The main occupation of the Broodies, it seemed from what Paulie told, was keeping order in their territory. It wouldn’t do, he said, for a tavern to burn up overnight or a shop to lose all its windows, or the owner of that tavern or shop to take a tumble and break something they needed to walk around on. Thus, money was paid to the Broodies to keep those foul things from happening. The Broodies could walk freely from their territory into enemy territory by day, just as could all the other gangs freely move, but with nightfall came the rule that payment was due by pain and blood if a rival gang member was caught poaching. And, according to Paulie, the scouts were always out watching the streets and those scudders knew who was who.
But, also according to the talkative boy, the Broodies did perform services for their territory other than demanding tribute. They settled disputes among tavern owners and other business keeps without need of court, and somehow—at least this was what Matthew garnered from the revelations—the Broodies were able to maintain the constant flow of commerce in the area, such as making sure a shipment of spoiled wine from a merchant in Clerkenwell was repaid by the burning down of the merchant’s house. Thus the Broodies sent the message to all merchants dealing with their territory in Whitechapel that respect given was respect earned, and as Paulie put it, “vicey versey.”
What seemed to be the particular bone of contention between the Broodies and the Mohocks was the pink-light area of bordellos Matthew had passed through; for awhile the Broodies had claimed it, as well as a percentage of the take for protection services, and then with the death of the last Broodie leader in combat the Mohocks had taken it over. Now the Broodies wanted it back, and they were scouting to learn the Mohocks’ strength and find their head-quarters, which like that of the Broodies was frequently moved to avoid such detection.
On this third day of his confinement—morning it was, because Jane Howard had brought him a bowl of oatmeal and a small pot of tea, as she’d previously done at the same time the morning before—the door at the top of the stairs was unlocked and Pie Puddin walked into the glow of Matthew’s lamp.
“Time for you to get acquainted with my friend,” she said, and she held up an open razor, which appeared to be no friend of Matthew’s.
“I’ll say hello at a distance,” he answered, but his calm flippancy was a lie. He was calculating the geometries of throwing his blanket over her head, somehow evading and gaining control of that blade, and—
“Go on with you!” said the girl. “How am I to shave you at a distance?” She lifted into the light the shaving-bowl in her other hand.
“Oh. Well…thank you, but—”
“Hush. I’m gettin’ them whiskers off that face, and that’s the fact of it.” She knelt beside Matthew and got her position comfortable. She set the shaving-bowl down and drew the lamp nearer. Matthew saw a cake of soap in the bowl’s water. Pie closed the razor, put it into a pocket of her brown leather waistcoat, and drew from another pocket a pair of scissors. “First we gotta trim the hedges.”
“Really, it’s not—”
“There’s a handsome face under that scruffle,” she said. “Let’s get some light on it.” She began the task of trimming. “Lordy, you been long without a shave!”
“Yes, a long time.”
“Not that I’m sayin’ some don’t look fine and gallant with a beard. Roger’s got one, and Will too, but I expect you to clean up better’n they would.”
“I hope I don’t disa—ouch!”
“Tough ol’ hairs don’t want to give up the ghost,” she said, as she continued to cut. “Y’know, Jane’s got an eye for you. She’s the one asked me to do this. Also wanted me to ask if you was taken.”
Matthew didn’t know how to respond to this. Jane was probably about Pie’s age, sixteen, as thin as a beggar’s cloak and with limp brown hair that had been weeks without a wash, but she did have very beautiful, luminous green eyes.
“She can clean up real good, too,” Pie told him as if reading his thoughts. “And she ain’t been so rough used as to be muffin-dead. She got out of the crib ’fore it killed her.”
“I’m glad of that. She seems very kind. I have to say, I am taken.”
“By who?” The scissors chattered away.
“Pie,” he said, “you have the damnedest way of trying to get information from me. Did Rory put you up to this?”
“Little a’ him, greater part a’ Jane. So who’s took you?”
“A girl in New York.”
The scissors stopped. She peered into his eyes. “You’re from the colonies?”
“I am. Came over here and was put directly into gaol at Plymouth. To answer the question you’re about to ask, the murder I committed was aboard the ship.”
“Ahhhhhh.” She nodded and began trimming again as if this information involved nothing more serious than a tricorn lost at sea. “Who’d you off?”
“A very wicked man. A Prussian, who certainly would’ve tried to kill me if I hadn’t…offed him,” he said.
“You got an interestin’ story. There, that’s the best trimmin’ can do.” She brushed all the hair off the blanket, put the scissors away and began to rub the soap between her hands to make lather. “Where’d you get such a scar?”
“I had a fight with a bear.”
“Oh, don’t be throwin’ me Adam’s rib! Really…where’d you get it?”
“Honestly. I fought a bear in the wild. It nearly killed me, but I’m still here.”
She looked at him with new appreciation. “Ain’t many can say that. If it’s true. How ’bout all them other small marks you got? Little scar here, little scar there. Them’s from the cubs?”
“No,” said Matthew with a small laugh. “They’re from…other circumstances.”
“Circumstances can kill you,” she said, and then she began applying the lather to her subject’s face. “I never killed nobody. Good thing I heal fast, though, ’cause I’ve took some hard circumstances.” Matthew had already noted that her injuries were mostly gone away, the cut across the bridge of her nose scabbed over, the bruises faded, the chin scrapes and knot disappeared and the swollen and discolored right eye nearly back to normal except for a small smear of purple. “Got to go scoutin’ again soon, though. Take my lumps like always, I reckon. Worth it in the long run, to get rid’a them Mohocks.” She brought the razor out and opened it. “Where to start?” she asked, studying the angles of the face that was being revealed. “Maybe I’ll just cut your nose off and call it a day.” She laughed at the widening of Matthew’s eyes. “I’m throwin’ you Eve’s apple! Let’s start on that chin.”
As the shaving progressed, Matthew could not suppress his curiosity a moment more, and though he knew this condition of his would likely be the end of him, he had to follow its lead.
“Tell me,” he said as Pie worked on his right cheek, “what’s in all those crates and barrels. Sure are a lot of them.”
“Oh yeah,” she answered, without an iota of hesitation. “That’s the White Velvet. Bottles in the crates, gin in the barrels.”
Matthew recalled what Parmenter had told him in Newgate: Cheap gin that knocks a man senseless. Just stay away from that pi’sen is my advice.
“What’s it doing down here?” Matthew asked, aware than any one question could be one too many. She was very deft with the razor; perhaps too much so.
“We dole it out ever’ so often. Fill up the bottles, sell ’em to certain taverns. They pay good money for it, ’cause the stuff’s special.”
“Special? How?”
Pie stopped shaving him. She drew the razor away from his face and looked deeply into his eyes. “Listen here, and listen good,” she said firmly. “Don’t you never take a drink a’ White Velvet. Know why they call it that? ’Cause they say it’s like sippin’ white velvet…goes down clean and easy. But you take a gander at them crates. Thirty bottles apiece in ’em. You drink one bottle a’ White Velvet, your goose is fuckin’ good and cooked. One bottle, and you’d sell your gr
anny for another…and if she was dead, you’d dig up her carcass and try to sell that. Believe you me, that shit is devilish.”
“Oh,” said Matthew. He was remembering something. Gardner Lillehorne in the conference room at St. Peter’s Place, saying Bring a new influx of cheap and mind-robbing gin to the equation, and you have the makings of Dante’s Inferno upon English earth.
“Stick with rum,” Pie advised as she went back to her task. “We had a Broodie drank White Velvet in secret, back…oh…it was last year. Wasn’t a secret too long. Pert soon he looked like a walkin’ skeleton and all he gave a damn about was gettin’ another sip.” She stopped the razorwork, the better to concentrate on the telling. “We tried to give him the hemp cure…y’know, tie him to a bed for as many hours as it took, but he was too strong for us. Him weighin’ maybe ninety pounds. Jumped out a third-floor window. Hell of it was he landed right on a lady gettin’ out of a carriage. Busted his leg but he was still a runner, crazed as he was. Horse reared up, caught him underneath, bashed his head in. You can bet we hightailed it.”
“If the stuff’s so bad, why do you sell it?” Matthew asked.
She gave him a look she must’ve reserved until she’d met the dumbest man in the world. “Money, dear heart. Them that wants will find a way to gets. Anyway, we ain’t the only ones sellin’ it. We just cover our own—”
“There’s the gentleman!”
The door had opened, letting in a shaft of light. The voice belonged to Rory Keen, who entered the cellar followed by three other Broodies. He carried a lantern and by its light wore a merry smile. “How goes the shavin’, Pie?”
“Little more to do.”
“Step aside,” he told her.
“Huh?”
“Aside,” he said. His smile was aimed at Matthew, who felt a sudden chill and not only to his newly-exposed face. “Step,” said Keen.
Pie obeyed. Keen put his lantern down on the crate beside the oil lamp. He sat on the floor next to Matthew, took the razor from Pie’s hand, washed it off in the bowl of water, ran a cautious thumb along the edge and gave a low whistle of admiration at the razor’s sharpness. Then he said, “Let’s finish up your throat. Lift your chin up. Little more. There you go!” The razor went to work, even more deftly than Pie had handled it.
“Ever’thin’ all right?” Pie asked, also evidently feeling a chill. Her smile and bright demeanor were gone.
“Fine. Just dandy. Peachy,” said Keen. “Look how pretty Matthew’s gettin’ to be. Like his mug now, Jane?”
Jane, standing among the others, did not answer.
“Jane went out a little while ago,” said Keen as he continued to work the razor across Matthew’s throat. “Know why? ’Cause she knew the latest Pin was on the street today. Got herself a copy, brung it back here to read. She’s a right good reader. ’Course, she saw that first story soon as she got her hands on it. Read us that top part, Jane.”
In her small, reedy voice, she read what must have been set in bold type: “Monster Of Plymouth Compatriot Of Albion.”
“Oh, careful!” said Keen. “You jumped a bit, Matthew. Don’t want to do that with this razor slidin’ back and forth and forth and back. Pie, you can read…pick up that book a’ words there and find ‘compatriot’. I am real curious as to what that means. Jane, go ahead and read us the next line. Chin up, Matthew, I don’t want to do you no damage.”
“Villain Loose in Whitechapel,” she read. “You want me to keep goin’?”
“Go.”
“Officials report,” Jane continued, “that the so-called Monster of Plymouth, by name Matthew Corbett of the New York colony in the Americas, lately has escaped Newgate Prison with the help of that golden-masked fiend of the night we know as Albion. Corbett, who murdered at sea an important Prussian dignitary on his way to England for a meeting with the crown, is also accused of the murders of three women and five children in Plymouth.”
“Nice,” said Keen. “Lemme get this little patch right under your lip. Go on, Jane, you’re gettin’ to the good part.”
“The Monster of Plymouth,” she went on, in a voice that seemed to fade in and out or perhaps that was just Matthew’s hearing under the pressure that squeezed his brain, “cut the heads off his victims, painted them in bright colors and planted them atop fenceposts to be, in his satanic mind, admired by all. He escaped custody of the law with help from Albion, who waylaid the prison coach in which Corbett was riding and afforded the Monster with clothing, money, lantern, two daggers, a pistol, and a garotte made of human hair.”
“Almost done here,” Keen announced. “You’re gonna be all shiny. Jane, read that next amazin’ part.”
“Reports to this news sheet say Albion visited the Monster in Newgate, walking through walls as only the phantom can do, and in that noble prison vowed to loose Corbett upon London, the better that they become brothers in murder and terror.”
“That is awful fine writin’.” Keen lowered the razor. He smiled into Matthew’s face, but his eyes were dark and deadly holes. “Now tell me this: what’re we gonna do with you?”
“If you’ll—” Matthew began…listen to me, he was going to say, but the hand at his throat and the razor under his right eye said that his words had become of no value.
“I could cut you,” Keen whispered, up close to Matthew’s face. “I could carve you into a hundred fuckin’ pieces, put you in a bag and then in the river, and…looky here…I done killed me a monster and brother to that fuckin’ Albion. You find that word, Pie?” She nodded. “Read it!” he commanded.
She did, rather haltingly: “Compatriot…of the same country…holdin’ the same politics…allied in beliefs.”
“Allied in beliefs,” Keen repeated. The razor had begun to sting Matthew’s flesh. “Ain’t that a kick in the fuckin’ head?”
Though most of his attention was of necessity riveted to the ominous razor, something had begun to work in Matthew’s mind. It was like the humming of industrious wasps around a nest, coupled with a sudden burst of light in absolute dark.
“Jane,” he said, his throat tight, “would you…please re-read the sentence that ends with the words ‘human hair’?”
“Huh?” she asked.
“What, you’re so high on y’self you want to hear it again?” Keen’s breath smelled like the kind of acid that could burn a man to his bones. “Go on then, Jane. Consider it a last request.”
She read: “He escaped custody of the law with help from Albion, who waylaid the prison coach in which Corbett was riding and afforded the Monster with clothing, money, a lantern, two daggers, a pistol, and a garotte made of human hair.”
“That suit you?” Keen asked.
“A moment,” said Matthew. “If I may speak without fear of being sliced?”
“You think you can talk your way out of this? You workin’ on Albion’s side, and that bastard puttin’ the snuff to Benny? What’re you doin’ here? Wantin’ to murder me next?”
“I am not working on Albion’s side. Who Albion is and what he wants, I have no idea.”
“You lie,” came the next heated response.
“I think,” Matthew said carefully, “we can all agree that Lord Puffery’s pen—and Pin—turns saplings into orchards. He seizes on a small statement of truth and expands that into a tome of fiction. I would have you consider: someone brought this story to Lord Puffery, who has greatly embellished it. Did Albion enter into Newgate? True. Did Albion waylay the prison coach? True. Did Albion give me those items? Both true and false, and here is a mystery.”
“What the hell are you goin’ on about?”
“The guards witnessed Albion giving me possession of clothing, money and the lantern. But they did not see him give me a dagger. When the dagger was mentioned to Lord Puffery, it became two daggers, a pistol and a garotte, as per sapling into orchard. Only Albion knew about the dagger…therefore—”
“Therefore I think I’ll start my cuttin’ on them flappin’ lips.”
“Therefore,” Matthew pressed on, “the person who submitted that story to Lord Puffery is Albion himself.”
Was there ever a deeper silence? The candle in Keen’s lantern hissed, and that was all.
Then: “Why the fuck would Albion have told all that to Lord Puffery?” Keen’s razor had not moved a hair, neither had its dangerous pressure lessened.
“I don’t know. All I do know is that when Albion pulled me out of that coach he told me to be at the Tavern of the Three Sisters at midnight. He spoke in a low whisper. I would imagine when he spoke to Lord Puffery he used his regular voice, and he stood unmasked.”
“You mean…Lord Puffery got a look at who Albion really is?”
“Yes, but unless Lord Puffery is actually sponsoring Albion’s endeavors, he had no idea to whom he was speaking.”
Still the razor did not budge. “You really murder all them women and children?”
“I killed a dirty Prussian killer aboard a ship from Charles Town. He was as much a dignitary as I am the king of Siam. Again—”
“You’re sayin’ some of what’s in the Pin is made up?” It was a shocked question not from Jane Howard, but from Tom Lancey, who obviously had put much stock in the publication. He sounded stricken. “What about Lady Everlust and her two-headed child?”
“Oh Jesus,” Keen muttered. The razor left Matthew’s face but the hand remained clenched to the problem-solver’s throat. “Why should I believe you ain’t workin’ with Albion?”
Freedom of the Mask Page 23