by J. A. Rock
At the precise moment that de Cock looked up and his eyes, the colour of ice on the Thames, met Gale’s, there came a commotion from the docks. Men shouted, and footsteps pounded over wooden planks. A splash.
Gale turned, straining to see what was happening at the dock. He began to pick out individual voices from amid the ruckus:
“Is he drowned?”
“Someone ’elp me pull ’im out!”
“What on earth?” Chant murmured.
“He’s dead!” someone shouted.
“Good God,” Gale said, his focus narrowing to the two large men crouched and straining at the water’s edge. “They’re pulling a body out of the river.”
Chapter 6
Up to this point, Chant had more or less been content to let Gale lead the way on the morning’s adventure. But now he felt himself drawn as if by some spell toward the water’s edge, where a crowd had gathered around a prone form.
“Chant!” Gale quickly caught up to him and took his arm as though to draw him back. Then he let go.
“We must help him!” Chant insisted, panic rising in him. He could become shaken quite easily in the presence of sickness or death, and while he did not know this fellow, he could not stand to see his corpse crowded by gawkers. He hurried on, Gale’s footsteps close behind.
When they reached the crowd, Chant discovered it was not a corpse at all. The fellow on the ground had begun to cough, sending up a spray of water and mucus that landed on his grey, swollen face.
“Good Lord.” Gale sounded irritated. “He’s not even dead. Chant, our captain has slunk away. We must follow. We do not have time to waste on a fellow who has not the decency to be a corpse.”
“They are crowding him! The poor man probably feels as though he still cannot breathe.” Chant moved closer. “Everyone, move back, please. Move back, I say. Give him some room!”
At first the crowd ignored Chant, still chattering excitedly at each other and at the half-drowned man. Chant sharpened his voice and shouted, “I’m a doctor!”
He wasn’t, of course. Fainted at the sight of blood, in fact. But he was dressed well underneath his borrowed coat, and several bystanders seemed to note that fact and let him through.
“A shark’s been at his leg!” someone called.
“There are no sharks in the Thames,” Gale said, sounding bored. “There was once, quite famously, a polar bear, but the wounds do not match that either.”
Chant made the mistake of looking at the fellow’s leg. The large gash in his left thigh was not ragged enough to be a shark bite. The slash in the trousers and the blanched edges of the wound itself suggested a blade. Through the torn fabric, Chant could see swollen flesh—black, grey, and pink. He swallowed down bile and turned away; his claim to medical knowledge would be proven a lie within seconds if he vomited.
The crowd quieted slightly as Chant knelt beside the spluttering fellow. If anyone was confused as to why a well-to-do doctor just happened to be walking along the dock at the precise moment a drowning man had been pulled from the Thames, they had the decency not to wonder aloud.
“Can you speak?” Chant asked the man.
The man wheezed, choked again, then nodded—although he did not actually speak.
“He were floating on that piece of wood!” an onlooker announced, gesturing to a broken plank bobbing in the water. “But his face were in the water, so I figured he was dead.”
Chant helped the man sit up, not minding that the man’s sopping clothes dampened his own. “There now.” He tried to clap the man’s back with some authority. “That’s a good chap. Get it all out.”
The man coughed up more water. The skin of his fingertips was wrinkled as though he’d been floating for some time.
“How did you come to be bobbing in the river?” Chant asked gently.
The man gasped, which caused him to choke again. When the fit ended, he looked first at Chant and then at Gale in frank desperation. “I was aboard the Condor, sir. First mate. I—I don’t know what happened. I was up there, trying to patch the sail, and—” He wheezed. His voice was high and hoarse. Chant initially thought his accent French, then realised it was Dutch. His English was good, but the strain in his voice meant Chant had to bend close to hear him.
Gale was suddenly beside Chant. “Yes?”
The man nodded and whimpered. “Along came a great gust, and I fell from the rigging!” His wheezing was painful to hear.
Chant called to the crowd, “Someone get this fellow food and fresh water. Blankets, if there are any to spare.”
“The Condor,” Gale said, leaning down. “It wouldn’t happen to be within sight, would it?”
The fellow’s jaw trembled, and he looked around at the ships docked nearby. “It—” He swallowed audibly. “There it is. Far away, there.”
Chant and Gale both turned. Chant was not at all surprised to see that the fellow pointed to the dark ship with the bird of prey figurehead.
“And your captain would be de Cock.”
The man gasped again, then seemed to collect himself. “Yes, sir.”
“When did this happen?”
Someone offered a flask of water—at least, Chant hoped it was water—and Chant helped the fellow drink. Then he took off his hall boy’s overcoat and draped it over the man’s shoulders, for he was now shivering fiercely. “C-c-couldn’t say, sir. I must have hit my head going over. I was barely conscious, sir. I found a plank and I held on to it for dear life. I was going in and out of sleep…”
“Did you hit your leg too?” Gale asked dryly.
The man raised his head to glimpse his gruesome injury, then whimpered, letting his head fall back against Chant.
“Where was de Cock?”
The man closed his eyes. His breath rasped in and out in a manner that made Chant think he was buying time before answering. “I don’t know, sir.”
Chant looked at Gale, and Gale’s gaze met his.
“De Cock’s out drinking!” someone called. It was Lewis, the man who had warned Chant and Gale about causing trouble. “Done nothing else since he docked four days past. You’ve got a surgeon on your ship, don’t you?”
The man shook his head. “The surgeon was only ever coming as far as London with us. His contract’s up. He’s off somewhere in the city now.” He exhaled through clenched jaws. “The captain will have my head.”
“Why?” Gale asked sharply. “For falling overboard?”
“He… he doesn’t like incompetence, sir.” Now the man’s eyes darted fearfully.
Gale spoke, low enough that only Chant could hear. “He is lying through his teeth. We must get him away from the crowd.”
Chant nodded and looked round at the spectators.
“This man needs tending to by a doctor,” he announced. And then he remembered his own lie. “Which is why I will tend to him. Now.” He glanced desperately at Gale.
Gale stepped in smoothly. “But that will require instruments, which my friend the good doctor does not have on his person. So we shall take him into our custody.”
Chant scarcely had time to offer Gale a grateful look before he was helping Gale hoist the man to his feet. They half dragged, half carried the fellow, who could scarcely put weight on the injured leg. Chant had no idea where they were going, but Gale seemed to have a plan.
“What is your name, man?” Gale asked their charge. Chant had not even thought to obtain that critical information.
“Visser, sir.” The man panted.
“Visser. While the doctor tends to you, I will ask you a number of questions—all of which I need answered in a truthful manner. Am I understood?”
Visser muttered an affirmation.
Just when Chant was beginning to grit his teeth with the effort of hauling Visser up and down side streets, they arrived at a narrow terrace house where a man met them outside. He was short and a bit on the stout side with a round, honest face that looked disconcertingly young for someone in his profession. He had wispy, a
sh-brown hair that stuck in all directions, and his mouth was the sort of tiny bow Chant could only ever recall seeing on dolls.
Gale started visibly as the man approached. “Fernside!” he called.
“Hello!” the man called.
“This is the Fernside you mentioned earlier?” Chant asked Gale in a low voice.
“I could count on two fingers the number of times I’ve seen him outside his home. He is the consummate hermit. A surgeon by trade, but I suppose he also doles out medicines to the locals if they need them. He also studies corpses in his cellar. Pays for them off the street.”
Chant felt queasy enough that he nearly lost his hold on Visser.
Visser, who had heard their exchange, began to twist between them. “Corpses?”
Fernside reached them. “This is the fellow they’ve just found in the water?” he asked as though Visser’s sodden clothes did not make that clear.
“News travels fast,” Gale said. “I’ve a few questions for our patient, Mr. Visser here, if you don’t object to my presence as you tend to him.”
“Not at all.”
“We will be speaking on a matter that is not yet of public record. I would ask for your discretion, Mr. Fernside.”
Fernside readily agreed.
They entered the surgeon’s home—a narrow, austere house, poorly furnished but well-lit—and helped Fernside deposit Visser on a cot near the tiny kitchen. Chant shivered, wondering where the corpses were. The cellar, Gale had said. Chant’s general modus operandi was to shake his head in gentle amusement at life and all of its oddities, but he did find it difficult to be gently amused by corpses. Visser apparently agreed; his eyes darted as though the room might be occupied by a restless spirit escaped from the cellar. Gale urged him brusquely to lie down. The surgeon immediately set to boiling water, and Gale set to questioning Visser.
As Chant watched, he could not help but be impressed. This was what had made Lord Christmas Gale famous: the ability to ask the right questions, to shroud his true intentions in more palatable inquiries that invited more honest answers. Gale asked Visser about the Condor and its crew—where they’d started their journey, what they were transporting, where they’d stopped. When Visser became reticent on certain subjects, Gale circled back calmly and approached from another angle. He’d have made a fair solicitor, Chant thought.
Fernside finished examining Visser’s head and, with barely a second’s hesitation, stripped off Visser’s torn and blood-stained trousers and whistled at the leg wound. Chant tried very hard not to look.
Gale asked, “What happened to the Condor’s sail?”
“A storm,” Visser said. “Delayed us two days.”
“That must have been rather frustrating.”
Visser snorted. “We were at each other like dogs. Everyone was in a foul mood.”
Visser began to breathe more rapidly as Fernside approached with a bottle of brandy. He laughed, the sound high and nervous.
“Like dogs,” Gale mused.
At that point, there was a great deal of screaming as Dr. Fernside cleaned the leg wound. Chant had to turn away.
“Tell me about the dog,” Gale said as though the screaming had not taken place. “The one on board your ship.”
Chant started. They had no confirmation of a dog on board the Condor. Was Gale referring to Flum?
It was several moments before Visser’s breathing steadied enough for him to reply, and Chant began to understand the tactic at work. Visser was so focused on the pain, he didn’t appear to consider why Gale was asking about a dog. “A funny thing he was—so big and hairy. Like a sheep. He came aboard in Rotterdam. He was not… um, how is it—he was not a good rat-catcher? But we all grew very affectionate toward him anyway. Shared our rations with him—and I assure you, sir, there wasn’t much to share.”
“What became of the dog?”
“He escaped when we docked.” Visser gritted his teeth for a moment. “Agh. I’m sorry, sir. This is—Oh, it does hurt.”
“Take your time,” Gale said.
Visser nodded, hissing.
“Did he come back?” Gale asked eventually.
“No, sir. I imagine he’s got more to eat on the streets here than he did with us.”
“Was the captain sorry to see him go?”
Visser’s eyebrows lifted, and his face contorted. Chant thought at first it was pain, since Fernside had begun, silently and efficiently, to stitch his leg. But then Chant saw it: fear, more than pain, in the man’s eyes. “I don’t think so. He did not like the dog.”
“Ah. I’ve heard from a couple of people that de Cock has been searching town for a ratter. But you said that wasn’t your mutt’s specialty.”
“Well, I suppose… I suppose having him on board put the idea in the captain’s head that maybe keeping a dog is good. A dog that is better at killing rats, yes?”
“Yes.” Gale nodded amiably as though this might well be the case. “Do you know, I saw a great hairy dog just this morning. In an alley behind The Anchor, wasn’t it, Chant?” He didn’t wait for Chant’s reply. “Feasting on scraps from the ale house. I wonder if it was your mutt.”
Visser’s lips parted, but he said nothing. Chant watched Gale watching every movement of the man’s face. “Perhaps,” Visser whispered at last. Then his brow furrowed, and Chant could fairly see gears turning in his head. “Sir? May I ask… what are you?”
“What am I?”
“Are you a”—he appeared to search for the word—“constable?”
Gale snorted. “Hardly. I’m merely a fellow who likes to make sense of things.”
There was a tension about Visser’s eyes and mouth that suggested a growing wariness. His gaze cut to Chant. “He said he was a doctor.”
Gale did not answer.
Fernside finished the stitches in what seemed to Chant record time, then went to clean his hands.
Gale spoke again. “The good news, Mr. Visser, is that you do not appear to have a head wound. Isn’t that right, Fernside?”
“No head wound,” Fernside confirmed, almost cheerfully.
“So the damage is confined to this leg wound, which appears to have been made by a blade, not a shark or a polar bear. And which is not fresh. Is it fresh, Fernside?”
“No, it’s not fresh,” Fernside agreed. “Perhaps two days old? Three?”
Gale nodded. “I do wonder, Mr. Visser, what your captain was doing sending you up to fix a torn sail when you had so recently been stabbed in the leg. The blade used appears to have been triangular, and so it opened the flesh in a most devastating way. Do you see why I find this befuddling?”
Visser was starting to sweat, and Chant did not think it was entirely from pain. The Dutchman’s eyes darted, and he swallowed hard.
“And since there is no head wound,” Gale continued, “perhaps, now that your initial trauma is over, you are able to recall how long ago you went overboard? And whether you were truly fixing a torn sail when it happened? And even, if you’re feeling especially ambitious, how you got stabbed in the leg.”
Visser licked his lips. Chant found his heart was pounding as though he himself were the one who had walked into Gale’s trap. But Visser looked Gale directly in the eye, and said steadily, “I was up on the rigging. Fixing the sail. A gust of wind pushed me off.”
“Very well,” Gale said, much to Chant’s surprise. He stood. Stretched. Glanced down and then frowned slightly. Chant couldn’t say for sure, but there was something theatrical about the gesture, as though Gale were pretending to notice something he had in fact noticed long ago. He reached down and took Visser’s arm, pulling up the sleeve of his shirt.
Raw, pink marks wrapped around the man’s wrist, and Chant had only to glance at the man’s other arm to spy a matching injury.
“I’ve seen vicious rope burns before,” Gale said conversationally. “On sailors’ palms or inner arms. I can’t say I’ve ever seen them go all the way around like this.” Visser looked too stunne
d to pull away. Gale met his eyes for a moment. “Strong winds.”
He let go of Visser’s arm and turned to Fernside. “Fernside, old fellow, I hear you have a corpse I might be interested in.”
Fernside confirmed that he did, in fact, have a fellow in his cellar, and before Chant knew it, Gale was giving him a nod and saying he’d be back in no time at all. And then he followed Fernside through a door and down a set of stone stairs.
Chant was not sure whether to talk to Visser or not. He didn’t have the confidence to continue Gale’s line of inquiry, but he desperately wanted the Dutchman to explain how he’d acquired the leg wound.
Visser glanced at him but didn’t speak. He lifted his gaze to the ceiling, and Chant made a point of studying the aging furniture.
True to his word, Gale and Fernside were back in a few minutes. “Fernside, I am leaving a small sum with you. When you are assured that Mr. Visser’s condition is stable, I would like you to have him transported somewhere private to recuperate.”
Fernside agreed, his eyes widening hungrily at the coins Gale pulled from his purse.
“Mr. Visser,” Gale said. “Though it may be a while before you walk again, please do not go anywhere without leaving word for me as to your destination. I may have more questions for you.”
“Yes sir.” Visser was shivering again, and to Chant’s unpractised eye, looked rather unfocused. “Of course, sir.”
Fernside walked them to the door, and as they stepped out, Gale said quietly to the surgeon, “Be careful. I don’t know whether he is dangerous, but he has an associate who concerns me.”
Fernside nodded, and they left.
They stayed clear of the docks, winding their way through the foul smell of Surrey Quays, heading westward. Chant wanted to speak, but sensed Gale needed this time to think. At last, Gale stopped and turned to him. “I wish to go somewhere private and discuss what we have learned today.”
“Oh? Am I a partner in this investigation now?” Chant tried to tease, though the afternoon had taken much of his energy and had left him unsettled.