A Very Singular Guild

by Catherine Jinks

  Ned gasped. ‘But – but it can’t be!’ he stammered. ‘You ain’t barely touched it!’

  ‘I don’t claim I’m the one as caused it to die.’ Without warning, Alfred lifted his spear and drove it into the bogle – which didn’t so much as twitch in response. ‘Best to be on the safe side, though,’ he remarked. Then he yanked the spear free and wiped it with the handkerchief that he’d removed from his pocket.

  Ned stared at the bogle in amazement. It hadn’t shrunk. It hadn’t exploded. It hadn’t evaporated. It had died like a sick rat, leaving a sizeable corpse.

  ‘What’s happening, Mr Bunce?’ he croaked.

  ‘That I can’t tell you,’ said Alfred. ‘This ain’t summat I ever seen nor heard of.’ He glanced at the two policemen, who were hauling their captive to his feet. ‘I don’t know if it starved, or were poisoned, or died of old age,’ he went on thoughtfully. ‘But whatever killed it, we got to find out what happened. For if we can, our troubles will be over.’

  25

  MR CLUNY’S MONSTER

  Clerkenwell was a long way from Billingsgate. So Alfred decided to catch a green omnibus from Gray’s Inn Road, then walk to the Custom House from Fleet Street. ‘Once we’ve done our work at the Custom House, we may have time for the Monument, which is close by,’ he said. ‘But I’ll not attempt no job at the London Docks. Not today. For we must return to Drury Lane in good time for Birdie’s show this evening.’

  Ned gave a start. The show! Of course! He had forgotten all about it. I should be ashamed o’ meself, he thought, though he understood why Birdie’s debut performance had briefly slipped his mind. He’d been distracted by the sick bogle, by Fitch’s confession, and by the fearsome prospect of tackling all the other bogles on Alfred’s list – which the bogler must have memorised, since he wasn’t able to read the pile of telegrams that Mr Harewood had given him the previous afternoon.

  Now, as Ned trudged past the great wholesale warehouses on Cannon Street, he wondered how he could broach the subject of his own incompetence. Alfred was relying on him. Ned knew that. But was he really all that reliable . . .?

  ‘Did you hear what Constable Evans said, when you was packing away the salt and the spear?’ Alfred suddenly asked. ‘He said he’d be sending word straight to Constable Pike, so as John Gammon may be nibbed.’

  Ned grunted.

  ‘We’ll neither of us have to fret about Salty Jack, no more,’ Alfred continued. ‘Nor Tobias Fitch neither, now he’s bin fingered by Mr Harewood. Mr Harewood must have gone to Smithfield station house last night, for he were due in court this morning, to testify against Fitch. Constable Evans told me so. He told me they’d be laying charges of assault and attempted murder on Fitch, in addition to the counterfeit coin charge.’ Alfred frowned, his expression preoccupied. Against the majestic backdrop of the City Terminus Hotel, he looked soiled and shabby as he shuffled along in a light drizzle. ‘I’m glad Mr Harewood will be there in court,’ he muttered, ‘for Jem’ll need a deal of encouragement. He’s bin called to give evidence – did I mention that? Mr Harewood promised to collect him from Drury Lane, though I ain’t no longer greatly troubled as to his safety on the streets. Not now Fitch is banged up, and his master about to be.’

  ‘Mr Bunce?’ Ned finally found the courage to speak. A wagon was rattling past, however, and Alfred didn’t hear him.

  ‘Constable Evans promised to have a word with the inspector on duty at Clerkenwell Police Court, who will tell Mr Harewood about recent events,’ the bogler went on. ‘I must confess I ain’t so sanguine on that score, for police courts is all noise and confusion. But at the very least, Jem is bound to spot Mr Harewood. And with Mr Harewood backing him up, Jem’ll make a better witness than he would have once, when it were his word against Gammon’s . . .’

  ‘Mr Bunce?’ Ned tried again – and this time he was heard. Alfred glanced at him from beneath the sodden, sagging brim of his hat.

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘How did you know a bogle were in that basement?’ Before Alfred could reply, Ned glumly admitted, ‘For I could not feel it. Not till it showed itself.’

  ‘Well . . . that ain’t so strange,’ said Alfred. ‘It had no strength left with which to poison the air.’

  ‘But you felt it. You knew it were there before I did.’

  Alfred shrugged. ‘When you bin around bogles long enough, lad, you get a nose for ’em.’

  ‘I don’t think I have a nose for ’em, Mr Bunce.’ Ned came out with it at last – the bald truth – his feet dragging and his gaze on the ground. ‘You said I were born to the job, but that ain’t so. I didn’t feel the bogle at Clerkenwell. I fainted when I speared the bogle on Water Lane—’

  Alfred cut him off. ‘That weren’t no faint. You was knocked out.’

  ‘Which you never was, while killing a bogle.’

  ‘Lad, I’m nearly twice yer size, at present. Though I don’t expect I shall be for much longer, the way you’re growing.’ In the pause that followed, Ned shot a quick glance at Alfred – who was studying him intently, with narrowed eyes. ‘You expect too much o’ yerself,’ Alfred said at last. ‘You’ll make a fine bogler. I’d swear to it, if that’s what’s troubling you.’

  Ned didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say. How could he tell Alfred that he didn’t want to make a fine bogler?

  ‘What you need is a bite to eat,’ Alfred unexpectedly announced. ‘No man feels equal to nowt if his belly ain’t full.’ And he stopped by a cart selling roasted chestnuts, buying a pennyworth for each of them. After that, the rain set in with a vengeance; Ned soon found himself too preoccupied with the challenge of eating hot chestnuts in wild weather to chat with Alfred about anything.

  At last they reached the Custom House, which stood on the river next to Billingsgate fish market. It was a lofty building that seemed to stretch for miles along the quayside, though Alfred and Ned didn’t enter it from the river. Instead they used the northern entrance on Lower Thames Street, which was thronged with clerks carrying umbrellas, and seafaring men in oilskin coats.

  ‘Mr Harewood told me to ask for Mr Spiddle at the Queen’s Warehouse,’ said Alfred, casting a practised eye around the building’s noisy, crowded vestibule. Spotting a man with a porter’s knot on his shoulder, he lunged forward and caught the man’s sleeve. ‘Can you direct me to the warehouse?’ he asked, raising his voice above the din.

  With a jerk of his head, the porter indicated a door at the rear of the vestibule. Then he spat on the floor and disengaged himself.

  ‘Thank’ee,’ said Alfred. He hustled Ned past a knot of customs-house officers in brass-buttoned jackets, through a pair of heavy oak doors, and into a big, square, unadorned room full of shelves and counters that overflowed with goods. Scattered among the boxes and barrels and crates were loose rolls of cloth, stacked jars of chutney, several acres of East India matting, great sheaves of slate pencils, and a piano wrapped in woollen pads.

  ‘May I help you?’ A man addressed Alfred from behind one of the counters. He was pale and pinched, with a bushy grey moustache that looked as if it had been pasted on. There were heavy pouches under his oyster-coloured eyes, one of which was magnified by a monocle on a black ribbon. He wore a dark serge waistcoat over a crumpled white shirt.

  ‘I’m looking for Mr Spiddle.’ When Alfred plucked a thin sheet of greenish paper from his pocket, Ned recognised one of Mr Harewood’s telegrams. ‘Concerning this here message he sent to the Board o’ Works.’

  ‘I’m Spiddle.’ The man set down his pen and emerged from behind the counter, adjusting his monocle as he did so. His voice was unexpectedly rich and sonorous, as if produced by a pipe organ. ‘Would you be Mr Mark Harewood?’

  ‘No, sir, I ain’t. The name’s Bunce. Alfred Bunce. I’m a Go-Devil man.’

  ‘Ah!’ One of Mr Spiddle’s sparse eyebrows climbed halfway up his balding head. The other stayed clamped to his monocle. ‘I read about you in the newspaper, Mr Bunce. You’re the man who kills b
ogles, are you not?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid you’re a little too late. I was about to send word, in fact.’

  Alfred frowned. ‘Beg pardon, sir?’

  ‘It’s been days since we communicated with Mr Harewood. So rather than wait any longer, Mr Cluny solved the problem himself.’ Before Alfred could respond, Mr Spiddle shouted across the room. ‘Alan! Would you come here, please?’

  Alfred and Ned exchanged a startled look as a short but very burly young man suddenly popped up from behind a heap of hatboxes.

  ‘Mr Cluny is our locker,’ Mr Spiddle told Alfred, ‘and first apprised me of the problem after our last Customs sale. We regularly sell off the goods that we’ve confiscated, as you probably know, and at such times our warehouse is open to the public. In the circumstances, it’s rather difficult to keep out some of the riffraff, and of course the first thing an accomplished thief will try to do is get down into the cellars, where we keep our wine and spirits.’ He suddenly turned to address Mr Cluny, who had joined them at the counter. ‘Alan, this is Mr Bunce, the Go-Devil man. He has come about our bogle.’

  ‘Ah!’ Alan Cluny had thin, sandy hair and grey eyes. He was red-faced and sweaty, and the sleeves of his grubby flannel shirt were rolled up, exposing his thick, sinewy forearms. ‘Ye’ll be wanting to see it, I expect?’

  ‘See it?’ Alfred repeated in amazement.

  ‘Aye. We killed it this morning, and havenae disposed of it yet.’

  Ned couldn’t believe his ears. Nor could he keep silent any longer. ‘You killed it?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘I did,’ said Mr Cluny. ‘With a cutlass and a poker.’ It must have bin sick, thought Ned. It must have bin! He opened his mouth to say as much, but Mr Spiddle was already speaking.

  ‘During our last sale, we had a clutch of young thieves make their way down to the cellars. They came screaming straight up again, claiming that one of their party had been eaten by a subterranean beast.’ Mr Spiddle pulled a wry face as his restless gaze moved past Alfred, towards a porter with a grandfather clock. ‘I wasn’t inclined to believe a word of it, until Cluny spotted something unwelcome among the hogsheads.’

  ‘A peat-black boggle,’ the locker interjected. ‘With blood-red eyes.’

  ‘He reported it to me,’ Mr Spiddle continued, ‘and I was put in mind of it again when Mr Harewood’s memorandum arrived. But then nothing came of my telegram, and the creature was making such a nuisance of itself—’

  ‘There are men amongst us who wouldnae go near it,’ Mr Cluny cut in, ‘though ’twas making its home among the wine-cases and the brandy-pipes.’

  ‘Indeed it was,’ Mr Spiddle agreed. ‘And being the warehouse keeper, I could not have the efficiency of this place imperilled by vermin. So I allowed Alan to do as he thought fit, and he cornered the wretched thing in the vaults.’

  ‘Which once I would have baulked at, when I thought boggles were something mair than flesh and blood,’ the locker confessed, sounding sheepish. But he brightened as he added, ‘Now I ken well enough that the Board of Works wouldnae be charged with exterminating demons, or suchlike, but would be concerned only with common beasties. So I set to work with good courage.’

  Ned was dumbfounded. Alfred asked suspiciously, ‘You’re sure it were a bogle?’

  ‘Come see for yeerself.’ Mr Cluny flung out his arm. ‘I’ll show ye.’

  Within a few minutes, he had guided Ned and Alfred down a flight of stone stairs and into the gloomy basement, which was divided into a series of groin-vaulted bays. Each bay contained wine casks of every size – barrels, hogsheads and butts – all stacked on top of each other. The air was saturated with the smell of spirits, yet beneath it Ned could detect a faint whiff of the river, which lay just beyond the granite wall to the south.

  ‘A sair job I had of it, shifting the thing,’ Mr Cluny declared, as he stopped to turn up the gas-lamps. ‘Like half a ton of gelatine, it was. But I packed it into a sturdy butt, and was about to dispatch it to the docks with the other condemned goods, to be burnt in the kiln there.’ Picking up a long steel prybar, he asked, ‘Did I do right, Mr Bunce?’

  ‘Aye. Like enough,’ said Alfred in a dazed voice. He then followed Mr Cluny over to a large, upright cask, which the locker proceeded to prise open. Hovering beside Alfred, Ned marvelled at the size of the cask. Surely the bogle hadn’t left that much of itself behind?

  ‘What do ye think?’ Mr Cluny demanded, wrenching off the cask’s wooden lid and tossing it aside. ‘Is that no a boggle, Mr Bunce?’

  Ned craned his neck to peer into the cask, which was full of something that looked like treacle jelly. When Alfred hesitated, Mr Cluny suddenly plunged the hooked end of his prybar into the mess and hauled out a floppy, drooling, distorted body part. Ned spied a gaping hollow lined with teeth . . . a blank, bleary, reddish orb . . . a flap like a giant pig’s ear . . .

  ‘That’s a bogle,’ Alfred confirmed, retreating several steps. And Mr Cluny let the grisly thing drop back into its final resting place.

  26

  MUDLARKS

  ‘Mr Bunce! Are you still about?’ Mr Spiddle’s voice came echoing down the stairs. ‘I’ve a bit of news you may want to hear!’

  Ned shot a puzzled look at Alfred, who cleared his throat and loudly answered, ‘I’ll be there directly, Mr Spiddle!’

  ‘Shall I nail this cask shut again, for dispatch to yon kiln?’ Mr Cluny wanted to know. ‘Or is it best dumped in the river?’

  ‘Burn it, Mr Cluny, if it don’t disappear in the meantime.’ Alfred tipped his hat and retraced his steps, with Ned drifting along behind him. When they reached the top of the stairs, they found Mr Spiddle waiting impatiently, a sheaf of paper in his hand and a pen tucked behind one ear.

  ‘There’s a dead bogle at Fresh Wharf,’ he announced.

  Alfred blinked. Ned croaked, ‘What?’

  ‘I just had it from one of our rummage crew. When I mentioned you were here, he said that a waterman had pointed it out to him.’ Mr Spiddle paused, but Alfred was speechless. So the warehouse keeper continued. ‘If you want to see it, you’d best hurry. For it’s under the pier, and will vanish at the next high tide.’

  Alfred took a deep breath. ‘Will you – can you . . .?’ Though he trailed off, Mr Spiddle seemed to understand that he wanted help.

  ‘Go down to the quay and ask for Donny Donkin. He’s the waterman you want to speak to. If he’s not about, ask someone else. All those fellows know each other.’ As Alfred and Ned glanced at the door through which they had entered the warehouse, Mr Spiddle flapped his hand towards another door, on the south side of the room. ‘That’s the way to the quay. Try the west stairs. You’ll need ferrying, mind – you’ll not be able to see a thing on foot.’

  Ned frowned. Even a short trip on a wherry-boat would cost them money. But Alfred simply nodded and mumbled his thanks, which Mr Spiddle received with a brisk farewell. Two minutes later, Alfred and Ned were bustling across the wide, stony surface of Custom House Quay, heading towards the west stairs and the forest of masts beyond them.

  Though it had stopped raining, dark clouds hung low over the river, mingling with yellowish smoke from hundreds of chimneys. Everything looked grey: the water, the mud, the boats, the buildings – even the fish being unloaded at Billingsgate Market. The only touch of colour that Ned could see was a clutch of red flannel shirts on the crew of a Dutch eel-boat. Among all the vessels packed together so tightly around the docks and wharves, there wasn’t a touch of gilding that hadn’t tarnished, or a lick of paint that hadn’t weathered. Even polished brass looked dull in the drab, wintry light.

  Most of the watermen who were waiting for business around the quay wore slate-coloured oilskin coats and sou’westers. As he neared the water, Ned spied a knot of these men at the foot of the west stairs. Some were smoking. Some were chatting to a uniformed customs-house officer. One or two of them glanced up when Alfred appeared at the top of the stairs.

  ‘
I’m in search o’ Donny Donkin,’ said Alfred, raising his voice over the clamour from the nearby market. Below him, every eye swung towards a man sitting in a shallow wherry-boat that had beached itself on the mud.

  ‘I’m Donkin,’ the man rasped. He had huge shoulders, grizzled hair, and hands that looked as if they’d been hacked from chunks of walnut. His face was as brown and seamed as a peach pit, but his eyes were a bright, clear blue.

  ‘The name’s Bunce,’ said Alfred. ‘I were given yer name by Mr Spiddle, at the Queen’s Warehouse.’ When Donkin didn’t so much as grunt in response, the bogler added, ‘He told me you saw a dead bogle by Fresh Wharf.’

  The customs-house officer snorted. ‘Dead bogle!’ he scoffed. ‘Aye, and that tangle o’ fishing nets out by the bridge is a sea monster, I daresay.’

  But Donkin ignored him. ‘You want to see it?’ the waterman asked Alfred, who gave a nod. ‘It’ll cost you sixpence. And a penny more for the lad.’

  Sixpence was an extortionate fee for two dozen strokes of the oar. Seeing the smirks of the other watermen, Ned opened his mouth to protest.

  Alfred, however, cut him off. ‘Tuppence,’ said Alfred. ‘With the lad. Or I’ll find someone else as can do it for less.’

  ‘Paid in advance,’ Donkin countered. Then he rose from his seat as Alfred began to descend the stairs.

  Ned followed, taking care where he put his feet. The stairs were damp and slimy, and strewn with people who hardly bothered to step aside as he passed. Some of them snickered when Alfred nearly fell while stepping into Donkin’s boat; his sack would have dropped into the mud if Ned hadn’t caught it in time. Luckily, the bogler managed to right himself without losing more than his balance.

  ‘Boy in the bow; you in the stern,’ growled Donkin. But even after Alfred and Ned had settled themselves, the waterman wouldn’t cast off until he had received his twopenny bit – which he inspected carefully, then tucked into his waistcoat pocket. ‘If you want a piece o’ that there crayture at Fresh Wharf, you’ll have a fight on yer hands,’ he said, as he grabbed his oars. ‘For there’s a crowd gathering already, and them mudlarks’d sell a dead man’s skull if it washed up on the tide.’