“Then do you add my name to the roster of those under suspicion,” Daniel said, “as it was placed in my trunk. But in all seriousness, Isaac, I’ll agree to this much: the Device could not have been placed where it was without the connivance-perhaps unwitting, or unwilling-of a servant in Threader’s retinue.”
“And it is certain that such Black-guards are numbered among his entourage. For Jack is a shrewd fellow, and would be at pains to plant spies in the households of his confederates.”
They had paused before the door to John Doe’s cell. Daniel said, “His confederates, yes-as well as his enemies. For as strange as it seems, he appears to have done just that in placing Arlanc at the Royal Society.”
Isaac listened to this gravely, and then devoted a few seconds to a sort of clinical examination of Daniel’s face: perhaps looking for symptoms of resurrection. “I suppose it does seem strange,” he allowed. “On any other day, Daniel, I should be quite amazed.”
The Launch Prudence
MONDAY, 12 JULY 1714
MR. ORNEY HAD SAID only that Prudence was a Simple and a Virtuous Vessel. No further warning was needed by the other members of the Clubb. They had come down to the stairs this morning laden with cushions, oilskins, umbrellas, spare clothes, food, drink, tobacco, and anti-emeticks. All of them were soon put to use as Prudence wallowed across the Pool of London and made a slow pass upstream before the waterfront of the Borough, struggling against the rain-swollen flow of the Thames towards London Bridge, which taunted them cruelly with visions of pubs and chocolate-houses.
Orney might be oblivious to rain, but, anticipating that the others would whinge about it, he had pitched a tarpaulin over Prudence’s midships. This was waterproof except along the seams; wherever anyone touched it; where it had been patched; round any of its constellations of moth-holes; and wherever else it happened to leak.
Prudence was, in essence, a fat cargo hold partitioned off from the rest of the universe by a carapace of bent planks, with a nod, here and there, to requirements of propulsion: diverse oar-locks, and a stubby mast with elementary rigging. There was no wind to-day-the rain was a steady soaker, not a lashing howler-and so he had hired four Rotherhithe lads to kneel on the deck and stir up the Thames with oars. The oarsmen were situated out-board, along the gunwales, sheltered by naught but big-brimmed hats of waxy canvas. They looked as wretched as any Mediterranean galley-slaves. Daniel, Orney, Kikin, and Threader were in the hold, where Orney had improvised a bench by throwing a plank between two clapped-out sawbucks. When this was augmented by cushions, it rose just high enough that the four Clubb members could sit on it, all in a line like worshippers on a pew, and gaze out through a narrow horizontal slit between the fraying and weeping tarp-hem above, and the bashed and tar-slopped gunwale below. This would make them perfectly invisible to any who might spy on them from the shore or the Bridge, as Orney had pointed out several times already, and would persist in doing until a plurality of the Clubb agreed with him, or told him to shut up. Orney used Prudence to make runs up and down and across the river for supplies, e.g., oakum, brown stuff, tar, and pitch, all of which the hold smelled like. There were other vessels like it scooting about the Pool.
“The point is granted,” Mr. Threader said finally. “As a means to reconnoiter the demesne of the infamous Mr. Knockmealdown, it is better than packing a water-taxi with gentlemen in periwigs and sending them forth on a sunny day with parasols and spyglasses.”
“There!” cried Daniel, who was tilting a hand-drawn map toward the feeble light lapping in through the slit, and menacing it with a Royal Society burning-glass the size of a dessert plate. This artifact, which was encrusted with a Rokoko frame and handle, had been a gift to Natural Philosophy from some member of the House of Tuscany. Beneath its splendour, the map looked very mean. The map had been cobbled together, as Daniel had explained, from rumors, recollections, and suppositions given to him by John Doe, Sean Partry, Peter Hoxton, Hannah Spates’s father, and any of their drinking-companions who’d been in earshot when Daniel had inter-viewed them. “Mark yon brick warehouse,” Daniel continued, indicating Bermondsey.
“There’s been naught but brick warehouses for two hours,” Threader pointed out, in a deprecating tone that moved Mr. Orney to muse:
“A man of the City, who lives off Byzantine manipulations of the Commerce of the Realm-like a fly, influencing the movements of a noble draught-horse by chewing on its arse-cannot perceive the beauty of this prospect. He will prefer the waterfront of Southwark: Bankside, and the Clink. For these were fashioned during indolent times, for the pleasure of idle wretches narcotized by Popery: being a succession of theatres, whorehouses, and baiting-pits strung together by a corniche well-made for preening strollers, beaux, fops, pimps, nancy-boys, et cetera. A lovely prospect doth it make-to a certain type of observer. But below the bridge, most of what meets the eye has been built in recent times-an age of industry and commerce. The same fellow who adores the Vanity Fair of Southwark will complain that Bermondsey and Rotherhithe are a monotonous succession of warehouses, all built to the same plan. But an industrious chap who lives by simple and honest labour will see a new Wonder of the World, not without a sort of beauty.”
“The only wonder of the world I have seen to-day is a man who can speak for ten minutes about his own virtuousness, without stopping to draw breath,” returned Mr. Threader.
“Gentlemen!” Daniel almost shouted, “I draw your notice to the Church of St. Olave, near the southern terminus of the Bridge.”
“Does Mr. Knockmealdown also control that?” asked Mr. Kikin.
“No, though he is not above posting look-outs in the belfry,” Daniel said. “But I point it out only as a land-mark. Directly below it, as seen from here, along the riverfront, may be seen a pair of wharves, of equal width, separated by a warehouse. The one on the right is Chamberlain’s Wharf. The other is the Bridge Yard. Each communicates with streets in the hinter-land by a labyrinth of crazed alley-ways, whose tortuous wrigglings are only hinted at by this map. The warehouse between ’em, likewise, though it presents to us a straight and narrow front, rambles and ramifies as it grows back into the Borough-like-”
“A tumor spreading into a healthy organ?” suggested Mr. Kikin.
“A hidden fire, spreading invisibly from house to house, sensible from the street only by a smoak-pall of pick-pockets, outraged women, and abandoned property?” tried Threader.
“The abcesses of the Small-Pox, which present themselves first as a diaspora of tiny blisters, but soon increase until they have merged with one another to flay the patient alive?” said Mr. Orney.
For Daniel had employed all of these similitudes and more while drawing their attention to other East London Company facilities.
The oarsmen were giving them curious looks.
“I was going to liken it to a tree-stump in a garden,” Daniel said forbearingly, “which to outward appearances stands alone, and may be easily plucked out; but a few minutes’ work with a mattock suffice to prove it has a vast hidden root-system.”
“Is it in any sense different from any of the other such places you’ve pointed to?” Threader asked.
“Without a doubt. Being so near the Bridge, it is convenient to the City, and so it is where Mr. Knockmealdown conducts a certain type of commerce: trade in objects small enough to be carried across the Bridge by hand, yet valuable enough to be worth the trouble. Whereas bulk contraband, as we’ve seen, is handled downriver.”
“It certainly enjoys a fair prospect of the Bridge,” observed Mr. Kikin, who had half-risen to a beetle-like squatting posture so that he could swivel his head back and forth.
“As does the Bridge of it,” Daniel said. “The place is called the Tatler-Lock, which means, the Watch-Fence. We shall learn more of it in coming days!”