by G. P. Taylor
Mariah looked through the large plate-glass windows of the building. Inside were row upon row of polished tables, each holding a small candle and posy of fine flowers. Upon the front door was a garland of holly leaves and mistletoe, gorged with red and white berries. From it hung a small golden fish and a man made of wire and a spurting whale. He took them in his fingers and traced his hand around each shape, looking at Sacha in the hope that she would explain each one to him.
‘It’s Jonah,’ she whispered. ‘Wouldn’t do what he was told so got eaten up and taken to the place he should have been and was spit out on the beach. The fish is a prize – in its mouth was a golden coin: spend it and another would come in its place time and again. Its providence would never run out.’
‘The Golden Kipper,’ Mariah said, as if he had surprised himself in working out why the place had such a name.
‘I could never eat here, though,’ Sacha went on, ignoring what he had just said. ‘Far too fine a place for a scivvy. They say the fish’ll melt in your mouth.’
‘I have a calling card for this place. Eat with me. I’m sure he’ll let us both come. Tomorrow’s Saturday – we can come here for tea.’ Mariah spoke excitedly as he looked at the large bowls of exotic fruits that filled the window, tempting him to come inside. There was also a fine looking-glass with a golden frame that hung down so that you could see yourself as you looked in. He took hold of the door handle, hoping that the door would not be locked.
‘Leave it, Mariah,’ Sacha said softly as she pulled his arm from the door. ‘It’ll be fastened shut. Your man would never leave it open.’
A sudden swirl of icy mist filled the street. From the harbour could be heard the bumping of the wooden fishing boats that were crammed together on the slack tide. Mariah looked up and shuddered, for in that quick second he saw the outline of someone standing behind him in the mist. Long strands of dank wet hair were matted across his face and through this mass a pair of bright red eyes stared at his reflection.
‘Seen a ghost?’ Sacha asked as she saw the look of fear on Mariah’s face.
‘In the mirror,’ he mumbled, not daring to turn around or make a sound above a whisper. ‘It was in the mirror.’
Sacha looked and then peered out into the street. ‘There’s nothing there, nothing at all.’
‘I saw it, Sacha. Like it had just come from the sea. It was in the fog.’
‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘it’s gone now. Mirrors is not the place to be looking in the dead of night. They make you see things that aren’t there and tell you to believe them.’
‘It wasn’t in my head or in my heart. It stood behind us and you never saw it?’
‘Not a thing. I was looking in the mirror the same as you and never saw a thing.’ Sacha stepped back towards the alleyway that was filled with the velvety black of night. ‘It’s this way to the Three Mariners and no other. If we stick to walking by the wall we’ll not be lost. To the end, then right and along the Bolts to Tuthill and we’ll be there.’
‘But –’ Mariah whispered, not wanting to leave the open sky of the harbour side.
‘It’s only darkness, Mariah. There’s nothing in the night that there isn’t in the day. Just because we can’t see doesn’t make it fearful.’ Sacha scolded him for his concern as she walked into the warren of passages that went underneath the stacked houses covering the hillside.
To Mariah, there was something in what she said that sounded like his mother. He had buried the memories of her deep within the grave of his heart. She was a bare-bone recollection stripped of any true likeness, a meagre ghost of a thought of what she once was. Yet the girl’s words had set his mind to a night when, as a child, gripped by a fever, his mother had cradled him in her arms and spoke love to his heart.
‘Faithfulness will be your shield, so you will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow of the day, nor plague that walks in the darkness. A thousand may fall at your side, but no evil shall ever come near you …’
Mariah began to follow on. He slipped from shadow to shadow and then into the utter darkness of the passageway, saying to himself his mother’s words again and again.
[ 12 ]
The Three Mariners
WITH his every step, the echo of the footfall sounded out against the cold damp walls of the narrow alleyway that ran from the seafront into the depths of the town. The groans and whispers of sleepers spilled from houses that were cut into the hillside and cluttered one upon the other like a stack of precarious cards. Every now and then a door had been left open, and the glow of the fire came from the room within to light the passageway. The distant figure of the girl strode ahead of him, never looking back, as if she danced from doorway to doorway. Mariah gulped his breath and tried to look ahead and behind at the same time, convinced that the red-eyed creature that he had seen in the mirror now followed him in the darkness.
He stopped by an open doorway and stared in. There, in the faint light of the fading fire, he could see the tiny front room of the cottage with its drab painted walls and tattered curtains that clung to the damp window glass. A ladder went up through a small hole in the ceiling to a room above, whilst by the fire slept a woman, wrapped in rags and clutching a small child. To her side a small black pot steamed and smoked and filled the room with the fragrance of boiling tea. As Mariah stood and watched, the boot-clad feet of another sleeping figure rolled from side to side beneath a short knitted blanket. Unseen by the sleepers, a fat brown rat sat upon its curled tail by the fire and rustled its whiskers without a care. Mariah rolled the penny in his pocket and then, stepping across the threshold, placed it silently upon the arm of a broken rocking chair.
The man snored and bellowed as he gripped tightly to the unthreading twine of his meagre blanket, unaware that he was being watched by boy and rat. Looking into the shadows, Mariah saw that far away from the fire and nestled by the long wall were a row of sleeping children, covered in old woollen coats and snuggled together to keep out the cold. By the man was a beer pot, tobacco bag and leather snuff pouch, all carefully placed upon a small oak stool that stood on a copy of the latest penny dreadful.
He thought for a moment as he stared at the beer and tobacco and then looked at the man who snored on, sucking back a slither of dribble from his stubbled cheek. Mariah picked the penny from the rocking chair and stepped further into the room. By his feet a sleeping boy scratched his milk-white bare arm. Quietly, Mariah stooped down and placed the warmed coin carefully in the boy’s hand, curling up his fingers into a loose fist. He smiled as he picked his way from the cottage, knowing that he would never see the look on the lad’s face and hoping that the lush wouldn’t steal it from his son and drink the penny away.
‘Can you do that for them all?’ Sacha asked. She chided him quietly, having watched silently from the doorway. ‘I can take you to a thousand houses just the same. Do you have a penny for everyone?’
Mariah shrugged his shoulders as he stepped into the street, pulling the door behind him. ‘Didn’t do it for that,’ he muttered. Sacha followed on behind as he stepped out his pace in the dark alleyway. ‘Thought of the lad waking up and finding a penny in his hand. Looks as though his father took what he wanted and they got nothing. Why do they leave the doors open for all the world to see their misery?’
‘For the Kraken,’ she said softly. ‘They believe that if the Kraken comes it will take one of them and leave a jug of gold pieces in their place.’
‘They let their children be taken for money?’ he panted.
‘They would let them go for less. If the Kraken were to give a quart of gin they would queue the length of the pier to give them away. Come easily, go easily, and after all they can always have another.’
‘What madness possesses them?’ he asked, his voice sharpened by anger.
‘Life, Mariah. Cold, hard … and piled room on room to the castle gate. Be thankful it’s them and not you and don’t give it a second thought.’ Sacha spoke brusquely as she trotte
d behind him in the shadow of a dim gas lamp on the corner.
They said no more as together they ran through the narrow streets, past the Customs House with its barred windows and narrow door, along Tuthill and into Quay Street. They saw no one and heard only the sounds of a cawing gull and their footsteps upon the broken cobbles. Sacha led him down several stone steps that trickled with the running of the open cess-stream that seeped through the alleyways to the harbour. Mariah still looked behind him, sure that somewhere far in the distance the red eyes of the Kraken searched for him. The thoughts of his heart churned inside him as he remembered the boy who clutched at the penny coin.
Soon they waited on the corner of a wide street. Mariah could hear the turning of the water as it lapped against the side of the wooden cobbles and staithes of the pier. In the black night he could make out the large frame of the warehouse that stood on the quayside. A thin rope dangled like a gallows from a thick wooden spar that stuck out from between the eaves. Between two buildings a narrow slipway came up from the water’s edge; the outline of a broken-backed fishing boat was visible against the dark patchwork of crumbling brick and stone. To one side was a tall yellow-stone house, much older than any other. It had a large wooden door nailed with black square-headed bolts. By the door was a small sandstone figure of a man enclosed in a metal cage that pinned him to the wall. He held his head in his hands, clutching a miniature metal crown placed upon his carved head.
Sacha looked about her, unsure as to the way they should take. She hesitated, then gestured for Mariah to follow as the sound of a horse carriage clattered towards them. They stepped into the deep darkness of a narrow alleyway that was more like a gash in the stone-fronted building. Stinking of sewage and seawater like a deep crevasse, it led back towards the town. They looked out as the carriage turned into the street and then stopped by the alleyway that led to the Three Mariners Inn. Suddenly its door opened and Luger stepped to the ground. He looked about him as he waved to the driver with his long silver-tipped cane, thrusting it in the air like a magician’s wand casting a terrible spell.
‘Did you know he would be here?’ Mariah whispered through a cupped hand.
‘Only one way he can come – he’d never walk, scared of getting dirt on his shoes. This is the only place a carriage can turn. Thought if we made quick time we’d be here before him.’ She spoke quietly as Luger disappeared into the shadows. ‘He goes to the inn and all we have to do is wait and then follow on.’
‘He’ll see us,’ Mariah said as Sacha vanished deeper into the crevasse.
‘I’ll take you to within a foot of the man and he’ll never know you were there. It’ll be as if you were but a ghost, listening to the whispering from over his shoulder.’
Quickly he lost sight of any trace of her as she vanished into the blackness of the narrow alley. He stumbled on blindly, sure he was walking on a living carpet of rats and discarded fish heads. The ground seemed to move beneath his feet, squirming around his ankles and over the top of his boots.
Suddenly a hand grabbed the cuff of his sleeve and pulled him sharply into an even darker portal cut into the side wall of the long building. Mariah gasped as he was jerked down two stone steps. He stumbled, only to be picked up before he fell as Sacha pushed him against the dank brick wall, holding him there until he regained his breath.
‘Say nothing,’ she said, and she struck a Lucifer that burst into light.
Mariah looked down a long flight of steps that fell away into the night, each one casting a shadow upon the next as they disappeared from view. Stacked by the wall and blocking the alley to the height of a giant man was a hoard of empty wooden beer barrels. They were pressed one upon the other and scattered about them were discarded green bottles that glinted in the match light.
‘It’s the cellar,’ Sacha said as she stepped on to the first stone. ‘Always left open, a great place to hide and an even better place to listen,’ she said softly. ‘From here on we cannot speak. Not a word let slip from your lips, just open your ears and take everything in.’
Mariah didn’t reply as he chased her down the steps in the fading light that gave out completely as they stood before the cellar door. Sacha slipped the catch and with one hand opened the door, then stepped inside. The light of a small oil burner lit the corner of the room, and the sudden sound of raised voices filled the void that stank and billowed out yeast and stale beer. Above their heads, many footsteps banged against the thin boards; in several places a narrow metal grate allowed the light of the inn and the spilt beer to flood into the cellar.
Everywhere was covered in drops of crypt-dew and beer froth. Each beam of the cellar roof was decked with jewelled strands of glistening cobwebs that shuddered with the footsteps above. Falling through the grate came billows of floor dust, scraped back and forth by the sweeping of a stiff bristle besom. It beat against the floor, pushing back and forth the mounds of sawdust which soaked up the dribbled beer and fell through the metal bars and into the cellar.
Sacha looked up, her face cast in the shaft of light from the grate above, flecks of wood shavings falling upon her. She edged this way and that, looking for Otto Luger as she peered into the room above, her head almost touching the oak beams. Mariah hid himself behind two stacked beer barrels and listened to the cackle of voices that in muffled tones filled the cellar as if he listened to utterances from another, unseen world. A fat spider clawed its way from wall pillar to floor post, spinning a yarned web as it let go and wafted in the rushing of air sucked down through the grate. Mariah watched as it lowered its fat body on the thinnest of silver threads and hung before his eyes like the dangling rod of a chime clock.
Sacha snapped out her hand, grasping the spider between her thumb and finger, and in an instant she crushed its frail body of all life. She smiled at Mariah as she wiped her thumb and the remains of the arachnid across his jacket. Then she looked up again, squinting through the metal bars to see if she could find Otto Luger and whoever he was going to meet.
Above, the door to the Three Mariners opened and all was suddenly still. The voices of the drunken fishermen hushed themselves and the hubbub of the barman clanking filled tankards upon the counter ceased in an instant. The familiar click of Luger’s steel-capped boots and the thud of his silver-tipped cane picked their way across the floor above them. It was as if they could see him taking every step as he walked slowly from the door, stopped, turned about and then made his way to the far corner of the room. Then came the scraping of the chair as it was pulled from the table and the rustle of his thick coat being slid from his shoulders and dropping to the chair back.
Slowly the noise started again, as if each man in turn recognised his new companion or some secret signal had been given that it was safe to talk in front of this strange gentleman. Sacha edged herself to the other side of the cellar and, propping herself against a dusty barrel, looked up into the room. Mariah slid to her side and peered over her shoulder. He could see Luger’s polished boots and crisp, hemmed trousers. There was a man with him, hunched over the table cradling a warmed pot of beer and sucking the froth from its top as if it were ice cream.
Luger was brought a drink without asking, the barman stumbling through the inn as Sacha and Mariah traced his steps above them. They listened intently; Luger said nothing. It was as if he were waiting for his companion to finish slurping the froth from his drink so that there would be no distraction to what he had to say.
The cellar door suddenly rattled as the stiff catch stuck in the saddle. In the half-light, Sacha gestured for Mariah to hide. The latch rattled again as someone pulled at the door from the outside and then in frustration kicked the wood and banged a sharp fist against the panel.
Mariah slid quickly to the floor, pulling Sacha close to him as they squeezed themselves into the narrowest of gaps between the damp cellar wall and the stack of barrels that were piled next to them. He put his hand across her mouth and buried his face into the back of her smock to dampen the sound of his
breathing. They were trapped. The door began to open. It scoured the stone doorstep, splintering shards of wood as it was pushed and kicked free.
‘Bodkins!’ shouted the man as he finally managed to push the door to its full width and step into the cellar. ‘One more barrel and they should be done for the night,’ he said to himself, not knowing he was being spied upon. The man stooped under the low roof as he checked each keg, trying to read the fading chalk marks in the dim light. ‘This’ll be the one,’ he said to himself as he tapped the side of a small fat firkin barrel. Quickly he picked it up like a pot-bellied pig, pulling it to his chest. ‘Up ya come and off ya go. Soon be gone and they’ll want some more …’
The man staggered under the weight of the slopping barrel, grappling to keep upright and climb the stone steps to the dark alleyway. Mariah let his hand slip from Sacha’s face as he gasped for breath, beads of sweat dripping across his cheeks. He listened as the man lurched and tottered away from the cellar, leaving the door wide open. Mariah snooped from his hiding place behind the barrels and in the dim light saw the open door. Sacha looked up at him, her face cut in two by a long black shadow.
‘We don’t have long …’ She got to her feet and whispered head to head. ‘It’s old Mathias, drinks more than he sells and he’ll soon be back.’
At the table above them, Otto Luger watched as his companion finally finished supping the creamy white froth from the top of the glass. The man took a folded handkersniff from his pocket and wiped his mouth.
‘More work?’ he asked Luger, looking at the tiny bubbles that blistered in his beer. ‘I’ve been waiting in this town for a week and hoping you would be coming to see me. What is it I can do for you?’
‘I have had some trouble, Mister Grimm. Someone messing with my possessions, and I want you … to find out who,’ Luger said as he sipped the balloon goblet and sniffed the liqueur, then took a fat cigar from his pocket and lit it from the table candle.