by C. S. Harris
Jem shook his head. “It’s just . . . Well, I reckon the vicar of St. James’s might be able to answer some of yer questions.”
“Oh?”
The boy’s face was once more a watchful, blank mask. “Reverend Filby is his name.”
“Why?”
Jem looked confused. “What ye mean, why?”
“Why do you think the reverend might be able to answer some of my questions?”
The boy shrugged. “He just might.”
Sebastian searched the boy’s crimped features, looking for some indication of subterfuge or guile. He could think of no reason why a lad so obviously hostile and uncooperative should suddenly decide to volunteer what he considered helpful information. But the boy’s face remained angry and closed.
And frightened, Sebastian realized. Jem Jones was terrified.
Chapter 7
“Don’t glower at us, Jarvis,” said His Highness, George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales and Regent of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, his attention all for the task of selecting another bonbon from the gold-rimmed plate of Belgian chocolates he held in his plump hand.
The Prince half sat, half lay on one of a set of pink silk-covered settees styled in the shape of gilded swans that he’d just had made for his favorite withdrawing room at Carlton House. In his youth he had been both handsome and beloved by his people. But his slim good looks were lost long ago to gluttony and debauchery, and he’d destroyed the goodwill of his people by the selfish, heedless extravagance of his spending and by the unfeeling brutality of his treatment of his wife and daughter. Now in his early fifties, he was fat, spoiled, and foolish. But he was still the Prince Regent.
When Charles, Lord Jarvis—the man to whom this comment was addressed—remained silent, the Prince pursed his lips into a pout. “I simply want to think about it a bit more; that’s all,” said George, popping the chosen chocolate into his mouth. “Decisions of such magnitude require thought. Don’t you agree?”
Jarvis stood stiffly just inside the chamber door, his hands clasped behind his back. A tall, fleshy man well over six feet, he was second cousin to the Regent’s mad father, the King, and the real power behind the Hanovers’ wobbly throne. It was a position he had earned not by his relationship to the King but by the brilliance of his mind, his dedication to the dynasty, and the utter ruthlessness of the methods he was willing to use to advance what he considered in the best interests of King and country.
For one telling moment, Jarvis’s gaze met that of the third person in the room, the Prince’s Foreign Secretary, Robert Stewart, Lord Castlereagh.
“Of course, Your Highness,” said Jarvis. But he made no attempt to alter the gravity of his expression, and his tone was similar to what one might employ when humoring a sulky child. “As you wish.” He nodded to the Foreign Secretary, and the two men bowed low. “We will leave you to . . . think.”
Jarvis waited until he and Castlereagh were outside the chamber with the door closed behind them before saying in a quiet, ominously tight voice, “What the devil brought that on? He’s been boasting of his determination to restore the Bourbons to the throne of France for the last twenty years. And now with our armies practically on the French frontier, Prinny suddenly decides he needs to ‘think’ about it?”
Castlereagh blanched. He was younger than Jarvis by more than ten years as well as both slighter and shorter in stature. And even though he was Foreign Secretary while Jarvis held no formal government portfolio, there was no question which of the two men was the most powerful. Foreign ministers came and went; Jarvis remained.
“Well?” demanded Jarvis when Castlereagh stayed silent.
“It’s because of Sinclair Pugh,” said the Foreign Secretary in a rush, raking his flyaway, reddish fair hair back from his forehead with a trembling hand. “I fear he’s had Prinny’s ear.”
“Sinclair Pugh?” Jarvis frowned. A longtime member of Parliament, Pugh had a vast fortune and an overrated reputation as an amateur philosopher and serious thinker. “When did this happen?”
“At last night’s soiree. Lady Leeds brought him to the attention of His Highness. Somehow in the space of an hour he managed to convince Prinny that not only will the French people never accept a Bourbon restoration, but that if we insist upon imposing the Bourbons by force, the result will be a second French Revolution even more disastrous than the first—a vast cataclysm with the potential to sweep away the Hanovers as well as the Bourbons.”
Jarvis let out a scornful huff of air. “Pugh is a fool. The restoration of Europe’s hereditary monarchs to their rightful thrones is the one thing that can and will secure the peace and stability of the world—now and for generations to come. Civilization as we know it depends upon it.”
“Yes. But unfortunately His Highness seems to find Pugh’s arguments damnably persuasive. He’s asked the man to come back next Monday and expand upon his theories.”
Jarvis paused beside the entrance to his own chambers. “Monday? Why was I not informed of this before now?”
Castlereagh’s eyes bulged as the last of the color drained from his face.
“Never mind. I’ll take care of it.”
“Good God.” Castlereagh’s voice rose to an undignified squeak. “You’re going to kill him.”
Jarvis gave a tight smile. “Only if I must. Fortunately there are other ways to eliminate those foolish enough to interfere where they don’t belong.”
Jarvis saw the Foreign Secretary open his mouth to ask, How?
Then Castlereagh wisely changed his mind, closed his mouth, and said no more.
• • •
Afterward, alone in the elegant chambers set aside for his exclusive use at Carlton House, Jarvis stood for a time at the window overlooking the forecourt below. Then he sent for Major Burnside.
A tall, dark-haired former hussar major, Edward Burnside was one of an extensive string of spies, informants, and assassins Jarvis maintained across the length and breadth of Britain. Little of any importance occurred in the Kingdom without Jarvis becoming aware of it—which made the current situation all the more infuriating.
“I want to know everything there is to know about an MP named Sinclair Pugh,” Jarvis snapped when Burnside appeared. “His associates, his holdings, his interests and tastes, and his weaknesses. Especially his weaknesses. Report back to me in—” Jarvis paused to glance at the clock on the mantel. “Twelve hours. At Berkeley Square.”
“Yes, my lord,” said the major and bowed himself out.
Chapter 8
Paul Gibson pulled the door to the stone outbuilding at the base of the yard closed behind him, his hands not quite steady. As he turned to cross the yard toward his house, the phantom pains from his missing leg flared hot and bright in a pulsating crescendo of agony that he found himself oddly welcoming. It gave him something to focus on, something to think about besides the horror of what had been done to the boy whose remains lay cold and still on Gibson’s stone table.
He was no philosopher or theologian. He seldom paused to give thought to what drove men to cruelty or why some men valued kindness and empathy as virtues while others scorned those same traits as weaknesses. Years of war had taught Gibson much of the darkness that can lurk in men’s souls. But war carried its own explanations, its own justifications that he realized now he had clung to as a defense against an uncomfortable reality. An uncomfortable reality and a truth he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge. Or admit.
He knew the explanations offered by his church. Yet he’d always seen religion’s externalization and personification of evil as mankind’s shirking of responsibility. It reminded him of a child’s excuse to avoid both punishment and blame: He made me do it. It’s not my fault. Satan tempted me.
Not, Satan is a part of me.
I am Satan.
Chapter 9
The parish c
hurch of St. James lay just to the north of Clerkenwell’s old village green, in the sweeping curve of an ancient lane known as Clerkenwell Close. Once the chapel of the long-vanished convent of the nuns of St. Mary’s, the church had been rebuilt in brick some twenty-five years before in a plain style reminiscent of a New World meetinghouse.
“I knew the children were missing,” said the Reverend Leigh Filby when Sebastian introduced himself and explained the purpose of his visit. “But it was quite a shock to hear yesterday that Benji had been found murdered. How perfectly ghastly it all is.”
The reverend was a plump man of medium height with fine, flaxen hair framing a pink, ageless face. He wore the long black cassock favored by many of his calling and had been supervising the installation of new iron railings atop the churchyard’s brick retaining walls when Sebastian came upon him. The two men turned now to walk along the sunken path that cut across the old churchyard toward the green, the reverend with his hands clasped behind his back and his chin resting against his chest.
“How did you know they were missing?” Sebastian asked, gazing out over the churchyard’s thick forest of weathered gray tombstones.
“One of Benji’s friends came around several days ago looking for him.”
“Oh? Why would he come here?”
The Reverend Filby was silent for a moment, his lips working back and forth over his long, slightly protuberant teeth as if he were choosing his words carefully. “When it’s dreadfully cold or wet and they have no place else to go, some of the children will come here. I let them sleep in the church.”
“You say that as if you were almost ashamed to admit it.”
The smile lines beside the reverend’s soft gray eyes creased. “Ashamed? No. But hesitant? Perhaps. I fear some of my more comfortably situated parishioners do not appreciate my generosity toward the area’s street children. A few have even gone so far as to hold me responsible for their increasing numbers. Unfortunately, it’s the presence in the neighborhood of three prisons that’s to blame—that and the increasingly difficult economic situation of our times.” He paused to expel his breath in a tight, pained sigh. “Odd, isn’t it, how some parents will undergo every sort of unimaginable hardship and danger to feed their children, while others . . . others simply walk away, abandoning their offspring to fend for themselves?”
“Are many of the area’s children abandoned by their parents?”
“Some, I’m afraid. But not Benji and Sybil. Their mother was transported. Although given how ill she was, I doubt she lived to see Botany Bay.”
“They never heard from her?”
“No. I told her she could write to the children care of St. James’s. But she never did.”
“Could she write?”
“Oh, yes.”
They walked in thoughtful silence for a moment, their footsteps crunching the gravel path. From this corner of the churchyard Sebastian could see Clerkenwell Green, which looked less like a village green and more like a brawling, busy marketplace. If there’d ever been any grass there, it was long gone.
“What was he like?” Sebastian asked. “Benji, I mean.”
“Sensitive. Sad. But determined to keep his sister out of the poorhouse.” The reverend cast Sebastian a quick, worried glance. “You’re saying no one has seen Sybil? Still?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Oh, dear. That’s not good, is it?”
“No, it’s not,” said Sebastian. “A lad named Jem Jones tells me other children have disappeared from around here in the past. Is that true?”
The reverend frowned. “It’s hard to say, actually. Sometimes a lad will seem to disappear, only to show up again a few months later. They drift into different parts of the city in search of work or other”—he paused as if fumbling for the appropriate word and finally settled on—“opportunities. Most return eventually. But some don’t.”
“I understand Benji had a friend named Toby Dancing. Do you know where I might find him?”
The reverend shook his head with a faint smile. “Now, there’s a lad who comes and goes all the time. He’s like quicksilver, that one. It’s one of the reasons they call him the Dancer—although I suspect there’s more to it than that.”
Sebastian nodded. “Second-story dancer” was a slang term for a certain kind of housebreaker. But he saw no reason to explain that to the reverend.
“He’s not missing as well, is he?”
The reverend’s eyes widened. “Not to my knowledge, no. I believe he spends more time than he should down by Hockley-in-the-Hole. I’ve seen him there several times.”
Constable Gowan had also mentioned Hockley-in-the-Hole, a notoriously insalubrious quarter of Clerkenwell given over to cockpits and bearbaiting and prostitution. Sebastian found himself wondering what the good reverend had been doing in such a district. But he kept those thoughts to himself.
“Benji wasn’t simply killed,” said Sebastian. “Whoever murdered him first held him for days and tortured him. Have you ever heard of anything like that happening around here?”
Reverend Filby brought up tented hands to press them against his nose and mouth. “Merciful heavens, no. It’s too horrible to even think about.”
“Yet it happened.”
The reverend remained silent, his gaze on the workmen fixing a section of iron spikes in place. The spikes were to discourage the resurrection men who made a comfortable living stealing the bodies of the recently interred and selling them to medical schools and anatomists such as Paul Gibson.
Sebastian said, “Have you ever noticed anyone paying unusual attention to the street children? Perhaps some of the ‘more comfortably situated’ gentlemen of the parish you mentioned?”
Filby shook his head and kept on shaking it long after it was necessary. “No. Oh, no.”
“Can you think of anyone I could speak with who might know more?”
“I’m sorry; no,” Filby said in an odd rush, dropping his hands to clench them in the cloth of his cassock. “And now you must excuse me, my lord. I’ve duties to attend to.”
And with that he turned and hurried away through the ancient, overflowing churchyard, his head bowed, his gaze fixed determinedly on the scuffed toes of his shoes, as if to look either right or left would only invite more questions he obviously had no wish to answer.
• • •
Sebastian considered visiting Hockley-in-the-Hole in what would doubtless be a futile search for Toby Dancing. But after some consideration, he changed his mind and turned his horses instead toward Covent Garden and the Bow Street Public Office.
Two and a half years before, when Sebastian was accused of murder and on the run, the official tasked with seeing him brought to justice was a dour, earnest little magistrate named Sir Henry Lovejoy. In the time since, Sebastian and Lovejoy had come to both know and respect each other, and there was no one whose integrity or devotion to justice Sebastian trusted more.
Lovejoy now served as one of Bow Street’s three stipendiary magistrates. As both the first and the most powerful of the metropolis’s public offices, Bow Street enjoyed a supervisory authority over all of London and beyond. It wasn’t Bow Street’s role to investigate the death of a fifteen-year-old in Clerkenwell, but if anyone had heard of other cases similar to Benji’s, it would be Lovejoy.
“Tortured?” said the magistrate as he and Sebastian walked down Bow Street toward the entrance to Covent Garden Market. “Paul Gibson is certain?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Oh, dear, oh, dear.” Lovejoy shook his head with a heavy sigh. He was an unusually small man, barely five feet tall, with a bald head and wire-framed glasses and pinched, unsmiling features. Once, Lovejoy had been a moderately successful merchant. But the death of his wife and daughter some twelve years before had led to a spiritual crisis that not only turned him toward the Reformist church but also
inspired him to devote the remainder of his life to public service. “Yet the Hatton Garden Public Office chose to do nothing?”
“I suppose that as far as they’re concerned, children like Benji and Sybil Thatcher are nothing more than a nuisance causing trouble. It’s only thanks to one of the parish constables that the boy’s body was sent to Gibson for autopsy rather than being dumped in the poor hole after what I gather was a rather hurried inquest.”
Lovejoy frowned as the two men turned together into the narrow lane leading toward the arcaded market piazza. Covent Garden Market did its busiest trade in the early morning hours; by now, the crowds were beginning to thin and some of the stall keepers were already putting up their shutters. With the increasing heat of the day, a sweet, sickly stench had begun to rise from the layers of cabbage leaves, smashed fruit, and manure underfoot.
Sebastian said, “You haven’t heard of any similar deaths in other parts of London?”
“Good heavens, no.”
“But then you weren’t told about Benji and his missing sister, either.”
“True,” admitted Lovejoy, his face troubled. “Yet surely this is an isolated case?”
“It could be.” Sebastian watched as a ragged girl of nine or ten snatched an apple from a nearby stall and took off running across the piazza, her bare feet sliding in the muck, the stall keeper’s shouts lost in the din of the market. “What worries me is that Benji was only found by accident, and there are rumors of other children disappearing from the streets of Clerkenwell. If what I’m hearing is right—if Benji’s killers are gentlemen—then it’s possible they’ve taken street children from other parts of the city as well. Why confine themselves to Clerkenwell?”
There were tens of thousands of ragged children on the streets of London. Some had at least one parent, but many were utterly alone. They eked out miserable existences, sweeping crossings, running errands, and selling watercress picked from the ditches outside the city. And when that failed, they frequently turned to begging, stealing, and prostituting themselves. Sleeping in doorways, under bridges, or beneath the stalls of markets like Covent Garden, they formed the most vulnerable segment of the city’s motley population of poor. Someone could pull one child under in Clerkenwell, another in Tower Hamlets, another in St. Giles, and no one would ever notice. Or care.