Theophilus Grey and the Traitor's Mask Read online

  Mr Paxton was also teaching Philo to read, without much success. As Mr Paxton had often remarked, he was a surgeon, not a schoolmaster.

  ‘I don’t recall anyone advertising for stolen roof-lead,’ said Philo, as he rifled through his mental notes. ‘Have you heard aught on the streets, these past few days?’

  Dandy shook his head. So did Fleabite. Kit murmured, ‘We might not hear until the next downpour. That’s when folk miss their roof-lead.’

  ‘Aye, like enough …’ By this time Philo had lapsed into a fit of abstraction. He was mentally sorting through the intelligence he’d just received, committing it to memory as he wiped the sweat from his eyes.

  The other boys waited in silence, though Kit coughed once – a sharp, hacking cough like the sound of someone chopping wood. It was loud enough to snap Philo out of his reverie.

  ‘Will you be fit for work tonight?’ he asked Kit, who nodded.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘We’ll need a new torch.’ Philo turned to Lippy. ‘I’ll leave that to you. Dandy can help. Get your pine pitch from that oilman on Earls Court – he’s cheap.’

  ‘But you should take Lippy with you, Captain!’ Fleabite piped up. ‘Lippy can protect you from Mr Hooke!’

  Kit smiled. So did Dandy. Philo was amused, but didn’t show it.

  He rarely smiled.

  ‘I’ll be safe enough,’ he assured Fleabite, assailed by a sudden memory of Garnet Hooke’s skull-like face. Garnet was very ill. He’d been ill for years. Though Philo feared him, it wasn’t because Garnet posed any physical threat. On the contrary, Garnet had never laid a hand on Philo.

  Philo was more afraid of Garnet’s tongue – and of his powers of manipulation.

  ‘Fleabite, you’re on dinner duty,’ he declared, reaching into his pocket. ‘And you’re not to spend all the chink on cheesecakes, or some such flummery.’

  Fleabite saluted. ‘Aye, aye, Captain!’

  ‘Calves’ feet,’ Lippy suggested, as Philo tossed a few coins into Fleabite’s outstretched hand. ‘’Tis an age since we had calves’ feet.’

  ‘In this weather?’ Kit grimaced. ‘Cold pease pudding would suit me.’

  ‘Salt mackerel and pickled cucumbers!’ Dandy weighed in.

  Fleabite tossed his head, all smug satisfaction. He loved taking charge of dinner. It gave him an opportunity to throw his weight around.

  While the other boys argued about sheep’s head boiled with onions, Philo got dressed. He hadn’t mentioned Caroline Cowley, and he didn’t quite know why. He thought it might have something to do with her reputation as an actress. Actresses weren’t entirely respectable; to visit one was to invite a lot of winks and nudges, and Philo was in no mood for jokes. He had too much else on his mind.

  ‘I’ve calls to pay, once I speak to Val,’ he said, as he buttoned up his waistcoat. ‘Don’t trouble yourselves if I miss dinner. I can always get a pork pie.’

  ‘When will you be back?’ asked Fleabite.

  ‘Six, or thereabouts. Wait for me here – I’ll know what to do about Essex Street by then.’ Philo glanced at Kit, who wasn’t looking well. His fleecy brown hair, usually so wild, had lost some of its bounce. He was deathly pale, and there were dark smudges under his eyes. ‘You should take your ease today,’ Philo told him. ‘Husband your strength.’

  ‘I shall,’ Kit replied. Then, as Philo made for the door, he added, ‘Be careful.’

  ‘Always,’ said Philo.

  Two minutes later he was hurrying downstairs on his way to Garnet Hooke’s house.

  A VISIT

  TO PHILO’S OLD LODGINGS,

  FOLLOWED BY A TRIP TO

  ST-GILES-IN-THE-FIELDS

  Garnet Hooke lived in a room above a hosier’s shop, halfway down Cucumber Alley. On arriving, Philo glanced up to see that Garnet’s sash windows were wide open. But the dormer window in the attic was shut, suggesting that Valentine might not be at home.

  Unless he was meeting with Garnet?

  Philo took a deep breath, straightened his waistcoat and smoothed his hair before marching through the front door, which opened onto a stairwell. He hadn’t been back very often since moving out, but each time he did come to visit, the smell of the stairwell made him flinch. A mixed smell of pine pitch, boiled cabbage and worsted stockings, it affected him the way smoke affects a horse.

  He’d just had time to notice that one of the bannisters was broken, and that the walls looked dirtier than ever, when he heard a door slam somewhere above his head. Moments later, thudding footsteps and creaking stairs heralded the sudden appearance of ‘Fettler’ Ben Thoroughgood, who froze on the first landing as soon as he spotted Philo.

  ‘Bless my soul!’ Fettler exclaimed, then lowered his voice. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Fettler was eleven years old, with an olive complexion, a receding chin, and lank black hair. He wore an oversized muslin shirt so blotched and stained that it looked as if it had been used as a coffee-bag. Fettler was a former member of Philo’s crew, though he’d chosen to stay with Garnet. Philo often wondered why. Was it because Fettler liked to feel needed, or because he hoped to inherit Garnet’s property?

  A bit of both, perhaps.

  Fettler had been a linkboy once, but was now a kind of quasi-nurse, in charge of Garnet’s lamps, linen, pens, food and medicines. He also emptied Garnet’s chamber-pot – which he was carrying in his right hand.

  ‘I came to speak with Val,’ said Philo. ‘Is he in?’

  Fettler grimaced, then shrugged. He and Valentine Brody had never liked each other. It amazed Philo that they still lived in the same house.

  ‘I’ve no interest in that jingle-brained boglander’s comings and goings,’ Fettler replied. ‘What do you want with him?’

  Philo hesitated. Though he wasn’t keen to broadcast his concerns, it struck him that Fettler might know whether Garnet had been plotting with Wat Wiley’s crew. So instead of dodging the question, Philo locked eyes with Fettler and said, very slowly and deliberately, ‘I want to find out what Val’s been doing at St Clement’s coach stand, passing time with folk who wish me ill.’

  Fettler looked surprised. He didn’t flush, or bridle, or drop his gaze – and he’d never been good at lying. Philo concluded that if there was a plot, Fettler didn’t know about it.

  ‘What folk?’ Fettler demanded. ‘Lamp-lighters?’

  ‘Glim-jacks,’ said Philo.

  ‘The deuce!’ Fettler blinked. ‘Glim-jacks?’

  ‘Riverside glim-jacks.’ Philo began to climb the stairs, passing Fettler on his way to the attic. ‘Who’s lodging with Valentine at present? Is Niall still here?’

  ‘Aye, and his brother. And a slubberdegullion called Murphy, may he rot in hell.’ Instead of rooming with other linkboys, Valentine now shared his quarters with a handful of Irish chairmen. Fettler clearly thought that they lowered the tone of the house. ‘Where are you going, Philo?’

  ‘To find out if Val’s upstairs.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’ll not disturb Mr Hooke,’ Philo added, as if it needed to be said. He had no intention of talking to Garnet. In fact he crept past the door to Garnet’s room, carefully avoiding every squeaky board. It wasn’t until he reached his old quarters that he realised he’d been holding his breath.

  When he tapped on Val’s door, there was no response. ‘Hello?’ he said, then tried the handle. To his surprise, it turned smoothly. Philo had never bothered spending money on a lock for this door, because his crew owned nothing of value that they couldn’t fit in their sea-chest (which did have a lock). But Val and his friends clearly weren’t worried about their pewter candlesticks, their pepper box, or any of the other items scattered around their room. Perhaps they were confident that no one would dare risk robbing an Irish chairman.

  Philo took one look at the dim, deserted space and quickly retreated, shutting the door behind him. The cracked windowpanes and mouldy ceilin
g stirred up too many memories. He headed downstairs again, trying to guess where Val might have gone. To the Bear Garden for a boxing match? To the Black Moor’s Head for a drink?

  He was wondering if he could spare the time to chase Val all over London when he suddenly found himself face to face with Garnet Hooke.

  ‘Why, Theophilus!’ Garnet wheezed. ‘What a pleasant surprise. I hardly hoped to see you here again.’

  He was leaning on two sticks, hunched and wizened and wrapped in a blue dressing gown. His yellow skin clung to his bones like wet silk, and his dark eyes burned deep in their sockets, as bright as polished jet behind gold-rimmed spectacles. Though he was only forty-six years old, he looked twice that age.

  Philo’s hand tightened on the bannister rail. He swallowed and said, ‘I’m on my way out.’

  ‘I hear you’re being harassed by a gang of competitors.’ Garnet’s voice was thin and rough. He kept pausing to gulp down more air. ‘How very troubling. And the fact that they might be friends of Valentine! I can understand why you’re concerned.’

  Philo studied Garnet’s face. But it was impossible to read the man’s expression. It always had been.

  ‘Who told you that?’ Philo said at last. He couldn’t see Fettler anywhere; surely he had been on his way out?

  ‘I overheard you speaking on the stairs,’ Garnet replied. ‘I may be decrepit, but I’m not deaf.’

  ‘Oh.’ Philo tried to change the subject. ‘At least you’re on your feet,’ he mumbled, vividly recalling how, in this very spot half a year earlier, Nathaniel Paxton had given Garnet just six months to live.

  Garnet, however, wouldn’t be diverted. ‘You said they were riverside linkboys,’ he went on. ‘Could it be that you’re trying to expand your territory?’

  Philo coloured. ‘What I do or don’t do is no business o’ yours,’ he said.

  ‘Aye, but I take a keen interest in your welfare, Theophilus.’ Garnet flashed him a sly look. ‘And you seem to be courting disaster, invading another crew’s neighbourhood. Why would you do that?’

  ‘I’m not!’ snapped Philo. He began to sidle past Garnet, desperate to get away. But Garnet’s voice pursued him, tugging and needling.

  ‘You must be causing offence, else they wouldn’t wish you ill. I’d keep to my own terrain, if I was you. Or who knows what might come of it?’

  Garnet’s tone of pious concern enraged Philo, who whirled around and cried, ‘I hope you’ve no part in this! Only a scoundrel would do such a disservice to someone who pays ’em!’

  Garnet became very still. His expression didn’t change, but there was a glint in his eye. When at last he spoke, he didn’t try to defend himself. Instead he croaked, ‘Why are you spending so much time in St Clement’s parish?’

  Philo realised that he’d made a tactical error. Garnet already knew too much. He was a master at wresting information from people.

  ‘Good day to you,’ said Philo. Then he charged downstairs, cursing his own stupidity. If Garnet hadn’t known about Wat Wiley before, he was certainly on Wiley’s trail now. Because Philo had sparked his interest.

  You fool, Philo thought, as he hurried into the street. One of the first lessons Garnet had ever taught him was that you didn’t simply give away intelligence; you either kept it or you sold it. Yet Philo had just dropped a whole pile of it in Garnet’s lap.

  How could he have been so stupid?

  He was still scolding himself when he arrived at the church of St-Giles-in-the-Fields, which stood tall and grey behind a fence made of forged iron, its steeple casting a dark shadow across the street in front of it. The stench from its overstuffed churchyard was very bad. As Philo approached the churchyard’s main entrance, he had to cover his nose and mouth.

  ‘Philo!’ Over by the Resurrection Gate – which was a lofty stone structure carved with scenes from the Bible – a little blonde girl waved at him enthusiastically. She was ten years old, as frail as a fledgling, with big blue eyes, a crooked leg, and tiny hands like claws. Her bedraggled petticoat had been made for a much larger person, as had her stays and slippers. She carried a basket of fresh rosemary, tied into penny sprigs. A ragged shawl was draped across her head.

  Her name was Susannah Quail, and she was one of Philo’s most valued informants.

  ‘Phew! There’s a stink!’ Philo declared, as he always did – though this time the stink was so bad, he could hardly choke out the words. ‘I’ll have a spray o’ your wares to guard my smeller.’

  Susannah beamed at him, plucking a handful of rosemary from her basket. She then passed the rosemary to Philo, who gave her sixpence in return – a penny for the herb and fivepence for her weekly report. Thanks to the widespread use of rosemary in sick-rooms, Susannah knew all the latest gossip about illness in the neighbourhood. And thanks to the fact that she stationed herself by the church every day of the year, from sun-up to sundown, she knew a lot about the parish itself: about vestry meetings, weddings, baptisms and burials. All Philo had to do, when he wanted information, was sit down next to her and pass the time.

  ‘Mr John Bradley is ill with the flux,’ she said, launching straight into her report. ‘He’s been laid so low, he had to hire someone to do his work for him.’

  ‘Bradley?’ There were a lot of Bradleys tucked into Philo’s head. It took him a moment to identify the right one. ‘John Bradley the distiller?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘But he’s from St Paul’s parish. How did you pick up that news?’

  ‘I buy my rosemary from a stall in Covent Garden market,’ Susannah reminded him, before listing all the other cases she’d heard about. The landlord of the Golden Key was ill with an ague. The parish searcher had died of consumption. A porter who lived at the Hampshire Hog had crushed his foot, and an old-clothes dealer from Monmouth Street was bedridden with a nasty dose of spotted fever.

  Philo tried to concentrate on this tide of information, but it was hard. He was fretting about Garnet Hooke, and the street was very noisy. There were a lot of hawkers about. A hackney coach was rattling past, with a ringing clip-clop of horses’ hooves. On the other side of the Resurrection Gate, Simon Edy was ranting about the devil. Simon was a beggar who carried most of his worldly goods around with him. He wore three coats, four hats, and a dozen canisters full of books and cutlery and meat for his dog. Though Philo knew him quite well, Simon never seemed to remember Philo from one day to the next.

  ‘What is it, Philo?’ asked Susannah – who had paused in her catalogue of misery. ‘What ails you?’

  ‘Naught. A trifle.’ Philo crushed his sprig of rosemary in one hand. Susannah had often told him that the herb would improve his memory; she knew about herbs and healing because her mother had been a cunning woman. Breathing in the clean, spicy scent, Philo started mentally checking off the list of names that Lippy had given him earlier, as a test. But he didn’t notice any improvement in his powers of recollection.

  He was worried about his memory. It felt stuffed – overloaded – as if a seam were going to rip. He didn’t know if his brain was big enough to hold everything it needed to hold. If only he could read as well as Garnet! But reading was so hard; he couldn’t seem to master the skills required. Sometimes he wondered if his engorged memory was filling all the space in his head.

  ‘Is there a pauper hole open?’ he queried, glancing towards the churchyard. A pauper hole was a mass grave that stayed open until it was full. During summer, pauper holes were the bane of London.

  Susannah nodded. ‘Aye,’ she said.

  ‘How can you bear it?’

  ‘I don’t notice, after the first few sniffs.’ Susannah was gazing at him with one of her serene, misty looks, as if she knew that he’d dodged her question. But suddenly she blinked and turned her head. ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  It was the sound of distant cheering. Philo heard it too.

  He jumped to his feet.

  ‘Is there a war?’ Susannah inquired vaguely.

  ‘Not that
I know of.’ Philo felt sure that Mr Bishop would have mentioned a war.

  ‘Has Jack Broughton won another boxing match?’

  ‘I doubt it.’ All at once the answer came to Philo, as he realised that the noise was coming from Broad Street. ‘Did a procession pass by here, this morning?’ he asked Susannah, who shook her head.

  ‘I saw none.’

  ‘Then I’ll wager this is Alexander Murray,’ Philo declared. ‘They must have let him out o’ Newgate Prison.’

  GIVING AN ACCOUNT

  OF A PROCESSION AND

  A LUCKY MEETING

  Philo ran to the fence that separated St Giles’s churchyard from Broad Street. Clasping an iron bar in each hand, he peered eastwards, towards the crumbling almshouses that stood in the middle of the road. People were already pouring past these houses, shouting and waving their hats. Philo recognised some of them as folk who spent most of their time drinking in the taverns along Broad Street. But there were a lot of strangers in the mix.

  Philo identified a wigmaker from the powder on his coat, and a dyer from his blue hands.

  ‘Who is Alexander Murray?’ Susannah suddenly piped up. She had parked herself next to Philo. ‘And why was he in Newgate Prison?’

  ‘He’s a Jacobite,’ Philo answered. Broad Street was beginning to fill as people poured out of its shops and houses. By this time Philo could hear the throb of distant chanting – the same words over and over again, though he couldn’t make out what they were.

  Then, over the tops of all the milling heads, he spied a canvas banner hung between two wobbly poles. Philo tried to sound out what was painted on it, letter by letter. ‘M …’ he whispered. ‘U … R …’

  ‘Murray and liberty! Murray and liberty!’ the crowd roared. As the lurching banner approached Philo, he saw that it was being carried by a pack of respectable-looking tradesmen and shopkeepers; he recognised a brewer, an upholsterer, a carpenter, a milliner and a couple of booksellers from Holywell Street. Behind them, a liveried coachman was sitting high on his box, framed against the gleaming black roof of a carriage.