But I had a sample of Jeremy’s handwriting. I dashed up to my study and dug his previous note about the inaccuracy of the translation of the volume I now thought of as “The Book.”
As I remembered, even in haste, Jeremy was incapable of anything but a neat signature. Part of his need to make certain the reader knew who he was and his qualifications.
I did not believe he had penned this note. Not only was the signature different, the formation of his letters was at the wrong slant and the “R” lacked a peculiar loop at top left and bottom right.
“Damnation! I should not have dismissed the messenger so readily.” I needed to know who had sent him. And where he’d met the sender.
The withered hand could be encased in a padded leather glove. Lord Ruthven’s aide had reached for a wineglass with his left hand. The unnamed servant (more than a footman, or valet, less than an equal or favorite companion) had hung back and kept his gloved hands behind him while Ruthven and Drew practically panted and drooled over the scene depicting death and hell for Don Giovanni. He’d maintained a passive face, betraying neither disgust nor enjoyment of Lord Ruthven’s reaction.
If he were the trusted companion of a lord with an adequate wardrobe, why had he disguised himself as a beggar?
So I would not recognize him, or connect him to his master.
A small and wiry man who, except for the damaged hand, might have been quite nimble and acrobatic. Like the kidnapper I’d confronted that first day in Lady Ada’s household; the person in black who had scampered over the roof despite the broken wrist I’d inflicted upon him.
I presumed him male. I’d been wrong before. But who . . . ?
“Damnation, who is he working for?” Lord Byron, I’d assumed at the time. Now, Lord Ruthven. Was he the connection between the two sources of necromancy that now haunted London?
And was he behind the kidnapping of several girls? Other than Toby, all of the missing people I’d heard about had been young girls, guttersnipes, shop girls, and now a noble offspring.
I needed more information. The kind of information I’d likely find only on the streets. Beggars with missing limbs and injuries were quite common. A beggar with a withered hand would not attract much notice. A well-dressed man with a withered hand, even if he did wear a black leather glove to hide it, would be noticed.
Was I dealing with one man or two? Who was he?
I needed information and I knew how to get it.
“Mickey, summon the troops!”
Nothing. My army of listeners had heard absolutely nothing. No rumors and no reports of more missing girls, highborn or low.
And no word from Drew.
I started into the downward spiral of gloom and doom. So I did what I always did when I could not make a decision or find a course of action to get me the information I needed. I baked.
Emily became quite disgruntled that I sent her upstairs to help run the café. I needed my kitchen to myself.
And then Mickey came crashing down the stairs late in the afternoon three days later. “Look who we found!” he chortled. He clung tightly to the arm of a young blonde woman with a new bonnet slightly askew and wisps of hair creeping forward around her face. A familiar and welcome face.
“Jane!” I grasped her by both upper arms, heedless of the flour I strewed in my wake and upon her, and dragged her down the last three steps into the kitchen. Off-center her bonnet might be, but it was new, chip straw with lovely crimson velvet roses and blue ribbons sewn to the brim at the crown. Her summer gown of blue and red with a short coat of blue with red lapels—similar to the uniform of the Bow Street Runners—was much finer than her shop girl salary could purchase.
Hastily I grabbed her left hand, not at all startled to find a wedding ring on her fourth finger. A slim gold band suitable for the wife of an up-and-coming barrister.
“So he made an honest woman of you,” I said evenly, belying the warring relief and disappointment that she had eloped without a word to me, or either of her flatmates.
“Yes, Missus,” she said quietly. She looked all around the kitchen, noticing the changes we’d made in the last week. “We took the new train to Gretna Green.”
I humphed. “A proper wedding, I hope, and not just a declaration in front of the local blacksmith.” The Scots had a rather loose definition of marriage, and all a couple had to do was declare themselves husband and wife before witnesses. Even my Romany friends made more of a ceremony and ritual binding than that.
Of course in the wild Highlands with more sheep than people and settlements few and far between, a couple might have to wait a year or more for an itinerant priest to reach them, so a simple declaration made sense. Unfortunately, couples from all over the island, not just Scotland, in a hurry to marry used the system to bypass church regulations.
“We found a church and a proper clergyman, if you can call the Presbyters proper priests,” Jane said, lifting her chin in righteous determination. She tidied her bonnet, retied the ribbons and tucked escaping tendrils behind her ears, restoring her dignity with her proper grooming.
“Do you know how worried we were about you?” I asked, angry now that I’d assured myself of her well-being and her virtue.
“But why? We were only gone a few days.”
“More than a week while girls are being abducted off the streets nearly every night, including Violet and the daughter of a baron. We feared for your life, and your soul, as well as your virtue.”
“I’m sorry, Missus. We had no time to prepare. My Freddy’s da said we had to stop keeping company until Freddy passed the bar, and Freddy wouldn’t hear of it. So he proposed right then and there, and his da went storming off threatening to throw him out on the street. He . . . he accused me of only wanting his money and not loving him. When I do love him. I really and truly do.” She looked right and left rather frantically, as if needing us to believe her. As if she needed our approval to convince herself her emotions were real.
“We had to leave. We couldn’t wait.” Jane fished in her reticule for a hankie to dab her eyes.
Her tears looked genuine.
Emily gave me a sidelong glance that told me she didn’t believe a word of it. “His father,” she mouthed. “He approved.” Then she deliberately took up my rolling pin and rolled out the pastry dough I had just abandoned, removing herself from the conversation.
Maybe the father had a change of heart. Maybe Freddy lied.
“Wait a moment,” Jane looked up, clear-eyed and without the blotchy skin that follows copious tears. “You said Violet is missing? But I saw her the morning that Freddy and I left. She was boarding a train for Devon. We were headed north and had no time to talk to her.”
“Devon? Why would she go to Devon? She said she needed to visit her mother in Southwark on her half day.” Without thinking, I headed upstairs to my office. I knew I had a map. In fact, I had a detailed map of southern England dating back to Roman times, and others covering many eras including modern times. I had not returned the tome to the library.
I loved maps. They held more information than most people thought to look for.
Jane and Mickey trailed after me.
“Toby’s gone, too,” Mickey whispered to Jane, none too subtly. “Went missing the same day.”
“Devon. What’s in Devon besides the best cream in the world?” I opened the atlas to the first map of the southern coastline.
“The end of the railway line,” Jane offered.
“Did Violet say anything else?” My head came up so fast my neck cricked.
Jane pursed her lips into a pretty pout. I wondered if she’d practiced the expression. “She . . . she wished me luck and said she wouldn’t be a shop girl much longer. I thought at the time she’d found the same luck as me, a man to marry and take her away from . . .” She blushed, also prettily. “I’m sorry, Missus. You gave us al
l wonderful opportunities to better ourselves. Without you and this café, we’d all be nothing better than slatterns with no hope. If we still lived. Life is short and brutal on the streets. Even with the Bow Street Runners doing their best to catch criminals.”
“Running away for a better life . . .” I mused. “Was she lured away with false promises?” I didn’t think so. Violet had been loyal to me from the first day. The first of my rescued children. She often hugged me with utterances of gratitude and hopes she could always work with me.
My fingers flipped pages to the most recent map of the southern coastline. It showed the ancient Roman roads as well as the newest addition of rails for the iron horse steam engines. Beyond the crossed hatch marks indicating the rails, another fainter line extended toward the rocky and broken coast of Cornwall.
I checked the date on the map. Charted in 1832, printed in 1834. Four or five years for the rails to expand toward the mines of Cornwall to fuel modern industries.
Cornwall, land’s end.
Cornwall.
A haven for smugglers. The place was riddled with tiny coves surrounded by tall cliffs. I hadn’t spent much time in the area, but the one time I’d stood on a tall promontory, I’d spotted caves in the cliff below. Caves to hide French brandy and silk during the recent war and embargoes.
Caves that could harbor a necromancer’s secret laboratory when London’s Bow Street Runners became too curious about an abandoned warehouse on the river.
A cavern like the one in my vision.
“Congratulations on your marriage, Jane. Please know that if life sours for you, you are always welcome here. Now, Mickey, you and I need to discover who owns that warehouse.” I grabbed a bonnet and shawl, oblivious to Jane’s protests that her life would not sour; she and Freddy loved each other too much.
“Just make sure you and Freddy register your marriage here in London to make certain it is legal and his father can’t have it annulled.” I swept away, preoccupied with the people still missing, not with the one prodigal who had returned.
Some of the girls might have followed the lure of a brighter future. Toby wouldn’t. Toby liked routine. Routine was safe. My Book View Café was his safe haven. He hadn’t left voluntarily.
Chapter Eighteen
A DRIZZLING MONDAY MORNING, June 22, 1837. King William IV had died a few days before. Victoria had already distanced herself from her mother and her mother’s lover. She’d gathered her Prime Minister and other advisers she trusted—meaning her mother didn’t trust them—about her like a tight cloak of protection.
I did what I always did on Monday mornings. I scrubbed my stoop. Violet was off to see her mother and hated getting her hands wet and dirty. So I did it myself, while I thought through the last week and what I needed to do to improve my business, to watch over the ailing Lady Ada, to observe patterns in the news both at home and abroad.
Already, after only a few days, I sensed the shifting of the power players in Parliament, and the money men. Caution all around as they weighed and assessed the nature of the new power on the throne. Would young Victoria become an independent thinker? Or would she become a puppet of the Prime Minister?
The sound of weeping, quiet like the crying child was afraid of being kicked in the ribs for the crime of hopelessness, off to my left, around the corner in the narrow alley, kept me on my knees and moving my scrub brush long after the slates were clean.
Patience, I told myself. Feral children were very much like cats, skittish and untrusting. They could lash out with flying fists or thrown stones in their hunger and desperation.
Slowly, I dropped my brush and drying cloths into the bucket of soapy water and levered myself up to my feet, moving as if stiff and sore. Well, I was; crouching on my knees and washing the grime of hundreds of muddy boots and shoes off of slate isn’t easy. But I still had enough ease in my joints to run, or fight if I had to.
The crying became muffled sobs. I suspected the lost one was aware of my movements and watched carefully, face covered by an arm, while trying to stop the tears that still controlled him.
Did I know for sure it was a boy? No. But I suspected. Girls learned early on that tears and wide-open eyes softened the heart of those who could take care of them. Boys hid their uncontrolled emotions as if they were a sign of weakness.
A lump of rags huddled in the dim alley—only wide enough to admit one person at a time. A big lump of rags that nearly filled the passage. One slow step at a time I edged up to him.
He dropped his face between his bent knees. I can’t see you, so you can’t see me. Very catlike.
With my back against the brick wall of my shop, I slid down to sit beside the lump.
He froze in fear.
“I won’t hurt you,” I said quietly.
“Yes, y’ will,” he mumbled.
“I have no reason to hurt you.”
“Yes y’ do.”
“What have you done?”
“No’what.”
“Then why should I hurt you?”
“’Cause.”
“Because what?”
“Old man give me somewhat for y’ and t’others stole it. Said it was too good for the likes o’ me.”
That sounded interesting. An old man had given this big boy something for me. A message perhaps? “Which old man?” I coaxed, edging close enough to put my arm around his thin shoulders. His shoulder blades felt prominent and his arms too thin.
He froze again. But as I tugged him in invitation to put his heavy head on my shoulder, he gradually unstiffened, then gave in to the force of my grip. A new spate of tears followed, and he succumbed to place his head in my lap.
In that moment I caught a glimpse of his round face with poorly defined features and up-tilted eyes, cheeks slightly darkened with the downy beginnings of a fair beard. A child of low intelligence probably. He’d always be a child. If born into a poor family, his parents would kick him out of the household as soon as he demonstrated an inability to learn. With any luck, his mum might continue to feed him for several years if she could. Not recently, though.
I hugged him tightly, sad for his condition, and sadder for the mother who had to give him up when he became a drain on the family, both financially and emotionally.
“What old man?” I asked again.
“T’ one in the woods.”
That could be anyone, homeless outlaws, highwayman or Romany. I hoped for Romany. “Where in the woods?”
“By t’ pond.”
More likely Romany. “Did he have horses?”
“Lots. Pretty little things. Sturdy, too.” He let go of the sobs as he lost himself in the memory of pretty Romany ponies.
“What did the old man say to you?”
“He . . .” hiccup . . . “he said I was to take his gold coin and give it t’ you. Said you’d know it, and help me. But t’ others, the bully boys, threw stones at me and stole the coin. Said it was too good for me. But they didn’t know about you. They didn’t hear what t’ old man said.”
Of course it didn’t all come out in a gush like that. He had to pause and think between phrases, and to choke back more tears as he remembered the cruelty of those who didn’t understand his weakness. Bullies who thought themselves better than him. But they were no better off, and no better in my mind because they had no heart or compassion.
“I know the old man in the woods,” I reassured the boy. “I know what he wanted me to do.”
“You do?” He lifted his head and smiled at me with hope.
That smile transformed him. He looked more cherub than lost idiot. I wondered if the sun had finally penetrated this dark and dirty alleyway.
“Do you have a name?” I asked, still holding him close.
“Aye.” He answered my question, not realizing I needed more information.
“And what is your na
me?”
“Toby.”
“Toby,” I affirmed. I didn’t elaborate on the origin of the name: Tobias, meaning The Lord is Good. Sometimes He was. He brought me this child in a man’s body when we both needed something to cherish.
“Well, Toby, I have chores to do and you could be a big help to me if you’ll fetch and carry for me.”
“But I lost t’ coin!”
“Never mind about the coin. It was only a token to tell me I should help you. But I’ll help you. I promise. You’ll help me enough to earn a good breakfast. And I’ll watch over you, make sure the bully boys don’t come back.”
“I . . . I smelled fresh bread.”
“Yes, you did. And fresh bread you shall have. With butter and jam. Now come along, there’s trash to carry to the dustbin, and floors to sweep.” I stood and walked to the back of the alley and thus into my courtyard and the back stairs down to the kitchen, where we both belonged.
“Missus,” Mickey whispered at my elbow. I held up one finger to suggest he pause while I finished counting and sorting the keys in the discard basket behind the carousel. Fifteen in the last three days, only two large, deep search keys, but five were medium and the remainder quick and easy. Quite a few, all told. My library was gaining in popularity. Fortunately, not all of them were queries into Archbishop Howley‘s treatise. I’d left those books on a shelf behind the carousel.
The upcoming coronation had brought many folk to town. They added more than a bit of chaos to my relaxed and genteel café.
“Yes, Mickey?”
“Robbie an’ Joe an’ Kit Doyle just reported, they did, t’ beggar with t’ . . . weak ’and was seen down on t’docks, he was, three days a-running. Always about tea time.” He gulped for air after the headlong spate of half-formed words.
“Slow down, Mickey, and tell me proper.” Already my mind spun around ways to trap the man.
Mickey repeated his report, this time pausing for breath and finishing most of each word.
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