by Andy Emery
‘Well, this little spying mission has been tiring for me, my dear. What do you say to a coffee and a tot of brandy in a little café I know, before we sail back across the channel?’
3
The sailing barge Saint Claire cleaved through the turgid brown water of the Thames. Lucas Gedge, leaning over the bow rail, could just make out the blocky warehouses and wharves lining both banks, as the dawn brightened the eastern horizon behind him. A breeze along the river blew strands of unkempt hair across his face, and caused his long overcoat to flap around his shins. Not a natural sailor, Gedge was grateful that the Channel had been calm on the journey over from France.
As they rounded a curve in the river, Loic, the barge’s master, came to join him in looking out over the rail. He pointed straight ahead.
‘See up there? The bridges!’
Gedge could just make out several lines across the water, like faint strings of pearls. London Bridge, the Cannon Street Railway Bridge and Southwark Bridge, he guessed. They spent several minutes contemplating the scene before Loic spoke.
‘Pardon me, Monsieur Gedge. I notice that you wear a charm. The image of the man carrying a child across a river. The patron saint of travellers, I think?’
‘That’s right. It’s my link to my daughter. She has an identical one. Or at least she did. I’ve seen her so little over the years, I can’t even be sure of that.’
‘When a man makes his living serving his country in far-flung lands, it can take its toll at home. But now you will be reunited? What is her name?’
‘Hannah. She’s sixteen now. She’s the reason I’m returning to London. I’m more or less estranged from her mother Maggie, but I’m determined to try to make up for my failures with Hannah in whatever way I can, whether Maggie wants to know me or not.’
‘I wish you luck, Monsieur. Family is the most important thing in life.’
Loic pointed to the northern bank, to starboard. ‘We are nearly at our destination. Just over there, at the wharves in Wapping, is where we will come alongside. Monsieur Rondeau’s man will meet you.’
Beyond the anonymous dockside buildings, but a little further along on the same bank, Gedge could make out the distinctive shape of the Tower of London. He had spent little time in his country’s capital. Hailing from Devon, he had joined the army and spent much of his life abroad on active service, and for a number of years on what could be described as secret service; far, far away from his native land. Maggie had been his childhood sweetheart, and they had married during an extended period of leave, early in his army career. They’d had Hannah not long after, but the marriage had stood little chance with home leave increasingly rare. He was only glad that Hannah had seemed impervious to her mother’s bitterness towards him, and had always shown deep joy whenever he did manage to actually show up. The resilience of the young, he assumed.
He had heard countless tales about London, of course. It was both the biggest city in the world, and the hub of an empire that covered half of it. And the River Thames was an important cog in the engine driving that empire’s business. It was relatively quiet at this early hour, but soon it would be throbbing with activity. Already, on their journey from the estuary, they had passed docksides stretching for dozens of miles, especially along the northern bank. And there were yet more upstream. All of the docks were engaged in importing goods from all corners of the globe, and funnelling profits to the wealthy elite, just a few miles away in the City of London.
But he’d also heard that there were two Londons. In the west was the city of royalty; of the nobility, the rich industrialists and their many hangers-on. And then there was that other breed of Londoner, mostly occupying the eastern boroughs; a seething mass of humanity that felt no benefit from the imperial hinterland and whose sole concern was how to get through another day alive. The city of the poor: his current destination.
The faint sound of wing-beats in the air made Gedge look up, as the reptilian and forbidding form of an otherwise-silent cormorant passed only ten feet above his head. The day had lightened enough to reveal a flat grey, featureless sky. The rust-coloured sails of the barge flapped gently above, as Loic made his way aft to help his brother Mathieu with preparations for docking. The boat’s gear was simple to operate, so a crew of two was sufficient. The sailing barge was a common and versatile vessel of the inshore British waters, but this vessel’s home port was Caen in France.
As they neared the wharves, Gedge could hear shouts from ashore, and he discerned activity all along the riverbank, as men set to work loading, unloading and moving goods within and around the vast warehouses that lined the bank. Cranes were positioned at regular intervals, and several were in action, lifting loads from the decks of moored ships and into the warehouses. Gedge wondered how many hundreds or thousands of men were involved in these activities all along the Thames.
The barge edged closer to the wharf, and as the gap reduced to a couple of feet, Mathieu leapt across it and started to secure lines to bollards on the quay. After a few more minutes the boat was brought to a gentle stop and a gangplank lowered to the cobbles of the wharf.
After saying his goodbyes to Loic and Mathieu, Gedge crossed to dry land and dumped his canvas travelling bag on the ground. From an inside pocket of his coat he brought out a piece of paper bearing three important addresses. They were all in Spitalfields, a borough only a mile or so north of where he stood. The most important was that of his wife and daughter. The second was for The Admiral Jervis, the nearest inn to their home, where he hoped to rent a room for however long it took him to get his bearings in London.
The last address was that of an elderly gentleman by the name of Claude Rondeau, a former colleague of Colonel Felix Bellhouse, his old commanding officer. Rondeau had arranged for Gedge’s passage on the Saint Claire. Bellhouse had described him as an autodidact with an incredible mind that absorbed huge quantities of information, and who was able to retain the details of a vast network of contacts, stretching beyond Britain and its empire. It was this network that allowed Rondeau to get a message to Gedge while he was travelling north through central France, much to the latter’s amazement.
It had been a year since Gedge had been forced out of both the army and the Intelligence Department to which he had been attached. Somehow Rondeau had been able to have a man contact him in a café in a country town one evening. One moment he was chatting amiably to a local newspaperman over a glass of red wine; the next, the man was telling him that a boat would take him from Caen, across the channel and up the Thames to Wapping, in a week’s time. After that, Rondeau would like to see him and hoped to interest him in an offer of work, if that was agreeable to Gedge. All very strange and intriguing. But if it helped Gedge find his feet in the city, he was all for meeting the man.
He took one last look around him. Over the city, smoke was starting to rise from thousands of chimneys. On the river, vessels of all sizes and descriptions—from large freighters down to wherries and dinghies—were beginning to ply their trade. Along the wharves to his right and left, men were scurrying this way and that, and piles of freight were mounting.
4
Gedge hoisted the bag onto his shoulder and left the wharf, heading up a narrow set of steps between two of the dockside warehouses. Emerging at the top of the passage, he found himself on a road running parallel to the river, lined with a seemingly endless row of warehouses where goods wagons were being loaded, ready to move the freight onwards.
Directly opposite, on the other side of the road, stood a black-painted hansom cab, the horse between its shafts a striking dappled grey. The driver was obviously a large man, but was hunched over, his face obscured by a scarf and bowler hat. As Gedge watched, the man gave a gentle tug on the horse’s reins and the animal hauled the vehicle across the road. As it drew alongside the pavement beside Gedge, the driver straightened up in his seat, pulled the scarf down and doffed his hat, revealing a face that was certainly not of British origin. The man’s dark complexi
on, hooked nose, and neatly trimmed moustache and beard suggested Arabic descent, but he could have come from anywhere between North Africa and the Indian subcontinent. He addressed Gedge in perfect English.
‘Mr Lucas Gedge? My name is Darius. Mr Claude Rondeau has sent me to pick you up and take you to your choice of lodging house. Please.’ He gestured for Gedge to enter the cab.
‘Pleased to meet you. I’d like to go to the Admiral Jervis inn. Do you know it?’
‘Yes sir. I am familiar with it. Mr Rondeau asks if you would be able to meet him at some point in the next two days?’
‘Yes, I certainly will, Darius. This afternoon I must visit my wife and daughter, but tomorrow should be fine.’
‘Excellent, sir. Mr Rondeau will contact you. He says that the matter he wishes to see you about has become more urgent.’
‘Urgent? Really? I wonder why. Oh well, I’ll just have to wait and see.’
Gedge hefted his bag into the cab and climbed in himself. Darius gave the reins another flick and the horse set the hansom into motion.
He knew this area—on the north bank of the river between the Tower to the west and Shadwell to the east—was called Wapping, and it was dominated by the dock trade. Indeed, as they started to make their way north, they went over a narrow bridge across the entrance to the western part of London Docks. He caught a glimpse of dozens of masts to his right: trading vessels moored in the vast sheltered basin. And to the left, smaller but still important to the mercantile life of the city, lay St Katharine’s Docks.
They passed along a narrow road between the two complexes of docks, and emerged into the first residential street they had encountered, unimaginatively titled Dock Street, and consisting of mean-looking terraced housing.
Darius suddenly shouted a word in what Gedge assumed was his own tongue. It brought the horse to a sudden stop. Gedge craned his head out of the cab’s window, to see three young boys standing in the street, blocking the hansom’s path. All wore ragged clothes, cloth caps and hobnail boots that were falling off their feet. Nobody else was about.
‘What do you want?’ said Darius. ‘Get out of the way!’
The middle boy—the tallest of the three—shouted back. ‘Now, now, darkie. Collecting somebody for old Rondeau, are ye? That’s nice, eh, lads?’
The other two boys laughed, and Gedge then saw them reach into their pockets and turn their backs to the hansom.
‘We’ve got a little message for old Rondeau,’ said the tall boy. ‘He needs to keep his nose out of what’s not his business. Supposed to be retired, ain’t he? Tell him to stay that way. Tell him we know where he lives.’
‘I am not your messenger! And Mr Rondeau would not listen to the imprecations of young urchins like you. Who sent you to pass on this warning?’
‘Never mind that, darkie. He’ll find out if he carries on.’ He turned to the other two. ‘Now, lads!’
The other boys turned back to face the cab. They were setting light to strings of firecrackers.
‘Watch out!’
Gedge reached for the door handle, as the boys hurled the flaring firecrackers towards the horse’s feet. A rapid-fire fusillade of pops and crashes—as loud as a battlefield firefight—ripped through the morning air. The horse reared up on its hind legs. Gedge flung the door open and leapt out onto the street, aiming to grab the animal’s harness and calm it down. But as he looked up, he was astonished to see Darius scramble from his driver’s seat, clamber over the roof of the cab, and launch himself onto the bucking animal’s back.
He clung to the horse as if his body was coated in adhesive, and with his face close to its neck, he emitted a kind of low drone. Within seconds, the horse stopped its bucking, and then relaxed back to its normally calm state, as Darius continually stroked its flanks, maintaining the murmuring.
Gedge looked down the road, but the boys were long gone. A number of people had appeared from their houses to investigate the racket. Gedge and Darius ignored them as they climbed back aboard, the horse now settled enough to continue.
‘What was that all about, Darius? I assume that sort of thing doesn’t happen routinely on a cab journey in London?’
‘No, sir. Although you would be surprised sometimes. I will of course inform Mr Rondeau of what took place here, and I am sure he will have some idea of what their warning refers to, or who might have given them their orders. I expect he will tell you when you see him tomorrow.’
As they moved off, Gedge opened the trapdoor in the roof of the hansom to continue their conversation.
‘Darius, does Mr Rondeau employ you? I understood he is retired. And I get the sense that you are not a run-of-the-mill cabman. Calming down our friend here like that was very impressive.’
‘Thank you, sir. Mr Rondeau is indeed retired, in the sense that he no longer works directly for either a company or a government. But he is far from inactive. And he has no employees as such, but I do work with him regularly. We have an understanding, sir. As to myself, driving a cab is one of my skills, but I do not earn a living from it. I have a natural understanding of horses, you see. I am from Persia. My ancestors lived in a part of the country that was then called Parthia.’
‘That name rings a bell. If I recall my school history lessons, weren’t Parthians rather handy with the bow and arrow, and on horseback to boot?’
Darius allowed himself a smile. ‘Yes, sir. Especially skilful, considering the stirrup had not been invented in their time.’
‘This goes a long way to explaining what I just saw. Not a bowman yourself, though?’
The Parthian, still smiling, inclined his head in a gesture that Gedge read as deliberately noncommittal.
As they crossed a road junction onto Leman Street, Gedge’s musings on his cabman’s abilities were diverted. He had made a note that the police station for this part of the East End was located here, and he peered at the solidly built structure as they passed by. Despite being a member of Her Majesty’s military for decades, Gedge retained a wariness of the forces of law and order. It was something he had picked up in his early years, his father being a notorious poacher in the part of Devon where he grew up, earning him regular run-ins with the police, and the occasional beating. Next to the police station was a “Hall of Varieties” bearing the name of the famous 18th century actor David Garrick, but looking down-at-heel enough to suggest that it didn’t deserve its prestigious name.
They had now passed from Wapping to Whitechapel, a district that had become infamous two years earlier, for the series of killings carried out by the character known as Jack the Ripper. The perpetrator had never been caught, and for Gedge it was a worrying reminder that his daughter was not living in the most salubrious of surroundings.
As they approached a junction with a major thoroughfare, Gedge noticed a woman standing in the recess of a doorway, studying the passing pedestrians and vehicles. She was wearing a hat that was flamboyant, if crumpled, and was grasping her coat tightly about her. She caught Gedge’s eye and blew him a theatrical kiss, then reached down and parted her coat, revealing a brief glimpse of a purple garter.
She winked, and Gedge nodded back. Like most prostitutes, the impression of glamour she cultivated was only surface-deep. Gedge noted a certain blankness about her expression, a darkness around her eyes, and she looked as though she were slightly dizzy or dazed. The effects of opium or one of its derivatives, no doubt. He’d seen similar expressions on the faces of addicts in India and Egypt. He knew that her life was likely a miserable one: beaten regularly by clients and her pimp, as well as the effects of addiction.
Darius called down. ‘Mr Gedge. Best to avoid that sort of woman.’ Gedge chuckled to himself. He may not have been in London more than an hour, but he wasn’t as green as the cabman supposed.
They emerged into a wide street—the Whitechapel Road—and Gedge’s ears were assaulted by the hubbub of fervid commercialism, rising from throngs of vehicles and people. There were perhaps a dozen omnibuses, and many
other horse-drawn vehicles of every size and description. The street was lined with shops on both sides, and people crowded the pavements, some crossing the road by running between the many vehicles, risking being run over or trampled by hooves.
Darius took the opportunity of a gap in the traffic to navigate the hansom across Whitechapel Road, and onto Commercial Street. They were now in Spitalfields, their destination, and Gedge observed a huge white spire dominating the skyline ahead. Darius shouted down that it marked Christ Church, a landmark in East London, built by the architect Hawksmoor.
Darius brought the hansom to a halt. He would have to admire the building another time.
5
Darius had stopped the hansom opposite a passage between a haberdashers and a cigar shop.
‘The Admiral Jervis is just down there, sir. An excellent choice, if I may say so. Discreetly tucked away, and of some historic interest as well.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, it is an ancient galleried building, with an odd assortment of rooms and seating areas. It has a mixed reputation. It seems to cater for both drunken carousing and for private meetings where it would be unthinkable to be overheard. Perhaps even the odd secret assignation. Mr Rondeau says it is popular with a cross-section of society. Off-duty policemen, down-on-their luck artists, craftsmen, labourers and market workers, not to mention criminals of all persuasions. Even some from the upper classes have occasionally been seen embarrassing themselves while attempting to “blend in”. An inevitable result of the events of two years ago.’
‘Ah, you mean the Ripper. I’d almost forgotten we’ve just been travelling through his old stomping grounds.’
‘That is correct, sir. Several of the Jack the Ripper’s victims frequented the Jervis before their hideous deaths at his hands.’