by Tim Mason
“What’s his name?” This was the young girl again. Tom’s vision was blurred. He saw indistinct faces peering down at him.
A gruff, gravelly voice responded. “His name is ‘’Nother Mouf to Feed,’ that’s wot it is, ain’t it?”
“Well, that’s less than gracious, Hamlet, I must say. We’re not short of provisions here, are we? Not unless we’ve been disobedient.”
“’Bedient.” A male voice, adolescent, parroting.
“Who does all the cookin’, then?” growled the old man. “Me and Missus Hamlet, that’s who, but nobody cares about us and all our labors, no, not likely.”
“Hamlet?” said Decimus sharply. “Shut it.” A perceptible shiver of fear went through the room. Tom, squinting against the light, could feel it. “Perhaps, my dear Hamlet, you’d like to lodge with Mary Do-Not at the top of the house?”
Tom struggled to see the blurred gallery of faces that swam above him. As he later would learn, Decimus called them his children, although they ranged in age from young to old. They were servants one moment and pets another; they were subjects to be studied, court jesters, and tools. They were rewarded or punished according to their actions or their master’s whim but probably no more or less severely than the below-stairs populations of many a London household.
The girl was ten or eleven years of age. Her name was Belinda, but Decimus called her Blinky. She helped the Hamlets in the kitchen and scurried about the West End running errands and thieving. Blinky often returned from sorties into the wide world bearing tokens of her private enterprise: handkerchiefs and other baubles. Her thin arms were circled by bracelets from wrist to elbow. She had a pinched, knowing face, large green eyes that twitched and fluttered, and she could move as quickly and quietly as a cat.
John Getalong (named, like Blinky, by Decimus) was a gangly youth of about seventeen years. He had survived a childhood bout of the pox, but the disease had ravaged his face and his mind. He was intensely loyal to the Chorister.
Mr. and Mrs. Hamlet were an elderly couple who looked (and smelt) like carrion birds. Both had hunched backs, beak-like faces, and nearly bald heads. They had come with the house. Because they had served his adoptive father when young Decimus entered the household, and had turned a blind eye to their master’s use of the boy, Decimus punished them. For the first six months after his accession he kept them locked up in a stone shed in the garden, feeding them from scraps. When Decimus realized the two old vultures didn’t mind this treatment and, in fact, preferred it to their usual workload, he released them to resume their labors.
Compared with the others who stared down on Tom, the hated man looked almost normal. As far as Tom was able to see, it was a handsome face, smiling with interest if not warmth. Tom started to speak, but his tongue was swollen and sticky; an inarticulate squawk emerged. He tried to lick his lips.
“Can he talk?” asked the girl.
Hatred flared up in Tom’s heart, and he mustered his will. “I di’n’t see nothin’,” he croaked. “I don’t care who you are nor yet what you done.”
“Well, that’s a relief!” cried Decimus with a laugh, which was echoed by his menagerie.
“I’d never split on you,” said Tom. “Let me go an’ you’ll never see nor hear o’ me again.”
The others looked to Decimus to see how he would respond.
“Tom,” he said finally. “You are called Tom, are you not? Tom Ginty? You live above the Fortune of War, I believe. I must say, your mother is most attractive.”
Tom didn’t respond; new avenues of fear were branching and spreading rapidly throughout his body.
“I saw her just yesterday. I can see her whenever I choose, do you understand me?”
Petrified, the boy managed to nod.
“Tom, what if there was a very bad, very powerful man and you had the chance of stopping him from doing great harm to the world? Would you do it?”
“Let me up.”
“First answer my question, Tom.”
Pox-scarred John Getalong said, “Question, Tom.” Hamlet cackled with laughter and Mrs. Hamlet shushed him.
“Tom,” said Decimus, “would you kill for me? If it was the right thing to do, of course.”
Tom’s mind raced but not quickly enough evidently, because Decimus sighed and said “How disappointing” as he slowly swung the coffin lid shut.
“No! No, no, no, no! I mean, yes, yes, I’ll do anything, yes!” But it was too late. Tom went on shouting in the utter dark, alone again.
13
Field walked rapidly up Fetter Lane, toward Smithfield Market, his two constables hurrying to keep abreast of him. They were respectfully skeptical of the inspector’s theory that the killer might have brought the butcher’s apron, wet with Stevie Patchen’s blood, back to where he’d got it.
“It’s strange, I know,” Field was saying. “How do you explain the missing ear? That’s at least as odd, if not more so.”
“Treasured memories?” said Kilvert. “Or a warning to others, perhaps.”
“Maybe the killer was in a rage,” suggested Llewellyn. “Maybe he was punishing Stevie and got carried away.”
“But dressing as a butcher done up in blood means the killer knew all along he was going to do for Stevie, doesn’t it,” said Field. “We know the butcher’s costume and wheelbarrow were took from Smithfield, and now the butcher’s apprentice, I have no doubt, was snatched because the boy saw something.”
The din of the market rose as the three men approached. For centuries prior this ground had seen more than the spilling of animal blood; it had been a frequent site of public torture and execution. In times gone by, men and women had been dragged here from the Tower behind slow-moving horses, to be strung up, half hanged, cut down, and quartered. Run-of-the-mill public hangings in London had been banned only recently (again, to a large extent thanks to the ubiquitous Mr. Dickens), but the seamier transactions of the market continued unabated. It was known, in fact, as a place where a man could sell his own wife if he was so inclined, typically to avoid the difficulties and expense of official divorce.
The three policemen proceeded into the heart of the market, quickly finding the butchers’ stall in question. Dennis Merrydew blanched when he saw them and devoted his attention to dressing a lamb, but Jake Figgis touched his cap to Inspector Field and nodded respectfully.
“No sign of the boy?” said Field.
“No, sir. Nor yet the gentleman wot asked after ’im.”
“Look at this, Mr. Field,” said Kilvert, circling the stall and indicating a pile of bloody aprons and rags on the ground behind.
“You get through quite a load of this mucky stuff in a day?” said Field.
“When weather’s warm, like now,” said Jake, “it’s all got to be washed regular or it stinks, sir.” Field crouched to inspect the bloodstained fabrics.
“I don’t know, Chief,” said Kilvert. “It’s a good half hour on foot from the Mall to the market. Seems a long way to go, does it not?”
“Unless our man had other business hereabouts,” suggested Llewellyn.
“Figgis,” said the inspector, “does the name Philip David Rendell ring a bell? Or Stevie Patchen?” Figgis shook his head. “What about you, Mr. Merrydew?”
“Nossir,” said Merrydew.
“How do folk round here feel about the Queen? Anyone talk about topping Victoria?”
Both butchers looked scandalized. “Sir,” said Merrydew, “anybody in the market whispered such a foul thing, he might get out with his skin, but he wouldn’t find no work here, not ever again, sir.”
“Right,” said Field. “Never mind, carry on.”
The three policemen moved on to the Fortune of War and waited respectfully as a funeral cortêge processed out of the chapel next door and into the already crowded street. Once it had passed, Field and his men found the interior of the pub bustling with midday diners and drinkers. The landlord, Mickie Goodfellow, moved along the bar toward them, wiping his han
ds on a rag. He was tall and broad, a northerner with ruddy cheeks, black stubble, and a wide grin.
“Charlie Field!” he bellowed. “We’ve not seen you here for months! Got too famous for your old mates, didn’t you.”
“Still watering the beer, Mick?” said Field.
“Listen to the man!” said the landlord. “Slander! Perfidy!” Addressing the constables, he said, “To have a devil like this over you, you poor sods, how do you endure it?” As he spoke he pulled an ivory-handled pump, filling pint glasses one after another and shoving them in front of the policemen.
“Goodfellow here worked for my old man,” Field explained to his men. “Always had his hand in the till, did Mickie.”
“I’d never been paid otherwise! A nasty piece o’ goods was his dad, God rest his miserable soul. Lord, what a temper! But you fellows must know that, I imagine, since he passed it on to his son.”
Field stiffened. “No, he didn’t.” The two men stared at each other for an awkward moment. The landlord grinned again.
“’Course not, Charlie.”
“You do a thriving business, Mr. Goodfellow,” said Kilvert.
“I’d do a better if you’d drink the beer in front of you!”
“Thank you, no, sir. It don’t agree with me.”
Goodfellow’s face registered shock. He turned to Field and cocked his head. “Where’d you find the undertaker?”
“We’re here about Martha Ginty’s son,” said Field.
“Indeed? You got lunatics shootin’ royalty, but of course a runaway ’prentice comes first.”
Field’s complexion darkened. “You don’t change, do you, Mick?”
“Sorry, just jokin’! Poor Martha dotes on her boy. She’s in a right state, and who could blame her? My wife has her up in our rooms; she’s no good down here today.”
“Any idea who might have snatched the boy?”
“You believe that story? Tom’s a good lad, but come—he did a bunk, that’s all.”
“You reckon he’d do that to his mother? Run off, break her heart?”
Goodfellow had turned to watch two new customers, well-dressed gentlemen, moving through the crowd.
“Give it a day or two,” said the landlord absently. “He’ll be back.”
Field followed Goodfellow’s gaze. The two gentlemen glanced cautiously over their shoulders and pushed through a swinging door marked saloon bar. “You get medical men in here, Mick?”
“Fully half my custom, Charlie. God help us, but these physicians can drink! Makes you wonder, don’t it.”
“I’m looking for a tall man, sandy-haired.”
“Thought you was lookin’ for a boy!”
“Dark deep-set eyes. A surgeon, maybe.”
“Narrows it down to two or three dozen, don’t it.”
“This bloke moves in a strange way, according to witnesses.”
“Charlie, the Lord moves in strange ways. Witnesses? To what?”
“Her Majesty’s government is looking for a tall blond man,” said Field, slowly and deliberately, “who walks with a gliding motion, never you mind why. All I’m asking for, Mickie, is a little help.”
“Charlie, there’s a whole gang of ’em walks like they got wheels instead of feet—open your eyes! It’s not the doctors, it’s the holy men. You’ll find ’em at St. Bride’s, you’ll find ’em at St. Paul’s. It’s some new damn religious thing they got going.”
“Religious?” said Field.
“They call it High Church, Mr. Field,” said Kilvert with distaste. “All the rage at Oxford.”
“What’s religion got to do with the way a bloke walks?”
“God knows, Charlie,” said Goodfellow. “I don’t.”
Llewellyn put down his empty pint and started in on Kilvert’s untouched one. “There’s a good lad,” said Goodfellow. “You, sir, are welcome to the Fortune o’ War anytime, but leave these glum fellows at home, they’re bad for business.” The landlord continued in a lowered voice. “It’s grand to see you, Charlie. But please do not come into my establishment, which I got by the sweat of my brow, askin’ me to tell tales against my customers, ’cause of I won’t do it, and that’s flat!”
“A little less high talk from you, Mickie, or I’ll start wondering what you got going in the Saloon Bar. Girls, is it? Gaming? Why does everyone look guilty who goes in that door?”
Field slid off his stool. He strode through the crowd and pushed open the swinging door into the Saloon Bar. It was populated by a decorous crowd; gentlemen, by the look of them, speaking in small groups, quietly nursing their drinks. The two or three who looked up revealed by their cool appraisal of Field that he was of a lower order and didn’t belong with this lot—at least, that was how the inspector interpreted their glances.
Field let the door swing shut, turned back into the main room, and found Martha Ginty standing before him, desperation in her eyes. “He is my only child,” she said.
The inspector nodded somberly, turned and left, followed by his men.
14
Richmond Spa
The man in the wooden enclosure shivered as he removed his robe. It was just after dawn and a clean, chill wind eddied in through the slats. Naked, he surveyed his own body, then sighed. For how many of his fifty years had illness come between him and his work, his family? The thought that he might have passed on his mysterious affliction to the child of his heart, that she—dearest of them all—should have received from him an inheritance that had proven fatal, was almost more than could be borne. Sitting on the polished wooden bench, he closed his eyes and was transported aboard ship again, as he had been twenty-five years earlier.
The seasickness was forgotten. The smell of wood and brine filled his nose; his ears exulted in the creak and groan of the vessel, gently climbing and descending, climbing and descending. Everything lay before him. Everything remained to be discovered, to be comprehended, to be known.
With his eyes still closed, Charles Darwin groped for the chain and pulled it, releasing from above forty gallons of ice-cold water to fall thundering down on his body.
Standing just outside the wooden booth, Thomas Huxley heard the cascade of water and the frantic gasps of the genius within. How could a mind like his embrace tomfoolery such as this? he wondered. Like Darwin on the Beagle, Huxley’s four-year seafaring journey of discovery on HMS Rattlesnake in the Southern Hemisphere had earned him the respect of the scientific community. Initially skeptical of Darwin’s theories, he had approached them gradually, but the publication of Origin had won him over wholeheartedly. Now this square-jawed, outspoken advocate was due in Oxford in a matter of days to hear an American deliver a paper on evolution’s relation to social progress. It was widely known that the powerful bishop Wilberforce would be on hand to refute the professor and condemn Darwin’s theories. With Huxley present, Wilberforce would not go unanswered.
“Are you all right in there, Darwin?” he shouted.
“I’m an old hand at the water treatment, Tom,” came the still-gasping voice from the enclosure. “I won’t be a moment.”
The two men breakfasted in the sanitarium’s communal dining room, the air filled with comfortable aromas of toast and marmalade, sausage and coffee. There were five other patients in residence, along with family members and servants. Darwin’s eyes strayed often to one table in particular, where a young girl sat with her parents, delicately rapping an eggshell with a tiny spoon.
“Did you happen to see the essay in the Edinburgh Review?” said Huxley.
“When someone writes something truly nasty about me or my work, I can be sure that my dearest friends will send me copies.”
“You do know who wrote it, don’t you?”
“My dear Huxley, I’m certain that you do.”
“It’s not just me, Darwin. Everyone knows it’s Professor Owen! It’s cowardly!”
“How strange that a towering intellect like Owen, a naturalist superior to myself, by the way, should be envious of me.
”
“He’s not your superior in any way. He’s a vicious, mean-hearted sneak.”
“His work on the chambered nautilus will live, I believe, forever.”
“Chambered nautilus notwithstanding, if Sir Richard Owen sticks out his hawk-like head too far, I mean to hack it off.” Huxley noted the anxious look on his colleague’s face. “With a minimum of fuss,” he added.
Darwin shook his head and sighed. He had put off publishing his revolutionary theories for years, wishing to avoid just the sort of tempest in which he now found himself.
“Sir,” said Huxley, more seriously, “these scurrilous writings stir up the worst in people. They speak directly to the deranged and the violent amongst us. I assume the volume of threatening mail arriving at Down House has not diminished?”
“On the contrary. I do my best to keep it all from Emma, but I know she’s seen and read some of the letters. I can’t blame her being frightened.”
A young woman entered the breakfast room and paused at the door. Reflexively, Darwin attempted to classify her: twenty-two or -three years old, lustrous brunette hair, healthy blushing cheeks. He quickly glanced over at the table with the little girl. The child’s face lit up; the young woman crossed the room and kissed the girl affectionately.
Sister? Aunt? No, hired help, governess most likely, but much loved. How sick is the child, I wonder? She’s just about as old as Annie was.
“Darwin?”
He wrenched his gaze away from the girl’s table. “Yes?”
Huxley saw that tears stood in Darwin’s eyes and made a show of taking out his watch and consulting it. “I must be getting on,” he said. “There’s no chance of persuading you to join me in Oxford, then?”
“None whatsoever.”
“I’m told that Owen is holed up with Wilberforce in the bishop’s palace, coaching the man on his science!”
For the first time that morning, an impish smile transformed Darwin’s clean-shaven face. “I should like to be a dipteran on that wall.”