A Very Peculiar Plague (3 page)
Finally he rose and flicked his burnt match into the fireplace.
‘Aye, very well,’ he rasped. ‘You’ll want me there now, I daresay?’
‘As soon as ever you can,’ the barmaid replied happily. And Jem took advantage of her mood, edging up to her with his hand outstretched.
‘Tuppence, Miss?’ he softly reminded her.
She flashed him a narrow, sideways look, but paid up without protest. Alfred, meanwhile, was on his knees, fishing around under the bed. He soon produced an old brown sack, which Jem recognised with an inward shudder.
The sight of it brought back horrible memories.
‘You’ll do exactly as I say, lad.
Exactly
,’ Alfred insisted, turning his head to fix Jem with a grim look. ‘Is that clear?’
‘Yessir.’
‘Don’t you take yer eyes off me. Not for one instant. And when I move, you move. Or you’ll pay the price, make no mistake.’
Jem nodded. He had always favoured the idea of being a bogler’s boy, because bogling was such a flash occupation, like smuggling, or highway robbery. People respected boglers. Unlike a grocer’s boy or a crossing-sweeper, a bogler’s apprentice could walk down the street with a swagger in his step – not to mention a steady wage in his pocket.
Of course, a pickpocket could attract just as many admiring stares, if he was walking down the right street, in the right part of town. Jem knew how
that
felt. But he also knew he’d been fooled into thinking that all those respectful glances were a tribute to his own skills – when in fact Sarah Pickles, his employer, had been the important one.
‘What’s me own cut o’ the fee, Mr Bunce?’ Jem asked, smothering a sudden pang of rage at the thought of Sarah Pickles. ‘How much did Birdie get for a job?’
‘She got what she deserved,’ Alfred said shortly. ‘As you will.’
Then he started to lay out his equipment, unwrapping his spear and testing the hinges on his dark lantern. Watching him, Jem felt slightly unnerved. Bogling could be dangerous. Jem understood that. He’d almost been eaten by a bogle, once. And although Alfred had saved him the last time, there was no guarantee that the bogler would be able to do it again.
For all he knew, he could be making the biggest mistake of his life . . .
The Viaduct Tavern was all gilt and glass and polished wood. Roaring voices filled the taproom. Gas-jets flared in a haze of smoke, keeping the dismal afternoon at bay. The air smelled of sweat and cheap spirits.
Things were very different downstairs, though. Jem knew at once that the basement was much older than the house above. Slimy stains covered the walls. Iron bars were pitted with rust. There was black grime all over the vaulted brick ceiling.
Gloomily surveying all the kegs and barrels stacked near the bottom of the staircase, Alfred said, ‘This is bigger’n I expected.’
‘Half a-dozen rooms, at least,’ Mabel confirmed, handing Jem her paraffin lamp. ‘You’ll not be needing me, will you? I only ask as it’s busy, and by rights I should be at the bar.’
Alfred grunted. ‘D’you know where Florry might have gone?’ he queried.
Mabel shook her head. Then she flapped her hand at one shadowy doorway. ‘She were sent to fetch sherry, which we keep in that room, with the port wine. But there’s coal down here, and lye, and sand . . . ain’t no saying where she might have gone, if prompted to.’
‘Mmph,’ said Alfred. Taking his nod as a kind of signal, the barmaid abruptly turned tail and hurried back upstairs. Alfred let her go without comment. He gazed around, sniffed the air, sighed and told Jem, ‘Don’t you wander off, now. Stay close to me.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Jem assured him.
Together they began to explore the maze of cellars, which weren’t as well stocked as they could have been. One room was full of coal. Another contained buckets of sand, bags of potatoes and crates of glass bottles. But there was also a lot of empty space, dotted here and there with shelves, sinks, alcoves, iron-barred screens and dark, mysterious holes.
‘Looks just like a prison, don’t it?’ Jem remarked under his breath. When very young, he had once visited his uncle in a debtor’s prison – before his mother’s death had left him homeless – and he had never forgotten the clang of metal doors swinging shut. The memory made his heart sink. He’d spent years worrying that one day, when his past crimes caught up with him, he would end up locked in a dank, musty prison cell.
‘You’d pay fourpence a night for a crib this dry, down near the docks,’ he joked, in an effort to shake off a sudden, overwhelming sense of gloom and dread. ‘Mebbe I should ask the landlord if he’d care to take in a lodger – cheap, like, on account o’ the bogle . . .’
‘Shhh!’ Alfred had stopped on a threshold. Peering past him, Jem saw that the room beyond was small and low and murky. There was an assortment of junk stacked in one corner: a broken chair, a cracked coalscuttle, a bent poker, a length of pipe.
In the floor was an iron grate, set over a drain.
Alfred hissed when he spotted this grate. He pulled Jem back from the door and hustled him in the opposite direction, growling, ‘That’s the one.’
‘What?’
‘She’ll have met her end in there, poor lass.’ Having retired to a safe distance, Alfred dropped his sack and rummaged through it. ‘Bogles like drains,’ he said quietly.
‘But that drain’s so small,’ Jem protested. ‘And there ain’t nothing in the room – not to speak of. Why would she want to go in there?’
Alfred shrugged. ‘To drink a sly nip? Or eat a stolen crust?’
‘But—’
‘As to the size o’ the drain, never think
any
hole is too small for a bogle. You never know where a drain might lead.’ Alfred’s knees cracked as he rose again. He held a small leather bag in one hand and his spear in the other. ‘Can you sing?’ he asked. ‘Whistling ain’t no good.’
‘I can sing,’ Jem confessed, ‘but not like Birdie.’
Alfred snorted. ‘No one can sing like Birdie. What
I
want is someone as can pipe away till the bogle comes. For hours, if need be.’
‘I can do that,’ Jem assured him.
‘And not falter when you see it?’
‘No.’
Alfred eyed Jem with a sceptical look. Jem stared back defiantly, though his guts were already beginning to churn. At last Alfred gave a sigh and said, ‘Take off yer hat and leave it here, for you’ll not be needing it. Wait nearby but don’t move or speak. Step into the ring
only when I tell you.
Take care not to touch the salt.’
Jem opened his mouth to point out that he wasn’t stupid, then thought better of it.
‘I’ll signal when I want you to sing,’ Alfred continued. ‘Don’t move till
I
move. And whatever you do, lad . . .’ He leaned down until his beaky nose was almost touching Jem’s snub one. ‘. . .
do not
touch the salt on yer way out o’ the ring. Is that clear?’
‘Yes.’ Jem was annoyed to find that his voice sounded a little hoarse. So he coughed and said, ‘Where’s me looking-glass?’
Alfred straightened. He propped his spear against a wall and reached into the pocket of his long, green coat, from which he produced a small mirror. ‘I’ll be wanting that back,’ he warned, as he surrendered it.
‘Was it Birdie’s?’
‘Aye.’
Jem felt pleased. He liked the notion of using Birdie’s mirror, which was bound to have at least a trace of good luck attached to it.
‘Any more questions, afore we start?’ Alfred wanted to know.
Jem shook his head.
‘Good,’ said Alfred. ‘Then I’ll begin.’
Jem had watched the bogler lay out his circle of salt once before, in a half-constructed railway tunnel. On that occasion there had been much more light and space. This time Alfred pottered about for a while after igniting his dark lantern, measuring distances and assessing vantage points, until he finally chose his spot.
It was just outside the room with the drain.
Jem kept his mouth shut when he saw this, though he had some last-minute questions he wanted to ask. Would this bogle be smaller than the previous one? Should he run from the room once it had been trapped? Did the peculiar sense of despair creeping over him have anything to do with the bogle, or did it stem from his own lack of confidence?
At last Alfred traced his ring of salt on the flagstone floor. He placed a gap in the ring directly opposite the door from which the bogle would be emerging. Then he stationed himself to one side of this door, armed with his spear, his salt and his dark lantern.
Finally he nodded at Jem, who took a deep breath and stepped into the centre of the circle. It was a large circle – so large that it filled Jem with dread. How big did it have to be, before the bogle was contained? With his back turned to the low, lightless doorway, Jem felt horribly vulnerable, like a rat in a baiting pit. But he positioned his mirror so that it gave him a clear view of Alfred
and
the door.
Then he began to sing.
There is a nook in the boozing ken, where many a mug I fog,
And the smoke curls gently, while cousin Ben
Keeps filling the pots again and again,
If the coves have stumped their hog.
Jem’s voice was naturally husky, but it didn’t usually crack or wobble – not the way it was cracking and wobbling now. He was ashamed of himself. So he paused, cleared his throat, and tried again.
The liquors around is diamond bright, and the diddle is best of all;
But I never in liquors took much delight,
For liquors I think is all a bite.
So for heavy wet I call.
Framed in Jem’s little hand-mirror, Alfred stood against the wall – a hunched, motionless shape holding a spear. At the bogler’s feet sat his dark lantern, which didn’t do much to illuminate his face. The paraffin lamp had been left at the opposite end of the room, which was piled high with old kegs. There was a strong smell of ale, mildew, mouse droppings . . . and something else. At first Jem thought it was sewage. Then, gradually, he began to change his mind.
What was that smell?
He tried not to let it distract him, even though it seemed to be getting stronger. Instead he focused his attention on the miniature scene captured in his hand: the bogler standing by the doorway, bathed in a flickering light. Luckily, Jem knew ‘The Thieves’ Chaunt’ off by heart, so he didn’t have to spare a thought for what he was singing. He just crowed away like a jackdaw, while he watched Alfred like a hawk.
The heavy wet in a pewter quart, as brown as a badger’s hue,
More than Bristol milk or gin,
Brandy or rum I tipple in,
With me darling blowen Sue.
Suddenly Jem spied something stirring in the shadows behind the doorway. He knew at once that it was a bogle. What else could it have been, after all? His voice quavered and caught on a gasp; for one panic-stricken moment, he thought that he’d lost the use of his lungs altogether. But then he found his breath again.
As one of the denser, blacker shadows in the adjoining room detached itself from the others and began to slide towards him, he launched into the next verse.
Her duds, they’re bob – she’s a kinchin crack,
And I hopes as how she’ll never back;
For she never lushes dog-soup or lap,
But she loves me cousin the bluffer’s tap.
Jem’s previous bogle had been a huge, hulking thing with horns and teeth and tentacles, like a cross between a goat, a bear and an octopus. This bogle was different. It seemed to pour through the doorway like a wave of black treacle, or a giant ball of jelly. Then, as it swiftly gathered itself into a kind of crest – rearing up behind Jem – a huge, gaping hole opened up in its body.
Still, however, Alfred didn’t move. So Jem had to keep singing, in a voice like a rat’s squeak.
She’s wide awake, and her prating cheat
For humming a cove was never beat;
But because she lately nimm’d some tin
They have sent her to lodge at the King’s Head—
Jem suddenly noticed that the bogle was starting to encircle him; it had slid through the gap in the ring of salt and now, on the floor at his feet, two viscous arms were flowing towards each other like channels of sludge, one from the left and one from the right. When they merged, he was left standing on a small, round, rapidly shrinking patch of flagstone in a sticky black puddle.
Glancing down at the slimy noose that was about to tighten around his ankles, he took his eyes off Alfred for half a second.
‘JEM! NOW!’ screamed the bogler.
Jem sprang into the air. He did it without thinking, as he would have dodged a blow or a cartwheel. The patch of floor beneath him disappeared – engulfed by a tide of goo – as he threw himself across the room and landed on both hands, then executed a clumsy backflip which left him sitting on his rear end, staring at a wall.
Somewhere along the way, he dropped his mirror.
There was a cry and a loud hissing noise. The air filled with foul-smelling steam. Jem jumped to his feet and spun round to face Alfred, who was barely visible through a cloud of greyish mist. Between them, on the floor, a large pool of fluid was rapidly drying out, like honey in the sun. A crust was forming around its edges.
Looking at it, Jem realised that Alfred must have speared the bogle.
‘Are you all right, lad?’ Alfred’s rough voice seemed to be coming from very far away. ‘Did you hurt yerself?’
‘N-no . . .’ Jem was still in shock. He staggered a little as Alfred hauled him to his feet.
‘’Pon my soul, I ain’t never seen tumbling like that there,’ Alfred went on. He was pouring sweat; Jem could see it shining on his hollow cheeks and dripping from his nose. ‘Where did you learn the trick of it?’
‘Along the crossings,’ Jem mumbled. ‘When it’s dry there ain’t no mud to sweep, so it takes a tumble or two afore you can tickle the pennies out of a gentleman’s pocket.’
He didn’t mention the fences he’d climbed or the policemen he’d dodged while working for Sarah Pickles. It didn’t seem the right moment, somehow – not while Alfred was looking at him with frank admiration. At last the bogler grunted. He turned away to pack his bag while Jem retrieved his mirror, which was still intact. By the time they’d finished clearing up, the crusty slick on the floor had crumbled into dirty grey dust, only slightly darker than the line of salt surrounding it.
