Tales of the Shadowmen 2: Gentlemen of the Night

by Jean-Marc Lofficier

  “No trouble,” the body-snatcher replied. “I hadn’t realized that the gentleman wasn’t known to you. Perhaps he was working on behalf of someone else?” Ned had been wondering whether it might be polite to mention that Gregory Temple was keenly interested in the burking business, and Hanrahan’s business in particular, but he decided that since Hanrahan was prepared to fish for information so blatantly, he might as well take the opportunity to do likewise.

  “I imagine that he was,” Ned agreed. “He’s a physician, it seems, and must be in charge of the grey men in that capacity, but he’s not the mastermind behind the scheme. How did Sawney give him the slip, do you suppose?”

  “I couldn’t say,” Hanrahan replied, dropping his load and making a show of searching through the suits on the rack while the tailor peered at him from the other side. “As you must have guessed from my expression, Master Knob, last night was the first time I clapped eyes on one of them. I’ve heard talk, mind–but you know the kind of fancies that spring up whenever rumors fly. I’m just an honest tradesman, trying to make a living. What happens to the goods after I deliver them isn’t my business–but I tell you straight, Master Knob, I’d far rather imagine that someone might breathe new life into them than know that they’d only be cut up and thrown away.”

  “I’m with you on that, Jack,” Ned agreed. “I know that you’re just a cog in the machine, collecting the goods and passing them on to the physician, with no questions asked–that’s just as it should be. But you’re an honest radical, as I am, and I know how glad you must be to know that you’re doing good as well as making a living. If the dead are being brought back to life, Jack, then those who take them from their graves are saints, working in the great cause of progress. You have my congratulations–and my sincere thanks, for what you’ve done for Sawney.”

  “I was startled to see him, that’s all,” Hanrahan said, gruffly. “I wasn’t scared. I was as glad as any of you to see him walking and talking.” He hauled his cargo back on to his shoulder and moved off abruptly, in the direction of the bookstall where one could purchase banned books, if one knew the password.

  Ned followed him. “You weren’t as startled as I was, I can tell you,” he said, companionably. “At least you knew that he wasn’t safely tucked up in his pauper’s grave. Are you perfectly certain that he wasn’t still alive when you sold him? You know your business far better than I do, of course, but one hears much nowadays about catalepsy and premature burial, and one hears plenty of tales of half-hanged men revived by their friends when the law has been careless.”

  Hanrahan did not pause at the bookstall but pushed on until he was clear of the market, obviously reluctant to say more while they might be overheard. He set off northwards, towards the old wall, striding energetically in spite of his burden. Ned glided effortlessly by his side.

  “You’re right, Master Knob,” the burker conceded, when he was sure that no one else was in earshot. “I’ve opened coffins that have been torn up inside, to find men who were supposed dead with their fingernails bloody and torn. I’ve seen men snatched early from the rope at Tyburn and carried off, with the stewards unable to interfere, or even turning a blind eye. Not everyone’s dead who’s supposed to be, it’s true. But Sawney... I was certainly convinced that he was gone, else I’d have handled him a good deal more tenderly than I did. You followed him, didn’t you? Do you know where they took him?”

  “I followed Patou and the grey men down to the quay,” Ned admitted, knowing that he would have to share his own information if he were to get a full return from the burker. “He took a ferry out to a ship in midstream–the Prometheus, as I said–where his master was waiting. I showed myself, so that they could come and pick me up if they wanted to, but someone threw a blanket over my head and smacked me hard on the back of my skull. To tell the truth, Jack, I thought for an instant it might be you, intent on making a delivery.”

  Hanrahan seemed genuinely offended. “I know they call me a burker,” he said, “but I’m no common murderer, however fresh the Frenchies might want their goods. I have my methods, Master Knob, and I can lay my hands on the genuine article easily enough. I’d have sworn on St. Paul’s, St. Giles’ and St. Luke’s that Sawney was the genuine article when I bought him from the undertaker’s cart for half a crown–and you can be sure the undertaker thought so too, else he’d never have sold him to me. His neck wasn’t broke, or I’d have got him for two shillings, but I never saw a tongue so black or a throat so deeply grooved on a man who still had breath in him. Anyway, if I’d taken it into my head to collect you, you wouldn’t be walking about today as bright as a button. How did you get away? Fought them off single-handed, did you?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t burkers–nor even common cut-throats. When the fellow in charge found out that he’s got the wrong man, he apologized.”

  “Wrong man?” Hanrahan repeated, incredulously, as he came abreast of a small high-sided cart with a horse between its hafts that would not have fetched a shilling to be boiled down for glue. The back of the cart was generously furnished with rags too filthy to attract even the meanest thief,

  Ned turned his nose away, saying: “I hope you’re not going to render the new ones as foul as that, Jack.”

  “No fear,” said Hanrahan, as he threw his latest purchases into the back of the cart. “I’ve got my good clothes on. I’ll take them down the cesspit another day, when I’ve sorted out the pieces that’ll make good winding-sheets. These will do for this afternoon’s job.”

  “Right,” said Ned. “You’re working. I didn’t answer your question, did I? Yes, they got the wrong man. They were after Patou, of course. An easy mistake to make, in the poor light. I must say, though, that they seemed a far better class of nighthawk than one normally meets south of Covent Garden at midnight on a Saturday. I don’t know what the physician had in his bag, but I imagine that’s what they were after. Do you mind if I ride a little way with you? I won’t come into the graveyard, mind–that’s the kind of work best done in private.”

  “I’ll not be doing any digging today, Master Knob,” Hanrahan replied, rather scornfully. “I know people think that I spend every night digging down through freshly-turned soil, when I’m not out cutting throats, but that’s not how the business works. I have dig down on occasion, it’s true, but I prefer to get the bodies before they’re laid to rest, if I can. I like to purchase them fair and square–from the next of kin, if that can be arranged, although I’m not excessively particular. These days, it can be arranged more often than you might think. Dissenting’s been a boon to the business, and no mistake–except for Methodists, of course. The Clapham sect’s the worst of all. Give me Unitarianism any day–godlessness that likes to keep up appearances. Better hop up smartly–that’s the half-hour chiming and I’m due at St. Luke’s in less than 30 minutes. Mustn’t be late, or the little girl might end up underground regardless. Can’t entirely trust the grieving, you know, if things don’t go exactly to plan.

  Ned did as he was bid, hoping that he would get used to the stink soon enough. His head had started to ache again, and he felt a pang of regret at not having purchased a phial of laudanum from the market while he had the chance.

  Hanrahan untethered the horse, got up on to the bench beside Ned, and took up the rein and the whip. There was no need for the whip, though–-the horse moved off obediently in response to a twitch of the rein.

  Once they had made their way out into the traffic, Ned said: “It’s possible, of course, that they weren’t out to rob Patou at all, Jack. Maybe he has enemies, who want to do him harm–or who want to claim his services for a rival master. I ought to warn him, ought I not? Would you carry a message for me?”

  “The Frenchie already knows that he has enemies, Master Knob,” Hanrahan told him. “He lies very low, except when circumstances force him out–as they must have done yestereve. I never saw his master at all... although I’ve heard the name John Devil muttered abroad, as it always seems to be when any
thing remarkable is going on. You’d probably know more about than I would.”

  Ned shook his head wearily. “I never had the pleasure of knowing Mistress Paddock’s husband,” he said, with a sigh. “That was before my time.”

  “Not that John Devil,” the burker said, giving his nag a flick of the whip for amusement’s sake. “The Quaker, Tom Brown–the one who murdered Noll Green and Lochaber Dick in Paris. I heard tell you were there, and saw the whole thing.”

  “Pretty Molly used to put the story about when she was in her cups,” Ned admitted, “but I fear that she was only trying to make me out a better man than I am. I did know Mr. Wood, though, who was Tom’s solicitor, and he always said that Tom wasn’t near a bad a boy as gossip painted him. Always loved his mother, you know.”

  “So did everyone else, the way I heard it,” Hanrahan observed. “Many a tear shed when she shipped out for Botany Bay. She was married to a Frenchie once, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes, she was,” Ned said. “I knew her husband slightly, although I know the present Comtesse much better. I’ve been in Paris a fair bit these last three years–but I never heard of a doctor named Germain Patou.”

  “I’ll wager there’s hundreds of doctors in London you never heard of,” Hanrahan observed. “He’s a doctor all right, and no mistake, if he brought Sawney back from the dead–and that giant too. I wish he’d warned me that I might bump into the goods again walking and talking.”

  “I don’t suppose he intended you that you should,” Ned opined. “Sawney wasn’t supposed to wander off on his own, whatever he was doing on the boat. Was the giant one of yours, by any chance?”

  “No. You’d need a big heap of foul rags to hide a body like his–have to fold him up, see, or his feet’d stick out of the cart. Ever tried to fold a body when rigor’s set in, Master Knob?”

  “Can’t say I have, Jack. Is that St. Luke’s off to the right, along Fann Street?

  “Yes it is–and we’re still in good time.” Hanrahan paused for just a moment before saying: “I suppose he might’ve been alive–old Sawney? The dead can’t really be brought back, can they, Master Knob? This is all some kind of mummery, isn’t it?” His voice was level enough, but Ned knew that there must be a deep anxiety as well as an honest uncertainty in the burker’s words. He was glad to think that such a tall man was unashamed to seek reassurance on such a weighty matter from Gentleman Ned Knob.

  “Well,” Ned said, carefully, “There’s a story–which is in print, not just idle chatter, so it might be true–about a gentleman scholar in Switzerland who found a way to reimpart the vital spark to a patchwork of dead flesh. Electricity is said to be the key–and now that men like Benjamin Franklin and Humphry Davy have begun to bring the fire of lightning down to Earth, who knows where it’ll end?”

  “Not the Methodists, that’s for sure,” Hanrahan muttered, as he turned the horse and maneuvered the cart into Fann Street. “Before your time, I know, Master Knob, but did you ever hear tell of a doctor named James Graham?”

  “As a matter of fact, Jack, I did,” Ned said, taken completely by surprise by the question, and wondering whether he might be getting somewhere at last. “He had a connection to Helen Brown too, you know, when she was taken up by the Duchess of Devonshire back in the ’80s. Graham was the Duchess’s pet quack–ran a so-called Temple of Health and Hymen in Mayfair, with an electric throne and a celestial bed and all manner of silly gadgetry. Would have been as famous as Mesmer, they say, if he hadn’t got himself thrown in jail in Edinburgh. Why do you ask?”

  “I happened to run across some of the equipment sold off when the Temple went bust,” Hanrahan replied. “No sort of bed, mind–baths, they were. Do you know who he called his Goddess of Health? That woman who was Horatio Nelson’s mistress–Emma Hamilton.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Ned lied. “That’s amazing, Jack–to think that Graham’s old equipment is still in use. Mr. Davy and Mr. Faraday would certainly be interested to know that–and I’ll wager they’d be able to put it to very good use, in the cause of Radical Enlightenment. Where is it, if I might ask?”

  “Shipped down river,” Hanrahan told him. “It was on a quay near Southwark Bridge when I saw it, about to be loaded up–probably on to the same vessel you saw last night.”

  “Downriver,” Ned repeated, thoughtfully. “But they bring the ship upriver at regular intervals, to collect all kinds of cargoes. Sawney must have slipped ashore last night, and made his way back to his old home-from-home. What was he doing on the ship in the first place, I wonder?”

  Hanrahan had no answer to that, and tried to signify as much by shrugging his shoulders as he jumped down from the cart, which he had driven round to the vestry door of St. Luke’s Church. Ned could see a funeral party wending its slow way to the northernmost part of the churchyard, into the shade of a clump of wych-elms. There was a coffin at the head of the procession, shouldered by four pall-bearers, but Ned had a strong suspicion that the corpse had been removed before the lid had been screwed down.

  The vestry door opened, and a black-clad man came out, wearing a polished top hat and carrying a small bundle tightly wound about by a dirty sheet. Hanrahan handed over a few coins and accepted the bundle into his own arms. Then he slid it gingerly into the back on the cart, using a pole and a pair of tongs to cover it with the filthy rags that no one would be eager to displace. Ned estimated that it weighed no more than four stones; it was the body of a child, no more than ten or twelve years old.

  The man retired into the church. “That was no grieving next-of-kin,” Ned observed. “That was the undertaker, or one of his mutes.”

  “I only said what I preferred, Master Knob,” the burker said, defensively. “I can let you ride as far as Fleet Street, if you want, but I can’t take you all the way. Guarantees given, you understand–but I’ll deliver your message to Patou. He has enemies, who thumped you on the noggin thinking you were him, and apologized when they found you weren’t. That’s good, in a way. If a man has to have enemies, best to have civilized enemies.”

  “Very kind of you, Jack,” Ned said, “Fleet Street will be ideal, and I thank you wholeheartedly. If Monsieur Patou asks after me, will you tell him that my success at Jenny’s doesn’t prevent me from taking other commissions, provided that they’re lucrative enough. I’m a versatile man, and a good friend to have when a man is a stranger in the city and finds himself beset by enemies.”

  “I’ll tell him that too,” Hanrahan promised. He was silent until he turned back on to the North Road at the end of Fann Street, and then he said: “Do you suppose this one will be back too, Master Knob? She’s only a kid–can’t be as much as eleven. Never had a chance to live a life, although I dare say she did her fair share of skivvying.”

  “I don’t know, Jack,” Ned said, soothingly. “But if Patou can give her a second chance, you’re surely doing a hero’s work. If there’s an alternative, anything’s better than leaving a little girl to rot in a grave.”

  “You’re right, Ned,” Hanrahan said. “You’ve a good head on your shoulders, and a good heart too. There’s not many men who’ve asked to ride with me on my cart, you know. You’re no Methodist, that’s for sure–but then, you’re a satirist. I’m a radical myself, you know, in my heart, and I used to be more ardent than I am now. I was there when they pilloried Dan Eaton back in 1812, ready to defend him–not that he needed any defending, as it turned out.”

  “Why, Jack, we’re practically twin souls,” Ned said, brimming over with camaraderie. “I was in court to see Tom Wooler argue the toss with Sam Shepherd–the Attorney General himself. And what a fine fist he made of it! These are great times, Jack, for revolutionaries like us. The aristocrats have their past and their tradition, but we have our future and our hope... and a better hope for the resurrection, it seems, than the Clapham crowd. Not that I’ve anything against Wilberforce, you understand. He’ll have slavery abolished in England before the decade’s out, and that’s a great thing... b
ut they say that there are islands in the Caribbean where the dead serve as slaves. Slow of wit, I’ve heard, but very docile, and never need to sleep. Now then, what do they call them?”

  “Zombies,” said Jack Hanrahan, promptly. A man in his trade would be bound to pay attention to such tales, Ned knew, and Limehouse had more than its fair share of sailors who’d seen the Americas, even though Liverpool and Southampton were the ports of choice for the Atlantic trade.

  “That’s right,” Ned agreed. “But they don’t use electricity there, so rumor has it. It’s all done with magic and the power of the will.”

  “They call it voudun,” Hanrahan supplied. “African magic, Frenchified.”

  “That’s right,” Ned said. “Toussaint l’Ouverture led the slaves of Haiti to revolt against Bonaparte himself when he tried to bring slavery back after the Jacobins abolished it. I wonder if Germain Patou has ever been to the Caribbean?”

  “More likely to have been in Paris while Mesmer was there,” Hanrahan opined, “given what I saw on the docks that day.”

  “Or both,” Ned said, thoughtfully. “Ben Franklin was on the committee appointed to evaluate Mesmer’s claims, as I recall–and Antoine Lavoisier too. Humphry Davy knew them both–I’ve heard him say so–and he was well received in Paris when he visited with Faraday. I wonder if Mr. Davy knows Germain Patou.”

  “That’s not the kind of question I can ask Patou,” Hanrahan said, perhaps fearful of being asked to carry yet another message. “If you know Humphry Davy, you’d best ask him. Do you know Davy?”

  “Only slightly,” Ned admitted. “I was a regular at the Royal Institution’s open lectures at one time, although I’ve grown a little lax of late. So was Tom Brown, I understand, before he was transported–but that, of course, was before my time. Perhaps I should have tried a little harder to understand the lectures, but I went there as a good radical, to show my support for Jacobin science, never thinking that I could fully understand the wonders of electrolysis...”