stories.

  ‘Aunt Doxie leads us to this man’s favourite room. It is high up, very high at the back of the brothel, very quiet. She tells to Mr Burden – stand outside the door and call if there is trouble. Then she leaves and we are alone. The man gives Mr Burden half a guinea. He says, keep your mouth shut.’

  She picked up the poker and pushed it deep into the fire, turning over the coals and building the flames higher. She did not turn back to look at me, but kept her eyes always on the light. ‘This man. He ties my hands. He ties a cloth over my eyes. I stand like this for a long time, so afraid, waiting in the darkness. Then I feel a blade, here.’ She touched her throat. ‘He whispers in my ear, tells me all the things he will do with it. I start to cry. He strikes me so hard I fall to my knees.