Black Wreath (10 page)

Sixteen

‘One of us'

‘H
e's one of us now.'
The words continued to turn over in James's head. And Darcy had repeated it throughout that night as they sat in Red Molly's with their plates of beef and mutton, and their tankards of beer and jugs of the best claret. It seemed a large reward for a mean crime, but as James learned over the following weeks, every robbery, no matter how small the pickings, was celebrated in grand style in Red Molly's. Sometimes the crime didn't even pay for its celebration, and Darcy had to sign the chit at the end, promising to pay in the future.

‘You know me, Molly,' he'd say, raising his glass to her. ‘Jack Darcy always pays his way.'

It seemed to be that way with many of Red Molly's customers, so that every meal, every carousing night, every rental of her unclean sheets and flea-bitten beds provided another reason to rob. Even fleas had to be earned. This was
the unending circle that defined their lives.

He's one of us now.
What did that mean? Where was James Lovett, Lord Dunmain as he should be? What has he to do with James Brown, member of the Darcy gang, assistant footpad, deceiver of the innocent? He remembered how shocked he had been when Kelly had kicked the man in Stephen's Green, at the needlessness of it. He'd quickly sensed that for Hare, Kelly and Kitty, a large part of their excitement came less from the robbing than from the chance to kick, punch, cudgel or stab.

One night they went to Kilmainham where they waylaid a man in the field near the soldiers' hospital. Kelly and Hare began beating him severely even though the man offered no provocation. Kitty, meanwhile, thrust his pocket knife at the man's head and shouted, ‘You dog, do you resent it?' The highwayman then cut then man so deeply James could see his skull under the flaps of skin.

‘You don't need to do that,' James said. ‘You have his money, isn't that enough?'

Kitty turned on him, snarling, his bloody knife an inch from James's throat.

‘Are you going to tell me what to do? You isn't my nursemaid, posh boy. I could slit you now.'

‘Enough squabbling, children,' Darcy said. ‘I'll be Daddy and Daddy says it's time to go home.'

‘At least see if he's alright,' James said. ‘He could bleed to death.'

‘No time for that,' Darcy said.

All that for a wig, a coat and some little money. James couldn't get the bleeding man out of his mind as the gang made its way back to Red Molly's to toast their bravery and wash the blood from the wig and coat. The kitchen was often the first stop for the clients of the tavern, where they could be found scrubbing and scraping breeches, coats, wigs and boots, on the same table where the food was being prepared.

Lately, though, Darcy had grown weary of these small raids. It was not a question of blood or excitement for him, but of business, and he had little interest in coats, wigs or small change.

The low point for Darcy came on a dark day coming into winter when the gang had, on a whim, decided they needed new wigs. Since money was short, they went to the wigmaker's shop at the sign of the Peruke in Meath Street and waited for the hair-picker to come selling his wares. Kelly then stepped out of the shadows, grabbed the bundle of hair and sent the man on his way with a kick. Then they went in and presented the hair to the wigmaker, and asked for new wigs for all.

‘That's not enough,' the wigmaker said, looking at the bundle of hair. ‘That might buy you half a wig. For the rest, I'll need coin of the realm.'

Hare whipped out his hanger. ‘Will this do?' he asked.

Darcy raised his hand apologetically. ‘Forgive my friend,' he said smoothly. ‘He is somewhat rash.'

The wigmaker eyed them closely. ‘Very well,' he said at last. ‘We understand that currency too.'

He disappeared into his workshop and, a little later, emerged
with new wigs for Darcy, Hare, Kelly and Kitty. They preened in front of the mirrors and left well-satisfied. The gang went to a gin shop and when they came out some hours later a heavy shower greeted them, and by the time it had finished the wigs were a tangled mess – whatever the wigmaker had used, it was not human hair; the wigs lay like drowned rats on their heads. James tried hard not to smile. The men took them off in disgust.

‘We should go back and slit that wigmaker's throat,' Hare said.

‘We'll make him swallow the rat-hair he gave us,' Kelly added.

‘It serves us right,' said Darcy. ‘If you act like a pile of by-blows and dunghills, a shower of lobcocks and eejits, then you get what you deserve. What we need to do is show this damn town what we're made of, and the sooner the better.'

They stood in the rain and swore an oath to serious crime, and, from that day on, they'd kept their word. Darcy was like a man possessed as he coordinated their plans and not a day went by when they weren't engaged in some action. Apart from robbing on the streets, they stripped lead from vacant houses and began to try their hand at housebreaking.

James dreaded these expeditions. As the smallest in the gang, he was the first to enter the houses once Kelly and Hare had levered the window frame up or broken the panes and smashed in the bars between to make an opening just big enough for James to be pushed through. His first job was to open the rear door to let the others in, but those first moments alone in the house were terrifying. It was one thing to rob in
the street; it was a terrible thing, but it happened in the open city and the gang could melt back into the streets within a moment of their actions, but if you were caught in a house there was no escape.

As James tiptoed through the drawing room of some fine house in the district where he himself had lived not so long ago, his heart beat violently.

In one particular house the gang decided that he should go in alone. James thought it strange at the time, though, afterwards, the reason was all too clear. Although it was daylight outside, the house was in darkness, with all the heavy drapes closed as if the place had been vacated. The only light was that streaming in from the fanlight over the front door; apart from the hall, the rooms were quite dark. James entered the drawing-room and, once his eyes had accustomed themselves to the gloom, he began to move around quietly, looking for goods to put in the sack he had brought with him. He found a pair of candlesticks and a silver tureen on a table.

Then he spotted what looked like a silver tankard on the mantelpiece and crept over for a closer look. The mantelpiece was high and he had to strain to reach it, but instead of grasping it securely he fumbled and the piece fell to the floor. The thud of the tankard on the floorboards was accompanied by another noise; a human noise, James realised to his horror, and he suddenly became aware of a human shape in the great wingback chair to the side of the fireplace.

‘Who is it?' the voice shouted, and the shape leapt up from the chair. ‘Who is in here?'

James dived under the table and then crawled to the window, where he concealed himself behind a thick drape. He could hear the man pacing around the room.

‘What blackguard are you? Come out wherever you are, or I'll run you through.'

James didn't dare move, but he realised that his spot wasn't very secure since the man was bound to open the drapes to let in some light. Yet strangely the man didn't approach the window and seemed content to thrash around the dark room. James remained utterly still until he couldn't hear any more noise. The man must have left the room to search the rest of the house. Very slowly, James stepped outside the drape and stood still. The coast seemed to be clear.

He was about to edge toward the door when he suddenly saw two piercing eyes dead ahead of him, blazing like a fiend's with no body that he could see. James froze with fright and it felt like his own body was melting. But he forced his terror-stricken mind to think. The next thing he became aware of was a flash of steel as a sword lunged. James dropped to his knees and sprang out of the way, feeling the breath of the blade on his cheek. Then he raced for the door and managed to get out into the shocking glare of the hall, expecting the blade at any second to catch up with him. Yet no one came into the hall, and no one pursued James down the stairs to the basement or out through the broken window he had entered by. James hit the ground outside and immediately jumped up. As he raced around the corner he crashed into the bulk of a man. He cried out, but his screams were met with a laughter
he recognised. It was Kelly he had run into.

‘What's yer hurry, son?' Kelly wanted to know.

The others appeared from the laneway they'd been skulking in.

‘I think James has met the demon,' Darcy laughed.

‘What demon?' James asked. Now that he seemed to be safe, he could feel anger rising in him.

‘This house is always dark,' Darcy said. ‘They say the man who lives in it – if it is a man – can't bear light; that he can't see in the light. Some say he is the Devil himself.'

‘The Devil wouldn't have missed me.' James said simply. He was angry because they had clearly sent him in knowing there was someone inside. He was not so much ‘one of us' that they could resist toying with him when the mood took them.

And so their lives continued that winter, a constant cycle of theft and celebration, with nights spent in Red Molly's flea-bitten rooms or in other houses around the city where no one would think to look for them. How long can this go on for? James asked himself in the cold morning light as he listened to the snores of the others. The life of a thief was short and usually finished at the end of a rope or on a ship bound for slavery in the colonies. None of these thieves seemed to care much about their likely fate; indeed, it even seemed to James that, in a peculiar way, they lived for the end; they lived in full readiness for the death that, in all likelihood,
would come to them. They sang songs about hangings; they went to Newgate to play cards with condemned men in their cells the night before they were executed. For a table they used the coffin which the gaolers had delivered to the cell to make the condemned man think of his fate. And they accompanied him to the gallows, cheering him along. Even when it involved someone they didn't know, they were drawn magnetically to these gruesome events.

One Saturday morning Darcy announced that they'd rest from robbery by going to the Green to see a hanging.

‘It'll be a good one,' he said. ‘Not often we get to see a student dangle.'

‘What student?' James asked.

‘The one that killed the man in Fishamble Street,' Darcy replied. ‘They caught him down the country, boasting about it in his local tavern. Not much brains for a student.'

James paled. Could it be that McAllister had come back and been apprehended? But Darcy's description fitted Vandeleur better; James could easily imagine him bragging in a tavern and assuming no harm could ever come to him. He felt sick at the thought of Vandeleur, and sicker at the prospect of his awful fate. He didn't go with the gang to watch him die.

‘His lordship's stomach is too delicate' had been Kitty's scornful dismissal.

But if James had no desire to see someone die at the end of a rope, he needed to know that it was in fact Vandeleur they meant. He set out to intercept the prison wagon near the castle. There he waited with a crowd of onlookers for the
cart to pass on its way to the hanging tree in Stephen's Green. Much time went by without anything happening and the crowd was growing restive. Many shouted and hurled oaths. A ballad singer struck up but was shouted down by those near him.

A hawker went round with sheets of paper. ‘Malefactor's confessions,' he half-sang, half-shouted. ‘Fresh printed this morning.'

James noticed that many about him had missiles with them: rotten vegetables, eggs, sticks and even stones.

‘Bring the bastard out!' the man beside him roared.