The serving-girl, up until then lethargic, had become quite excited. “Killed eight women and a dozen children, the monster did, and now Albion’s pulled him out of a prison coach and loosed him on Whitechapel to kill more. Ha! Like we don’t have murderin’ enough goin’ on ’round here! And that’s the monster’s face, is it? Can’t be! He looks too much a human. You the law? Smells so.”
“Your smeller is correct,” Hudson had decided to say. After the girl moved on, he had nearly gnashed his teeth. Hudson said, “One of those damned guards has sold his tale to some liar’s news sheet! We’ll see if we can’t find a copy somewhere. Damn all publishers of rotten fiction!” He caught himself, for it was certain that Berry’s grandfather had on occasion published in the Earwig fiction that foully masqueraded as news. “Apologies to present company and her absent grandfather,” he amended, and she had returned to him a snort, a bemused half-smile and the raise of a coppery-red eyebrow.
During the course of yesterday’s route, they had several more times come upon readers of this Pin who recognized the name but knew not the face. Finally, in the Goat’s Breath, the barkeep had supplied an already tattered copy of the rag, and after reading the article of concern Hudson with reddened face had torn the thing to pieces, marched to a latrine hole behind the tavern and dumped the shreds in with the shits. “Not suitable for your eyes,” he’d told Berry, taking upon himself the role of gallant protector.
As all people did, they had to eat sometime and somewhere, and since there did seem to be a menu of some variety at the Four Wild Dogs and many of the other patrons were having food with their various poisons it was agreed to pause here and replenish.
“What are you thinking?” Berry prompted to Hudson’s silence.
“The two men,” he said, “were standing at the bar when we asked the keep and the serving-girls about Matthew. I saw both men glance at the drawings, but one—the gent who’s sitting over there—regarded the pictures a few seconds longer than the other. I meant to ask him if he’d seen the face, but before I could he pulled his companion aside and they had a little conversation of a guarded nature. A minute or so later, the second man left. At first I thought they were setting us up for a robbery, but between here and there they had plenty of opportunities to strike. Therefore…” He hesitated to sop up a little brains-and-gravy with a chunk of cornbread. “They may have some knowledge that I would like to get.”
“And how will that be done?”
“We’ll see,” he told her, and attended to his meal and cup of red wine.
Now Berry found herself on edge. Did every new patron who entered the tavern cast a shady and lingering gaze upon them, or was it her imagination? Her interest in her food was gone. Though she had known London and had lived in Marylebone for eight weeks as a teacher, before an unfortunate incident with a goat and a lantern had burned the school down, this part of the city was utterly alien to her. She had entertained the thought yesterday of going to visit her father and mother in Coventry but that was nearly a week’s coach trip from the city and likely a full week due to the weather and the roads. Neither one of them could help her find Matthew, and so she could not spare the time for them even though she loved them dearly. Possibly—hopefully—when this ordeal was over and Matthew was safely by her side she could suggest that they all go to Coventry for a few days, if for nothing but to get this vile city grime and smell off them; until then, Coventry must wait.
“Hm,” Hudson said, a small noise of importance. “The two men who just came in,” he said with a goodly mouthful of brains, “are going back to see our friend in the corner.” He swallowed his food and followed it down with a drink of wine. “One of them is the man who left the Hag. Seems we’re being ganged-up on.” He wiped his mouth with a brown cloth napkin. “I expect all three of them will follow us when we leave here. Did you ever imagine that today you’d be leading a parade?”
He amazed her. She asked, “Aren’t you in the least afraid?”
A tight smile rewarded her question. “Now there’s an interesting word for you,” he said, as he crumbled the last of the cornbread between his fingers. “I am cautious. I am aware. I am cognizant of my abilities and shortcomings. Am I afraid of those three men over there? Who now are all staring at us quite openly, by the way. Afraid? Not for myself, because I know I can give as well as I can take. But…I’m afraid a little bit that when whatever is going to happen begins, I won’t be able to protect you. Which is why, Miss Adamant, I wished you to stay behind.”
“I couldn’t stay behind. You know that.”
“Yes, I do know.” He gave a sigh and patted her hand in the most fatherly way. “Let’s pay for our slop and get out into the wild again, shall we?”
On the street, a light rain was falling from the drear sky and a cold wind sneaked around the edges of the buildings. Hudson was hatless and gave not a care about the wet, but Berry drew up over her head the hood of her violet cloak. Within an inner pocket of the cloak were the two drawings of Matthew, rolled up with leather cords and protected as much as possible from the weather. “Walk in front of me,” Hudson told her, and motioned in a direction that would take them westward. In a little over two hours they were due back at their first stop of the day, The Bat And The Cat, at the crossing of Whitechapel Road and Plumber’s Street. It was Hudson’s opinion that if Matthew remained in this vicinity he had to be eating and drinking somewhere, therefore the taverns were the targets of investigation. Ahead through the rain Berry could see another tavern sign that proclaimed itself to be The Seat Of Judgement, and assumed this would be their next destination.
She hadn’t gone very far when a figure lurched out of an alley to her left and clutched at her with skinny claws. The suddenness of the attack scared a scream out of her. At once Hudson was between her and the assailant and had thrown the man up against the bricks.
“Please sir…please sir,” said the man, who had a gray beard matted with straw and a mass of tangled gray hair. His flesh was so filthy it too was gray. He wore the thinnest of rags, his face was swollen and malformed both by the violence of blows and the ravages of disease, his lips being corrupted with sores, and from him issued the foul odor of wet grave-rot. “Please, sir,” he rasped. “Please…have mercy. A few pence, please…beggin’ you, sir…and lady…beggin’ you.”
“Away with you!” Hudson said, though he still gripped hold of the beggar’s shirt.
“Please…sir…got to have a sip…just a sip to get me back on my feet. Just a sip, sir, and that’ll do me right.”
“I think you’ve had a sip too many, old man!”
“The velvet’ll get me back,” he said, one eye bright with what was likely madness and the other as dark as a river stone. “God praise the sweet velvet, sir, one drink’ll bring me back from all this.”
Hudson released him. “I think you should go find a man of God instead of a bottle.”
“Please, sir…please…just enough for a sip.”
“Here.” Berry was opening her purse. “Take—”
A small riding-crop whipped out and struck the beggar across the face. It had come from behind Hudson and Berry, and as Hudson whirled toward the new threat he damned himself for losing his concentration due to this Godforsaken beggar.
The three men were standing there, all of them in dark coats and tricorns. The man who had wielded the whip was the one who’d been sitting in the corner at the Four Wild Dogs; at a distance he may have resembled Hudson, but at close quarters the man had a broader face, thinner eyebrows and a hooked nose that looked like it could impale someone with a dangerous sneeze.
“Get away from here, shit rags,” said the man in a voice as cold as the wind. He lifted the riding-crop for a second blow.
The beggar scrabbled back into the alley, his good eye full of fear. Hudson could see an empty crate in there and a threadbare blanket on the ground. Suddenly the beggar seemed to come to whatever senses he had left, for out of striking distance of the crop he straigh
tened himself up, smoothed his pitiful shirt with his frail hands, and said to Hudson in a tone of whispery dignity, “I’ll have you know…sir…that I am a man of God.” The eye blinked. “Was,” he said. Then, “Will be, again. Annie can tell you. She died but I raised her from the dead. She’ll tell you true, my Annie will.” Then his ravaged face broke and what was underneath was the horror of a soul destroyed. He sat down on the blanket and rocked himself with his bony knees up to his chin, and he sobbed as he whispered, “A sip…a sip…God save me…a sip…”
“Don’t,” said the man with the riding-crop as Berry’s hand emerged from her purse with several coins in it. “Throwin’ your money away, miss. Hundreds of ’em like that around here. Better off left to die rather than live tortured.” The man’s smoke-colored eyes were emotionless, the hook-nosed face impassive. His gaze shifted to regard Hudson. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Who am I agreeing with?”
“Name’s Frost. This is Mr. Carr and Mr. Willow. You’ve been asking about a young man by the name of Matthew Corbett.”
“That’s right. And you’ve been following us a ways.”
“Also right. We know someone who might be able to help you.”
“Really?” Hudson’s thick brows went up. “Three good Samaritans in Whitechapel? I doubt that very much. Who are you and what’s your angle?”
“Come with us. Two streets over, the Gordian Knot. You’ll find out.”
“I don’t think so. I have a fighting chance in the street. My friend and I don’t care to be knocked over the head, robbed and dumped down a chute into the river today.”
Frost laughed, but it was just a chilly sound; his eyes and face were uninvolved. “We ain’t…” He stopped and tried that again. “We’re not,” he said, “violent men.”
“Every man, woman and child in Whitechapel is violent. It’s called survival. Tell me another one.”
“As you please. There is a woman in the Gordian Knot waiting to speak to you on the matter of Matthew Corbett.” Frost was trying very hard, Hudson thought, to sound as if he came from anywhere in London but these few hundred acres of mean despair. “She can be of great help to you.”
“What’s her name? Bertha Billyclub?”
“I’m not at liberty,” Frost said, pronouncing the word with care, “to reveal her name. Come along and you’ll find out.”
“No, thank you.”
Frost shrugged. His face was a blank, as were the expressions of the two others. “Suit yourself. It would be a bit ridiculous to let this opportunity go slidin’ by, but that’s your choice, inn’it?”
“’Tis,” Hudson replied, his own face equally unreadable.
“Good day to you, then. Good day, miss.” Frost offered a tip of his damp tricorn to Berry. “Let’s be off, friends,” he said to the others. They crossed the street between a passing haywagon and a team pulling a load of what appeared at first to be a mound of pallid dead bodies but was revealed with lessening distance as broken pieces of statuary, old saints pulled from some collapsed church or dislocated graveyard, arms reaching to the gray vault of Heaven and the faces washed serene and smooth by the water of time.
“Are you insane?” Berry asked, with a bite to it.
“Not the last time I looked.”
“Aren’t you at all interested in what this woman has to say?”
“I am,” he admitted. “But I’m not walking into any damned tavern with three men at my back. Not violent! Really…did you see the scarred knuckles on Frost’s hands? Knocked plenty of teeth down throats, you can be sure.” He pushed a lock of rainwet hair away from his forehead. “We don’t know what we’ll be going into. Damn it!” A hand came out and slapped the bricks. “I don’t suppose it would do a bit of good to ask you to go back to the Bat And Cat, wait for the coach, and if I’m not at the inn by…say…eight o’clock you’ll have a message sent to Lille—”
“Not a bit of good,” she interrupted.
“All right. I’ll save my breath, I may need it later.” Hudson peered into the alley. The old beggar had crawled into his crate. He was shivering, wrapped up in his nearly-useless blanket. Hudson reached into a pocket of his breeches and flipped a few coins to the ground beside the crate. As the old man sprang upon them with a cry that would have made the angels weep Hudson turned away, his face drawn tight. “Save your coins,” he told Berry. “God willing, you can buy me a very strong mug of ale back on Fleet Street. Let’s go.”
Misters Frost, Carr and Willow were waiting for them under the sign of the Gordian Knot, which Hudson had known they would be.
“Changed your mind,” said Frost, he of the frozen expression.
“You gentlemen enter first,” Hudson told him. “I want none of you at our backs.”
“Very well. Our route will be this: once inside the doorway, we’ll cross the tavern floor to the bar. To the right of the bar there’s a staircase going up. We’ll be ascending.”
“After you, then.”
The Gordian Knot was no different from any of the other taverns they’d entered; a change of name, but the same planked floor, the same candled lamps, the same round tables scarred with use and the same woozy patrons, the same long bar and the same beleaguered keep, the same weary serving-girls, the same the same. “Stay close to me,” Hudson said quietly to Berry as they crossed the floor behind the three men. For the first time he noted that Frost wore a pair of spurs on his expensive-looking boots. The trio went up the narrow staircase, Frost first and then Willow and Carr. Hudson ascended with his hand reached back behind him to grip Berry’s.
They emerged from the staircase into a circular room much finer than the rest of the tavern below. Lanterns of blue and green stained glass hung from hooks on the exposed oak beams, giving the upper portion of the room an underwater cast, while regular lanterns with burning white candles were set on several large round tables. The planks of the floor were covered with what appeared to be a very fine dark green Persian rug.
“Here they are, ma’am,” said Frost to someone else in the room.
Hudson and Berry saw a figure sitting in a high-backed leather chair, over in a corner at one of the tables.
The woman spoke in a voice that, like Frost’s, made an attempt to disguise its common birthing. “Bring them closer, if you please.”
“We’re close enough,” said Hudson. “We’ve been told you have information about Matthew Corbett?”
“Firstly, welcome to my tavern,” said the woman. “Do sit down, the both of you. We have a fine selection of mulled wines here.” The candlelight caught a smile on the woman’s mouth, exposing small peglike teeth beneath a knuckle of a nose and a pair of eyes that Hudson could only describe as froggish.
“We’ll stand,” he answered.
“You’re afraid,” she said.
“Cautious.”
“A big, strong man like yourself ought to be able to take care of business, if necessary. Look at you! You’re an ox!”
“I grew up to be big and strong by being cautious,” he said. He was very aware of where the three men stood in the room and if any bootstep tread upon the risers. He kept hold of Berry’s hand. “We’re leaving in ten seconds if you don’t offer us something.”
“I’ve already offered you wine. Oh…the other thing, you mean. Matthew Corbett. Well…that young man does get into scrapes, doesn’t he? He makes for an entertaining story in the Pin. And now he’s associated himself with that dreadful Albion! You have seen that, haven’t you?”
“Your time’s up.”
“If you won’t be sociable, I fear we have nothing more to communicate. I don’t like rudeness, Mr. Greathouse. Either you and Miss Grigsby come sit down, or I agree…time is indeed up.”
“I know you,” Berry suddenly said. “Don’t I?”
“We’ve never met. Come, come…sit.” She shrugged her broad shoulders. “Or leave, if you like. The way out is open.”
Hudson didn’t like the smell of this. As far as he knew,
he’d never met this woman before, and yet…something about her was familiar. He had a decision to make. “Do they have to be here?” He motioned with a lift of his chin toward the three misters.
“Certainly not. If they offend you, they shall be gone.”
“They offend me.”
“Be gone,” she said, speaking directly to Frost. Hudson pulled Berry aside as the men passed them and descended the stairs without another word or glance at them. “Now,” said the woman, “can we talk like civilized people?”
“To the brass tacks,” Hudson replied. “We’re looking for Matthew and we’ve been told you have information. You seem to know us from somewhere. And no, we don’t want any wine, thank you. Do you have information, or not?”
“Oh, I do.” The woman pushed back from the table and stood up. She approached them across the fine Persian rug. She was of formidable build, a thickly-set woman not fat but crudely powerful, though she moved with a practiced grace. The froggish brown eyes in the work-seamed face were fixed upon Hudson, the mouth crooked with a peg-toothed smile. She wore a dark blue gown with bright pink ruffles down the front and along the sleeves. On her big, workman-like hands were pink lace gloves with the thick sausages of her fingers exposed. Hudson took measure of the deep lines in her face and the cottony cloud of her hair done up with golden pins, and he decided she must be sixty years old at the youngest but there was the attitude about her of the strutting Whitechapel brawler thirty years her junior. He knew her from somewhere…surely he did, and now she was close upon him and she was about to speak.
Freedom of the Mask Page 26