Her lips parted, and I thought she was going to speak. Instead she screamed. I stared at her in bewilderment, as she leaped from the water and threw herself to the floor. A moment later the door burst open, and the proprietor and his doorman rushed in. Mary clutched her face. ‘He hit Mary, Mister Fred. Threatened to cut her open with his nasty sword.’
I protested my innocence, but at a signal from his master, the doorman grabbed me by the arm and the back of the neck. I could have reached for my pistol, but I had no desire to kill anyone else. Nor did I wish to be arrested for a brawl in a bawdy house. I allowed the man to force me from the room and march me back down the passage to the lobby. He kicked the door open and jostled me down the steps to the street. To my chagrin, I slipped on the slimy cobbles and fell on my backside.
‘Go fuck somewhere else, soldier boy,’ the proprietor said. ‘Don’t even think about coming back.’
The indignity stung, and in the morning I’d have another bruise to add to my Deptford collection. The door to the bathhouse banged shut and I picked myself up. I trudged back towards the dock, cursing Mary’s name.
I was convinced she had been lying about Drake, but unless I could prove that lie, what good would it do? I kept thinking of Peregrine Child in the alleys last night, when he’d prevented my murder at Drake’s hands. We’re good friends, you and I. Let’s keep it that way.
Frank Drake, Peregrine Child and Jamaica Mary. They formed a little knot that needed unpicking. As I walked, I pondered which was the loosest thread.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It was not yet eleven, and I decided to go in search of the opium house Brabazon had told me about. From one house of debauch to another. This was Deptford after all.
The quality of the dwellings deteriorated as I neared the Upper Watergate, the faces darkening from white to brown. The East India Company employed many Lascar and Malay sailors to crew their giant Indiamen, and the foreigners seemed to have made these squalid streets their temporary home. Bunches of dried herbs and roots hung in lodging house windows, and scents of incense and spices drifted on the breeze. It did little to mask the deeper stench of offal, tar and sewage. Lascar sailors watched me from windows and doorways, and I saw trepidation in their eyes. I guessed that most of the white men who ventured down here after dark came looking for trouble.
I passed a few ramshackle stalls selling brass lamps and legs of mutton. A Lascar in a robe embroidered with stars offered to tell my fortune. I asked him the way to the Red House, and for a farthing he showed me.
The house was older than its neighbours and only the door was painted red. When I knocked, I heard footsteps, and a panel in the door slid back. A pair of glittering black eyes filled the hole.
‘Poppy drug?’ I said, and I heard the sound of several bolts being drawn back.
The eyes belonged to a woman, a round Malay dressed in black. As she ushered me into the hall, the smell hit me: heavy, sweet and inviting. The woman led me through a fringed curtain into a long dark chamber. Little red coronas of light glowed in the shadows, now bright, now dim, now bright again. As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I made out men lying on straw pallets around the perimeter of the room, each curled round a long wooden pipe. Recalling Brabazon’s analogy, it brought to mind Tad’s diagram of the slave ship.
An old Malay, I guessed the woman’s husband, was sitting at a table, serving a customer. The woman gestured to me to wait until he had finished. The Malay took a tube of cloth from a black, japanned box and unrolled it on the table in front of him. Inside was a long piece of the poppy drug, and he cut a segment from it with his knife. He wrapped it in red wax paper, just like the wrapping around the opium Amelia and I had found in Tad’s valise. The customer paid, and I stepped forward to take his place.
I showed Tad’s opium to the Malay. ‘Do you know if this was bought here?’
‘How I know?’ Annoyance flashed across his wrinkled walnut of a face. ‘You want buy poppy or not?’
‘You can keep it if you talk to me.’
Mollified, he examined the opium. ‘Could be mine. Could not be mine.’
I described Tad to him: his long black hair, his size, his pale skin. By the time I had finished, he was nodding furiously.
‘Was he alone?’
‘Yes, alone.’
‘Did he smoke any of it here?’
‘Take away for dream at home.’ He grinned suddenly, showing me all three teeth in his head.
‘How much did you sell him?’
He pointed at the opium, and spread his fingers.
‘More than this?’
‘Again as much.’
‘Can you remember when he came here? A week ago? Longer?’
‘One week.’ His fingers wobbled, which I took to mean ‘more or less’. Just before Tad was killed.
The man held up two fingers. ‘Two time.’
‘He came here twice? When was the first?’
A shrug. ‘Two month maybe.’
Which must have been the first time Tad had come to Deptford. Two visits to buy opium. Yet he’d shown no signs of addiction, and Amelia had never seen him smoke it. Nor had I found any trace of opium use at Tad’s rooms.
I handed the Malay the pouch, and he bowed with his palms together. That was the conclusion of our business.
As I was leaving the smoking room I stepped back to avoid a customer coming through the curtain. He walked past without seeing me, but I saw him. Tall and broad, wearing a periwig. A grim face much scoured by the weather. John Monday, The Dark Angel’s owner, was here buying opium.
Outside, I lingered in an alley with a view of the opium house. After a few minutes Monday emerged and walked in the direction of the quays. I let him open up a suitable distance between us and then I followed him. He walked swiftly and with my infirmity I found it hard to match his stride. The alleys twisted and turned, and I kept losing sight of him. By the time I reached the river he had disappeared entirely. The ships were ghostly in the mist, the docks deathly quiet. I walked along the harbourside, hoping to catch sight of him.
I heard voices up ahead, and drew back into the shadows, moving cautiously in the direction of the sound. Warehouses and shipping offices faced the Public Dock, with cobbled yards out front for loading carts. In one of these recessed yards, two men stood talking. Their faces were obscured by shadow, but one of them had Monday’s height and build, and wore a periwig. Their voices were low and their movements furtive. I saw a flash of silver as money changed hands.
The second man unlocked the warehouse door and the pair walked inside. For a moment I saw their faces clearly in the moonlight. The gentleman was not John Monday, though he did have the look of a merchant. His clothes were fine, and he had a plump, pasty face. He took a long look around the dock, before ducking inside. The second man was younger and wore a horsehair wig: Nathaniel Grimshaw.
I presumed that I was witnessing a criminal act. Perhaps thievery, perhaps smuggling, perhaps something else. It intrigued me, and I lodged the encounter in the back of my mind. It might be a useful lever to exert pressure upon Nathaniel should I need it. Yet John Monday’s presence in the opium house was surely of greater significance. I walked on.
I progressed a hundred yards down the quays, but I had no further sight of him. A light rain had begun to fall, stippling the surface of the ink-black Thames. Coils of cloud wound round the moon like opium smoke. I studied the buildings around me, wondering where Monday had gone. Few of the windows had any lights. The dock seemed deserted. I gazed out over the water, listening to the creak of ships on the tide. Somewhere a bell rang, warning of fog. The wind came from the north, over the river, over the slave ships. It filled my nostrils and it held the scent of death.
*
I walked back to the Noah’s Ark without further incident. The taproom was lively, filled with officers from the Navy Yard singing a cheerful ditty about slaughtering the French. I went upstairs to my room.
On the floor inside my
door, I discovered a letter. The missive was addressed to me by name alone, and no insignia adorned the black wax seal.
I walked to the window, and threw it open. Over the rooftops I could see the fog-lamps of the Guineamen out on the water. I slit the seal with my thumbnail, trying to pick out The Dark Angel by counting the lights.
One of the lights was moving, travelling along the deck of a ship. I couldn’t be sure it was The Dark Angel, but it might have been. A watchman? There was no way to tell. But why would anything of value be stored on those ships, when they lay in the Private Dock with its warehouses and guards?
The light disappeared, but I kept watching, and soon I saw it again. I followed its progress, until again it disappeared. This time it didn’t come back. I stared into the darkness, then unfolded the letter in my hand.
GET OWT OF DEPTFORD BEFOR IT IS TO LATE. REEMEMBER WOT I DID TO YUR SHITTEN FREND.
The message was written in the same ill-formed script as those I’d found in Tad’s rooms. In the lamplight, the words flickered and writhed like serpents.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Mrs Grimshaw served me breakfast in the dining room. Her face was flushed from the steam of the kitchen and strands of copper hair escaped her black cotton cap.
‘Might I speak with you a moment, madam?’
She gave me a sharp look. ‘If you’re going to ask me about those dead slaves, then you might as well save yourself the trouble. My Nate told me why you are here. I know nothing about that blessed boat.’
‘Forgive me, Mrs Grimshaw. I should have been honest with you from the start.’
‘Yes, you should,’ she said, slightly mollified. ‘I’ll tell you what I told your friend Mr Valentine or Mr Archer or whatever he was called. My Amos left all his slaving down at the dock. “When I walk through this door, Marilyn,” he’d say, “I’m a taverner, nothing more.”’ She gazed at me hotly. ‘I know nothing about it, God’s truth.’
‘Actually, I wanted to ask you about a letter pushed under my door last night.’
She frowned. ‘If it was pushed under your door, sir, then it wasn’t me who put it there.’
‘You are certain?’
‘I always put my guests’ letters right in their hands. Saves the chance of anything going astray.’
‘Did anyone go upstairs during the day other than your guests?’
‘Only my Nate and the serving girl. Oh, and Mr Child. He fixed a broken window casement for me on the upstairs landing.’
‘Do magistrates usually undertake carpentry work in Deptford?’
‘That was Mr Child’s trade, sir, before he became a magistrate. He’s never been one to put on any airs. He and my Amos went back years.’
‘And you saw nobody else go upstairs?’
‘No, sir, but the inn was busy last night. I can’t say for certain.’
The letter had unsettled me, coming so close upon the heels of Frank Drake’s attack in the alleys. Either the killer was behind the letters and watching me, or someone wanted me to think he was. I wondered fleetingly if Child had put the letter there himself. He was certainly eager enough for me to leave town. Yet anonymous missives didn’t quite seem his forthright style. Perhaps Nathaniel had seen someone. I would ask him.
*
The air was fresher after last night’s rain, and the beans in the market gardens that flanked the road between the Strand and the Broadway seemed to throb against the blue sky and the dusty ground. Sparrowhawks circled overhead, swooping for their breakfast. I passed farmers, and a milkmaid leading a cow. Buildings intermittently lined the road: sundry houses, a laundry, a tavern. Many more were in a state of construction, claiming the fields to the east for the town. I passed a bright white church, around which fine houses were being built. Beyond them I could see gravel pits and mill-wheels along the pewter line of Deptford Creek. Perhaps one day, I thought, the two Deptfords would meet and merge, doubtless to the displeasure of the Broadway’s refined inhabitants.
Such concerns still seemed a long way off. Entering the Broadway after the vicissitudes of the Strand was like stepping into another world. The shops on the High Street were temples to genteel consumption: London fashions, Canary wines, Venetian glassware. Ladies sheltered beneath parasols trading gossip and advice about servants. Gentlemen stood in little clusters talking matters mercantile. The rich fabrics they wore and the glossiness of their horses bore further testament to the town’s commercial power. Even in these straitened times, money plainly flowed into Deptford Broadway, much of it carried on a tide of African sweat.
I had decided to pay another visit to The Dark Angel’s owner, John Monday. Nathaniel Grimshaw and Peregrine Child knew my true purpose for being in town, and Frank Drake had a good enough idea. It was surely only a matter of time before somebody told Monday – if they hadn’t already. If he did still believe that I was a potential investor in his business, then it was an advantage I must press home before it was too late.
Monday lived in a terrace of large brick mansion houses overlooking Deptford Creek. Elaborately carved lintels over the front doors incorporated the emblems of their owners’ trade: here a leaf of tobacco, here a glossy nutmeg, here a grinning African holding up his chains. Monday’s house was one of the largest in the street.
A plump black maidservant answered my knock. I asked to see Monday, offering her my card. Seemingly reassured by my uniform, she invited me inside.
‘Will you wait here, sir, while I speak to my master?’
The hall smelled of beeswax and the lilies sitting in a vase on the marble-topped console. Fine paintings of biblical scenes hung on the walls. I heard a sound of running feet and two children, a boy and a girl, burst into the hall. Neither of them noticed me, and the girl advanced upon the boy, trapping him against the side of the staircase. He was about ten years old, dressed in the pink waistcoat and breeches of a gentleman’s son. I stared at his face in surprise. His skin was only slightly darker than mine, but in the shape of his lips and nose, and his curly black hair, I discerned a trace of African blood. The girl was younger and wore a pudding cap. Her colouring was fair, not like the boy’s at all.
‘Give it to me,’ the girl said.
He shook his head violently.
Whatever it was, she tried to take it, but he pushed her away.
‘Blueskin.’ She said it softly. ‘Picked any cotton today, boy? Dirty blackbird.’
The boy lashed out, striking her with his fist, and she burst into loud, heaving sobs. Almost immediately, a nursemaid appeared from one of the adjacent rooms. In a rustle of starched skirts, she seized the boy by the arm, dragging him off, spanking him as they went. ‘Little savage. What have I told you about hurting your sister?’
The girl smiled through her tears, and followed them into the room from which the nursemaid had emerged. The door closed upon the boy’s muffled cries.
Upstairs, I heard a fleeting clamour of raised voices and then silence. I shivered. My disquiet was not just a product of the encounter between the children – though the girl’s pleasure in her torment of the boy had been unsettling. It sounds melodramatic to say so, but in that place I felt a malevolent presence. Something in the air and the stillness reminded me of my childhood home. I knew an unhappy house when I stood in one, and I did so now.
A door opened above and the maid descended the stairs. ‘My master asks if you will wait for him in his study. He will only be a few minutes.’
She opened a door off the hall and stood back to allow me to enter. She offered me refreshment, but I declined. ‘Please ring the bell if there is anything you need.’
She left, pulling the door ajar behind her. Such opportunities we are rarely gifted. I moved fast.
Between the long windows overlooking the street was a mahogany desk. I went to it and opened a drawer at random. It contained a neat array of writing implements: quills, ink, seals, tapers, sand. I tried another drawer and found an account book, which I opened. Household expenditure, mainly paym
ents to merchants in Deptford Broadway. Monday’s accounts looked healthy, decidedly so.
I put the book back and tried the other drawers. Two were locked and the others held little of consequence. Monday probably kept his business papers in that cabinet in his warehouse office. I replaced everything in the desk and surveyed the rest of the room.
For all Monday’s religion, there was little evidence of monastic forbearance. His inkwells were silver, a pair of crystal decanters held port and sherry wines, and the carpet was a fine Persian weave. The mantelpiece was elaborately carved, fashioned from black marble. Sitting upon it was an ornate silver casket. I lifted the lid and saw that the interior was lined with sandalwood, divided into three long compartments. Two of the compartments held knives, their handles finely worked in silver. The third was empty.
I tested the blade of one of the knives against my thumb. Very sharp.
‘They were a gift from a prince of the Aro Confederacy,’ said a voice behind me. ‘I have been trading with his family for over twenty years.’
I turned and saw Monday in the doorway. He had moved silently for such a big man.
I put the knife back and closed the lid. ‘Forgive my curiosity, Mr Monday.’
He gestured to signal its inconsequence and we bowed. ‘Such gifts establish trust, upon which a good slaving venture rests. The Aro Negroes know I will never try to cheat them. In turn, I know they will never try to sell me an inferior product disguised as something better.’
‘That happens?’
‘Never underestimate the Negro’s capacity for trickery. The uninitiated men of my trade are sold slaves painted with nut juice to disguise their injuries, or plugged with oakum to hide the symptoms of dysentery.’
My expression must have offered some clue to my disgust, for he hastily drew back a chair and indicated that we should sit. Given the impact of the war on Deptford’s trade, he was plainly eager to close the deal on an attractive investment.
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