Beneath London (43 page)

“To
Gilbert Frobisher
?” Finn asked, astonished to hear this.

“Indeed. The poor man is lost below ground.”

“He might still be alive,” Beaumont said. “We found the newspaper what wrapped his sandwich, if it was his and not the other’s – Professor St. Ives.”

A train clattered along overhead now, making speaking impossible for a time. Boats spun past beneath the bridge, the river running fast and high through the narrows.

“I know nothing of a sandwich,” said Miss Bracken when the train moved on. “Gilbert and the Professor descended together. Neither returned. But I won’t say that either of them is lost until there’s proof.
Show me the body
. I shall say just those words until my dying day. And what is your name, my small friend?”

“Beaumont the Dwarf, ma’am, although some call me Zounds.”

“How did you come to be in the house?” Finn asked Miss Bracken.

“I was taken off the street by the villain Smythe, who tricked me with a falsehood. I should have seen through him, for I’ve met his type often enough. But I very much wanted to believe he was doing me a kindness. My heart got in the way of my sense, I’m afraid.”

“Aye, that’s the way with hearts,” Beaumont said. “Smythe won’t bother you again. The worms already have him by the toe. Now that we’re all mates I’ll say that we must lie low until after dark and then go back the way we’ve come. It’s dangerous above ground with Klingheimer’s men looking out for us. They’ve got urchin boys, you see, who they’ll put to the search for a shilling or two. The sooner we’re down below, the better.”

“We mean to go underground to Aylesford,” Finn said, by way of explanation, although he scarcely understood it himself.

“Where my own Gilbert disappeared?” Miss Bracken asked.

“Just so,” Beaumont told her.

“That’s good. That’s
very
good. We’ll search for him. We’ll find my Gilbert and bring him out with us. That’s just what we’ll do.”

“When it’s dark we can go below,” Beaumont said. “I know a way. But for now we’ve got to lay up somewhere out of the way like.”

“Before we go under we’ve got to fetch Ned Ludd, Clara’s mule,” Finn said. “I rode into London on his back, and I won’t leave him behind. I made him a promise. We’ll take him along below with us.”

“A
mule
?” Beaumont asked.

“Yes,” said Finn. “He’s in Southwark, at the George Inn. Close by.” Clara squeezed his hand, for which Finn was thankful.

Beaumont stood contemplating and then said, “The mule might be the death of us.”

“Or the life of us,” Finn said. “He can carry two of us if the way below is hard. And the mule speaks to Clara. Ned Ludd is more alive than the heads on the plates, and he’s a Christian mule. It was Balaam’s donkey that spoke out loud when the Angel of the Lord was blocking the way, and he was let into heaven for it.”

Beaumont considered this. “My uncle had a mule as could ring the Pancake Bell upon Shrove Tuesday,” he said. “We give him a pan of grease for it.”

“There you have it then,” Miss Bracken said. “You can’t argue with the pancake bell.”

“Then we’ll cross the river in the boat these two men just left a-lying there,” Beaumont said. “But coming back to this side, even after night fall?” He shook his head. “And leading a
mule
? It won’t hardly answer.”

“Shush,” Clara said suddenly, and Beaumont fell quiet. There were footsteps approaching, and the four of them moved farther up the shingle, deeper into the shadows. A man appeared, stepping out of the sunlight and into the darkness beneath the bridge, and then standing still while his eyes found their way. Finn let go of Clara’s hand, ready to fight if he had to. If he was quick, he could rush the man and knock him into the river where it ran swiftly beneath the arch. The current would sweep him downriver long enough for them to run. The man looked roundabout himself carefully, seeing them now.

“Zounds!” he said, bending over to look harder at them. “Here you are then, with the boy and the women, a-standing about like statuary. It’s your infernal hat that caught my eye, Zounds. A man can’t hide in such a rig as that. They’re a-looking for you up and down. They found Penny and Smythe beaten and choked out, and they think it’s you what done it. Klingheimer will murder the lot of us for letting it happen when he comes back from Peavy’s.”

“This here is Arthur Bates,” Beaumont said, gesturing in the man’s direction. “I’m glad it’s you, Bates. You’ll not give us up. Klingheimer can go to the devil, and Peavy with him.”

“That’s right. But the word’s gone out for a reward if you’re taken, Zounds, so every boy in the street is looking out. London Bridge ain’t safe, nor Queen Street nor Blackfriars neither. Shadwell knows the girl’s from Aylesford, and they’re watching the roads east.”

“What of the house where they’ve been a-digging?” Beaumont asked. “Near Temple. You know the one, mayhaps, though they kept it from me.”

“Nothing. What of it?”

“Is there a lookout, I mean.”

“Not that I know. But I ain’t been there, Zounds, not recent. Why would they watch it?”

“It ain’t
why
would they watch it, Bates; it’s
if they ain’t
a-watching it.”

“Well they
mayn’t be
is as good as I can say. I’ve got to be on my way now. I won’t peach on you, Zounds, but that hat…” He shook his head.

“He is quite correct,” Miss Bracken said. “This disreputable hat doesn’t show your features to advantage. Not at all. You’re not a man who is difficult to look at when you haven’t got this egg upon your head.”

Beaumont blinked at her, apparently having nothing to say to this.

“And you, Mr. Bates,” Miss Bracken said. “Won’t you quit that dreadful place? You don’t belong in that house, a good man like you.”

“I’m owed nigh onto twenty pound, ma’am, and I mean to have it before I scarper,” Bates said, nodding a goodbye to them while already walking away.

They watched him out of sight and then turned toward the boat – the sooner across the river the better. The men who had arrived in it were nowhere to be seen. They were well heeled, it seemed to Finn, and could afford to lose their little boat, if that was what came of their borrowing it. Beaumont went straight to it and untied the dock line as if the boat were his. They climbed in, and within moments were skimming along downriver on the tide, Beaumont pulling hard and steadily through the shipping toward the opposite shore, all of them looking studiously at the water that sloshed across the planking in the bottom.

* * *

T
ubby stepped aside as he had been commanded to do, his back in the shrubbery, gripping his stick with both hands. As the first man rushed past, he swung the knurled end into the man’s face, a vicious, chopping blow that caught him on the bridge of his nose. His head flew back, and he fell into the arms of the second man, whose eyes shot open in surprise. Tubby’s bowler flew off as he speared the stick over the head of the first man, throwing his considerable weight into the blow and ramming the brass tip into the second man’s forehead, the two men falling in a heap together.

It came to Tubby that he might have killed the man with the broken nose, and in fact he appeared to have no nose at all, just a bloody pulp where it had been. It was time to retreat, perhaps. The second man tried to roll clear of his companion, however, and Tubby had no choice but to hit him a second time, catching him on the shoulder, and in that moment, yet another man, dressed in an apron, issued from the door carrying a bent iron poker. Without a second’s pause the new man saw what was what and pitched the poker hard at Tubby, who had time to turn his face aside and throw an arm up. He felt it carve a deep furrow over his ear, although he sensed no pain at all. His man was weaponless now, and so Tubby roared at him, gripping his stick and swinging it back over his shoulder – just enough room in the alley for a roundhouse blow. But his adversary was having none of it. He turned around and jumped back in through the open door, Tubby at his heels.

Tubby stopped himself at the threshold, however, and shouted, “Tell your master that Tubby Frobisher has come for him!”

There was an answering shout from nearby: “The
pistol
, Mrs. Skink!” and Tubby made away down the alley at a heavy run, snatching up his bowler and heading toward the Embankment. He had no desire to face down a man with a pistol in a narrow alley, and it occurred to him that with every passing moment there was more of a chance that his way would be blocked by the two men who had gone out into the street and might easily have come around behind, searching for Finn and his lot.

He felt his own blood running freely down his neck, seeping in under his collar. He probed the patch of scalp that hung loose, gingerly pressing it closed before placing the brim of his bowler along the wound and then painfully tugging the hat down until it secured the injury – perhaps the first hat-band bandage on record. He came out at Temple Avenue, seeing the open cistern that had stood there for a decade and hurrying down toward it, blessing the Cattle Trough Association for putting it there. The gray water was floating with horsehair, but he swept it clear and splashed it onto his neck by the handful, wiping the blood away, rinsing his hand in the trough and swabbing it again.
Clean enough
, he thought, heading down toward the cab-stand at King’s Bench.

“Half Toad, Smithfield!” he said to the cabby, and he slumped gratefully onto the seat and closed the door against the wind that blew cold against his wet clothing. Two of Klingheimer’s men trotted past, the one’s blue shirt giving him away as one of the first two that had come out through the door. Good – they were still searching. Tubby slumped lower in the seat, holding tightly to his cudgel, coming up again when his coach had rounded the corner and was moving away at a fair pace.

The afternoon was wearing on, and he wondered whether his companions were gone from the Half Toad, and whether they would have left him a message. He had stirred up a hornet’s nest for certain, against Alice and Hasbro’s wishes, not to mention being truant from the dinner meeting. But there was virtue in it. He had forestalled whatever fate had lain in store for Finn Conrad and his odd companions, and he knew beyond doubt that Finn and Clara were safe, at least for the moment.

The wound on the side of his head throbbed, the pain pulsing from temple to temple, but the bleeding had stopped, his hat-band doing its job. He thought about his luck – three against one, and he had lain out two of them and sent the third packing: a satisfactory rout. The coach headed up Old Bailey now, Newgate Prison off to the right, and within minutes Fingal Street and Lambert Court came into view ahead, and he saw the great wooden toad that looked out from over the door of the inn. A wave of relief swept through him, and it came to him that a roast chicken and a glass of beer would set him up admirably. Uncle Gilbert would scarcely deny him the pleasure.

THIRTY-FOUR

“
I
t’s time, Finn. Pull in the anchor,” Beaumont said, taking his pipe from his mouth and knocking the burning tobacco over the side. They sat in their borrowed rowing boat near the Bankside shore, with its tumbledown riverside buildings, the people picking their way across the mud that lay stinking along the water’s edge, searching for whatever might have been left by the falling tide. The four in the boat had spent the past hour out of the wind on the lee side of a schooner that also sheltered them from the view from Southwark Bridge, mostly from people crossing from the Queen Street side, which meant Klingheimer’s men. The schooner’s bow shouldered the current around the rowing boat, making for an easy anchorage. Blackfriars Bridge lay upriver, distant enough so that they were safe from lookouts, unless the lookout had a telescope. Night was fast falling, however, and with it came a modicum of safety, if they looked sharp and wasted no time.

Finn hauled in the anchor, the iron flukes dripping water on his shoes, while Beaumont was already pulling away. They moved along beneath Southwark Bridge toward London Bridge and the steps just beyond. When they were out of the shelter of the schooner, the wind grew sharp, but at least there was no rain falling from the heavy clouds. The ships riding at anchor in the Pool of London were dark silhouettes dotted with lamplight.