The Oversight Read online

Lucy was sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest, cradling the hand in its wrapping close to her, and not thinking about much in particular as her eyes watched the darkness drift by.

  The Sluagh appeared on the bank so quietly that it took a moment or two for Lucy to realise that some of the darkness had detached from itself and was now keeping pace with her at a disturbingly leisurely pace, as if it were just out for a gentle stroll along the towpath only three perilous feet away.

  She looked up to see a man with a face garlanded with ancient tattoos, wearing an animal-skin top-coat and a hat crowned with a coronet of woodcock skulls with all the beaks pointing to the sky.

  “What is it you want, little girl?” he said calmly, his eyes open and guileless.

  “Don’t look at him,” said Charlie. “Not in the eyes.”

  She kept her eyes on the Sluagh’s hands instead.

  “I have a proposition for you,” he said calmly.

  There was a solid click of metal ratcheting back against metal right by her ear as Charlie cocked the blunderbuss.

  “And I have half a pound of cold iron nails in here for you if you try and warp her will,” said Charlie. “Rusty ones.”

  “Rusty ones?” said the Sluagh, and there was a disconcertingly mocking tone to his voice. “Oh well then. That makes all the difference.”

  A second Sluagh appeared beside him, shorter, hunchbacked.

  “You sound so confident–yet smell so very scared,” the newcomer giggled.

  Charlie jabbed the gun at them.

  Lucy saw the first Sluagh’s hands open and make a placating gesture.

  “Just listen,” he hissed softly. “Just words: I have a proposal. You are going to London?”

  “We don’t know where we’re going,” said Charlie.

  “Will you let us have the girl?” said the hunchback.

  “Why would I do that?” said Charlie.

  “Gold,” came the wheedling reply. “Gold which could change your life… make you rich, gold which would make you free…”

  “Gold which would turn to acorns and beech-mast in my pocket as soon as your filthy glamour washed out of my eyes?” said Charlie. “No thanks.”

  “Real gold?” said the Sluagh wearing the woodcock crown.

  “No,” said Charlie.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  Lucy saw the Sluagh’s hands fold round themselves and squeeze tight. He walked on with them clasped like that for several paces and when he spoke his voice was clenched as tight as the hands.

  “There are men in London who would pay us well for her. Who have sent the word out. Powerful men.”

  “When did the Sluagh get interested in money?” said Charlie.

  “It is not money they would pay us with. It is something much more precious. To us,” said the first Sluagh.

  “The answer’s still no,” said Charlie.

  “I heard the answer. You haven’t heard my counter-offer,” said the Sluagh, a dangerous smoothness taking the edge off his voice in such a way that Lucy nearly involuntarily looked up into his eyes.

  “You don’t shut up and stop doing that thing with your voice, you’ll bloody well hear mine: I’ll sound like ‘boom–splatter’,” said Charlie sharply, poking the stubby gun in their direction. “This is the boom; your head’ll be the splatter…”

  The hunchback Sluagh growled in the back of his throat and spat words back at Charlie in a snarl of barely controlled rage.

  “Do you ever wonder what your skin looks like on the inside, boy? Step over the iron and say that. Then we could have a nice time showing you.”

  “What is your offer?” said Lucy. She was uncomfortable with several rather significant things about this conversation, first of which was who they were having it with, but the fact that she was being talked about as if she were just baggage with no will-power of her own was running it a close second.

  “I offer you an uninterrupted passage if you will take a message to The Oversight,” said the Sluagh in the woodcock crown.

  “Who?” said Charlie.

  “Don’t play games, boy,” said the Sluagh, irritated again. “We have been in her mind before, and we know where we sent her.”

  Lucy’s stomach lurched.

  “You couldn’t interrupt our passage if you tried,” said Charlie. “The boat’s iron-bound, on flowing water you can’t cross.”

  The Sluagh said nothing, but just walked on, its hands working against each other.

  “If you are running to The Oversight, tell them we know they have betrayed us. We know they have given our most precious possession to a mere man. They have given him the thing they took from us when they laid the Iron Law across our shoulders. They have not only betrayed us, they have betrayed Law and Lore.”

  Lucy had the strong impression that the left hand was gripping the right hand to stop it flying across the narrow gap between them and grabbing her by the face, running water and cold iron be damned. She pushed back against the timber baulks behind her.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “But they will know,” said the Sluagh with the woodcock crown. “And now they will know we know. And until they return what they took from us, and lift the Iron Law, we will work relentlessly to destroy them, even if it means working with men.”

  And he spat and stopped walking.

  The barge passed under a bridge which neither Lucy nor Charlie had seen approaching, so concentrated had they been on the Sluagh.

  “Phew,” said Charlie. “Railway bridge. Cold iron for miles on either side. We’re safe.”

  She felt strangely divided, a mix of relief and frustration. She knew she would sleep badly because the malice of the hunchback Sluagh would taint her dreams, but something else in her wished she’d had more time to talk to the other Sluagh. She might have had a chance at filling in some of the blanks in her memory.

  “Safe as houses,” said Charlie, as much to himself as her. “And old Harry says we should touch London tomorrow, and all your troubles will be over.”

  “For now,” said Lucy, looking back at the darkness and wondering about the answers it held.

  CHAPTER 67

  SO-HO!

  The Citizen had left it to the Alp to dispose of the corpse of the doorman, it being beneath his own dignity to do so, and in that way he was, perhaps, responsible for its ultimate fate.

  The Alp trussed the doorman like a large turkey, a cord around his knees cinched tight round his neck, and then his ankles lashed in close to his buttocks, so that when the Alp had wrapped him in an old dust-sheet he looked more like a squarish parcel than a suspiciously body-shaped bundle.

  The Alp hoisted the body onto its shoulder and set out into the cool early morning air an hour before sunrise, walking to a small leather manufactory close by the Pillars of Hercules tavern in Soho, where it dumped the body in a broken barrel which had been thrown into the adjacent alley. It then checked it was still unseen, and walked back to its new home in Golden Square.

  It would not have trod so lightly had it known that five hours later Jed, still casting for its scent in ever wider circles, would be trotting alone and unnoticed through the now teeming street and would cut his trail and stiffen with recognition, nostrils quivering.

  People had not hunted in Soho for generations, not since it was the open farmland known as St Giles Field attached to the leper hospital of the same name, but Henry VIII had often ridden to hounds across it, and it was the old hunting cry of “So-ho!” that had given it its name. So it was with a degree of appropriateness that Jed stuck his nose to the scent trail and careered off hot on the heels of the Alp.

  Five minutes later he was circling the house on Golden Square, confirming that the trail went into the house and didn’t leave it. Then he sat downwind beneath a wagon in the street and inhaled for a good ten minutes. The scent of the Alp was strong, and definitely coming from the house. Satisfied, he lay down and rested his chin on his f
ront paws, watching the door to the house.

  He would wait here without moving until Hodge arrived, which he knew would be soon. He had felt him in his head and told him what he had found.

  The Alp knew nothing of this. It had cleaned the blood from the sprung parquet as best it could, and had looked at the money The Citizen had left it.

  The Citizen had told it where it might find the kind of girls who would be willing to accompany a man for a price, and he had a mind to find one who might not be missed were she not to return. Giving The Citizen a new lease of life had left him flat and exhausted. He needed breath, and young breath at that.

  And so the Alp prepared to stalk its prey, unaware of the hunter’s eyes waiting patiently for him in the street outside.

  CHAPTER 68

  A LILY PLUCKED AND DISCARDED

  Issachar and Zebulon Templebane had directed that the Safe House be watched at all hours of the day and night, and from all sides. This kept their adopted sons busy, sleepless and consequently at increasingly short temper with each other.

  The most annoyed of them was Garlickhythe, who had been the youngest until the arrival of Amos into the cold but extendable bosom of the family three years ago. As such he had had to endure all the worst jobs for longer than he liked to remember, and he had got used to enjoying his freedom from them once the mute had been brought into the house.

  However, since Amos was not yet returned from his mission to Rutlandshire, Garlickhythe had become the youngest again, and thus the receiver of the short straw in all decisions. In the matter of keeping the Safe House under surveillance it was generally considered that the most uncomfortable post was to the south, close by the river: it was windy, wet and beset by the most startling and mephitic odours that the sewers, emptying themselves freely into the Thames just below his observation point, could provide.

  He was not too upset by the smell, being a Londoner born, but he was also a hypochondriac who spent much of the time worrying about his health. There was no question that his post, outside a most unappealing shop-front specialising in broken-backed chairs, scarred tables and all manner of second-hand bric-a-brac (including a rack of wooden legs which clattered ominously in the wind) was the most uncomfortable and exposed to the elements.

  Worse than that, it was boring. It was so very boring that Garlickhythe decided to divert himself. Nothing other than the normal comings and goings of the fat cook, the thin man in midnight blue and a couple of tradesmen, a ratter and a blacksmith had been seen for days. He was sure he would miss nothing by a sporting encounter with one of the accommodating ladies from Neptune Street, and it would not take long.

  He was, however, not willing to stray too far from his post in case he was whistled in by Coram or Bassetshaw or one of the other older “brothers”. He knew they would have great glee in reporting his absence to Issachar. So he engaged with one of the girls to meet her outside the shop and then to repair to a less visible spot to conduct their business. The spot he chose was down some greasy steps that took them under the shadow of a disused jetty on the edge of the river.

  Lily, for that was the girl’s name, complained about the mud he was clearly intending her to walk through to get to his chosen private trysting place beneath the dank pilings and their ruined boardwalk. She was especially vocal on its pernicious effect on “her nice new shoes”, shoes which were, as he pointed out, neither nice nor convincingly new. He suggested that she take them off, which she surprised him (since taking off clothing was something of a prerequisite of her chosen profession) by refusing to do.

  “You can carry me,” she said.

  “Carry you, my arse!” he retorted.

  “You’d carry me if you was half a gent,” she pouted.

  “If you was half the size you are I might give it a go,” he said. “I ain’t putting my back out trying to lift a dirty great plumper like you—”

  And then he stopped.

  In the shadows beneath the jetty there was a lighter or flat-bottomed barge moored in close in such a way that no one would notice it from the street above, and he saw The Smith disembark from it and cross the mud to the river wall where there was a barred culvert.

  “You bast—” began Lily, outraged at the aspersions he had just cast as to her size.

  His hand lashed out and grabbed her, yanking her down into the mud. She gasped and began to cry out again, but he was so acutely sensible of the need for silence that he mashed her face, mouth first, into the ooze at his feet and held her there as he watched what The Smith was about.

  He was fascinated to see the culvert gate swing open and the fat cook emerge to look at the boat. There was a muttered conversation and in order to catch at least a few words he was obliged to push Lily’s face deeper into the river mud so that the bubbles she was producing as she struggled and began to spasm did not distract him.

  “… load it up… turn of the tide tonight or tomorrow morning…” was all he could make out. Then they both disappeared back into the culvert and the gate was clanged shut and audibly locked behind them. He waited, frozen for a long while, until he was sure they were not going to return.

  “Well,” he said to Lily. “I think them has got themselves a secret tunnel to the river from that there ’ouse. What do you think the old fathers is going to give me for discovering that?”

  Lily didn’t answer, and when he stopped pressing down on the back of her neck she didn’t get up either.

  He looked down at the body with a cold disinterest, the excitement of what his fathers would do for him when he transmitted the intelligence having kindled a greater fire inside him than the lust he had intended to quench in the girl.

  He looked around, especially watchful of the blank warehouse wall rising like a cliff above him, but no one was watching.

  He sighed and bent to pick her feet up, dragged her to the edge of the mud bank and rolled her into the rising water. He looked down at his trousers.

  “You were right about that mud,” he said to the sad jumble of skirts that had been Lily. “It’s ruined my bloody shoes.”

  And he walked gingerly back to the greasy steps and back up into the city, his pace quickening with excitement.

  By the time he got to Issachar’s and Zebulon’s study, the Thames had risen enough to float the girl and start her on her journey around the great loop in the river pulling inexorably towards the darker expanses of Blackwall Reach.

  From that point things moved fast: deducing that a lighter was engaged to carry something from the Safe House in secrecy, and further extrapolating that whatever–or whoever–it was that was to be the cargo must be something of rarity and value, Issachar went to see Mountfellon.

  That interview was substantially more amicable than their last contact, although Issachar found the opaque windows that Mountfellon had glazed the house on Chandos Place with gave the interiors an unworldly and disconcerting feeling, as if one were trapped under ice.

  A plan was agreed, which was as follows: Issachar would engage some biddable gentlemen who had no scruples about foul play.

  “The Wipers will suit, I think,” he said thoughtfully. “My brother or I, depending on time of day, will direct matters personally. This is too serious a business to delegate—”

  “Exactly,” said Mountfellon. “I will engage two boats, steam launches for speed. One can be crewed round the clock close by this hidden jetty, and when these damn people endeavour to make their escape with whatever it is they are trying to hide, the first boat will follow and effect an entirely justifiable act of appropriation as soon as they can. A reasonable act of piracy, if you will.”

  “And the second boat, my lord?” enquired Templebane.

  “I shall pilot that myself. As soon as the hare is running, I am to be alerted and will embark in pursuit.”

  “But it will take a long time to get there from here,” said Templebane.

  “I do not intend to catch a chill sleeping on a boat,” said Mountfellon. “And we do not kno
w which of the two tides they will take. So I will stay at your house. It is close to the river. It looked clean enough, and I’m sure you can provide something approaching a comfortable bed.”

  And so the plan was made.

  And all this before poor accommodating Lily had even been missed for her dinner.

  CHAPTER 69

  THE ALP SPEAKS TO A DOG WITH NO BARK

  The Alp had found its prey.

  Jed had trailed it to the section of Haymarket known, because of the extraordinarily high density and brazenness of its prostitutes, as Hell Corner, and then trotted back with it to Golden Square, twenty paces behind, close to the wall, an unnoticed dog in a city full of strays.

  The girl was gin-numbed and happy enough at the thought of the promised coins she would be going home with. She even liked the fact that the gentleman whose arm she was limpetted to appeared not to wish to speak: she favoured the shy ones because the business tended to be over quicker with them.

  Hodge seemed to step out of thin air, straddling the pavement in front of them, a short man with a dog who circled in from behind and stood growling at his feet. Hodge held out a fist with a bloodstone ring on it, his eyes boring into the Alp’s.

  “By the Powers, and as a Free Companion of the London Oversight, I charge you that you allow yourself to be manacled and accompany me peaceably to the Privy Cells in the Sly House to await judgement.”

  The girl stared at him through a gin-fuelled haze.

  The Alp’s face retained its studied blankness.

  Hodge raised the ring higher.

  The Alp raised one eyebrow to match it. And then it just shrugged and tried to walk forward.

  Hodge stepped in front of it, ring still raised. The Alp worked its mouth, as if moistening something that was desiccated from long disuse.

  And then it spoke.

  “Look like man but your stench is dog. Perhaps that is what you are: little dog with no bark…”

  Its voice was rusty and disdainful, its lisping high German intonation adding an extra air of supercilious amusement to it.