A Very Peculiar Plague

by Catherine Jinks

  ‘No, no, you’re not listening, Ed. This is Birdie McAdam. The real Birdie McAdam. Now why don’t you put on that head and show her what you can do?’

  Eduardo opened his mouth, still looking puzzled. But then someone else broke into the conversation.

  ‘What do you mean, Bedelia is leaving?’ a shrill voice exclaimed. ‘I’ll have you know I ain’t going nowhere! Not without a fight!’

  Suddenly two more figures emerged from the backstage door. One was a dwarf wearing a false beard and a wax nose. He was dressed all in green, with a pointed green hat and knitted stockings. The other was a girl with a python draped over her shoulders. She was clad in a blonde wig, a white dress and a blue velvet sash. Jem decided that she was about sixteen years old.

  ‘Why, Bedelia!’ Mr Lubbock exclaimed, with forced cheerfulness. ‘The show’s in ten minutes – go and put on your slap, there’s a good girl.’

  ‘Who is she?’ Bedelia demanded, as if he hadn’t spoken. She was glaring at Birdie, who glared right back.

  ‘I’ll tell you who I am,’ Birdie retorted, folding her arms. ‘I’m Birdie McAdam. And you ain’t. Why, you’re nothing more than a cheap, false, parrot-voiced impersonator! And if you don’t leave off what you’re doing, I’ll snatch you bald-headed – that’s if you ain’t already bald, under that sorry excuse of a wig!’

  7

  THE PENNY GAFF

  Bedelia turned to Mr Lubbock. ‘What does she mean, I ain’t Birdie McAdam?’ the girl cried. ‘You can’t do this! I were engaged for the entire London run!’

  ‘Now, Bedelia . . .’

  ‘Don’t you “Bedelia” me, Josiah Lubbock!’ She rounded on Birdie again. ‘Who do you work for, then? Pottle? Bland? What shows have you done?’

  Jem began to laugh. He couldn’t help it. What with the wax-nosed dwarf, and the hairy giant, and the battling Birdies . . .

  ‘She ain’t here to take yer job,’ he told Bedelia, grinning from ear to ear. But Birdie quickly corrected him.

  ‘I’m here to make her stop being me,’ Birdie said, ‘and don’t care if she loses her job as a consequence.’

  By now Bedelia was starting to look confused. It was her companion, the little man in green, who suddenly exclaimed, ‘You don’t mean you’re Birdie McAdam? The real Birdie McAdam?’

  ‘Ain’t that what I just bin saying?’ Birdie replied crossly. Beside her, Miss Eames added, ‘This is a clear case of fraudulent impersonation. I shall take you to court if Birdie’s name is not removed from your advertisements by tomorrow morning. Do you understand, Mr Lubbock?’

  Mr Lubbock nodded. ‘Yes, of course,’ he assured her, with another greasy smile. ‘I had no wish to cause offence. But might I just ask—’

  ‘No, you may not,’ Miss Eames snapped. Bedelia, meanwhile, was gazing at Birdie in astonishment, open-mouthed and goggle-eyed.

  ‘You ain’t never the real Birdie,’ she protested. ‘You’re so young! Ain’t she young, Rupert?’

  ‘She is,’ said the dwarf, nodding.

  ‘I’m eleven years old,’ Birdie stiffly informed them.

  ‘You’re such a bit of a thing, though – ain’t she, Rupert?’

  ‘A scrap,’ the dwarf confirmed.

  ‘And Rupert would know,’ Bedelia pointed out, ‘for he’s worked with some o’ the smallest, in his time.’

  Jem shot an inquiring glance at Rupert, wanting to hear more. But Miss Eames wasn’t interested in Rupert’s fairground memories. She reached for Birdie’s hand and said, ‘I see no reason to stay. We’ve delivered our message. You will no longer profit from Birdie’s name, Mr Lubbock, or you’ll be hearing from my solicitors. Good day to you, sir.’ She gave Birdie’s hand a tug, then frowned when there was no response. ‘Come along, dear. What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Birdie mumbled. Catching her eye, Jem pulled a sympathetic face. He knew in his heart that she wanted to pet the snake, chat to the dwarf, and examine the exhibits. Why not? He wanted to do it himself.

  Miss Eames, however, had no wish to stay. Not while a cab stood waiting outside. ‘We ought to get home,’ she told Birdie. ‘Whitechapel Road isn’t exactly a respectable place to be. Is it, Mr Bunce?’

  Alfred shook his head. ‘Off you go, lass,’ he said to Birdie. When she pouted, looking mulish, he fixed her with a flinty gaze. ‘Do as you’re told, now,’ he warned. ‘Miss Eames knows what’s best for you.’ Then he turned and motioned to Jem. ‘You too, lad. Come along.’

  ‘One moment, Mr Bunce.’ Stepping forward, Mr Lubbock managed to insert himself between Alfred and the door. ‘I wonder if you might be interested in a public appearance? On competitive terms, of course.’

  Alfred scowled. ‘Get out o’ me way,’ he rasped.

  ‘You’re a bogler, Mr Bunce. You’ve made a name for yourself. People would pay to see you at work.’ Before Alfred could do more than sniff, Mr Lubbock gestured at Bedelia. ‘A double act, perhaps? You wouldn’t have to do much. Your main contribution would be your name; my associate would take care of the rest. Why, she could be your new apprentice!’

  Jem bristled. ‘I’m his new ’prentice. I’m a bogler’s boy,’ he said.

  ‘Indeed?’ For the first time, Mr Lubbock studied Jem with genuine interest. But Alfred shook his head sternly.

  ‘I ain’t going on no stage,’ he declared, ‘and neither is Jem.’

  ‘Then may I make another suggestion?’ As Alfred sidestepped him, trying to follow Miss Eames into the vestibule, Mr Lubbock began to talk very quickly. ‘Have you ever considered how valuable a bogle would be? People pay enormous sums to see tigers and elephants – only think how much they’d pay to see a real, live bogle!’ Before Alfred could sidle away, Mr Lubbock grabbed his arm. ‘I’m acquainted with the owner of a travelling menagerie, and I’m sure that, with his help, we could devise a means of caging and keeping any bogle you might catch during the course of your daily rounds—’

  ‘Listen here, Lubbock.’ Alfred wrenched himself free, then planted his finger on the showman’s chest. ‘In the first place, you can’t trap a bogle. Try and you’ll perish.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘In the second place, I don’t bogle no more. It ain’t a healthy occupation.’

  ‘Mr Bunce—’

  ‘And last of all, I don’t work for liars.’ Alfred suddenly turned his attention to Jem, using the same dark, piercing look that he’d used to quell Birdie. ‘Liars is nothing but trouble,’ he declared, very slowly and clearly. ‘They promise you money and it never comes. When they make a mistake, they allus blame you for it. You should remember that, lad. They ain’t worth the time you spend on ’em.’

  Jem grunted. He didn’t know what else to do. As an accomplished liar, he felt that Alfred was being a little harsh. But he couldn’t exactly say so.

  ‘I’m not lying, Mr Bunce,’ Mr Lubbock protested. ‘Why would I want to saddle myself with a vicious creature if it wasn’t going to make us both a fortune? Which it would, sir, I promise you. On my mother’s life—’

  ‘D’you know what bogles eat?’ Alfred interrupted.

  ‘Do you know what you’d be feeding ’em?’

  Mr Lubbock glanced at Bedelia, who shrugged. Beside her, Rupert said vaguely, ‘They’d be partial to a bit o’ meat, I daresay?’

  ‘They eat children,’ Alfred growled. Then he touched his hat in farewell. ‘You don’t keep bogles, sir, you kill ’em,’ he concluded. ‘Good day to you. I’ll see meself out.’

  He moved away so quickly that he was in the street before Jem could catch up with him. Miss Eames was already outside, tearing a placard off a wall. It was drizzling. A line of people stood waiting for the penny gaff to open. The watery reflections of nearby gas-lamps gilded the damp cobblestones.

  ‘Here!’ said the man at the front of the line, when he saw what Miss Eames was up to. ‘What’s your game, then?’

  ‘The next show is cancelled,’ Miss Eames informed him.

  ‘Cancelled?’
/>   ‘You have been misled. Birdie McAdam will not be performing here tonight.’

  Miss Eames was so absorbed in her work that she seemed not to notice the sudden clamour of disappointed theatre patrons. Jem heard it, though. And so did Birdie.

  They exchanged an anxious look as several drunken loiterers moved towards Miss Eames, loudly complaining.

  ‘Ye’re ten minutes late, and now ye’re saying ye’ll not open at all?’ somebody bellowed. Whoever he was, he sounded Irish.

  Alfred grabbed Miss Eames’s wrist. ‘Come,’ he said, pulling her towards their hansom cab, which was waiting just down the street. Birdie slipped behind Miss Eames and began to shove her along. Jem tried to distract the Irishman.

  ‘It’s Josiah Lubbock you want. He’s the manager o’ this here gaff,’ Jem announced. He pointed at the shop door, where the showman was skulking. ‘That’s him there – see? He’ll tell you why there ain’t no show tonight.’

  As the crowd rounded on Mr Lubbock, erupting into a chorus of complaints, Jem turned and made for the hansom cab. He could hear Miss Eames giving Alfred’s address to the cabman, but didn’t stop to wonder why until he was safely tucked away in the vehicle, opposite Alfred and Birdie. Only when the cab had started to move, heading west down Whitechapel Road, did Jem feel safe enough to speak.

  ‘Why are we going to Alfred’s place?’ he asked Miss Eames. ‘I thought you was heading home?’

  Miss Eames looked at him in surprise. Her complexion was blotchy, her skirt was splashed with mud, and her hair had come loose, falling in damp wisps from beneath her hat – which sat crookedly on her head. Jem was relieved to see her looking so dishevelled. It made her less intimidating, somehow.

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t let you walk,’ Miss Eames replied. ‘Not barefoot. Not in this weather.’ As Jem blinked, she added, ‘You will take Jem for the night – will you not, Mr Bunce? He cannot be left on the street.’

  ‘Aye,’ Alfred rumbled, sounding resigned. ‘I’ll take him.’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll be able to find him a suitable position,’ Miss Eames went on. ‘He is not completely unskilled, after all.’

  ‘Mebbe he can sell flypapers,’ Birdie suggested. She was regarding Jem in a slightly resentful way, her arms folded, her eyes narrowed. ‘Mebbe he can work as a “Catch-Em Alive” boy.’

  ‘Mebbe,’ said Alfred. But Jem didn’t want to sell flypapers. He wasn’t about to walk around London with a loaded flypaper tied around his cap, singing, ‘Catch all the nasty beetles and flies, catch ’em from teasing the baby’s eyes.’

  ‘I ain’t no hawker!’ he snapped. ‘I’m a bogler’s boy, now!’ Appealing to Alfred, he continued, ‘We killed a bogle today. Don’t that make me a bogler’s boy?’

  ‘Not if I ain’t a bogler,’ Alfred replied shortly.

  ‘But you are!’ Jem exclaimed. ‘How can you sit there with a bogler’s bag on yer knee and claim you ain’t a bogler?’

  ‘I’m a retired bogler.’ Alfred frowned at Jem. ‘That’s what you’re to say, next time anyone comes to you with tales o’ missing scullery maids and such. D’you hear?’

  After a moment’s hesitation, Jem nodded. He didn’t have much choice. He was wet, tired and hungry, with no shoes, no job, and barely a penny to his name. He wasn’t in a position to argue with Alfred.

  ‘And if you’re to stay with me, you must pull yer weight,’ Alfred went on. ‘First thing you can do is sweep the place out, since you left yer broom there. If you don’t know how to cook, Ned’ll teach you. Aside from that, there’s water to haul and a fire to keep stoked.’ Before Jem could say that he would be happy to do all these things, Alfred warned, ‘But if you ever bring home another prospect like you done today, you’ll be out o’ there faster’n a swift can fly. Understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jem mumbled.

  ‘The last thing I need is you pointing me out to every stray barmaid as comes along. Why, I moved halfway across London to prevent it!’ Leaning forward suddenly, Alfred glowered at Jem. ‘And another thing – I’ll not have you chasing Sarah Pickles.’

  ‘But—’ ‘It’s too dangerous. She’s too dangerous, living or dead.’ Something about Alfred’s tone made Birdie shiver and Miss Eames wince. ‘If she’s dead, then those as killed her won’t take kindly to you nosing about,’ Alfred continued. ‘And if she’s living . . . well, I’ll not have you vanish into thin air, like all them other poor souls as crossed Sal, over the years.’

  ‘But she sold me as bogle-bait!’ Jem protested.

  ‘Aye, and you’re lucky to be alive,’ the bogler agreed. ‘Which is how I want you to stay. Alive. Else I ain’t got no use for you.’

  He waited as Jem swallowed, clenched his fists and finally said, ‘All right.’

  ‘Long as you’re under me roof, you’ll not chase Sal?’ Alfred pressed.

  ‘No,’ Jem answered. And he was telling the truth – up to a point. How could he chase Sarah while he was under Alfred’s roof? It wasn’t as if she lodged there.

  Jem knew that, when he did find Sarah, it would be somewhere else in London . . .

  8

  THE MISSING APPRENTICE

  Rat-tat-tat-tat!

  A knock on the door awakened Jem the next morning. For an instant he didn’t know where he was. But then he raised his head, rubbed his bleary eyes, and realised that he was in Alfred’s room, under a pile of old clothes.

  ‘Ned?’ he squawked, as the rapping continued. Rat-tat-tat-tat! Judging from the pale light creeping through the window, it was still very early – yet Ned Roach was nowhere to be seen. His boots were gone. There was no one on his palliasse.

  It occurred to Jem that a coster’s boy like Ned might have to rise before dawn if he wanted to reach Covent Garden Market in time to grab the choicest fruit.

  Rat-tat-tat-tat.

  ‘Whassarr . . .?’ Alfred grumbled, from somewhere deep in a nest of grubby bedclothes. Jem pushed back his own covers and stood up. He was still wearing his canvas trousers and blue shirt, but had carefully washed his feet upon crossing Alfred’s threshold the previous night.

  Alfred had insisted on it.

  ‘I’m a-coming,’ Jem growled. He staggered over to the door, dodging strips of flypaper on his way. When he lifted the latch and pulled the door open, he found himself peering at a total stranger. ‘Who are you?’ he asked crossly. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Hugh Purdy’s my name.’ The stranger tipped his cap, which was made of leather. He also carried a leather toolbag, and wore leather pads tied to the knees of his trousers. ‘I’m looking for Mr Alfred Bunce,’ he said. ‘Miss Lillimere sent me.’

  Jem grimaced. He glanced over his shoulder at Alfred, who was sitting up in bed, running his hands through his hair.

  ‘There’s a cove here wants to see you,’ Jem told him. When Alfred groaned, Jem turned back to Hugh Purdy. ‘A little early, ain’t it?’

  ‘I got a job this morning,’ Purdy replied, ‘and I’m afeared to go up there without Mr Bunce comes along.’ As Jem hesitated, conscious of Alfred grunting and coughing in the room behind him, Purdy took off his cap. He was a wiry little man with an angular, clean-shaven face, a thatch of mouse-coloured hair, and skin as leathery as his toolbag. Jem judged him to be about thirty years old.

  ‘I’m a plumber and glazier,’ the man continued, ‘and I lost my apprentice on a roof, yesterday morning.’ Seeing Jem blink, he added, ‘Billy didn’t fall, I’d swear to it. For I searched until nightfall, but there weren’t no trace of him thereabouts.’ Purdy shook his head in bewilderment. ‘When it got too dark to keep searching, I stopped for a pint at the tavern nearby – and that’s when Mabel told me about the bogle in her basement.’

  By this time Alfred was more or less upright. He had pulled on his trousers and was dragging his old green coat over his nightshirt. Jem also noticed that the neighbours were beginning to show an interest in Alfred’s unexpected visitor. One or two doors had opened in the passage outside. Several pairs of eyes were wat
ching Hugh Purdy’s every move.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ said Jem, having decided that Alfred would probably prefer to discuss his bogling business in private. He ushered Purdy over the threshold, then pulled a grotesque face at the nosy old woman across the hallway before slamming Alfred’s door shut.

  ‘I’m sorry to rouse you so early, Mr Bunce,’ Purdy was saying. He had fixed his bemused gaze on the flapping strips of paper overhead. ‘I’m putting lead on a roof, see, and must have it done by the end o’ the week. But I can’t do it without a boy, and won’t take another boy up there till I discover what happened to the first . . .’

  Alfred coughed, hawked, and spat. He wasn’t looking very well.

  ‘Why d’you think a bogle’s to blame?’ he asked. ‘Could the boy not have run off?’

  ‘Not Billy,’ the plumber replied. ‘Billy’s a stouthearted lad, as keen as mustard. He had no cause to run, and no desire to.’

  Reaching for his pipe, Alfred studiously ignored Jem, who was kicking his bedclothes tidily into one corner. ‘You sure he weren’t taken? There’s some folk do that, when they need boys for thieving, or begging. They grab ’em where they find ’em.’

  ‘On a rooftop?’ Purdy’s tone made it clear what he thought of that idea. ‘Billy’s a big boy, sir. Ten years old, and sturdy as a stump. Yet I didn’t hear a sound – not a single cry or clatter. One instant he were fetching sheets o’ lead, and the next . . .’ Purdy trailed off, shaking his head again. But Alfred said nothing.

  He was busy packing his pipe with tobacco.

  ‘I ain’t never heard of a roof-bogle,’ Jem observed at last, to break the lengthening silence. Still, however, Alfred didn’t speak.

  It was the plumber who finally said, ‘I once heard tell of a chimney-bogle taking kids from a mill near Sheffield. So when Mabel mentioned your visit, Mr Bunce, it crossed my mind that—’

  ‘—Billy might have bin took by a chimney-bogle,’ Alfred interrupted. He had pulled a box of matches from his pocket.

  ‘Exactly!’ The plumber sounded relieved that Alfred hadn’t scoffed at the notion. ‘For there’s any number o’ chimneys up there, and precious little else.’