A Very Peculiar Plague (17 page)

For one thing, the buildings in Warwick Lane were taller and older than most East End buildings. And though some had fallen into disrepair, it was clear even to Jem that many of them had once been very fine – unlike the buildings in Bethnal Green. What’s more, the city crowds were sprinkled with lawyers and physicians and merchants, while the streets of Bethnal Green were largely peopled with poor folk: seamstresses, bootmakers, navvies, pickpockets.

The city businesses were more prosperous, too. Jem’s first stop on Warwick Lane was a printing office, which was papered with bills and bursting with books and pamphlets. All the men in this office could obviously read, from the refined young clerk ordering a gross of leaflets to the burly typesetter with big shoulders and ink-stained hands. When Jem stuck his head through the door, he took one look and instantly retreated, before anyone inside could tell him to hook it.

He knew that Eunice Pickles would never set foot in such a place.

So he revised his original plan, deciding to concentrate on public houses. The Bell, on the western side of the street, was an old-fashioned coaching inn built around a cobbled court. It was several storeys high, with here and there an outbreak of long wooden balconies that were stacked one above the other, like theatre galleries. People hung over the balustrades, smoking and spitting, while others slouched at ground level, surrounded by straw and horse manure. A clutch of old dog-carts mouldered near the stables, which were as bad as anything in Bethnal Green.

Jem entered the Bell’s courtyard from Warwick Lane, through a large, square opening high enough for a man on a horse. The taproom was immediately to his right. It should have been a cheerful place, because its windows formed a wall of glass that overlooked the courtyard. But when Jem walked in, he saw that the glass was so dirty, and the bar itself so old and sooty, that it wasn’t cheerful at all.

The pot-boy didn’t know anything about missing children. Nor had he heard of Eunice Pickles. As for his patrons, they were all from out of town. So Jem abandoned the bar and did a quick circuit of the courtyard. Here he found a few locals, including a groom, a cook, and a knife-grinder.

But none of these people could help him.

The Old Coffee Pot was Jem’s next port of call. It stood near the entrance to Newgate Market, which occupied a small square tucked away behind Warwick Lane. Most of the butchers had recently moved to the new markets at Smithfield, so the pavilion in the centre of the square was all but deserted. Even the clock on its cupola had stopped. The tavern was busy enough, though – and when Jem spoke to the untidy blonde barmaid (who screeched her orders like a parrot as she slung quart pots around as if they were teacups), she was surprisingly helpful.

‘Why, yes,’ she said. ‘We had a lad go missing here only last week. He were a printer’s devil, and tried to pay for a pint o’ porter with a bad shilling. When I challenged him on it, he ran away, with a good many customers in pursuit. But no one could catch him. They say he vanished into thin air.’

‘He ducked down into the vaults below the market stalls,’ an eavesdropping patron interrupted, ‘and we never did find him.’

‘I daresay he kept hidden in some dark corner, then seized his chance when he could,’ was the barmaid’s theory.

But Jem wasn’t so sure about that. ‘There’s
vaults
under the market?’ he demanded.

‘So I’ve heard,’ said the barmaid, ‘though I ain’t never seen ’em. They’re old storage cellars, from the days when Newgate had a market-beadle and a slaughter-house, and more horse-drawn railway-vans coming in and out than there’s fleas on a dog.’ She admitted that she’d not heard of any other strange disappearances, but promised to spread the word.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t recall ever having laid eyes on Eunice Pickles.

By the time he left the Old Coffee Pot, Jem was halfway convinced that there had to be a bogle under Newgate Market. So he went to make inquiries at the Sun and Last Inn, which opened directly onto the market square. Here he heard about the printer’s devil all over again, though no one seemed to know much about the underground vaults. Someone
did
mention an apprentice called Tom Peel, who had gone missing a month or so previously from a brass foundry in the old College of Physicians, just down the road. But then someone else pointed out that Tom had been a ne’er-do-well, who had spent all his time threatening to stow away on a ship bound for America. And it was generally agreed that if he hadn’t gone to sea, the boy had probably been murdered.

He was that kind of lad, according to the landlord. A bad lot.

Since Jem couldn’t find anyone at the Sun who recognised his description of Eunice Pickles, he moved on down Warwick Lane, past something that must have been the old College of Physicians. It had a great domed roof held up by massive stone pillars, and looked rather like a bank, or a church. But it was also dingy and dilapidated, with only the brass foundry and a squalid collection of butchers’ shops cluttering up its inner court.

Most of the butchers who worked there were drinking in a nearby tavern called the Three Jolly Butchers. Its landlord, Mr Quick, didn’t know Eunice Pickles. He did, however, know Tom Peel. Tom had been a regular patron, but had died of the grippe in a Portsmouth hospital. ‘I swear ‘tis true,’ Mr Quick said, ‘for I had a letter from his poor mother, who could not get Tom’s indenture money back.’ In other words, Tom Peel had not mysteriously vanished after all – though Mr Quick knew of three other children who had. ‘Name o’ Moggs,’ he explained. ‘When their mother died she left ’em all alone in the world. The eldest daughter did piecework at home, making hairnets, while the boy cleaned boots. But one day they all disappeared, and have not been seen since.’ After a moment’s thought, he added, ‘People say they went to a workhouse. What
I
say is: why did they leave their tools behind? All their needles and brushes were still in the cellar, along with their clothes and their bedding—’

‘They lived in a
cellar
?’ Jem interrupted sharply.

‘Like beggars in St Giles,’ Mr Quick confirmed. ‘
And
paid two shillings a week for the privilege.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘Their lodgings were falling down around their ears – and still are. The sooner they demolish that old cess-pit, the better. ’Tis a blot on the neighbourhood, for all its past fame.’

He was referring to the Oxford Arms, which stood a little further along Warwick Lane, down a short passage. It was another galleried coaching inn, even bigger than the Bell, but its rooms were now let to long-term tenants and its stables were stuffed with costers’ carts. When Jem arrived there, he found two women tearing each other’s hair out in the cobbled yard, as dozens more leaned over the balcony railings, urging them on. The fight ended when one woman was flung into a stack of baskets, and burst into tears. The victor stomped off, muttering darkly.

There was a murmur of disappointment from the audience.

Meanwhile, Jem was scanning the face of every spectator, fully expecting to spot Eunice Pickles. But he didn’t; she wasn’t there. Disappointed, he then began to inquire after the missing Moggs children, darting around to catch people before they drifted back into their grimy, tumbledown rooms.

‘Indeed, I spoke to that family, once or twice,’ a skinny Welsh girl finally admitted. She was a fur-puller by trade, so her clothes were covered in cat-hair, and she had a dreadful cough. ‘They lived in the old beer cellar, but they’re gone now. And not a soul has lived there since.’

‘Why not?’ asked Jem.

‘Duw, and would you show me who’d want to?’ She shuddered. ‘You might as well crawl into a grave.’ She then pointed at a wooden hatch set into the ground near the old bar. Lifting this hatch, Jem saw a rickety ladder leading down into a black pit. The stench that wafted up was sickening – a mixture of stale beer, mould, sewage, and something else.

Jem didn’t bother to go any further. A single sniff told him all that he needed to know. He dropped the hatch and retreated.

‘You might have a bogle down there,’ he said. Seeing the Welsh girl’s bewildered expression, he added, ‘One o’ them murdering monsters as skulks in the dark.’

‘A knocker, is it?’

‘Mebbe.’ Jem wasn’t familiar with all the different kinds of bogle. Not like Miss Eames. ‘I know a Go-Devil man, if you want it killed. You can reach him through Mabel Lillimere, at the Viaduct Tavern.’

‘But no one ever goes down in the cellar. Why would we need a Go-Devil man?’

Jem snorted. ‘Bogles eat kids,’ he replied. ‘and there’s a deal o’kids in these parts. I’d not be surprised if the sewers was crawling with bogles. So you’ll want to cover this trapdoor with summat heavy, afore they start spilling out like a plague o’ rats.’ As the girl goggled at him in a witless kind of way, he decided to change the subject. ‘D’you know a woman called Eunice Pickles?’ was his next question.

Once again, he drew a blank. The fur-puller had never seen Eunice. Neither had any of her friends. It was very disheartening – and since the light was starting to fade, Jem decided to abandon his search, at least for the moment. Instead, he wandered back into Warwick Lane, where he bought an eel pie for his supper.

He ate it on his return trip to Newgate Street.

By this time he was feeling a little drained. It had been a long day, full of incident. Though bogling was in many ways easier than sweeping – and far,
far
easier than stealing purses – it wasn’t a job for someone who valued his independence. Jem wasn’t used to having his every move watched and judged. He didn’t like being told what to do. That was why he hadn’t flourished as a grocer’s boy.

Yet now he had to obey orders like a military man, or suffer the consequences.

Not that he was complaining. As he walked along in his new coat and boots, his pockets jingling with change and his mouth full of pie, he felt more prosperous than he ever had before. Suddenly he could see why other people sometimes looked ahead, hoping for better things. After all, Birdie McAdam was now living the high life. And
she
had once been a bogler’s apprentice, just like Jem.

But then again, Birdie was special. Jem knew that. Sarah Pickles had told him all about Birdie’s predecessors: the boy who had gone to gaol, the boy who had run away to sea, the boy who had been killed by a bogle. According to Sarah, Alfred Bunce had burned through his apprentices like matchsticks until he’d found Birdie McAdam, singing on the banks of the Limehouse canal. Birdie had lasted six long years at Alfred’s side, and was now eating tea-cakes off fine porcelain every afternoon. Of
course
she was special.

Jem wasn’t. And that was something he had to remember, for it would do him no good to think otherwise. Though he might have had a bit of luck, for once, it would run out eventually. It always did. And when that happened, he would find himself on his own – as usual.

There was no point putting his faith in anyone else.

Upon reaching Newgate Street, he hesitated. It was already growing dark. Across the road, to his left, he could see light spilling from the windows of the Viaduct Tavern. There was a new bill posted in one of windows, but Jem couldn’t see it clearly from where he was standing. And he didn’t want to edge any closer, in case Josiah Lubbock was waiting inside.

So he turned up his collar, pulled his cap down low, and headed straight for Christ’s Hospital School.

21
A LARDER-BOGLE

Alfred had his strategy all worked out.

‘Far as I can tell, the bogle came from that empty larder off the scullery passage,’ he declared. ‘But a larder ain’t big enough for
our
purposes, so we’ll use the scullery, instead.’

He was standing in the school kitchen, which was dark and deserted. Though the air still smelled of baking, and the tabletops were still damp, none of the kitchen staff had stayed up to welcome him. All the cooks and maids were in bed, now. So were the students, the beadles, the matrons, the masters – and every porter bar one.

Mrs Kerridge couldn’t leave her dormitory of an evening, so she had made certain arrangements with the night porter, Mr Sowerby. It was Mr Sowerby who had admitted Alfred and his friends into the school. It was Mr Sowerby who had hidden them in an infirmary waiting-room, while candles were snuffed and fires doused all over the school grounds. And it was Mr Sowerby who had finally ushered his unofficial guests across a small yard separating the infirmary from the Great Hall, when he’d judged that the coast was clear.

He was a pudgy little man with small features and a soft voice. Even though he wore a dark-blue uniform, he didn’t look very threatening. It was hard to imagine him driving unwelcome visitors from the school gates.

‘Is there owt ah can bring thee, Mr Bunce?’ he inquired, hovering on the kitchen threshold. He carried a lamp in one hand and his cap in the other. Though his tone was mild and his expression placid, he kept rocking restlessly from foot to foot, like someone anxious to be on his way.

His balding head gleamed with perspiration.

‘I don’t need nowt from you, Mr Sowerby, thanks all the same,’ said Alfred.

‘Except the fee,’ Jem interposed. He had positioned himself beside Birdie, who was clad in what he had privately labelled her ‘bogling outfit’: a tight-fitting dress, a bowler hat, and sturdy black boots. Miss Eames wore something similar, though her outfit was made of grey tweed instead of navy-blue cashmere.

‘Seek me out at the gate when the job’s done, and tha shall have thy fee,’ Mr Sowerby advised. ‘Mrs Kerridge arranged it so.’

‘Very well.’ Miss Eames spoke crisply. ‘Thank you, Mr Sowerby. You may go now, if you wish.’

‘That ah will, for ah mun get back. Thank’ee, Miss.’ The porter promptly vanished, taking his lamp with him. The only light now came from Miss Eames’s lantern – and from the embers that still glowed in every fireplace.

‘That feller were scared witless,’ Jem observed, pleased that he wasn’t the only one sweating like a cold pint of beer. Birdie, though pale and solemn, was as dry as chalk. Alfred seemed quite calm, in a grumpy sort of way, while Miss Eames (being a lady) didn’t appear to perspire when she was anxious.