Though Garnet was not the warmest or most affectionate of guardians, he had always been lavish with his praise when he thought that Philo deserved it. And as Philo’s skills had developed, Garnet had become less demanding.
‘There’s folk enough who’ve helped me, over the years,’ Philo added, thinking of Garnet’s painstaking memory games. ‘I’ve naught to complain of.’
‘I was hoping you would say as much.’ Turning into Crown Alley, Mr Paxton added, ‘Two children lost their mother in the workhouse this evening. It has brought me as low as a cinder-wench. I need rum. Or brandy. Where should we obtain it?’
‘Ah . . .’ Philo tried to think of a respectable tavern in their immediate neighbourhood. None sprang to mind.
‘There?’ said Mr Paxton, pointing towards a cluster of lights up ahead.
‘Nay, your honour. That’s a common gin-shop. You’ll not find rum in that rowdy house.’
‘Gin will suffice,’ the surgeon declared. Then he seemed to have second thoughts. ‘Unless you’ve a taste for something else, Master Grey?’
‘I, sir?’ Philo gaped at him.
‘You’d bespeak me damned ungracious, if I was to drink alone.’
Philo never touched liquor when he was working – and rarely did it when he wasn’t. For one thing, Garnet didn’t approve. But small beer was as weak as water.
‘An’ it please your honour, I’d be grateful for a drop o’ small beer.’
‘Small beer it is,’ said Mr Paxton. ‘Where is the best small beer to be found hereabouts? You must know that, being so well informed.’
‘We should go to the Blue Bell,’ Philo answered. He felt safe suggesting the Blue Bell. It was a respectable house, and it wasn’t too far out of their way. Besides, Mr Paxton had been there before.
So Philo headed for the Blue Bell, asking questions to distract the surgeon from any other low boozing-kens they might encounter along their route.
‘How is Jemmy Jukes, your honour? Did he ever wake up?’
‘What? Oh. That fellow.’ Mr Paxton sighed. ‘I cannot tell you. He is no longer at the workhouse.’
‘He died, then?’
‘He was fetched away this morning, still alive. He may have died since.’
‘Who fetched him?’
‘Again, I cannot tell you. I was not there.’
Philo pondered this curious piece of information. Who would have bothered to come for Jemmy Jukes? He had no family in London, and his cronies were the same men who’d once abandoned Kit, when Kit was too ill to work.
‘Did he ever wake up, your honour? Did he ever talk?’
‘I believe not.’
‘He must have been wheeled away, then. On a cart or a barrow. Or carried in a chair.’ Philo decided that Valentine should make inquiries among the Irish chairmen. If Cockeye or Scamper had come to collect Jemmy from the workhouse, then they might have been responsible for knocking him out in the first place. ‘Belike those who settled Jemmy took him off to finish the business,’ Philo added gloomily, speaking more to himself than to the surgeon.
But Mr Paxton heard. He studied Philo for a moment. ‘You see a different world from most of us, do you not?’ he said at last. ‘A far grimmer one, on the whole. Who raised you after your mother died? Not the parish. You’re no parish lad.’
‘Look! There’s the Blue Bell!’ Philo dodged this question by gesturing with his torch as they turned a corner into Dirty Lane. He was relieved when Mr Paxton didn’t press him for an answer. Instead the surgeon picked up his pace, saying, ‘Hey dey, here’s a warm welcome! We need thawing, you and I. Come – Mr Coverdale will have a fire burning.’
The inn’s taproom looked very cosy, with its shining windows and open door. The babble of happy voices and the smell of hot sugar made Philo feel wistful. But he shook his head. ‘I’ll wait here, sir. Saves snuffing my link and lighting it again.’
‘Ah.’ Mr Paxton hesitated, then shrugged. ‘I’ll not be long,’ he promised, before plunging inside.
Philo watched him go, wondering how badly the man needed a drink. It was a test, of sorts. In Philo’s estimation, Mr Paxton was too decent to leave his linkboy standing in the bitter cold for an hour while he himself threw back dram after dram of liquor. Others might, but not Mr Paxton – unless the surgeon had trouble stopping when he started. Navy men were notorious tosspots, and Mr Paxton may have picked up the habit while serving his King and country. If that were so, Philo might have a long wait ahead of him.
But I’ve been well paid for it, he reminded himself, as his thoughts turned back to the lamplighters. It would be impossible to prosecute Josiah Billings for striking Lippy. There wasn’t a linkboy in London who could afford the price of an arrest warrant, let alone all the other fees – for drawing up an indictment, for swearing it in, for the doorkeeper, for the justice of the peace. It always cost a fortune to bring any kind of action against anyone. So the only way of getting Joe Billings and Bluff Bob off the street would be to have someone else prosecute them. And that would only happen if the two lamplighters were up to no good.
Philo thought that they probably were. The reputation of lamplighters was hardly better than that of linkboys. How many lamplighters had found themselves in front of the Bow Street magistrate’s court, over the past few years? At least a dozen that Philo could recall.
‘Master Grey!’ Mr Paxton’s voice startled Philo out of his reverie. The surgeon was approaching him, tankard in hand. Before Philo could speak, the vessel was thrust under his nose. ‘Your small beer,’ said Mr Paxton.
‘Oh . . .’ Philo stared at the tankard in astonishment. He couldn’t believe that Mr Paxton was behaving like a common pot-boy. ‘Th-thank ’ee, your honour.’
‘Drink up and we’ll head home.’
Philo drained the tankard, grateful that the beer inside it wasn’t cold. The last drops were trickling down his throat when Mr Paxton said, ‘So who did have the raising of you, Master Grey? You was about to tell me.’
Philo hiccupped. With his belly full of the surgeon’s beer, he knew that he couldn’t dodge the question any longer. Not without being ungracious.
‘A gentleman took me in, your honour.’
‘A gentleman?’ the surgeon echoed. ‘What gentleman?’
‘He was a lawyer’s clerk before he took ill.’ Philo refused to provide a name; Garnet was always adamant about that. ‘He’s a very wise man, your honour. Very learned.’ As Mr Paxton opened his mouth, Philo said quickly, ‘Where is your bag, sir? Did you leave it inside?’
‘By my fig!’ the surgeon exclaimed. He grabbed Philo’s tankard and rushed back into the Blue Bell, returning some twenty seconds later with his doctor’s bag. By that time, Philo had formulated at least a dozen of his own questions to keep the surgeon occupied for the rest of their trip back to Parker’s Lane.
The most successful of these questions concerned Jemmy Jukes.
‘Did you ever hear of a faery stroke, your honour?’ Philo asked.
‘A what?’
‘A faery stroke.’ Seeing the surgeon frown, Philo explained, ‘I’ve a friend who spoke to me of faery strokes, when she heard about Jemmy. She said there’s elfin folk that can fell you with a touch. And she should know, being the daughter of a cunning woman.’
‘Pshaw!’ Mr Paxton made a scornful noise. ‘I hope you put no faith in such nonsense?’
Philo hesitated. He didn’t like to say ‘yes’, but he couldn’t say ‘no’, either. Not after what he’d seen going on in Garnet’s room.
Mr Paxton glanced at him sideways. They were crossing Drury Lane, which was busy with coaches and sedan chairs and chattering knots of people, all heading for the theatres and coffee-houses around Covent Garden. Philo was keeping an eye out for his own crew, but couldn’t see any of them. The linkboys he passed were mostly bedraggled loners with makeshift torches.
‘Let me tell you where such nonsense can lead, Master Grey,’ the surgeon continued crisply. ‘I knew a man once, when I was
a boy, who became convinced that his infant daughter had been taken by what Cornish folk call the pobol vean. The Little People. Seeing her become fretful and wizened, he decided that she was no longer his child – that a changeling had been left in her place. So he summoned the local faery doctor. And do you know what that pig-widgeon advised him to do?’
‘Nay, sir.’
‘Why, to beat the child! And make it suffer such torments that the faeries would come to its rescue, and restore his true daughter to her rightful place!’ As they entered Parker’s Lane, Mr Paxton grimaced and asked, ‘Do you know what happened then, Master Grey?’
Disconcerted by Mr Paxton’s fierce tone, Philo shook his head.
‘The child was crippled. Crippled and made an idiot.’ Mr Paxton paused. He seemed to be waiting for a comment. But when none came, he concluded, ‘Such ignorance has no place in an age such as ours. These are enlightened times – or so we’re told. We should not tolerate the dark lies of old superstitions.’
Philo wasn’t sure how to respond. At last, mindful of Garnet’s need for intelligence, he said, ‘So you was raised in Cornwall, your honour?’
Mr Paxton didn’t reply. He had stopped in his tracks, and was staring down Parker’s Lane towards the figure hovering outside his own front door. Peering in the same direction, Philo saw that the figure was small – no bigger than a child – and wearing a long gown.
‘Here’s business,’ the surgeon muttered. Then he stepped forward, raising his voice. ‘Hollo! Who’s that? May I help you?’
The figure turned with a start, revealing a girl’s face lit by the glow of a rushlight. Philo judged her to be about thirteen or fourteen years old, but small for her age, and worn down by work. She was dressed in a cap, a shawl and a short gown over a draggle-tailed petticoat.
‘Does Mr Paxton live here?’ she quavered.
‘I am Mr Paxton.’
‘Oh! Sir!’ Her expression was instantly transformed from one of acute anxiety to one of intense relief. ‘Mrs Bambridge sent me, your honour. Her husband’s taken bad, sir – very bad. She says to come at once, an’ it please you.’
‘I see.’
‘Poor Mr Bambridge don’t move nor speak. He’s still as death. But there’s no fever.’ Before the surgeon could do more than glance at Philo, the girl added, ‘He was felled like a tree, sir, for he dropped his spectacles. Yet there’s not a mark on him.’
CHAPTER 8
HOW PHILO
STUMBLED UPON ANOTHER STUPEFIED CITIZEN
Goldsmith’s Alley lay just off Coal Yard, which was always busy until the early hours of the morning. It was a neighbourhood full of gin-shops and drunk women, and though Philo didn’t like it much, he knew it well because he did a lot of business there. He knew, for example, that a carpenter owned three of the houses on the east side of Coal Yard. He knew that a former brandy-smuggler kept an illegal gaming house near the old lock-up. And he knew that Henry Bambridge, the watchmaker, had a shop on Goldsmith’s Alley.
What Philo didn’t know, before arriving at the shop, was that Mr Bambridge had recently taken in a lodger – and that the lodger was Hellcat Nan Dooley.
It was Hellcat Nan who answered the door when Mr Paxton knocked. Philo was startled to see her. The last he’d heard, she’d gone to live in a distant parish. Yet here she was, back again, and he’d had no inkling of it – even though she was cursed with a notorious temper. It amazed him that she hadn’t already made her presence known by breaking someone’s head, or throwing someone out of a window. She was always doing things like that, though she’d never been gaoled for it. People were too frightened to run the risk of offending her a second time by taking their complaints to a justice of the peace.
She was a big, sturdy woman with wild black hair and a flushed face. As soon as he laid eyes on her, Philo began to rethink his position on Mr Bambridge. If Hellcat Nan was living in the watchmaker’s house, then her sweetheart, Beans O’Neill, might be living there too. And if Beans O’Neill was living there, then . . .
‘Are you the surgeon?’ Nan demanded, in a harsh, strident voice.
‘Of course he is!’ another voice cut in. It belonged to Mrs Eliza Bambridge, a grey-haired, middle-aged woman in a lace-trimmed bed-gown with a shawl thrown over it. Philo glimpsed her through the open door, and recognised her immediately – even though she was tearful and trembling, and as white as her nightcap. ‘Mr Paxton – oh, Mr Paxton! Whatever shall I do?’ she cried.
‘Hush. Where is he? Let me look at him.’ The surgeon moved forward, then paused for an instant to glance back at Philo. ‘Will you wait, Master Grey? Or are you wanted elsewhere?’
‘I’ll wait, your honour.’ Nothing less than a golden guinea would have lured Philo away, now that he had seen Hellcat Nan. He had come at Mr Paxton’s request, even though the little maidservant – whose name was Peg – had offered to light the surgeon to Goldsmith’s Alley. But Peg was a feeble creature, shivering with cold in her thin gown and her ragged shawl, and Mr Paxton hadn’t wanted her guiding him back home.
‘I’d feel safer with you, if you can spare the time,’ Mr Paxton had told Philo. Lowering his voice, he’d added, ‘Mr Bambridge lives in a very dubious quarter, as I have discovered to my cost. You would oblige me with your company.’
So Philo had escorted Mr Paxton to the Bambridges’ house, never thinking that Hellcat Nan would be waiting for them on the doorstep. When Nan stepped back to let Mr Paxton enter, Philo grabbed Peg’s arm.
‘Nan Dooley,’ he murmured. ‘Does she lodge here?’
The maid nodded. She had a witless look about her, thanks to the way her mouth hung open.
‘For how long now?’ Philo asked.
‘These three weeks,’ Peg replied, just as Nan said sharply, ‘Get inside, ladybird, and stop flirting with that glim-jack!’
So Nan had been on the premises for three weeks. Philo pondered this as the door slammed shut in his face. Hellcat Nan wasn’t a footpad, but she mixed with footpads. Her lover was Beans O’Neill, whose attentions Philo had dodged just the night before . . .
In Philo’s experience, footpads and watchmakers didn’t mix. They were like foxes and rabbits, or cats and birds. Had Nan been living with the Bambridges for a mere three days, Philo might have concluded that she was there to burgle them.
But three weeks? Three weeks suggested something else. To Philo, it suggested that Mr Bambridge was a receiver of stolen goods.
Moving sideways, he peered through the shop window. It was an old leadlight window, because the building itself was an old one, half-timbered and top-heavy. Through the little panes of uneven glass, Philo had a distorted view of the well-lit interior. Mr Bambridge was lying face-up on the floor, fully dressed, his thin legs in their black stockings and buckled shoes poking out from beneath Mr Paxton’s crouching figure. Mrs Bambridge was stooping over Mr Paxton, wringing her hands. Hellcat Nan was taking a swig from a bottle. As for little Peg . . . where had she gone? To fetch something?
The surgeon carefully examined his patient from head to toe. Then, with Nan’s help, he lifted Mr Bambridge and carried him out of the room, with Mrs Bambridge bringing up the rear. After they had vanished, there was nothing left for Philo to look at, since they’d taken their rushlights with them.
So he turned and surveyed the street, which was long and narrow and very ill-lit. There wasn’t an oil-lamp from one end to the other. Most of the passers-by were groping along in the darkness, using only the feeble glow from windows and doors to guide them. As a result, Philo couldn’t see enough to identify the few people who were out and about. The only person he recognised was Shambles Sam, the beggar, because of his distinctive, lurching gait.
As Philo watched Sam turn down Lyons Court, something else caught his eye. Another figure was lumbering out of the same narrow passage – a huge, hulking shape wrapped in a hooded cloak. It was so big that Philo wondered, for an instant, if he was looking at a bear that had escaped from the custody of a bear-leader. B
ut it moved with too much stealth and purpose to be an animal, despite its strange, misshapen silhouette . . .
Philo felt a chill run down his spine. He was relieved to see the dark form turn left towards Lewknor’s Lane. If it had headed in his direction, he would have been hard put to stand his ground.
He didn’t take his eyes off its retreating silhouette until it had disappeared. Then he glanced towards the north end of Goldsmith’s Alley, where a flickering flame had appeared in the distance. Philo watched the flame draw closer, aware that another linkboy was approaching. He was delighted when it proved to be Dandy Dodds. Dandy was on his own, trotting along quite cheerfully even though he was under-dressed. He wore no hat on his wispy blond curls, so his ears must have been like blocks of ice. His nose and cheeks were red with cold under their coating of soot.
When he saw Philo, he grinned. ‘Hollo, Captain!’ he said, his breath emerging in a white cloud. ‘How’s trade?’
‘Fair.’ Philo beckoned him over. ‘Did you see that . . . that thing?’
‘What thing?’
‘The strangest creature . . .’ Philo hesitated, then shook his head, dismissing the vague sense of dread that still clung to him. ‘What news?’
‘I just spied Brimstone Moll afoot, with all her baggage. She was heading east down Broad Street, pushing bolsters in a barrow.’
Philo frowned. ‘Filching ’em?’
Dandy cocked his head and screwed up his nose. ‘She looked nervous,’ he had to concede. ‘But there must be threescore people saw her on Broad Street, and she’s a cunning wench. Belike she was removing to another lodging-house.’
‘So late in the evening?’ Before Dandy could reply, Philo answered his own question. ‘No doubt she owes rent. Where’s she been lodging – Rat’s Castle?’