Ratcatcher mh-1

by James McGee

  Lomax must have been one of those trapped on the field. By some miracle he had survived, but at an appalling cost.

  “I was wounded and trapped under my horse,” Lomax said, as if reading Hawkwood’s thoughts. “Couldn’t move, y’see.” The major’s good eye glistened as he remembered. “Damnedest thing, but it was a Frog officer who pulled me free. Heard me yelling. My horse was charcoal by the time he dragged me out. Which is what I would have been if he hadn’t got to me in time.” Lomax shook his head at the memory. “A bloody Frenchie! Who’d have thought it?”

  As the major recounted the story, Hawkwood looked down and saw for the first time the full extent of Lomax’s injuries. He tried to imagine the man’s pain, what he must have gone through.

  “Couldn’t carry on, of course,” Lomax said. “Could still ride a horse, but a cavalryman ain’t much use if he can’t swing a weapon at the same time.” He held up his right hand, which didn’t resemble a hand so much as a blackened claw. “Can just about pick my bloody nose, if I put my mind to it.” Lomax’s ruined mouth split into a travesty of a smile.

  It must have taken a great deal of effort, Hawkwood knew, for the man to say what he had. Even before the fire, the 23rd Light Dragoons had faced their own demons during the battle. Through mistake and misfortune, less than half the regiment had returned from the fight.

  But for all Lomax’s well-intentioned words, the past could not be rewritten. Hawkwood had left that life behind. Now he marched to a different drum. On this occasion, it was leading him along a path he did not relish taking. A pilgrimage to a place whose very name was a mockery. A crawling cesspit known as the Holy Land.

  The St Giles Rookery was a world within a world. Bounded by Great Russell Street to the north, Oxford Street in the west and Broad Street to the south, and occupying nearly ten acres, it was a festering sore deep in the heart of the city.

  Built on a foundation of poverty and vice, its impregnability lay in the sheer congestion of its dilapidated buildings, narrow alleyways, yards and sewers. The wretched tenements with their soot-blackened tiles made the Widow Gant’s miserable lodging house appear a palace in comparison. Between them ran dark passages, some so low and narrow it was impossible for two people to walk abreast. Entry into this rat-run could be gained from a hundred directions by way of the dives and alleys around Leicester Square and the Haymarket and from the dank tunnels leading off Regent Street. To the east lay a timber yard, beneath which, it was rumoured, there existed a passage that ran all the way to High Holborn.

  It had been christened the Holy Land by its inhabitants: Irish Catholic immigrants for the most part, though over the years outcasts of a different kind had found sanctuary within its stinking slums. Murderers, deserters, beggars and whores, along with the poor and the hungry, had all sought to establish some kind of haven for themselves away from the prying eyes and unwelcome attention of the Parish Officers and the police. Free from the constraints of conventional society, the inhabitants of the Holy Land had set up their own kingdom, their own laws, their own courts, their own form of justice and punishment. Any representatives of officialdom who chose to venture into the St Giles Rookery did so at their peril.

  The girl’s name was Jenny. She had no mother or father, at least not that she could remember. She was just one of the thousands of children who lived on the streets and who scratched a living by their wits or, as in Jenny’s case, by selling their bodies.

  Hawkwood could feel the eyes on him as he and the girl picked their way along the overflowing gutter that was the entry point into the rookery. The watchers hovered in wormeaten doorways and hid behind windows draped with rags, their lifeless faces as grey as brick dust, eyes dark with distrust. Everywhere there were signs of deprivation; mounds of rotting waste, human and animal; dampness and decay.

  Somewhere, a woman screamed, the sound rising in a wavering note of terror from a bleak alley, before ending abruptly. Another voice, male, bawled an obscenity. There followed a crash and a squeal. The girl clutched Hawkwood’s sleeve. As the scream was cut off, Hawkwood felt the girl’s grip tighten. For all her brashness, she was still a child, susceptible to fear and dread.

  A figure slouched in an open doorway, eyeing their approach. It was only as they drew closer that Hawkwood saw the apparition was female. As they passed, the woman pulled aside her shawl and lifted her tattered skirt to reveal her nakedness. Her breasts and legs were the colour of fish scales and covered in welts. She threw back her head and laughed loudly. “Come on, darlin’! Let the nipper go an’ Molly’ll show yer what a real woman can do!”

  As they walked on, the girl pressed against Hawkwood’s side, the whore’s raucous laughter following them up the alley.

  By now, they were deep inside the rookery and Hawkwood was well and truly lost. The girl had made certain of that by leading him in all directions, sometimes recrossing their path or by doubling back the way they had come. Hawkwood was beginning to doubt he’d ever find his way back to civilization, or at least what passed for it.

  The houses were becoming even more closely packed, the streets narrower, the smell much worse. And it was getting darker. He noted there didn’t seem to be too many people around. It was as if they had been swallowed up by the encroaching shadows. He wondered how much this was due to his own presence.

  Without warning, the girl tugged him sideways. He found himself ducking under a low archway. A flight of stone steps led downwards. A heavy wooden door barred their way. Beyond the door, Hawkwood could hear voices. There were other noises, too, guttural and indistinct, and what sounded like the rasping strains of a fiddle. As the girl knocked on the door, Hawkwood felt the short hairs on the back of his neck begin to prickle. The door opened. The girl pulled him through and Hawkwood was plunged into darkness.

  5

  It took several seconds for Hawkwood’s eyes to adjust, finally allowing him to take stock of his surroundings. The cellar was huge with dung-coloured walls, flagstone floor, low arched roof. At the far end of the room, just discernible through the press of bodies and a swirling fog of pungent tobacco fumes, a short flight of wooden stairs led up to a second level, separated from the rest of the cellar by a wooden rail. A crude counter constructed from empty barrels and bare boards stood along one wall.

  The drinkers lounged around rough wooden tables or stood at the counter, bottles and mugs in their hands. The women were as rough-complexioned as the men. Without exception, all were poorly clothed, faces gaunt with hunger or ravaged by drink. A fiddle player was seated in the corner. Several male customers were singing in bawdy chorus, coarse voices slurred with drink.

  The rest of the clientele, a score or more, were gathered around the dog pit.

  There were at least half a dozen dogs in evidence. Bull terriers, squat, broad, powerful beasts, weighing in at a good forty pounds apiece, bodies crisscrossed with scars, and ear flaps removed to make it more difficult for an opponent to get a grip. A couple of the animals, Hawkwood saw, were taste dogs upon which the fighting dogs served their apprenticeship. They’d had the more vulnerable parts of their anatomy shaved so that the trainee dogs learned to attack specific areas of flesh. At the side of the pit stood barrels of flour, used to separate the dogs during fights. It blocked the nasal passages, forcing the animals to relax their grip in order to breathe, allowing their owners to prise them apart.

  The place reeked of tobacco smoke, sawdust, spilt liquor, stale bodies, vomit, and piss.

  At Hawkwood’s entrance, conversation petered out. The silence, when it came, was so acute it was as if every person in the place was holding his or her breath. Hawkwood felt his skin crawl.

  The girl released her grip on his coat. A scrape of a boot from behind made Hawkwood turn. Two men moved to the door, blocking his exit. Each man carried a thick wooden stave. Their gaze was malevolent. Several of the dogs, sensing a stranger and tension in the air, growled menacingly.

  “Well now, and what have we got here? Reckon you’ve t
aken the wrong turning, squire.”

  Hawkwood stood perfectly still.

  “Christ!” A second voice broke the spell. “I knows ’im. ’E’s a bleedin’ Runner!”

  Several of the men sprang up quickly, chairs scraping. A dog barked, a woman yelped. Candlelight glinted off a knife blade. Hawkwood sensed the girl starting to back away. His first thought was that she had played her part well. A trap had been set and he had walked right into it. He cursed his stupidity. He should have changed his clothes before accompanying the girl. He was too well dressed to be anything but an outsider.

  Someone in the gauntlet hawked noisily and spat. A ribbon of mucus struck the floor an inch from Hawkwood’s boot. It was as if a signal had been given. Knives and razors were drawn as the men began to close in. Hawkwood could feel the strength of their hatred. He reached for his baton.

  “LEAVE ’IM BE!”

  The voice came from the top of the stairs. What the speaker lacked in height he made up for in girth, but it was solid muscle, not fat, that gave him his wrestler’s build. The face was square and rough-hewn, framed by close-cropped hair the colour of pewter. He would not have been out of place gracing the canvas against the likes of Figg or Reuben Benbow. One hand rested on the rail, the other gripped a heavy blackthorn cudgel. He gazed down at Hawkwood, holding the pose for several seconds without speaking. Then, unexpectedly, his mouth split into a wide, leathery grin and he threw out his arms in a broad expansive sweep.

  “Ev’ning, Cap’n! Welcome to Noah’s Ark!”

  In the eerie glow of the tallow candles, the scar beneath Hawkwood’s eye shone white as he breathed a sigh of relief. He waited as the interloper descended the stairs. Hawkwood saw how the other men moved apart to give the man room. He sensed a subtle change in the mood of the cellar’s occupants, watched as expressions shifted from malice and suspicion to surprise and curiosity. The eyes of the dogs gleamed jewel bright.

  “Hello, Nathaniel,” Hawkwood said. “How are you?”

  Still grinning hugely, ex-sergeant Nathaniel Jago, late of His Britannic Majesty’s 95th Rifles, held out his hand. “Fit as a fiddle, sir, and you ain’t looking so bad yourself, considering.”

  Hawkwood returned the smile and the grip. Jago’s hand was calloused and as hard as knotted rope.

  “By God, sir, it’s grand to see you, and that’s no word of a lie!”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Hawkwood noticed that the girl had reappeared at his side. She was staring up at them both.

  Jago looked down. “Well done, Jen. Here you are, my love, and don’t go spendin’ it all at once.”

  The girl’s eyes widened as the coins were pressed into her hand. Then, with an impish grin, she darted away.

  “She’ll spend it on rotgut, as like as not,” Jago said. There was genuine sadness in his voice. He watched the girl go with knowing eyes. “Come on, Cap’n, let’s you and me find a bottle and a quiet corner. What’ll it be? Gin? Rum? Or how about something special? A drop o’ brandy perhaps?” Jago winked conspiratorially. “French, not Spanish. Took a delivery only this morning. Word is it’s from Boney’s own cellars.”

  “ French brandy, Sergeant?” Hawkwood said drily. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Anyway, I thought there was a war on?”

  Jago grinned. “Never let political differences get in the way of business. First rule o’ commerce.”

  Sticking the cudgel in his belt and taking a bottle and two tankards from beneath the counter, Jago led Hawkwood up the stairs to a table at the back of the room. Hawkwood could feel the eyes of every person in the cellar following their progress.

  “Ignore ’em,” Jago advised. The big man laid his cudgel on the table, then took the bottle and poured a liberal measure of brandy into each tankard. “Novelty’ll wear off soon enough.”

  Hawkwood doubted that. Nevertheless, by the time they had taken their seats the conversation in the rest of the room had resumed. But Hawkwood could still feel eyes burning into his shoulder blades.

  Jago raised his mug. “To old times.”

  Hawkwood returned the toast. The brandy was smooth and warming at the back of his throat. Hawkwood wondered if it really had come from the cellars of the Emperor. And, if so, by what tortuous route had it ended up on this table, in a drinking den in London’s most notorious rookery?

  There was a silence, then Jago said softly, “I hear you’ve been busy.” The big man took a sip of brandy and sat back. “Been makin’ a name for yourself.” He put his head on one side and fixed Hawkwood with a leery eye. “I heard tell it was you who closed down the Widow Gant.” Jago’s expression was all innocence as he added, “An’ not before time, too, if you ask me. The way the old bitch used to corrupt young minds and such.” He tut-tutted and shook his head at the sheer injustice of it all.

  Hawkwood wondered about that. Putting the Widow Gant out of business had probably done all the other criminals in the district a substantial favour. Jago and his confederates would undoubtedly profit from the decrease in competition. Which, come to think of it, might well have accounted for the reason why nobody had bothered to warn the widow about the presence of law officers in the vicinity of her clearing house. Quite obviously, the old adage about there being honour among thieves didn’t apply to the denizens of the St Giles Rookery.

  Observing his former sergeant, Hawkwood thought that Jago didn’t appear to have changed much in the months since he’d last seen him, except for having shed a little more hair and gained a few pounds. In fact, the exsergeant appeared to have taken to the civilian life like the proverbial duck to water; the mark of a born survivor.

  The son of a farm labourer, raised in an isolated village on the Kent marshes, orphaned after his parents had fallen victim to the cholera, Nathaniel Jago, during his formative years, had turned his hand to many things, not all of them legal-blacksmith, drover, poacher and smuggler-with varying degrees of success, until a chance meeting with a recruiting party at a Maidstone fair had changed his life for ever.

  The promise of a fine uniform, a roof over his head, and three square meals a day, not to mention the two guineas he’d receive for signing on, had seemed like a dream come true for a young man, homeless and hungry and only one step ahead of the Revenue. And so it was on a warm afternoon in early summer that Nathaniel Jago had accepted the King’s bounty and gone to war. From the lowlands of Flanders to the jungles of the West Indies and the dusty plains of India, Jago had marched and fought his way across the world. From private to sergeant, he’d served his country well.

  He’d served Hawkwood well, too.

  They’d faced the enemy together under Nelson at Copenhagen, marched with Black Bob Crauford in the Americas and with Moore in Spain and Portugal. Jago had stood with Hawkwood on the ramparts at Montevideo. He’d guarded his back at Rolica and Vimeiro and at Talavera they’d both watched in horror as the Coldstreams and the King’s German Legion had fallen victim to the French counterattack.

  It was a friendship forged on the squares at Blatchington and Shorncliffe. Since then, Jago had stood by him through ten years of war and skirmish; a staunch ally, sharing canteens on the march across the searing heat of the Spanish plains and shivering under the same blanket in the bonechilling cold of the mountains. It had been Jago’s loyalty to Hawkwood that had caused the sergeant to become a fugitive from justice.

  When Hawkwood had taken to the mountains to join the guerrilleros, Jago had deserted from the ranks to be with him, an offence for which there could be no reprieve. At the time Hawkwood had been appalled. He had tried to persuade the sergeant to return, but to no avail. Jago had just laughed in his face.

  “Too late now, sir,” he’d said. “In any case, what would I go back to? The army don’t take kindly to deserters, even them that ’as second thoughts. Why, if I was to go back now, they’d either flog me or ’ang me. Seen men flogged and I’ve seen men ’anged. Not a pretty sight. No, reckon I’ll take my chances with you, sir, if it’s all the same. Besides
, you’ll need somebody to watch your back.”

  “You’re a bloody fool, Sergeant,” Hawkwood had told him. “The chances are we’ll both die in these mountains. Is it worth it?”

  “ ’Tis if we take a few Frenchies along with us,” Jago had responded, and then he’d favoured the exasperated Hawkwood with an irrepressible grin. “The army can get along fine without Jago. You, on the other hand…well, admit it, Cap’n, you’d miss me if I was gone.”

  Words uttered in jest, but they had added up to one indisputable fact. For all Hawkwood’s attempts to dissuade Jago from following through with his reckless decision, he knew that not having the sergeant by his side would have been tantamount to losing his rifle or his sword. It was inconceivable that Hawkwood should continue his personal war against the French without Jago’s support. So Hawkwood had admitted defeat and they had spoken no more of the matter.

  Until Hawkwood had made his decision to return to England.

  It had been late September. The first snows of winter had begun to settle on the high peaks. Wrapped in blankets around a flickering campfire, Hawkwood had revealed his intentions, and what had surprised him had been the lack of surprise shown by his sergeant. Jago had asked only one question: “When do we leave?”

  They’d secured passage on a merchantman bound for Tilbury. They had been passing the Kent coast, close to the mouth of the Medway, when Jago had jumped ship in the early hours of a chilly dawn. Officially, Jago was still listed as a deserter and it was not unheard of for ships to be met by provost sergeants on the lookout for such individuals. By leaving the vessel before it docked, Jago had pre-empted that possibility. Hawkwood, watching Jago tread water as he made his way ashore, had felt the loss hard but, in retrospect, the sergeant’s actions had been understandable.