The Raven's Seal

by Andrei Baltakmens

  Rising hastily, and with a motion of his hand, Grainger concealed the seal again.

  “It is curious: Mr. Ravenscraigh said much the same about you.”

  “Every man here has his secrets,” said Mr. Tyre.

  “And what secret does Mr. Ravenscraigh own?” asked Grainger sharply.

  The raven, as if impatient with the discourse between the two men, had its head in among his scrap box and was strewing fragments of used leather about the floor. Mr. Tyre reached out to restrain it.

  “You will have heard,” said he, “that Mr. Ravenscraigh is a debtor, brought low in his youth and constrained here still by the malice of his creditors.”

  “The gentleman has indicated as much,” replied Grainger.

  “He was not then the eminence he is now, for the gaol was not yet swollen to its present numbers, but he was still known and respected by all the felons and debtors, when my own misplaced trust turned my steps hence.”

  “But did you not think it curious,” said Grainger, leaning nearer, for both men were close to the ashen hearth, “that a gentleman of his quality could hold sway over such a collection of brutal men?”

  “I was thankful for his patronage, for it was he that saw to it that I could continue, in a small way, my poor trade,” said Mr. Tyre solemnly. “But there was one tale I was told, by the prisoner who kept this cell before myself, that shed a sinister light on the character of Mr. Ravenscraigh.”

  Mr. Tyre seemed to grow even smaller and fainter, and his dry voice barely stirred the air. “It came to me that in his youth, Mr. Ravenscraigh was a notorious rakehell and gambler, a man of high lineage and low capital who had married into a small fortune and squandered his wife’s fortune just as quickly. First among his creditors was a man called Airey. This man Airey was a moneylender, horse-racer, gamester, and seducer. He had gained a hold on Mr. Ravenscraigh and wielded it over him without mercy. Now, the Ravenscraighs had a grand house, near to the river, I believe, and it pleased Airey to carouse there at all hours, to rule over the household and its parts as if he, and not his debtor, were the master there. This he did, even as Ravenscraigh’s other debts threatened to overwhelm him, as he sold off his family possessions, jewels and furniture and silver, one by one, and made a desolation of the property.

  “One November night, a shot was heard in the house. The sound was traced to the bed-chamber, and when the door was broken in, Airey was found in a great-chair beside the fire. He had been shot with a pistol through the head.”

  “Was it terrible?” asked Grainger.

  “The ball smashed his skull, passing out. On the wall behind there was a plume, a veritable fountain of blood.”

  “What became of it?” said Grainger.

  “A pistol, discharged, was found at Airey’s hand. It was at first thought that he had taken his own life. But Airey’s family could not accept the verdict. It was their belief that the man had been murdered. The suspicion, if not the truth of it, fell upon Mr. Ravenscraigh. There were fragments of papers, some said promissory notes, found in the grate in Airey’s room. The Aireys turned their fury against Mr. Ravenscraigh. His other debtors, seeing the weakness of his estate, fell upon him like wolves.”

  “But could they make nothing of the charge of murder?”

  “Nothing at all. The door to Airey’s room was locked. When it was broken in, the key was found in the room on the other side of the latch. The charge of murder would not hold. The dead man’s family could not be persuaded but that he had contrived by some cunning means, to enter the locked room and do the deed, staging the death. Nothing could be proven. But Ravenscraigh’s enemies had him taken up for debt, and so implacable was their claim, so heavy and shadowy the rumour of guilt, so complete their conspiracy, that he is here still, condemned to die in a debtor’s cell if he cannot be brought to the gallows.”

  Grainger and Mr. Tyre parted then. Without a light of his own, Grainger groped his way through the belly of the gaol to his own cell, careful to avoid the puddles and clots of filth on the stones. The prison walks were silent, but in Grainger’s mind all secrets and crimes were abroad beneath the shroud of night-darkness, and he walked as one dazed, on an exhausted field of battle after midnight, where companions and bitter foes mingled, met, and passed unseen, until daylight should yield forth again the record of their desperate acts.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  On the Watch.

  THE SUN, in its trek from the high fields of noon, stumbled and gashed itself on the spires, roofs, towers, and weathercocks of Airenchester and spilled blood-red into the lanes and alleys. As he came from a pawnshop on the margins of Staverside, William Quillby buttoned his coats and walked into the cool of the evening. He had once more returned to the hunt, through the high city and the low, for one who might recognise the form of the Black Claw, a rubbing of which he kept in his breast pocket. He had spent a futile hour or more in the grimy pawnshop, pawing among signet-rings, seals, and snuff-boxes. The last scarlet trace of light departed as he made his way along the streets.

  As he clambered up one of these archaic lanes, with a narrow, feculent ditch in its centre, William became aware of steps that seemed to follow his own and hasten and slow as he did. He took a turn, thinking to come to some street where more people were abroad, but not knowing this district, William chose badly and found himself in an even tighter alley, with the same footfalls coming close behind his, sharpened and contained by the overhanging eaves.

  The lane ended in stairs that turned to ascend. William trotted up and heard his follower hastening. Alarmed, at the top of the climb, which led into another sinister lane, William halted and turned back. He was mistaken. Not one man but two trailed him. They were both lean, with matted hair, filthy coats and beards, and hard, sharp eyes. One paused at the bottom of the steps, while the other sidled against the wall. It grew darker between the lanes, and all their other features, as well as what they carried in their hands, were obscured.

  “What is it?” stammered William, as the three looked at each other.

  The two said nothing. One climbed the stairs on his right, and William perceived that he would be trapped in the corner. William had not even a stick, only a pocket-book with his rubbing of the Black Claw folded inside.

  “Speak your purpose,” William challenged, and still the two men did not respond.

  “What! Murder! Theft!” William bellowed—and bolted.

  Pursuit started after him. The air rushed in his throat, and he saw little in his onward haste but blank walls and barred doors. About and above him, windows opened and lights came to those windows, and voices took up the call: “Robbery! Fire! Murder!” and, “Stop, thief!”

  Still he ran, in wild haste up the twisting lane, striking against corners and turns, scampering over drains, while his surging blood clamoured in his ears and overwhelmed even the uproar that went with him.

  William spied a lantern in the twilight beyond an arch and turned towards it. He bore down on the man who carried the light and circled with him in a moment. This man wore a great coat, buttoned up to the chin, and had a three-cornered hat and a stout staff in his hand. The watchman stepped past William. The staff whistled through the air and met a crack of bone and wood, and a howl of dismay. William turned, but already the two who had driven him before them scampered into the shadows with foul oaths.

  The watchman raised his lantern and looked on William, who struggled to compose himself, for his ribs ached with the force of the breath in him.

  “Sir…I thank you…I am unharmed.”

  “The Captain is nearby,” is all the watchman said, in no reassuring fashion.

  William leaned against a wall, coughed, and mopped his head with a handkerchief, while the watchman blew three notes on his whistle and called that all was well.

  Shortly, Captain Grimsborough arrived, and William, though he had restrained the shaking of his hands, felt sincerely that he should rather meet all the cutthroats in Airenchester than give an account
of his business to the Master of the Watch.

  “It is Mr. Quillby,” observed the Captain, with an accusing air, as if to say that being Mr. Quillby were a breach of the peace.

  “I have been set upon by thieves,” gasped William.

  The Captain was unmoved. “And what would thieves have with you?”

  “I believe they sought this,” returned William, stung by the Captain’s dismissiveness. From his pocket, he drew out the folded paper and flourished it towards the Captain.

  For a man of his height and angular disposition, the Captain moved very smoothly to take the paper from William’s hand. He glanced at the charcoal rubbing made of the seal. His face remained, as ever, imperturbable, but a narrowing of the eyes and a lengthening of the long jaw betrayed his consternation.

  “How came you by this?”

  “Do you know it?” said William.

  “I say again: how came you by this?”

  “And I say,” returned William, though his voice shook, which he reasoned was but a consequence of his exertions, “how do you know this sign?”

  The Captain put his hand to the hilt of his cavalry sabre. He turned stiffly to the watchman. “Go about your rounds. All is well here.”

  Heartily, William thanked the man before he left, but in a moment, he was alone with the Captain.

  “If you knew, sir, what I know of this mark,” began the Captain, “you would not brandish it so readily, nor refuse to answer my question.”

  “I will reserve my answer,” said William, “until you give an account of your interest.” Though hoarse, he could not disguise the sullen suspicion that gripped him.

  The Captain smiled grimly, showing a line of hard, straight teeth. “So be it. But I think, rather, a demonstration is in order.”

  The Captain turned and marched away, and William followed, compelled, for his paper was still in the Captain’s possession. The Captain chose a path, down constricted lanes and through creaking gates and across a tiny churchyard, finding a gap between two canted buildings, which William had never seen and heartily doubted he could ever find again—but when they come out at last, they were nearer the lively streets surrounding Battens Hill. The dark had come on, and there was scant means to see one’s way. The streets were active; link-boys hastened through the night with their torches to guide men and women among the twists and courts of these regions.

  The Captain shuttered his lantern. When he stopped, William, irate, but not yet recovered from his fright, began to demand an explanation, but the Captain silenced him with a gesture.

  A man came weaving and clattering down the street. He could have been a gentleman, but his condition was ambiguous, for his coat was askew, his wig had half slipped across one eye, and his shirt hung about his breeches. A youth with a torch led him, but the youth was forced to halt and turn, and look about, and go back, and guide the reeling man forward again. The Captain drew back into a pillared doorway, as these two approached.

  The boys came slouching out of another alleyway: four or five of them, filthy, with rags for shirts and no shoes. But, when the youth with the torch saw them, he looked back at his drunken charge, spat in the gutter, and lowered his light grimly. The boys swarmed like a pack of starveling dogs about the man, who in his stupor barely comprehended the small, hard hands that clutched at his purse and watch and kerchief.

  “They are robbing him!” exclaimed William.

  “Away, you curs!” bellowed the Captain, striding out and uncovering his lantern.

  The boys scattered, dashing across the street and slipping into mere cracks between the buildings. They had taken the man’s purse and torn a ring from his finger. He lay on his back in the filth of the street, moaning and mumbling. The link-boy had also run away. Briefly, the Captain attended to the fallen man, propping him against the wall.

  “What do you mean by this show of desperate thievery?” said William, under his breath.

  “You ask about a certain sign,” said the Captain, rising. “Here begins the reading.”

  On they went, south and east about Battens Hill.

  They emerged from the tangle of dim lanes below the courts at law, into the raucous thoroughfares of Denby Street and Prowling Road, where all the classes and orders parade. Here a nobleman’s carriage passed; here a lady in a sedan chair covered her face with her fan; here were soldiers and harlots, coopers and clerks; beggar-children, gypsies, and tinkers; here a troupe of musicians and tumblers; here, a mass of giddy, vaunting, laughing, scheming humanity, grown upon the flood.

  William and the Captain paused in the crossroads before the New Theatre. But, perhaps due to the company, or perhaps it was his new wariness, William Quillby observed all the chattering, shifting crowd with a watchman’s eye. He saw the pickpockets at work, the filchers and dips, a lean, wall-eyed woman in a green bonnet, whose fingers flashed into a gentleman’s coat. He saw the fellow, dressed sombrely like a minor cleric, blunder against a merchant and stumble away with his snuff-box. He saw the poor painted whores and the orange-sellers winking at the gentlemen in the crowd. He followed the Captain’s gaze to where a pair of harlots tarried with a sodden, besotted youth at the tavern door, and each time he turned from one to the other for a reeky kiss, they shared out his coin between them.

  “Is this what you would have me see?” asked William.

  “These are but jackals,” replied the Captain. “They prey on each other and quarrel over scraps, but they flee when the lion comes to claim his share.”

  They moved on by narrow side streets, where there were signs of furtive movement, giggles, low grunts. Painted women simpered and cooed at William from windows and open doors.

  “Take no notice,” remarked the Captain dryly. “They ply their trade nightly, and it is a dull one.”

  They crossed the river, getting among the miserable winds, courts, and tenements of the poorest quarters of Calderhithe. They walked up through the muck spilling from open drains. The stench assailed the senses and clotted the mind. Captain Grimsborough marched, steady and straight-backed as ever, but William hunched his shoulders and started at every strange sound and movement. They dived beneath rickety, filth-encrusted arches to emerge in stinking yards, filled with slimy, uneven stones. Twice, the Captain stopped and conversed with another of his watchmen, and they exchanged the news of the night in low voices.

  The Captain descended a narrow set of greasy stairs into a low cellar. The air reeked of tobacco. It was a wretched tap, crowded with men playing at dice and cards, and haggling over such scraps and dainties as came from the labours of the day. They did not pause as the Captain came in, and the din was almost unbearable to William, who began to reel, as if drowning in these scenes.

  “There is very little that cannot be got,” said the Captain calmly, “in places like this.”

  He moved on, from the first room to another, and William glimpsed, beyond this one, further passages and chambers, with weeping, distorted walls of packed-earth and brick, shored up by warped timbers, stretching on through the clay and fill beneath the streets.

  The Captain pointed out certain men among the press, in the murk of stale beer and smoke and oily lamps. He knew them as the huntsman knows his prey and can tell out their qualities: “All your thieves here have their classes and professions, like your respectable folk. Here is your twitcher and diver, who will have your goods out of your pockets. Here’s your cutpurse. This fellow is a budge: a burglar of clothes. Your burglars and house-breakers, mind, are a very high order. This one—” putting his hand to the shoulder of a man, and shaking him—“steals through windows with a hook; a veritable technical wonder, your angler. Those—” pointing across the room—“are your stand-over men, pads and cutthroats, who will rob you from your face. But your whipjack will rob only at markets and stalls.”

  The Captain seized William by the collar, to guide him around a group of laughing women. “Your trulls, doxies, slammerkins. Your bawds and procurers. And let us not forget your res
pectable beggars: your Abraham men, who feign madness; your palliards, who blemish their skin; your cleppendoggens, or false cripples.”

  The Captain drew William a little nearer. “Ahh, I see you Bully Traughten,” he spoke through tight lips, addressing a slab of a man who sat alone, in splendour, in a corner of the cellar. “And then these are your upright men, who stand over the rest and take their fees and garnish. Thieves upon thieves, and gloried like lords. There is but one thing they fear. One power that rules even them.”

  They climbed out, from these several hells, by creaking wooden streets, and William, regaining the streets, gulped down the fresher airs.

  “You have made your case, sir,” said William, coughing.

  “My case,” the Captain repeated, dourly.

  “You mean by this pageant of misery and crime to frighten me into some sort of admission, or to deter me from my aim.”

  “You had best be warned, but that is not my intention.”

  “Then what do you mean by this?”

  The Captain pulled out William’s paper from his pocket again. “If I choose to ask how you came by this token, a black seal bearing the imprint of a carrion bird, as I well know and mark, and each blighted soul in that place would obey without thought, you may be assured, sir, that it is no idle enquiry. You are not the only soul in Airenchester who heeds the tracks of that black bird.”

  William considered this. It was plain to him that a man like Captain Grimsborough, active, firm of purpose, direct and taciturn, may yet have that lack of imagination which renders him blind to many connections and unfriendly to doubt, preferring order to agitation. And yet, why this show, why this night’s work, if the Master of the Watch did not harbour some misgiving, as if his knowledge of many incidentals did not stir some consciousness of the greater wrong? This line of reasoning made William bold.