by Paul Stewart
He picked up an old battered medical bag that was lying on his desk, and pulled out half a dozen sealed envelopes, names and addresses written on them in a broad, florid script. He handed them over.
‘Report back to me when you’ve delivered them all,’ he told me.
‘I shall, Doctor,’ I said, and took my leave.
It was only when I was walking back down the great sweeping staircase that something about the doctor’s battered old medical bag struck me. It was the initials, worn and faded, but still legible.
Three gold letters. N.J.W.
So began one of the most fateful days of my career as a tick-tock lad; a day I still look back on with regret and shame. I was intent on uncovering the mystery of Old Benjamin’s disappearance, yet still unaware of the terrible consequences of carrying out Dr Cadwallader’s instructions.
If the doctor’s surgery on Hartley Square was situated in one of the most salubrious quarters of the city, then a quick look at the addresses on the envelopes he’d given me was enough to confirm that my assignment would take me to some of the most squalid. The good doctor’s claim that he was helping the poorest and neediest people in the city seemed, on the face of it, to be true.
Just before Hartley Square hit the grand stretch of Duke’s Avenue, I turned right down a narrow cobbled alley where I knew there was a drainpipe with particularly good handholds that would get me onto the rooftops in no time. Halfway up, I disturbed a big black tomcat, out on a window ledge, sunning itself. The creature hissed at me, its teeth bared and hair standing on end, furious that I had disturbed its peace and quiet.
I knew just how it felt. Whenever I was highstacking, I liked to imagine I was the only one up there, and that this rooftop world was mine and mine alone. Having reached the top gutter and climbed up onto the roof of the tall white building I had just scaled, I stood for a moment looking around. It was a beautiful, exhilarating sight all right, up here amongst the gables and spires. The weather was warm, almost balmy, and overhead, plump puffs of cloud ambled across the sky like stuffed ganders at a goose market.
‘A perfect day for highstacking,’ I muttered to myself as, shielding my eyes with my hand, I planned my route.
Far across the city I saw the place that I was heading for. A brown blanket of sooty filth hung over the whole area, with the forest of great brick and metal chimneys pumping out yet more smoke with every passing second.
One city for the rich and one for the poor, I thought.
I patted the envelopes in my inside pocket and set off across the rooftops at a brisk pace. Before long I was approaching my first drop. Even if I’d had my eyes closed, I would have known it. The air had the stale, pungent odour of burning sea-coal, and a low, droning underswell of human misery filled my ears.
I was drawing close to the Wasps’ Nest.
One of the oldest parts of the city, the whole area had fallen into decay and disrepair. It was a hotchpotch of paper-thin buildings, crammed together so tightly that precious little sunlight penetrated the maze of stinking alleys below. Clapboard tenements rubbed shoulders with crumbling brick buildings, underground tunnels and attic rat runs linking one to the other to form a vast three-dimensional labyrinth through which its occupants buzzed and scurried.
And there were a lot of them. Tens of thousands, certainly – though no official city census had ever discovered just how many. In some of the dilapidated tenements whole families – grandparents and all – shared a single room. Buildings would collapse under the weight of the number of people who filled them, and there wasn’t a single ledge, alcove, nook or cranny that wasn’t put to use. In the Wasps’ Nest, even the most wretched hole in the corner of the dingiest cellar would be furnished with a stool, bucket and straw mattress, and called ‘home’.
Normally I had little reason to visit the Wasps’ Nest. It was a dark, noisy, vicious place; swarming with thieves and cut-throats who, if provoked, were as bad-tempered as wasps themselves – but whose stings were far more deadly. Yet it was into this filthy, seething pit of humanity that I now descended, taking care to avoid the more hazardous crumbling ledges and rusting drainpipes that threatened to come away in my hand.
I made sure I kept my eyes peeled and my hand ready to unsheathe my swordstick at a moment’s notice as I climbed down, leaving the sunny morning behind me and entering a shadowy, soot-filled gloom. And if it was gloomy outside, who knows what it must have been like inside those cramped buildings all around me. After all, most of the windows were broken – some boarded up, some stuffed with rags – while those that miraculously were still in one piece were so thick with sooty grime that no one could see either in or out.
Nevertheless, what struck me most about the Wasps’ Nest was the feeling of being watched. Sullen-looking men in battered stovepipes and tom-o’tassels, and half-starved waifs in ragged clothes watched from doorways and balconies through narrowed, suspicious eyes. I gripped my swordstick all the more tightly as I stepped down from a sooty ledge and out into a narrow alley.
A couple of street corners away was number 4 Seed Row, my first drop. It was, according to my list, where I would find one Edna Halliwell. As soon as I turned the second corner, I knew I’d found the right street. At one end of Seed Row there was a back yard where poultry was fattened – and it was that curiously stuffy odour of damp feathers which now filled my nostrils. As I got closer, the strangled-sounding clucking of the birds grew louder.
I was on Seed Row all right. I counted my way along the terrace and knocked on the fourth door. It remained shut – though I could hear the sound of movement coming from inside, like rats scurrying about under the floorboards. I knocked again, louder. This time the door flew open and I was confronted by a great ogre of a man with a stained vest and an eye-patch. A scrawny girl, clinging to his left leg, peered up at me.
‘What you want?’ the man grunted suspiciously.
‘I have a letter for Edna Halliwell,’ I told him.
‘I’ll take it,’ the man said, thrusting out a filthy hand that looked as if it strangled geese for a living.
‘Sorry, guv’nor.’ I smiled. ‘Has to be delivered by hand to Mrs Halliwell in person.’
‘Mighty full of yourself for a tick-tock lad,’ sneered the great oaf before his one good eye spotted my swordstick.
I let him check out the brass-tipped handle and the inch of gleaming steel blade that I had just exposed with a casual flick of my wrist. I smiled back at him and waited. The oaf blinked, then turned aside.
‘Top of the house,’ he growled. ‘Knock loudly. Old Ma Halliwell’s a bit deaf.’
I thanked him and stepped inside.
The stairs were rickety, and as I made my way up, I could feel them shift under my weight. It felt as though, like a house of cards, the whole lot might collapse at any moment. The building stank of boiled cabbage and burned fat – odours that seemed to get more intense as I climbed higher. I tried my best to ignore it – that and the eyes that peered at me through the banisters, out of the cracks in partially opened doors and from the shadows of every landing.
I knocked at the door at the very top of the building. It was opened instantly, and I was struck by a sour smell that left me gasping for breath.
‘Yes?’
I found myself looking at a small, pale, ferret-faced woman. It was impossible to tell how old she was. Her hair, though unwashed, was thick and golden and could have belonged to someone young. Her skin, however, was ravaged – a leathery parchment of lines and pockmarks.
‘Edna Halliwell?’ I said, speaking loudly.
She nodded. ‘Yes, yes, you don’t need to shout. There’s nothing wrong with my hearing – leastways, not any more …’
I reached into an inside pocket of my coat and handed her the letter. ‘From Doctor Cadwallader,’ I told her.
She nodded, and smiled delightedly. Using a dirty fingernail, she opened the letter and read it, her lips moving silently as she did so. Glancing over her shoulder, I saw the
cause of the overpowering smell.
The rafters of the attic room were crowded with nesting pigeons; hundreds of them, coming and going through holes in the roof as I watched. The floor and meagre furnishings were white with encrusted droppings, with more scraped into heaps or deposited in sacks in the corner. Old Ma Halliwell was obviously a ledge-scraper – earning her living by bagging and selling pigeon droppings for fertilizer.
‘Tick me off your list, young man. I’ll be there,’ she said, breaking into my thoughts, and the door was pushed shut in my face.
One down, I thought as I put a tick next to her name.
I checked the next name and address. Edward Dobbs. Basement, 12 Spieler Lane. Returning the list to my inner pocket, I set off down the stairs.
Edward Dobbs, it turned out, was an old barrow boy, down on his luck. When I say ‘boy’, old Edward must have been seventy if he was a day. He gave me a great gap-toothed smile when I presented him with Dr Cadwallader’s reminder, and promised to present himself at Hartley Square that evening before the lamps were lit.
I left Spieler Lane and turned right. My third drop was beyond the Wasps’ Nest, on Strap Street – above the Sow’s Ear. A Miss Sarah Monahan, according to my list.
I climbed up a drainpipe onto the curving roofline of Amhurst Crescent and headed towards the gaslights of the theatre district. Before long I was approaching the smoking chimney stacks of Strap Street, with its crowded music halls, taverns and gambling dens. The Ambassador, Henry Moonshine’s and the Bloody Nose and Bootleg were all to be found on Strap Street, along with dozens of other establishments just like them.
They all echoed with the sound of cursing and swearing, raucous laughter and bawdy song, and the banging and crashing of innumerable fist fights and bar brawls. Strap Street – even on a sunny day – wasn’t for the faint-hearted.
I shinned down a copper pipe and jumped lightly from the water butt below, landing in a back alley just up the street from the Sow’s Ear – a fitting name for a place from which no good would ever come. With its broken windows and rusting sign, I knew I was looking at an inn that had seen more than its fair share of trouble, and as I heard the raised voices and muffled thuds from inside, I prepared myself for flying fists and barstools.
Seizing the door handle with one hand and my swordstick with the other, I marched in.
I’m not sure what I was expecting. Perhaps that there would be a sudden silence and everyone present would turn and look at me. Perhaps that someone would reel round from the bar and smash me across the head with a bottle the moment I crossed the threshold. Thankfully, nothing of the sort took place – in fact, I rather doubt anyone even noticed me, although since it was so dark, I couldn’t say for sure.
I paused for a moment to let my eyes grow accustomed to the gloom, then crossed to the bar, where a swarthy woman with tattooed forearms the size of hams was busy drying tankards with a filthy rag. There was sawdust on the floor and smoke in the air. I sat myself down on a tall stool and rested my elbows on the battered oak counter.
‘I have a letter for Sarah Monahan,’ I said. ‘I understand she has a room above this tavern.’
‘Sarah Monahan?’ the landlady repeated and shook her head, her filthy mobcap threatening to fall off into the tray of slops. ‘No one of that name round here.’
I frowned. ‘Are you sure?’
The woman glared at me furiously. ‘Are you calling me a liar?’
Now the tavern fell silent and everyone turned and stared at me. Then I heard the sound of scraping chairs as three or four hefty-looking men climbed to their feet. One of them, I was sure, was gripping the neck of a bottle with one hand and tapping it softly in the palm of the other. It was looking like trouble. In rough houses like the Sow’s Ear it didn’t take much to trigger a fight.
I smiled casually, and laid a large coin on the counter.
‘I’d never dream of calling a carnival legend such as yourself a liar,’ I said. ‘And I’d be honoured if I could buy a drink for such a work of art.’
The landlady beamed me a delighted black-toothed smile and motioned for the tavern thugs to resume their seats.
‘So you’ve heard of me?’ she asked coyly.
‘Henrietta the Amazon Queen? Of course!’ I said.
I’d noticed the gothic lettering that spelled out the name on her forearm. Clearly it formed part of a larger tattoo which, from its elaborate design, obviously spread up her arm – and, most likely, over the rest of her body. It told me everything I needed to know. The landlady had been a ‘Painted Lady’ and toured on the carnival circuit. Probably scraped up enough to buy this rundown tavern – a place where the compliments were most likely as rare as unwatered ale.
So I laid them on thick, and she loved it. I told her how exquisite the tattoo of the mermaid on her lower arm was – even though, truth be told, she looked as if she needed a shave. Two drinks later, Henrietta was my best friend in the world.
‘A pleasure to meet you, Mr Grimes, I’m sure,’ she said with a girlish giggle. ‘And if I hear anything about this Sarah Monahan woman, I’ll let you know.’
It was lunch time and I was hungry, so I ordered some sausages and mash, took them to a table over by the door – just in case I needed to make a quick getaway – and sat myself down. The sausages were better than they looked and the mash didn’t have as many lumps as it could have had, given the type of dive I found myself in. I was just mopping up the last drops of gravy with the remnants of my bread when I felt someone tugging my arm.
I hadn’t noticed anyone there, and I spun round suspiciously, ready to draw my sword if it looked like trouble – only to find myself faced with a short, black-haired woman with thin lips, a bulbous nose, tiny eyes and angry skin, blistered and flaking and the colour of a strawberry.
She must have seen the look of shock in my eyes, for she recoiled and turned away. From the bar came the cackling laughter of the landlady.
‘Don’t you worry about Scaldy Sal,’ she said. ‘She won’t do you no harm. Just collecting your plate, if you’ve finished. Caught in a furnace blast a few years back, she was, poor thing. Been sickly ever since.’
I turned back to the woman. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.
She shrugged and took my plate. ‘I heard you,’ she said softly. ‘Earlier. Looking for me.’ Her voice dropped to a hushed whisper. ‘Sarah Monahan.’
The penny dropped. Sarah. Sal …
How typical, I thought, that in this dark inn even someone who worked here was known only by a nickname rather than the name they were given at birth. It was the perfect place to remain anonymous. I made to pull the envelope from my inside pocket, but she stilled my arm.
‘Not here,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll see you outside.’
I nodded.
Minutes later I bade farewell to the landlady and left the inn. Two dogs ran past, almost tripping me up; a small black and white one chasing a large brown one that had a dead rat clamped between its jaws. Two children were playing some kind of pat-a-cake game on the wall opposite.
‘You have something for me.’
I looked round to find Scaldy Sal standing beside me again. She was certainly a past master at creeping up on folk.
‘This,’ I said, pulling the envelope from my coat pocket.
‘A letter,’ she said, turning the envelope over in her hand.
‘From Doctor Cadwallader,’ I told her.
‘Ah yes,’ she said, ‘the final consultation. I’ll be there.’ She smiled, her yellow, peg-like teeth gleaming. ‘The doctor’s been so very good to me …’
With that, she turned and slipped away as softly as she had appeared. I set off in the opposite direction, heading for the riverside – where the fourth person on my list lived.
Ginger Tom Carrick.
His address was the most curious of the lot. The Susie Lee, Wharf 12, East Bank. Strangest of all, Susie Lee was written upside down.
Not that that was what gave me pause for thought
. No, it was the fact that this fourth drop was down in the notoriously dangerous East Bank – a place that made the Wasps’ Nest seem like a flower-seller’s boudoir. I know every bit of the city and I’m telling you, that particular stretch of river was the very last place you’d ever want to visit, even on the sunniest of afternoons – unless, like me, you had no choice.
When I reached the river, I saw that the tide was out, for the water was low and the mud banks exposed. Scruffy gulls wheeled overhead, mewling and screeching as I made my way along the towpath, counting off the wharves as I went past dilapidated warehouses and rundown shipwrights.
To my left, out on the freshly exposed mud, were legions of wiry boys and girls – barefoot and dressed in rags – searching for anything that they might salvage from the river flowing past. Mudlarks, they were called.
I shivered involuntarily.
The name used to describe them might sound innocent enough, but I’d had dealings with their like before. Feral urchins – orphaned or abandoned by their parents – who banded together in packs. Roaming the desolate mudflats, jealously guarding their patch of territory, they would sift through the flotsam and jetsam, trying to eke out a meagre living. They might look like children, but woe betide anyone who underestimated them for a moment. It wasn’t unknown for a whole tribe of them to descend on hapless dockers or drunken sailors, emptying their pockets and leaving them bruised and bleeding – or worse …
They even had their own language – a guttural slang, snatches of which I’d picked up over the years. I’d had to. But even so, I remained wary. The East Bank was a place where the lowest of the low washed up, condemned to scavenge in the mud by a callous city. The mudlarks were as savage and unpredictable as they were resourceful and cunning. They had to be, just to survive. I kept my eyes trained on the stooped figures, squelching through the mud. They were some way off to my left, but I drew my sword just in case.
‘Oi, you there!’
The voice had come from the opposite direction, and I turned to see two figures emerging from a rundown sail yard. Although they were older than the scavenging children, I saw at once from their dark, weathered complexions and intricate chin tattoos that they had once been mudlarks themselves. Their waterproof ankle-length oilskin slickers and battered nor’westers, coupled with foppish, if tatty, double-knotted cravats and embroidered waistcoats, singled them out as river-toughs – the young thugs that the more vicious mudlarks graduated into. Violent jacks of all trades, they dabbled in all sorts of dealings, from press-ganging to kidnapping, smuggling and extortion.