‘I think so. He said that after he had finished with them, the slave trade would never recover.’
I didn’t smile, though in other circumstances I might have done. It was the kind of thing we used to say when we were students together at Oxford. ‘We’ll end child labour. End bear-baiting. End slavery.’ Childish dreams, as impossible as they were laudable.
Amelia was waiting for my reaction, and when none came, she pressed on: ‘I told him that was ridiculous. The trade in Africans is worth many millions of pounds. It spans three continents. How could one man hope to end all that?’
‘What did he say?’
‘Only that he was going to Deptford to collect something that his enemies would want, something he could use against the slavers. If anything happened to him while he was there, then I should go to Harry Corsham. He said that you would know what to do.’
I stared at her. ‘He said that? I haven’t seen him in over three years.’
‘I think you are the only person he truly trusts.’ She held my gaze with those grey eyes that were so like Tad’s. ‘I do not pretend to understand what happened between you and my brother, Captain Corsham, but there was a time when he was your dearest friend in all the world. Will you go to Deptford and see if you can find him?’
Still I hesitated. I had no wish to see Tad again and open up old wounds. Yet how could I not?
‘Of course I will go. First thing tomorrow morning. In the meantime, do try not to worry.’
Her eyes were bright with emotion, but I did not want her gratitude. I only needed to know that Tad was safe. For that brief moment, when I’d imagined his death, I’d felt cold as marble in a crypt. It was as if a shadow had passed across my soul.
CHAPTER TWO
I slept fitfully, and woke before six. For over an hour I lay there, thinking about Amelia’s visit. Many times I told myself that my fears of the night before were unfounded. By the time I was washed and dressed, I had managed to convince myself that I would find Tad in Deptford, doggedly trying to change the world, blithely unconcerned at all the trouble he had caused.
Caro’s bedroom door was closed. I’d heard her come in last night, sometime after three, and I decided not to wake her. I went downstairs, where I asked Pomfret to have Sam ready the carriage. In my bookroom, I scribbled a quick note to Nicholas Cavill-Lawrence, the Under-Secretary of State for War, explaining that I had been called away from London on urgent business. Since I had been invalided home from America, I had been attached to the War Office, and was shortly due to enter Parliament myself. I made a difference there, I felt, though increasingly I found all the factions and the committees and the administrative labyrinth rather wearisome. I told myself that a day away from the intrigues of Whitehall would do me good.
I gave my note to one of the footmen to deliver, and then took breakfast with Gabriel in the nursery. We made castles out of kedgeree, which we stormed with soldiers made from toast. My son’s laughter had the power to drive all anxiety from my thoughts, and I left the house with my spirits much restored.
Sam took the road south out of the city, over London Bridge. The streets jostled with carts and carriages and gigs; the drivers smoking or swearing or flicking their whips to startle the horses of rival carters. We made slow progress, held up by barrowmen and farmers driving their flocks of sheep and cows to the Smithfield market. On the outskirts of Southwark, scaffolding covered the buildings, and labourers swarmed over them like ants. London was gobbling up the countryside in all directions, but at last we left the traffic and the bustle behind us. The wheels gave a long low note of protest against the turnpike as the horses picked up speed, and I settled to the swaying rhythm of the carriage.
I had never visited Deptford before, though I was familiar with Greenwich, which lay only a little way along the river. Yet I knew from my work at the War Office that the town comprised two separate settlements, joined by a road which cut through open field. Deptford Broadway was where the town’s merchant class lived, near to the toll-bridge where the Old Kent Road crossed Deptford Creek. Deptford Strand lay nearly a mile to the north, on the banks of the River Thames, and comprised the Public and Private Docks, the Navy Yard, and workers’ housing.
Perhaps an hour after our departure from my house in Mayfair, we rattled into Deptford Broadway. I glimpsed large stone houses and a street of elegant shops with curved windows. Gentlemen and ladies with parasols promenaded in the sun, followed by little black pageboys and towering African footmen. My intention was to find the town magistrate, who would be the best-placed person to know if a gentleman from out of town had fallen ill, or suffered an injury here in Deptford. I had Sam stop at the coaching inn, where I learned that the man I sought was named Peregrine Child. At this hour, I was informed, he would be down in Deptford Strand, taking stock of all the crimes that had been committed in that place overnight.
Soon the gentility of the Broadway was but a distant memory, and we were jolting along the rough dirt road towards the Thames. The carriage steadily filled with noxious air: pitch and sulphur, brick kiln and tannery, the stench of the slaughterhouse, sewage from the river. My apprehension at seeing Tad again had grown with every mile we’d travelled from London. Now it was sitting like a stone in my gullet. Why the devil had he told Amelia to seek me out? I had seen him only once since I had returned from America, over three years ago, and the memory of that meeting grated often upon my conscience. I regretted the hurt I had caused him, but I had no wish to revisit my decision. Our shared past was a dark and dangerous place.
We clattered into Deptford Strand a few minutes later, passing dingy brick houses and a large flint church. My bad leg was stiff after the journey and I was eager to walk it off. I rapped on the roof, and we halted next to a wide field of mud, which appeared to pass as the town green. This dismal patch of ground was surrounded by crooked rows of houses and shops, and a number of stalls perched on the mud were selling fish. Sam climbed down from his box, and fitted the steps for me to descend.
‘Have a drink in one of the taverns,’ I told him, ‘but make sure that you are back here by midday.’
There were a great many taverns for Sam to choose from. Men were already staggering along the street, though it was not yet eleven o’clock. Many wore sailors’ slops and had the wide-hipped gait men acquire after years at sea. A cacophony of whores were soliciting for custom, and I proved a magnet for their attentions as I walked in the direction of the river.
‘Feel its olive skin.’ One ageing Delilah touched my face. ‘Soft brown eyes like my daughter’s. Oh, I’ll take you to Paradise, my handsome soldier.’
Looking around myself at the rag shops and the pawnbrokers and the gaunt, grubby prostitutes, I struggled to imagine a more distant destination. I disentangled myself from her embrace, gave her a penny, and asked her for directions to the Deptford watchhouse.
‘You looking for Perry Child?’ she asked, showing me a mouthful of blackened teeth. ‘He’ll be having his breakfast. Try the Noah’s Ark.’
This establishment proved to be an old half-timbered inn on the north-west corner of the Green, the upper storeys leaning so far over the cobbles, I was half afraid the entire edifice would come crashing down on top of me. The road carried on to the river, and I paused to admire the vast brown sweep of Deptford Reach. The docks jostled with vessels of every conceivable size, a forest of masts pricking the cloudless sky.
Perhaps a dozen men sat drinking in the taproom, and they turned to stare as I walked in. The place smelled of fried fish; the conversation punctuated by the rattle of dice. A young man in a horsehair wig was cleaning tankards behind the bar, and I asked him to point out Peregrine Child. He directed me to one of the wooden booths in the tavern’s dining room, where a man of middling years was eating alone.
‘Mr Child?’ The man looked up from his fish pie. ‘Captain Henry Corsham.’ I bowed and he gave me a curt nod. ‘Forgive me for interrupting your breakfast, but I require a few minutes of your time.’
Child ran a sceptical eye over my uniform: from my black bicorne hat to my leather boots, by way of my scarlet coat, buff breeches and silk stockings. ‘What’s it regarding?’ he asked through a mouthful of pie. His accent was local, devoid of gentlemanly inflection, and he didn’t try to hide it.
‘A friend of mine is missing. He was last believed to be in Deptford. I would like your assistance in locating him.’
Child wore a shabby blue coat, and his cravat was stained with grease. He was about forty-five, I guessed, though his double chin and the full dress wig made it hard to be certain. His eyes were swift and button-black, his mouth was small and cynical, and his bulbous nose was a filigree of broken veins. A bottle of red wine, almost empty, stood beside his elbow.
He stifled a sigh, and gestured me to the seat opposite. ‘What’s your friend’s name?’
‘Thaddeus Archer, though most people call him Tad. He is thirty years old and he travelled here from London.’
‘A gentleman?’
‘A barrister. Lincoln’s Inn.’
‘Lawyers. My father used to say they were put on this earth to make excise men look good. I’ve never heard of your friend, Captain, I’m sorry to say.’
‘Mr Archer should have returned home five days ago now,’ I persisted, ‘but no one has seen him since he left London. His sister is concerned for his—’ I broke off as he started to shovel more pie into his face. ‘Perhaps I could wait for you to finish your breakfast, sir, and then accompany you back to the watchhouse? That way you could make notes.’
Child tapped his skull with the tines of his fork. ‘It lodges here, I assure you, sir. Lawyer. Archer. Sister. Do go on.’
I found Child’s manners to be as coarse as his costume, but I restrained my impatience. ‘As I was saying, Mr Archer’s sister is concerned for his welfare.’
Child took a long pull on his wine. ‘Look, I would like to help you, sir, but we have many visitors here in Deptford. They come and they go, and accidents happen. Men get drunk and fall in the river, or someone helps them fall. The Reach gives them up eventually, though there’s often not much left of them when it does. If that’s the way your friend’s gone, it could be weeks until we find him.’
It was plain that Mr Child had taken a dislike to me, probably based on my appearance and my class. Perhaps he also disliked me as a military man. I knew there were tensions between the town and the Navy Yard. It was time to dispense with good manners.
‘A gentleman has disappeared in your town and on your watch, sir. I have no desire to make trouble for you in Whitehall but, believe me, I will if you won’t help me.’
At last Child looked up from his breakfast. ‘Whitehall, is it, sir?’
‘I am attached to the War Office.’ I handed him my card. ‘Now which is it to be, sir, friend or foe?’
Child moistened his lips with his wine-stained tongue and regarded my card with a baleful stare. ‘Was your friend here on business, do you know? A lot of London lawyers have dealings with the merchants and the wholesalers in Deptford Strand.’
‘I don’t think his visit was connected to his legal affairs at all. Mr Archer had political interests too, the radical kind. One of his principal passions was the abolition of slavery.’
I anticipated further hostility on the part of Mr Child – I could well imagine his opinion of abolitionists. Yet when he spoke, it was with urgency rather than malevolence.
‘Describe him, will you, Captain, please?’
His bearing had stiffened and his eyes burned into me like coals. I was alarmed by the change in him, and a sensation of foreboding crept over my skin.
‘He is about five feet seven inches tall. Very thin, rather pale. Long black hair. People will remember him – they always do. He dresses like a lawyer, but he talks like a priest.’
‘An apt description,’ Child said heavily.
‘Apt?’ I frowned. ‘I thought you said you didn’t know him?’
‘Mutato nomine de te fabula narrator. Change but the name and the tale is told of you.’ Child pushed his plate away and wiped his mouth with his napkin. ‘Captain Corsham, you’d better come with me.’
CHAPTER THREE
It was the size and shape of a man, and covered by a sheet. Tad’s size. Tad’s shape. Acid flooded my mouth. Peregrine Child was talking, but I barely heard him.
‘Our corpse here called himself Thomas Valentine, and this wasn’t the first time he’d stayed in town. We found him four days ago, down at the dock. I have been making inquiries with the London magistrates, trying to locate his kin. If Valentine was an assumed name, that would explain my lack of success.’
We were back in Deptford Broadway, in the apartment of a surgeon named James Brabazon, on the first floor of the town’s apothecary shop. The room was fitted out with shelves of glass bottles and jars, and wooden racks of saws, knives and scissors. A dreadful smell hung in the air, not quite of putrefaction, but a powerful stench of overripe game that mingled with the surgeon’s cologne. I noted all these facts peripherally, for I only had eyes for the thing upon the table.
‘As I said,’ Child went on, ‘the description fits, but maybe you’d prefer to send for someone else? A servant who knew him, perhaps? The body is not a wreath of roses.’
I raised my head. ‘And I am not a flower girl. Please proceed.’
Child gestured to Brabazon, who pulled aside the sheet.
My world swam. I stood motionless, absorbing the shock. I had been expecting it, but still it hit me like a team of oxen. Tad’s fine-boned features were swollen, but still painfully recognizable. My eyes travelled over the gaping chasm in his neck, the countless cuts and abrasions that covered his body. The injuries seemed unreal, like a painting of a tortured saint.
I stared at him dumbly, wanting to shake life back into his body. I wanted to drop to my knees and pray to a God I was no longer sure existed. My ears buzzed, as they sometimes did at times of stress, damaged by proximity to the artillery cannon at Bunker Hill.
‘It’s him,’ I heard myself say. ‘That’s Thaddeus Archer.’
Brabazon offered me a sympathetic smile. He had a gaunt, narrow face and wore his own dark brown hair long, tied back with a ribbon. His eyes were quite startling: one blue in colour, one brown. Each stared back at me, brimming with concern.
‘Had you known him long, Captain Corsham?’ he asked in a soft Scottish brogue.
‘For over ten years. We were up at Oxford together.’ The words came distantly and didn’t sound like my own.
‘He died when the throat was cut,’ Brabazon said. ‘At the end, at least, it was mercifully quick.’
‘Brabazon believes he died not long before we found him,’ Child said. ‘Sometime during the early hours of June eighteenth.’
‘The timing of rigor mortis suggests it.’ Brabazon peered at me. ‘Captain, would you like to sit down?’
In my worst imaginings last night, I had contemplated his death – but never this butchery, this savagery. ‘Dear God, but he was tortured.’ I stared at a grotesque mark upon his chest. The flesh had been burned and some sort of design seared into it: a crescent moon turned on its side, so that the horns pointed south, surmounted by a band with points, like a crown. ‘What devilry is that?’
‘Whoever killed him saw fit to brand him like a Negro,’ Brabazon said. ‘It is extraordinary. I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘Turn him over,’ Child said.
I swallowed as I took in the raw mess of Tad’s back. ‘This was done with a whip,’ Brabazon said. ‘I’d guess fifty lashes. He was probably tied to a post for it. You can see the rope abrasions here – around his wrists and ankles.’
‘Show him the hands,’ Child said.
I’d already noticed them. How could I not? Each was grotesquely swollen, the knuckles puffed and purple. Some of the fingers stuck out at odd angles.
‘I fear a thumbscrew was used on him,’ Brabazon said.
‘A thumbscrew?’ I sta
red at him, appalled. ‘Where would a man obtain such a thing in this day and age?’
‘Oh, they are in regular use aboard the slaving ships. It’s not a pleasant aspect of the trade, I grant you, but sometimes their application proves necessary. If a cargo of Negroes are suspected of plotting a rebellion, for instance, the thumbscrew can force their plans out of them. I take a voyage as a slave ship surgeon every other year, and I have applied the device myself. Mr Archer’s injuries are entirely consistent.’
Dear God, these people. This town.
‘As I said, this wasn’t the first time that the man we knew as Valentine came to Deptford,’ Child said. ‘I had dealings with him myself. He’d been harassing one of the slave merchants here in the Broadway, and stirring things up with the local Negroes. I advised him to get out of town and not come back.’ He moved to stand over the corpse, pointing at Tad’s injuries as he spoke. ‘The whip. The brand. The thumbscrew. Slaving punishments. Your friend came here looking for trouble and he found it.’
Brabazon rolled Tad onto his back and stepped away. I knew this scene would be etched upon my memory forever. ‘Do you have the man who did this in custody?’
‘Not at present,’ Child said.
‘What are you doing to find him?’
‘What I usually do when I have a corpse and no witnesses. Issue a reward and see if anyone comes to claim it.’
‘In London many magistrates also investigate crimes.’
Child regarded me evenly. ‘This isn’t London.’
My gaze kept returning to the mark on Tad’s chest, imagining the smell as the hot iron burned his skin, his screams. ‘If the killer is familiar with slaving punishments, doesn’t it stand to reason that he is a slaving man?’
‘Doubtless he is, but half the men in town have worked the Guineamen at one time or another. That’s near three thousand suspects. I asked around the slaving taverns, but I didn’t find any answers. Nor did I expect to. Slaving men look after their own.’
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