The Fiend in Human (39 page)

Authors: John MacLachlan Gray

BOOK: The Fiend in Human

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The Crown

She does not remember having entered the Crown, nor climbing the stairs to the office of Stunning Joe Banks, nor how she came to recline on his couch covered with a blanket, with Mr Whitty and Mr Banks hovering anxiously overhead, the latter extending a snifter of brandy to her lips so that she may breathe the fumes. She no longer trembles, nor does her mind occupy an animal state of absolute fear. Despite the events of the past hour she feels safe and warm – and decent, for the blanket covers the part of her dress which has been torn away …

Dorcas. The finding, stealing, matching and sewing of the squares of cloth was a thing they shared – both in the doing, which took many weeks, and in the wearing too, together or apart, as if they wore bits of each other wherever they went.

‘He ruined my dress, Mr Whitty. I don’t have another.’

Stunning Joe Banks speaks in a damaged growl: ‘A new dress is forthcoming within the hour, Miss, never worn, selected by one of the more dignified young ladies of the establishment, courtesy of the Crown. I have given instructions that it be worthy of a schoolmistress, or possibly a governess, and that
décolletage
is out of the question.’

‘I am not prepared to receive charity, Sir.’

‘The Crown is not prepared to receive quibbles, Miss. D’you wish to traipse about in your skivvies?’ So saying, the proprietor retreats behind his desk, there to busy himself with the accounts.

‘Miss Phoebe, I apprehend that you have undergone a terrific ordeal and have occasioned a severe shock to your system. Your condition is one of great delicacy and must not be disturbed further. And yet,
tempus fugit …’

‘Do not speak Latin to me, Mr Whitty, I don’t like it.’

‘Then might I intrude with a question in plain English?’

‘By all means, Sir. Ask anything you like. I am at your service.’ So saying, she places her hand in his, at which the correspondent flinches. Stunning Joe Banks looks up from his desk, gazes significantly at the two joined hands, and lifts one eyebrow in Whitty’s direction.

‘Mr Banks, I know what you are thinking. It is incorrect.’

‘I believe you, Mr Whitty. From what I am given to understand, womanizing may be the only weakness you lack.’

‘I am touched by your vote of confidence,’ remarks the correspondent, returning his attention to the young woman under his protection: ‘Miss Phoebe, when you told me that any person might recognize your attacker, what did you mean?’

With her hand remaining in his (noting his discomfiture), she reaches beneath her dress with the other and retrieves the knife, now with dried blood along its edge, which stain will require ashes to remove. ‘I meant that I have marked him, Sir, that he cannot conceal himself.’

‘Am I to understand, Miss,’ says the correspondent, glaring at the knife in her hand, ‘that you did not return the implement to Mr Owler, as we agreed?’

‘On the contrary, Sir, I did as we agreed. However, when Father finished his supper, I took it back again.’

‘Point taken, Miss. With such a literal mind you belong in the Chancery. And in the struggle with your attacker, I take you to say that you wounded him?’

‘I did. But not to kill, for I did not know where I should puncture him to make him stop. Instead I put the edge to his face, knowing that a cut along the forehead will produce a great amount of blood.’

‘Very perceptive, Miss,’ agrees the proprietor. ‘Many a match be lost thanks to a simple cut over the eye.’

‘You terrify me, Miss. The both of you terrify me.’

Continues Phoebe: ‘Also I acquired these.’ So saying, she reaches one hand under her dress, while still trapping Mr Whitty with the other; this time the hand emerges with a pair of round spectacles, smeared with blood and dirt, which she lays on the table beside the bottle of brandy.

‘They dropped from him as he struggled with Dalton the monkey-chaser. I picked them up, and I ran. The Lady Lurker was also there, as was the dragsman Taff Spring.’

‘Dragsman?’

‘Stealing from carriages is Taff’s speciality.’

‘Friends of the family?’

‘Acquaintances, rather.’

‘It is a wonder that the attack occurred at all – with so many acquaintances at hand.’

‘Not in the fog and dark, Sir. He would have done for me had I not my knife. He was surprisingly strong.’

‘Still, it seems a remarkable coincidence.’

‘I don’t think it was a coincidence, Sir. It was Father. He put out the chaunt.’

‘Put out the chant?’

‘No, the chaunt. That I was to be watched. Father can do that. He is well-known in the trade. When he puts out a chaunt, all of London will know the tale in two hours.’

‘And after you effected your escape – what then?’

‘Certainly the Lurker and Taff would have put out the word, and he would be followed – and nibbed once they have him safe in the Holy Land.’

‘And then?’

‘He will disappear, Sir. That is the usual thing.’

‘Disappear?’

‘Into a cess-pit. Such as you encountered that first day. He will be hit on the head and thrown in with the rest of the shite, please excuse my language. And nobody will see him again, is what I am given to understand, although Father would never discuss such a subject in my presence.’

‘Drown him in the cess-pit? It cannot happen.’

‘The Holy Land is short of timber. We cannot afford gallows, nor graveyards, for that matter.’

Adds Mr Banks: ‘One must admit that the cess-pit kills two birds with one stone.’

‘That is not the deuced point! A gentleman is rotting in Newgate whose life depends upon the emergence of the Fiend.’

‘I cannot help that,’ says Phoebe. ‘Mind you, there would be a trial first, it would be fairly done.’

‘By this I suppose you mean some kind of local Inquisition, as occurs in the colonies?’

‘The people of the Holy Land have tried their own since before your time, Mr Whitty. It is an old custom.’

Whitty turns to the proprietor: ‘Mr Banks, do you know anything of this custom?’

‘I have heard so. And from time to time I’ve noticed a particularly notorious regular to disappear of a sudden, no trace of his whereabouts and no knowledge from the Peelers. One chooses not to enquire further, as such customers are not missed.’

Whitty grasps both Phoebe’s shoulders with utmost urgency. ‘Look into my eyes, Miss: Do I appear serious?’

‘Indeed, Sir. Astonishingly serious, for you.’

‘Please believe me, it is vital that he not disappear.’

‘Why, Sir? And to whom?’

‘William Ryan is to be hanged on Monday. Your father knows this. If our man simply vanishes, an innocent man will die in his place. Your father will have traded one murder for another, and made a murderer of himself as well.’

She thinks about this, weighing her feelings for the gentleman against her native tendency to distrust such a complete outsider.

‘What is it you wish me to do, Mr Whitty?’

‘Go to the constabulary. Ask for Mr Salmon. Tell him everything that has happened. Give him the scarf as proof. Tell him where he should look.’

‘And what will you do in the meanwhile?’

‘I wish to speak to your father. Mr Owler and I have subjects in common.’

Stunning Joe Banks arises from his desk. ‘Then I shall accompany you. Alone in the Holy Land, dressed as you are? Mr Whitty, you would be stripped naked inside of ten minutes.’

The Holy Land

As the two gentlemen make their way along Cat-and-Wheel Alley it is as if they are on parade, past a gauntlet of lead-coloured men and women no longer in a position to sell themselves, all eerily silent as they watch the passage of two examples of comparative quality, hungrily scan them top to bottom like wolves, with eyes like drops of mercury.

‘Joseph, the route we have taken seems somewhat more degraded than most, if that is possible,’ says the correspondent, somewhat unnerved.

‘That is true,’ replies Stunning Joe. ‘But it is the fastest route, with the added advantage that these people are in general too weak to attack with any force. Keep your gaze forward, Mr Whitty, keep your hands free, and be pleased that we have not yet encountered the offal-eater.’

‘That is indeed a blessing, Sir,’ replies the correspondent, whose stomach is not constant.

As they turn down Mincer Lane, upon experiencing a flicker of moonlight Whitty stops to gaze upward at a slice of Prussian sky, against which he can make out the silhouettes of rooftops and washing, as well as rows of spikes driven into the walls immediately over his head, to facilitate passage from one window to the next; further on is a crescent-shaped bridge between roofs, and another behind it, built with the most paltry materials and in a state of near collapse, yet frequented as commonly as the street below.

Stunning Joe Banks notes the correspondent’s upward preoccupation: ‘There are indeed faster routes from one part of the rookery to the next, Sir. It is said that an escaper may pass from Covent Garden to Upper Regent Street in a quarter-hour. But I don’t know these ways, and they are littered with traps for the unwary.’

‘Believe me, Sir, I am content with our present progress.’

At the end of Mincer Lane is a crumbling edifice which was once an elaborate fountain of the Italian style, a centrepiece for the garden of some elegant town-house; now the mansion is a nethersken and the fountain a plebeian source of drinking-water, from which a man is indeed drinking – not by using a cup, nor even the palms of the hands, but directly from the bowl; indeed, his face seems entirely submerged.
Sensing their presence, our man raises his head, streaming with water, to investigate these two strangers, whereupon Stunning Joe hands him a penny.

‘I beg you to tell us, Sir, if we are near to Rosemary Lane?’

‘Aye, that be so, my good Sir. I’m after there meself. There are important goings-on, you know, for a chaunt has gone up and many as is in attendance.’

‘So we are given to understand,’ replies Whitty, who has just now realized that the man was not drinking water but washing his bald head. ‘If I may ask, Sir, what is your business or profession?’ For the gentleman is oddly dressed, in tight-fitting trousers and an outlandishly coloured shirt. As well, his face and hands are streaked with a dark brown substance.

‘Trueman Caul is my name, Sir, and I is in the nigger business. An Ethiopian serenader by trade.’ So saying, he holds up the bones which are his chief musical instrument, consisting of two pairs of elongated sticks made of elephant tusk and shaped in a peculiar way.

‘And where are your fellow serenaders, Sir?’

‘They ’as took up with the chaunt. I was delayed by an unforeseen complaint …’ Here the speaker pauses, having become distracted by the sight of Whitty’s companion. ‘Cor, Sir, if I may be so bold, would you by any chance be Mr Banks?’

‘I have that honour, Sir,’ replies the former pugilist. ‘I am pleased to meet you.’

‘Not so much as I, Sir. I were present at the bout against Caunt. It were a great moment, Sir. And a great moment it is for me now, Sir. I would ask the honour to shake your hand.’

‘With pleasure,’ replies the famous gentleman, extending his enormous, deformed hand, every bone of which has been broken and poorly set. To judge by the expression on the smudged face of the Ethiopian serenader, it is as if he has been granted an audience with the Queen, as if his life, however hard it may become, has now been touched by grace. The correspondent cannot help but remark on the paradox – that a hand that crushed the bones of one man may bless the life of another.

And so the two companions continue silently on their way, led by their recent acquaintance, whose ongoing announcement –
Make way for the distinguished gentlemen, please, Mr Stunning Joe Banks has graced us with his presence, do not disturb!
– appears to embarrass its subject greatly.

None the less, in response the denizens of the Holy Land step back and drop their heads slightly, and it is clear that the Iron Duke himself could not have provided a surer escort.

They turn another corner and now Whitty recognizes the court he visited earlier – the clothes-lines of Rosemary Lane, the coster carts and the stable-like structure which serves as the communal kitchen for the neighbourhood, now crowded with excited, expectant, ragged citizens, there being no room inside.

Notwithstanding the crush, their escort’s pronouncements continue in their effect, for the throng obediently parts for them, while at the same time crowding over one another to catch a glimpse of a true hero of their kind, an exemplar of physical courage. Among the throng Whitty recognizes a woman who has a short pipe in her mouth and a wolfish-looking dog beside her; she nods to him in similar acknowledgement – which puts him in mind of the consumptive young man in the blue stable-rug, doubtless now deceased, such being the transience of life in the Holy Land, akin to a battle-zone. Now he sees that their Ethiopian serenader has disappeared – never, in all probability, will they meet again in this lifetime; whereupon it occurs to him that the chief difference between the Holy Land and proper London is neither one of ferocity nor squalor, but rather one of speed, in that the pains of a lifetime occur in swift succession here.

They pass through the green doors, jammed open by the pressing crowd, and already Whitty recognizes the heavy smell of fat and fish, augmented by the cheap tobacco of a hundred pipes, and the rancid odour of wool hardened by the combined sweat of a succession of wearers. The hole in the ceiling admits naught but the barest hint of moonlight. Gradually he discerns, in the inadequate gaslight, that in place of the culinary activities of his previous visit, what is in progress can only be described as a trial. Spectators crush upon them from all sides and fill the structure to capacity. They are muted, even solemn (with no drinking in evidence), as they perch attentively at and upon tables, those in the rear standing upon benches to obtain a better view, all facing the communal stove, where tables have been pushed together to form a kind of stage.

On a bench placed upon the table to the right and in charge of the proceeding perches the elderly, scrawny figure of Mrs Organ, whose customary occupation is to ladle out the substance Whitty could not think of putting into his mouth. Evidently it is the good woman’s additional charge (perhaps by virtue of being the keeper of the stove) to
deal out a measure of justice – an equally uncertain concoction. On the table to the left stands Mr Hollow, unsteadily, who appears to speak on behalf of the prisoner; Mr Owler, seated nearby, for his part plays a prosecutor’s role, which he has evidently just completed, for he is very red in the face and wiping his eyes, while sweating profusely from tension and effort.

On the centre table, meanwhile, surrounded by two stout black Irishmen in tweed caps, a chair has been placed on which sits a man Whitty recognizes, squinting into the darkness. On his face is a serious wound, a long cut like the work of a surgeon, straight from forehead to jaw, which gives him the aspect of a Harlequin, the kind with a two-coloured face.

It is some moments before Whitty can discern what is happening, and that the voice is that of Mr Hollow. The distance of the voice lends an abstracted presence, something like the speech of a ventriloquist’s puppet:

‘My purpose here is to remind my brethren of this: notwithstanding that the offences of which the gentleman stands accused offend all Christian decency and civilized practice, that they have occasioned untold injury to persons present, still a man is innocent until shown otherwise; moreover his offence, if such there be, must be regarded as an offence, not to any person present, but to Her Majesty the Queen. I say this as one who has more reason than many to wish him ill. God save the Queen, Gentlemen! We will be governed by duty, and not rage, justice, and not revenge …’

Whitty listens in amazement. Provided one kept one’s eyes and nostrils closed, the oration underway could be taking place in the House of Lords, declaimed by a senior eminence with the ministerial drone of a Methodist.

Covering the lower part of his face with his handkerchief to ward off the miasma present, Whitty glances at his protector, who seems unbothered and at ease: ‘I say, old man, how do you bear the odour?’

‘I have no sense of smell,’ replies Stunning Joe. ‘It was the Sweeney match what did it.’

‘May I say that at present I envy you.’

‘In my work it has advantaged me greatly. I can view the contents of a man’s stomach without a qualm.’

Now Mrs Organ stands and speaks – whose air of dominance seems to possess some ancient root; indeed, the degree of deference accorded to the crone is not unlike that of an ancient village for the
pronouncements of a witch. ‘You may speak now, young master,’ she says to the gentleman in the chair. ‘What say you, Sir, to the charge what has been laid before us here, for which you have been marked by blood and seen by witnesses?’

At the sound of her voice, the young gentleman looks up as though dazzled by some bright light, into which he squints with effort. In the meanwhile, the muttering of the crowd in attendance grows tentative and silent, indicating a willingness to wait and listen.

Whispers the publican: ‘Do you recognize the fellow?’

‘Oxford man. I was acquainted with him once – only slightly, for we were not part of the same set.’

‘So much for the benefits of a higher education.’

Indeed, on witnessing Sewell’s bewildered, inarticulate condition Whitty feels a sort of misplaced pity, like the empathy one might experience for a blind hedgehog – which, having destroyed a vital crop, now finds itself in the open, cornered, and facing the ruined farmer.

The young man moistens his lips in order to speak, at first without success; his mouth seems muffled and dry, as though stuffed with salt biscuits.

‘I wish to say … I wish to say …’ He stops in mid-statement, surprised anew by the position in which he finds himself. Now he continues:

‘No. Not possible. By which I mean to say that it is not right. I mean to point out that, with all due respect …’

Whereupon his small eyes widen as though a sudden inspiration has struck his mind. ‘May I remind you that I am a fellow Englishman, of … of, with no disrespect intended … a distinguished family. It is not right that I be placed in judgement other than by … by … other than by a forum of my peers. That is the way of it, duly assembled, which is to say a court of the Queen’s Bench, by authority of the Crown of England. I therefore request in the strongest possible terms …’

Here he pauses, overcome with alarm: ‘Police! Help! Police! …’ cries the prisoner hysterically, as though he were the victim of a buzzing in Covent Garden, which volley of cries occasions a corresponding shower of mirth from his delighted audience.

Notes the publican: ‘Your classmate is due for the school obituary, by my reckoning.’

, In the meanwhile, the crowd settles back into an atmosphere of ritual solemnity.

Comments the old woman: ‘The young mister makes a joke of
himself, not of us. We know what we know.’ The timbre of her voice, cuts through the smoke as scissors cut through paper.

‘I only point out my position, Madam. By what authority——’

‘You are out of order, Sir. There is no crusher to beat back the horde, nor a daddy to purchase your rescue. You are here before the citizens of St Giles what has suffered injury, being the effects of the actions of which you stand accused. That be our concern, and our dominion, and it is authority enough.’

‘What Madam means to say, Sir,’ adds Mr Hollow, ‘is that we in the Holy Land can speak to the workings of the Metropolitan Police and the courts, to our eternal disadvantage. This is well known. Our confidence in those civic entities is of a restrained nature. Nor do you show yourself to advantage by invoking your membership in the quality, to we as have witnessed the quality at their leisure.’

In response, a whisper erupts of extended agreement, like the rustle of a thousand palms rubbed together, accentuated by more pithy and quotable phrases, which combine into a ripple of seething voices, like hot soup:

He’s a downy little jemmy.

If the crushers nib him —

He as never get the fecking gallows.

Flam anything, they can.

Fecking scurf!

And my Jamie topped for passing snide!

They gets transportation.

Mizzle off to Canada.

Hear what he done to them girls?