CHAPTER SIX
“In the streets of a town, young women of all ranks must be most particular in their deportment.”
Private Education: A Practical Plan for the Studies of Young Ladies.
Elizabeth Appleton. 1815.
Gamesters, thieves, jades and slip-gibbets thronged the street outside The Bowl inn of St Giles Rookery, its bow windowpanes edged with dirt, the sign swinging in a spring breeze laden with drizzle.
Dusk was drawing nigh, the daytime washerwomen, tanners and brewers scuttling home as the sins of the Rookery burst into Cimmerian life – gin shops unbolted their doors, flash houses flaunted their wares, whores scrabbled at jackets and grubby lads lifted purses.
Drawing his hat low and ragged cloak close, Hugh barged his way across the street and through the horde. Someone carped but Hugh twisted with a scowl and the lad hushed.
He knew what that lad had seen: a cut-throat with frozen eyes and a bitter snarl. A man with a dagger in his boot and awooden staff in his hand. One should never enter St Giles lightly as too few ever made it out – whether held by their own dark desires or because of the blade in their guts.
An odour of decay permeated, poverty ageing the inhabitants beyond their years, and yet Hugh knew many here had come to London in search of more. Irishmen driven from famine, Welshmen hounded from their land, country misses desperate to support their families.
Most ended up here selling all they had – youth, muscle, innocence…
And he sometimes wished…
But wishes were for fools, so he sidled past a blowsabella who crowded the entrance to the inn.
Hugh caught a hand at his hip and raised it. “Won’t find any blunt there, you won’t.” His accent was strong, the sound of Wales saturating every syllable.
Rouged lips smirked. “Welshmen never ’ave any coin. Only yer sweet voice.” And she swivelled away for richer pickings.
Hugh made his way through the crowd to where a tapster scrubbed the counter with a grubby cloth.
“Ale,” he growled with a push of penny.
It disappeared quicker than yesteryear’s summer and a tankard of nut-brown liquid was shoved across.
The Bowl inn harboured a jumble of customers beneath its low-beamed ceiling: working men propped at the bar, others slouched in a jug-bitten stupor, a few sharpers played cards at a table, and one bench held a chucklingTonbuck with a wench in his arms. Hugh gave him less than an hour before he found himself in the gutter –bucknaked, out of pocket and quite possiblysanshis auburn locks, which would fetch two shillings at the wig makers.
Hugh limped his way to the rear, to a table at the foot of the closed-in stairs with an unimpaired view of the inn’s bustle. Hesat heavily, thrusting the cloak over his shoulders to uncover his tattered uniform.
The ale was so bitter, it tore at your throat. Indeed, the whole establishment was barbed with malice – a dark shiver that inveigled the soul and loitered.
Situated beside St Giles Church, it was this place that had the more customers of the two and had once been a stop for condemned prisoners taken from Newgate Prison to the Tyburn hanging tree. They’d sup a bowlof ale to fortify themselves before continuing their doomed journey in an open cart. The crowds would have jeered and cheered and mocked, and though such processions had halted years back, it was said that on befogged nights, the jeers still echoed and the ghosts still journeyed.
Hugh had arrived early in order to observe other members of the Ravens, as although he’d be in a room with them soon enough, he wished to burn their faces into his memory, one by one.
Ross had written the name of this group in that notebook for a reason and Hugh could feel in his very bones they’d somehow been responsible for his mentor’s death. The handful of members he’d befriended over the past months were hardened men, soldiers turned felons who no longer cared whom they hurt, others’ lives a commodity.
Tonight he’d meet them all.
And as for their leader?
Allure and brutality were a potent mix, and in their brief meeting, Hugh had sensed John Roberts had both in plenitude.
Footsteps scuttled down the stairs and Hugh slouched under his hat as a rush of lavender scent assailed him and a cloaked woman brushed by, slender and… She twisted but the hood was pulled low and he could solely make out blue eyes fixed on the staircase behind her.
The tankard hovered at Hugh’s lips as the men of the inn ignored her dash across the flagstones for the door. But her identity would have to wait as a fellow with a limp barged past her and made straight for the stairs. Not a moment later, a long-limbed lowlife in a tattered crimson jacket did the same and over the next quarter hour, he watched another eight ragged men enter and clamber the steps.
So he drained his tankard and did likewise.
Four doors led off the narrow corridor and at the third, he heard the grumbling of low voices so gave a strident three knocks with his wooden staff.
