I called the pamphleteer back. ‘Do you know where I might find the Children of Liberty?’
He shot a sidelong glance at the tapwoman, who shook her head.
‘I don’t know them, boss. I’m sorry.’ The man scurried off.
It was obvious that the tavern held a connection to the group, and I refused to be discouraged. I noticed an African in footman’s livery approach the huge man by the curtain. The pair spoke briefly and the latter stood aside to allow the former through.
Curious, I walked over and attempted to follow the footman. The big African moved to block my path. ‘This room’s private.’
‘Someone just went through.’
‘He had an appointment.’
‘Can I get an appointment?’
‘No.’
Trying to barge past him would have been an act of suicide. I was debating my next move, when I spotted a face in the crowd I recognized. Scipio was sitting alone in a corner of the taproom, next to a boisterous party of blacks racing snails. He’d said that he sometimes drank here when he was in London.
I walked over to join him. ‘Good evening, Scipio. How propitious that we should meet here, so far from Deptford.’
He rose and we bowed. ‘Mayor Stokes has business in London. He did not need me tonight, and so I have a rare evening in the city to myself.’
‘Does his business concern his new dock?’
‘Everything does, these days. The West India lobby are meeting tonight to decide if they will support our Deptford plans.’
‘How do you rate your chances?’
‘We have a strong argument, but the Wapping merchants will counter our proposal. Given the divided opinions of its membership, I anticipate the lobby will stand neuter. Then the decision will be down to a Parliamentary Committee.’
‘In which case you might have your new dock sometime next century.’
He smiled. ‘Have you come here looking for the Children of Liberty?’
‘Yes. You should know that the murderer struck again two nights ago.’ My smile faded. I was still much shaken by the memory. ‘This time he killed two women.’
He stared at me. ‘Which women?’
‘Archer’s sister and her maid. They were murdered at her home in Bethnal Green.’
Scipio sat down, visibly shocked. ‘You are convinced it was the same man?’
‘It would seem an unlikely coincidence. Archer’s sister was also tortured before she died.’
He drew a deep breath. ‘I can hardly credit that someone would do such a thing.’
I wondered if I could turn his evident horror to my advantage. I drew up a chair, and he made no objection when I sat down, seemingly lost in a reverie inspired by my news.
‘The killer is a monster,’ I said. ‘He must be stopped. I beg you to tell me anything you know.’
He blinked, seeming to collect himself. ‘I am sorry for your friend and his sister, truly I am. But I can say nothing that might jeopardize my position. Posts for educated Africans are scarce, and for all his faults, Mr Stokes appreciates my abilities.’
Yet I could sense the conflict within him. Perhaps I could ease him in gently. ‘Then let us speak of something else. When I was with Stokes the other day, some dead birds were left on John Monday’s doorstep.’
‘I heard.’
‘And you know this isn’t the first time this has happened. I hear Mrs Grimshaw saw you in her yard on one such occasion?’
I thought it unlikely that the birds had a direct connection to Tad’s murder. Yet it was part of the puzzle, and I wanted to understand it.
‘One of Mr Stokes’s servants had cut his hand badly that night, and needed a surgeon. I tried at Brabazon’s rooms, but he wasn’t there. His landlord told me that he might be at the Noah’s Ark treating a patient in the stable-loft.’
‘Did you find him?’
‘No, in the end I went to another surgeon.’
‘Did you see anyone else at the Noah’s Ark while you were there?’
‘Only Mrs Grimshaw’s son. We had an exchange of words. He was in the stable and I startled him, I think. Mrs Grimshaw is a woman consumed by fear and prejudice. I’m afraid she has raised her son the same way. He had many offensive things to say about my race.’
I wondered if there was a side to Nathaniel I had not yet seen. ‘Can you tell me about it? The dead birds, I mean?’
He smiled. ‘It is called obeah, African folk magic. Just as you have your wise women who bury apples under trees at midnight, we have obeah men and women with spells and potions and charms to make you fall in love or kill your rival.’
‘Is it commonly practised among Africans over here?’
‘Hardly at all. I know little of it myself. Some of those who were brought here from the Caribbean still cling to the old rituals, but even over there it is being slowly suppressed. In Dominica, where I was a slave, the obeah men were punished harshly. The planters thought it was a cover for insurrection. It probably was.’
‘Then you don’t believe it has any power?’
‘It has the power to frighten credulous men, which should not be underestimated. But it flies in the face of reason to suppose that it can curse or kill.’
‘Thank heavens for rational minds. There seem to be few enough of those in Deptford. Where did you obtain your education?’
‘In Dominica. My second owner was a good deal kinder than my first. He saw that I had an inquiring mind and taught me to read and write. In time he made me his secretary and gave me the run of his library. He was originally from Deptford, and when he returned to England in ill health, he took me with him. When he died, I attained my freedom in his will.’
Out of the corner of my eye, I was still watching the curtain, and I noticed another black footman go through it.
‘Do you know what goes on back there?’
He followed my gaze. ‘I have no idea. A brothel? Or more gambling perhaps?’ He shot a look of disapproval at the snail-racers on the next table.
‘How did Cinnamon come to be owned by Stokes?’
‘Her father was a white man, a commissioner of a slave fort on the African coast. Her mother was a girl from the local village. She was raised in some comfort, within the commissioner’s quarters, but after he died, she and her mother were sold by his fellow officers. Cinnamon was brought to England as a child, where she was trained to be a lady’s maid to a Bristol sugar merchant’s wife. Her master sold her to Stokes a year ago.’
If that was true, then Cinnamon could not be the slave who had returned to Deptford on board The Dark Angel. Was Scipio lying? To obfuscate my inquiry on behalf of his master? If not Cinnamon, then who?
‘Mr Stokes does not keep her as a lady’s maid,’ I observed.
‘No,’ Scipio said heavily. ‘But do not make the mistake of thinking her duties any less onerous.’
One of the snail-racers, unsteady on his feet, chose that moment to cannon into our table. He attempted to right himself and stumbled back into his own table, scattering coins and snails everywhere. His friends roared their amusement and one poured a jug of wine over his head.
Scipio’s jaw tightened. ‘No wonder Africans are looked down upon if such men serve as models. They have their freedom and look what they do with it. They make no attempt to better themselves.’
‘Plenty of white men squander their time drinking and gambling in taverns,’ I observed.
‘Your race has that luxury. Mine does not. If we are ever to abolish slavery, then free blacks must lead by example – in our conduct and our learning. We must be the living proof that our race are not animals, to be kept in chains. I look at men like that and I despair.’
His anger saddened me, and I realized I had little conception of the barriers he must face. I had heard of English Jews who, driven by the prejudice of their Christian neighbours, had shaved their beards and shunned their religion, so that they might pass as Christians themselves. No such course was open to a black man, and in many res
pects I was glad of it. Why should a man have to hide his true self away? Only by accepting our differences would we find a better way to live. Only by confronting bigotry would we slay the monster of division. Yet none of this would help Scipio, who seemed to carry the weight of English intolerance upon his shoulders. Africans escape one set of chains, I thought bleakly, and we simply fashion more for them. If there was such a thing as a savage race, then I was its sole representative at this table.
I was about to return to the topic of Cinnamon, when I noticed a familiar figure walk into the tavern. Moses Graham’s ample girth and huge wig provoked ridicule from the patrons standing nearest the door. He didn’t look as if he cared. His eyes searched the taproom with a distracted, anxious air. He saw me and froze.
‘Excuse me,’ I murmured to Scipio. ‘There is someone I must speak to.’
As I rose, Graham turned and hurried out of the tavern as swiftly as his legs would carry him. The taproom had filled up with drinkers from the garden and it took me a little while to fight my way through the press to the door. I stepped outside and saw Graham hurrying away down the darkened High Street. Cursing the limitations of my infirmity, I hastened after him.
The street was busy with revellers and a camp of gypsies on the common were dancing around their fire. Some of them tried to waylay me, pushing their heather and lucky charms into my face. I shouted after Graham, but he didn’t turn back.
He was nearing the end of the village, where the houses thinned and then petered out entirely. The road continued on into London, a sulphurous glow across a strip of darkened field. I called his name again. This time he turned, and then broke into a waddling run, abandoning the road and taking to the fields.
I cursed again, not understanding his fear. ‘I only want to talk to you,’ I called.
The moon rolled behind a cloud and I lost sight of him. Houses in varying stages of construction covered the ground between here and the city, muddy spaces marked out between the buildings for grand avenues and squares. The place resembled a city devastated by war.
The moon emerged again and I caught a glimpse of Graham, hurrying across a patch of ground between the grey walls of two half-built houses. I glanced around, uneasy. I had left my sword and pistol at home – as I always did when working in Whitehall – and these fields were notorious for thieves. Yet Moses Graham’s panic drew me on. Now, as at Tad’s funeral, he was behaving like a man with much to hide.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The ground was treacherous with hidden obstacles: bricks, tangles of scrub, broken tiles. Moonlight bathed the half-formed avenues and crescents, shafts of it piercing the empty windows of the tooth-like houses.
‘Mr Graham?’ I called. ‘You have nothing to fear.’
I could hear only a faint hum of music and laughter, drifting from one of the London stewpots. Now and then a carriage or a cart rumbled past on the London–Marylebone road. I reached the spot where I’d last seen Moses Graham, flitting between a pair of half-built mansions.
I heard a faint rattle of stones, and swivelled round. It seemed to have come from one of the larger houses, a future home for a marquess or a duke. I walked towards it, casting a wary glance around, and climbed the steps. Inside it was dark as a tomb. I struggled to dispel the ominous feelings this place provoked.
‘Mr Graham? I won’t make trouble for you, I promise.’
Silence. I crept further into the house, straining to see. I made out the sweep of a grand staircase and a half-laid marble floor. Scaffolding towers and carpenter’s benches rose amid the chaos. I could hear a faint rustling towards the rear of the entrance hall and I approached the spot swiftly. I rounded one of the scaffolding towers, and something shot across the floor, a vibrant streak of colour in the darkness. An unearthly scream pierced the night air. A fox.
As the echo died away, I heard another sound: a faint crackle, repeated at intervals, as if someone was trying to move silently across the debris-strewn floor. Tracking the sound to its source, I peered into one of the darkened rooms that led off the hall.
‘Mr Graham?’
I edged further into the room and heard a patter of footsteps. Instinctively, I stepped back, just as something heavy swept the air in front of my face. The blow caught me on the arm, but it was a feeble strike. I grabbed my assailant’s stick before he could hit me again, and pivoted him around to put him up against the wall. It was not a difficult endeavour. My assailant was large and soft and weak. Moses Graham.
His eyes were wild in the moonlight and his wig had fallen off in our struggle. ‘Please don’t hurt me, sir,’ he cried. ‘I never intended you harm.’
‘You swung a stick at my head.’
‘I only wanted to knock you down, so that I might escape.’
‘Why? I don’t understand why you ran from me.’
‘Didn’t you hear me at Archer’s funeral? I am in danger. So is Mr Proudlock. If our enemy knows that you and I have spoken, then you will be in danger too.’
I remembered Ephraim Proudlock from the funeral, Moses Graham’s skinny assistant in matters of art and abolition. I doubted their fear was connected to the painting of watercolours.
‘This is about The Dark Angel, isn’t it? Please tell me what you know. If the knowledge places me in danger, then I’ll take that chance.’
His eyes were flitting around in the darkness. His voice rose in agitation. ‘We thought that too at the beginning. But we didn’t know how far they’d go.’
‘You and Thaddeus Archer?’
‘And Mr Proudlock. The three of us who discovered The Dark Angel.’ He peered at me, biting his lip. ‘Have you seen him? Mr Proudlock?’
‘You don’t know where he is?’
‘He went missing two days ago. I was looking for him at the Stingo. Proudlock thought he was being followed, just as Mr Archer did. Sometimes I feel it too.’
So did I. ‘Someone tortured and killed Archer’s sister and her maid two nights ago.’
‘Oh, the poor woman.’ Graham sank his face into his hands.
‘There’s still so much I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘How do the Children of Liberty fit into all this?’
‘They don’t. I told you before, I have nothing to do with those people.’
‘Could Archer have involved them without consulting you? He had some of their pamphlets with him in Deptford.’
‘Why would they want to be involved? There is no profit for them in dead slaves, only the living.’ Graham’s voice was underscored with a contempt I didn’t understand.
‘What profit? I thought they helped slaves escape their masters?’
He shook his head. ‘They are bad people. Just know that.’
Perhaps Tad had needed bad people. Stronger allies than a gentleman painter of watercolours and his skinny assistant.
I studied his anguished face, his bald head, his crumpled clothes. ‘I need you to trust me, Mr Graham. Together we can stop the killer.’
‘He is protected. Haven’t you learned that yet?’
Protected by the West India lobby. The Deptford authorities. Men like Nicholas Cavill-Lawrence.
‘They protect him because they are afraid. We can take comfort in that. Now, please, Thaddeus Archer planned to prosecute The Dark Angel’s crew, that much I understand. And yet the slaves were property. No charge of murder could ever be brought. So how did he intend to bring the case to court?’
‘You just said it, didn’t you? The slaves were property. That was the key to it all. Everything hinges upon it. The crime, the prosecution, the murder—’
He broke off as light flooded the room. Not the bright white light of the moon, but the yellow light of a lantern. Someone had entered the building. We could hear him moving about in the hall.
‘It is Archer’s murderer,’ Graham whispered. ‘He has found us.’
I put a finger to my lips and peered into the hall. I could see the lantern, making slow curves through the air as the man who held it walked around th
e room. I couldn’t make out his face, but I had an impression of size and strength. Was it a nightwatchman looking for trespassers? Could Scipio have followed me here from the Stingo? Or was it the killer, as Moses Graham supposed?
Part of me ached to find out, but I was unarmed, with only Graham for assistance. Steering him by the shoulder, we crept away from the hall, towards the rear of the house, into a vast chamber that ran the entire width of the mansion. Plainly intended for summer balls, many doorways opened onto an outdoor terrace.
I could hear the man with the lantern behind us. He was still moving around, going from room to room. We hurried across the ballroom onto the terrace. It looked out over a long, muddy strip of garden with high walls on either side. I might have scaled them, but Graham hadn’t a chance. I had to hope there was a door at the end of the garden.
The terrace steps had not yet been built, and it was a drop of six feet to the ground. I lowered myself down, and Graham dropped heavily into the mud beside me. I peered over the top of the terrace, and saw that the light was now in the ballroom. Had he seen us? I didn’t know – but he was coming this way.
Graham was almost insensible with panic. I pulled him, unresisting, into the shadow of the garden wall. We froze as footsteps approached. The man stood at the edge of the terrace, his lantern sweeping the ground in front of it. He turned this way and that, cocking his head to listen. Frank Drake? Or John Monday? It was impossible to look more closely without revealing myself.
Each second felt like eternity. Graham wouldn’t stop shaking and I feared that at any moment, his panic would overwhelm him and he’d do something to give us away. The lantern stopped moving and the figure leaned forward. If he jumped down into the garden, he would surely see us. Sweat poured off me. My muscles twitched. Graham mouthed a prayer.
The figure turned, and walked back into the house.
Graham gave me a shaky smile. We waited a few moments longer, and then crept down the garden, keeping to the shadows. Relief coursed through me when I saw an open doorway in the rear wall.
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