Blood & Sugar

by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

  I smiled. I’m on to you, Frank Drake. I doubted it was coincidence that Tad had lodged at the home of one of The Dark Angel’s officers. This ship seemed central to everything he had been doing in Deptford. Had Nathaniel been entirely honest with me? I didn’t think so.

  *

  Jago was sleeping in the Noah’s Ark’s yard. Flies buzzed over the manure. I looked for Nathaniel in the stable, and when I couldn’t find him, climbed the steps to the living loft above it.

  I had to knock twice before he answered, wearing only a pair of breeches, rubbing the sleep from his bleary eyes.

  ‘Captain Corsham.’ He gave me another of his military salutes. ‘Forgive me, I often catch a rest during the afternoon.’

  I returned his smile. ‘I’m sorry to wake you. Might I speak with you a moment?’

  ‘Of course, sir. Come inside.’

  The loft was long and hot and dark, though I imagined it would be freezing in winter. It was furnished simply: a chest of drawers, a rocking chair and a bed in which a young man lay sleeping. A mattress took up the floor next to the bed, presumably where Nathaniel slept. The place smelled of sickness and chamberpot.

  ‘How is your friend?’

  The young man on the bed had a thin grey face and lank yellow hair. His chin held a furze of golden stubble.

  ‘Brabazon has given him laudanum for the pain. He says there is still no improvement. If there is none by Sunday, then Danny’s leg will have to come off.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Have you been friends long?’

  ‘Since school. Our fathers crewed together. It seemed natural to fall in together ourselves. I thought it was the worst thing that could happen when Danny went slaving. Now I’m to go myself, and he won’t be there. He’ll never sail again, Brabazon says.’

  ‘Where is his father now?’

  ‘Died four years before my own da. Lost overboard. His ma’s gone too.’

  ‘Then he is fortunate to have a friend like you. The surgeon’s bills alone must be costing you a fortune.’

  ‘We can’t take credit for that. The merchant who owns Danny’s ship is paying Brabazon’s bills.’

  ‘That’s good of him.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  His tone made me curious, and I remembered the way he had spoken about Brabazon that morning. I placed a comforting hand on his shoulder and he seemed to collect himself. ‘Forgive me, sir. You don’t want to hear about our troubles. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Mr Archer came to Deptford because of The Dark Angel, your father’s ship. He must have asked you about her. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  His soft gaze flitted around the room. ‘It slipped my mind.’

  ‘I don’t believe that.’

  He looked down at Danny and sighed. ‘People round here, they didn’t like that Archer was asking about the ship. They wouldn’t like me talking about her neither.’

  ‘People like Frank Drake?’

  He muttered something beneath his breath.

  ‘What was that?’

  The words burst out of him. ‘Look, I want to help you, sir. I didn’t like what happened to your friend. But I don’t want no trouble from Drake, nor anyone else.’

  ‘You need to trust me, Nathaniel. When I find out who murdered Archer, everyone who helped protect the killer will be in a deal of trouble.’

  ‘I’m not protecting anyone.’

  I wondered if that was true. ‘I won’t tell anyone we have spoken, but I need to know what happened on board that ship.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that damn ship, do you hear? Only that they drowned a lot of slaves. I don’t know why. I don’t know nothing. Da never talked about his slaving. The first I heard about it was when Archer came that first time, asking all his questions.’

  ‘Questions about the dead slaves? About the crew?’

  ‘Both.’ His eyes met mine. ‘Do you think one of them killed him?’

  ‘Do you?’

  He had made no move to put on his shirt, and I noticed again how muscular he was. He wore some sort of ivory charm on a strip of leather around his neck.

  ‘I don’t know. They all seemed afraid.’

  ‘Afraid of what?’

  ‘Your friend, Mr Archer, I think. Danny said even old Mr Monday looked like the devil had walked across his grave. Danny did too, come to think of it.’

  ‘What does this have to do with Danny?’

  ‘That was his ship – The Dark Angel. He was on that voyage.’

  I stared at the lad on the bed. He looked about sixteen years old. ‘It was nearly three years ago. He must have been little more than a boy.’

  ‘Cabin boys start as young as twelve. That was Danny’s first voyage. When he came back he looked like a ghost. I knew something bad had happened.’

  I thought about what Cinnamon had told me. This boy, all but a child himself, throwing infant Africans to their deaths.

  ‘When did his accident occur?’ Before or after Tad’s murder was the pertinent point.

  ‘Three weeks ago. He slipped on the waterstairs. Landed with his leg bent the wrong way.’

  Three weeks would place it well before Tad’s murder. ‘Can he walk?’

  Nathaniel gave me a look of disbelief. ‘He can’t even make water by himself, sir.’

  ‘That’s quite an injury from a tumble down some stairs.’

  He looked away. ‘It was a long way to fall.’

  ‘Has he talked since it happened?’

  ‘Yes, sir. This is just the laudanum.’

  A new thought occurred to me then, one that made a few more things fall into place.

  ‘Brabazon said he’d sailed with Danny. Was he the surgeon on board The Dark Angel?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Our good Mr Brabazon.’ Again I heard the hostility in his tone.

  Was that why Child had taken Tad’s body to Brabazon’s surgery? I recalled that it had been Brabazon who’d originally steered me away from the slave brand. Yet he must have recognized it – he’d surely applied it himself, countless times. As to his dinner with Tad, I was willing to bet that they’d talked about a damn sight more than Thomas Aquinas.

  ‘Did a man named Isaac crew with your father?’ I described the man I’d killed last night.

  ‘Isaac Fairweather? He works the privateers. Not been slaving since before the war.’

  Then Isaac’s friendship with Drake had cost him dear.

  ‘Do you know the names of any other men who crewed The Dark Angel on that voyage? Anyone who has been in town these past few weeks?’

  ‘Only the officers are left in Deptford now, aside from Danny. The men didn’t want to crew her. They’ve left town.’

  ‘Because the ship sails under a bad star?’

  Nathaniel touched the charm around his neck. ‘Not just that. Captain Vaughan’s been sick, and the voyage was delayed. Him and Mr Monday are close, see, or he’d have been replaced weeks ago. Danny only stayed on in Deptford because he wanted to sail with me.’

  ‘How many officers are there, aside from the captain and the surgeon?’

  ‘Three. But Drake is the only one who sailed her back then. Da’s dead, and the old second officer threw himself overboard a year after the slaves were drowned. Slaving affects some men that way.’

  I was making headway, and yet there was still much that I didn’t understand. Why were the slaves drowned? How had Tad presented a threat to the officers? The slaves had been killed at sea, where they would be accounted property. It wasn’t as though anyone could be prosecuted for murder. And how did any of it threaten the existence of slavery itself?

  ‘Your father never mentioned anything about that voyage?’

  ‘Like I said, he rarely talked about his slaving. I knew it was bad, though. Da had a lot of nightmares, just like you.’

  He flushed under the sudden sharpness of my gaze. ‘I heard you this morning, sir. Didn’t mean to, but I did. I always check in on Ma after I come back from a shift at the dock. Her room’s next
to yours.’

  I didn’t like the thought of him listening to me talking in my sleep, yet he looked so stricken I felt obliged to explain. ‘War leaves its legacy too. Sometimes when we choose not to think about things, those thoughts force their way out of us through our dreams.’

  He nodded, as if he understood. ‘Da called it the black serpent. He said it wrapped its coils so tight around you, sometimes nothing but the bad could come out.’

  I wondered if they had bad dreams too, those men who had sailed The Dark Angel. Captain Vaughan I was yet to meet. Frank Drake, who’d attacked me last night. And James Brabazon, who’d told me a pack of lies from start to finish.

  Then there was John Monday, The Dark Angel’s owner. He’d spoken of Tad with compassion and he claimed to be a man of God, but I was learning that religion took strange forms in Deptford. I remembered the way he’d wielded the whip outside his warehouse. It wasn’t hard to imagine him hanging a man up and cutting his throat.

  I imagined this puzzle as a painting, stained over the years with layers of soot. I knew I was seeing only a small part of it. None of these men, even Monday, would count as powerful enemies by Tad’s standards. This had to be more than slaving men killing to protect themselves. Yet I had rubbed a small portion of the blackness away to reveal the colours beneath.

  Four names, no motive, but the beginnings of a trail. Every instinct told me that it would soon lead to Tad’s murderer.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Deptford bathhouse lay at the heart of the warren of alleys near the slaving taverns.

  An ogre of a doorman was stationed outside, flanked by flaming torches. He examined me with gimlet eyes over a broken nose, then nodded me through. In the dimly lit lobby, the proprietor came forward to meet me. He had a rat-like countenance and snuff stains on his busy fingers.

  ‘Greetings, sir. Welcome to the Temple of the Naiads. I have baths of scented water that will ease every ache and torment. I have girls to sate every appetite. Name your flavour.’

  ‘Black,’ I said, remembering Drake’s alibi and his uncouth description of the girl he claimed to have tumbled that night.

  ‘Negress cunny? You are a man of strong tastes, sir. I applaud it. Jamaica Mary is the girl for you. She’s one of the prettiest nymphs I have. Nay, I do her a disservice. Less a nymph than a Nubian goddess, sent down from the very heavens for your delight.’

  I forestalled any more of his patter. ‘Is she the only African you have?’

  ‘Divine, ebon, and sadly unique. If it’s two girls you are after, I have a meek little Malay who could join you?’

  ‘Mary will do fine.’

  I paid him and was shown into an anteroom, where sailors and other rough men were drinking wine, dandling half-naked girls upon their laps. After a short wait, the proprietor returned, and I followed him along a passage to a small steamy room lit by candles. A stone bath, about six feet by four, was sunk into the floor, and a mattress piled with soiled linen occupied one corner. A naked black woman was lying in the bath, and she eyed me without much interest. The proprietor wished me eternal happiness and withdrew.

  Jamaica Mary might once have been pretty – it was hard to tell in that light – but she was fast approaching forty and the demands of her profession had taken their toll. Her skin was the colour and texture of old shoe leather, and her hair was coarse and curly. She gave me a perfunctory smile of invitation, and I saw that she was missing several teeth.

  ‘Why don’t you come in, sir? The water’s hot.’ The words rolled from her lips in a West Indian drawl, with a slight edge of Deptford on the vowels.

  ‘I only wish to talk to you.’

  ‘You want Mary to tell you tales from the bathhouse, sir? Some men like a story to get them primed.’

  ‘I have a particular story in mind. A particular night and a particular customer.’

  ‘Give you a good report, did he? Mary sends them all away happy.’ She ran her hands over her small brown breasts. ‘Tell Mary his name, sir, and she’ll see if she can remember. Sometimes all these nights drift into one.’

  ‘His name is Frank Drake. The night I have in mind is Thursday last. You’ll remember it well enough, I’m sure. The next morning they found a murdered man on a hook down at the dock.’

  She sat up to examine me, the water rolling off her nipples. She had a small heart-shaped face tapering to a point at the chin, and slanted yellow cat-like eyes. ‘You’re not one of Perry Child’s men. Mary don’t have to talk to you.’

  ‘I may not be a constable, but I am a man of means. I will reward you well if you tell me the truth. Shall we say three shillings?’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘Five.’

  ‘Three. But only if you tell me the truth.’

  She pouted. ‘You want to know what Mary and Mr Drake was doing that night?’

  ‘Spare me the details. I only want to know if you were with him.’

  ‘All night long,’ she said, without hesitation. ‘He came in around eight. Went home a happy man the morning after. God’s honest truth.’

  She had the sort of face that would make you think she was lying if she told you the sea was blue. I wondered if she was frightened of Drake, or had some other interest in protecting him. Perhaps I just didn’t want to accept the truth.

  ‘Well? Where’s Mary’s reward?’

  ‘I have a few more questions for you first.’ It occurred to me that Mary must know many of the men in Deptford, and that I might as well make use of her time now I had paid for it.

  ‘Ask what you like.’ She lay back, watching me. The candlelight made patterns on the perfumed water. ‘Long as Mary gets what she was promised.’

  ‘Do gentlemen from the Broadway ever come down here?’

  ‘Sure they come. Can’t keep away.’

  ‘A gentleman surgeon named James Brabazon? Does he come?’

  ‘That grim old sawbones?’ She pulled a face. ‘Not here.’

  ‘You don’t like him?’

  ‘Mister Fred sent Mary to see him once, after she got poxed. He looked at her like something you’d kick off the quayside. He got no taste for African cunny, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Do you know what his tastes are? Where he goes to sate his pleasure?’ I was thinking of the silver ticket I’d found in Tad’s rooms.

  ‘There’s brothels aplenty in Deptford. They’re welcome to him.’

  I fished in my pocket for the ticket. ‘Did you ever hear of any brothel where you might need a ticket like this?’

  She squinted at it, then shook her head. ‘There’s no call for silver tickets down here in the Strand. All you need is brass in your pocket and wood between your legs.’

  ‘How about in the Broadway?’

  ‘Mary wouldn’t know. They don’t let her ply her trade up there.’

  ‘Do you know a lad named Danny? He is younger than Drake, but they sailed together.’

  ‘The Waterman boy? Drake and Amos Grimshaw brought him here a few times. Mary heard he took a tumble down some steps.’ She made a snapping sound with her tongue. ‘Luck’s a bitch, soldier, especially when she’s given a helping hand.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Just talk, that’s all.’

  ‘What kind of talk?’

  ‘Danny Waterman had light fingers. Helped himself to someone else’s property. That someone taught him a lesson he wouldn’t forget.’

  I recalled that Nathaniel had been evasive upon the topic earlier. Could Waterman’s ‘accident’ have something to do with Tad’s murder? They had happened only a week or so apart.

  ‘Did Amos Grimshaw come here often?’

  ‘Aye, he was a lusty one, old Amos. They say the pimps cried into their tankards the day he died.’

  ‘How about John Monday, the slave merchant? Does he ever come down here?’

  She cackled. ‘Bible John? He wouldn’t know what to do with Mary’s cunny if she stuck it in front of his face. They should have called him Sunday. Ain’
t that the truth?’ She squinted at me. ‘You done talking yet, mister? Mary’s feeling lonely all by herself.’ She let her legs fall open and made a crude gesture with her hands. She seemed to consider me a professional challenge.

  ‘I’m married,’ I said. ‘Do you know a sea captain named Evan Vaughan?’

  ‘Married?’ She smiled contemptuously. ‘Half the men in Deptford are married, sugar. Don’t stop them coming here. You should see what their wives get up to when they’re halfway across the world. What’s your wife doing when your back is turned?’

  ‘Just answer the question, Mary. Do you know Evan Vaughan?’

  Her smile faded. ‘He comes in from time to time.’

  ‘Was Vaughan here that night with Drake? When the man was killed at the dock?’

  ‘He hasn’t been here in over a month. There was some trouble.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’

  She brought her hands together, making a circle with her fingers. ‘He tried to strangle one of the other whores.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  She shrugged, as if it happened every day. Perhaps it did.

  ‘What’s the whore’s name?’

  She pulled a bored face. ‘Alice.’

  ‘What does Vaughan look like? Is he a big man?’

  ‘Big enough. Tall, muscular, but slim in the waist. He cuts a fine figure – and he knows it.’

  ‘How about his face?’ I wanted to know him if I saw him.

  ‘Brown as a gypsy. Long curly black hair. An old scar.’

  ‘Did you ever hear of Vaughan having trouble with anyone else besides the whore?’

  Her eyes flickered, and I sensed she didn’t like the question. ‘Mary’s bored of talking now. Where’s her three shillings?’

  ‘I said I’d give you the money if you told me the truth. I think you’re lying about Frank Drake and I want to know if you ever heard of Vaughan having trouble with anyone else. The man who was killed at the dock, for instance.’

  ‘Mary never told a lie in her young life. You ask Perry Child.’

  I smiled at the implausibility of this statement, whilst noting her apparent familiarity with the magistrate. ‘These particular lies could get you into a lot of trouble, Mary. I bet Drake didn’t think to tell you that. If he murdered that man, then you could hang for an accessory.’