A Very Singular Guild

by Catherine Jinks

  ‘. . . I must mark it on our map,’ Mr Harewood was saying. ‘It’s a pity I cannot recall which sewer passes under the post office . . .’

  They were approaching Giltspur Street, where Ned had once tackled the fugitive Sarah Pickles and brought her to the ground. She was now in Newgate Prison, awaiting trial. Meanwhile, her accomplice Salty Jack was lurking just around the corner – which was far too close for comfort, in Ned’s opinion. As he passed Giltspur Street, Ned caught a fleeting glimpse of Cock Lane, and quickly turned his head to one side.

  At the same instant, he spotted a familiar face across the road.

  Why, he thought, it’s that newsboy from the post office!

  ‘. . . and the Chemical Operator might undertake to analyse this sample, if we make it worth his while . . .’ Mr Harewood continued, oblivious to Ned’s sudden intake of breath. There was no mistaking the newsboy’s tartan tweed cap, or bright blue eyes. Though he couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old, he already had the kind of pinched, cagey, watchful expression that marked him as a thief, or a lookout. Jem Barbary had worn the same expression when he was working for Sarah Pickles.

  ‘Mr Bunce?’ Ned grabbed Alfred’s sleeve. ‘We’re being followed.’

  ‘What?’ Alfred stopped short.

  ‘I didn’t tell you earlier . . .’ As Ned hurriedly explained, Alfred began to frown. But he was smart enough not to glance in the newsboy’s direction.

  Mr Harewood wasn’t quite so quick on the uptake – though he soon turned back when he realised that his friends had fallen behind. He joined them eagerly, his eyes sparkling and his cheeks flushed. On hearing Ned’s report, however, his sunny face darkened.

  ‘Why, what a damnable cheek!’ he growled. Then, before Ned could stop him, he looked at the newsboy.

  ‘Sst! No!’ Ned hissed, but it was too late. The newsboy caught Mr Harewood’s eye. There was a heartbeat’s pause. Then the boy ducked, swivelled and darted into the nearest cross-street.

  ‘I’ll catch the rascal!’ Mr Harewood exclaimed. He thrust his china pot into Ned’s hands before bolting across the road like a foxhound.

  ‘Wait!’ Ned cried. ‘Mr Harewood!’

  ‘He’ll get hisself killed,’ Alfred muttered, setting off in pursuit. With Ned at his heels he dodged a hackney cab, jumped over a puddle, and headed after Mr Harewood, who was struggling to keep up with the newsboy. After dashing past the Newgate pump, Mr Harewood elbowed his way through the crowds that were spilling out of a tavern door, then plunged into a narrow lane opposite the prison.

  Alfred swore under his breath. His pace slowed as he eyed the mouth of the lane, which looked dark and seedy. ‘I don’t like this,’ he said. ‘This here is a trap, like as not.’

  Ned shivered. ‘Mr Harewood!’ he yelled. ‘Come back!’

  ‘Mr Harewood! Come back!’ echoed a youth who was lounging against the tavern wall. His friends all laughed. Ned blushed.

  ‘You stay close to me, d’you hear?’ Alfred told him, ignoring the jeers of their drunken audience. As he slowly advanced, he pulled his sack off his shoulder and tucked it under his arm. Ned couldn’t help wondering if he planned to use his spear.

  Beyond the tavern, a cobbled passage ran between two rows of sooty, blank-faced shops. The passage was cluttered with carts and barrows. About halfway down its crooked length, another alley opened onto it – and Ned spied Mr Harewood vanishing around a corner into this second alley, pursued by the shrill curses of a woman who’d just been knocked sideways. ‘Watch where ye’re going!’ she squawked, stooping to pick up her basket. One glance told Ned that she probably wasn’t a threat, even though she looked a bit like Sarah Pickles. The man near her also seemed harmless; he was small and thin, and wore an ink-spattered apron. But what about the heavily pockmarked porter hovering behind him? Or the man in the blue butcher’s smock who was crossing the street up ahead? Were they dangerous?

  Ned couldn’t tell. He’d never laid eyes on John Gammon – or on any of his associates. Except, of course, for Sarah Pickles . . .

  All at once a volley of furious shouts was cut short, quite abruptly, as if a door had slammed shut on it. By the time Alfred and Ned rounded the next corner, Mr Harewood was already on his back, in the middle of the alley, with both hands clamped over his nose. There was no sign of the newsboy. But through a screen of startled bystanders – all of whom were converging on Mr Harewood, offering their assistance – Ned saw a man running away.

  ‘There!’ Ned shouted, nearly dropping his china pot. ‘Stop! Thief!’ As he took a step forward, however, Alfred dragged him back. ‘That man!’ cried Ned, pointing. ‘He’ll escape!’

  ‘Leave it.’ Alfred wouldn’t let go of Ned’s arm. ‘T’ain’t safe here. We shouldn’t linger.’

  Startled, Ned peered at the people who were clustering around Mr Harewood. Some of them looked quite respectable. There was a stonemason, powdered with white dust; a watchmaker, who wore a bulky eyeglass on a chain; a laundress with a basket of washing; a man dressed in the blue shirt and greasy, fustian trousers of an iron-worker. But there were also several idlers who alarmed Ned. The hatless women were squawking away like hens, while the unshaven men were eyeing Mr Harewood in a speculative manner, as if waiting for a chance to steal his handkerchief.

  ‘John Gammon knows what Jem looks like,’ Alfred continued under his breath, ‘but that don’t mean his cronies do. For all we know, there’s folk in this neighbourhood as think you’re Jem, on account o’ you’re with me.’

  Ned felt a chill run down his spine as Alfred went to assist Mr Harewood, who was already scrambling to his feet. But the engineer pushed away every helping hand extended towards him. He was fumbling in his pockets – for a handkerchief, perhaps. His nose was bleeding, and his voice sounded oddly snubbed when he spoke.

  ‘Thad scoundrel strugg me!’ he barked. ‘I shall inform the police ad once.’

  ‘Mr Harewood? We cannot stay,’ Alfred began. Then he frowned on seeing the engineer search through his pockets more and more frantically, without producing anything at all.

  ‘My poggedbook!’ Mr Harewood rounded on Alfred, wide-eyed and gasping. ‘Id’s been stolen!’

  There was a murmur of shocked sympathy from his audience. ‘Aye, no one’s safe in these parts,’ said the stonemason. And the watchmaker murmured, ‘Are you sure it is nowhere about?’

  Ned scanned the surrounding cobbles, but saw no sign of any pocketbook. Alfred, meanwhile, was drawing Mr Harewood aside, away from the curious crowd of onlookers. ‘Did you see where the boy went?’ Alfred asked in an undertone.

  ‘The boy?’ Mr Harewood seemed confused.

  ‘The boy you was chasing,’ said Alfred. ‘I’m persuaded he had a protector. One o’ the butcher’s men, I daresay.’

  ‘You thing so?’ Mr Harewood accepted the rag that Alfred had produced from his sack, pressing it to his bloody nose before adding, ‘I’m inclined to believe a gang of pigpoggeds lured me here. Thad wretched fellow toog me by surprise.’ Before Alfred could object, Mr Harewood turned to Ned and murmured, ‘I didden catch more than a glimpse of the boy. Can you describe him to me?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Ned replied. ‘He were eight or nine years old, smaller’n I am, with blue eyes and light hair, wearing brown canvas trousers—’ ‘Good.’ Mr Harewood cut him off. ‘And I saw the other blaggard well enough – he was a big fellow with no hair and a scar on his lefd eyebrow. So you musd come with me to the nearesd station house, Ned. I believe id’s in Smithfield. Or perhaps there’s a constable ad the Old Bailey?’

  ‘Ned cannot stay, sir. Not in this quarter.’ Seeing the engineer blink, Alfred quickly explained, ‘I’m a marked man, hereabouts, and Ned is likely to be mistook for Jem. He ain’t safe here.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mr Harewood glanced at Ned, then at the small crowd that was dispersing nearby. ‘I see . . .’

  ‘And Mr Gilfoyle is expecting me, besides,’ Alfred continued. ‘I should take Ned straight to Water Lane,
while you go to the police.’ Eyeing Mr Harewood’s stained handkerchief, the bogler finished, ‘I’d have that nose seen to, in addition.’

  ‘Very well.’ Mr Harewood suddenly capitulated. ‘Yes, you should go. Id would be wrong to delay poor Razzy. I shall repord to the police, and perhaps join you in an hour or so.’ He nodded at Alfred, but paused for a moment in front of Ned. ‘You musd give thad sample to Mr Gilfoyle. He’ll know whad to do with id. Can I trusd you with such a commission, my boy?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Ned answered.

  ‘I hope id’s nod been too knogged aboud,’ Mr Harewood went on, lifting the lid of the china jar. Then he yelped in dismay and spluttered, ‘Why, whad’s this? Whad happened? I cannod understand . . .’

  For he had uncovered nothing more than a brown smear, where once there had been a great dollop of black jelly.

  12

  A VERY STRANGE PLACE

  The Apothecaries’ Hall was a fine old building wrapped around a central courtyard. It was several stories high, constructed of brick and stucco, with a carved coat-of-arms set over its main entrance. To the left of this entrance was a shop that sold drugs, herbs and chemicals. The building also contained a packing room, a warehouse, a mill house, a factory, an accountants’ office, a series of examination rooms, and all the various chambers required by any guild or society: a great hall, a courtroom, a library, a kitchen – even a beadle’s office.

  Not that Ned saw any of these apartments. When he and Alfred arrived at Water Lane, asking to see the Superintending Chemical Operator, they were directed straight to ‘the laboratory’. A porter conducted them across the courtyard, past a gas-lamp on a plinth, and through a set of swing-doors into a narrow but well-lit passage. As he walked, the porter listed the building’s many features, pointing some of them out along the way.

  ‘The Great Hall is up the stairs to our right . . . the library above us contains many rare botanical works . . . this colonnade is sometimes used as an extension of the packing room . . . there is an old friary well under the gas-lamp—’

  ‘A well?’ Alfred interrupted sharply, glancing at Ned. But before the porter could reply, they pushed through another set of doors into the laboratory, and Alfred forgot to press for an answer.

  Like Ned, he froze in his tracks, drop-jawed and blinking.

  ‘Ah! Mr Bunce!’ a familiar voice exclaimed. ‘Thank you so very much for answering my summons.’

  The speaker was Mr Gilfoyle. He was standing with another man in the middle of a sweltering room full of huge copper tanks. Ned instantly realised that these tanks were stills, like the stills he’d sometimes seen in dank cellar kitchens around Wapping, back when he was a scavenger. Such equipment had been used to distil alcohol from old vegetable peelings, though on a very small scale. Ned couldn’t understand how these larger versions could possibly work without a fire burning beneath them.

  ‘Mr Warington, let me present Mr Alfred Bunce, our committee’s bogler,’ Mr Gilfoyle continued. Though rather damp and flushed from the heat, he still looked beautifully groomed in his glossy top hat, gleaming shoes and spotless white linen. ‘Mr Bunce, this is Mr Warington, who has kindly offered to assist our committee in its endeavours.’

  Mr Warington bowed slightly. He was a short, wiry man with sallow skin, a brisk manner and pale, piercing eyes. Though still quite young, he already had flecks of grey in his dark hair – which was also dusted with some kind of yellowish powder. He wore his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, and an apron that reached his knees. Every inch of his clothing was stained, splotched, scorched, smeared or splattered.

  ‘How d’you do?’ he said drily. Then his searching gaze settled on Ned.

  ‘This is Ned Roach, Mr Bunce’s apprentice,’ Mr Gilfoyle explained, before turning back to Alfred. ‘According to Mr Warington, it should be possible to isolate some of the substances on your spear, Mr Bunce. To do so, however, he would probably have to destroy a good portion of it.’

  ‘To break down the constituents,’ Mr Warington added.

  ‘But you can’t do that!’ Horrified, Ned spoke without thinking – then flushed as everyone stared at him.

  ‘He won’t have to,’ said Alfred, and went on to describe his planned trip to Derbyshire. Meanwhile, Ned’s attention strayed to a nearby set of hanging scales, and to the brick oven that stood beyond it. The scales were big enough to sit in, and the oven was fitted with two iron doors. There were also half-a-dozen boilers, a complex tangle of pipes, a collection of oddly shaped beakers, and two sweating men in dustcoats.

  ‘Well, that does sound like a sensible thing to do,’ Mr Gilfoyle observed, when Alfred had finished. ‘I’ve always believed that village healers, with their old tales and traditions, can sometimes be quite helpful.’ Hearing Mr Warington snort, he said quickly, ‘At the very least, we should leave no stone unturned.’

  ‘Aye. I thought that,’ agreed Alfred. Then he changed the subject by addressing Mr Warington.

  ‘I’m told you had two boys go missing. Can you tell me where they was last seen?’

  ‘Downstairs,’ Mr Warington replied. ‘They were collecting fuel for the steam engine.’

  Ned was thrilled. ‘You have a steam engine?’

  ‘We do. It runs the forcing pump that feeds hot water to the steam boiler heating our distilleries.’

  ‘Ohhh . . .’

  ‘We distil nitric acid, muriatic acid, hartshorn, sulphuric ether – although that, of course, is distilled in an earthenware vessel.’ Mr Warington cocked his head. ‘Are you interested in steam, Master Roach?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Oh, yes.’

  ‘Then it may amuse you to know that you are standing on a steam pipe.’ As Ned instinctively jumped sideways, the toe of Mr Warington’s boot prodded a line of steel plates underfoot. ‘The main pipe from the underground boiler branches off into smaller pipes, which run beneath the still-house floor and intersect with each still. The pipes running out of each still carry condensed water to a cistern, which in turn supplies the boiler—’

  ‘Ahem.’ Alfred cleared his throat suddenly, and Mr Gilfoyle remarked, ‘Forgive us, but we’re a little pressed for time.’

  ‘I need to know if anything else were seen.’ Alfred fixed his sombre gaze on Mr Warington. ‘Around the time them lads disappeared. Anything . . . strange.’

  ‘Anything like this,’ Ned interjected, taking the lid off his china pot.

  Mr Warington and Mr Gilfoyle both peered into the pot. Mr Warington even sniffed at it. Then Mr Gilfoyle asked, ‘What on earth is this, Mr Bunce?’ ‘It’s dead bogle,’ Alfred said flatly.

  ‘Ah.’ Mr Gilfoyle straightened. ‘I see.’

  ‘In truth, Mr Bunce, there is such an endless supply of smears and smells in this laboratory that no one working here would be likely to notice anything like this.’ Mr Warington tapped on the side of the pot, which he had taken from Ned. ‘But if you’ve no objection, I shall attempt to analyse these remains, it being easier to kill a thing if you know exactly what it is.’

  ‘Why, what an excellent idea!’ Mr Gilfoyle began to thank Mr Warington profusely before Alfred could even open his mouth. ‘That is most kind, sir. Our committee would be extremely grateful.’

  ‘As to unusual signs in the basement . . . well, it’s a very peculiar place down there.’ Tucking the pot under his arm, Mr Warington regarded his visitors with a keen, measuring look. ‘I’ll show you, shall I? Come. Follow me. And mind what you touch.’

  He led them across the still-house, through a pair of large iron doors, and into another, even hotter room full of open fires and furnaces. ‘This is our chemical laboratory,’ he explained. ‘And this is our calcining furnace, and our wind furnace, and our furnace for sulphate of quicksilver . . .’

  It wasn’t until they entered something he called a ‘mortar room’ that they finally reached the stairs to the basement, which were tucked away in a corner, near a drying stove. According to Mr Warington, the missing boys had marched down these steps, ca
rrying their empty coal-buckets, and were never seen again – though their discarded buckets were later found.

  ‘Where?’ asked Alfred.

  ‘Let me show you.’ Mr Warington placed Ned’s china pot on top of a steam-press before plunging into the basement ahead of his visitors. When Ned arrived at the bottom of the stairs he found himself in a large, dark, vaulted space, with the biggest chimney he’d ever seen standing squarely in its centre. The chimney was so massive that four other flues fed into it, one on each side.

  ‘Where was them buckets found?’ Alfred wanted to know.

  ‘Over here.’ Mr Warington moved past the chimney towards a towering heap of coal. He stopped at a point midway between the coal and the chimney. ‘Both buckets were discovered in this area,’ he said, as Ned scanned the floor.

  No drains or steel plates were visible.

  ‘What’s that?’ Alfred demanded, pointing at a small hatch set into the flue that faced the coal-heap.

  ‘A chimney will not perform its proper function if it can’t be cleaned or repaired,’ Mr Warington replied, then went on to describe how smoke from every upstairs furnace was directed underground and into the main chimney through a number of flues. Access to the chimney’s interior was through the hatch in the flue. ‘Now that I think about it,’ he murmured, as an afterthought, ‘a sweep’s boy was reported missing, hereabouts. That is to say, some sort of complaint was made to the Warden, though I wasn’t informed of the particulars . . .’

  ‘A sweep’s boy?’ Alfred cut in. ‘There’s boys sent up this chimney?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Mr Warington. ‘But only when the fires are out. And the fires were unquestionably lit when our laboratory boys vanished.’

  Alfred looked at Ned. Then they both looked at the hatch in the flue. It was perfectly placed, Ned realised. You had to turn your back on it if you wanted to shovel coal into a bucket . . .