Caro had said that this would be his answer. I almost smiled.
I watched him walk off down one of the paths that bordered the canal, heading in the direction of St. James’s. As he passed the old woman and her cow, a short muscular African in a red hat detached himself from the group queuing for milk. He turned fleetingly, and our eyes met, though we made no acknowledgement. The scars on his face caught the light, as he fell into step behind Cavill-Lawrence.
*
The roads east of Southwark High Street, beyond Thomas Guy’s hospital, were narrow and airless. Most of the houses were half-timbered survivors of an earlier London, home to workers on the cotton and wine wharves that lined this stretch of the Thames. I wasn’t due to reconvene with Caesar John until later that evening, and so I’d walked down here, breathing in the rich odours of the river and its industries.
Tooley Street was thronged with workers from the tanneries and foundries, calling out to one another in their salty, riverside tongue. They weren’t heading home to their wives, but to the many bear gardens, theatres, bagnios and gaming houses that drew visitors south of the river.
Outside the Southwark Commedia a sign advertised a production of The Tempest. A pair of gaudily painted women, rouged nipples peeking over the tops of their stays, were sharing a pipe, watched over by a surly doorman. They tried to entice me inside, and I retreated a short distance to study the playbill I’d found in Frank Drake’s pocket on the ship.
The hand-drawn map on the reverse contained no street names, nor any writing at all. I took it as further proof of Drake’s illiteracy. It was clearly supposed to depict London – I could tell by the sweep of the river, the position of the bridge, and the dome of St Paul’s. The playbill advertised a production of Sheridan, held last month at this same theatre, which was marked on the map with an X. A second location nearby was also marked with an X, and I wanted to find out what it was.
Following the route on the map, I walked down a couple of side streets, heading away from the river. Eventually, I came to the road on which the X was marked. The street was lined with shops selling dusty vegetables, old furniture and clothes, as well as a tavern. On the map, these buildings were depicted by little squares. Two of the squares were annotated with symbols: a fish and three balls. The building marked with the X lay between them.
I walked along the street until I came to a pawnbroker’s. Two properties down was a fish market, and between them a masonry yard. The sign above the yard read: JM Law, Quarried stone, slate and marble. I stood back to allow a covered wagon to enter the gates, then followed it through.
A mason was squaring off blocks of stone in the yard with a rock-hammer. Other men ran to unload the wagon. To the side of the yard, outside a low building, two gentlemen stood talking. A large brown dog was chained up outside the building, and it barked as I approached.
‘Mr Law?’
‘Who wants to know?’
The man who had spoken was slovenly in dress, his wig and stockings yellowed. Masonry dust covered his shoulders like dandruff. His skin had a pink, hard-boiled shine, little piggy eyes peering at me over a receding upper lip. He aimed a kick at the dog. ‘God’s blood, Caligula, be quiet.’
‘Captain Henry Corsham.’ I bowed.
‘Jacob Law. You want stone or a mason?’
‘Neither. I’m making inquiries about a man named Frank Drake, a Deptford sailor. I think you may have had some dealings with him here?’
Law spat a lump of phlegm into the dust. ‘Don’t know the name.’
‘Let me describe him.’ As I did so, I saw his bearing stiffen.
‘Send you here, did he?’ His eyes had narrowed to a squint.
‘I’m afraid he’s dead.’ I held up a silver crown. ‘Can you tell me about the business you had together?’
He knocked the coin from my hand with his fist, eliciting a fresh round of barking from Caligula. ‘I said I don’t know him, you stupid, deaf cunny. Now get out of here before I set my dog on you.’
I thought about the significance of this encounter for many hours afterwards. When the answer finally came to me, I thought of Peregrine Child. For the first time, I believed, I properly understood the part he’d played in Tad’s murder and the events that followed. I felt anger, but also satisfaction.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The drum of Zephyrus’s hooves upon the highway echoed inside my skull. Each vibration sent fresh agonies through my body. Caro had sent for the physician last night and he had strapped up my ribs, yet they still skewered my insides every time I moved or coughed, as I seemed to be doing with increasing frequency. My fever hadn’t abated. I was hot as Lucifer.
Caro had begged me to wait before returning to Deptford. Yet, conscious that The Dark Angel would be sailing any day now, I had insisted. She and I had parted on distant terms. Perhaps, like me, she’d thought she should say more, but hadn’t been able to find the words. Gabriel had waved to me from the window. When I come back, I thought, I’m never leaving you again.
I’d returned to the Yorkshire Stingo late last night. One of Caesar John’s men had driven me across town, blindfolded once more, to the sponging house. There I’d found Cinnamon and Caesar John.
Cinnamon was sitting on the floor, wrapped in a blanket, a little way apart from the other runaways. She didn’t look up, or otherwise acknowledge me, seemingly lost within herself. Bronze, the tapwoman from the Stingo, was making soup for the slaves. Caesar John took me into one of the other rooms.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Where did he go?’
‘Piccadilly. At first I thought he was heading to one of the gentlemen’s clubs, but he was paying a house call.’
Caesar John described a large, elegant mansion on the park-side of Piccadilly. I knew it well. Everyone did. I had once met the duke who owned it at Carlisle House.
‘Mr Cavill-Lawrence seemed to be known there,’ Caesar John went on. ‘He was inside nearly three hours. After about an hour, a number of other visitors arrived in fine carriages.’
‘Did you see who was inside them?’
‘No, but I bribed one of the footmen for the names.’ He handed me a list. The names were all, without exception, familiar to me. One Member of Parliament, one judge of the King’s Bench, two peers of the realm, one not-so-distant relative of the King of England.
‘I think you just met The Dark Angel’s syndicate,’ I said.
*
Before I left the sponging house, I sat with Cinnamon. Hollow-cheeked and hollow-eyed, she pressed a finger against the bruises on her wrists while we talked.
‘I return to Deptford tomorrow morning,’ I said. ‘Before I go, I need to ask you about the obeah. Were you the one behind it?’
She gave that strange smile again. ‘It wasn’t I.’
‘Do you know who it was?’
‘I only know who it was not.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It isn’t real.’
I remembered Jago’s head in the flames. ‘It looked real enough to me.’
‘That is because you know nothing of obeah.’ She licked her cracked lips. ‘Neither does the person doing this. Maybe they’ve read or heard a few things. Birds and bones, yes. But rats, cats, dogs … It isn’t real.’
*
‘I say, sir, are you all right?’ The ferryman’s voice cut through my thoughts. ‘You look rather pale.’
‘I am perfectly fine.’ The Rotherhithe horseferry had docked on the south bank of the river. Clouds black as Cinnamon’s bruises scudded across the sallow sky. I mounted Zephyrus, still thinking about what she had told me.
The Africans had known, I thought, remembering Jamaica Mary’s smile – but they’d kept silent, enjoying the terror of the slave ship sailors. Someone had wanted to put the fear of God into them. Someone white.
*
My farewells in the sponging house had varied in length, but were consistent in theme.
Bronze gave me a look that said ‘damn fool’.
/>
Cinnamon offered me only a little more. She clutched my arm. ‘Don’t go back. It is dangerous in that place.’
‘I need to find the man who killed my friend, Mr Archer.’
She nodded, biting her lip. ‘Please, tell no one where I am.’
‘Even Scipio?’ I told her how I’d never have got her off the ship without his help. ‘I know he feels very badly about what happened that night at the villa.’
‘No.’ She said it forcefully. ‘I want nobody from Deptford to know where I am. Promise me, please, say you won’t.’
I could hardly blame her for mistrusting him. ‘Then I will tell no one.’
I gave Caesar John ten guineas. ‘This is for the girl. If I don’t come back, see that you find her a good lawyer. You should be careful too. Moses Graham will have told the killer everything. He’ll know that you know about The Dark Angel.’
‘I can look after myself.’ Caesar John cocked his head, examining my bruises. ‘Sure you can?’
‘I have so far.’
He smiled, unconvinced. ‘Sit down a moment.’
‘What is it?’
‘I want to tell you a story about a slave I once knew.’
Caesar John didn’t strike me as a man for stories. Nor was I inclined to hear one right now. Yet I was dependent on his goodwill for Cinnamon’s welfare.
‘This slave was born here in London,’ he said, once we’d taken seats by the fire. ‘His mother was a slave to a West India planter. He was taken from her when he was just five years old, and sold to a new master, who made a present of the boy to his lady wife. The lad was fine-looking and the lady made a pet of him. She dressed him up in a velvet suit and educated him alongside her own children. Sometimes she sat him on her lap, and fed him sweetmeats. In time he forgot his mother. The love of his mistress was all that mattered.’
I thought of Ben, my childhood companion. A little boy, plucked from his home. He’d found happiness of a sort with us, until it was torn from him once again.
‘As the boy grew older and less pretty, the lady’s manner towards him changed. She called him stupid and clumsy and sometimes she would strike him. When he was thirteen years old, he tried to run away, but he was caught.’
Caesar John played with his toothpick as he talked, turning it round in his fingers. ‘He expected his mistress to be angry, but the fact that he no longer wished to live with her seemed to chasten her. She told him she was sorry, and much of her old affection returned. When he cried with relief, she stroked his hair. She asked her footmen to bring a brazier, so they might roast sugared cobnuts together as they’d used to. They laughed and ate the nuts, and his resentment receded. Then she clapped her hands, and announced that he had yet to be punished. He saw a look in her eyes that frightened him, and he tried again to run. Her footmen caught him, and dragged him back. The lady herself pushed his face down onto the brazier.’ Caesar John’s fingers worked the raised ridges of his cheek.
‘Some months later, another black servant, seeing how he was mistreated, whispered to him the name of Thaddeus Archer. The boy managed to get a message to his chambers, and Archer came to the house that same day. He was armed with an injunction from a court, and he took the boy under his protection.’ His shrewd brown eyes met mine. ‘I know what it is to owe Thaddeus Archer.’
I smiled. ‘Do I take it there’s a lesson here somewhere?’
‘Stay alive, that’s the lesson.’ Caesar John stabbed the air with his toothpick. ‘Archer was brave and principled. He is also dead.’
*
I rode on towards Deptford, my mind a whirl of disconnected thoughts, trying to see the patterns that emerged. The obeah. The threatening letters. Monday’s slave brand. The silver ticket. Amelia’s murder. Stokes and the missing contracts.
I was running up that hill again, Tad the chalk man at its zenith. My leg moved as freely as it had before Saratoga. I put on a burst of speed and crested the rise, the sun brighter than a thousand stars. I spun him around laughing, but his countenance was sombre.
Don’t you ever heed anyone’s advice? Go home.
Follow your own path, I thought that was your motto?
Mine, not yours. You’re the one who always cared what people thought.
I wish I’d cared less, Tad. I really do.
A ghost of a smile. If wishes were wine, Hal, I’d never be sober.
I’m getting close to him now. I know I am. I can feel him, but I can’t quite see him.
He can see you. He’s watched you from the first. And he’ll come for you, just like he came for me.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
The porter at Lucius Stokes’s gate refused to admit me at first. His pinched face twitched with agitation.
‘I don’t care what you were told,’ I said, twisting Zephyrus’s reins around my fist. ‘Tell your master I have made an important discovery in my search for Archer’s killer. He’ll see me.’
I was counting upon Stokes’s curiosity. Only lately had I begun to understand how important my inquiry was to Deptford’s mayor.
When the porter returned, he had Abraham with him. He unlocked the gate, and the footman escorted me up to the house.
Stokes was in his study, standing over his model of the dock, adjusting some part of it that was not to his liking. ‘He returns. A thief in the night,’ he said. ‘That girl was my property, sir. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t summon Child to lock you up.’
‘It would be unlawful imprisonment for a start. I had an injunction from a magistrate.’
His face darkened. ‘You owe me fifty guineas, sir.’
Examining his countenance, I decided his anger was genuine. It was about the only thing that was, aside from his love of his dock. Everything for Lucius Stokes began and ended there.
‘Frank Drake didn’t kill Thaddeus Archer,’ I said.
‘We have a suicide note that says differently.’
‘It is forged. Drake couldn’t have killed him. I’ll soon be able to prove it.’
Stokes waved a hand. ‘Child is to convene a coroner’s court to discuss Drake’s suicide and the murders. You are welcome to say your piece there, if you dispute his culpability.’
‘I expect you’re counting upon me to do just that.’
He frowned, straightening his cuffs. I caught a waft of his civet scent. ‘What is this nonsense, sir? I don’t have all day. You said you had made an important discovery relating to the murders?’
‘Yes, I have learned the whereabouts of the contracts Mr Archer had stolen from Mr Monday.’
‘Oh, where are they?’
‘Right here in this study, I should think. Sometimes the simplest explanations are also the most likely. Ockham’s Razor. Peregrine Child told me that. You had Archer’s room at the Noah’s Ark searched the morning after his murder. That was where Child and Scipio found the contracts and they brought them here to you.’
He laughed. ‘Had I found those contracts, I’d have given them to Napier Smith.’
‘I have a theory about why you decided to keep them. Perhaps you’d like to hear it?’
‘It would be a waste of both our time, so I think not.’
‘Perhaps I’ll try my theory out on Napier Smith? I think he would be interested to hear it. Or perhaps you’d like to listen after all?’
He didn’t respond, and I took it as an invitation to continue.
‘It’s quite simple really. You wanted the West India lobby’s support for your dock, but you were starting to fear you wouldn’t get it. When Archer was murdered, you sensed an opportunity: those missing contracts.’
‘Preposterous,’ Stokes said, but his voice lacked his earlier conviction.
‘You needed The Dark Angel’s massacre to become a public scandal, because otherwise those contracts would be no use to you. Had I not returned to Deptford, doubtless you’d have found some other way. Yet you didn’t need to, for I was intent upon doing it for you.’
I was seeing a lot of puzzling eve
nts in a new light. ‘You couldn’t be seen to be working against the West India lobby, but that’s precisely what you were doing. I thought you were my enemy, yet all along you were my secret ally. You were hostile in public and private. You had Monday throw me out of his house. You sent those men to my room to beat me, and I imagine you told the West India lobby what you’d done, posing as their faithful servant. Yet you ordered Child to keep an eye on me, and make sure I wasn’t killed. You delayed telling Monday my real identity, so I could make progress, and you twice delayed telling Napier Smith that I was in Deptford. You also instructed Scipio to help me. He did, you’ll be pleased to know.’
Stokes reached out a hand to right a fallen model of a Guineaman, placing it gently at anchor on his plaster waves.
‘You see, if I found the murderer and prosecuted him, the investors behind that voyage, men of wealth and influence, would be desperate to keep their names out of it. The sole means to do so would lie within your hands. What price would you demand for the return of those contracts?’ My eye fell upon the model of his dock. ‘It isn’t hard to guess. If I explain all this to Napier Smith, I think he’ll appreciate the reasoning behind it.’
The room was silent except for the ticking of a clock.
‘Or we could continue to be secret allies. You give me those contracts, in exchange for my silence. It makes a lot of sense, when you think about it. You were prepared to gamble the future of your trade against the future of your town. Your private interest against that of your brother merchants. Mr Smith is unforgiving when he’s crossed, I have discovered that myself. This way we both get to protect ourselves.’
Risk and reward. That’s what it came down to in the end. Stokes displayed no emotion. He ran a hand through his thick powdered hair. Then he crossed to a mahogany bureau between the windows, and unlocked it with a key from his pocket. He returned with a sheaf of papers in his hand.
I leafed through them. Seven contracts, each signed by Monday and one of the syndicate. The Duke, the five visitors to his Piccadilly mansion, and the seventh: Nicholas Cavill-Lawrence.
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