The Raven's Seal

by Andrei Baltakmens

  The two rakes glared at him, and the one sneered, but Grainger hastily drew out his pocketbook and scribbled a note on a corner of a page, which he then tore and threw to the table. “There. That is my promissory. That will stand for it.”

  Starke grew still.

  As the other gentleman began to leisurely gather up the cards, Grainger reached over the table and fingered the note. “It is strange, is it not,” he mused, “that these little notes of hand, mere markers, are so widely circulated and accepted. Why, I have seen one of these passed from person to person and so covered with names and emendations, as the original debt was illegible. The prison is full of such papers. They may represent, with a mere name and sign, the commonest objects or the most intimate favours. They are a currency in themselves.”

  The cards fell flat on the table. Starke did not touch them. “You are all sly hints and disordered insinuations. Be plain, if you can.”

  “My hand is almost made,” replied Grainger. “Consider the note more closely.”

  Starke glanced at the scrap of paper. His face grew blank and hard. “You need not attend us any longer,” he said, with a glance at his companions.

  The gentlemen stirred, protested that the game was in progress, the stakes uncollected, the bottle not empty.

  “Get out!” roared Starke. “I say I have no need of you! Perdition take you!”

  He rose clumsily, dragged the woman from her perch at the window, and pushed her squealing into the arms of one of the rakes. In a mass, they departed the room.

  In all this time, Grainger had not stirred, but seemed to be even more at his ease.

  Starke sat again. “Sir, you are at liberty to proceed.”

  Grainger glanced down and along the floor. “If the burly fellow behind me takes one more step, upon my soul you will hear not one whisper more from me, and it will go all the worse for you.”

  “Wait outside,” said Starke curtly.

  Grainger waited until the heavy footsteps had withdrawn. They were alone in the room, over the scattered remnants of the game.

  “Tell me, sir,” said Starke, with a heaviness of manner and intonation he had not evidenced before, “how it is you, a gentleman, presume to sign this promissory with a false name.”

  “Do not have the effrontery to tell me you have never seen the mark of Lemuel Dreaver before,” said Grainger.

  “I keep many such tokens. One name is much the same as another to me.”

  “Aye, but I say every note and marker signed or countersigned by Master Dreaver has come by some means or another to your hand. I have been abroad in the gaol, and I know that you have brought them up, oftentimes at a loss to yourself. You have gone slowly and quietly; you have gathered them all in one by one, but not so subtly that you would be undetected by one who had an interest.”

  “And what if I should?” said Starke, with a shrug. “Wherefore should I, a moneylender, not collect all this man’s debts, if it pleases me?”

  “You know this Lemuel Dreaver is a pitiful, grasping, absurd figure of a man. He has not a penny to his name, but writes out these notes for a farthing here, a favour here, a mug of beer, or a belt-buckle. He games and drinks and scrounges, and the gaoler lets him out each day to go begging in the streets, and he returns like a roaming dog each night to squander the proceeds of the day.”

  “I say again: what of it?”

  “You have grown mightily dense in your apprehension. For where this Dreaver is at leave to pass in and out of the Bells, he is also at leave to carry messages and remembrances given him by the prisoners. It was for this that he passed between poor, mad Ginny Cleaves and her lover.”

  “The girl is pitiful. But her tale means nothing to me.”

  “You are become exceedingly dull! Shall I be plain?”

  Starke gestured, as though to say, “It is no matter to me, but proceed,” and Grainger, sensing his advantage, went on.

  “You covet the middleman’s part in the Wodenshill job. The profits without the risk, since no doubt you have connections with some southern or northern fence who will take on the loot, tainted with blood as it is. And therefore, you must court Dirk Tallow, whose swaggering presumption grows so great that he scorns his former associates and seeks to cheat them out of their share of the prize. But how better to win Dirk Tallow than gift him the destruction of his bitter rival, Michael Harfoot? So you gained a hold over Lemuel Dreaver, by gathering up all his debts, and insinuated yourself into the communications between Ginny Cleaves and Mickey Harfoot. And it was a simple matter to betray them both.”

  “They betrayed themselves to the law, reckless fools.”

  “And for mere gain, you set them towards the gallows.”

  Starke opened his mouth and drew a deep breath. Grainger pushed the table aside, scattering cards, coins, cups, and bottles, and in a stride was before the informer and had his hand upon Starke’s thick throat.

  “Cry out,” hissed Grainger, “and I swear you will be a cold corpse before this morrow’s eve.”

  “What do you intend?” wheezed Starke. All winks and smiles and friendly nods were gone. Before Grainger, squirming in his grasp, was a cold, hard, and pitiless man.

  “Ginny Cleaves has a brother,” said Grainger. “And her brother has friends and a bitter rage to satisfy. If I do not return this evening, her brother will know his sister’s betrayer, and then all the locks and gates of the Bells will not preserve that man from his vengeance.”

  “You have no proof,” gasped Starke.

  Grainger grinned crookedly. “I am no jurist to tarry for proofs. No doubt the proofs are hidden somewhere here, among all the notes you have collected. But let that be. Dreaver will accuse you to defend himself. But I doubt if Daniel Cleaves will wait for proofs when my tale is set before him.”

  “What will requite you?” asked Starke. “I have money. There is a strongbox hidden in the next room.”

  “I will give you this grace, infinitely in excess of what you deserve: if you have bribe money, means or influence, depart the Bellstrom Gaol within these next few hours. Never return. For I will play the informer in my turn and set this whole matter before Ginny Cleaves and her brother, for that sorrowful creature will not die doubting herself. In return for this, you must satisfy me on one or two matters.”

  Starke nodded. “Speak on.”

  Grainger withdrew a half step, righted a candle that had fallen on the table.

  “Did you, through the offices of a thief called Lafferty, conspire to remove certain papers from my cell?”

  “I did.”

  “With what purpose?”

  “I get my living by informing. It is my business to acquire secrets. I thought to come across something to my advantage and discredit you thereby.”

  “You are lying,” said Grainger harshly. “Do not test my forbearance. You stand in present danger.”

  “Why do you doubt me?”

  “An informer who turned to thievery among thieves would not long prosper. Under whose direction did you ransack my cell, and mine alone?”

  “It was my own fancy.”

  “You are lying still, and therefore, I bid you good night, and to make your peace with the tatters of your conscience.”

  “Wait!”

  Grainger paused and looked back across the disordered room. The prison-spy was undone, hunched in his chair. A dreadful pallor had overspread his face, and his hands rubbed and twisted against each other, turned and clasped, as though to suppress a terrible tremor.

  “I had orders,” said Starke. His voice was low and dull.

  “Who commanded you?”

  “I am a poor man; I pass by my wits.”

  “Who?”

  “You are a fool and an innocent, Grainger. You preen yourself as a gentleman and cultivate high sentiments and make a show of pity for these fragments of the gaolhouse, but you see nothing and know nothing. You are blind, blind, blundering in a pit. You threaten my life? My life is bound to a more terrible power
that has no name to bargain with. Merely to voice the rumour of it is certain death.”

  “Then permit me to make so bold. It is the Black Claw.”

  Abruptly, Starke reached into his waistcoat pocket. He rose and with a motion dashed something to the floor. “There is my commission from the devil!”

  Grainger stooped. In the parlous glow of the candles, it was nothing more than a broken disk of black wax, with three deep, pointed indentations, still attached to a scrap of paper.

  Starke had turned his back on him. “Will that suffice?”

  “You have my word, as a gentleman. Go at once, and no one will hear of this until the main gate closes behind you.”

  “Our hand is concluded,” said the informer.

  A CROWD HAD gathered in the great yard of the Bellstrom, but unlike the usual mob gathered to see a punishment or an execution, there were no catcalls, jeers, cheers, or encouraging shouts, merely a deep silence, as only a mass of men and women, shifting, pensive, and alert, can possess. Grainger had come out to witness this, but guessing that there was little to see from within the ranks, he clambered up some haphazard stairs and crossed onto one of the high, open walks that looked down into the yard. He was not the first, for Mr. Ravenscraigh was there. The wind was sharp and squally, with a taint of rain, and indeed, shrouds of grey cloud moved across the city. Ravenscraigh held his coat close against his throat, but the old man’s face was hard and unreadable.

  “What is it?” said Grainger, though he knew as he spoke.

  “She has been examined before the justices. She is not with child; nor has she ever been. There is no hope for her now.”

  The crowd stirred sullenly. The gate at the base of the wall beneath the Maids Tower opened. Ginny Cleaves came forth. She held herself straight and quite alone. None dared speak or cry out. She was attired in a fine, clean dress, such as a country-maid might regard her best, and her wild black hair was bound up with a bright ribbon, shining like a lover’s token. Her face was pale, proud, and calm.

  “Beautiful, is she not?” observed Grainger.

  Ravenscraigh snorted. “A fine neck is as fit for the noose as any other.”

  The crowd parted solemnly, and the sound of shuffling footsteps shifted up from the yard. Ginny Cleaves walked between them. Only once did she pause and her proud head shift from the path before her, and this for the slightest instant as she approached, standing at the edge of the prison mob, Dirk Tallow.

  That gentleman swept off his plumed hat. He would not meet her eyes, and for a moment his glance flew up, across the crowd, to where Ravenscraigh stood at his high vantage. All the bluster and display had fallen from Dirk Tallow. Grainger, from the balcony, fancied that he detected between Tallow and Ravenscraigh an intimation of acquiescence and resignation. The old gentleman did not alter his stance, save that the sardonic line of his mouth tightened.

  And then Ginny Cleaves was moving toward the cart, and Dirk Tallow, abashed, looked away, and the crowd turned as she took the gaoler’s hand, and he lifted her into the back of the tumbrel.

  “Or’right, my dear?” growled Swinge, though more gently than usual.

  The gate opened.

  “Is it likely,” mused Grainger, “that Mr. Tallow is to be reconciled with Mr. Brock?”

  “A curious thing to say,” responded Ravenscraigh.

  “Mr. Tallow has little reason to be downcast this day, when the last dependant of his old rival leaves this world forever, unless his plans have elsewise been frustrated.”

  “And what plans were those?” said Ravenscraigh, without looking away from the yard and the gate.

  “Why, to fence the proceeds of the Wodenshill job through the offices of Mr. Starke. I mention this now, only because you once spoke of a slight small interest in the case.”

  If Ravenscraigh was perturbed by this, he made no sign. He said, “There will be little commerce with Mr. Starke henceforth, under any terms. He quit the Bellstrom in haste, but this day past, a corpse answering to his description was drawn out of the river at Gennertly Weir.”

  The cart was moving. Grainger went to the edge to watch its progress. He coughed into his hand. “I had not heard the rumour.”

  “I daresay it is in part deserved.”

  “It is well deserved,” said Grainger, more harshly than he intended. “For he contrived the capture of Mickey Harfoot and that wretched woman there, to ingratiate himself with Dirk Tallow.”

  “It is a dreadful thing,” said Ravenscraigh gravely, “to make a traffic in human lives for one’s own advantage. But how, sir, came you by this knowledge?”

  Ginny Cleaves passed beneath the gatehouse. Though the cart rocked over the worn and uneven stones, she swayed but did not falter.

  Grainger pressed his fingertips hard against the stones. “Let us say that I, too, had an interest in the matter.”

  “Quite so. It is not a circumstance that gentlemen need discuss.”

  Mr. Ravenscraigh left his place at the edge of the walk and clasped his hands behind his back. The gate was closing, and the gaol crowd dispersed, though from the execution square, the rattle of drums and the activity of the crowd were growing audible.

  Ravenscraigh turned to Grainger and said briskly, “Do you play chess, sir?”

  Grainger considered this. “I learnt the game as a boy. My father was fond of it.”

  “Then we shall play. I have need of apt opponents. All the prisoners do here is play at chequers and gamble. I abhor games of chance.”

  “I am at your service,” said Grainger, nodding slightly.

  Ravenscraigh passed on at an easy pace and did not glance back before he went downstairs. Grainger lingered a long while in the fresh air, staring at the disordered sky and listening for the last roar of the far crowd.

  CHAPTER XV.

  Hours and Days.

  “WHAT DO YOU MAKE of this?” asked Thaddeus Grainger.

  “Very little, if you decline to tell me what it is.”

  “It is a prize, taken in battle.”

  “Then I am more than adequately perplexed.” Quillby frowned at the disk of black sealing-wax. It was broken along one edge, and what remained were three rough indentations or lines with a hooked point. “I do not know it,” he said at last. “I will try the stationers about town, but it looks very plain. In the meantime, you will keep this concealed.”

  “Of course,” said Grainger, amused by his friend’s concern.

  “If this is the mark or token we have heard of, it could be a decisive proof. But it is also as dangerous to the one who holds it as to the one who sent it.”

  “How so?”

  “It conceals at least one murderous secret and a host of crimes. Its master will little suffer it to be brought to light.”

  “Then you be careful when you go into the town.”

  “Quite right,” said William, with a sombre nod.

  THE BELLSTROM GAOL, between court sessions and the doling of punishments, filled and emptied like a harbour at the tide, save that very little fresh water ever got in, and the same human driftwood was admitted and discharged and washed in again with such regularity that old hands greeted their former fellows and renewed their acquaintances with grim predictability. Indeed, for some the gatehouse, yard, and cells assumed the character of a retreat, where they could confirm their social obligations and hone their skills before embarking again on the chances of the world. Thus the gaol proved a college for villainy, wherein its doctors in crime graduated to that most thorough and relentless examiner, the noose.

  Yet, to the few prisoners committed for a term of confinement, there was no such relief from the dull daily round. They marked the passing years indifferently; the change of the seasons was but to shift from sweltering to shivering in their cells, the months and weeks becoming mere abstractions. The prisoner knows only the hours and days, boredom and routine, and the few fond habits he shores up like timbers against the ruin of his body and mind.

  Thaddeus Grainger ro
se at the first tolling of the city bells, and if the snow was not high at his window, he watched the day’s dawning over Airenchester, as the grey, tentative light struck the rooftops, spires, and chimneys and quenched the glow of fires and link-lights. He washed, dressed, waited for Mrs. Myron, who came each morning with warm rolls for breakfast and provisions for the day. Mrs. Myron fetched him, likewise, books from his father’s library and other small items he might require. That steady lady bustled about his cell and straightened his few possessions and scolded him for his slovenly habits and informed him of all the matters of good society, though these later reports were to him, now, of little more import than accounts of rebellions in distant colonies, and he heeded them little within the compass of the prisoner’s hours and days.

  After Mrs. Myron took her leave, he wrote for an hour or two, for he was involved in correspondences and appeals (though no lawyer would now take his case). These duties accomplished, he walked briskly in the yard. On most occasions, he met with Mr. Ravenscraigh, and if that gentleman was not engaged, they exchanged a few words. He always stopped to entertain Mr. Tyre and share a few scraps of cheese and rind with Roarke. Many of the other inmates who preferred his services approached then, while the rest of the prison bickered and brawled around them.

  Later, he sought out Mr. Glover, a young gentleman of dissolute habits and negligible sense, whose family, properly, confined him until that day when some consciousness of duty or restraint should enter his disordered head. That day was not imminent, but among his passions for whoring, drinking, and gaming, Glover nursed a fondness for fencing, boxing, and the single-stick, and therefore Grainger and he drilled in these arts (with a crooked pair of bated smallswords) for an hour or two. In the corridors of the Bellstrom, this attracted the raffish remarks of the cutthroats and ruffians, who were convinced of the advantages of the stiletto, cutlass, and cosh, and at pains to point out their myriad improvements, with gruesome illustrations.

  As the day wound away, Grainger read or wrote in his cell, or received his visitors. Often, he considered the Black Claw, which he kept carefully hidden behind a loose brick at the back of his constricted fireplace. If it could be read aright, if the hand that set it could be found, how much would be revealed! On some evenings he traced the crumbling, narrow stairs that struck up along the curtain-wall of the mouldering fortress to play chess with Mr. Ravenscraigh in his cell.