Black Wreath (13 page)

There was a shuffling in the witness stand and eventually a hand was raised. Now it was time for Doctor Bob to do his part. He was a regular at Red Molly’s, and was even, it was said, a real doctor. But he had somehow disgraced himself in London and found his way to the second city, where he had set up a practice in the Liberties in which medicine played only a small part.

Molly had told James all of this with a grin. ‘And he owes
me money,’ she added, ‘which makes him all the more reliable a witness.’

James hadn’t argued. Money accounted for everything, it seemed; there was nothing in the city that could be accomplished without it, and nothing that couldn’t be suffered for the want of it.

Now, in the courtroom, Doctor Bob came forward in a new coat and well-shined shoes, and the clerk swore him in. He testified in his cultivated English voice that on the night the prosecutor was attacked by villains near Kilmainham his patient had been confined to bed in his lodgings in Thomas Court with a bad fever caused by the gripe. He had sent to the apothecary down the street for fennel seeds and figs, and the apothecary had despatched his boy to the house with the remedy. Both were here present today and could testify to that effect.

‘You are English?’ There was interest in the judge’s voice.

‘Yes, my lord,’ Doctor Bob said. His voice grew oilier with every sentence, it seemed to James, but if its intent was to soften the judge, it seemed to be working. ‘London. Oxford. If you please, my lord.’

‘What I don’t understand,’ said Lord Norwood softly, after this polite exchange, ‘is why someone as cultivated as yourself is defending scum like this. What have you done, I wonder, that men like this are your clients?’

Again the listeners had been lulled into a sense of security by seeming politeness, and again the shaft had been loosened suddenly and caught the whole room by surprise. James could
see that Doctor Bob was rattled, though he kept his composure. Beads of perspiration had begun to appear on his forehead.

The eagle-eyed Norwood spied it. ‘I’m sorry, is our room too warm for you, doctor? Should I summon your apothecary?’

‘No, my lord, it’s quite alright, I–’

‘I think I will summon him, though not on your account. Where is he?’

Now it was the apothecary’s turn to raise his hand weakly. He was beckoned forward and sworn in.

‘This man says he sent to you for a cure for his patient. What was the remedy you sent?’

‘If it please my lord, I sent my boy with tar water.’

‘Tar water? What on earth is tar water?’

‘You mix it with water, your honour, work it with a flat stick, let it stand then pour off the water. A pint every hour for fever, but it should cure just about every disease, smallpox, scurvy, ulcers …’

Lord Norwood looked as if he could bear no further information. ‘Who brought this concoction to the prisoner?’

‘My apprentice, sir.’

‘And is he here?’

This was it. James could feel the back of his neck prickling. He put his hand up.

Norwood looked at him long and hard, and waited for the clerk to swear him in. ‘So you’re an apothecary’s apprentice, are you?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

The judge looked at him as if he thought this was extremely unlikely. ‘I’m troubled by a cold. What would you prescribe?’

James had spent an evening in the apothecary’s shop trying to learn the essentials of that trade. He pictured the shelves in the shop. ‘A little ground ivy tea, my lord, sweetened with syrup of horehound before retiring at night.’

Then he abandoned the shop and was back in Wexford with his mother’s hand on his forehead. ‘Or you could make a hole through a lemon and fill it with honey, then roast it and catch the juice. Take a teaspoonful of this frequently.’

‘Oh yes?’ Norwood said blandly. ‘And what herbs do you recommend for consumption?’

Again, James tried to picture the shelves and the labelled drawers of herbs. But which were for consumption?

‘Mugwort, nettles, foxglove, spearmint … a little cinnamon.’

The judge took no notice of what he said, but continued to stare at James, as if the very force of his gaze could compel the truth from him.

‘Falling sickness?’

James closed his eyes and pictured the shelves again. He knew that the real enemy was silence. He remembered how quickly the apothecary talked, how a great part of medicine seemed to lie in speed of reply, matching the ingredients until a clear and indisputable remedy appeared.

‘Valerian, peony, mugwort again, thorn-apple, common henbane, mistletoe, belladonna, foxglove, bitter orange and Peruvian bark.’

As he opened his eyes, he could see the torn and angry
face of the prosecutor. Norwood looked at James with a flicker of interest, as if he might pursue him to the end of his knowledge, but it was getting late. It was past lunchtime already and justice cannot be dispensed on an empty stomach.

‘You are either an excellent apprentice or an excellent liar,’ he said. ‘We’ll find out soon enough.’

He waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal and James returned to the witness box. At last, he could breathe. He saw Kelly at the back of the public gallery. What was he doing here? Was he not afraid he might be recognised?

Suddenly, the blood drained from James’s face. There was a man sitting beside Kelly, tall, bulky, dark-eyed, and staring straight at James. He turned and whispered something to Kelly and Kelly nodded. It was Dunmain’s man, the one who had chased him into the coopers’ yard. What was he doing here? He gave no indication that he had recognised James, but the force of his stare was not kindly, and James felt sure that they were discussing him.

The judge ordered the jury to deliver their verdict on Darcy. They huddled a little longer this time. James could see the strain on Darcy’s face; maybe he wasn’t as brave or as sure as he seemed. If they found him guilty, he would be sentenced to death, like his father before him. And his witnesses might find themselves arrested for perjury.

The crowd in the public gallery grew restive. As the jury huddled, a scattering of talk broke out. Some began to move towards the door at the back of the gallery. Kelly and his companion were no longer there. Maybe Kelly feared what might
happen to
him
if Darcy was found guilty and someone should recognise him as one of Darcy’s men.

The foreman stood and delivered the verdict. Not guilty. There was some clapping and cheering.

The prosecutor pointed to his face and shouted, ‘This is what they did!’

The judge shouted for order and the room was silenced. His face was dark with displeasure. He looked down at his black cap as if he itched to put it on. He seized it with his hand and rolled it up in a tight ball as he addressed Darcy. ‘You were born to hang, and you will hang. You may have cheated the rope today, but you’ll be back in this room before long.’ He unrolled the black cap. ‘And this will be waiting for you; the tree in Stephen’s Green has your name on it. And your companions will perish with you.’ His eyes swept past the doctor and the apothecary, coming to rest again on James. And then he billowed out of the room behind his tipstaff.

Nineteen

A Meeting

R
ed Molly’s was packed. There wasn’t an inch of the place free from the press of human flesh caught up in an endless round of eating and drinking. The tables were awash with beer and gin and claret, and weighed down with sides of beef and pork, plates of rabbit and codfish, and just about any other food you could think of.

Doctor Bob clapped James on the back so hard he nearly fell forward into his food. ‘God but I wouldn’t mind having you as my own apprentice. You sounded like you knew the remedy for every ailment under the sun.’

‘A trick of memory,’ James replied, resisting the man’s praise. ‘Nothing more than that.’

‘You’re too modest, boy,’ Darcy called out to him.

Even though Darcy was just across the table, the din was so loud it was hard to hear him. Darcy raised his tankard in a toast to James, and the doctor loudly followed.

Kelly and Hare were slumped against a wall in a corner of the room. Hare looked stupefied with drink, but Kelly’s eyes were sharp and calculating. James had not forgotten his courtroom companion. He’d also noticed that Kelly seemed less joyous than everyone else at Darcy’s restoration, even though he’d played a large part in it. But it meant he was no longer leader of the gang, and Kelly was the kind of man who, when he got a taste of power, found it very hard to let it go again.

Kitty, meanwhile, was standing on a table, dancing madly and swinging his hanger above his head until Molly appeared and ordered him down if he didn’t want to feel the back of her hand. Someone asked for a song from the dead man. ‘Come on, Lazarus, give us a tune!’ and the cry was taken up by the whole company.

Darcy bowed in acknowledgement, then stood on his chair and demanded silence. ‘A song,’ he said, ‘for the lady of the house’.

This was met with great applause, and then the room fell quiet as Darcy sang.

When it came to the chorus, the whole room took it up, and it seemed to James that the rafters might tumble down under the weight of so much singing.

Molly herself was redder in the face than ever, but James could tell she was pleased. ‘Just don’t think your song will pay the bill, Jack Darcy,’ she said.

‘Oh, the devil will pay the reckoning,’ Darcy shouted. ‘And it’s the devil will be back on the streets with a brace of pistols and a merry crew!’

For a man who had just escaped hanging, this seemed to be tempting fate, James thought. But crime was no longer a choice for Jack Darcy; it
was
him, and he didn’t care where it led. It wasn’t in his nature to be cautious, or to think of consequences.

‘Your problem is you think too much,’ he often said to James.

That might be true: James did think about everything. He tossed and turned at night, and often woke to see Jack stretched out peacefully, not a sign of worry to be seen on his mild face.

The carousing went on in Red Molly’s until nearly dawn. And then Darcy got up and announced that he had business elsewhere. He didn’t say where he was going, but he told James they’d meet again in the Phoenix Park. James was anxious at his going; he felt safer with Darcy around, but the inn was so full of good cheer that he felt no harm could come to him here. Kelly and Hare seemed to have disappeared; they must have gone with Darcy or collapsed in one of the rooms upstairs. What was it the servant had said the first time James
had slept there? ‘Clean sheets is three shillings, dirty ones are a shilling.’ James smiled at the memory. Life wasn’t all bad; he even found himself dancing a jig on the table to Doctor Bob’s violin and the roaring encouragement of the drinkers. He felt that he was dancing all the worry of the last few days out of his body. At the end of it, he was exhausted but happier than he’d been in a while.

The birds had already started singing when Kitty came over to the table. His face was flushed with drink or excitement, or maybe a combination of both. But when he spoke to James his manner was businesslike.

‘You’re to meet Darcy in the dump,’ he said. ‘He’s calling all the gang together.’

James looked hard at Kitty, but apart from the flush of excitement that had been there when he arrived, his features were impassive. James wondered why Darcy hadn’t said anything earlier about a meeting.

‘Why now?’ he asked Kitty.

‘He doesn’t tell me his plans,’ Kitty said. ‘He said something has come up, something unexpected that needs action now.’

‘He’s only just out of gaol,’ James said. ‘I don’t see why he can’t wait.’

‘I’ll tell him that, will I?’ Kitty’s face was twisted into his usual sneer.

‘No,’ James said, ‘I’ll come. But I want to take my leave of Doctor Bob first. I’ll see you outside in five minutes.’

Kitty looked at him distrustfully, but finally nodded. ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘But no longer.’

When he left, James went to find Doctor Bob. ‘I’m not sure what’s happening,’ he said. ‘But can I borrow your sword?’

‘Can you use it?’ the doctor asked. ‘It won’t do you much good otherwise. I’ve seen plenty killed who grabbed a blade they couldn’t wield.’

‘I can use it well enough. I hope I won’t have to.’

Doctor Bob considered James carefully. James could read the question in his gaze, the one that was often there when people looked at him. Who is this boy? the gaze asked, and how does he come to be here? If the question was in his mind, the doctor chose not to articulate it. He handed James the sword and scabbard and, as James thanked him and turned to go, he touched his shoulder gently.

‘Be careful, my friend,’ he said.

Before he stepped outside, James unsheathed the sword and put it inside his belt, then wrapped his cloak around his coat to conceal it.

Kitty was stamping his feet in the cold outside. His eyes brightened a little when he saw James, but his expression was neutral. The morning was grey and cold, the bricks damp in the mist. A large rat scurried off in the direction of the dump. A good enough guide, James thought, as they moved off behind the rat until they came to the dump. It seemed as if all the rats of the city were congregated here this morning; everywhere James looked he saw their fat bodies twisting and darting. Gulls screeched above and came down to inspect the rubbish. No other humans walked the rough path through the dump. It looked like a long-deserted place,
a rat-and-gull kingdom. James spotted a couple of fist-sized stones on the path and scooped them up quickly, secreting them in his breeches pocket. They trudged on past mounds of stinking rubbish until they came to a clump of bushes in the corner of the dump.

‘This is the place,’ Kitty announced.

James noticed his companion’s hand had gone to the hilt of his hanger as he spoke, and under the cloak he reached quietly for the hilt of his own blade. He wasn’t entirely surprised when Kelly and Hare stepped out from the cover of the bushes.

‘Where’s Darcy?’ he said, though he knew the question was pointless.

‘Who?’ said Kelly. ‘Jack Darcy, do you mean? I imagine he’s well tucked up in bed with his floozy. Were you expecting him?’

Kitty went for his hanger, his eyes shining now as if all his wishes had come true at once.

‘Nothing like a cock-fight to warm us up on a winter morning. Better than breakfast, if you ask me,’ Kelly said. He reached into his pocket for his cudgel. ‘Isn’t that right, my lord?’

So they knew who he was. James didn’t wait to find out what they knew exactly or what their intention was. He whipped the sword from his cloak and lunged at Kitty before Kitty knew what was happening. The blade went into his shoulder and he dropped his hanger and cried out.

‘You should have expected that, Kitty.’ Kelly shook his head.
‘Don’t you know these gentlemen were born with their hand on a sword, the better to teach the lower orders some manners?’

Kitty lay groaning on the ground. James backed away and held his sword in front of him. Kelly and Hare began to circle him, Kelly with his cudgel ready and Hare with hanger and dagger pointed at him, keen for his blood. James switched the sword to his left hand, and with his right he pulled one of the stones from his pocket and launched it at Hare. It hit him on the side of the head. He fell, but got up again, blood trickling from under his wig.

‘You little bastard,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll cut you so many ways you won’t be able to tell what’s skin and what’s scar.’ He ran at James with a mad fury, waving both his weapons.

James managed to fend him off but had to spin violently to avoid the dagger. As he spun around to take up his position again, he found Kelly waiting for him with his cudgel raised. He ducked and hacked at Kelly’s shins. Kelly doubled over in pain but it made no difference, for Hare had him now, his hand around James’s throat as he kicked the sword away.

This is it, James thought, there’s nothing more I can do.

He closed his eyes and waited for Hare to do his worst, but, as he did so, he suddenly felt the man’s grip slacken and at the same time he heard the report of a pistol. Hare slumped to the ground and James saw Kelly look around quickly in confusion.

A figure in a long cloak was approaching down the path with a second pistol cocked and aimed. Kelly bolted towards
a mound of filthy rubbish and disappeared among the rats and gulls. James had never seen a man move so fast. The figure with the pistol came nearer and James recognised him. It was Doctor Bob. He bent over Hare, then turned him on his back.

‘He’s dead,’ he said simply.

Kitty had managed to get himself up and was shuffling away towards the street, but the doctor caught up with him in a couple of strides. He took an object from his pocket, some sort of cosh or baton from what James could see, and landed a single sharp blow at the base of Kitty’s neck. Kitty fell in a heap.

‘Not dead,’ the doctor said as James caught him up. ‘Just out of action for a few hours. He’ll need to get his shoulder seen to then. Your handiwork, I take it?’

‘Yes,’ said James, ‘though not so notable as yours. How did you come to be here?’

‘No one who is not in danger borrows a sword. I left Red Molly’s to follow you, and in my haste went down to the river. It only then occurred to me that you might have gone this way. A more private place for murder, with only rats and gulls as witnesses.’

‘You think they meant to kill me?’ James asked.

‘Maybe,’ the doctor replied. ‘I didn’t have time to inquire.’

He paused a little as he looked at James. ‘This is a densely packed city,’ he said at last. ‘An easy place to lose yourself in, for you to feel you can hide in it and no one will really know who you are. But there’s always someone who knows the truth, or who finds it out, especially if there’s profit in finding it out.’

‘You know who I am then?’ James felt a great relief as he asked this. He was tired of being James Brown; he had had enough of it. From now on he would be the man he was born to be, no matter what the price.

‘I knew your father a little. He wasn’t entirely a bad man, though God knows he was bad enough.’

‘I think my uncle wants me dead,’ James said.

‘Lord Dunmain?’

‘I am Lord Dunmain,’ James said calmly. And he felt it too: they were not just words.

‘Of course,’ Doctor Bob said. ‘By rights you are. And that’s what makes you so dangerous.’

‘One day, if I live that long, I mean to claim my inheritance.’

The doctor didn’t reply. Maybe he didn’t think this was a likely outcome. Maybe he just didn’t want James to lose heart. ‘What will you do now?’

‘If this were a tale, I’d say I’ll go and seek my fortune. Or I’ll go into the forest and kill the dragon and return to the cheering crowd. But all I can do is, as you say, sink deeper into the city, into some corner of it, where those that want me dead can’t find me.’