A Very Peculiar Plague (10 page)
He heard the crackling roar and saw the green flash. He even felt the heat. But by the time he’d slid sideways and righted himself, the flame had been snuffed out. Nothing was left of the bogle except a huge black scorch-mark – and a truly awful smell of burnt hair.
Even the salt had turned brown.
‘I don’t like the look o’ that,’ Alfred said hoarsely. He was standing at the edge of the circle, his moustache singed and his face dusted with soot. When he disturbed the salt with the toe of his boot, it made a sizzling noise. ‘Don’t you touch it, d’you hear? It might be poison.’
‘I won’t,’ Jem mumbled. He staggered to his feet, vaguely aware that his left knee was smarting. ‘I dropped the looking-glass,’ he quavered. ‘I – I don’t know where it is.’
‘Mebbe it’s broke,’ said Alfred, who was now rummaging through his sack. Jem blanched. He knew that a broken mirror meant seven years’ bad luck.
But when he finally
did
find the mirror, it wasn’t in pieces. It had turned into a pool of black glass, which had fused to the floor.
‘What does that mean?’ he asked Alfred, as they surveyed it together. ‘Is it good luck or bad luck?’
‘It’s bad luck for me,’ Alfred replied, wiping his face with his neckerchief, ‘since I must buy another.’
Jem flushed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he croaked. He felt sick and dizzy and ashamed.
Alfred shrugged. Jem wanted to ask if the cost of the next mirror would be deducted from his own wages. He wanted to suggest that they hang any future glass on a string around his neck, to prevent further mishaps. He wanted to find out if Birdie had ever broken a mirror, and, if not, whether a broken mirror was grounds for dismissal.
But he wasn’t given the chance to speak, because Alfred began to hustle him upstairs – where the sexton was patiently waiting.
‘Well?’ asked Mr Froome. He carried a pair of brown boots and was flanked by two men: Hugh Purdy and a blond giant who wore a fan-tailed hat. Jem assumed that the stranger must be Purdy’s friend, the sewer-flusher.
‘It’s done,’ Alfred told Mr Froome. He then nodded at Purdy before shifting his gaze to the flusher, who had a silver tooth, pierced ears, and a tattoo on his wrist.
‘Sam Snell at yer service, Mr Bunce,’ the flusher announced with a wide grin, shaking Alfred’s hand enthusiastically. ‘I never
did
think I’d meet a genuine Go-Devil man, though it’s bin a dream o’ mine since I were nobbut a young shaver!’
Alfred blinked. Then Sam Snell released him and turned to Jem, saying, ‘So you’re the brave lad as hunts down them bogles, eh? I’d ha’ given me right arm to do the same, as a boy, but went to sea instead.’
He proceeded to shake Jem’s hand vigorously, his blue eyes twinkling and his silver tooth glinting. Jem couldn’t help smiling back. He’d been feeling so bad about the broken mirror that he welcomed any praise he could get. And he’d always admired seamen.
‘You’re a scrap of a child to be facing down bogles,’ the flusher continued. ‘And a mite green around the gills, besides. Mebbe you need a shot o’ liquor.’ He appealed to his friend. ‘We should buy ’em a drink, Hugh!’
‘Nay,’ said Alfred. He looked a little distracted, as if something was preying on his mind. ‘We have to go, now. Unless we’re needed in the sewers, Mr Purdy?’
‘Uh – no. Not yet.’ The plumber explained that Sam would have to speak to his foreman, and his foreman to an inspector, before Alfred would be allowed inside the Holborn Viaduct. ‘But Sam ain’t expecting no trouble. He says if they had boys working the sewers – which they don’t – they’d have hired a bogler long since.’
The flusher nodded fervently. ‘I’ve said all along there’s bogles, but no one’s had the spine to take it to the Sewers Office.’
‘I see.’ Alfred seemed anxious to quell the talkative flusher (who may have been a little drunk, Jem thought). ‘Well, you know where to find me if you hear any more,’ the bogler said to Purdy, before addressing Mr Froome. ‘There’s traces in the crypt you should be wary of. I’ve doused it in holy water, but I wouldn’t touch it without gloves.’
‘I understand,’ said Mr Froome. ‘And I’ll be careful.’
‘Have you ever heard owt from Newgate Prison?’ Alfred went on. ‘About young’uns escaping from the cells, or some such thing?’
‘I have not.’
‘Then you’d best keep yer ears open.’ Seeing the sexton blink, Alfred sighed and explained, ‘That there tunnel is a perfect bogle’s lair, and might be sheltering others where it joins the prison. Even if it’s bin emptied, I’m inclined to think a second creature might move in. For this corner o’town ain’t like no other. There’s more bogles here than I’ve ever come across in one place, and it troubles me. Very much.’
‘Oh dear,’ Mr Froome quavered. Then he gave Alfred his fee and Jem his boots, remarking to Jem as he did so, ‘I hope these fit. There’s a stocking in each.’
‘Thank’ee, sir.’ Jem bobbed his head, almost teary with gratitude. He couldn’t understand why he was feeling so shaken. The bogle was dead. He was alive. And Alfred wasn’t the type to beat an apprentice for breaking a mirror.
Yet Jem felt like sobbing his heart out just because he’d been given a new pair of boots.
Puzzled and mortified, he pulled them on while Alfred said his goodbyes to the others. But when at last they emerged onto Newgate Street together, Jem said to Alfred, in a very small voice, ‘Is a dead bogle as bad as a live one for making you low-spirited?’
Alfred shot him a quick, measuring glance. ‘Not as far as I know.’
‘Mmph.’ Jem fell silent. Alfred waited. He and Jem both donned their hats, walking towards the nearest ’bus stop through milling crowds. Jem’s feet felt oddly clumsy, wedged into their casings of stiff leather.
At last Alfred observed, ‘Birdie never broke no looking-glass, but she once dropped a flask o’ brandy into a cess-pit.’
Jem brightened. ‘She did?’
‘Aye.
And
tried to claim the bogle took it.’ Alfred gave a snort of laughter. ‘Ask her yerself, when we get to Bloomsbury. She’ll tell you I ain’t lying.’
‘We’re going to Bloomsbury?’ asked Jem, diverted by this news. ‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t understand what’s happening here.’ Alfred’s eyes narrowed as he scanned his surroundings, almost as if he expected to see bogles slithering along the gutters. ‘Bogles ain’t like pigeons,’ he said. ‘They don’t travel in flocks. So why is this corner o’ London crawling with ’em?’ Without waiting for an answer, he continued, ‘Miss Eames is book-learned, and has made a special study o’ bogles.
She
might know why. And she might know what to do about it, besides. For I tell you, lad . . .’ He shook his head gloomily. ‘. . . I’m flummoxed.’
‘Bogles don’t hunt in packs,’ said Alfred. ‘I ain’t never seen more’n one bogle every half a mile, even along the river. So what’s three of ’em doing within a stone’s throw o’ Newgate Prison?’
He was sitting in a flowery little parlour, full of books and pictures, stuffed birds, embroidered cushions, spindly furniture, clocks, tassels and crocheted doilies. Jem and Birdie were with him, as were Miss Eames and her aunt, Mrs Heppinstall. They were gathered around a low mahogany table laid with a linen cloth, a silver tea service and a plate of jam tarts.
Jem had already eaten three of the tarts. He had also drunk two large cups of sugary tea. In fact, he’d been so busy stuffing his mouth that he’d hardly said a word since arriving on Miss Eames’s doorstep. He’d said ‘Hello’ to Birdie on first entering the house. He’d said ‘Yes, please’ when offered a jam tart by Mrs Heppinstall. And he’d muttered a few vague words of approval after hearing from Miss Eames that all the posters with Birdie’s name on them had been removed from Josiah Lubbock’s penny gaff.
‘I went there this morning, just to make sure,’ she’d told her two visitors, before shepherding them into the parlour.
But it was Alfred who’d done most of the talking. Very slowly and carefully, stopping occasionally to sip his tea or shake his head, he had described his adventures around Newgate Prison in great detail before finally coming to the point. ‘In all yer reading,’ he asked Miss Eames, ‘did you ever stumble upon a
pack
o’ bogles, hunting close together? For I never did.’ Seeing Miss Eames frown, he added, ‘Could they be foreign, d’you think? Or Scotch?’
‘Scotch?’ she echoed, then leaned forward to put down her teacup. She was beautifully dressed, as usual: Jem calculated that the blue velvet trimming on her jacket was worth at least eight shillings a yard. ‘In all honesty, Mr Bunce, Scotch bogles tend to be lonely guardians tied to particular places,’ she replied. ‘Like the
Baisd Bheulach
, for instance, or even the Loch Ness monster. However, I’ve read about some creatures who are mentioned always in the plural. The
sluagh
. The
brollachan.
The Dunters and the Red Caps, which infest certain Border castles—’
‘Aye, but do they haunt in clusters, or is it one for each castle?’ Alfred interrupted. ‘And if they
do
mix, do they all look the same, or differ as much as a pig differs from a duck?’
Miss Eames blinked.
‘Why, Mr Bunce, what a
very
odd question,’ said Mrs Heppinstall, who had been listening with great interest as she poured the tea. She wore a black gown, a grey shawl and a white lace cap. Her silvery hair formed two little bunches of ringlets over her ears. ‘What on earth do you mean by that?’
‘Jem knows.’ Alfred nodded in Jem’s direction. ‘He saw ’em. Why don’t you tell Miss Eames what they was like, lad?’
Jem had to swallow a mouthful of pastry before he could oblige. ‘The cellar-bogle looked to be made o’ black gelatine,’ he said thickly, spraying crumbs everywhere. ‘The crypt-bogle had a wolf’s head, and a monkey’s arms, and a toad’s legs—’
‘They was like chalk and cheese.’ Alfred cut him off before he could finish. ‘If they hadn’t bin, I’d have started wondering if I’d even
killed
the first. On account of how close it were living to the second.’
‘I see.’ Miss Eames nodded, pursing her lips thoughtfully. Meanwhile, on the couch beside her – which was upholstered in a green damask that Jem valued at three shillings-and-sixpence a yard – Birdie McAdam was wriggling about like a worm on a hook, impatient to have her say.
‘Mebbe all o’ them bogles was cast from their old haunts,’ she suggested. When the others stared at her blankly, she turned to Alfred. ‘You just said there’s houses coming down and houses going up, over by Newgate Street,’ she reminded him. ‘And new railway tunnels, and sewers being laid . . .’
‘Aye,’ Alfred confirmed.
‘Well, what if that’s flushed out the bogles?’ Birdie argued. ‘Like roaches when you shift a bin?’
‘Yes, of course!’ Miss Eames brightened. ‘That
would
make sense!’
‘Clever girl,’ Mrs Heppinstall said fondly, patting Birdie’s arm.
But Alfred didn’t look convinced. ‘Even if all the new work
is
flushing bogles out o’ their dens,’ he objected, ‘that don’t explain why they ain’t spreading out, instead o’ clumping together.’
‘Perhaps it’s territorial,’ said Miss Eames. Alfred grunted. Jem reached for another jam tart.
Then Mrs Heppinstall gently inquired, ‘Would you care for something else, Jem? A tongue sandwich, perhaps? Jam tarts don’t build sturdy bones.’
Jem’s mouth was already full, so he nodded. Mrs Heppinstall immediately rang the little silver bell at her side, as Alfred continued in a glum, slightly anxious tone, ‘What’s worrying me is where this might lead. If there’s so many bogles about, what’s to stop ’em living in the same lair? Suppose I do another job and find there’s more’n one to deal with? What then?’
Birdie hissed. Jem shuddered.
Miss Eames frowned again. ‘But Mr Bunce,’ she said, ‘I thought you had abandoned bogling? Except in this one instance, of course . . .’
‘I swore I’d clear out Holborn Viaduct,’ Alfred retorted stubbornly. ‘And that’s what I’m a-going to do. But if I take Jem down the sewers, and find two bogles instead o’ one, what then?’
‘Let
me
go!’ Birdie cried. She began to bounce up and down, making springs creak and petticoats rustle. ‘I’ll distract one bogle while Jem lures the other! We can work as a pair!’
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Miss Eames said in a crisp, reproving voice.
‘You can’t stop me!’ Birdie shot back. And before Mrs Heppinstall – or even Alfred – could protest, she added, ‘If you don’t let me go, I’ll walk out! I shall! And you won’t never see me again!’
‘Birdie,
dear
. . .’ Mrs Heppinstall bleated, as Miss Eames matched Birdie’s scowl with her own.
‘Nonsense!’ snapped Miss Eames. ‘Don’t be foolish, Birdie. Where on earth would you go?’
‘Mr Bunce’ll take me back. Won’t you, Mr Bunce?’ Birdie fixed a pair of big, blue, beseeching eyes on Alfred, who dragged a hand over the pouches and hollows of his face, muttering something inaudible.
Jem said nothing, though he was anxious about his own little hard-won corner of Alfred’s room, and knew that if Birdie laid claim to it he wouldn’t stand a chance. All he could do was glare at her, hoping that she would come to her senses. Why would anyone wearing silk hair ribbons and lace-trimmed petticoats want to live in a tiny attic room full of red dust?
She was mad, he thought.
Then the maid entered. And before Mrs Heppinstall could ask for a tongue sandwich, her niece suddenly remarked, ‘Take the children upstairs, Mary. Jem wants to see Birdie’s room, I’m sure.’
Jem blinked at her. Birdie exclaimed, ‘No, he don’t!’
‘I wish to talk to Mr Bunce,’ Miss Eames declared. ‘In private.’
‘But—’
‘Do as you’re told, lass.’ At last Alfred decided to intercede, raising his voice from its usual low rumble and fixing Birdie with one of his hard, dark looks. ‘This ain’t yer house,’ he said. ‘Seems to me you’ve lost respect since you come here. I thought I raised you better.’
To Jem’s surprise, Birdie didn’t answer back. Instead she coloured, rose, and began to walk out of the room, straight-backed and fuming. Jem leaped up to follow her – though not without grabbing another jam tart.
‘And Birdie?’ Miss Eames called after her. ‘Remember what I told you about double negatives.’
