by Robin Jarvis
The Deptford Histories
by Robin Jarvis
Book 1: The Alchymist’s Cat
First published in the UK in 1989
Book 2: The Oaken Throne
First published in the UK in 1993
Book 3: Thomas
First published in the UK in 1995
This epub is version 1.0, released March 2016
Book 1: The Alchymist’s Cat
First published in the UK in 1989
The Beginning
It was a fine night; the full moon edged the sleeping city with silver and the deep velvet dark of the sky was splashed with stars. A perfect night for a cat to roam.
The city of London was a marvellous playground to stalk in; with its narrow, dark alleys and open drains it held countless possibilities and there were hints of adventure round every corner. The squashed huddle of houses that shouldered together uncomfortably on either side of the shadowy street were blind to the night. Only in one window was a candle steadily burning but she took no heed of that.
There was a heady cocktail of scents on the air, a blissful mingling of twilight odours, and her sensitive whiskers searched hungrily through the breeze.
Beneath the dank, green reek of the river which always assaulted the nose, she detected the movement of many creatures; the night foragers were abroad. Mice were scratching in the walls of the wooden houses—raiding the pantries too, no doubt. A fearsome dog howled near the old bearpits and its plaintive wail floated over the ramshackle rooftops like a banshee. But no, there in the dim deeps, under the straw stacked against the gates of the brewer’s yard was what she sought this night—rats.
As a spectral vapour she slunk from shadow to shadow, noiseless and determined as Death himself. Only her golden eyes glinting under the moon could betray her but she kept them half closed, leaving only slender slivers which floated over the cobbles like razors.
The thrill of the hunt was mounting as she lowered her head and padded after her prey. How strong the smell of rat was here, she could almost feel the heat of their blood burn in her nostrils. And then she waited; expert in the art of being still as stone, she held her breath—at one with the night.
The dirty straw rustled and a furry brown snout nosed the air suspiciously.
“I tells ya ’Arry,” muttered a nervous voice, “there’s summat not right in the air out there.”
“Tush Bert!” came an answering squeak. “What’s put ya in this un’appy ’umour. Y’aint been feelin proper fer days now.”
“Tain’t that ’Arry,” replied Bert retracting his twitching snout. “I swears by the Three thesselves I don’t like the whiff of the wind.”
“Dullard!” snorted the other. “I’ve a mind to dine off grain tonight and have my fill o’ m’lord brewer’s barley sacks. You stay ’ere ’an feed off dung an’ beetles but I’m away.”
Harry shuffled out of the straw and shielded his tiny black eyes from the bright moon. What a glorious night for pilfering and eating your fill. The rat thrashed his tail gleefully and hopped onto the cobbles. He did not hear her spring.
“Aaaarrrggghhh!” he bawled when he became aware of her hot breath on his neck and felt her strong claws squeeze round him.
“I’m dead, Bert!” he wailed. “Flee, while you can...” and then he was silent.
The cat trotted away contented, with the dead, juicy rat dangling from her mouth.
She wanted to enjoy this delicacy in peace and knew the very spot. Onto a rain barrel she leapt and from there jumped to a window-sill. Then she sure-footedly walked around the side of the building using one of the decorative beams set into the wall as a ledge. And so up, to the sloping roof, where she stretched herself out on the cool tiles and devoured her supper.
In the full glare of the moon she was a gorgeous creature; her ginger fur almost seemed to glow under its baleful beams. Her features were fine and delicate, having a sharp chin and small pink nose—indeed she was considered a great beauty yet none of her countless suitors had claimed her.
From her vantage point she surveyed London like an empress with a supreme look of disdain upon her proud face. The streets were quiet now, even the dog had ceased its howling; all was calm. Yet she was wise enough to know that it was on such nights as these that the most gruesome murders were committed or the direst tragedies could occur. Death and disaster were always eager visitors when they were least expected.
A man trailed through the streets below with a lantern in his hand. With her glittering eyes she watched his progress and saw him pause on every corner where he called out, “Eleven of the clock on a fine October night and all’s well.”
She hated mankind, they were ugly, stupid and cruel beasts—yet she had the wit to use them on occasion. There were at least seven houses in the city where she was known and where a spot of milk or table scraps could be had in return for a measure of play acting. A smile spread over her face as she thought how easy it was to mew prettily and press her head against their shambling legs in a mock display of affection.
“Verily, I am yours,” was the expression she always wore for the gullible fools. What simpletons they were to think they owned her, she who could hunt when there was no moon—by scent alone. She was totally a creature of the wild, untameable and ravishing as darkness itself.
Beneath the tiles she heard the muted voices of bats whispering their prophecies to each other; she had never tasted bat before and idly wondered what they were like.
The moon rose higher in the clear sky and she dozed happily with her head in her paws but even in sleep she was alert.
Her ears flicked in agitation as the nightwatchman returned. She heard the squeak of the rusty lantern chain as it swung slowly and the breath of the fat oaf wheezing out of his lungs as he prepared to call out once again. Why were people so ridiculous? her drowsy mind speculated. Why could they not feel the thrill of the hunt and prowl at night? She would probably never know.
“Midnight on a fine October even’ and all’s well,” came the voice of the man.
“Fine and well indeed,” said a different voice nearby.
She leapt to her feet at once, angry that she had missed the newcomer’s approach. She peered into the shade beneath one of the chimney stacks and quested the air to get a scent, but try as she might the identity of the stranger eluded her.
“And what a fine lady we have here,” it said from the gloom. The voice was rich and silky, oozing with charm and fascination.
Her eyes glared at the shadows and a warning rumble began in her throat.
“There’s fire in the dame too,” purred the voice with undisguised delight. “Excellent! You please me more and more, my dove.”
“Tib?” she ventured uncertainly. “If that’s you lurking there come out, or by the gods I shall swipe at thee!” Effortlessly her needle-like claws slid out and she scraped one against the tiles making a piercing sound like the screech of a stuck pig.
Soft laughter drifted over the rooftops. “I come not to fight my sweet,” the stranger told her gently, “but to woo thee and win thy heart—oh lucky heart to beat in thy breast, would it were beating for me.”
She spat her rejection and looked away; she was getting bored of this. How many times had she heard the same old thing from the mouths of all the toms from Highgate to Lambeth?
“Stay a while my treasure,” called the voice urgently. “I shall leave my cover if ’twill win thy favour.”
She turned, curious to see who had been making a fool of himself this time.
From the black shadow pits two eyes appeared and they were the most stunning she had ever beheld. Like twin emeralds they were, yet they possessed a spark, nay, a sacred fire blazed in them, the sight of whic
h quickened her breath and set a flame of her own coursing through her blood.
“Here am I to claim thee,” said the voice and the sound of it was like music to her now.
Out of the dark he came, a slender, handsome cat, the finest she had yet seen. Like a piece of the wild night he melted from the shade, with an easy, confident gait he approached and his noble head was held high. Into the moonlight he glided and she saw with hungry eyes that his fur was sable from ear tip to tail end.
He studied her carefully for a moment and put the power of his eyes on her.
“Tell me sir,” she murmured breathlessly as she gazed at him, “from whence do you come? I have not heard of such a one as you in all my nights abroad.”
The black cat sat down beside her and his tail twined with hers and she, being too overcome by the heat of his glance, did not even notice. “This night is the first I have seen with these eyes,” he said mysteriously.
She dragged her own away and stared at the carved wooden sign which marked the fish shop opposite. Her breaths eased yet still she was aware of him and his influence; the touch of his fur next to hers was like a wound that ached to be healed.
“How are you called, my maid?” he asked.
“I have many names,” she answered with a weak laugh. “Yonder am I known as Mewler; to the grocer—China I am after the oranges that he do sell; in the merchant’s—Silky; and to the fat landlord of The Old Swan—Mouser. Tell me, Master Midnight,” she said teasingly, “which of these is mine own?”
He shook his head wisely. “You play with me, my maid,” he replied with mock hurt. To none of those vulgar callings would you answer. Too elegant and shapely are you and too sharp-witted also to suffer thus at man’s clumsy hands. May I not know the truth?”
She was accustomed to flattery, the local toms had often poured treacly words on her and all to no effect, but this one was different. She smiled and acknowledged his superiority over them all. “I am Imelza,” she replied courteously.
“Imelza,” he repeated trying the name out on his own tongue, “it does suit you well.”
She faced him coolly and inquired, “Now you know. My Lord, will you not return the gesture? What shall I call you?”
“Two names you have already give me, my pretty Imelza,” he laughed. “First, “Master Midnight” and now ‘My Lord’. I like them both well enough.” The mirth subsided and he said to himself, “And how apt they prove to be.”
“But this is most unfair,” she countered, “that you should know my true self yet you would withhold yours from me.”
The black cat turned his green fires on her. “As to that,” he purred, “if it pleases you—call me Imp, that should suffice. Yet I have many true names, more than you could guess.”
“Imp,” she muttered. “I like ‘My Lord’ better.”
“Then let it be so.”
The moon shone down on them and that night they were as one, and so the seed of terror was sown.
1 - Childhood Forsaken
“Nothing is what it seems,” Will whispered to himself, repeating a favourite saying of his father’s. The boy stared up at the sky. “Is it the usual ill-humour of November that falls—or is God weeping for them?”
Grey rain drizzled down and the small, sodden group of mourners shivered uncomfortably. A large dew drop dangled from the pale minister’s nose as he read from the New Prayer Book and his droning voice filled the drab churchyard. The downpour continued, the puddles grew and the drenched garments of those assembled became spattered with mud. Will lowered his eyes, the tears on his face lost amid the rain.
1664 was drawing to an end. The nation was revelling in the Restoration. Charles II had been on the throne for four years and the wounds of the Civil War were slowly healing. But the peace would not last for much longer. Already there were rumblings of a war with the Dutch and sweet England was about to enter into one of the most terrifying and grimmest times it had yet witnessed.
Such events however seemed a world away from that dismal ceremony in an Oxfordshire churchyard where the rain beat down.
Daniel Godwin had been well respected by those in the village of Adcombe, he had never given his neighbours cause to complain and he was a fair master to those few he employed. If it had been a lesser man who was being laid to rest then this filthy weather would have kept them all away.
Daniel had been a yeoman who worked behind the plough all his life, but the soil that he tilled and watered with sweat was his own. The titles to the land which he furrowed and nearly broke his back for belonged to him alone and not a day had passed by without his grateful thanks being offered up to the Lord. But now he was dead—the smallpox was not in the pay of the Almighty, and the righteous it claimed as eagerly as the sinful.
In all, the tally of dead on the Godwin estate amounted to five, these being Daniel, his wife Sarah, Beth and Anne—their two daughters—and a man called Shackle who was one of the labourers on the farm.
The waiting grave was deep and Will stood upon its mud-slithering brink, gazing steadily down into the blackness below. He felt as empty as it would soon be full, Master William Godwin was a slim youth. The hair which hung about his shoulders was chestnut in colour—a perfect match to his hazel eyes—and, fortunately, his lean face had been spared the usual marks which the smallpox leaves in its wake. Yet today that face was devoid of expression.
One by one the coffins were lowered. How strange to think that the mortal remains of all those he had loved were now sealed into them. He choked back a sob as the smallest of those horrible caskets descended to join the others. Anne had only been six years old.
A comforting hand patted the boy on the shoulder. “Shows them yer respects Will lad,” said a voice, “cast in some earth.”
Will blinked and turned round. A fat, heavily jowled man with a red, bulbous nose and whiskers like a badger was looking at him squarely. “There is no soil,” the boy muttered, “just mud. Look—see how it pours over the edge. Already the...” he faltered, not able to say the correct word, “...boxes are covered.”
Mr Balker, the miller, gripped the boy’s shoulder more tightly with his podgy hand whilst he reached into the pocket of his great coat with his other. “Now don’t you fret on so lad,” he told him bringing out a small bag. “I had no likin’ for the sunset yesterday—an’ afeared as I was that the day would be a wettun I got me some earth from the sexton.” He handed the bag to Will who received it gratefully. “Don’t get me wrong now,” the miller added with haste, “weren’t no special trip up ’ere that I made, I were only passin’ an’ the notion took me, ’at’s all.”
“I thank you, Mr Balker,” nodded Will. He understood—the miller enjoyed a sour reputation and was anxious that no one should see this chink of humanity in his calloused armour.
The boy took the dry soil from the bag and slowly sprinkled it into the grave. “Goodbye,” he said.
“Now let’s get you indoors,” coughed Mr Balker gruffly. “The Millhouse is yonder an’ you’ll be needin’ summat warm in yer belly, I’ll warrant.”
Will hesitated. It was his duty to thank the minister but the black-gowned figure was already hurrying towards the church. The other mourners were scurrying off also, hastening to their crackling hearths—they had shown their respect for the departed and now their thoughts were for themselves.
“Come you, lad,” urged the miller, “you don’t want to join yer folks just yet.”
Will took a last look at the deluged grave and pulled the collar of his cloak tightly under his chin. He was on his own now.
“Would you just look at the state of you both!” the bustling woman cried, throwing her arms up in distress. Muddy pools spread over the stone-flagged floor as the two squelching arrivals stamped and removed their outdoor clothes. “John Balker, take them boots off at once!” she scolded. “Never was there a more slovenly wretch.”
The miller muttered under his breath but his sister pretended not to hear. Instead she rushed t
o Will’s side and helped him off with his things. “Bless you Master William if you aren’t raw with the cold,” she tutted. “It’s the Devil’s own weather today. You’ll be lucky not to catch a distemper, I swear!”
Hannah Balker was, in appearance, very much like her brother. She was plump and rosy with small piggish eyes, but there the similarities ended. Whereas the miller was inclined to be crude and rather too fond of the ale jug, she was the opposite. Mistress Balker was a devout soul who possessed all the religious zeal of a Puritan. Her impious brother caused her much anxiety and she prayed for him almost constantly. With her hands fluttering over her black, woollen skirt and up to the white cap which covered her silvering hair she ushered him and Will into the small parlour where a fire had been lit in readiness for their return.
The miller grunted with pleasure as he toasted his tingling palms before the flames. Will sat in one of the large wooden chairs and watched Hannah scurry in and out of the kitchen with a large jug of beer and two tankards. She set them down on a low table, poured the brown, foaming brew then nudged her brother out of the way.
“Always underfoot,” she clucked. “Sit you down, John Balker, and let me fetch that poker from the fire.”
Stubbornly the miller remained standing so she squirmed past him and reached down to the hearth. From the leaping flames she took a long iron poker by its blackened wooden handle and flourished it over her head. “I told you to sit,” she told him sternly. “Do so or I’ll brand thee as surely as if you were a Jesuit.”
Mr Balker opened his mouth to protest but he took one look at the glowing tip of the poker and sat down at once.
His sister stared at him for a moment then went over to the table. The poker squealed and steam hissed up as she plunged it into one tankard after another. “There you are Master William,” she said kindly handing Will the warm ale, “that’ll put the colour back in you. It’s spiced with ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves—the way your dear father liked it.”