I saw the logic in what he was saying. Now my inquiry must have unnerved the lobby again, and the order to send her away had been reinstated.
‘But she doesn’t know anything.’ I closed my eyes, correcting myself. ‘She doesn’t think she knows anything.’
Child didn’t seem to be listening. ‘I told her I couldn’t help her. It might be the law, but this was Deptford. The look she gave me … Will you tell her? That I’m sorry, I mean.’
I glanced at him distractedly. ‘Yes, of course.’
Child poured himself another glass, and raised it to an absent host. ‘Feci quod potui, faciant meliora potentes.’
I have done what I could, let those who can do better.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
I rode south, skirting Greenwich, towards Lee. Blackheath was notorious for highwaymen, and I kept one hand on my pistol. The rain drove harder, the wind stripping leaves and twigs from the trees, hurling them against my face. The road was a bog, and I was forced to check Zephyrus’s stride several times. Often, I could hardly see the road ahead of me. As I rode into Lee, thunder seemed to cleave the sky.
Dark brick houses behind ivied walls were shuttered against the elements. Following Child’s directions, I rode through the village and out the other side, emerging into open countryside once more. Forks of lightning lit up the fields for miles around. I glimpsed cottages and barns, manor houses and windmills. Then everything was plunged into darkness again, and little was visible through the rain. Another flash, and in the distance I saw the house Child had described. A mock castle in the Gothic style, a crenellation of battlements and turrets against the thin blue sky.
I reined in Zephyrus at the gate and dismounted. Tipping my hat to pour off the rain, I rang the bell. A servant, bundled up in a greatcoat, carrying a lantern on a pole, came out of the lodge and stuck his hand through the bars of the gate. I passed him a coin, but he frowned, shaking his wrist. I took it back, confused, before I realized what he wanted. Then I placed Tad’s silver ticket in his hand. He peered at it, smiled, and unlocked the gate.
In the courtyard, he took Zephyrus from me, handing me over to a burly footman, who had emerged from the house. ‘Come inside, sir,’ the footman said, with a wink. ‘We’ll soon warm you up.’
I walked up the steps to the front door, which was flanked by stone griffins. In the hall, I stood dripping on a Persian carpet, while the footman fetched towels. The air was impregnated with scents of orange, clove and cinnamon. A door opened, and a tall woman in a grey silk dress came forward to greet me. She was perhaps fifty years old, in the autumn of her beauty, with streaks of silver in her black piled hair.
‘Good evening, sir.’ She held out her hand for me to kiss. ‘Welcome to the House of Lilies.’
I started to introduce myself, but she cut me off. ‘No names, sir.’ Her smile was coquettish. ‘Only the fairest blooms you’ve ever seen.’
Once I had dried off, I followed the woman into a large parlour. I was offered a seat by the fire, and furnished with a glass of champagne. A few other gentlemen sat around singly or in pairs.
‘Your timing is exquisite, sir,’ our hostess said. ‘I was just about to call the girls.’ She crossed to a mahogany sideboard, and rang a bell.
I heard a patter of light footsteps on a staircase, and then a procession of girls filed into the room. Each wore a gown of satin or silk, trimmed with lace and bright ribbons. The fashions were Parisian and expensive. Their hair was coiled in glossy ringlets, and they smiled with invitation in their eyes. Our hostess commanded them to lift their skirts, so we might admire their stockings. They were, in other words, much like any other whores in any other exclusive brothel. Except that not one of them was over ten years old.
*
I feigned an attack of dropsy to get out of that place. Then I rode back to Deptford, buffeted by the winds and the rain. At least it served to cool the anger that ignited my soul. I understood Tad’s hold over Brabazon now, how the surgeon had been forced to become his creature. I wondered if Brabazon had been the sailor Tad had paid Caesar John’s man, Jupiter, to follow, and I supposed I’d never know. Yet somehow Tad had found his way here to the House of Lilies, and learned Brabazon’s foul secret.
I rode on, my thoughts spiralling, linking cause to cause like a chain. The first link the massacre, the last this point I’d come to now. Stokes and the contracts. My conversations with Scipio and Child. Monday’s lack of alibi. Vaughan’s insanity. Brabazon’s secrets. My conviction that Cinnamon knew something that could implicate the officers. Then suddenly I saw it.
I reined in Zephyrus on a rise, my heart pounding. I could see the killer’s face. I understood how it had happened. If I’d thought the knowledge would bring me peace, I was wrong. In the distance I could see the river. The Dark Angel was waiting for me there. So too was Captain Vaughan, locked down in the lower slave hold, hidden from those who would use his tortured conscience to further the cause of abolition. I understood the dangers. I could guess what else awaited me there. One way or another, this would end tonight aboard that ship.
*
In Deptford Broadway, I stabled Zephyrus at the coaching inn. When I was certain I was unobserved, I concealed the syndicate’s contracts inside his saddle. Then I walked down to the Strand and the dockside again, where I stood, rain lashing at my face. The wind had whipped the water to a heaving swell, even the largest ships tugging at their chains like tethered Leviathans. Each time the lightning flashed, I met The Dark Angel’s gaze, her wings unfurled, as if coasting the currents of the storm.
I imagined the river as a claw, cleaving the chalk of the Kent countryside, gouging the shores of Iberia, snatching up human plunder on the Guinea coast to deposit in the Caribbean – then shrinking back into this robber baron’s lair we called England. It corrupted everyone it touched, reducing each man to his price. Cavill-Lawrence and his friends in the ministry. Nathaniel Grimshaw and Daniel Waterman, boys chewed up and spat out. Frank Drake, who hadn’t been born a monster. Scipio, who blamed himself for the crimes of his masters. Each caught by the creature that was man’s avarice. The Devil’s Reach.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
The river’s current was fierce. The storm whirled around me. Rain beat against the rowing boat and my frozen face and hands. I kept getting caught in treacherous eddies, spun around, sucked downstream. A spear of lightning split the sky, turning the ships blue, iridescent. I heaved on the oars, my ribs stabbing my innards.
I had been wracked several times by shivering fits during the ride back from Lee, and I was gripped by another one now. Lightning flashed again, and I glimpsed the winged woman above me. The ladder still dangled from the ship’s northern side. I tied up my boat, and unbuckled my sword, before beginning the arduous climb to the deck. The heaving of the ship on the waves made it harder going than before. I gripped the ropes, buffeted by the wind and the spray. When I reached the top, I suffered the worst shivering fit yet.
The deck rose with each heave of the waves, the creaking of her timbers very loud. Drawing my pistol, I headed for the quarterdeck, and lit the lantern hanging inside the door. I stuck my head inside each cabin, but nothing seemed amiss. In the surgeon’s cabin, a couple of bottles had been dislodged by the rolling of the waves, and lay smashed on the floor. Otherwise everything was as it had been on my last visit.
Returning to the deck, I contemplated the hatch leading down to the slave decks. Steeling myself, I heaved it open, and descended the ladder. Lightning flashed, enough light penetrating the hatch and the air holes to bathe the entire vast space in a blue, ethereal glow. Chains, slave racks, cannons. Then everything was plunged into darkness once more, save for the small yellow circle around my lantern. The storm was nearly overhead now. Thunder rolled around the belly of the ship.
I put the lantern on the floor by the hatch to the lower slave deck. Kneeling to examine the padlock, I took out my roll of lockpicks. The lock proved much harder to pick than the one at the w
arehouse, and the light was worse. Eventually I found a pick that slid smoothly into the lock’s interior. I worked it around, keeping one eye constantly on the shadows, making my task harder.
I was acutely aware of how vulnerable I was. I had to use both hands to work the pick, my pistol jammed in my belt, the pool of light at my feet, the darkness beyond impenetrable. Finally, my pick found a new part of the lock to excavate. Very swiftly came a click, and the shackle fell open. I removed it and put both the shackle and the pick in my pocket, to preclude anyone locking me in.
I raised the hatch, and descended further into the bowels of the slave ship. Less light from the moon and the lightning reached down here. The air was fouler, the temperature hotter. Rain drummed against the sides of the ship, a constant ticking, like beetles. I held the lantern up. ‘Captain Vaughan?’
Silence. I inhaled the ripe stench, trying to detect the sweet aroma of opium beneath the flavours of death and corruption. A spike of bile rose in my throat, and I spat it out, shivering again. Once it had passed, I walked further into the hold. All I could hear was the creaking of timber and the rain and the thunder.
I moved like a tacking ship, from one side of the hold to the other, my circle of light travelling with me, my pistol drawn. I found more slave racks, more chains, more blocks and tackle to haul the cargo. But I found no trace of Evan Vaughan.
Only at the far end of the hold, where the shadows were thickest, did I find something interesting. A stack of shipping crates, about fifty of them, each stamped: PROPERTY OF HIS MAJESTY’S ROYAL NAVY. Drake’s gunpowder, I presumed, and much else besides. He’d probably been robbing the Navy Yard for years – whenever he was in port. He must have stored his spoils here until he’d accumulated enough to make a trip to London worthwhile. I wondered if it had been his lantern I’d seen out here, traversing back and forth. Then where was Vaughan?
Not down here, was the inescapable conclusion to which I came. I wondered if he could be somewhere else on board. I hadn’t yet checked the kitchens and ancillary offices in the forecastle.
Anxious to leave these oppressive confines, if a little troubled by the absence of Vaughan, I walked back to the hatch. I put my pistol in my belt, and holding the lantern in one hand, climbed awkwardly up the ladder again.
As I neared the top, and my head emerged into the upper slave deck, a dark mass detached itself from the blacker shadows around it, and came towards me fast. I reached for my pistol, forced to drop the lantern, but the man – for I knew it was a man now – kicked me in the face. I dropped back through the hatch, hitting the floor, striking my head.
The lantern had shattered and I’d dropped my pistol. I grappled around for it in the dark, staring in the direction of the hatch. I heard a thud as the man jumped down into the hold.
Lightning turned everything a dull grey. The man was striding towards me. I was on all fours, still scrabbling around. My fingers closed on the pistol. I rolled onto my back, and swivelled it round. I fired, the hammer dropped, and nothing happened. Everything went black. I fired again. Again the hammer clicked, and I realized, with a sinking, awful feeling of despair, that the powder must have got wet during my voyage out here. The man was nearly upon me. I scrambled to my feet. My escape to the ladder was cut off. I could see nothing in the dark. A primal instinct overtook me. Run.
I didn’t get far in the dark. My bad leg caught on one of the slave racks, and I went down a second time. Again the lightning flashed. I turned to see my pursuer bearing down on me. He had a length of chain in his hand, swinging it like a flail. Darkness again. I heard the whistle of the chain through the air. Then a crack and a loud rumble of God’s own thunder.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Cold metal against my skin. Blood on my face. Terror in my soul.
I knew right away where I was. In the surgeon’s cabin. Secured by fetters to that chair, my ankles chained. Hands manacled behind me.
A lamp flickered. On the wall opposite, I could see slave brands, thumbscrews, the speculum oris, like the tools of a medieval dungeoner. He had removed my coat and shirt. I could see them on the floor. On the dresser lay my pistol and the roll of lockpicks. Sweat glistened on my skin. The stove had been lit. My eye rested on its squat, black shape. I shivered.
I heard footsteps in the corridor. The doorway filled, and Scipio walked into the room. He went to the stove and raised the lid.
‘I guessed it was you,’ I said. ‘For a long time I was distracted by the trail of misdirection you laid.’
And by my glimpse of Amelia Bradstreet’s killer. That pink hand gripping the bannister pole. I remembered Scipio’s shock when I’d told him of Amelia’s murder in the Yorkshire Stingo.
‘Archer broke under torture,’ I said. ‘He told his killer everything. If the murderer had wanted the missing contracts, he could have gone to Archer’s room and retrieved them. There was no need to torture Amelia and her maid, no need to kill them. Once I knew the contracts had been found here in Deptford, I should have realized that those two poor women were killed by someone else.’ Remembering Amelia, anger flooded through me. Scipio might not have killed her, but she was dead because he’d set out upon this path. I thought of Moses Graham and Ephraim Proudlock. Their faces contorted in agony. Caesar John’s man, Jupiter, whom I’d never met. Most of all I thought of Tad and my voice thickened with fury.
‘To you those contracts meant nothing. You didn’t care about the syndicate. Nor The Dark Angel. Nor the massacre. Not really. I only guessed the truth when I learned Stokes had been planning to send Cinnamon away before.’
‘If you knew, then you should not have come back.’ Scipio blew softly on the coals in the stove. They glowed orange, scattering sparks. He turned to me. ‘No part of me wants to be here. Not for you. Not for Archer. All I wanted was to be left alone, to build a new life for myself here – but you could not even let me have that. You and Archer brought this upon yourselves, and by God, I wish you had not.’
‘You told me Vaughan was on the ship to lure me out here, just as you lured me to the Yorkshire Stingo, that night you hoped to kill me. Did you lure Archer here too?’
Scipio was pulling on a pair of thick leather gloves. ‘No, that was Brabazon – he hoped John Monday would kill him here, I think. I waited at the dock first to see if Monday would come. But he didn’t have the stomach for it. I cannot say I was surprised. Monday is too much in thrall to his religion to kill a white man, whereas Brabazon is the stripe of man who can only order others to kill. So I came out here and dealt with Archer myself.’
‘And Vaughan? Did you kill him too?’
‘That was my intention, but Vaughan wasn’t here. I’m not sure he ever was.’
He seemed satisfied now by the heat of the stove. I watched, my mouth dry, as he took a long iron rod down from the wall, and thrust it into the coals. I twisted my hands in the fetters, trying to work them loose, but it was hopeless.
‘It was clever,’ I said, aware that I was talking very fast. ‘Marking Archer with Monday’s brand, hanging him up at the dock, choosing slaving punishments for your torture, using Monday’s knife. Everyone presumed one of The Dark Angel’s officers killed him, and the town closed ranks, protecting its own.’
His patrician countenance was perfectly calm, but his eyes burned with anger. ‘Until you came.’
‘I presumed a Deptford motive, and that was a mistake.’ I eyed the iron in the fire, sweat trickling from my fettered hands. Keep him talking. ‘I presumed money was the guiding principle: the insurance fraud and its consequences. At root they were, I suppose, but only because they threatened the one thing you wanted.’
I pictured that chain again: each link a cause, followed by another link, another cause. I’d presumed the massacre to be the first link in that chain, but it stretched much further back than that. To a day when an eight-year-old boy had been taken from his village of dancers and fishermen and locked in irons …
I had seen Scipio’s darkness for myself, wh
en we’d drunk at my room in the Noah’s Ark. That long glance after the women in the stable-yard. His longing for a wife, for children. A woman as God’s plan. A way of making sense of a world so cruel it defied understanding.
It had all been there in plain sight, and I marvelled that it had taken me so long to see it. Every time we’d met, he’d warned me to stay away from Cinnamon. His anger at the way she was treated, coupled with his determination to keep her here in Deptford. Her anguished cry in the face of his fury that night at Stokes’s villa: How can you do this after everything you told me? Scipio’s curse was not to love a white woman, as I’d first presumed, but to love his master’s mistress.
‘What does Cinnamon know about the massacre?’ I asked. ‘The West India lobby ordered Stokes to send her away before, and you had to kill Archer to get her back. Now they’ve tried to send her away again. What is it she knows that she doesn’t think she knows?’
He took the rod from the flames. The ship lurched, and bottles slid along the shelves. Scipio grabbed hold of the doorframe to steady himself. He held the iron before my face. The tip was hot and white.
‘You are going to tell me where she is, and then I will bring her back to Deptford. Stokes will give me my old position back by way of reward. Drake will be blamed for the murders, and once the West India lobby discover that you are dead, they will let her stay, as they did before.’ He moved the rod closer, so I could now feel its pulsing heat against my face. I flinched from it. ‘If you tell me now, it will be quick. I told Archer much the same, but he didn’t listen. He lasted nearly two hours, but he broke in the end.’
I struggled wildly, the cuffs cutting into my wrists. Again I remembered Tad’s death-rictus leer, his silent scream. Again I thought of Proudlock’s mutilated body. Moses Graham’s bulging eyes. Gabriel growing up without a father.
Blood & Sugar Page 32