A Nest of Vipers
Authors: Catherine Johnson
C
ONTENTS
1. Newgate Prison, London, September 1712
2. A Fleet Wedding, Winter 1711
13. Newgate Prison, Dawn, September 1712
15. A Yellow House in Bath, Michaelmas Day
A
BOUT THE
B
OOK
“So, here they are,” I say, “The last words of Cato Hopkins, boy criminal.”
Cato Hopkins is the youngest member of Mother Hopkins’s ‘family’ – a group of larger-than-life fraudsters who roam the streets of London. There’s Addy, who can become a very convincing boy when she needs to; beautiful Bella, trained to charm any rich young man out of his fortune; Sam and Jack, with more muscle than most; and Cato himself, whose nimble fingers are trained to pick a lock in the blink of an eye.
But old age is slowing down Mother Hopkins, and she wants to carry out a final con to outdo all the tricks that have gone before. And so the gang set about bringing ruin upon Captain Walker, a proud and cruel slave captain who deserves to be taught a lesson or two . . .
Catherine Johnson has written many popular novels for children, and co-wrote the screenplay for the critically acclaimed film
Bullet Boy
.
C
ATHERINE
J
OHNSON
For all the Hackney Catlins with much love,
and with thanks to the Arts Council of England
for their support
C
HAPTER
O
NE
Newgate Prison, London, September 1712
‘HOW’D I COME
into the profession?’
I was looking up at the priest in the dark of the condemned cell. I knew I was shivering – and not from cold either. In all my fourteen years I’d never been this close to death and it was only hours away. Hours until I was to hang. The priest knew that – he was smiling down at me through the gloom – and I had no intention of making his task a simple one.
The Newgate Ordinary, as the prison parson was known, pulled out a small stool and sat down.
‘I know your game!’ I said to him. ‘You’ll have this all down and sold on for some street ballad seller to sing in every square between here and Westminster before my body’s cold!’ I looked away, and would have walked away too, but the chains bit into my wrists and ankles. ‘You’ll call it “The Boy Who Made the
Favourite
Disappear!”
Or
“The Ship That Vanished” or some such nonsense!’
‘The
Favourite
? Was that the name of the ship, the two-masted vessel, that clean vanished?’ He tried to sound innocent.
‘As if you didn’t know!’ I spat back at him.
‘It’s a long night,’ the Ordinary said. ‘The one before you hang. No one’s called for you; there’ll be no one in the mob to cut you down and save you from the surgeons! They’ll hand you over and take their shilling piece. Think on that, lad. And we’d all like to know what happened to the vessel in question.’ He coughed. I looked the other way in case he could read my face, even here in the dark. ‘And the gold she had on board, of course. I mean, if there
was
anything you could tell me—’
‘I’m no snitch! I’ll tell you nothing!’
The Ordinary smiled. I shut my eyes. The dark of the condemned cell seemed just as black whether you had your eyes open or closed. And to tell the truth, I felt even more foolish because I was the only one of my ‘family’ to be caught for our crime. Indeed, to be caught for anything at all was bad enough . . . But to hang? That had to be nothing but my own stupidity.
The
Favourite
’s vanishing was to be Mother Hopkins’s final act, her last hurrah before old age slowed her, and I had let her down . . . No wonder no one had asked for me.
I supposed my ‘family’, who were the nearest thing to blood relatives I could name, had vanished into the stew of the city. They must have reckoned me already good as dead. Mother Hopkins never even showed her face at my trial. I called her Mother – she taught me everything I know: reading, writing, the way to spring any lock you like – but she never bore me in the natural way. Paid threepence for me, she says, not that you can believe a word from her lips. I don’t know why I should even care a fig for any of them.
But there’s a lump in my throat feels like it’s the size of a cannonball.
‘
The
Mother Hopkins?!’ the Ordinary asked. I nod, and his face lights up. ‘I remember the woman myself! In here to swing like you, she was. Not thirteen, fourteen years ago!’ He rubbed his chin as if that action eased his memory. ‘A fine-looking woman.’
I said nothing. Mother Hopkins – although possessed of many qualities, such as cunning and cleverness in parting a gentleman from his money without said gentleman realizing – would not, in my mind, be thought of as fine looking.
The Ordinary sighed. ‘Knew her well,’ he said. ‘Once.’
This was not a surprise. Mother Hopkins knew most of the useful people in London. I had heard the tale of how she escaped the condemned cell, and my infant part
in
that story (she would never have paid anything for me if I wasn’t to be useful). But it seemed as though her devious ways would no longer be used to further my own little life.
None of the others had showed themselves. Not Bella, although to be honest I never expected to see her anyway. Sam Caesar and Jack Godwin were nowhere to be seen. Addeline came once, on the day the beak passed sentence. The judge wore his black cap as he brought down the hammer to end my short life. I saw Addeline and my heart leaped. She was up in the gallery, gripping the rail so hard her knuckles showed through like white marble. She was dressed as a boy, but I would know her anywhere, even though she never even looked down at me once. Just thinking about it now is bringing me close to tears . . .
‘So if you don’t tell me, lad, who’ll ever know?’ The Ordinary’s rough voice brought me back out of my dream. He took out his pen. ‘Ah, go on then, son,’ he urged. ‘It’s a good tale, I’ll warrant! You should hear the ones they’ve made up about you already.’
‘Oh?’ I said, trying to sound casual, but he knew he had me hooked. ‘What
do
they say about me?’
‘They say the boat was magicked away by witchcraft! They say that you’re too clever to be a boy, that you’re a man who never growed, and that you had a sack of gold and you would walk about the streets by St Dunstan’s
throwing
money in the air for poor children to catch.’
‘Hah!’ I would have folded my arms but the chains were so damn short they didn’t allow for it. ‘That was me and Addy once – we had so much cash in our pockets it was weighing us down. And we had to run so fast . . .’ I shook my head, remembering.
‘They say you can escape from any lock save ones blessed by a bishop,’ the priest continued. ‘And that the vanished ship sails back and forth between the Indies and Africa, freeing slaves and causing pain for the planters!’
I smiled. ‘Is that all?’
His eyes glinted in the darkness as he leaned towards me. ‘And they say you’re an angel that fell down into hell. That’s on account of your smooth words, your kind eyes and your infernal skin.’
‘My skin is far from infernal!’ I protested. ‘It’s been my living every one of my fourteen years! I’m as proud of my colour as the peacock is of his feathers,’ I said. ‘Go on. Write that down to start.’
‘So you’ll talk?’
I took a deep breath. That was a big mistake because of the smell. The odour of the two others who were to hang with me tomorrow and the filth of us all packed together in sweat and grime filled my insides. It took me a long time to ready myself. How would I start? My education in crime, my life in and out of the Nest of
Vipers
(the best inn in London and that’s God’s truth), learning to pick a lock, and watching Addy turn over country gentlemen in Smithfield with her cards, playing Find the Lady?
Or the crime I was set to give my life for – the most incredible scam ever laid by man or woman: the secret of the
Favourite
? I smiled to myself. I’d keep some of my tales back a little longer.
Anyway, if I tried telling all, we’d run out of time and I would be swinging in the wind, dancing the devil’s own jig on the end of a noose. There was so much to tell . . . Arabella playing the fine lady; me, the page, done up like the Queen’s Own dog’s dinner. Or when I was younger, and Mother Hopkins sold me so many times over I almost forgot my own name. And we played so many lays over so many years – to be straight with you, it was just like any other line of work. But there were one or two times . . . one or two marks who deserved absolutely everything they got. And, yes, one family stands out. In the end they were my own downfall – the Walkers of Greenwich.
Yes, I’d start there. And it was how we first met Sam Caesar. He’s one of the best chairmen in town now, as it goes. Him and Jack Godwin rule Leicester Fields – they can carry you, in their sedan chair, from Covent Garden to St James’s in half the time you’d make with a carriage and pair. I only wished they were waiting for me now,
outside
, and I could slip my chains, melt into the walls and be away.
That wasn’t going to happen. The judge was so afraid of me escaping again that I’m shackled and trussed like a pheasant in a butcher’s window.
I looked at the Newgate Ordinary. He was so dirty you could only just make out his chaplain’s collar. He was greedy for my words because to him they were solid old goree. Old goree? Blood and bread, quids, love-of-my-life, rhino . . .
money
. The root of all evil and the staff of life. I made him promise he’d use some of the cash he’d get for my story to save my body from the surgeon’s knife. Then I began.
‘So, here they are,’ I said, ‘the last words of Cato Hopkins, boy criminal. Who only ever robbed those who were so greedy as to want more. Who only ever tried to share about the wealth of those who are fat with goods and silks and food—’
‘Hold on!’ the Ordinary said. ‘Slow down, for the sake of my quill!’
I paused a while, then began again. ‘It was like this. It was my eighth year or so; we was living above this public house, an inn just east of Drury Lane: the Nest of Vipers. It was my home for longer than any other, but trade was slow and the only regular money coming in was from Bella’s job at Two Crows coffee shop and whatever me and Addy brought in from the street. One day, not long
after
Whitsuntide, this boy walks in . . . Well, he looked more like a man – he was the
size
of a man. It was Sam Caesar, fifteen but more than fully grown. He was bleeding from a knock on his head and he was so desperate it took more than Mother Hopkins’s soft words and a cup of ale to quieten him down.