The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins (5 page)

I promised Jenny that I would think further on the matter. I also promised to fix a bolt on her door. I was unsettled by her story, but what more could I do without confronting Sam, which she had begged me not to do? There was a chance she had indeed dreamed it all. I had my own reasons not to trust the boy, but I had seen him with my own eyes last night, while the thief was supposedly scurrying about next door. Shadows in the dark, that was all.

I headed downstairs, stomach rumbling. Dinner – that would help banish the gloom. I poked my head into the shop but Kitty had vanished, replaced by . . . ‘Ah, damn you. There you are.’

Sam was reading a book of anatomy, black curls falling across his face. His gaze slid briefly to mine, then dropped back down to an illustration of the heart, labelled in close detail.

I tapped the page. ‘So. You’re learning the mysteries of the human heart.’

‘Ventricles.’

A month ago I would have been perplexed by this response. But I had learned to form sentences around the odd word he deigned to expel into the air. In this case: ‘
No, sir. I am not studying the mysteries of the human heart, but its mechanics. Including, for example,
ventricles
, a word I will now say out loud for my own unfathomable amusement.
’

His lips curved into a faint smile.

‘Where’s Mistress Sparks?’

Nothing.

‘The magistrate paid us a visit. Mr Burden accused you of breaking into his house. He claimed Stephen saw you – though Stephen denied it. What do you say to that?’

Nothing.

‘I defended you. Miss Sparks lied for you.
Sam
,’ I prompted, exasperated. ‘When a gentleman defends you against an accusation of theft, it’s customary to express gratitude.
Much obliged to you, sir
, for example.
Thank you, Mr Hawkins, for defending my character. I am in your debt.
’

Sam closed his book. ‘Bliged.’

Just one vowel short of a word. A triumph. When Sam first arrived at the Cocked Pistol I’d thought he was shy with strangers, or missing his home and family. As the days had passed, I’d come to realise that this was his natural temperament. He was a strange boy, no doubt – but I had not considered him a danger to the house. Had I been too trusting of him?

I was about to venture out in search of a decent meal when a young lad entered the shop. His clothes were badly patched but clean, and he was well fed. One of James Fleet’s boys. I glanced at Sam and caught the slightest flicker of fear in his eyes. Afraid of his father? Well – he was not alone in that.

The boy handed me a slip of paper.

Hawkins. I have something for you. Come at once. Bring Sam.

I paid the boy and sent him on his way. I could feel Sam’s gaze upon the note from across the room.

‘Your father wishes to see you.’

His brows twitched. Ach, I knew that anxiety well enough. Tell a boy his father has summoned him and nine times out of ten it’s trouble. I’d spent half my childhood in my father’s study, staring at the floor while he expounded upon my failings. Weak. Obstinate. Wilful.

‘I’ll change,’ Sam said.

I blinked, confused – as if he had somehow read my mind. By the time I understood him he had slipped around the counter and was climbing the stairs to his garret room.

‘You are dressed well enough,’ I called up to him.

‘Too well.’

A good point. I returned to my own room and threw on my drabbest waistcoat and breeches, and a fraying, mouse-coloured greatcoat. No silver buttons, no embroidery. Not for a trip to St Giles.

St Giles is barely a ten-minute stride from Covent Garden but it might as well be another country. The Garden is not without its perils – especially at night – but the stews of St Giles contain some of the deadliest streets in the city. The last time I’d ventured in I had crawled out again upon my hands and knees, battered and bloody, lucky to be alive. I had been led there by a linkboy I’d paid to light my way home. Instead he had tricked me, leading me through the twisting maze of verminous streets into an ambush, where I had been robbed and beaten.

The same boy was at my side today.

Sam’s father, James Fleet, was captain of the most powerful gang of thieves in St Giles. I would call them infamous, but their success hinged upon the quiet, secret way they went about their business. Fleet was careful not to make a name for himself, except where it mattered: whispered in the shadows. While other gangs swaggered about the town boasting of their deeds, Fleet’s men were stealthy, silent and – if caught – never  peached another gang member. For ten years James Fleet had ruled St Giles – and barely a soul knew it.

As we left Drury Lane and crossed St Giles’s road I put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. It was a little over three months since he had led me into the stews. I was
tolerably
certain I’d forgiven him. We had been strangers at the time, after all – and indeed his father had made amends, later. But I still remembered the look of pride and curiosity on Sam’s face as I was beaten to the ground. The satisfaction of having pleased his pa. ‘Do you remember the last time you brought me here?’

He tilted his face and looked up at me, black eyes cool and unwavering. ‘Yes.’

‘You’ve never apologised for it.’

He thought about this for a moment. ‘No.’

I gave up.

The city streets are never fragrant, but St Giles wins the honour of being the foulest-smelling borough in London. It is impossible to walk a straight line – one must gavotte around the piles of shit, the clotting pools of blood, men lying drunk or dying in the filth. Sam weaved through it all with an easy tread, while I caught my heel in something so rancid I almost added my own vomit to the street. I reached for my pocket handkerchief, then thought better of it. There would be narrow eyes watching us from every alleyway, every rooftop. I did not want to enter St Giles waving my hankie to my nose like some ridiculous fop.

When Sam had first come to stay with us there had been a trace of the St Giles perfume trapped in his clothes, his hair, his skin. We had given him fresh clothes, clean linen, and several trips to a nearby
bagnio
where his skin was scrubbed and scraped and rubbed in sweet-smelling oil. I’d suggested that he might wish to shave off his curls as well, to discourage lice and other pests. Disdainful silence. Now he was back in his favourite ‘old duds’ – a battered hat tipped low over his face, a torn and shabby coat, thin breeches. His father could have paid the best tailor in town to stitch a new set of clothes for his only boy, but that would have drawn unwanted attention.
Where did he get the chink for such rum togs, eh?
No one in James Fleet’s gang wore fine clothes. Clean and modest – that was the order. That’s how I’d known the boy with the note was one of his.

Hawkins. I have something for you. Come at once.
My stomach tightened.

A few nights before I had made a grave, foolish mistake. By chance I had met with Sam’s father near St James’s Park. It was not his usual haunt and he had looked somehow diminished, wandering through such a respectable part of town. Indeed he had seemed so lost that on a whim I had invited him to join me at the gaming tables near Charing Cross.

I did not think to wonder what he was doing in St James’s. A man such as Fleet is not stumbled upon
by chance
. I am sure now that he had been waiting for me, but I did not even consider the idea at the time.

He had caught me at a ripe moment and he knew it, the cunning bastard. The Marshalsea had cast a long shadow on my soul. I had almost died, and it had changed me – I could see it when I studied myself in the mirror. I did not trust any more to: ‘and all will be well’. I was no longer the careless boy I had once been. But what was I then, in truth? Not a clergyman, despite my father’s wishes. So then . . . what? What was my purpose? I couldn’t say. And a man without a purpose is easy to trap.

I took James Fleet to the gaming house as if I were leading a pet lion upon a leash. Look! See what I have brought with me! I gambled away all the money in my purse and I drank until the floor pitched like a boat beneath my feet. All the vows I had made when I left prison fled before that cheap, seductive thought:
damn it all to hell
–
life must be lived!
I had won my freedom from gaol. I had won Kitty’s heart. I had won my safety. The game was over. So what now?

Another roll of the dice, of course. Because the game must never end.

I sat with James Fleet in a tavern – so drunk I cannot even remember the name of it. And I confessed to him what I had barely admitted even to myself. That I was suffocating. That I had begun to suspect that a life without risk for a man of my nature was in fact a kind of slow death. Fleet had leaned forward, interested. ‘I could use a man with your talents, Hawkins.’ The next morning I’d woken with a pounding headache and the uneasy feeling that I had accidentally made a pact with the devil.

And now he had
something
for me.

Sam turned on to Phoenix Street, a long road that runs straight through the heart of St Giles like an arrow. Most of the houses were ruins, rotting roofs patched with tarred cloth, as if the risk of fire weren’t grave enough amidst all the timber frames and gin stills. One building had collapsed into the street overnight – a couple of thin, ragged street boys were loading the wood into wheelbarrows to sell. They saluted Sam, who gave them a tight nod as we hurried on.

There were eyes upon us in every window here. Men lurking in every shadow. I could feel the stares burning the back of my neck as we passed. I stole a glance up at the rooftops, scouting the wooden planks and ropes that laced the houses together in one long, tangled forest of outlaws. The rookery, they called it – a town for thieves hidden in the skies. A man could clamber right through it without once touching the ground. We passed a gin shop, then another. And then another. At the fourth, a tattered scrap of a boy was puking his guts into the street, blind drunk. A group of older lads jeered at him and kicked him on his way. There were no old men here.

James Fleet did not live on Phoenix Street. His house was hidden, tucked away like a coin buried deep in a miser’s pocket. This was my first visit to his den, and Sam had led me on a strange, intentionally confusing route. But I had learned my lesson the last time he had brought me into St Giles, and I paid close attention to every twist and turn and double back.

Suddenly, without warning, he shoved open a door near the end of the street. It was stiff, and he had to throw all his weight behind it. Somehow he managed this without making a sound. It struck me that Sam used silence the way other boys worked with knives or their fists. I thought again of Jenny’s whispered confession and felt a flicker of unease deep in my chest.

We climbed up through a tall, narrow house, its rooms partitioned with sheets and blankets to cram in as many bodies as possible. No need to guess what happened behind those temporary walls. The air stank of sex and bad liquor. Above the low sobs, the groans of pleasure and pain, I could hear a little girl crying out again and again for her mother. No one answered her. I stopped on the staircase, overwhelmed. Sam glanced back, and I could tell from his impatient expression that these sounds meant nothing to him. They were, after all, the sounds of his neighbourhood, of his childhood. He heard them the way I might hear the cry of gulls and the rush of the sea against the shore. We moved on.

At the top of the house we pulled ourselves through a trapdoor onto the roof, wind gusting fresh air on our faces. From up here we could see the city stretching into the distance, the dome of St Paul’s far away to the east. Even Sam couldn’t resist. He paused to look out over his father’s estate, balancing lightly on a damp board that ran between two of the houses. A look settled upon his face that I recognised well – the joy and anxiety of coming home.

‘Your father will be pleased to see you,’ I called out.

He spun nimbly on the beam. ‘Stephen. He denied seeing the thief?’

Good God, it was bad enough that he barely spoke. Even worse when he hodge-podged conversations in such an eccentric fashion. ‘He said it was too dark to be sure.’