A Very Peculiar Plague (23 page)

The rain worried Jem. Though London was full of people leaning against walls and sitting on doorsteps, the number of folk taking the air always dropped dramatically in bad weather. No matter how cramped it might be indoors, a dry space was preferable to a damp one. For that reason, Jem couldn’t help feeling that he would look suspicious, loitering in a persistent drizzle. Certainly there was no one else about – except the old man with the pipe, who was still eyeing the empty yard from his threshold as he puffed away. It was impossible to study any of the houses while
he
was there. Instead Jem had to slouch listlessly, his head bent and his arms folded, trying very hard not to look like a cracksman’s crow. Sometimes he would yawn, or shift his limbs, and then a sidelong glance would tell him that the yard was still deserted. But he couldn’t inspect windows or check doors. Not beneath the old man’s blank, rheumy gaze.

Suddenly the door behind Jem swung open.

‘Hoi! Get out of it!’ A blow to the shoulder sent him stumbling forward, as someone small and shrill attacked him like a guard dog. She was a skinny, angular woman with a harsh voice and a sour face. Her apron was soiled, her hair greasy and unkempt. She carried a straw broom, which she jabbed at Jem as if he were a pile of kitchen scraps.

‘I know yer game, you thieving little snipe!’ she squawked. ‘You don’t live here! Move! Go on!’

Startled, Jem began to edge away. But she chased him, still swinging her broom. ‘Hook it!’ she screeched. ‘This is
private property
! We don’t want no filthy housebreakers here!’

Jem didn’t know what to do. Normally he would have told her where she could stick her damned broom, but he didn’t want to cause a ruckus. So he retreated towards Cock Lane, with the angry fishwife snapping at his heels.

‘Thief! Burglar! We’re
respectable
folk in this neighbourhood!’ She kept swiping at his legs, pushing him out of Red Lion Court. Meanwhile, the nearby windows were filling up with spectators. Jem couldn’t see a single familiar face among them, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

Besides, he’d had an idea.

‘You gammy old haybag!’ he snarled, then took off towards Giltspur Street. By the time he reached Pye Corner, he’d shaken off the woman with the broom. Perhaps she’d turned back because she’d driven him into Cock Lane – or perhaps she was too old and breathless to pursue him any further.

Whatever the reason, he was alone as he headed for St Sepulchre’s. Here he stopped by the watch-house, to peer up at the houses backing onto the churchyard. Though screened by a few scrappy trees, these houses weren’t hard to identify. Jem had last seen them from the front, in Red Lion Court. The privy yard lay just beyond them.

But he couldn’t squeeze between them, because they were rammed together like books on a shelf.

His gaze skipped up a cliff-face of brick, wood and peeling plaster. The walls of the houses were pierced here and there with small windows. They were also trimmed with rusty downpipes. A couple of wooden boxes hung off the upper floors. From the chimneys all the way down to the coal sheds, there was a clear path for anyone with enough nerve, skill and energy to use it. Jem’s practised eye picked out this path at once.

He glanced back at Giltspur Street. Thanks to the wet weather, it wasn’t very crowded. Carriages were passing, but not many pedestrians. The buildings opposite were veiled in rain. The churchyard was empty.

I can do it
, he thought.
I can get onto that roof.
And from the roof he would have a commanding view of Red Lion Court.

Jem slipped through the churchyard fence and ducked behind a statue. Then he took off his boots and tied the laces together. He was about to sling them around his neck when the sight of his pale feet against the dirt made him stop and think. Peering up at the nearby houses, he saw that they were dark with soot. So he spent a couple of minutes rolling on the muddy ground, collecting grime.

Only when he was well camouflaged did he swarm up the nearest tree, pad swiftly over the roof of a coal-shed, and attach himself to a crooked downpipe that would (he hoped) carry him up the wall he’d chosen to climb. It didn’t look like a difficult task, since the back of each terrace was studded with all kinds of flues, hooks, windowsills, gas-pipes, string courses, planks of wood, missing bricks and irregular patches. Jem’s only concerns were the rain – which made everything slippery – and the people on the street. Though shielded by foliage during the first leg of his climb, he would be fully exposed upon reaching the third floor. His only hope was that any passersby at ground level would be keeping their gazes cast down, for fear of getting water in their eyes.

Jem decided to stay away from the windows. Instead he used other footholds to inch his way, step by step, towards the roof. He found that the best way of doing this, as always, was to concentrate on the details directly in front of him, and not think of what lay behind, or ahead. He tried not to listen to the sound of raised voices from within the building, or the clatter of hoofs from without. He ignored the water dripping from his nose and the empty boots thudding against his chest. He simply kept going – hand over hand, breath after breath, stretching and heaving and pushing and straining.

At one point someone opened a window nearby. Jem froze. A pair of hands tossed a bucket of water into the churchyard, then slammed the window shut again. Only when a tuneful whistle had faded into silence did Jem once more start moving.

By the time he reached the eaves, he was gasping for breath. His muscles ached and his fingers were beginning to cramp. His face felt red-hot. But he was able to haul himself up over the eaves and scramble across the slate roof until he reached a chimney. Here he rested for a moment, clinging to the chimney pots.

When his head cleared, he began to assess his surroundings. He was on the very apex of the roof. Behind him lay St Sepulchre’s churchyard and spire. In front of him was Red Lion Court. He could see the uneven roofline of the houses enclosing it, but he couldn’t see right down into the yard itself.

He realised that he would have to move forward if he wanted to watch people coming and going.

Unfortunately, the roof was quite steep. And wet. And full of holes. It had no fence or balustrade along its rim. But it
was
punctured by a couple of dormer windows, which reared up midway between the chimneys and the gutter. Jem decided that the closest of these windows would be a good place to start, so he carefully edged his way along the ridge until he was directly behind the little roof that covered the window. Then he slid towards this little roof until he was sitting right on top of it.

That was when he heard a familiar voice – and his heart missed a beat.

‘If this cove were a young ’un, I’d know what to do with him. But them creatures down there don’t take their vittles full grown.’

It was Sarah Pickles. Jem recognised her harsh drawl instantly. For one horrible moment he thought that she was on the roof with him. But then he realised that her voice was leaking through the open dormer window.

‘Stop fussing,’ someone else growled. ‘There won’t be no trouble with this here chest. The contents might take a week or so to perish, but no one’ll hear it. And what’s done with the remains is me own business.’

‘But he’s fat as butter, Jack,’ Sarah objected. ‘What if he don’t fit?’

‘Oh, he’ll fit,’ her companion said grimly. ‘Even if I have to take him apart with a boning knife, he’ll fit.’

By this time Jem had slipped down one side of the window. With his left arm clamped across its roof, he slowly positioned himself so that he could sneak a look inside. He wasn’t particularly worried about being heard, because of the noise that Sarah was making. And when he peeped into the garret, he saw what all the banging and crashing was about.

Sarah and the butcher were trying to stuff Josiah Lubbock into a large oak chest.

Jem pulled his head back quickly. He sat for a moment, sweating and staring at the sky. Sarah hadn’t changed a bit. She was the same blowsy, shambling, sharp-eyed old crone that she’d always been. But Mr Lubbock wasn’t looking as dapper as usual. His hat was missing; his suit was torn; his left ear was bloody. What’s more, he was bound and gagged.

Jem decided, in a dazed fashion, that the showman probably wasn’t dead yet – or why would Sarah have bothered gagging him? Then the noise in the garret abruptly stopped, and Jem began to wonder why. Had the job been done? Had Sarah left the room? He was about to take another peek when all at once a big, hairy arm lunged out of the window towards him.

Next thing he knew, he was caught by the ankle like a rabbit in a snare.

‘
No-o-o-o-o-o!
’

Jem screamed. He kicked. He writhed and scratched and clawed at the slates, but it was no good; he was too weak, and his position was too perilous. One wrong move would have sent him plummeting to earth.

Seconds later he found himself on the floor of the garret, with the butcher’s hand around his throat.

‘Well, I’ll be blowed,’ Sarah Pickles remarked. ‘If it ain’t Jem Barbary, come to pay us a call . . .’

28
CORNERED

‘You know this kid?’ said the butcher. Close up, he looked even more terrifying than he had from a distance. His neck was as wide as a bull’s. His forearms were like giant hams. His eyes were even harder than Sarah’s, though they resembled pale slivers of ice rather than dark chips of shale.

‘He used to work for me,’ Sarah admitted. Then she gave Josiah Lubbock a prod with her foot. ‘I’m a-thinking he must work for this ’un, now.’

‘No! You’re wrong!’ Jem squawked. But he couldn’t speak properly – not with all the pressure on his throat.

‘Shut yer mouth.’ The butcher slapped him across the face. ‘No one’s talking to you.’

‘It don’t signify who sent him,’ Sarah pointed out. ‘He knows me, and can swear to it in court. That’s what should be worrying us, Jack.’

‘Seems to me you’re more trouble’n you’re worth, Sal,’ the butcher muttered. He was crouched over Jem, who could hardly breathe. ‘First the notice, then the slang cove, now this here young shaver. Seems to me I oughter throw
you
in the chest, as well.’

‘And risk having our mutual friend in Whitechapel telling the beaks what he knows about yer business, Jack? I don’t know as how
that
would be too smart.’ Sarah smirked when the butcher scowled. ‘I’ll put this young ’un out o’ the way, don’t you fret,’ she promised. ‘Just as long as you tend to his boss.’

Suddenly Jack rose – and Jem found that he could gulp down air again. Coughing and gasping, he tried to stand up. But he was still on his knees when Sarah seized his earlobe, pinching it between her fingernails.

The pain was agonising.

‘
Ahh!
Ow-ow-ow-ow . . .’

‘Get up,’ she ordered, yanking at the tiny flap of skin. ‘Come on!’

As Jem staggered to his feet, he saw through a film of tears that Jack had somehow manoeuvred Mr Lubbock into the huge oaken chest.
BANG
went the lid.
Click
went the lock. With the butcher’s back to him, Jem saw his chance. He hurled himself
at
Sarah, instead of trying to pull away. She staggered beneath his weight as he barrelled into her. ‘Ooof!’ she said, releasing her grip.

But Jem wasn’t halfway out the window before Jack caught him again.

‘
He-e-e-e-elp!
’ Jem screeched.
‘Help! Murder!
’

WHOMP! This time the blow left his ears ringing. Lights danced before his eyes. His head swam and his stomach heaved and he must have blacked out for an instant, because the next thing he knew he was tucked under the butcher’s arm like a side of pork, with the butcher’s big, hairy hand clamped across his mouth.

‘Lock the door behind us,’ Jack told Sarah. All at once the room around Jem began to bob and sway as he was carried out of it. He noticed dust, cobwebs and joists riddled with dry rot. He caught a glimpse of an old wicker cradle. Then he was whisked into a stairwell lined with peeling wallpaper, where he felt so dizzy that he had to close his eyes for a moment.

‘This ain’t what I allowed for,’ the butcher was saying. ‘No questions asked, Sal – that’s what you promised. No questions, no problems, no traps sniffing around—’

‘Since when did the traps come into it?’ Sarah interrupted sharply. ‘
I
ain’t seen no coppers on our doorstep!’

Jem tried to announce that the police were on their way, but he couldn’t. Not with Jack’s hand over his mouth. All he could do was mumble and groan.

‘Stow it,’ Jack warned. To Sarah he said, ‘You’d best clear out. Soon as you can. T’ain’t safe here no more.’

They were still hurrying downstairs, past landing after landing. The further they went, the more obvious it became that the house was falling down. There were missing floorboards, smashed windows, broken banisters, holes in the walls. The plasterwork was crumbling away. Sparrows were nesting on architraves, and rats had chewed through joinery. Jem didn’t see a stick of furniture until he reached ground level, where he spotted another empty cradle through a half-open door. The room in which this cradle stood seemed to be in fairly good repair, though two of its windows were boarded up. Jem glimpsed a hearthrug, a coal-bucket, and a bundle of clean white muslin stacked on a rocking chair. He even spied a line of wet washing: a baby’s chemise, a flannel wrapper, a bib, a bonnet, a petticoat. Squirming with fear in the butcher’s grasp, Jem wondered fleetingly if Eunice had become a mother since her removal from the East End. Surely she was too old?

Then they plunged into a basement, where a fire was burning and lamps were lit. Jem saw at once that Sarah must have been living in this dingy cellar for some time. A large bed stood behind a ragged curtain. More damp laundry hung in the old-fashioned chimney corner. The floor was littered with soiled plates and food scraps.

The cradle by the bed was empty.

Eunice sat on a chair by the fire, staring blankly into space. But she looked up to see who was coming downstairs – and when Jem appeared, her mouth dropped open. ‘What’s
he
doing here?’ she demanded. ‘We don’t take ’em that old, do we?’