The Butcher's Hook

by Janet Ellis

  ‘Mr Levener?’ (Yes! A name!) ‘Oh! I do not think you should go there, his shop is hard by Smithfield but it is not . . .’ She searches for a word. ‘Not . . . comfortable.’ She is trying to convey just how out of place she thinks I would be.

  ‘Le-ve-ner.’ I ignore her opinion and note the name with due seriousness. I’m in no danger of forgetting, it is already engraved on my skin. I leave a measured pause, so she cannot read my haste. I want to run, but I must preserve propriety. ‘Thank you. I shall not visit him today, of course.’ (Of course I shall!) ‘But, when the opportunity arises, I may make his acquaintance.’

  Another little smile. She sees me now as her pupil in housekeeping. I will fill her up with this sort of talk to put her off the scent and keep her happy. There is only a small space in her head for her thoughts, it will be easy to keep it stuffed and satisfied.

  ‘Perhaps you would take me with you when you next go about your business? I could do no better than observe you.’ I have gone too far. Jane overflows with pleasure. She curtsies so low I have to help her up. She goes off to the kitchen, a quick conspiratorial glance over her shoulder at me, wiping her hands on her apron, full of purpose and intent.

  And I am now condemned to spend the next little while finding excuses not to accompany her anywhere at all.

  Chapter 6

  I had to consult the household ledger for Levener’s address; it was tucked in with Jane’s receipts and invoices. She has a large looped hand, spread indiscriminately over each page. I suspected she looked at a boiling pot as she wrote and only guessed at where her pen went. But I found it eventually and slid the information into my head. For my map, I have only my standing beside Dr Edwards on Primrose Hill. If I become lost, I will close my eyes and imagine the view we saw together. Dr Edwards looms up in that vision if I’m not careful, so I must concentrate. That will not be difficult. I cannot think of anything else much but reaching Fub.

  As I walk, I rehearse my exchange with him, to be ready when we meet. In my mind’s eye, he raises his eyebrows in question when I appear and I need to be ready to explain myself.

  ‘I need to understand your business,’ I might begin. What would he say to that? The Fub of my imagination is no fool. ‘My business?’ he would retort. Of course, he is only apprenticed and therefore quite a way from understanding it himself, I should think. There must be a better way to begin.

  ‘My mother is confined, I will conduct her affairs.’ Quickly, he would come back with: ‘And did she not instruct her housekeeper and cook before retiring?’ What sort of a scrappy household would he think the Jaccob woman keeps? Better to speak my mind, if I can be brave enough. ‘I want to stand near you, smell the very skin of you, know your face as your glass does.’ That is the truth of the matter.

  And somewhere he waits, though Fub does not know he waits, and I am closer with every step to his shoulders, his arms, his belly, his hands. My fellow pedestrians, observing me as I hold my flowered skirt above the street’s muck and keep my eyes modestly averted, would not guess my thoughts. They cannot tell I am propelled by a longing I cannot describe, something huge that chokes me, that covers me like a heavy quilt, making me dizzy and too warm. It makes me hold my breath, lest I pant like a dog.

  Why did I think I could set out from my house with so little idea of how to proceed? My excursions from the house have always been short and familiar, little outings with my mother, small errands run. I am ill-prepared for this foray. The streets quickly follow no pattern I understand, this one leads nowhere I recognise, that one ends unexpectedly with a stop of houses. The crush of people, the din of horses’ hooves and the jangle of livery do not help my concentration. I have not brought any money, or else I could have got in a coach. Jane must walk this way on household errands, mustn’t she? She’d not summon a coach and yet she puffs loudly and rests her legs when she even steps up a stair, so I can surely manage a few more paces.

  I must find a place where I can see St Paul’s fat head of a dome, keeping always north of it. I had intended to call at St Peter’s on my way home (my father’s missive must be delivered) but at this rate I’ll still be going at nightfall. The jostle of the crowded street chafes at me like a pinching shoe. Have you seen a pack after their prey? These dog-brained folk follow and nip at each other with no thought except forward motion. They do not know they have a fox in their midst; I am keeping low to the ground and masking my scent well.

  ‘Woah!’ A hand grabs at my sleeve. I wheel round and almost collide with a man, who holds me still to stop me going further.

  ‘Look! There!’ He points to a heap of steaming dung where some nag has recently voided. If I’d walked unseeing into it, I would hardly have been able to bear my own company on the journey home, let alone pay any visits.

  He grins, slowly releasing his grip till he’s sure I won’t topple over. I shake my arm from his grip, not so much to be free of him as to steady myself. I rejoice in his intervention, though he’s an odd kind of guardian angel.

  ‘All hurry and haste and no sense,’ he says. There’s a soft addition to the ‘r’ and ‘s’ as he says the words, prolonging the sounds. He is not much taller than me, though a deal older, and his face is pitted all over as if little feet had stamped there while it was still soft. He has pale blue eyes and coarse russet hair, springy as hay. He wears a Scottish skirt over his breeks and a coat fashioned oddly from black woollen felt; the sleeves are attached by tow threaded through gaping holes which appear to have been made by a blunt knife or dagger. The tow must have been pushed through with thumbs. It is as far from delicate sewing as I’ve ever seen. There’s a tatty beret of sorts on his head. It might be fixed there with nails it clings so tightly. He nods his head at me and the hat doesn’t move.

  ‘Thank you, Sir.’ I make to go on, but he keeps looking at me – perhaps he hasn’t seen me grateful enough. ‘I would have cursed my folly if I’d stepped there!’ I laugh and move away as if foolishness itself speeds me on. ‘I am so very fortunate that you caught my arm.’

  ‘Where do you go?’ Again that ‘r’ is rolled and long, even the ‘go’ is luxuriant.

  ‘Near Smithfield.’ No harm in saying that, is there? He isn’t a spy for my father. I feel a sudden chill at the idea of being watched or followed, but when I meet his eyes his gaze is kindly.

  ‘Smithfield?’ He looks askance, weighing my journey. ‘That’s a fair way. A long way.’ And his way of saying ‘long’ extends to match. ‘You have friends there, or other matters?’ He only asks with interest, I’m sure he’s not intending harm or spite.

  ‘My mother is confined with child. I go about her business.’ I had thought I would say all this first to Fub, now I am telling his strange understudy.

  ‘A little mother manquée,’ he says. He is amused at this and although I don’t know what he means I smile back at him. His teasing is light and gentle; it tickles rather than pricks at me. ‘And where does this task take you, then? Do you know the whole route?’

  I am winded by his concern – it knocks all the passion and purpose out of me. I have been walking far and long enough to be weary and easily disconcerted.

  ‘No.’ He waits, and does not prompt me. ‘I am going to Meeks Passage.’ There is a magic in saying it aloud, as if the words are a spell to conjure Fub. ‘Titus Levener, the butcher, has his shop there.’

  ‘Indeed he does.’ He nods. ‘He does indeed. And your family does well to give him trade – he is all honour about his slaughter and his slicing.’ The sly way he says this suggests it might be otherwise with the butcher, but I am not going to pursue that notion. The fact he knows exactly where I am bound is astonishing. All the world conspires to get me to Fub; so proper is my intent that fate even puts horse muck in my path to help it happen.

  ‘Soooo.’ A great roll of the word, several vowels long. ‘Shall I take you there? Modom?’ He purports to bow and holds his felted arm out
for me to take. I have to warn him of one circumstance, though, perhaps to prevent him from doing me harm otherwise.

  ‘I have no money to give you for your trouble.’ It sounds false, as if I secretly carry gold weights in my stays. He raises a stiff eyebrow.

  ‘No money, eh?’ He purses his lips, considering how he must now act with charity alone. ‘I did not look at you and think you would make me rich. I only thought that while there are many I would like to see face forward in dung, you are not one of them.’

  We laugh together; the shared humour is a very pleasant glue. But are we now a pair? He acted as any kindly stranger, saving me from a disgusting fate, but that does not make him trustworthy. I weigh up my choices. The streets are throng enough to have someone come to my aid if needs be. And if he tries to divert me to a lonely place, I’ll shout loud enough to save myself. I have long thought my senses were alert, ready as a cat for a mouse, ready as a mouse to flee. I trust my instincts about him as I do with Fub – quick and sure. ‘Show me the way, please.’ I take his arm. Under the stiff fabric, I think I can feel the bone.

  I steal glances at him, sideways as we walk briskly along. His chin curls up and his nose points down, while his dimpled cheek rises like a hillock. Sparse red hair springs from his chin in single strands, as if he had decided to grow a beard but could not persuade every follicle to join the endeavour. He is a crude drawing of a man and I suspect that he sleeps outside, for he has not the finish of one who rises from a soft bed and washes with fresh water. I can see little of any youth in him either; he has been aged and sorrowful too long and it has all been covered over.

  He starts to sing, his voice low and tuneful. The song is full of battles, of kings, of Charlie this and James that and all at once I understand his speech, his garments. Of course, my skirted companion must be a Jacobite. A vanquished soldier! He warbles of heather and moors, but that’s not what takes my fancy. I have heard so many stories of slaughtered Highlanders: I recall pictures of ripped flags of red silk, and tales of punished chieftains and prisoners killed or confined. I think of several questions to ask him but do not utter them lest I seem callous or cruel. I badly want to know about battles and fighting. I have never stood so close to a warrior before. Can he tell me how close he stood to his pretender prince? Did he see any blood shed?

  He chews his lip over some of the words; he lingers over the rhymes, draws in his cheeks and whistles between the verses, then keens in imitation of the pipes. Overall there is such sadness in his music that we might be going to a funeral. Not that I have attended any, of course, but I cannot imagine they contain a wealth of jolly songs.

  When he finishes his tune, I say ‘What was that ditty about?’ I do not want to upset him now – he might lead me up all the wrong paths and abandon me there.

  He detects the guile of my tone, however, for he turns his head to me quickly with a frown. ‘My girl, I think you know. There’s a wit to you that you cannot disguise. It’s no help with your geography . . .’ he lays great stress on this and holds his arms wide to the streets about us, ‘but I’ll warrant your history is sound.’ Again a mocking accent on that word.

  ‘It’s true,’ I acknowledge. ‘But I do not want to enquire about things that might cause you sorrow. If that’s the case, I’ll hold my tongue and you may resume your concert.’ He shrugs at this, but turns to me with all the sorrow that was in his singing on his face.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  He deserves a truthful answer. He is a good companion and a useful one besides, that’s in no doubt. ‘Anne Jaccob.’

  ‘Ha! Another Jaccobite of sorts. Angus.’ He salutes, speeding his hand to his temples and clicking his heels together. ‘Well, Miss Jaccob. Anne.’ He makes my name rhyme with ‘done’, the ‘a’ hardened to ‘u’. He waits a moment, without comment. I glance at him, to catch his mood. His features stay immobile. He does not break his stride but quickens, if anything. I increase my pace to match, but my legs are not so long as his and I must step in double-quick time with a skip every third or fourth step to keep up with him.

  ‘My mother warned me not to fall in line with the Camerons,’ he says, ignoring my awkward gait. ‘She guessed I’d not be a soldier easily. When I was a boy we’d sheep then: not so many we were overworked but enough to keep us. My brother was newly married and she wanted to keep me home awhile, to aid her, and then I’d stay on where I’d one day inherit.’

  I should be sitting at his feet for this, not hurrying alongside him, catching what I can above the noisy streets we walk. I press myself to his side.

  ‘But the cause was a hook to me and it reeled me in. Why would I sit on a stone in a field watching wool grow when I could fire a gun in a regiment instead? My uniform was the smartest and warmest clothing I’d ever owned, and I looked up to my sergeant as we stood in ranks. Till I watched how we proceeded, of course, and realised those in charge were soft as sheep. Softer! That winter I had no idea of how our plans were progressing; it seemed to me we marched about in a cruel and random way. Back and forth over the border we went. Our dog rounded up the flock with more precision. Gah!’ He punches his two fists together – if a man’s head were there in the middle of them, it would feel very sore after.

  ‘Where were you born?’ I ask.

  ‘Fort William.’

  ‘Oh! Is that a castle?’ If I sound surprised, it’s only that I didn’t take him for high born.

  ‘No, no, no. It is far from that.’ He narrows his eyes for a moment. ‘Look over to that church.’ He points and I squint to see. In the far distance is a spire. ‘Then look behind you to that coffee house.’ It is the same long way away. ‘In Fort William, all that is grass, then rising to high mountains. When I was a boy, I thought that all the world must look like my home, for I could run to lakes or hills or trees or open places all in the same day.’

  He closes his eyes, and I think he is a child again in his head, not heeding his mother’s ‘Come home!’ cry as he sprints, barefoot, over places lost to him now.

  His eyes open. ‘Through bog!’ He sounds angry and his pock-marked face is closing up with bitterness. What bog?

  ‘We’d no chance!’ He shouts now, and several people round us look quickly at him then away. That is how they look at the queer and damaged, isn’t it? I cannot quite see how we got so swiftly from grassy plain to bog in his recounting; he has squeezed his story up like a concertina.

  ‘Stuck like pigs!’ he bellows. This has all taken a most unsatisfactory turn. One moment, I am listening to his memories, enjoying the cadence of his voice, next I am shushing him while trying to get him to walk straight. He is wriggling about like a worm on a stick.

  ‘Butcher!’ My butcher? Are we arrived?

  ‘That bastard Cumberland.’ Not my butcher, then. He has grown quieter, hissing the name. He spits. He stares at the gob where it lands, then at me. His expression shifts, as if he is trying to remember who I am. I smile brightly.

  ‘Tell me more of your home,’ I say, in an effort to pull him back to the place we were before his temper flared and keep him on our path.

  ‘Home. Aye, aye, that’s what he said. Sir, I AM come home. But then he’s beggared off to France and me thrown into a cell and look who’s pissing in the palace now.’ The beret clings hard to its perch as he flings his head about.

  He has snapped shut now, like a book. His final chapter is not a happy ending, of course, but he must tell it; his recounting is speeding his steps and that is a good outcome.

  ‘How did you come to be here?’

  He slows down at this, draws in to himself, his voice not much above a whisper.

  ‘I was traded, as a prisoner. Then chucked from my cell with the clothes I stood up in. And they were rags, almost. No home to go to, and if my mother wasn’t already dead she’d be dead of fright if she saw me so changed. They’d punched the teeth from me, and twisted me about so I coul
dn’t tell who was king and who a pauper. I’d no trade and no ambition. This is all I have.’

  He stands stock still, his arms spread out, forcing several passers-by to give him a wide berth. After three people have urged him angrily to move or hurry up, he comes to his senses. We walk on in silence.

  I am weary of his story now, with its rapid trajectory from boy to eager soldier to this chastened individual, all the guts of him reduced to a soup of self-pity. Still, it has lasted through our journey. It did not take much to wind him up like a clock and set him ticking.

  ‘We are almost there.’ He turns in a circle where he stands, scanning the crowds as if he’s looking for a friend or an enemy. He whistles to a boy who looks half asleep, leaning in a doorway with his hair over his eyes and his arms folded. The boy wakes and starts and comes to him like a loyal dog. ‘Where is the man Levener?’ he says. The boy points to our right, then offers the same hand, palm flat, for a reward. It’s a single, graceful gesture.

  ‘Do you know him?’ I say, as our guide disappears into the throng. ‘No, only his type. Too docile to lie.’ But there is the lane marked ‘Meeks’. My heart jumps. All so fast!

  ‘I thought you knew the way.’ He stares hard at me. ‘It’s all meat here,’ he says. ‘I knew we’d find him.’ I am impressed at his guile. And now I am indebted, too, as he pays the boy for his pointing.

  ‘Here is my price, Anne.’ I look carefully at him. I do not speak but he answers as if I had. Did I misjudge his true intention toward me?

  ‘A while more of your company, is all. I will leave you at the shop. After half an hour – no more – I will come for you. Where do you go next?’

  ‘To St Peter’s in Vere Street. That is the last place I must call.’ I cannot help but be truthful. It seems he brings out the worst in me, for being honest is not my best suit. ‘And I am so grateful for your kind—’