“I don’t know what Albion’s trying to accomplish. I understand he’s—would you remove your hand, please, it’s very uncomfortable.” After a few seconds, Keen did. Matthew continued. “I understand he’s murdered six men, Benjamin Greer included. All of them have been criminals charged yet released from prison by legal machinations.”
“By what?”
“Able and cunning lawyers,” Matthew amended. “I would imagine that bribery had a hand in it as well. I think Albion holds a grudge not only against those six men but against the entire English legal system…or rather, what he considers the corruption of such.”
“You’re in water over my head,” said Keen.
“Deep water indeed. Almost over mine as well. I have many questions, but one foremost is: what does Albion want with me? When he got me out of that coach—and I can tell you I feared for my life at that moment—he said he was not only helping me but that I was going to help him.”
“What? To murder the rest of the Broodies?”
“No, certainly not that. But I wonder…I understand that Ben Greer was killed after he’d been drinking at the Three Sisters? And then Albion wanted to meet me there…presumably, in an unmasked condition, just entering as any patron would.” Matthew’s brow furrowed. “What is it about the Three Sisters that might draw Albion’s attention?”
“Don’t know. But I do know that place is our best customer.”
“Customer? For what?”
“The White Velvet. Over in them barrels. We bottle it and sell it around to the taverns. The Three Sisters would buy ever’ drop, if they could.” Now it was Keen’s turn to frown. “Hm. I’m thinkin’ maybe I shouldn’t have told you that. The Mohocks would sure like to get their claws on what we got down here.” He looked to one side. “Pie? You believe him?”
She hesitated.
Matthew felt very cold indeed, and very much alone.
Then Pie said, “I do believe him. Look at him, Rory! He may be scarred up and hard on the outside, but he’s got soft innards. He ain’t killed no women and children.”
“He’s got a handsome face,” said Jane. “For a monster, I mean.”
“He ain’t no monster,” Keen decided. “He’s just a man got hisself in a right sticky Londontown mess. A smart man, though, and one I could put to good use.”
“Pardon?” Matthew asked.
“One way to show us you’re on the level,” said Keen, his eyes fiery again. “You join the Broodies. Take the oath and get the mark, you’ll be bound for life. Means you ain’t gonna wander far from our sight, either.”
“Well…I appreciate the offer, but what I need to do is get some clothes and be on my way to find Lord Puffery. He knows who Albion is, though he likely doesn’t know he knows.”
“You talk like you’re blowin’ smoke rings. Kinda entertainin’, to hear you.” The razor came up and rested against Matthew’s jugular vein. “I wouldn’t kill you here. Too bloody. But there’s places it can be done, easy. Two ways you’re endin’ this day: either in pieces in a burlap bag in the river, or proud to be a Black-Eyed Broodie. Which is it gonna be, Mr. Corbett?”
He didn’t have to hesitate very long. The razor meant business, and as he needed the full use of his legs to locate Lord Puffery, he didn’t have much of a choice.
With a smile so tight it could have been its own Roper’s Window, Matthew said, “I would be proud to be proud.”
“Good. Then you’ll be with us tonight, when we raid the Mohocks and kill that fuckin’ Fire Wind.”
Nineteen
SATISFIED?”
“Another moment, please,” said Matthew. He had seen the welcome sun appear from the clouds for perhaps forty seconds, shining a yellow glare upon the streets of Whitechapel. Then the clouds had closed up again, their gray bellies pregnant with more rain, and the cold wind grew colder still.
“Nothin’ much to see out here,” Rory Keen told him, standing at his elbow.
And that was true, if one was looking for beauty. Matthew was looking for the substance of the neighborhood, and indeed it was not a lovely sight. Standing on the front steps of the dilapidated and abandoned warehouse the Broodies called home, and dressed in a ghastly purple suit that had been procured for him from a local tailor’s shop, Matthew had been given time to take stock of where he was in the scheme of things.
It was, first and foremost, a pleasure to not have a razor threatening his life; secondly a pleasure to be wearing clothes and sturdy boots, and thirdly to be out from the confines of that damp cellar into the air, though the air be equally as damp. To the west amid the awesome crush of buildings stood the larger constructs of London, the stately and grandiose towers of the government meant to endure into eternity. To the east new parts of the metropolis were being born, a landscape of hundreds of wooden frames rising amid a sprawling tent city set up to house workmen and their families, and from where he stood Matthew could see all that and the sparkle of small fires on muddy hillsides. Horses, mules and oxen were pulling wagons loaded with bricks and timbers along paths yet to be made into streets. He couldn’t see much to the south, for all the buildings in the way, but he figured the warehouses were sardine-packed side-by-side down there amid the river wharves.
Somewhere, he was sure, there were elegant gated neighborhoods where the lords and ladies dallied on the plush luxury of their estates, where the snow-white wigs were always of the current fashion, where the carriages were kept spotlessly clean by the loyal servants and the horses in the barns were fed the finest oats and pranced beneath the smoothest of leather saddles.
Wherever that was, it was a world away from Whitechapel.
Here the very sky was filthy with the crisscrossed black banners flowing from dozens of industrial smokestacks, and the ebony effluvium came down and settled as dirty dew upon the squat and crooked buildings so that no roof nor window nor brick nor chink between bricks could ever be anything but the color of midnight. If there was a wig-wearer passing by, he was staggering drunk and likely moony, and his wig looked as if someone had burned it as tinderbox cotton. The wagons that trundled along the streets, which were mud covered with cinders, all appeared to have been recently wrecked and bound back together with ropes and pieces of other wrecked wagons either smaller or larger than the original, for none seemed to be of the correct proportions. Even the horse teams were mismatched, as one big and slow-hoofing beast that had been trampled by the world was yoked to a smaller animal straining at the bit, or as Paulie would say, “vicey-versey”. Every wagon, and there were many in the progression of local commerce, moved as if on its way to the driver’s funeral.
Matthew saw clearly that the territory of the Black-Eyed Broodies was simply the black eye of London. He had the impression that the industries here—mostly tanneries and slaughterhouses, from the odor of scorched blood and rotten guts wafting in the wind—were vital to the city’s progress yet a blight on the senses of those same elite lords and ladies who lived a world apart, thus it had been necessary to further the distance. The buildings were most made of rough stones and bricks but there remained a few wooden ones like the warehouse upon which steps Matthew stood; the old timbers and roofs of these structures had taken quite a beating, and seemed to be either slowly caving in or bending toward the earth in defeat. The sun had for its scant appearance found glass beneath the grime and gave a falsely merry glint off the many windows, though most were only large enough to allow a single face at a time to peer out from the dark interiors.
To be such a hellish pit, the area of course offered a paradise to the determined drinker. Nearly directly across the street was the Drunk Crow Tavern. Three doors to its right was the Sip A’ Courage, and across the way and further to the east stood the Long-Legged Liza. A goodly number of pedestrians were on the move, all of them—men, women and children of varied ages—looking as if they’d just awakened from long alcoholic binges or particularly frightening nightmares.
“Had your fill?” Keen asked.
“Had my fill,” Matthew replied to Keen’s query. It was time to do whatever he had to do to get this Broodie business over and done, though the prospect of raiding the Mohocks and killing anyone tonight was a plan he wished to object to once the formalities were finished.
Keen followed him back into the building. All the windows were boarded up. There was a large central chamber and a warren of rooms around it, these being the rooms the various Broodies inhabited. Pigeons by the plenty roosted up in the rafters. Some of the holes in the roof were large enough to drop a wagon through and under those holes the planks of the floor were stained black by sooty rain. Various rusted chains and pulleys hung from the ceiling, indicating that heavy weights were once hoisted here for whatever purpose.
All twenty-five of the other Black-Eyes were waiting for Keen and Matthew. Each one held a candle. True to their name, they had put circles of black greasepaint around their eyes and they stood in a circle. They appeared more raccoons than rowdies, but far be it from Matthew to say anything. He wondered if he was going to have to eat bugs or something, or have to recite an infantile creed that would have him laughing before he finished it; beware a blade to the throat if that happened, he thought.
“Stand in the center,” Keen told him. Matthew obeyed as Pie applied the black grease to Keen’s eyes. Then Keen lit a candle of his own from Pie’s flame and regarded Matthew with his ebonied orbs. “We won’t be hard on you,” he said. “Ordinarily to start with I’d put you up against two men and let ’em beat the tar out of you, but as I need ever’body in good health tonight that’ll have to wait for later.”
“Makes sense,” said Matthew.
“Shut up and don’t try to be cute,” Keen told him. “This is damned serious, whether you think so or not. The Black-Eyed Broodies been a fam’ly for near twenty years, been takin’ care of each other and guardin’ the streets since I come in when I was ten years old. Came in when Spencer Luttrum was the head man, and a finer more honest gent there never was. I was there when a Cobra Cult bastard stabbed him in the heart, and I was there when we run that fella down and skinned him alive. I seen ’em come in hungry and tattered and we fed and clothed ’em, gave ’em a reason to keep on livin’. I seen ’em so mad at the world they could fight their own shadows, and sometimes their own shadows were what killed ’em. I seen ’em rise to greatness from the dirt of the streets and I seen ’em fall back to that dirt bloody and dyin’, but they didn’t die as nobody’s dogs. They lived and died as Black-Eyed Broodies, part of a tradition. So what I’m sayin’ is, we got a lot of history here, and anybody don’t take history with a serious mind has got a lot of woe in his future. Who wants to be first?”
First? Matthew tensed; he didn’t like the sound of that.
“I’ll choose,” said Keen. “We’ll go ’round the circle, startin’ with Tom.”
Tom Lancey stepped toward Matthew, hawked up a spit and delivered it squarely into Matthew’s face.
“Let it run,” Keen instructed as Matthew lifted a hand to wipe away the offending spittle. “Touch it and we start over again. Paulie, you’re next. Keep it movin’.”
To bear a spit in the face from twenty-six mouths was not how Matthew had figured this was going to go, but at least he was not going to be thrashed. As the members of the Broodies stepped forward to perform this solemn duty, Keen intoned a speech that Matthew suspected had been repeated time and time again through the years.
“We give of ourselves,” Keen said tonelessly, “and in givin’ we receive new blood and new strength. So doth the Black-Eyed Broodies live on. Long may the Broodies live, long may we take refuge in each other, protect each other and what we have, and subject our enemies to ’orrible deaths.”
Jane Howard had been about to spit in Matthew’s face. She paused, and with the others in unison repeated the last sentence of Keen’s speech. Then she spat a good greasy one in Matthew’s left eye and stepped back for John Bellsen to take his turn.
“State your name,” said Keen to Matthew, who wisely waited until the spittle splashed his forehead before he opened his mouth. “Log it in your hearts, scribe it on your souls,” Keen intoned to the others. Then, again to Matthew, “State your reason for joinin’ the Broodies,” and before Matthew could reply—and what he was going to say he didn’t know—Keen answered for him: “To uphold the laws of this fam’ly and give honor to your brothers and sisters, and damn you to a mongrel’s death and eternity in the shittiest hole of Hell if you don’t.”
Kevin Tyndale gave Matthew a full blast that he must’ve been saving in a phlegm-pouch at the back of his mouth since mid-morning, for it was heavy with bits of oatmeal. Next up, Angie Lusk equalled the force of that spit and more, and the mucous that flew out of that small mouth streaked across Matthew’s face like the strike of a whip. The following spit, delivered by Billy Hayes, sealed Matthew’s right eye and effectively blinded him for he dared not lift a finger to clear his vision. Besides, he didn’t care to see any more strings of spit flying into his face, anyway.
But the wet initiation continued. The next spitter—Will Satterwaite, it would have been from the continuation of the circle—took a diabolically long time hawking up clumps of goo, and when all of it hit Matthew’s face it was at very close range and with such power that Matthew actually staggered back before Keen’s hand caught and steadied him.
The mess drooled down Matthew’s forehead, cheeks and chin. His eyes were glued shut. It went on for so long Matthew suspected Keen had gone out into the street to recruit the beggars with the foulest breath and saliva he could haul in; surely the end of the circle was near, or was it in this case a horrible example of the circle being unbroken and the treatment would continue until Keen decided it was done?
Matthew took it, with his hands down by his sides. At last—long last!—there came a fierce spit into the morass of Matthew’s face that was followed by…nothing.
“You are now the lowest of the low of the highest of the high,” came Keen’s voice.
“Repeat this: I solemnly swear…” He paused. “Well, go on, we ain’t waitin’ all day!”
Matthew, his eyes still shut and the rivulets still dripping, said, “I solemnly swear…”
“To be faithful and true to the Black-Eyed Broodies…”
Matthew repeated the same.
“…and hold my brothers and sisters…”
The same, again.
“…in the highest regard and respect, show no mercy to their enemies, and do no harm to nobody who is and ever was a Broodie.”
Matthew repeated it.
“And if I don’t,” Keen went on, “I take it plain that I am worse than dogshit and give my brothers and sisters leave to remove me from this earth without complaint. I swear this a hundred times a hundred.”
“I swear this a hundred times a hundred,” Matthew said, with tight lips because some of the mess was getting in.
“That finishes the oath. Here, stand still.” A cloth that smelled of musty dampness was wiped over Matthew’s face several times, unsticking his eyelids. He opened his eyes to find Keen offering him an uncorked bottle of rum. “Take a swig.” Matthew did, and then Keen took a drink and passed it around to the others, who still remained in the circle. Keen sloshed the liquor in his mouth and Matthew had the fri
ght that now came a group spritzing, but then Keen swallowed it down and the fright passed.
“We’ll whip your ass later,” Keen vowed. “But you ain’t a full Broodie quite yet. Pie, come on and do the honors.”
Matthew realized she had stepped out of the circle. Now she returned carrying a silver tray on which rested a small blue bowl and a couple of strange-looking sticks. She said, “Over here,” to him, and he walked out of the center of the circle to where a table had been set up, two chairs pulled close together, and two oil lamps atop the table. “Sit down,” she told him. He took one chair and she the other. He saw black ink in the blue bowl and realized the sticks were tattoo instruments: one was called a rake, being a length of wood like a Chinese chopstick with a small piece of bone with little needle teeth attached to its end, and the other a more blunt piece of wood called a striking-stick. A multitude of nail holes pocked the tabletop.
He knew he was about to get his, as Pie had put it, “fam’ly mark”.
As the main part of this ceremony seemed to be done, the circle of Broodies broke up. Some drifted off and others came nearer the table to watch. The rum bottle was still being passed around, and then someone put it on the table within reach of Matthew’s left hand. A few small pieces of sponge were also on the silver tray.
“Pie’s our artist,” Keen said, pulling up another chair to sit and watch.
“Not near as good as Ben was. He had the touch.” She wet one of the pieces of sponge with rum and cleaned the area of Matthew’s right hand between the thumb and forefinger. “It don’t hurt too bad,” she explained. “Just takes a little time.”
“Oh, make it hurt bad,” Keen said, with a crooked smile. “And draw it out it ’til he screams.”
“He’s playin’ your fiddle.” Pie darted Keen a disapproving scowl. “Gent needs to be relaxed, Rory!”
“I’m relaxed,” Matthew said, though the rake’s needle teeth, as tiny as they were, did appear fearsome.
Freedom of the Mask Page 24