As we left Drury Lane and crossed St Giles’s road I put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. It was a little over three months since he had led me into the stews. I was tolerably certain I’d forgiven him. We had been strangers at the time, after all – and indeed his father had made amends, later. But I still remembered the look of pride and curiosity on Sam’s face as I was beaten to the ground. The satisfaction of having pleased his pa. ‘Do you remember the last time you brought me here?’
He tilted his face and looked up at me, black eyes cool and unwavering. ‘Yes.’
‘You’ve never apologised for it.’
He thought about this for a moment. ‘No.’
I gave up.
The city streets are never fragrant, but St Giles wins the honour of being the foulest-smelling borough in London. It is impossible to walk a straight line – one must gavotte around the piles of shit, the clotting pools of blood, men lying drunk or dying in the filth. Sam weaved through it all with an easy tread, while I caught my heel in something so rancid I almost added my own vomit to the street. I reached for my pocket handkerchief, then thought better of it. There would be narrow eyes watching us from every alleyway, every rooftop. I did not want to enter St Giles waving my hankie to my nose like some ridiculous fop.
When Sam had first come to stay with us there had been a trace of the St Giles perfume trapped in his clothes, his hair, his skin. We had given him fresh clothes, clean linen, and several trips to a nearby bagnio where his skin was scrubbed and scraped and rubbed in sweet-smelling oil. I’d suggested that he might wish to shave off his curls as well, to discourage lice and other pests. Disdainful silence. Now he was back in his favourite ‘old duds’ – a battered hat tipped low over his face, a torn and shabby coat, thin breeches. His father could have paid the best tailor in town to stitch a new set of clothes for his only boy, but that would have drawn unwanted attention. Where did he get the chink for such rum togs, eh? No one in James Fleet’s gang wore fine clothes. Clean and modest – that was the order. That’s how I’d known the boy with the note was one of his.
Hawkins. I have something for you. Come at once. My stomach tightened.
A few nights before I had made a grave, foolish mistake. By chance I had met with Sam’s father near St James’s Park. It was not his usual haunt and he had looked somehow diminished, wandering through such a respectable part of town. Indeed he had seemed so lost that on a whim I had invited him to join me at the gaming tables near Charing Cross.
I did not think to wonder what he was doing in St James’s. A man such as Fleet is not stumbled upon by chance. I am sure now that he had been waiting for me, but I did not even consider the idea at the time.
He had caught me at a ripe moment and he knew it, the cunning bastard. The Marshalsea had cast a long shadow on my soul. I had almost died, and it had changed me – I could see it when I studied myself in the mirror. I did not trust any more to: ‘and all will be well’. I was no longer the careless boy I had once been. But what was I then, in truth? Not a clergyman, despite my father’s wishes. So then… what? What was my purpose? I couldn’t say. And a man without a purpose is easy to trap.
I took James Fleet to the gaming house as if I were leading a pet lion upon a leash. Look! See what I have brought with me! I gambled away all the money in my purse and I drank until the floor pitched like a boat beneath my feet. All the vows I had made when I left prison fled before that cheap, seductive thought: damn it all to hell – life must be lived! I had won my freedom from gaol. I had won Kitty’s heart. I had won my safety. The game was over. So what now?
Another roll of the dice, of course. Because the game must never end.
I sat with James Fleet in a tavern – so drunk I cannot even remember the name of it. And I confessed to him what I had barely admitted even to myself. That I was suffocating. That I had begun to suspect that a life without risk for a man of my nature was in fact a kind of slow death. Fleet had leaned forward, interested. ‘I could use a man with your talents, Hawkins.’ The next morning I’d woken with a pounding headache and the uneasy feeling that I had accidentally made a pact with the devil.
And now he had something for me.
Sam turned on to Phoenix Street, a long road that runs straight through the heart of St Giles like an arrow. Most of the houses were ruins, rotting roofs patched with tarred cloth, as if the risk of fire weren’t grave enough amidst all the timber frames and gin stills. One building had collapsed into the street overnight – a couple of thin, ragged street boys were loading the wood into wheelbarrows to sell. They saluted Sam, who gave them a tight nod as we hurried on.
There were eyes upon us in every window here. Men lurking in every shadow. I could feel the stares burning the back of my neck as we passed. I stole a glance up at the rooftops, scouting the wooden planks and ropes that laced the houses together in one long, tangled forest of outlaws. The rookery, they called it – a town for thieves hidden in the skies. A man could clamber right through it without once touching the ground. We passed a gin shop, then another. And then another. At the fourth, a tattered scrap of a boy was puking his guts into the street, blind drunk. A group of older lads jeered at him and kicked him on his way. There were no old men here.
James Fleet did not live on Phoenix Street. His house was hidden, tucked away like a coin buried deep in a miser’s pocket. This was my first visit to his den, and Sam had led me on a strange, intentionally confusing route. But I had learned my lesson the last time he had brought me into St Giles, and I paid close attention to every twist and turn and double back.
Suddenly, without warning, he shoved open a door near the end of the street. It was stiff, and he had to throw all his weight behind it. Somehow he managed this without making a sound. It struck me that Sam used silence the way other boys worked with knives or their fists. I thought again of Jenny’s whispered confession and felt a flicker of unease deep in my chest.
We climbed up through a tall, narrow house, its rooms partitioned with sheets and blankets to cram in as many bodies as possible. No need to guess what happened behind those temporary walls. The air stank of sex and bad liquor. Above the low sobs, the groans of pleasure and pain, I could hear a little girl crying out again and again for her mother. No one answered her. I stopped on the staircase, overwhelmed. Sam glanced back, and I could tell from his impatient expression that these sounds meant nothing to him. They were, after all, the sounds of his neighbourhood, of his childhood. He heard them the way I might hear the cry of gulls and the rush of the sea against the shore. We moved on.
At the top of the house we pulled ourselves through a trapdoor onto the roof, wind gusting fresh air on our faces. From up here we could see the city stretching into the distance, the dome of St Paul’s far away to the east. Even Sam couldn’t resist. He paused to look out over his father’s estate, balancing lightly on a damp board that ran between two of the houses. A look settled upon his face that I recognised well – the joy and anxiety of coming home.
‘Your father will be pleased to see you,’ I called out.
He spun nimbly on the beam. ‘Stephen. He denied seeing the thief?’