The Curse of Salamander Street (6 page)

To one side of the hallway was a large kitchen; the door was open and a black oven range steamed in the candlelight. Beadle looked in and saw a maid, who gave a soft smile as she hurriedly pulled a pair of jerkins from the drying rack and folded them neatly. The old drunk beckoned them on; he apologised under
his breath for the lack of rooms and said that if he’d realised Barghast was in the district he would have made better the accommodation.

They tramped up two flights of stairs and along another dark hallway until the man took a key from his belt and opened a door for Barghast.

‘Hope this’ll do, sir. I’ll have someone come and take the things away. I’ll double the man up in another room. Don’t think he’ll mind, not if he knows it’s you who has taken his room.’

Barghast didn’t reply. His eyes scanned the room and then he turned to Raphah and Beadle. ‘Only one bed, sadly. I am sure our host will find you a soft resting place?’

The man nodded as he tugged on his belt and pulled up his breeches over a large paunch that flopped like the rump of an elephant. ‘This way,’ he said as he pushed Raphah back along the way he had just come. ‘I’ll send up some food, Mister Barghast. We tend to turn in early. If it’s a coach for Peveril you want then it leaves at six. Breakfast at four. Three tickets?’

Barghast nodded and smiled as he slid into the room and quickly shut the door.

‘Important friends,’ said the innkeeper as he hurried them along and pulled the hairs from the wart on his chin. ‘Without him
you’d
be in the barn,
if
you were lucky,
and
you’d be walking to Peveril.’ His mood had changed and he glared at Raphah.

The innkeeper pushed them along the landing and down the stairs until they came to the kitchen door. Once again the gathering in the parlour hushed their voices to a mutter as Raphah and Beadle went by the open door.

He took them into the kitchen. ‘In here and up there,’ he said, pointing to a double bed that was framed to the ceiling and hung across the room just below the roof. ‘It’s warm and too
high for fleas, so think yourselves lucky. Eat, drink, sleep and make it quick – not good to be awake when it’s dark. Too much goes on that’s not the doing of men.’ The man gestured for the maid to leave the room. ‘All you can eat on the table, the oven’s stacked so will keep you warm.
Important friends
… Huh!’

‘What did he mean, Raphah?’ Beadle asked when he was certain they were alone.

‘He meant we take some bread and cheese and drink some ale and fall asleep.’

‘No, about the darkness and the goings on … And what about Barghast? Why did he follow us?’

‘It was only when I saw him in the light that I realised who he was. He is more than he says he is. I have heard of him. Cartaphilus Barghast is a collector of antiquities. He searches for that which he thinks has special powers. I was once told that he carried the finger of a saint and that all he desires to find is the Grail Cup,’ Raphah said. He picked at the meat that had been left on the table, pulled a chunk of bread from the loaf and filled his pockets with tiny apples that had been daintily stacked upon a white plate. ‘I think he knows who we are. It was
not
a coincidence we met on the road.’

‘The Grail Cup? Demurral spoke of it often. So what’s Cartaphilus Barghast doing here and why does he travel with us?’ Beadle pleaded.

‘That we will discover my friend, that we will discover,’ Raphah said as he climbed the ladder to the high bed and looked down at Beadle from the ceiling. ‘This is a good place. A warm night’s sleep and then on to Peveril. Soon I’ll find Thomas and Kate.’

‘But who is he?’ moaned Beadle as he warmed his steaming backside against the oven. ‘Did you see the coach hounds? Every one of them terrified and he said he’d been with us whilst we walked. What is he – invisible?’

‘If Barghast is the one I was told of when I sailed to this land, then he will soon reveal himself and his purpose. Until then, let us keep close counsel.’ Raphah rolled himself into the blanket. The heat from the oven had warmed the bed, and it was as if he rested on hot buttered bread. Raphah smiled to himself as he looked down at Beadle, who shuffled and strutted up and down the kitchen angrily chuntering to himself. ‘Beadle, sleep.’

‘SLEEP?’ Beadle asked as he stepped too close to the oven and singed his rear upon the scalding door. ‘Sleep? How can I sleep when we have trouble with us? That’s what Barghast is – TROUBLE. I can smell it a mile off and it’ll follow us all the way to London.’

‘And all I can smell is a burning Beadle.’ Raphah laughed as Beadle wafted the smoke from his burnt trousers. ‘Whatever Barghast may be will not concern us. In the morning we will be gone to Peveril.’

‘But why does he follow?’

‘That we shall soon discover,’ Raphah replied calmly as he snuggled himself into the blanket and closed his eyes wearily.

‘Blast, bother, boiling blood.’ Beadle fussed as he pulled every item of flotsam from his coat pocket and burnt it in the stove fire. ‘Everyone sleeps and Beadle paces … Clock ticks on and I’m on my own.’ He reluctantly began to climb the ladder to the bed.

Lying next to Raphah he gazed down to the wooden floor far below. With the coming of the night it was as if the house began to yawn and tremble. From all around came the sound of strange groaning. Footsteps beat wearily above his head; far away he could hear words spoken in whispers. The gnawing of rats echoed in the walls and as all in the house fell into dreams, Beadle stared about the room.

In his mind he suddenly entertained the thought that he now missed life with Demurral. He had his place in the order of the
world and had walked in the glow of being
the master’s
servant. Beadle felt quite alone as his thoughts raced. He wondered how circumstances had come and tattered his life like scoundrels and vagabonds stealing all he had.

Late into the dark hours, Beadle twisted and turned in sleeplessness. He was hot and bothered in his high bed, and itched as if every crawling creature had taken to eating him alive. The house had fallen into silence as all the travellers slept. ‘Last to taste sleep,’ he muttered. ‘Hate it, hate it …’

Wide awake, he looked on as a small mouse crawled from a cobwebbed corner of the scullery and climbed the carved table leg. It scurried in and out of the covered plates and every now and then took hold of a crumb in its claws and feasted merrily upon it. The creature then sat, rubbing its whiskers, looking at Beadle. The candles flickered against the whitewashed plaster. To hurry sleep, Beadle counted the slats of the wooden shutters again and again. Half-drowsy, he listened to another set of footsteps pounding the stairs, making their way to the outside privy. Something in their stealthy and somewhat sinister bearing made him listen more intently. It was as if they stopped at every doorway of the passageway above Beadle’s head. Time and twice time they walked quietly across the bare boards, stopping and starting and moving from door to door. At every doorway the footsteps entered the rooms above his head, then moments later shuffled their way along the passageway.

He thought for a moment, knowing that this was not just the nocturnal wanderings of a weary traveller. ‘Can you hear it, Raphah?’ Beadle asked as he nudged his companion. There was no reply. Raphah slept soundly, wrapped in the quilted blanket.

The sound of the footsteps carried on across the landing and then, slowly and carefully, began to descend the wide staircase that led into the hallway. From beneath the scullery door, Beadle
could see the flickering of shadowy light. It moved with each pace taken, coming quietly closer by the second.

‘There’s someone coming,’ Beadle whispered as close to Raphah as he dared without being overheard from the hallway. ‘Outside – listen.’

Raphah didn’t stir. He snored gently, a smile etched in his dreaming like a contented cat filled with cream. The footsteps stopped outside the door. Beadle could tell that whoever was walking the house did so with great ease, not fearing or showing concern that they would be discovered.

The large brass door handle began to slowly turn. Beadle pulled the covers up about him and peered quietly from the bed as he pretended to sleep. Slowly and purposefully, the door opened. Beadle remained silent. He could feel a rising sense of panic begin to grip his throat. Inch by inch the door opened. A hand gripped the wood and gently eased the door wider and wider.

From his vantage point, Beadle could see the bright glow of three candles. Covering his head, he peered below through his crooked elbow. The door opened wider – and it was then that he saw the Glory Hand. The fingers gripped the candles that burnt brightly. Beadle knew it well. It was like the one that his master Demurral had used several times before. It was the hand of a hanged man, severed at the wrist, dipped in saltpetre and wax, dried and charmed by a magical incantation. In its grip it held three candles. Once it was lit, all who slept could not wake and to put out the flame would take blood or the milk of a mothering cat.

A cloaked figure held the Glory Hand before it. With a chank of bagged coins, the hand was wedged between two plates of cold meat and a moneybag emptied on the table. A living hand came from the shroud and began to count the money coin by coin. It stacked them in neat piles, gold to the left and
silver to the right. But it was as if the robber searched the bag for something more and that the money was of no concern.

Beadle could not see the figure’s face nor recognise by its dress who it was. He was certain it was neither Barghast nor Demurral. The figure was far too small and its hand far too delicate. All he could fearfully see was the thin white hand counting the money.

‘Money and nothing more,’ the soft voice said.

On the table, the mouse hid beneath the rim of a pewter plate, its long tail trailing from its hiding place. The hand suddenly stopped its reckoning, darted to its left, snatched the mouse and in one loud gulp the tiny creature had vanished into the hooded fiend’s mouth. There was the crunching of bones and the satisfied chuckle of contentment.

The coins were placed back in the bag and the hand taken from the table, and without any backward glance the figure left the room.

Beadle counted the footsteps back up the stairs and along the corridor. Again, at every room they stopped until their sound faded into the still night. In the kitchen, Beadle sniffed the air that hung heavy with the fragrance of wild jasmine.

C
HARRED plaster walls rose up from the muddied lane that was Salamander Street. Thomas looked to the narrow gap between the buildings and the slither of sky that cut through the rooftops. He could see that the street ran out of sight towards the city. There was little light from the sun; even on this bright morning the oil lamps beckoned them as they walked slowly on through the shadows. With every yard, they picked their way in and out of the open sewer that ran its length.

‘Good place to stay,’ Crane joked as he pulled the scarf around his face like a mask. ‘I know a man here called Pallium … He’s a banker. We’ll take a room and see what is to be done.’

‘What about the
Magenta
?’ Thomas asked as his feet slipped from him, as if the slime beneath him was alive.

‘Never give in to those who think they are your betters,’ Crane snarled suddenly. ‘Priests, kings and excise men, every one of them a rogue by another name. Give me a week and I’ll have it back and we’ll be away to France. I have a house in Calais away from the customs men. You can stay there and I will return. I have unfinished business with Parson Demurral.’

His words put an end to the conversation. In the mean light they walked on silently. Thomas caught Kate’s glance and tried to smile. He could see she looked more and more concerned with every step as they walked forth into the looming cavern.

Crane stopped by a flaking wooden door. The house that surrounded it was stacked against the sky like a rocky outcrop. It had once been painted white and had now dulled to a mouldy yellow. The thick and crumbling plaster was engrained with dirt and the taint of wood smoke. Nailed into the broad oak panel was a lion’s head that had once heralded the call of visitors but now its jaws were rusted shut.

‘This must be the place,’ Crane said as he rapped his fingers against the wood and pulled at a flake of paint. ‘Wonder if Gimcrack Pallium is here?’ There was unexpected warmth in Crane’s voice. His eyes glinted, suggesting he had shared much with Pallium and remembered him as an old friend. ‘The most generous man in the kingdom – he came here but a year ago and never a nicer man you would want to meet. If it is within Pallium’s power he will get it and if it’s in his benefit he will give it to you. But beware – he is the fattest and most gluttonous man in the kingdom. My own age but the size of a whale. Eats like several horses and will pinch the food from your plate.’

Crane banged on the door again as he leant against the wall and looked back and forth along the empty street.

‘No people,’ Kate said as she followed his eyes. ‘Strange for the time of day, it’s morning and every house looks as if they still sleep.’

There was no reply to Crane’s banging. He rapped again upon the door and, taking the dagger from his belt, punched the panel once more. ‘PALLIUM! PALLIUM!’ Crane shouted.

From the dark bowels of the house came the babbling of what sounded like a madman.

‘Who wants me?’ asked the croaking voice from within. ‘No one has called on me before at this hour, it’s the middle of the night and I am one for sleep.’

‘Pallium?’ Crane asked, scarcely believing the frailness of his friend’s voice. ‘Is that you?’

‘Who should want to know such a thing?’ came the reply. A small wooden slat was slid open and two feeble silver eyes stared out into the gloom. ‘Crane – Jacob Crane?
He
said you’d be coming. All’s made ready, all ready. What an amazing thing …’

Feebly, the bolts were pulled and the door slowly opened. A frail hand came from within and was held out towards Crane in greeting. Thomas could see that the fingers were covered in sores, and long, uncut nails curled about them.

‘Pallium,’ said Crane softly in greeting to his friend, looking at his shrivelled body that wore the clothes of a man thrice its size. ‘You have changed, my friend. I was telling my companions …’

‘Changed?’ argued the voice as he snapped back his hand. ‘I am as I have always have been. Never in finer health and a more robust creature in London will you never find. I didn’t expect such an argument in the middle of the night.’

‘We seek rest and not discontent, Pallium. My friends and I are in need of a bed. I am without a ship and I do not wish to be without a friend. This is Kate and Thomas, we have travelled from Whitby.’ Crane smiled as he spoke, hoping to calm his friend.

Pallium rolled a worn gold coin in his hand as he looked at Thomas and Kate and gave them a slight grin. His mouth was filled with jagged teeth that appeared from the darkness like sharp rocks in a night storm. The man rubbed his chin as he surveyed them both warily.

‘
Suppose
we could find you a straw mattress … somewhere. Things are not as easy as they once were Jacob, money doesn’t grow on trees and I am sure someone has been helping themselves
to mine. You never know when you will need all you have. Always death and always taxes, nothing so certain as those two creatures.’

‘Since when has concern for the future been a thought for Gimcrack Pallium?’ Crane asked as he looked about the cobwebbed hallway with its rotting drapes and tattered rugs. ‘The man I once knew wouldn’t give a thought for the morrow. Weren’t you the one who would tell me never to worry for the morrow, as this day has enough troubles of its own?’

‘That was then,’ snapped Pallium, pulling his baggy coat about himself as if it were a blanket. ‘A year ago I would have agreed, but things change, people change, lives change and with each day in Salamander Street …’ Pallium stopped short and looked at them all through a screwed-up eye. ‘Not short of money, are you? Not here to take what I have, are you, Jacob?’

‘If it’s money you want I have plenty for us all,’ Crane bellowed, his temper growing shorter. ‘I may be a thief, but I have honour for my friends and from you would I take nothing. If you want me to pay for our lodging then very well, but don’t think I’m a thief.’

Pallium shook his head, as if he tried to rouse himself from a dream only to be sucked back into his waking slumber. He stared at Crane and sniffed the dew from his nose, wiping it on his silvered sleeve that looked as though it had been garlanded with mercurial slugs.

‘A shilling for the lodge and find your own food?’ he offered, slobbering over the amount. ‘Each?’

Crane looked at the dust-covered panelling and smiled. ‘It would be a pleasure, Pallium. I take it you would then burn some wood to warm this place through?’

‘Only enough to take the chill from your breath. Can’t have Galphus thinking I am being wasteful.’

‘Galphus?’ Crane asked as Pallium led them through the long
hall and into the scullery. ‘I have not heard his name before.’

‘A fine man. And my landlord. He has a word for every season and if I’ll be blown, it is as if he knows everything. Owns the whole street and deserves every glorious brick and beam. This is the finest place to live in the whole of the city. Never been happier and it’s such a place. I’m honoured to live here, honoured, Jacob, and you will be too when you meet Galphus.’

‘Where do we eat?’ Kate asked, looking around with eyes that spoke of her discontent.

‘The Inn, of course,’ replied Pallium amazed that such a question should be asked. ‘The Salamander by Potter’s Yard. No finer place to eat in London, and Galphus dines there.’

‘Then that will suit us well for we could eat a whole ox,’ Crane said as he stepped into the scullery. ‘In fact you will join us and we will all eat together.’

‘Can’t leave Pallium’s Palace,’ Pallium sniggered as he held out his arms as if to show them the finery of the scullery. ‘Well, that’s what I like to call it … Never know when someone will come. There’s always work to do and so little time and so much to count.’

The three looked about the room. Its cold stone floor echoed the sound of their steps. An empty fireplace stared back at them like a golem’s eye, caked in black soot. In the centre of the room was a long candle-lit table that was stacked with neat piles of gold and silver coins. The wood was worn with many times of counting and recounting. By the table was a solitary chair.

‘Don’t get out much,’ Pallium said wearily as he looked at the coins. ‘
They
need so much work, so much consideration. Just like children, they have to be kept safe. I know each one as if it were my own. I look after them for Galphus and he would not be best pleased if I were to lose a farthing or halfpenny.’

‘We’ll need a bed, Pallium. Sleep has been a stranger to us these last days,’ Crane said as he eyed the sparseness of the room.

‘You’ll have to share,’ Pallium said briskly to Thomas and Kate as they looked nervously about them. ‘I have a room for you Jacob, all ready. Fit for a king, some would say an emperor, with a sea-hammock and not a bed. Was told you’d want it like that. Prepared it all yesterday when I knew you were coming.’ Pallium rolled the coin in his hands as he spoke.

‘
Knew
we were coming?’ Crane asked, his sharp eyes searching Pallium’s face.

‘Yes, Galphus told me yesterday,’ Pallium said in a matter-of-fact way as he edged his way closer to his precious coins. ‘Came especially … Said he had heard that Jacob Crane would come and stay at Pallium’s Palace. Never thought he’d be right, but as with everything, Galphus is astounding.’

‘I would love to meet a man who knows my thoughts a day before they come to mind,’ Crane said suspiciously.

‘Galphus is a seer and prophet beyond doubt. He has made me a happy man since I came here. For years I had a melancholy that would never leave me. Galphus soon fixed that – for not only is he a seer, but also a physician. When Galphus said you were coming I didn’t question his word. I made up the beds and strung up the hammock. Didn’t sweep the rooms. I find dust keeps the place warm and then you don’t waste on a fire.’ Pallium spoke quickly, pulling on his long brown whiskers and frowning like a cheated cat. ‘Didn’t tell me
why
you were coming … Don’t want any trouble, Jacob, can’t be having any trouble …’

‘The last thing I would want,’ Crane said as he eyed Kate and Thomas to be silent on all that had happened. ‘Just a few days’ rest until I get the
Magenta
back and then we’ll be to sea.’

‘Then,’ Pallium grumbled reluctantly and with much chagrin, ‘my home is your home.’ His eyes flickered from one to the other and back again as if he were a cornered animal.

Thomas stared at the man, wondering why his melancholy
gripped him like a tight glove. Pallium appeared to be nervous of their presence, as if he were hiding some deep secret that he could share with no one. As they stood in a long and uncomfortable silence, Thomas looked him up and down. He thought Pallium to be a ragged man in dead men’s clothes. The collar of his shirt was stiffened with neck grease and draped about him like a forlorn noose of grimed cotton. His jacket and waistcoat hung from his body like a horse blanket, his breeches sagged like sash curtains about his spindly legs.

The one thing that gave Pallium an ounce of glory was his shoes. Thomas widened his eyes as he stared at their beauty – never had he seen foot coverings so fine. In the dust and the murk they glimmered and shone like burnished jet-stones. Large silver clasps held them to his socked feet. Thomas could not help but gasp as they glinted in the candlelight.

‘A lad who appreciates the finer things?’ Pallium asked propitiously, breaking the long silence.

Thomas nodded, and glanced to Kate and then to Crane and back to Pallium’s feet.

‘Made by Galphus and never taken from my feet in the last year. Prosperous shoes, boots of providence and a charm against the world,’ Pallium said, suddenly sparked to life. ‘Blessed me with them he did – the finest, most assiduous shoemaker in the country. Italian leather, fine silver and Mandarin cloth. Warm and soft, lad. Restful for the feet.’ Pallium sighed and sat at the chair by the table as he raised a foot in the air for all to see. ‘I never take them from my feet. Far too precious to be left for anyone to pick them up. Look but never touch.’

‘Shoes are shoes, Pallium. You speak of them as if they have a life of their own.’ Crane scoffed, his words tired and angry. ‘Does this hammock have a life of its own? Will it be decked in finest Mandarin cloth?’

‘No – hemp, and found in the room above,’ Pallium snapped
as a cloud of gloom enfolded him again. Slowly, his thin smile slipped from his face. ‘If you follow the stairs you’ll find where you sleep. I won’t walk with you. I have to be about my counting. All these interruptions keep taking my mind from the task. If I were lonesome for a year and a day it wouldn’t be long enough.’ With that, Pallium turned from them and looked to the table and the neatly stacked piles of coins. Ignoring Crane, he picked a stack and began to count each coin slowly and precisely.

Without the touch of human hand, the door to the stairway suddenly jumped from the latch and opened. It blew cobwebs and a cloud of dust from the rafters, showering the room with a crepuscular mist. Pallium nodded as he grunted and cuzzled his words like an old and wizened dog. It was if he had been expecting the door to open as an invitation for them to leave his presence and depart to their rooms.