“Bloody hell,” Sebastian swore under his breath. How many more were there?
A fat baker with graying whiskers threw back his head and sang, “Name or title what has he? Is he Regent of the sea?”
Sebastian cast a quick glance up the Strand. The crowd ahead was too thick, too hostile for Sebastian to have any hope of pushing his way through it. He began to slip sideways, edging his way toward a narrow lane he could see opening up just beyond the alehouse on his right.
“By his bulk and by his size,” sang the crowd, their voices swelling toward the punchline, “by his oily qualities…”
Slipping between a fishmonger and a tattered begger, Sebastian reached the corner. The side streets here lay in shadow, the shops already shuttered out of fear of the restive throng. Without looking back, Sebastian darted down the lane.
“This or else my eyesight fails,” roared the mass of voices. “This should be the Prince of Whales!”
Sebastian heard a shout go up from behind him, followed by a chorus of angry protests from the crowd as his pursuers pushed their way forward.
Chapter 61
The cobbled lane stretched straight before him. Throwing a quick glance over his shoulder, Sebastian took the first alley that opened up to his left. Already he could hear the sound of running feet behind him. He quickly ducked down another byway.
He hoped to lose himself in the warren of mean streets that ran between Bedford Street and St. Martin’s Lane. But the area was unfamiliar to him. Dodging the low-hung, swinging sign of a shuttered gin shop, he rounded a corner and found himself in a cul-de-sac. Ancient, soot-stained brick buildings rose around him three and more stories. He was trapped.
He spun around, his breath sawing in and out of his heaving chest. Several doors opened onto the pavement, but all were padlocked from the outside. The slap of running feet grew nearer. Impossible to go back now.
His gaze fell to the arched entrance of the culvert at his feet. Once, the arch had been barred by an iron grill, but now the grill was rusted and broken, the bars twisted apart to make a space wide enough for a man to slip through.
He’d heard tales of men who made their living by scavenging the honeycomb of ancient viaducts and sewers that ran beneath the streets of London. Toshers, they were called. The work was dangerous. The vaults flooded quickly with the rising tide of the river into which they emptied, or even from a heavy storm that could pass unnoticed by those toiling away belowground. There were deadly gasses, too, that could overcome the unwary. Sometimes the floor of one tunnel would collapse into an older vault that ran below it, the sinkhole covered by deceptively flat expanses of silt that only betrayed themselves when a man stepped onto their smooth, deadly surface.
“This way,” someone shouted.
“Bloody hell,” swore Sebastian.
Rolling into the gutter, he squeezed his way through the grill, the rusted bars scraping his wounded side as he lowered himself into the shaft. He felt his coat catch on one of the bars and pulled it sharply, swearing again when he heard the cloth rip.
Scrabbling around for the iron rings driven into the brickwork of the shaft, he lowered himself into the darkness. Some six or eight feet down, his legs plunged into the void of a vault. He let go, dropping the last four or five feet into a noisome stretch of mud and muck that splashed beneath his feet as he landed.
The close, foul stench of the place pinched at his nostrils, roiled his stomach. Panting heavily, he paused to give his eyes time to adjust to the darkness and heard a voice from the street above say, “Where the devil did he go?”
Sebastian held himself very still.
“There,” he heard Portland say. “He’s gone down the culvert. See—” There was a dull twang of metal. “He’s torn his coat. You, Rory, fetch some lanterns, and be quick about it.”
“Sweet bleedin’ Jesus,” said a man’s gruff voice. “I ain’t goin’ down there. People die down there.”
“You fool,” spat Portland. “If we don’t find him and stop him, we’ll all be dead. Now get going!”
Setting his teeth against the stench, Sebastian slipped away from the shaft. He could see better now, his eyes growing accustomed to the dim light that filtered down through the occasional grates. He was in a brickwork tunnel that arched so low over his head he had to stoop to keep from scraping his crown against the curving roof. A slow trickle of water ran down the center of the tunnel, but he suspected it wouldn’t be enough to wash away all trace of his footprints. If Portland and his men could find lanterns, the direction Sebastian had taken would be all too easy to see.
The uneven, muck-covered bricks were treacherous beneath his feet. Moving as quickly as he dared, he followed the water downhill, hoping to come across another open grate that would give him access to the streets above. But he’d gone no more than a few hundred feet when he heard the sound of splashing and men’s voices behind him, followed by a wavering gleam of light. Rory had found lanterns far quicker than Sebastian would have expected.
“Devlin.” Portland’s voice echoed through the shadowy tunnel. “Devlin? I know you can hear me.”
Sebastian paused, listening.
“You won’t get far down here, Devlin. Not without a lantern. It’ll be dark soon. Is this what you want? To die in a sewer like a rat? For what? For a shrieking madman of a king and his bloated buffoon of a son?”
A silence fell, filled with the drip of water and the furtive scurrying of unseen rats’ feet.
Portland’s voice came again. “You know what we’re doing is right, Devlin. You saw what it was like up there. The people of England have had enough. They’re restless, angry. If we don’t act now, the people themselves will bring down the monarchy. Only, they won’t just sweep away this king, this regent. It’ll be the end of us all. We know what happened in France. Is that what you want? To see England a Republic? With a guillotine in Charing Cross and every man, woman, and child of noble birth a target?”
Sebastian could feel the damp chill of the place seeping up through the soles of his boots and wrapping around him like a fetid embrace. He glanced up at the rough bricks overhead and tried not to think about the crushing weight of the tons of earth above him.
“Join us,” Portland was saying. “You want what we want. A strong England, a strong monarchy. It can happen. All it takes is a few selfless, determined men in the right places. Tomorrow the Regent leaves for Brighton. We will simply seize control in his absence. Declare for Anne of Savoy and her husband, and present the world with a fait accompli. What can Prinny do? March on London? It won’t happen. What regiment would follow him? It’ll be the Bloodless Revolution of 1811. Join us, Devlin. It will be a historic moment.”
The Home Secretary fell silent.
“There!” said a man’s gruff voice, cutting through the darkness. “See the footprints? He’s headed toward the river.”
Sebastian splashed forward, heedless now of the noise he made. His feet slipped in the muck, his head brushing the rough bricks above. He could hear Portland and his men behind him, their feet slapping in the mud, their voices breathless. The feeble light from their lanterns bounced and flickered over the tunnel’s damp-stained walls, chasing him.
Rounding a long bend, he came upon another tunnel that angled away uphill to his right. This tunnel was both higher roofed and broader than the one he followed, and for a moment he considered taking it.
He’d long ago lost all sense of orientation. But when he hesitated at the junction, the air of the wider tunnel lay still and dead in the darkness, while a faint stirring of air seemed to waft up from below.