Avery & Blake 02 - The Infidel Stain (30 page)

I mentioned the name I had been given and told him whence I came. He called out. There was a rustling above me, and down a ladder, his hair interlaced with bits of straw, came a yawning boy of perhaps nine or ten. He listened to my instructions and nodded sleepily. He slid into one of the stalls, past an old dray nag who did not enjoy the disruption, and disappeared. The ostler went back to his corner, and I sat upon a straw bale and waited.

At last the boy returned and said all was in train and then disappeared again. More time passed. I struggled to stay awake, while unwanted thoughts thrust themselves into my head: Allington’s terrible dark misery; the monster who murdered and might do so again; my confused thoughts about Matty Horner; my wife’s expression when I had told her I was going to London and the shame and relief I had felt in going.

The boy reappeared and said that all was in order. I paid him well, as instructed by Blake, retraced my steps and collected a nervous O’Toole, who had bundled himself back into his coat and scarf until he was barely identifiable as human. We descended the stairs, tackled
the backyard almost without injury and sidled through the gate into the street, where there stood a very old and battered hackney carriage. The plan – far from elegant but at least straightforward – was that the driver, some familiar of Blake’s, would take O’Toole to the Paddington terminus, where he would catch the first train west, then a mail-coach to Exeter, where he seemed to think he would find shelter. Should this fail to transpire, I had reluctantly furnished him with a letter of introduction to my sister and had also written a letter to send in the morning to apprise her of the matter.

We crouched in the shadow of the backyard fence. The door of the carriage stood open. The Irishman looked about nervously and took a first step towards the carriage. From nowhere two men appeared. One tried to push me aside and brandished a knife under my nose. The other went for O’Toole, who, to my surprise, fought him off stoutly with his cane, administering whacks with all the force in his small but doughty arms.

I launched myself at my assailant. My fist reached across his body and caught him in the face, then I seized his arm, jerked it back and forced the knife out of his hand – I heard it skitter across the lane. I kicked him in the stomach and threw all my weight at him, pushing him on to the cobbles, where he gasped, winded and unable to rise.

At this, the hackney-carriage driver took fright and took off.

O’Toole howled, ‘No! No!’ after it, the noise rupturing the night’s silence.

O’Toole’s man had managed to grasp one of his arms and was attempting to hoist him over his shoulder. Despite his proliferation of layers, O’Toole succeeded in eluding these efforts like a slippery eel, administering knocks to the man’s head with his free hand and shrieking, ‘Unhand me, sir!’

I gave O’Toole’s man a floorer, while O’Toole cracked him over the head. He threw his arms over his head to protect it and overbalanced. I seized O’Toole, kicked the other fellow – now on his knees – giving him a nose-ender (not a blow I was proud of), and ran to the ostler’s yard. The moon had come out and the boy, alerted by O’Toole’s shrieks, was standing in the shadow of the yard’s open gates. When he saw us, he beckoned and ran into the stables, then
into a stall, past a large old nag. I followed him, dragging O’Toole, who was terrified of the creature, behind me. In the corner of the stall the boy lifted up a piece of old canvas nailed into the wall to reveal a hole, before climbing inside.

Our pursuers had come into the yard. I propelled O’Toole and his cane into the hole after the boy and had just time to climb in myself before they reached the stables. The boy pulled at the Irishman’s sleeve to follow him, but O’Toole would not, or could not, move. I did not press him, for I judged he might go off like an alarum if pushed too hard. The horses stumbled anxiously in their stalls. O’Toole took ragged breaths. The canvas covering the hole had folded back on itself a little and I saw their feet padding past our stall. One of them called for attention. The ostler had fled or was well hidden, for there was no answer. They debated what to do. One turned back into the stables; it became apparent that he was searching each stall one by one. I held my breath as he came nearer and nearer. In the stall before ours, however, he was almost trampled – the horses were growing more and more jittery – and so he gave up. The other man, meanwhile, had climbed into the hay loft, for we heard him stamping about above us.

At length they met again and decided we must have gone through the stables to the large inn on the other side. The boy began to tug at O’Toole’s sleeve again. This time the Irishman was obedient. It was a tight place and he found it exceedingly difficult to turn, but he did so at last and we followed the boy on hands and knees until we came out into a larger space.

The boy lit a taper and I saw we were in a tack room: there were bridles, cart trappings, several sacks of feed into which the rats had made good inroads, and an old cart with three wheels on which O’Toole made himself comfortable. It was almost warm. I mimed to the boy, asking if it was safe to speak. He nodded and said that Blake had told him always to have a safe place to hide, just in case.
Just in case of what?
I thought.

The boy, very pleased with himself and much enlivened by the night’s activities, swore he could get O’Toole to Paddington for the first train. He said he was familiar with ‘the back ways’ and that
when they got as far as Hyde Park, he knew a cabbie who would take them the rest of the way. It did not seem a bad plan, but I worried at what might happen should they encounter any trouble, and O’Toole – previously so desperate to escape town – was now fearful of striking out at all. The alternative was somehow to regain Blake’s rooms, a notion which would at least give us the benefit of Blake’s judgement. The question was how to evade any observers. I wondered what Blake would have done. As almost in a dream, an answer floated in upon me like a memory from another world.

My pocket watch said it was near four in the morning. I asked the boy if he would be able to provide me with the necessary accoutrements, and gave him some money. He nodded, merry, disbelieving and very curious, but too deferential to ask for explanations. Having availed himself of the most comfortable spot, O’Toole was already nearly asleep, so I sat down in a pile of straw to take what rest I could find.

I woke stiff and, as I often did now, with a peculiar sense of apprehension. The boy was nudging me. I thought guiltily of Helen at home, without me, then I remembered where I was. I was very cold. I stretched and thought longingly of the bathtub at the Oriental Club. Light seeped in through the edges of a stable door. Under his arms, the boy carried a bundle larger than his head, with a paper parcel on top. He said it was nearly eight o’clock and we were expected. He untied the bundle and produced a dress of grey worsted, an apron and an old bonnet. We shook O’Toole awake – he was not in the best of moods – and presented him with the dress. I began to explain how in India many respectable British officers had escaped difficult incidents in women’s dress. To my surprise he required very little persuasion. Indeed, he seized the clothes from me, unburdened himself of his own layers at once and almost leapt into the dress. It was immediately apparent that while his arms squeezed into the sleeves, the bodice would never button around his plump little figure. The ingenious boy, however, produced a
moth-eaten cape to cover the great gaping hole at the back. O’Toole then arranged the apron so as, he said, ‘to make the dress sit plausibly’, plunged his head into the bonnet and swathed his old scarf around his neck and chin to hide his emerging whiskers. When all was done, he gave me a low curtsey. The effect was most unsettling.

‘Captain Avery, I am no stranger to women’s
habillements
,’ he said gravely. ‘I take a keen interest in the stage. I have several times been called upon to give my “dame”.’

The boy opened the paper parcel; inside were French pastries – I recognized them from having once or twice encountered them in India.

‘Mr Blake bought me one once,’ said the boy eagerly. ‘From the Frog bakery in Dean Street. Now they’ll sometimes give me what’s left at the end of the day. This one’s a crescent. This one’s a chohsun, like a jam turnover.’

O’Toole had already seized two; the boy was sinking his teeth into another. I took up a fourth. It was ambrosial.

My notion was that the boy would lead O’Toole around to Miss Jenkins’s (who had been kind enough to provide the clothes) while I would make my own way back to Blake’s through the back door. Miss Jenkins would then escort her elderly female visitor up to meet Mr Blake. That was as far as my ingenuity had taken me.

O’Toole then refused to give up his cane. ‘I have carried this thing through thick and through thin, Captain Avery,’ he said. ‘It has protected me against assailants in their dozens.’

In vain we suggested that an old lady would be unlikely to be seen brandishing such an item. In the end I had to snatch it from him and promise that it should be returned to him once he attained Blake’s rooms.

By the time I reached Blake’s rooms Mr O’Toole – still wearing his dress, his bonnet on his lap – had taken up residence upon the settle and was in full flood, in between helping himself to pieces of cheese. Blake was wrapped in his banyan, feet bare and grey-faced except for where he was shinily bruised. Miss Jenkins seemed admirably composed after her small adventure and had decided to ignore Blake’s state of undress. The boy had returned to the stables.

Miss Jenkins leapt up and said she must return to the shop, but it had been a most exciting distraction, and O’Toole launched into a series of fulsome – and lengthy – tributes to each of us, during which I muttered apologies to Blake, and he grumbled that I should have sent O’Toole off with the ostler’s boy. He asked if I had recognized any of our assailants and I said I had not, but added that I thought their intention had been to carry off O’Toole rather than to murder him.

‘You cannot stay here,’ I said to O’Toole. I knew Blake would be oppressed by O’Toole’s prolonged company, let alone the thought of him rooting around in his books and papers. ‘Blake must be allowed to rest quietly, and I have calls to make.’

‘But where then will I go?’ said O’Toole, his face the picture of alarm.

Miss Jenkins immediately offered to take him in for the day, as I had hoped she might. Blake dismissed the idea. Miss Jenkins said that she would be happy to have Mr O’Toole. Her aged house had a spare room and several small hidden spaces which she suspected had once been priest’s holes. Should something go amiss, Mr O’Toole might secrete himself in one of these. Unbidden, a picture of O’Toole’s meaty little limbs bursting out of one of Miss Jenkins’s small cupboards sprang into my mind.

Blake hesitated. It was clear that Miss Jenkins would have done anything for him. Clear, too – to me at least – that Blake knew this and wished it were not so. I foresaw an impasse.

‘A capital and most courageous notion, Miss Jenkins,’ I said, before Blake could voice his opposition again. ‘Mr O’Toole will of course pay for the time spent in your house and for his board and lodging. I think we have no alternative but to accept. Now I shall put Mr Blake back to bed.’

‘They call it “the Steel”, you know,’ said Henry Mayhew, gazing up at the forbidding gateway of Coldbath Fields house of correction in the afternoon gloom. ‘After the Bastille. Can’t think why.’

I had collected Mayhew from the Shakespeare’s Head tavern in Wych Street, mere steps from Holywell Street. He claimed to be writing an editorial for his journal, though this seemed to be indistinguishable from enjoying numerous tankards of ale. We had agreed that we would not tell the warders precisely who he was, as he said that being too candid about his profession could produce unfortunate results. Matty was waiting in front of the gates when we arrived, clutching a parcel. She was so grateful to see us, and so slight and small against the prison’s great walls, that I felt my anger and disappointment of the day before melt away. I introduced Mayhew and explained that we might be joined by someone of influence who could help us. I still had hopes that Lord Allington would come. I could not help but believe that if anyone could persuade the authorities to reconsider their judgement, it would be him. If he did not appear I would regretfully have to conclude that he remained in thrall to his demons.

The minutes passed. I grew less and less hopeful. To begin with, Mayhew had asked Matty questions and scribbled in a small notebook. Now we simply stood. Coldbath Fields itself had a dejected, down-at-heel air; and the muddy green sward before the prison seemed principally arranged to attract chill gusts. The gateway, meawhile, lent the prison an indubitably fortress-like aspect. On the great granite coping stones above the huge wooden doors were the words ‘The House of Correction for the County of Middlesex’ and the date ‘1794’. At the top of the two pillars supporting these stones dangled two pairs of giant black iron fetters. Within the great wooden doors was a smaller one, upon which was pinned the
legend ‘No provisions, clothing, or other articles for the use of prisoners can pass these gates’.