The Betrayal of Thomas True, page 10
He held up a torn piece of paper. It bore the same handwriting as the one Gabriel had found in Martin’s pocket.
George’s bravado was gone now. He looked fearful, just as Martin had the day before he was pulled from the ditch, and Gabriel had a vision of a red line slicing across his neck.
‘When did you get this?’
‘Found it this morning. Tucked under a dish.’
‘Whose dish?’
‘Annie didn’t recognise him. I only saw the note when I was throwing the bones away, so I asked her who it was. Some man, she said, with a pointed snout and dead skin under a hood.’
Gabriel thought of the deathly figure standing on the gangway at Clap’s.
‘A hood? How about a cloak?’
‘Might have been. She said he stank of rotten meat, even in this place. I caught the note before Annie saw it, praise be.’ He held Gabriel by the wrist. ‘I ain’t been a friend to you, Lotty Lump. You don’t like me, neither. Only molly who does is the Duchess, but she’s afraid.’ His smile turned bitter. ‘Saintly Mister Rettipence, sticking with his sad little family in their smart house on Camomile Street, them children of his cosy as kittens while we starve. That’s when he ain’t travelling, of course, important merchant as he is.’ He wiped his nose. ‘All that money wasted on the wife when all I get is tatty gowns and wigs. Ain’t fair, if you ask me.’
‘Life ain’t fair for mollies; that’s why we say our promise.’ Gabriel held out his hand and nodded. ‘Together.’
‘Ay, always together, whatever that means.’
George stepped closer to Gabriel, careful not to talk until a pair of beggars had passed them by. ‘Thomas True. That’s your rat. New molly, only just christened. Cocky little prick if ever I met one, playing all innocent, but I can smell a liar from a mile off. Saw him at the exchange on Sunday night. Got myself knocked out by them Society hounds, but when I came round, he’s standing right there in the middle of ’em, bold as brass. So I get up and run off, but he follows me, thinking I’m blind, and turns up at Clap’s not half an hour later.’ George narrowed his eyes, nodding meaningfully. ‘There wasn’t a scratch on his pretty face. Ay well, pretty he might be – I’ve seen you making sheep’s eyes at him – but true? Don’t make me laugh.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
George Lavender was right about one thing: Gabriel had been watching Thomas True. Was he a fool not to see the young man as a suspect in his hunt for the Rat? But the lad was new to Mother Clap’s; how could he be giving men’s names away to the Society? And surely he wouldn’t be handing threatening notes to Martin and George before he’d ingratiated himself. No man could be so clumsy. Besides, Mister True was not evil. Gabriel could feel it deep in his bones; there was something pure and good in the man, something innately kind.
Henry and Bet had been quarrelling all night, so he slipped away from Red Lyon Street without them noticing, hiding his face from the moonlight beneath the drooping brim of his hat. Across High Holborn he went, bowling from shadow to shadow into Lincoln’s Inn New Square, crossing to the bog houses on the opposite side of the court. Mister Spue was in residence, for a sprig of ivy had been placed on the door of one of the bog-house stalls and whispering could be heard coming from inside. There was a sort of rubbing sound and a regular yelping. Gabriel waited patiently, watching the square to make sure no guards were about. Eventually, the door opened and a sorry-looking gentleman departed in funny jerks, his knees apart.
‘Enter,’ said a voice, followed by a curled finger.
The stall was tiny, its floor drenched with piss, while the cesspit below stank.
‘Apothecary Spue,’ said Gabriel as he entered the stall. ‘You took my money for a witch’s potion.’
The man looked up from his bag. ‘Mister Griffin, how nice to see you again; has the past month treated you kindly?’
‘Your remedy didn’t work.’
‘It had no suppressive effect?’
Gabriel wrung his hat in his fists, looking at his boots. He thought of the sinful dreams he’d been having about Mister True. ‘I’m worse than ever.’
‘Is that so? It’s done the trick for other fellows, I assure you. Still, you are a very large man. Did you insert it twice daily as instructed? Crouching helps.’
‘I did.’
‘All the way up?’
Gabriel shuffled uncomfortably. ‘Ay.’
‘And my remedy had no effect at all?’
‘Made my arse itch.’
The apothecary waggled his finger. ‘Sodomitical tendencies are symptomatic of a lifelong disease, Mister Griffin. It is not a mere distemper or blistered finger. Still, Apothecary Spue does not give up so easily.’ He opened his case, rifling through the bottles, stretching his face as he peered at their labels in the scant light. ‘Rubbing mercury?’
‘Burns like Hell.’
‘That is the purpose, dear fellow.’ He pulled out a metal ring the diameter of a parsnip. ‘How about this?’
Gabriel kicked the floor. ‘Too tight.’
‘Goodness me, is it really? Let us see, let us see.’ He rummaged deep in his bag, pulling out a little jar of pine needles. Gabriel grimaced and the apothecary gave a little chuckle. ‘They cause some irritation of course, which is part of the remedy, and passing water is a problem… ’
‘You have any cures that don’t make a man want to hang himself?’
Mister Spue folded his arms. ‘Mister Griffin, my curatives are designed specifically for a man riddled with your peculiar sexual perversion. Lord knows the sins you might have committed without my ministrations these past three years. Still, I have one last tincture that might just quell your desires. I rarely use such old-fashioned remedies, but you are an old-fashioned sort of a man. A few drops of this should turn a horse into a tortoise.’ He took out a glass bottle, filled with a resinous liquid and held the swirling mixture to his eye. ‘If it worked for the monks, it ought to work for you.’
‘What is it?’
‘A little camphor.’
‘Ay?’
‘And chasteberry – monk’s pepper as it was known in old Harry’s day.’
‘And?’
The apothecary smiled, leaning in conspiratorially. ‘I added a little dilution. Vrina Vulpis.’
Gabriel frowned. ‘Fox piss?’
The apothecary gave an encouraging nod. ‘Half a crown will see us right, Mister Griffin; two spoons daily or… ’ he looked Gabriel up and down ‘…on demand.’
Gabriel jangled the last of his week’s money in his pocket and gazed at the tincture. Might it save him at last? After a lifetime of torture, might he be free of his disease? The oil was glutinous and pale green with little black and yellow lumps floating in it.
‘Two shillings.’
‘Oh, very well, very well. By Christ, here I am keeping my patients healthy, only to have my pockets picked.’
Gabriel moved to the spyhole in the door and froze: a shadow was crossing the square in a long cloak.
‘Who is out there?’ said Spue. ‘The guards?’
‘Just the night watch,’ said Gabriel, inspecting the apothecary in the darkness of the stall, wondering whether he could be trusted. He decided to take care. ‘You heard any of your other molly clients talking about a rat?’
Spue frowned. ‘I am a medical man, sir, not a ratcatcher. Why do you ask such a thing?’
Gabriel went to push the door open. ‘No matter, best be getting home.’
‘I shall go first,’ said Spue, pushing past him. ‘You must wait a few minutes, or we may arouse more than your devilish loins.’
The apothecary slipped from the stall, hurrying into the night with his tinkling potions while Gabriel sat on the bench, deep in thought. He held up the apothecary’s bottle, watching the tincture swirl inside the glass and sniffed the sour liquid.
A vision of Mister True appeared before him in the darkness, and he quickly slugged a measure of the potion to quell his excitement. He heaved and swallowed vomit. The cure hadn’t worked, for the young man was still there, looking down at him from the corner of the stall, a spot of apple flesh sitting on his lower lip.
The white of his parted teeth, the square chin, the faint dusting of freckles across his cheekbones.
Gabriel reached out, tracing the contours of his face. He breathed heavily, his hands brushing the man’s ribs. A gulp. A pulsing neck. A clean, muscular chest. Gabriel took another slug of the revolting potion then threw himself back. It was hopeless. These were not the usual visions, well worn and easily dismissed; not the shirtless masons from the cathedral, nor the soldiers with their swords unsheathed; nor the butcher with powerful fingers buried in meat. The usual cast of seductive players had been usurped by him … Thomas True turned with a smile, then stripped away his clothes as Gabriel felt an explosion of biting pleasure and the bog-house door swung open with a bang. Three pairs of hands reached inside and grabbed him by the coat. Gabriel struggled but he was sick from the potion, and with much shouting and kicking he was pulled out and thrown to the ground.
‘What is this?’ he demanded as a boot collided with his head.
The men rolled him onto his stomach, his teeth biting the gravel, and as he craned his neck he noticed the outline of the cloaked figure watching him from the shadows of a passageway on the far side of the moonlit square.
The Rat held his gaze, then turned and melted into the dark.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Gabriel ignored the watchmen’s insults as they trundled through the sleeping city. After an eternity, they arrived at the Poultry Compter, passing through a stone porch with an iron grating. Three knocks were given, and the captors waited. At last, the door swung open and Gabriel was bundled into a dank cell.
‘Filthy buggerantoe,’ laughed the gaoler, slamming the cell door with a jeer. ‘Watch yer backsides, good thieves, this one’s another pretty fellow, the great beast.’
The bolts clanked shut and the cell turned black, but for the faintest light through a low grill in the wall. Gabriel huddled against the bricks, listening to the whimpering of his cellmates. The air was a poison of tobacco, sweaty toes, putrid breath, puss-riddled carcasses and filth. The restless men shuffled, pressing together for warmth. Those manacled to the corners pulled rags over their legs with their toes, while roaming shadows loomed between the prisoners, shards of glass between their knuckles, threatening murder if a shilling wasn’t paid. Gabriel parted with the very last of his money.
‘Be merciful,’ came an old man’s voice, rattling his chains by Gabriel’s side. ‘What use is there in killing me? No point hurting a poor old bag of bones, I’ll be dead soon anyways. Here, I will pay you when my good wife collects me in the morning. She will have a pie for you, kind sir. Now, please, won’t you take that piece of glass from my neck?’
Gabriel saw the goblin shift. He pressed his foot between the stumpy legs with a low growl. ‘Touch the old beggar and I’ll boot your cherries to your jaw.’
‘What’s it to you, filthy madge?’ said the prowling shadow.
‘Don’t want his blood on me, do I?’
The goblin considered his prey, then moved off to another victim.
The old man struggled to his knees, clasping his hands together. ‘By the saints, is there any man so fortunate as Old Bob Buckleburn this night? I swear, I thought he would cut my throat, but I shall see my darling wife on the morrow thanks to a kindly giant.’
Gabriel huffed, turning to face the bricks, but the beggar spoke on:
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘did I hear the turnkey call you a sodomite? I’m sure he did. Caught on Sodomites’ Walk, was you? Or searching for love under the arches at the exchange? No fear, gentle giant, I am a friend, you can trust Old Bob. My dear wife will feed us both come morning and we can share a drink together if you’d brave Alsatia?’
Gabriel shuddered at the name. Once a religious sanctuary for men escaping justice, Alsatia was now the heart of London’s criminal society – and the fabled home of the spider children known as the Blackguard. ‘Not likely,’ he said, rolling over.
‘Then let me give you the only precious thing I own,’ said the man, huddling against Gabriel’s back and cupping a cold hand to his ear. ‘I am locked up in here because I know something, you see. I know a secret, a funny old tale, if you’d care to listen?’
Gabriel nudged the man away, preferring the chill of the flagstones to his cellmate’s faint warmth. Still, the man tugged at Gabriel’s shoulder. ‘I know who you are, Lotty Lump. Recognised you the second the cell door opened. Dark times, dark times.’ He shuffled closer. ‘It was at Miss Muff’s on Whitechapel – I’d been there a few times, preferring the quiet to all that commotion at Clap’s. Besides, it was too painful to see my darling with a younger molly. Anyways, I come out of Muff’s for a little puff on me pipe and I sees a young lad in the stable yard. Skinny little thing he was, by the name of Martin Little-something.’
Gabriel turned over. ‘Lightbody?’
‘Yes! Martin Lightbody, that’s the one. Martha Moggs they call her. Like I say, young as anything and not too smart. Part of that gang of brave bone-heads who like to go trolling through the streets in their gowns like they want a beating.’ The old man’s head shook in the shadows. ‘I would have done the same their age, I confess, yet still it frightens me, by Christ; it frightens me to see ’em goading the Society, thinking it won’t bite us all back.’ He prodded Gabriel’s side. ‘That’s what’s happening now, I suppose.’
‘What is?’
‘I heard what happened to poor Martha. You dredged her up from the ditch yourself with her throat cut, ain’t that right?’
Gabriel whispered, ‘Get to your point, or I’ll silence you myself.’
‘I’d seen her, hadn’t I? Martha, outside Miss Muff’s. Only, she wasn’t alone. I went over to the stable she was hiding in and saw her talking to someone I thought I recognised. “Get back inside,” they were saying. “Find out their names and bring them to me.”’
Gabriel rolled over, their noses almost touching. ‘You mean Martin Lightbody was playing spy for the Society?’
‘I don’t think so.’ The old man’s voice fell fainter still, his beard tickling Gabriel’s ear. ‘Martha was telling them “no” – quite bravely I thought. You can imagine my bones a-shaking while I listened with these cloth ears of mine. It was so terrible dark in that stable, I couldn’t see much, but I could see enough.’
‘Who was it?’ said Gabriel, straining his eyes as black shapes swam around them through the darkness. ‘Who was Martin talking to?’
‘The Rat,’ said the man. Then he gave a dry chuckle, clearly sensing Gabriel’s quickening heartbeat. ‘So you heard it too, did you? News travels fast along the ivy trail, don’t it?’ His eyes grew wide. ‘I saw the Rat alright, and how I wish I hadn’t, or I wouldn’t be chained up in this place. I reckon I was spotted, peeping from that other stable. One moment I was back home in Alsatia enjoying one of my lady’s pies, the next I was beckoned by a queer-looking fellow with a face like death itself, then shackled up and dragged to Hell.’
Gabriel kept his voice low. ‘Did you see the Rat’s face?’
The old man opened his mouth to answer, only for his eyes to bulge and with a loud rattling of chains, he was yanked across the floor. Gabriel wrenched at his shackles, listening helplessly as the old man was murdered beyond his reach, sobbing for mercy until his miserable screams were drowned in blood.
‘Timothy,’ was his final breath, ‘Timothy, take care.’
Shaking, Gabriel waited all night for a slice at his own throat, managing to grab a stray shard of glass, brandishing it till morning. It was so deadly cold, the wet stones of the cell echoing to the sound of men’s sobbing and screaming and snoring. Gabriel could feel the Rat gripping him as tight as the shackles, the mystery of the traitorous molly looming large above him, more terrible than any shadow-cloaked assassin. For this was a man who threatened hundreds of lives, including his own. Who was he? And why would he do something so wicked to his friends?
Eventually, enough pale light slipped through the grate to illuminate the old man’s corpse, his eyes and gaping mouth fixed in everlasting bewilderment as though asking Gabriel a question. There was little to tell which of the other cellmates were responsible, all of them cast in the same character of villainy, all of their hands filthy with blood.
Duly, the bolts on the cell door clanked open and the men were led out to have their shackles struck off, then to a paved yard to stretch their legs, craning their necks to the pale sky. Like mice in a box, they trudged in a circle, spitting grey slugs of phlegm up the garrison walls until, finally, they were shepherded into a cellar to eat.
Gabriel sat on a bench beside a long table and stared at his bowl. Had the old man really spied the Rat? If so, the knowledge had surely killed him. Gabriel shuddered, forcing himself to swallow the bowl of slop. The constable’s polished shoes clapped the stones as he paraded ceremoniously between the tables, huffing and tutting at his captives before settling himself into an elbow chair with all the majesty of a king.
He quickly dispatched his business, most of the men being regular guests, and finally came to Gabriel, the last prisoner to be heard.
The constable yawned, peering at a note. ‘Griffin’s the name, is it?’
‘Ay. I did no wrong.’
‘That so?’
‘Was just passing through Lincoln’s Inn. Stopped for a piss in the bog house.’
The constable laughed, slapping the arms of his chair. ‘Never gets old no matter how many times I hear it: “But sir! I was only walking past the bog houses when I happened to drop my drawers. I did not mean to sit on the man’s cudgel. I thought it was a wooden spoon and my arse a mixing bowl!”’ He wiped tears from his face, his cheeks flushed. ‘I have a good mind to send you to the pillory. Why, I would be the envy of every constable in London, catching a sodomite the size of you. Sadly, on this occasion, I must do as I am told.’
