by Will Thomas
“’Ello, Egg-Face!”
“Vic!” I exclaimed. “You gave me a turn. What’s in the sack?”
Soho Vic carried a cloth sack over his shoulder like Father Christmas. Normally, he tried to present a kind of East End toughness, but I’d never seen him look so excited before.
“Hold the door and see for yourself,” he said, swinging it open for me. “You have a future as a doorstop.”
He walked to Jenkins’s desk unbidden, upended the sack, and poured papers and envelopes all over the surface.
“I didn’t expect your new position would produce so much correspondence,” I remarked, staring at the pile in front of me.
“Cor, those aren’t for the Guv. They’re from Downing Street.”
“What?”
“We bottled it, didn’t we? Whitehall’s our territory now. Any boy from anywhere else is paid off or warned off.”
“You mean, these letters are not for us? They’re for other people?” I said, shocked. “But some might be important!”
“They should have thought of that before they sacked Old Push. Sorry, I mean Mr. Barker.”
“Vic,” I said. “Boys bring messages from all over London and you stop them just before they reach the door of Number 10?”
“S’right,” he answered. “You have a talent for stating the obvious.”
“Did you do this on your own?”
Barker cleared his throat but did not stop working. “I thought a show of force was in order.”
“No messages going in,” I said. “What about out?”
Vic waved a hand at the desk. “There they are, all in one bunch.”
“You stole them!”
“No, we didn’t. We paid for them. The messengers made it all the way to Downing Street, didn’t they? They deserve payment. Most don’t care if a message misses the front door by a foot or two. They’d accomplished their mission, they supposed. If they argued, they’d trade their note for a kick in the knee and a bloody nose.”
I was appalled. Barker’s plan could disrupt the government. No one could say what was inside each one or how momentous it all was. I wasn’t certain it was even legal. We were taking an awful risk.
“What about the professional messenger boys?”
“Nice little chaps,” Vic said. “Very helpful and generous. One of them gave us the very trousers he wore out of the goodness of his heart. Another of them wanted to show us how far he could glide on the ice on his stomach. He traveled over a dozen feet on the paving stones of Whitehall Street.”
“I see. And what of the commissioners? They are retired soldiers and former officers. Surely you couldn’t humiliate them.”
“Oh, no? They changed their tune after a Shadwell snowball.”
I put my hands on my hips and glared at him. “And what, pray tell, is a Shadwell snowball?”
There was no response from Barker, whose chair was turned away from us. Jenkins looked at the ceiling, ignoring the question, while Mac studiously recorded the messages that in fact we were not privy to.
Victor Soho, as he styled himself, grinned.
“It’s like a real snowball, only instead of snow, there’s—”
“Night soil,” Barker supplied, ahead of Vic’s response.
“You’re joking.”
“Naw,” Soho Vic said. “Very careful of their uniforms, they are. Can’t stand a bit of horse dung on their nice gabardine trousers, lucky for us.”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“They’ve got to learn some respect,” Vic went on. “They has to know the Whitehall Street Boys are here now.”
“Ah,” I said, turning to the Guv, or at least the back of his chair. “This acting as a benefactor was merely for my benefit. You were actually forming a gang!”
“It’s tragic how disorganized the messenger business is here in Whitehall,” Vic answered. “Truly a crime. Everyone coming and going, messages traveling hither and yon and everyone accepting that they reached their destination until proven wrong.”
“Wait. What about the postman?” I asked.
“Of course, we would not interfere with Her Majesty’s postal delivery,” Barker said. “Now that would be illegal.”
Vic nodded in agreement.
“We’re not savages,” he said. “But an ordinary messenger is fair game, either here or in Whitechapel, get me?”
“I ‘get you.’ These notes were all destined for Downing Street, then. Or coming out of it.”
“Most of them,” Vic replied. “Some were meant for the Foreign Office. And the Home Office. And the House of Commons. Then there’s Scotland Yard, of course.”
“You stole these notes from all over Whitehall?”
“’Course we didn’t. Said I paid for them, didn’t I? Coin of the realm? They weren’t legal messengers, anyway, and really, who can tell one street arab from another?”
“What are you going to do with them?” I demanded.
“Record them,” Barker called to Mac in the waiting room.
“Yes, sir,” Mac answered.
“Jeremy, do you have a box large enough to carry these to Downing Street?”
“I believe so, Mr. B.”
“Then send them on their way in an hour or two.”
Sir,” I said. “That sounds foolhardy, if I may say it. Salisbury won’t swallow such an insult lightly.”
“What would he do? Sack me?”
“I…” I began, but I didn’t know how to answer.
“When one travels with the pack, one must learn how to bite,” he said.
I sighed. I was trying to save us from being arrested again, and he was quoting aphorisms to me. I shook my head.
“I’m certain this cannot be legal,” I said. “And I’m a married man now. I’d prefer not being arrested when I can avoid it.”
Barker actually put down his boat and turned toward me, which was fine. I was growing tired of talking to the back of a chair.
“You’re not involved in this,” he said. “You knew nothing of it until now.”
“I don’t believe the Prime Minister of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Skye, Manx, and whatever bloody islands I’ve forgotten shall strain so fine as to believe me innocent in this, whether you say it or no. And what about Mac? He just walked in the door!”
“I can argue for myself, thank you,” Jacob Maccabee murmured, but I suspected he was worried as well. He had aged parents who might be inconvenienced by a stint in jail.
“If they’re mixed together, how shall we know what went where?”
“We’re not idjits,” Vic said. “Penciled the name or address on the back, didn’t we? And we bundled these together.”
“You’ve cordoned the area, and disrupted the government!”
“Mr. Llewelyn is correct,” Barker said. “We’ve gone far enough. Pull your boys out of Whitehall, and scatter across the river.”
“You’re the boss, Push.”
“This never happened, as far as you are concerned.”
“Never heard of it,” Vic said, holding up his hands. “I was in Wapping, eating mussels.”
“Good, then.”
Jeremy came from the front room with a stationery box in his hands. We separated the folded notes from the envelopes, then divided them between Whitehall and other locations. Then we put the Whitehall messages in the box. Jenkins had to press down to make them fit. Then he found some string and tied the box closed. Meanwhile, Soho Vic tucked the ones to be delivered elsewhere under his arm, and carried the box.
“I’ll deliver these in the morning straightaway,” he said, “and I’ll leave this box on the Prime Minister’s doorstep tonight.”
Barker reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out his watch.
“Five thirty-five,” he said. “Jeremy, don’t you have someplace to go?”
“Crikey!” our clerk exclaimed. It was five minutes past the time he normally left and therefore he was five minutes late for an appointment with a pin
t at the Rising Sun. It might even be sitting on the counter at that moment, awaiting his arrival. Without another word, he grabbed his hat and ran out the door.
“Since we are without benefit of client,” the Guv said, returning to the matter at hand. “The three of us are at loose ends. I think we have deserved a night’s rest.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“You look worried,” Rebecca said to me over the book she was reading.
We were in my old bedchamber, which had now been turned into a study. There was a snug coal fire humming in the grate. I was in carpet slippers and a dressing gown, with a book in my lap looking out the window at the frozen garden below.
“Hmmm?”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing. Well, Juno, actually. The stable is cold and her water is liable to be frozen. I’ve been so busy, I haven’t thought of her until now. Does she have enough hay? Is her blanket dry? The old duffer who owns the stable is forgetful sometimes and the stable lad doesn’t really care about another man’s horse.”
“Are you thinking of going out in this weather?” she asked. “I’m sure there isn’t a hansom to be had in all London!”
“I can walk,” I replied. “It’s less than half a mile, and there are no drifts in the road.”
“Thomas, that isn’t a good idea,” she said.
“She’s dependent upon me. It’s my fault if she freezes or gets sick. I’d never be able to live with myself if something happened to her.”
Before I married Rebecca, I sometimes wondered if anyone would ever bond with me as well as Juno. She was my girl and at times it seemed as if she understood me perfectly. She accommodated me so much it was as if she could read my very thoughts. Now we were without a case, the weather was terrible, and frankly, I had forgotten about her. She gets nervous when left alone for too long and will kick at the stall doors. She could injure herself, I reasoned. There was no getting around it.
“I have to go, I’m afraid,” I answered. “I won’t be able to sleep otherwise.”
I changed clothes and met her at the top of the stair.
“At least let me see you out,” she said. “You would be this solicitous if it were I in the snow and not Juno, wouldn’t you?”
“Only if your water was frozen.”
She smacked my arm. “You’re terrible. I don’t know why I agreed to marry you.”
“I’m still mystified about it, myself.”
In the hall she wrapped not one but two woolen scarves around my throat and pulled a thick tweed cap with flaps down over my ears. Then she made me change my shoes for my stoutest pair of boots. Mac came out of his pantry, looked at me, then looked through the window beside the front door to see the weather. He, too, thought I was mad, but it wasn’t his duty to see to it that I was safe.
There was a creak of the stair and Barker came down from above, dressed in his gold-and-black Chinese dressing gown. He looked at the three of us suspiciously, as if we were youths at some sort of prank. Mac slunk off. Even Rebecca looked a trifle guilty.
“What the d—” he began. “I mean, what is happening here? Where are you going?”
“I must see after Juno, sir. I forgot about her.”
Juno was the Guv’s horse before I bought her from him, and though he no longer owned her, he expected me to do my duty by her, to make sure she was brushed and blanketed, that the farrier and the veterinarian saw her regularly. But now, like Mac, he looked out the front window.
“Cannot it wait until morning?” he asked.
“I’m concerned that her water is frozen.”
“It’s dangerous out there, Thomas, and I don’t merely mean the weather.”
“If any blue coat follows me he can keep me company.”
“A wit to the end. Take precautions. If the snow becomes heavy, stay close to a fence as you walk. Don’t wander off the road. Mrs. Llewelyn and I do not want to find you frozen in a drift somewhere. It’s not good for business.”
“Or marriage,” Rebecca added.
For once, they agreed on something.
“I shall be exceedingly careful,” I said.
With a nod from Barker and a peck on the cheek from my wife, I stepped out into the cold. To be truthful, it wasn’t that bad. There was no breeze at all, and the air was still. The moon overhead cast blue shadows onto the whiteness, reminding me of the sentimental images on Christmas cards of houses covered in snow and bedecked with pine boughs. But it wasn’t December, it was the cold, harsh reality that is January.
It was very quiet, unnaturally so for London. I heard nothing but the crunch of my boots in the alleyways. There was a layer of snow, perhaps an inch or so, but beneath I felt frozen ice, hard as iron. Before I was married, I used to take long walks at night to combat my insomnia, but that had greatly abated since marriage. Now that I was out in it again, it all came back to me, the feeling that everyone in the world was asleep but me, the belief that all London was mine and I was its night watchman of sorts. Sometimes it is best to get out from among people, even ones you love, and clear one’s thoughts, or at least that was the lie I once told myself.
My hands were in my pockets, my collar pulled up around my face, and that absurd tweed cap with the hanging flaps was perched on my head. Whose cap was it? It certainly wasn’t the dandy Mac’s. It would not fit on the Guv’s head, and I didn’t believe Rebecca had brought it along with her from the City. Houses are like that: they acquire gloves, brollies, scarves, hats, and boots for which the owners cannot account. Anyway, the hat was unsightly, but it kept my ears warm.
I trotted the last few hundred yards and then pushed the livery door to the side, just enough to squeeze through. Inside, it was dark and cold. I lit a lantern. My advent caused some pawing and snuffling among the occupants inside. Plumes of warm mist rose from every stall. Finding Juno’s, I squeezed between her body and the wall.
“Hello, baby,” I said. “How are you tonight?”
She turned her head and rubbed an ear on my coat. She’d lean all her weight upon me if I’d let her. I pressed my cheek against her bony face and rubbed her neck. She was glad to see me, too.
Stepping back as far as I was able, I took stock of the stall. As expected, her water bucket was frozen. It took a strong kick with my boot to break the surface ice. She drank almost immediately, then she decided to find out how my coat buttons tasted. Juno is always interested in my coats.
I sang out for the stable boy, but he was gone. Her blanket was soiled and had not been put on properly. She looked as if she hadn’t been curried in a month. Drat that lazy boy, I thought. No, drat this one for not taking proper care of his own horse. I rebuckled her blanket, brushed out her mane, and wrapped her left back fetlock, which I had been concerned over. I turned her hay, filled a bag full of oats and fed her, while telling her what a fine horse she was and how I would never neglect her again. I cannot say whether she believed me, or even understood me, but she liked the sound of my voice and my presence. When the bag was empty, I stroked her muzzle until she fell asleep. Coming to see her had been the right decision.
He was there waiting when I came out of the stall, blocking the door, one arm raised, holding a saber in front of him. Gunther Voss, my nemesis from the stage at the camp meeting revival. Instead of the trousers and singlet I last saw him in, he wore a coat and bowler, like the man at the funeral. Had he been one of the original three who’d stolen my bag that first day? I didn’t know for certain. I hadn’t seen their faces.
“Guten Abend, mein Herr,” he said, holding the weapon loosely in his right hand. The blade gleamed in the light from a single lantern.
“Oh, it’s you, Gunther,” I said. “Back for more?”
He came forward slowly in a fencing crouch.
“Not very sporting of you, old fellow.”
I looked about. There was a pitchfork. Barker had taught me to fight with a weapon called the “Tiger Fork,” which was similar. There was a long-handled sickle agai
nst the wall, but by my calculation, I would be skewered before I reached it. I had promised Rebecca I would return, and I do my best to keep my promises.
I’d made another promise, this one to Cyrus Barker. I had taken precautions. I pulled my trusty Webley from my pocket and aimed it at his chest. I thumbed the hammer. He cried out and stepped back. I could tell he was going to back out and run, so I pulled out the second pistol.
“Stop. One more step and I’ll shoot you dead where you stand. Do you understand?”
“You will not shoot,” he replied. “You are English. Fair play and all that.”
“I am Welsh, Gunther, and we don’t care how the bloody English play.”
He took a run of two steps before I cocked the other pistol and he stopped again.
“Don’t tempt me,” I said. “I don’t want to spoil your looks with a bullet between the eyes, but I am perfectly willing. I won’t lose sleep over it, I promise.”
He slumped. He’d gambled and lost. His anger over being humiliated had caused him to make a rash decision. He threw down the sword. He may have been ordered merely to watch the house, but the chance to get even with me had proven too great.
“That’s wise,” I said. “Now, move along. I’m taking you to see Mr. Barker. For your sake, I hope he shall be more patient than I. He’d believe you should live until your graduation. I do not.”