‘I can make more for you, very easy,’ she said. ‘I even do range of poisons if you like. Some for sleeping, some for paralysing, some for making blood come out of eyeballs.’
‘Um . . . thank you,’ said Sheba.
It was just then that the door opened, and a queasy-looking Gigantus staggered in. Sheba quickly hid the pistol away, guessing he probably wouldn’t want to be reminded of it. ‘My head . . .’ he groaned, slumping into a chair. His scarred face had a definite greenish tinge, and beads of sweat covered his brow.
‘You poor thing,’ said Mama Rat, fetching him a cloth. ‘That nasty little puppet man poisoned you good and proper.’
‘That poison kill normal-size man,’ said Sister Moon.
‘Thank goodness you’re such a great lump,’ said Mama Rat, mopping his forehead.
Gigantus moaned in agreement.
‘What exactly did you do with him, by the way?’ Sheba asked. She hoped it wasn’t anything too horrid.
‘Mr Farmy-flanelly is now on a one-way trip to Australia,’ muttered Gigantus, holding his head in his hands.
‘Transported to the prison colonies?’ Mama Rat said, in surprise. ‘How did you manage to get him into court so quickly?’
‘I didn’t,’ Gigantus said. ‘I just nailed him into a packing crate and paid someone to stick him on the next ship out there. Serves him right for shooting me with that stupid gun.’
Then he groaned again, and made a sound as though he was going to be sick. Sister Moon ran to get a bowl from the kitchen.
‘Why don’t you lot go out somewhere?’ said Mama Rat, looking concerned. ‘I think things here are about to turn a spot unpleasant. I’ll send my ratties along with you to keep you safe.’
‘Right you are,’ said Monkeyboy, not needing to be told twice. He was out of the front door in a few seconds, and Sheba and Sister Moon followed close behind.
‘We’re best off out of there,’ said Monkeyboy, when they were safely on the street. ‘Can you imagine that huge gorilla throwing up? It’d be like a tidal wave of spew. We’d probably have drowned in half-chewed mutton.’
‘Enough, Monkey,’ said Sister Moon. ‘At least we have afternoon for ourself. Where shall we go?’
‘We could go to the Great Exhibition,’ suggested Sheba. ‘You did say we would, and I’d love to see the Crystal Palace and the big diamond.’
‘Too expensive,’ said Sister Moon, looking at the few coins in the pouch on her belt. ‘We not have three shillings.’
‘What about the Penny Gaff down the road? They’re a steaming great heap of bum-juice but they do an afternoon show most days,’ Monkeyboy said. ‘We’ve got plenty enough for that, and some cakes and lemonade besides.’
Sheba and Sister Moon agreed, and the three of them set off.
Sheba pulled her hood down over her eyes, and kept her hands tucked beneath her cloak. Monkeyboy had hidden his tail down a trouser leg and jammed his battered top hat over his huge ears. Oddly enough, Sister Moon was the one getting all the stares. Probably because she was a girl wearing trousers.
Through the door behind them, a nasty retching sound could be heard. Sheba trotted a little faster, just in case Monkeyboy was right, and a giant wave of vomit was about to chase them down the street.
Back in Little Pilchton, Sheba had read about Penny Gaffs in scraps of newspaper, which described them as dens of vice and criminal behaviour. Officially they were cheap versions of the theatre, with a range of badly performed acts that kept their rowdy audiences entertained for an hour or so. Of all the sights she had wanted to see in London, it wasn’t very high on her list.
‘I’m sure going to a Penny Gaff will be interesting,’ she said, politely as they walked along Cable Street.
‘You clearly haven’t been to one before,’ Monkeyboy cackled.
‘Where are rats?’ Sister Moon asked. ‘I not see them.’
Sheba sniffed the air. There were scents of rodent everywhere, but then there were probably more rats in London than people.
‘I think we’ve lost them,’ she said.
‘Good,’ said Monkeyboy. ‘Them things give me the creeps.’
They turned on to the Ratcliff Highway. It was a seedy, dirty place, with people lying in the gutter and hordes of ragged children leaping around piles of rotting litter. The smell of disease and decay made Sheba feel sick, and she took her handkerchief out and held it to her nose.
‘Lovely here, innit?’ said Monkeyboy, grimacing. ‘Just the place for an afternoon out. Makes Brick Lane look like bleeding Mayfair.’
‘This the place,’ said Sister Moon. She had stopped by an ancient, timber-fronted building that looked as though it might have once been an inn. The outside was covered with pasted playbills, all too weather-stained to read.
‘I’ll say it again,’ said Monkeyboy. ‘I hope you’re not expecting anything spectacular. I don’t want the blame if it’s rubbish.’
‘It be good, Monkey. You see.’ Sister Moon ducked through the low door, not waiting for the others to follow. Suddenly, without a ninja to protect them, the Highway didn’t seem a very safe place for two young children to be standing. Monkeyboy and Sheba quickly followed.
They came out into a small, crowded tavern. Sheba could smell lots of unwashed bodies, pipe smoke and gin, and also something sweet. Over in the corner she saw a makeshift bar, where a woman was selling apples and slices of unhealthy-looking cake.
Sister Moon was standing at the far doorway, beckoning. It looked as though the show was about to start. Sheba and Monkeyboy pushed through the unwashed bodies towards her. As they arrived she dropped three pennies into the hand of the doorman and they went through into the theatre.
It was dark inside, and even smellier than the tavern. People were squashed into the small pit area next to the stage, and it was with difficulty that the three of them managed to push their way through to the rows of wooden benches at the back, which stretched up to the ceiling like a Roman amphitheatre (if amphitheatres had been knocked together by a few drunken carpenters out of worm-eaten timber). Sister Moon grabbed hold of a wonky ladder and scampered right to the top, where she found an empty bench. Monkeyboy followed, just as agile, but Sheba found the climb difficult and not a little frightening.
After minutes of clutching the splintered rungs and praying she wouldn’t fall onto the heads of the crowd beneath, she felt Sister Moon’s hands around her wrists, lifting her up. Stress had made her claws come out, and she left little gouge marks on the top rung. They had a bird’s-eye view of the whole theatre. The stage below seemed small, but at least the air was clearer up here, away from all the dirty clothes and festering armpits.
A little man came out onto the stage. There was an immediate roar from the audience, and it was very hard to hear what he was saying. It sounded as if he was boasting of the marvels of his show – a bit like Plumpscuttle did every night before their own performances.
The more the man went on, the more the crowd jeered. At one point, he compared his theatre to the Great Exhibition, and the whole audience fell about laughing. He seemed to take that as the final straw, and disappeared through a trapdoor in the stage floor.
There was a brief moment of silence from the crowd, then a lady in an extraordinary amount of petticoats came on. There were wolf whistles and cheers, some rather pleasant music started – played by three men at the corner of the stage – and she began to dance.
She wasn’t the most agile or slender of dancers, unfortunately, and soon the audience in the pit were throwing things at her. Eventually, she was booed off, and the director edged on stage again to announce his next act.
‘Ladies and Gentlefolk, may I now present to you the scientific genius, Mr Faraday!’
The audience shrieked and booed as a man in a black suit and enormous wig of wild grey hair came on. He carried a badly painted box, covered with coiling copper wires, strange dials and a crank handle on the side, which he placed on a small table and pretended to tinker w
ith.
‘What’s a scientific genius doing in a place like this?’ Sheba shouted into Sister Moon’s ear, trying to make herself heard over the noise.
‘It not really him,’ Sister Moon yelled back. ‘Is actor. Is famous because of new invention.’
Sheba was about to ask what he had invented, but the performance on stage soon made it clear. As he turned the handle, his box exploded with a bang and the actor jittered about the stage as if being shocked, before collapsing in a smoking heap. The crowd threw empty bottles and apple cores at the stage, forcing the man to scramble away on all fours.
‘He made something electric, did he?’ Sheba thought of the board of levers and wires on Farfellini’s ship.
‘He very clever scientist,’ said Sister Moon. ‘You not heard of him?’
Sheba shrugged, not knowing how to explain the patchy nature of her general knowledge. As soon as I get a chance, I’m going to buy myself an encyclopedia, she thought.
When the interval came, Sheba was rather relieved. Monkeyboy went off to get some cake for them all, leaving her to enjoy the relative peace and quiet.
‘Is something the matter, Sheba?’ asked Sister Moon. ‘You not like the show?’
‘It’s all right, I suppose,’ said Sheba. ‘Not my sort of thing, really.’
‘Yes. In Japan we have theatre called kabuki. It more civilised than this.’
‘Do you miss your home?’ she asked. What had driven the young girl so far from her native country?
‘A lot, yes.’ Sister Moon looked suddenly very sad.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to remind you.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Sister Moon forced herself to smile. ‘I cannot go back there, so I must get used to the sadness.’
‘Why not?’ asked Sheba. ‘Why can’t you return?’
Sister Moon paused for a moment, thinking. Obviously this was something serious, and she was wondering whether to trust Sheba or not. When she spoke again, Sheba felt a rush of affection – that she had been deemed worthy to share Sister Moon’s secret.
‘In Japan I do bad things, Sheba. Things I not proud of.’ She halted, looking around to see if anyone was listening. When she next spoke, it was almost in a whisper.
‘I work for a group called Shadow Fist. We belong to powerful shogun as ninja . . . assassin. My master, he train me for many years, make me the best of all his ninja. But then one day he give me new task. He ask me to kill daughter of rival shogun. A girl not much younger than me.’
Sister Moon stopped; pressed her hands to her eyes for a moment. Sheba put an arm round her and squeezed gently.
‘I refuse,’ said Sister Moon. ‘I refuse mission. Bring disgrace to Shadow Fist. In my country, if you do such a thing, is terrible crime. My master would have had to kill me. So I leave. Get on first boat and come here. Monkeyboy and Gigantus find me in Whitechapel, save me from attack by gang. Mama Rat persuade Plumpscuttle to take me.’
For a moment, Sheba didn’t know what to say. Finally, she took one of Sister Moon’s hands in hers.
‘You poor thing,’ she said. Then, because that sounded so hopelessly inadequate: ‘Your master, he sounds like a horrid man. It’s good that you got away from him.’
‘He horrid man . . . but . . . he my father.’
There was an awkward silence, broken by Monkeyboy returning with the cake.
‘What’s going on here?’ he said. ‘Heart to heart, is it? Has Moonie told you her sad story?’
‘Shut up, Monkeyboy,’ said Sheba. She didn’t mean to be so harsh, but she was feeling responsible for opening Sister Moon’s old wound, and also dredging up thoughts of her own lost family.
‘Wait till you hear my story, then. It makes hers sound like a comedy.’ Monkeyboy finished his mouthful of cake and handed the rest around. Then he cleared his throat, as if about to launch into a performance of his own.
‘I was born on a boat, I was,’ he said. ‘A transportation ship, on its way back from Australia with those what had served their time. My mam was aboard, heavy with child (which was me, of course). They were just passing the Isle of Wight when she gave birth. A strange little thing with a tail. Everyone screamed in terror and thought it was a bad omen – the ship was going to sink and all that – so they wrapped me up and threw me overboard.’
Sheba wasn’t sure whether to believe any of this. She looked across at Sister Moon, who appeared to be taking it seriously.
‘Days and nights I must have drifted on the sea, until I washed up on a Cornish beach. The local tavern-keeper took me in, and that’s where I grew up. Hanging in a cage and forced to sing rude limericks to all the pirates and smugglers. And I’d be there still, if old Plumpscuttle hadn’t come by one day. Just lost his fortune when his boat sank on the way back from America. Bet all he had left on a game of blackjack and won the jackpot . . . me! I was his first freak, I was. Just goes to show, when one door closes, another one opens.’
Monkeyboy bowed as if he’d just done a Penny Gaff act of his own.
‘Were you really his first freak?’ Sheba asked.
‘I certainly was!’ Monkeyboy reached across and took her uneaten piece of cake, cramming it into his mouth in one go. ‘He had a couple more after me: a grumpy little dwarf and some bloke who said he was older than Julius Caesar. They didn’t hang around for long, though. Then he found Mama Rat and Gigantus, straight off a boat from France, and the rest is history!’
Sheba wanted to ask more – such as, what were Mama Rat and Gigantus doing in France? – but the audience had started shrieking again. It was time for the main performance, which turned out to be some kind of bizarre story of a man who kept escaping from prison by tying bedsheets together and picking locks. He wasn’t even doing it right, Sheba noticed in disgust.
‘What’s all this about?’ she asked, as the hero was being chased around the stage by an angry mob.
‘Story of Jack Sheppard,’ said Monkeyboy, ‘most famous jailbreaker in the world. Robbed from the rich, broke the hearts of half the dollymops in London and escaped from every lock-up they held him in. Nobody ever told him what to do. My hero.’
It was all about as well-acted as a Punch and Judy show, but the crowd seemed to love it. They whooped and cheered so loudly it made Sheba’s ears ring. Monkeyboy was actually doing backflips of excitement on the bench next to her.
Then it was all over. The roars began to subside and everyone suddenly stood up.
‘We go now,’ Sister Moon said. ‘Owner cross if you not get out quick. They want to make room for next audience. Take more money that way.’
Sheba noticed the director had returned, this time with a pair of very large bouncers. The rest of the crowd was making for the door as fast as the crush allowed.
With Sister Moon helping, Sheba scrambled down the ladder as quickly as she could. The three of them plunged into the throng and, holding hands tightly, were somehow swept along, through the door and into the street outside.
‘Crikey,’ said Sheba, as she rearranged her cloak. ‘Isn’t there a better way of getting out of the place?’
One of the unspoken laws of London was that, as soon as three or more people stood still for more than a minute, a horde of street vendors and ballad singers would descend on them like a swarm of flies on a fresh pile of manure. The crowd that had previously been the audience now filled the street, and as if a secret signal had gone out, they were suddenly set upon by jugglers, cardsharps and gypsies, all trying to squeeze some extra pennies out of them.
Sheba and the others dodged a ballad-singer, a clothes-peg-hawker and an acrobat before they were finally cornered by a mad-looking old woman with filthy grey hair and no teeth. She shoved a basket of rotten pastries at them and screeched in a broken voice.
‘Pork pie, luvvie? Pig in a blanket?’
Sheba stepped back from the reeking meat, just as a gang of small children bustled past. Monkeyboy instantly hopped in front of her and shouted over his shoulder. ‘Wat
ch your pockets! They’re dippers, and she’s their kidsman!’
Sheba wondered for a moment what language he was speaking, and then realised he was talking about the children picking her pockets. She was about to tell him she had nothing worth taking, when she remembered the clockwork pistol and Till’s marble. Her hands flew to the pouches in her cloak lining. Thankfully, everything was still there. The hideous old pie woman screeched something unintelligible at them and spat on the cobbles.
‘Sling yer hook, you smelly old hag!’ Monkeyboy shouted after her.
Sister Moon looked at the crowd around them, frowning. ‘This not good place,’ she said. ‘We go before more trouble.’
Sheba agreed. It was getting later in the day, and this wasn’t a place to spend a pleasant evening. Not unless you enjoyed getting robbed, murdered and robbed again. She was about to follow the others back to Brick Lane when she caught sight of something in the doorway of the inn across the road. Suddenly, her feet became rooted, her hair bristling all over her body.
‘Sheba, we must go,’ Sister Moon repeated, grabbing hold of her arm, then she stopped.
‘What is it?’ Sheba asked.
‘Over there,’ Sister Moon whispered. ‘In the doorway.’
There were several figures lounging about the tavern door, every one of them looking like they would happily slit your throat for tuppence. But one in particular stood out.
He was wearing a long, dark coat, and matted locks of hair trailed down his back from beneath his hat. He was talking intensely to two terrifying-looking goons – one with a bushy black beard and another with a blood-spattered butcher’s apron. Although he stood within the shadows of the doorway, Sheba could still see the intricate pattern of coal-black stripes and swirls on his face. And there was a hint of something else in the air – oil and spice. She gasped.
‘Man at graveyard,’ hissed Sister Moon. ‘I sure.’
‘And his face, the patterns. It’s what Barney Bilge said he saw in the crab machine’s eye! How many people in London have painted faces like that?’
Monkeyboy, having walked twenty metres down the road before realising the others weren’t with him, scampered back to them. ‘What’s the hold-up?’ he said. ‘We should be hooking it out of here, not standing around taking the flipping air.’
The Peculiars Page 9