Rory Keen had been wearing a mocking half-smile. Matthew saw it melt away as if the man’s face had become a mask of hot wax.
“I don’t care who you are. Who any of you are,” Matthew went on, just as strongly. “I was on my way to the Tavern of the Three Sisters, I saw someone who I thought needed help and I tried to do so. I got a kick in the jaw for it, and for it also thrown into a cellar on a dirty mattress and now threatened with death if I don’t answer questions ‘right as rain’. Take your knife, stick it up your ass and back away from me, because I’m having none of it.”
The silence of doom stretched out. Keen’s face was blank, absolutely unreadable.
“You forgot somethin’, Matthew,” said Pie.
“What?” he snapped.
“You got a nice bath out of it,” she said softly.
Still Keen did not move nor did he register a speck of emotion. No one else spoke.
After what seemed a crawl of eternity, Keen’s hand came out and retrieved the knife. He drew it towards himself and it went into the folds of his brown coat. Matthew had gotten a glimpse of a tattoo—a stylized eye within a black circle—on Keen’s hand between the thumb and forefinger. Keen regarded Matthew as one might study a dead fish. “My apologies,” he said. “But, y’know, we have business interests. We have competition in those interests. Got to be careful these days, who you trust. Dog-eat-dog world out there, am I right?” He waited for Matthew to agree, but Matthew remained quiet.
“Alrighty, then,” Keen went on, “I’ll give it to you that you’ve been struck hard, your brain rattled, and a few swallows of rum gone to your head. I’ll give it to you that you got a league-long cock. I’ll give it to you that you was wearin’ clothes look like they come outta some prison or workhouse, and you was just as dirty, so you got some kind of rough history. I see that scar on your forehead; you didn’t get that by bein’ sliced on no children’s playground. I’ll give you all these things,” he said, “but I’ll not give you another chance to live if you ever speak to me that way again.” His face during this discourse had never shown the slightest hint of any emotion. “Are we clear on that?”
Matthew wanted to lead with his chin and say, decisively, no. But he realized this short rope had a bitter end, and therefore he said, “Yes.”
Still Keen’s face remained unchanged. Then, slowly, the smile crept back. “You wantin’ somethin’ to eat?” he asked. “Bet you do. Paulie, go get ’im some food. Beef stew do for you? Comes out of the Drunk Crow Tavern ’cross the way. Mostly horse meat, but it’s tasty. That do you?”
Matthew nodded.
“Good. Paulie, bring ’im another bottle. Bring me one too. Go on with you.” There was the sound of someone walking away across the stones, then going up creaky wooden stairs. “I’ll leave you for now,” Keen said to Matthew. “Pie’ll stay with you, keep the rats away. That suit you, Pie?”
“Suits me,” she answered.
“Fine, then.” Keen stood up. “We’ll have us a good talk later, Matthew.” And then he turned away and, with a group of the others Matthew could not see, left the cellar.
It was a long time before Pie spoke. Then she said, quietly, “Rory killed his first man when he was twelve years old.”
“Do tell.”
“I’m tellin’. He split the man’s head open with an axe. It was just after his pa beat his ma to death right in front of him, and that axe was a few minutes late. His pa was gin-mooned, Rory says it was kill or be killed.”
Matthew considered this, and then he replied, “We all carry a bloody axe of one sort or another. I just don’t like being threatened for no reason.”
“Rory’s got a reason.” Pie knelt down on the floor so he could see her face, and she could see his better. “One of our own got hisself killed ’bout two weeks ago. Murdered in Crescent Alley one street north from the Three Sisters. Fact is, he’d just been drinkin’ there. So when you said that’s where you was headed, and you a stranger and all…it’s put him on edge.”
Matthew had a sudden start. The Black-Eyed Broodies. So-called, he presumed, because of the black eye makeup they used when they were on the prowl; that was what he’d seen on the faces of the other gangmembers as well as on Pie’s face. But his sudden start was because he’d recalled a conversation in his cell at St. Peter’s Place, when he’d been interrupted in reading to Broken Nose and White Hair from a recent issue of the Pin.
The headline had been Albion Attacks Again, Murder Done In Crescent Alley.
Matthew remembered that the victim’s name had been Benjamin Greer, recently released from St. Peter’s, and White Hair had said Benny…damn, he was a good feller. Ran with them Black-Eyed Broodies over in Whitechapel, and maybe he did some things that weren’t so upstandin’, but…hell…he had a good heart.
Matthew decided it would not be in his interest to reveal that he knew the name of the Black-Eyed Broodie who’d been done in by Albion’s sword. Now was not the time to go any further along that crooked and dangerous road, though the burning questions fairly flared from his mouth.
“Were you ’bout to say somethin’?” Pie asked, because evidently he had started to speak before he’d caught himself.
“No.”
“Seems like you were.”
“I was going to ask,” he dodged, “about the situation last night. You in that alley with those painted play-Indians beating you. What was that about?”
Pie, who not only had the cropped hair of a boy but wore a boy’s clothes and boots, busied herself by bringing from a small horsehair bag a clay pipe, which she began to fill with coarse-looking tobacco. “I was set on by the Mohocks. They do fancy themselves Indians. Try to copy the Mohawks, from the colonies. They all give ’emselves Indian names. Sometimes they come at you with tomahawks and spears. Fire Wind’s the big chief.”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“Am not.” She started her own fire with her tinderbox, and her wind pulled the flame into the pipe’s bowl. She puffed a cloud of blue smoke that drifted between her and Matthew. “See, we’re at war. Not just with the Mohocks, but with the others too.”
“The others?”
“For sure. We’re surrounded by ’em. To the north the Mohocks and the Amazon Nation, to the east the Plug Uglies, to the west the Bitter Roots and the Luciferians, to the south the Savage Circle and the Cobra Cult.”
“Hm,” said Matthew. “Are the Killer Clowns in there somewhere?”
“Huh? Oh, no!” She gave a little laugh that spewed smoke. “That would be damn silly. But the ones I told you, that ain’t all of ’em. Them are just the ones right around here.”
As Pie smoked her pipe, Matthew saw that same tattoo of a stylized eye within a black circle on her hand between the thumb and forefinger that he’d noted on Keen’s hand. “I’m guessing,” he said, “your tattoo is your—how shall I put it?—gang symbol?”
“Fam’ly mark,” she corrected. “The Black-Eyed Broodies, they’re my fam’ly. Could be yours too, if you’re wantin’ such…after what you did for me and all. Wouldn’t be a hard pull to get you in.” She gave him a sidelong long as she puffed her pipe. “You got a fam’ly?”
“Not really. I was raised in an orphanage.”
“Me the same!” she said from her smoke cloud. “There’s where they gimme my name. Found me in a basket laid at the front door. Note pinned to my swaddlin’ said ‘Take care of my puddin’ and pie, ’cause I cannot.’ Leastwise that’s what the nuns told me. So that was my name, but they put it backwards: Pie Puddin.”
“A nice name,” Matthew offered.
“I wouldn’t change it, not even if I knew my real name. If my ma gimme a real one, I mean. I always thought…my ma must’a been a lady ’cause of the way she wrote that note. ‘I cannot’, she said. Don’t that sound like the way a lady would speak?”
“It does.” Matthew was listening with one ear. He was taking the measure of how he felt and if he could stand up. It had occurred to him that though he’d missed
the appointment last night, he might get to the Three Sisters tonight and possibly…well, he would find out when he got there. Then following rapidly on the heels of that realization was the thought that one could go nowhere without clothing.
“Answerin’ your first question,” Pie was saying, “I was out doin’ my job. We was poachin’ on Mohock territory. My job is findin’ out where they’re gatherin’ and where their headquarters might be. I go out front, and the others are always close behind.”
“They weren’t close enough last night.”
“I don’t mind gettin’ banged up a little. I heal fast. Anyway, we do the same to them, or any other bleedin’ gang tries to poach. I’m a scout. What they call a promised rider.”
“Providence rider,” Matthew corrected. “Yes, I’m familiar with that.”
Pie smoked her pipe and watched him while he took another swig from the rum bottle. “Real unusual, somebody buttin’ in like you did,” she said, and the silky tone of her voice told him what he’d suspected: that she was not down here to guard him against rats but to get answers from a question mark that had resisted Rory Keen. Possibly some signal had passed between them for her to take prominence in this particular rat-hunt. Matthew understood that everything she’d been telling him had been to soften him up. “Your clothes and you all filthy,” she went on, “and you too handsome to have a beard, if you don’t mind me sayin’. So you been somewhere you couldn’t get hold of soap or a razor. What gaol was that?”
Now the territory was getting swampy. Matthew said with a pained expression, “I appreciate talking to you, Pie, but my head’s still ringing like ten church bells. Do you mind if we talk later?”
Her mouth on the pipe’s bit. Puff…puff…puff.
“Ain’t no shame to have been behind bars,” she said. “Most of ’em been. What’d you do to get y’self hooked?”
He was saved, mercifully, by the sound of a door opening and boots descending the creaky stairs. It was a good thing, because he’d had not an iota of an idea what to say. She would want to know—acting as Keen’s ear—how he got out of Newgate and why he was in Whitechapel on his way to that particular tavern, and what would he say that she couldn’t see through?
“Here’s your food comin’!” the girl said. “Paulie, come sit with him awhile, lemme go up and do my business.” She stood up over Matthew as Paulie, a skinny boy about seventeen with shaggy brown hair, brought their guest a clay pot of stew and a fresh rum bottle. “I’ll be back directly,” Pie said. She started off and then abruptly stopped and turned toward Matthew again.
“That’s a fine dagger you had in that cloak. Expensive ivory grip, real fine. Got the cutler’s mark on it. Where’d you get that from?”
“It was a gift,” he had to say.
“Who from?”
“A friend.”
“Matthew,” she said with a tight smile in her voice, “you’re makin’ all this sound so mysterious. Rory ain’t right about you, is he? That you’re either workin’ for the Mohocks or—worse yet—the law? See, Rory thinks that after I cleaned all that stink off you, you still smell like the Old Bailey. Is he right about that, Matthew?”
She was doing her job, he thought. After all, she was a providence rider. He said, “I need to eat and get some rest. But I’ll tell you this and tell you truly: I am wanted by the law for murder. I am not working for the law and certainly not for the Mohocks or any other band of rowdy idiots. Can we leave it at that?”
An answer was a moment in coming. It arrived with the pungent odor of Virginia’s finest.
“For now,” she said, with a harder edge, and she went off to do her business, part of which Matthew figured would be to report to Keen everything he’d said.
“You really murder somebody?” Paulie asked, all big eyes and misplaced admiration.
“I really did.” And there it was: the truth. He had killed a man in cold blood and with forethought. Did it matter that Dahlgren would be trying to kill him and toss his body over the side all the rest of the way to Plymouth? He likely could have protected himself, by stating his case to the others. Maybe they would’ve put Dahlgren in chains, down in the hold. That damn Dahlgren, he thought…why the hell hadn’t that bastard stayed in Prussia where he belonged?
He looked into Paulie’s grinning face and then quickly away. After the eating would come the drinking. He could forget about the Three Sisters tonight. Even if he felt up to the stagger between here and there, the bawds and headknockers of Whitechapel had never seen a nude man parade into a tavern and sit there waiting to be contacted by a maniac wearing a golden mask. He had traded one prison for another; the Black-Eyed Broodies were not going to give him clothes and let him leave here until he gave Keen an explanation that made sense, and mentioning Albion and the murder of Benjamin Greer to Keen would not be so keen. Not for awhile, at least.
Sitting crosslegged with the blanket more or less covering him, he started in on the stew with a wooden spoon Paulie had brought. The food and drink was far better in this prison than in any other he’d recently visited. Paulie sat down on a crate and watched. “Rum?” Matthew asked, and offered him the second bottle. The boy took it with an eager hand, uncorked it and put down a swig.
Matthew waited until a few more swallows had gone down Paulie’s pipe, and then he said casually between bites of the peppery stew, “Pie told me one of the Broodies was murdered a couple of weeks ago.”
“Yep.”
It was necessary to wait for a swig or two more to go down. “Wasn’t there something about that in the Pin just lately? Do you know that news sheet?”
“Every’body does. Yeah, they done some writin’ ’bout Ben. How he got murdered in Crescent Alley.” Paulie drank again, and then said in a hushed tone, “Albion done it. Will was there when it happened.”
“Will?”
“Will Satterwaite. He was down here awhile ago.”
“Albion didn’t try to harm Will?”
“Went for Ben. Stepped out of a doorway and got him clean ’cross the neck.” The boy made a motion with a finger across his own throat. “Will said it happened so fast it was over and done ’fore he could pull his blade. Then Albion run off and he was gone.”
Matthew recalled something else in the Pin’s story. “No one claimed Ben’s body? Not even the Broodies?”
“Naw, ’cause Mousie took care of the buryin’.”
“Mousie?” Matthew’s brows lifted.
“Humphrey Mousekeller,” said Paulie, and he drank once more from the bottle and ran the back of a hand across his mouth. “Our lawyer,” he added.
Matthew pondered this new information and found it most intriguing. “The Broodies are able to pay a lawyer for his services?”
“We don’t pay. Somebody does, but I don’t know who.”
“What else does he do for you?”
“Things.” Paulie shrugged. “He’s just there when he’s needed, I s’pose.”
“I see,” Matthew answered, but in truth he was as blind as the proverbial bat. He would have to feel his way toward answers in this puzzling cavern. Of what need did a street gang have for a lawyer? And—most interestingly—who was paying the legal fees? Certainly not Rory Keen. That one didn’t seem the type to spend two pence on anything to do with the law, and the service of even a cheap London attorney likely was not cheap. No, it definitely wasn’t him.
Matthew decided not to press the issue, for he doubted that Paulie could supply him with any deeper knowledge. He continued to eat and drink, but now he only sipped infrequently at the rum. Sooner or later Keen would be back down here wanting to know Matthew’s full story, and this time he would not leave it to Pie to glean bits and pieces of information. But Matthew had his own questions too, and an intriguing theory based on what Paulie had just told him.
The Black-Eyed Broodies might have a silent benefactor who had used Humphrey Mousekeller to spring Ben Greer from gaol…and in so doing, had brought the wrath of Albion down upon the unf
ortunate victim. Will Satterwaite had been in no danger. Albion was making a statement, scrawled in blood.
“Know what a pawn is?” Matthew asked the boy.
“A paw?”
“No,” said Matthew. “A pawn. A chess piece of the lowest rank. Usually fated to die on behalf of a greater purpose.”
“What’re you talkin’ about?” The young man frowned, completely lost.
“I’m talking,” Matthew said quietly, “about Ben.”
Eighteen
FOR the next two days Matthew was treated well. Though he was never offered clothing and he knew better than to ask for any, the blanket kept him warm against the cellar’s chill. Relatively warm tavern meals and jugs of fresh-tasting water were regularly brought to him, he was afforded the oil lamp, a chamberpot and a modicum of privacy. When he asked for something to read, he was promptly brought two small volumes: a dictionary that appeared to have never before been touched and a grimy dog-eared pamphlet entitled The Adventures Of Peter Gunner, Or How The Ladies Learned To Shoot. On several occasions he was left alone and took the opportunity to wander around the cellar, finding it to be a large space holding two dozen crates and a half-dozen barrels, four brick columns supporting the floor above, and here and there a skittering of rats. At the top of the wooden stairs the door was always locked.
As he was left alone much of the time and he neither wanted to learn new words or investigate Peter Gunner’s adventures, his curiosity turned toward the crates and barrels. All were unmarked. With an effort that demanded more than an hour and some skin off his fingers he was able to subvert the nails and pry the top off one of the crates. He uncovered several rows of small blue bottles packed in wood shavings. The crate held thirty bottles. Thirty times two dozen…a lot of small blue bottles in this subterranean chamber. The barrels were heavy, but a liquid sloshed within when Matthew moved one. He returned the top to the crate and decided it was best to leave these unknowns alone.
Over this period of time Matthew learned from his various keepers some of their names—Paulie McGrath, Tom Lancey, Lucy Samms, Billy Hayes and John Bellsen—and what the Black-Eyed Broodies were about. Paulie was the best source of information, though Lucy also had an unguarded tongue. At the moment the Broodies were a collection of twenty-six outcasts from London society who had come together simply to survive. The twenty males and six females ranged from the ages of fifteen to twenty-seven, Keen’s age. They all had criminal histories, mostly theft and acts of violence before they’d joined the Broodies. Paulie’s loose lips revealed that Tom Lancey was a good forger, Will Satterwaite a very able cracksman, and both Jane Howard and Ginger Teale such practiced pickpockets they could, as he put it, “steal the cock off Sad Dick and turn him Mary.”
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