The Thief Taker (29 page)

Chapter Sixty-Three

Maria awoke to find herself jolted painfully against a dusty wooden floor. She tried to move her hands and found she couldn’t. They were bound tightly together, and as she tried to raise them up an electric pain stabbed in her wrists and arms.

Her mouth was dusty, dry and her head throbbed.

She tried to think back to how she’d got there.

There was the prison.
She searched the jumble of memories. Even that was painful. Like prodding the place where a tooth had been with your tongue.
The cell. Plague.

The memory thudded back.

The plague doctor.

Her stomach filled with ice.

The plague doctor.

Her last memory was of being dragged from the cells. She’d kicked and screamed, and the guards had let him take her. They seemed to think he was an important man.

Then . . . She struggled to remember.

He’d got her outside the prison and told her to sit still whilst he bound her legs and hands.

Numbly she’d watched as he wrenched the rope around her wrists and ankles.

Then he began pushing up her skirts, telling her not to scream.

She had tried to fight with him. But he’d reached out and gripped some part of her neck. The strength of his fingers was inhuman, and the grip found out some thick nerve, charging her body with excruciating pain.

‘Do not struggle,’ he’d said to her, ‘this is only a tiny part of what I can do to you.’

The pain combined with her tight bodice must have been great enough to make her faint. Because after that there was nothing.

She moved her knees, trying to discover if anything had been done to her whilst she was unconscious. As far as she could tell it hadn’t. Which meant he wanted her to be awake for whatever he meant to do.

And that frightened her far more.

Maria twisted on the wagon floor, trying to see some way to escape. The walls of the wagon looked thick. She moved experimentally on the boards beneath her.

The planks were immoveable, and thudding against the floor brought a searing paroxysm of pain to her hip and shoulder.

Her legs and shoulder must have been badly bruised from where he’d flung her in the wagon, she realised. Maria gave her shoulder another little twitch, and the pain flooded back, worse this time.

She thought it might be dislocated.

To the back of the wagon she could see a heap of shapes which came and went with the slices of sunlight flitting through the
moving
vehicle.

At first she thought her eyes had deceived her.

Corpses?

There was no mistaking them. Each wrapped neatly in a winding sheet. But the faces were covered. Which was unusual. And now that she thought about it there was no smell either.

Was it something other than bodies that he transported?

Maria inched painfully towards the shapes. Every movement brought a fresh pain to her injured shoulder.

Something pulled at her foot with an ominous clinking sound. There was some kind of manacle around her ankle. She was chained to the side of the wagon.

He must have a connection to the prisons then, she thought. No ordinary man would be able to lay his hands on irons.

The chain held firm, but she thought if she stretched out her damaged arm far enough she might be able to tug free one of the winding sheets and see what it was he transported.

She stopped for a moment, as the white heat shuddered through her shoulder. Then she gritted her teeth, willing herself to make the final distance.

Her hand touched the nearest body.

It was cold. Hard. And she snatched her hand back in alarm, gasping as the movement ricocheted through her shoulder.

Slowly, she reached out again. Her fingertips tapped the hard corpse. Then she realised. It was metal. Something metal she was feeling.

Maria scrabbled for a closer hold, but couldn’t get one. This was the nearest she could get.

There was a sudden jolt, and she found herself sliding back along the floor of the wagon.

Her heart began to race. The wagon had stopped.

She heard the slow sound of the driver dismounting, his heavy tread sounding along the side of the wagon.

Her purse was still attached to her hip, and she mentally rummaged through its contents for something which could help her. She could feel by its weight the pistol had gone. All she had were a few coins, and some wax cosmetic to make her cheeks look rosy.

She almost sighed aloud at her own vanity. Why hadn’t she armed herself with a knife, instead of a useless cosmetic?

The tinderbox she had given to Charlie. Was there a needle? She thought there might be. That was something at least.

A key turned and a shaft of sunlight blinded her. She tried to throw up her arms, squinting in the unfamiliar light.

Peering into the dark was a great metal beak. The crystal goggles lay as flat and cold as the blue eyes beneath them.

The plague doctor began to heave his great bulk inside the
wagon. And then he was standing over her. She could smell
his swea
t.

‘It hurts,’ he said, raising a gloved hand slightly towards her shoulder.

It wasn’t a question, but she nodded anyway.

The plague doctor stood for a long moment, looking at her.

‘I do not feel such things any more,’ he said. ‘But I like to see them in other people. It reassures me I am still alive.’

He stuck out a booted foot and pressed down on her damaged shoulder.

Maria felt white hot waves of agony course through her. She pressed her lips together, feeling tears roll from her eyes.

‘Things were done to me after the war that cannot be spoken of,’ he said.

Beneath his foot her whole arm had begun to pulse.

‘After your body is used in such ways you feel nothing. Mostly nothing,’ he corrected himself. ‘At times like this I can feel a little something. Watching your face.’

He pressed down harder. Maria gritted her teeth.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘a little something.’ He watched her with interest for a moment.

Carefully he drew up his foot. Then he leaned forward, wrapped a tight gag around her mouth and unlocked the manacle at h
er ankle.

‘Soon we will be in London,’ he said, dragging her upwards. ‘First I must collect my wife. She will be very happy, when I deliver you to her.’

Chapter Sixty-Four

Charlie pulled the rest of his body through the opening just as the blade of a knife snickered across his bare ankle.

‘Come back Charlie!’ cried Teresa. ‘I will tell you more of your mother.’ Candlelight glimmered through, throwing her tall silhouette. The light revealed a tunnel large enough to stand up in, but gave no clue as to what might be ahead.

He straightened up, feeling with his hands for what he couldn’t see, hobbling blindly into the darkness. The light was enough to see a man-sized tunnel had been dug and walled with tiny tiles, like mosaics. Then it died and all was black.

From behind he heard Teresa heaving herself through the
opening
, her knife scraping against the stone.

Throwing out his arms Charlie made a stumbling jog forward.

‘Wait Charlie Oakley!’ cried Teresa. ‘I will share your mother’s secrets!’ She switched to shout after him in English. ‘Come back and we shall find out where she is gone.’

Abandoning all thoughts of caution Charlie started to run.
He needed to get to Maria. Fast. The ground beneath him was
uneven and he lurched over mounds of ragged soil struggling not to fall.

He could hear the woman had broken into an ungainly sort of trot but it was impossible to judge how fast she was moving. His shoulders bounced against the tiled wall and he swore as the stonework tore his skin.

Teresa’s voice echoed along the tunnel. He staggered on.

Then with a cry of pain he thudded face-first into a solid wall of earth.

It was a dead end. The tunnel had been blocked. He cycled through his options. Despite her height he was stronger than her. But fighting blind and unarmed against her knife he might not avoid a chance swing of the blade.

He laid a hand against the wall behind him to steady himself, and as he did he felt a tangle of thin roots. Something was growing on the other side of the earth. That meant the end of the tunnel couldn’t be too far from the surface. The delicate root structure suggested something which didn’t grow deep.

He scrabbled to drive his hand into the soft earth. It broke out almost instantly into warm air on the other side, and as he pulled his arm back through a shaft of light followed the falling soil.

In the slim beam of sunshine the tunnel’s end revealed itself. And to his amazement only a few steps from where he was standing was a wooden door with a latched handle.

A jumble of prayers caught in this throat as he raised his hand to the large latch, pressed it down and pushed with all his strength. Against the full weight of his body the door inched open, showing the thinnest crack of the outside world.

It must be of some hugely thick construction, thought Charlie, driving in with his legs to push it open further. The door creaked and rolled at agonisingly low speed, revealing as it did so the maddened face of Teresa bowling towards him from the gloom of the tunnel.

Charlie slipped through the narrow opening and let it slam back as Teresa hurled herself against it from the other side.

The door smashed into her wrist, turning the knife in on itself as her body fell forward.

The blade jackknifed back against the door and disappeared into some dark reach of her body.

A scream issued up and then a choking and a gurgling.

Charlie turned his body to hold the door shut, pushing it fast, not willing to risk that she was trying to trick him again.

The outside of the door was lined with a thick covering of turf and set hidden into a near vertical verge. He leaned against it.

Charlie paused to take a quick stock of his discoveries and
surroundings
.

The tunnel had brought him out by the waterfront. He was standing in a sunken grassed area, and behind him the entrance to the prison was now rendered almost invisible, set into the slanted slope.

Broken walls of the old port loomed above him, casting drawn-out shadows in the late afternoon light. His heart hammered as he assessed the situation.

Maria. He would have to get back in the tunnel somehow. It was his best hope of freeing her from the prison.

Stepping away from the door he stood for a moment. If Teresa was badly injured he could easily return through the tunnel. But it could have just as easily been a feint to lure him back.

His mind scanned the possible options.

Weakness flowed suddenly into his muscles.

Charlie willed himself to take stock of what had happened, driving down the pain from his burned back and legs which had suddenly reared again.

It was not Malvern who killed those girls
.
It was his wife.

Charlie tried to assess what it meant. If Malvern was not involved in some dark magic then his uprising must be more calculated, more logical than they’d given him credit for.

What was it he brought back to London by the wagonload?

A heavy form blocked out the sun, casting him into cold shade.

Charlie looked up. His curiosity turned to instant fear.

A huge wagon, driven by six black horses, had arrived on the road. From his vantage point in the grassed trench the enormous hooves drew level with his head. Then slowly the vast turning wheels followed after.

Charlie waited frozen for a moment, wondering whether he could be seen. Then a shadow fell long across the grass beside him.

It was in the shape of a curved beak.

The plague doctor had arrived.

Chapter Sixty-Five

Taking a quick stock of his surroundings Charlie ducked low and sprinted towards the cover of a nearby hedgerow. He threw himself behind it panting and peered through the branches to assess whether he’d been seen.

The heavy vehicle stood motionless. It was a contained
wagon –
an enormous black chest on wheels with a separate driver’s seat at the front. Malvern stepped down from the seat and moved to the back of the wagon. He opened the doors, and Charlie caught a flash of blonde hair inside.

Maria.

He stared out at the scene in horror. Malvern must have taken her from the dungeon. But why? The possible reasons made his stomach lurch.

He couldn’t tell if she were alive or dead, but he could make out her hands and feet had been bound.

Charlie gritted his teeth. She could not be dead. He wouldn’t believe it.

Malvern closed up the door of the wagon with a heavy padlock and then turned towards the hedgerow where Charlie was hiding. There was a long moment as the beaked mask stared out towards him. Charlie stayed motionless, his breath held.

Slowly Malvern began to stalk towards him. As he drew closer the residue of rusting blood on the hem of his canvas cloak came into close relief.

Then he turned towards the place in the grassy verge that held the hidden door leading to the dungeon. Charlie watched as he slipped a short rod of metal from his cloak and inserted it into some secret part of the door.

Using both arms he pulled at the heavy opening, dragging it back to reveal the dark tunnel inside. Charlie saw the slump of the corpse first. Teresa fell forward glassy-eyed, the motion of her dead limbs rigid. A dark circle of blood stained her tattered white shift. Her gore-soaked hand had closed around the knife but she’d failed to pull it free. It was lodged in her stomach right up to the hilt.

Her scream must have been real then, thought Charlie. Teresa had run onto her own blade as the door slammed into her. He looked back to the wagon, fighting the instinct to run out into the open and wrench at the padlock. It was probably basic enough for him to pick. But he would need longer than a few snatched moments.

He stemmed his breathing trying to remind himself he could do Maria no good by dying.

Charlie’s attention went back to Malvern. He had dropped to his knees and was examining the body of his dead wife. It was impossible to tell what he was feeling behind the mask.

Malvern reached forward and tugged out the knife. Then he held it up in the sunshine and looked at the bloody blade for a long moment.

A low growl of anguish went up.

Malvern was howling a strangled lamentation.

After a moment the sound stopped and he heaved up the body and began walking back to the wagon. Malvern was alert now, looking left and right.

Heaving the corpse of his wife into the wagon with more delicacy than he had Maria, the crystal eye goggles gazed unblinking into the dark interior. Charlie caught a glimpse of blonde hair and then the load of corpses, wrapped in their linen winding sheets.

Then Malvern shut up the heavy door of the back and bolted it with a thick lock. Returning to the front he climbed heavily into the driver’s seat and urged the horses forward with a flick of the reins.

The wagon lurched into motion.