‘You don’t strike me as a man who does what he’s told.’
‘Shows what you know. My family have sailed the Middle Passage since the days of the Virgin Queen. There have been Frank Drakes here in town ever since the first Drake set out to find black gold on the Guinea coast and knocked up a Deptford doxy on his way through town. I was twelve years old on my first voyage. I saw a Negro put a spike through my best friend’s skull because he hadn’t followed orders. On a slave ship the captain’s word is God, and it’s good discipline that keeps a crew alive.’
‘You weren’t on a slave ship when Archer was killed.’
‘If I ever hoped to be again, then I had to do what Monday said. A man gets blacklisted, he’s finished in this town.’
‘That’s true,’ Child said. ‘And I believe Jamaica Mary told you she was with Drake in the bathhouse all night.’ So he had heard about my visit there. No prizes for guessing who’d told him. ‘It seems to me that Mr Drake is in the clear. As I believe I told you myself some days ago.’
‘Where is Captain Vaughan?’ I asked Drake.
‘How the hell should I know? In some cat-house probably.’
‘You spend a lot of time in brothels?’
‘What do you think?’
I took the silver ticket from my pocket and showed it to him. ‘You ever see one like this before? In any of your brothels?’
‘No.’
‘How about you?’
I thought I caught a trace of unease on Child’s face, but he shook his head. ‘You could buy half the whores in Deptford for the price of that ticket.’
I returned it to my pocket, and took out my notebook and pencil. ‘Would you write your name down for me, please, Mr Drake?’
‘What the devil for?’
‘A letter was left for me at the Noah’s Ark a few nights ago. Its author threatened my life. He used some choice phrases that reminded me of you.’
‘I don’t have to listen to this.’ Drake threw his bottle over his shoulder into the field. ‘Fuck your questions. Fuck your friend. Fuck you.’
He strode over to join the bait, and I raised my eyebrows at Child. ‘For an innocent man, he seems very upset.’
‘He can’t read or write. It is common with seafaring men. Perhaps if you tried harder not to upset people, then you wouldn’t receive such letters.’
The bait was growing louder, nearing its climax. I raised my voice over the bellowing of the bull. ‘Mrs Grimshaw says you were fixing a window in the inn on the day the letter was delivered. Did you see anyone who could have left it there?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
Child had been in London when Proudlock was killed. He had looked into The Dark Angel while he was there. Should I treat him as a suspect? I couldn’t see a motive. And surely he was too short to be the man I’d encountered last night at Marylebone? Yet I couldn’t quite put my finger on Peregrine Child.
‘On my last visit here, I asked you about The Dark Angel. You pretended you’d never heard of her. How was your trip to Whitehall? Did you find anything interesting in the ministry’s archives?’
If he was surprised that I knew his movements, he didn’t show it. Like Brabazon, he had sangfroid. ‘Just keeping myself informed.’
‘I confess I hadn’t associated you with such diligence.’
‘Ad altiora tendo. We all strive to better ourselves.’
His flippancy angered me. ‘Do you ever think about the dead slaves? I do. They fought, I have heard, but their limbs were wasted. They threw women and children to their deaths too. Did you know that? The infants screamed for their mothers, but their mothers couldn’t help them. They must have sunk like stones when they hit the water. What would you have done? Stood by and watched?’
My words sparked a greater reaction than I had anticipated. Child moved so fast, he caught me by surprise. He grabbed me by the collar and slammed me up against the trunk of the oak tree. He put his face up to mine, so I could make out the network of broken veins around his nose.
‘I don’t care how many Yankee soldiers you’ve killed. Or whose arse you kiss at the War Office. Talk to me like that again, and I’ll break your nose.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I was baffled by Child’s assault on me, not least because it was the first time I’d seen him animated about anything. He had always struck me as lazy and self-interested, but, fleetingly, I had seen a fury in his bloodshot eyes that had frightened me.
A little unnerved, I rejoined the High Street, which was busy with people returning from the bull bait. I noticed The Dark Angel’s owner, John Monday, walking on the opposite side of the road, but I didn’t approach him. I wanted to find out more about his stolen papers first. I planned to talk to Daniel Waterman tonight.
Walking beside Monday was the young mulatto boy whom I had seen at his house. Several passers-by turned to stare as they walked past. I felt a stab of compassion for the boy, an object of spectacle in this pitiless town. He reminded me a little of Ben, who’d been about the same age when we’d been parted.
I walked back along the road to Deptford Strand, deep in thought. Evan Vaughan. Opium. Monday in the Red House. The timings of Tad’s visits to Deptford. I was still trying to make sense of it all, when a handsome turquoise-and-silver carriage swept past me, then clattered to a halt a few yards further on. Two black footmen were clinging to the back, and with a sinking heart, I recognized the protruding eyes and squashed nose of Abraham, the mayor’s footman. As I drew level with the vehicle, the window was lowered, and Lucius Stokes’s head emerged. Behind him I could see Cinnamon in the carriage.
‘Captain Corsham,’ Stokes said. ‘You have returned.’
I smiled as cheerfully as I could. ‘As you see.’
I tried to catch Cinnamon’s eye, but she was staring at the floor. Her scarlet dress was cut low in the bodice, as all her gowns seemed to be. Red silk roses adorned her piled hair. How was I ever going to get a chance to talk to her alone?
‘I confess I am a little surprised,’ Stokes said. ‘I had been told that you now understood how unwise it was for you to be here.’
‘Whoever told you that must have been mistaken.’
He smiled. ‘I fear it is you who has made the mistake, sir.’
He rapped on the roof with his gold-topped cane, and the coach moved off again. Abraham turned to eye me sullenly, though whether on his own or his master’s account, I couldn’t know. I’d hoped to have longer in Deptford before Stokes learned of my return, but perhaps that had been wishful thinking. No doubt letters would soon be winging their way to Napier Smith and Nicholas Cavill-Lawrence. I’d been trying not to think about Smith’s threats and ongoing inquiries, but with this untimely reminder, how could I not?
*
I decided to wait until after dark before trying to talk to Daniel Waterman, in the hope that I could do so unobserved. In the meantime, I walked down to the dock. An idea was taking shape in my mind, and I wanted to test it.
Mindful of Mrs Grimshaw’s warning, I avoided the Blackamoor’s Head and the other slaving taverns, opting instead to walk along the quays. Little groups of sailors and stevedores sat around in the evening sun, playing cards or dice, drinking and smoking. The cheaper sort of whores paraded their dubious wares, and grunts of copulation drifted from the alleys.
As a gentleman, it wasn’t hard to make friends down here. I went from group to group, playing games of ‘Find the Lady’, buying an overpriced scrimshaw carving, paying to hear a sea shanty, asking questions. I discovered that Captain Vaughan was in London, as well as Margate, as well as Bath, that he was dead, that he was in gaol, that he was anywhere in the world save for Deptford.
‘Do you remember who told you?’ I asked one meaty bull of a fellow, who was convinced I could find Vaughan in Lyme Regis.
He shrugged. ‘A sailor.’
‘Do you remember which ship he crewed?’
‘The Phoenix,’ he said, after a moment’s thought.
&
nbsp; I nodded, unsurprised. One of Monday’s men.
A little further along the quay, I noticed the old seadog I’d talked to in the Blackamoor’s Head, playing cards with some other sailors over a barrel. The game looked as if it was going badly for him, probably due to his evident inebriation.
I bought a bottle of rum from one of the hole-in-the-wall ventures selling liquor, went over and showed it to him. ‘Care to take a walk with me?’
He eyed the bottle longingly. ‘You’re not that redcoat Drake’s been on at everyone to watch out for, are you?’
‘Drake?’ I said. ‘Who’s he?’
The man grinned and took the proffered bottle.
We wandered along the harbourside, passing the bottle back and forth. He drank most of it, giving me the occasional sidelong glance to see if I’d noticed. He’d heard nothing more about Vaughan since the last time we’d talked.
‘Tell me, how do things stand between Vaughan and John Monday?’ I asked. ‘I heard they were close.’
‘Go back years,’ the man said. ‘Vaughan was Monday’s first officer when he captained for Lucius Stokes. Went with him when Monday set up on his own.’
‘There’s loyalty there then?’
‘Plenty of it. They say Vaughan saved Monday’s life once. He was knocked off deck by a block and tackle during a storm, out cold in the water. Vaughan risked his own neck to jump in after him. They’re different stripes of men, one of those friendships that’s hard to fathom, but I’d warrant Monday would run into fire for Evan Vaughan.’
The wharves were busy. A fleet of barges were ferrying the cargo of a merchantman moored in the dock. On the quayside, stevedores swarmed around the unloaded shipping crates, fastening them to ropes attached to thirty-foot cranes, hoisting them into a row of adjoining warehouses.
‘Tell me about the lad in Monday’s household, the one with African blood.’
‘The blueskin boy? What about him?’
‘Is he Monday’s child? I confess I find it hard to imagine him taking a black mistress.’
The man grinned, showing me his bright ivory teeth, pipe-smoke shrouding his grizzled chin and bloodshot eyes.
‘Depends if by “Monday” you mean the husband or the wife. This was a taste for black cock, not black cunny.’ He cackled, enjoying my evident astonishment. ‘She weren’t Eleanor Monday back then, but Eleanor Forrester. Owen Forrester was her first husband, one of Monday’s captains. Owen was delighted, they say, when his wife got with child. Less delighted when the baby came out brown. Now Eleanor tried to claim the child was a throwback. That happens on the plantations. A planter gets a by-blow on one of his Negresses, the child comes out white, and he raises it as his own. All well and good, until a few generations down, when out pops a tar-baby. Well, no one in Owen, nor Eleanor’s families had ever set foot on a plantation. The story was horseshit and everyone knew it.
‘Some in town said a Negro had molested her, and she didn’t want to admit it for the shame. That’s what Owen chose to think too. He blamed his house-slave, a boy named George. Owen and two of his friends took young George out to marshes yonder.’ He pointed over the water to the Isle of Dogs. ‘They say his screams carried all the way to Bromley. What he told them, nobody knows, but we can guess. The next day Owen up and left his wife.’
‘He thought she went with George willingly?’
‘Would you want a wife who liked black cock?’ His leer subsided into a frown. ‘Not everyone believed it, mind. Some in town thought she’d been badly done by. Old Monday tried to change Forrester’s mind, to no avail. He moved away to Liverpool and his ship went down a summer later with all hands. Then Monday went and married her – raised the tar-baby as his own.’ He shook his head. ‘Too much God. Sentimental old fool.’
For my part, I thought the story reflected well on Monday. ‘The child seems unhappy.’ I remembered how his half-sister had tormented him.
‘Mixing the blood weakens it. Everyone knows that. Probably touched in the head.’
Such prejudiced nonsense aside, it was a sad story – though one I doubted bore any relevance to my inquiry. ‘Are Vaughan’s relations with his officers—’
‘Beware below!’
The shout went up. I heard a faint whistling, the spin of a frictionless wheel. Glancing up, I grabbed the seadog and dived to the right, just as a net of shipping crates slammed into the quayside where we’d been standing. A snake of rope followed it down, the crash echoing around the wharves. I stared at it, shaking.
‘Are you hurt?’ I helped the seadog to his feet.
Stevedores hurried over to inspect the splintered crates and their contents. They seemed remarkably unperturbed about the near-fatal incident, more concerned with the question of how to get their sacks of sugar into the warehouse. As they pulled apart the netting, I stooped to examine the rope. The end was smooth, as though it had been severed with a knife.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Fortified by one of Mrs Grimshaw’s anchovy suppers, I sat in a secluded corner of the taproom in the Noah’s Ark, still shaken by the near miss on the quayside. It was the first time I had stopped in two days, and I only now realized how exhausted I was. I found myself thinking about Peregrine Child. His visit to the ministry’s archive showed he was more interested in Tad’s murder than I’d first supposed. Did he want the killer caught after all? I thought I’d seen a glimmer of humanity beneath the ambivalence that day at the dock. He had intervened with Drake in those alleys to save my life. Yet I also remembered the murderous look on his face when he’d slammed me up against that tree – and his friendship with Frank Drake suggested darker motives. I dwelled on the inconsistencies until my head hurt. Then I gave up, pushing all thought of them aside.
Long hot evenings are made for drinking and the taproom was crowded. I looked around for Nathaniel, but he wasn’t there. Perhaps he was still out looking for his dog, or making inquiries about Tad’s silver ticket. If I didn’t see him tonight, then I’d seek him out tomorrow.
A fiddler was playing a jig, trying to get people to dance and give him money. I stared through him. I had these moments with increasing frequency now, when grief gnawed at me like a canker. Tad would come so near I could almost touch him. I’d started to live for them.
I can’t find him, Tad. It’s too much of a thicket. I can’t see my way through all the tangles.
Of course you can. You only need patience.
You’re a fine one to talk. When did you ever have patience?
I waited years for you, Hal. You never came.
I’m here now, aren’t I?
Then stop asking me for help. This is your penance, not mine.
It isn’t penance, Tad.
What is it then?
A debt. A journey. Your last days. My life in yours.
That won’t bring me back.
You’re here now, aren’t you?
And then, just to spite me, he wasn’t.
I sat there drinking more than I should, until I decided he wasn’t going to return tonight, no matter how inebriated I became. The drinking songs were in full sway, and it was dark outside. With luck Daniel Waterman would be alone, awake and lucid. I went out through the door onto the High Street, then doubled round through the carriage arch into the stable-yard. I walked up the stairs to the living loft and tried the door. It wasn’t locked.
Candlelight cast a soft glow over Waterman’s sickbed. Cinnamon stood beside it, holding a copper basin. The sheets were drawn back, and Eleanor Monday was sponging Waterman down. The women were talking, but fell silent as I entered.
Such irony! How badly I wanted to speak to all three of them. Yet not together like this. What was Cinnamon doing here, after all she’d told me about Waterman drowning the infant slaves?
The boy moaned and writhed under the sponge. I winced at the sight of his stump, swathed in bandages. How easily that could have been my fate. ‘Close the door, please, sir,’ Mrs Monday said. ‘Or he’ll catch a chill.’
‘I came to see how he was.’
The boy groaned again and Mrs Monday stroked his forehead. ‘He won’t be able to talk to you about The Dark Angel, sir. Not tonight. Isn’t that why you’ve come?’
Her directness took me by surprise. ‘Yes, it is.’
I glanced at Cinnamon, trying to convey with my eyes that I was willing to help her. She looked away.
‘Even if he could talk,’ Mrs Monday said, ‘what makes you think he would tell you the truth?’
‘He probably wouldn’t. I am used to lies in Deptford.’
She nodded. ‘People lie for all sorts of reasons. Out of fear, or to protect the ones they love. Sometimes they lie to themselves. Those are the hardest to detect.’
Her words and her stare were unsettling. She appeared outwardly composed, yet her calmness struck a false note. Her hands twitched, and I sensed her emotions lay near to the surface.
Waterman moaned. ‘Mama.’
‘Hush, child. Your mama is gone. Yet I am here, Daniel. Mrs Monday.’
His voice rose. ‘The nigger has the knife, Mama. It burns.’
A sudden crash startled us all. Cinnamon had dropped her basin. The metal vibrated, water soaking the wooden floor.
‘Careless girl,’ Mrs Monday admonished her.
‘Forgive me, madam. I will go fetch some more.’
‘Quickly now. You know Mr Stokes doesn’t like you wandering off alone. And don’t go getting any ideas. It is a long way to London, and they will find you if you run.’
On her way to the door, Cinnamon’s eyes slid to meet mine. I knew she wanted me to follow, but it would be too obvious if I did so right away.
The door closed behind her, and I addressed Mrs Monday: ‘I saw you at Archer’s funeral.’
‘You are mistaken, sir.’
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