Helen crossed her arms. ‘It would seem that my progress, or lack of it, is the subject of much speculation in this house.’
Darby’s hands dropped a little, the jacket sagging between them. ‘It was not meant with any meanness of spirit, my lady.’
Helen relented. Darby only had her well-being at heart. ‘I’m sure it was not. Your Mr Quinn is the least mean-spirited man I know.’ She stood and held out her arms for the jacket. ‘Have you spoken to him about the Terrene ritual?’
‘I have,’ Darby said, her voice dropping into a whisper as she threaded Helen’s arm expertly into the tight-fitting sleeve. ‘It is a blood-bonding, my lady. He explained the basics of it — a mix of blood and milk and burned hair, drunk by Reclaimer and Terrene — but he was adamant that the intricacies were best left for Lord Carlston to explain. I pressed him, but he became a little suspicious. I did not want to alert him to our plan so I turned the conversation to other matters.’ She threaded Helen’s other arm into its sleeve and, with a hoist that had all her weight behind it, fitted the jacket over Helen’s shoulders. The force sent Helen forward a step. ‘I am sorry I could not find out more, my lady.’
‘I understand.’ Helen squeezed her maid’s shoulder in reassurance. ‘We must find another source of the ritual.’
It must be recorded in a book somewhere. She would make a thorough search of the alchemy books that Lord Carlston had left for her perusal.
‘There,’ Darby said, smoothing a last crease out of the wool. ‘You look very fine. What do you plan to do, my lady?’
Helen rolled her shoulders into the tight fit. ‘I am not sure yet.’
‘You should do something very male,’ Darby said. She smiled tentatively. ‘You could go to Raggett’s Club, or drive the gig down the main street by yourself.’ At Helen’s smile, she gathered momentum. ‘You could even eat your lunch at a chophouse. At a bench!’
Helen placed her hat upon her head. Or I could visit a bawdy-house, she thought dryly. There was nothing more male than that.
Half an hour later, she strolled along Union Street, a dingy laneway in the Old Town, with a red apple in hand, still smiling from the few moments she had spent conversing with the apple boy on the corner. She had passed him the coin, and the boy, with a lift of his sandy brows, had called, ‘Catch it, sir?’ Helen had nodded, and her neat grab of the apple high in the air had earned her a grin of admiration from the lad before he turned to his next customer.
She could not, of course, bite into the fruit — even gentlemen did not eat in the street — but she lifted it to her nose as she weaved her way around the other pedestrians. Its fresh green scent was the sweetest she had ever inhaled.
She nearly walked past her goal: the sign above Holt’s Coffeehouse was blackened with grime. It stood in a row of close-built wooden shops, each three storeys tall and in some disrepair. The draper’s next door was open, a basket of cheap cloth set outside to tempt buyers inside and a display of sprigged dress lengths in its window. Holt’s, however, looked ominously deserted.
Helen tried the stout red door. Locked. The view through one of the window’s small panes showed a dark room. A single shaft of sunlight caught the curve of a roughly made stool and the corner of a table.
‘Ain’t open, mister,’ a young voice said. ‘Not ’til after midday.’
Helen turned to find a girl of ten years perhaps watching her from beneath a rough knot of brown hair, one dirty hand clutching the bricks that quoined the corner of the building. She wore the bedraggled remnants of a woman’s dress, its flowered print faded into ghostly roses and vines.
‘You lookin’ for the whores?’ she asked, hoisting up the gaping neckline.
Her voice was very loud for such a small girl. Helen checked the street before answering. A man in fisherman’s trousers and a smock strode by, intent upon his own thoughts; and a dark-skinned couple dressed in sober blues, Quakers perhaps, on their way to the Meeting House, hurried past, their chins tucked to their chests. Outside a butcher shop, a group of filthy children were floating sticks in a puddle reddened by drained blood, their squabbling like the sound of agitated geese. No one was heeding her at all. It was rather thrilling to be standing in a street by herself without a chaperone.
‘I am looking for one girl in particular,’ she said.
‘They all be asleep,’ her informer offered. ‘We opens the same time as the coffee-’ouse.’
‘I want to speak to Binny. Do you know her?’ Helen asked.
The girl nodded, her watery blue eyes as wary as those of a kicked dog.
‘Would you please fetch her for me?’
‘The girls don’t like to be woked, mister.’
‘Oh.’ Helen looked in the window again, at a loss. She had not expected the child to refuse her request.
The girl edged a step closer, hand still gripping the bricked edge of the building. ‘Give us a penny an’ I’ll do it.’
Of course, everything here was a commercial transaction. Helen juggled the apple into her other hand and dug two fingers into her breeches’ pocket. She pulled out a penny.
‘I will give you this now. And a sixpence too, if you go and tell Binny that Martha’s friend is here, and bring her back to me without disturbing anyone else.’
The girl drew in a breath. ‘A sixpence? You gullin’ me?’
‘No, I am telling the truth. But you only get the sixpence if you bring me Binny quietly.’
The girl held out her hand. Helen dropped the penny into the cupped palm. The girl tapped the coin against a crooked front tooth. It seemed that it, and Helen, passed assessment for she jerked her pointed chin towards a sliver of dirt path that ran up the side of the coffee-house. ‘Follar me.’
‘What is your name?’ Helen asked as they edged along the narrow space between drapery and coffee-house. It was overhung with cords strung with greyed washing. The dank smell of human urine caught at the back of her throat and she coughed, hearing the sound bounce off the close-set stucco walls.
‘They calls me Sprat.’ The girl skirted a pile of old rope with practised ease. ‘Course when I start swivin’ next year I’m gunna call meself Janey.’ She climbed over a small pile of broken bricks, her bare feet seemingly immune to the jagged edges, then squinted back at Helen. ‘Pretty name, ain’t it? You’d like that if you was lookin’ for a ladybird, wouldn’t you?’
Helen translated the girl’s words, steadying herself against the wall as she came to their awful meaning. ‘But you are a child.’
Sprat stopped, pale brows furrowing into a frown of indignation. ‘I’m near twelve.’
Heaven forfend; only twelve. ‘What do you do now?’
‘Fetchin’ and cleanin’, and sometimes I’m allowed to keep the times and knock on the doors. Not for the floggin’ rooms though, ’cause them’s the spesh-ee-al-itee.’ She sniffed back a nose full of mucus. ‘I can tell the time by a clock and count up to a hundred.’
A side glance checked that Helen was impressed. Helen was appalled, but she nodded and smiled.
They had arrived at the back of the coffee-house. Along the length of a small yard yellowed drying cloths hung from cord strung between two wooden stakes that leaned inwards from the burden. Behind the line of laundry, Helen could see a solid whitewashed outbuilding, fairly new by the look of it, that formed the opposite wall of the yard. The back door of the bawdy-house stood open and a greasy smell of roasted mutton turned Helen’s stomach.
‘Best stay ’ere,’ Sprat said. ‘Binny ain’t gunna like being woked at all.’ She regarded Helen for a moment. ‘What’s yer name?’
‘Tell her it’s Martha’s friend.’
Sprat gave a nod and headed into the kitchen, batting the washing on her way past.
Helen surveyed the quiet yard. A selection of long birch rods had been propped against the outbuilding wall, a wet circle on the cobbles beneath them. Newly washed, Helen surmised, and set into a patch of sun to dry. She eyed them uneasily, remembering Sprat’s
description of the house speciality. A tabby cat observed her discomfort from its position on the opposite roof, then yawned as she took the few steps across the rough cobbles and parted a curtain of limp linen to look at the outbuilding.
It was a solid wooden box, the only apparent source of light and air obtained from a rectangle cut high into the door and lined with six wide-set iron bars. A cell then. Helen hesitated; perhaps it was something to do with one of the bawdy-house perversions. She wrinkled her nose: a rancid smell, like rotting flesh, emanated from within.
Hand pressed against her nostrils, she edged closer, peering through the bars into the dim interior. A straw pallet had been shoved up against the back wall, a jumble of blankets bunched at its end. A bucket, stained and buzzing with flies, stood in the corner. Nearby, an array of gnawed bones — no doubt the source of the rancid stink — lay piled carefully on the dirt floor, their own collection of flies weaving lazily above. A long chain snaked across the floor, the dirt around it swept smooth except for a churn of footprints to the left that clearly showed the chain’s extent stopped well short of the side wall and a wooden chest pushed against it.
Suddenly, the chain rattled and pulled tight. A face reared up at the bars, yellowed teeth bared.
‘Sweet heaven!’ Helen yelped and jumped back.
‘You got somethin’ for Lester? You got somethin’ for Lester?’
A filthy hand curled around a bar and a pair of green eyes, the corners red and inflamed, blinked rapidly. The bared teeth, Helen realised, were a smile.
She straightened. Somehow she had ended up in a combat crouch three feet away. This must be Kate Holt’s mad son. The Unreclaimable.
‘You got somethin’ for Lester?’ The hopeful voice turned a little mournful, as if many times there had been nothing for Lester.
She could see now that underneath all the filth was a young man of about twenty-five, with thick black hair matted into hanks and a strong cleft chin. Lord Carlston had said that the vestige energy could sometimes overburden an offspring’s mind and manifest itself in fits of extreme violence, promiscuity, or, as it seemed in Lester’s case, a descent into pitiful madness. Would Lord Carlston end up in such a state if they could not find a cure? Helen pushed away the awful thought.
‘Hello, Lester,’ she said gently, then realised she did have something to offer. She held out the apple. ‘Would you like some of this?’
A female voice answered, ‘I’m not rightly sure he’s ever had one.’
Helen spun around. A girl stood just outside the kitchen door, a broad hand clutching an old pink flowered banyan robe around her plump body. Sprat stood at her side. They both flinched at Helen’s sudden turn.
‘Are you Binny?’ Helen asked.
‘Course she is,’ Sprat said, rallying. ‘You got my sixpence?’
Helen retrieved the coin and held it out. ‘Here.’
Sprat darted forward and collected it. ‘See, told ya,’ she said to Binny. She scuttled off to the gate, treasure closed tight in her hand.
Binny picked her way across the yard. Her pair of high wooden pattens, designed to raise the wearer above the muck, clunked against the cobbles.
‘You really gunna give it him?’ she asked, nodding at the apple.
‘Yes, of course. If he wants it.’
‘You gotta go up nice an’ easy,’ Sprat advised from the gate. ‘Some of the girls tease ’im and snatch stuff away, so he’s a bit grabby. If he gets yer hand, he won’t let go.’
‘He likes to spit too,’ Binny added.
‘Spit,’ Lester echoed.
Helen approached the door carefully and held out the apple. A hand, the wrist painfully thin and ingrained with dirt, shot out and grabbed the fruit.
‘Ta, ta, ta, ta,’ Lester called.
He disappeared from view. Helen heard a loud crunch of apple flesh and a low hum of delight.
‘Sprat says you’re Martha’s friend,’ Binny said softly.
Just as Helen nodded, a man’s voice, high-pitched and vicious, rang out from the kitchen. ‘For Chrissakes, girl, take the man’s money and get in ’ere. He don’t want to be standin’ in all that shite.’
Helen peered down the yard, glad that the brim of her beaver shaded her face from view. A dim figure stood in the doorway, then moved away again. Kate Holt’s husband?
The order sent Binny across the small distance between them. She clutched the banyan tighter, creasing the front of it around an ample bosom. She was perhaps a few years older than Helen, with a ruddy country complexion sprinkled with freckles. Her eyes were round, a pretty dove grey, and, at that moment, wide with fright.
‘Pretend you’re havin’ a fumble,’ she whispered and pulled aside the front of the banyan to expose one heavy breast. She grabbed Helen’s hand and pressed it against her warm flesh, squeezing her fingers around the soft weight.
Helen froze. Dear God Almighty! She felt locked in place, her eyes fixed upon the girl’s chest.
‘Mrs Gunn says I was to speak only to a lady. No one else. You seem like a decent cove, sir, but Mrs Gunn was real particular. Only a lady, so I can’t tell you nothin’.’ She stopped, watching Helen’s face. ‘Ain’t you never touched one afore?’ She bit her lip, trying to hide a smile.
Face hot with horror, Helen pulled her hand free.
‘Lordy, you never been with a girl, have you?’ Binny said.
Helen squeezed her eyes shut. How could she act as if such casual obscenity did not matter? Yet she had vowed she would put aside her sensibilities and be a Reclaimer.
Pushing past her shock, she whispered, ‘I am the lady.’
‘What?’
Helen opened her eyes. ‘I am not a man. I am the lady Mrs Gunn told you about.’
Gritting her teeth, she caught Binny’s hand and pressed it against her own chest, pushing the girl’s fingers around the small curve that the breast-band could not fully disguise.
Binny gasped. ‘Glory!’ She patted Helen’s chest again. ‘Dressed in men’s clobber. Like them actresses.’
‘Yes.’
Binny glanced over her shoulder. ‘Come with me.’
She bent and ducked under the linen, pulling Helen after her with surprising strength. They landed side by side against the wall of Lester’s cell. Binny pressed her finger against her lips.
‘I’ll tell Mr Holt you just wanted a knee-trembler,’ she whispered. ‘But you’ll need to give me the coin so’s I don’t get a hidin’. Deal?’
Although not quite sure what Binny had said, Helen nodded. The core of it was clear: she needed money to avoid a beating.
‘Sorry ’bout stickin’ yer hand on me pap. I didn’t know,’ Binny continued.
‘No, of course not,’ Helen said, feeling fresh heat rise to her face.
‘I never sent you a message, my lady. I ain’t seen no sign of the cove you want — Mrs Holt’s brother, MacEvoy.’
‘You do know what he looks like though?’
‘That I do.’ She grimaced. ‘Last time I saw him was about a month back. Mrs Holt give him little Lizzie.’ Her voice dropped to an even softer whisper, barely more than a breath. ‘He cut her up bad and did things to her here.’ She tapped her head. ‘She still screams at night. He’s real bad folk.’
Helen sounded her agreement; Lowry was the worst folk. At least her suspicion that he would come here to take refuge with his sister was right.
‘Have you seen Mrs Holt hide anything special, or has she told you to stay away from some place?’
Binny shook her head. ‘We ain’t allowed in her particular room, nor where she and Mr Holt live, but that’s always been so.’
‘Where are those rooms?’
She pointed up. ‘On the second floor. At the back.’
Helen studied the small window that Binny had indicated. ‘Did her brother stay up there too when he was last here?’
‘He spent his time down below, past the molly rooms. Him and poor Lizzie.’
‘Have you seen anyon
e else watching the house?’
‘I ’ave,’ Sprat said, peeking around the corner of the building.
Binny glared at the girl. ‘What have I told you about sneakin’ round watchin’ us?’
Sprat lifted a bony, truculent shoulder.
‘Who have you seen?’ Helen asked. Perhaps Philip was watching the place too. ‘A tall red-headed man?’ She touched her own hat, searching for the right cant word. ‘Wearing a gray nab like this?’
‘No. A go-by-ground, black hair. Looked real smoky.’
Helen translated, a short man with dark hair who looked suspicious. So not Philip, but perhaps the swarthy companion she had seen at his side near Edward Street.
‘Did he come inside?’
Sprat shook her head. ‘Never. Just stayed in the daffy house opposite watchin’.’
Helen floundered for a moment. Daffy house. Ah, gin house.
‘I knows where ’e lives,’ Sprat added. ‘I follared ’im one day.’
Binny clicked her tongue. ‘Mrs Holt told you not to fork no more. Leastways, nothin’ that could be traced back here.’
Fork: Sprat was a pickpocket too.
‘Will you show me where he lives?’ Helen asked.
Sprat regarded her expectantly, crooked teeth showing in a sly grin of encouragement.
Helen stifled a smile at the girl’s cheerful venality. ‘Yes, all right, for another sixpence.’ She gripped Binny’s arm for a moment in thanks. ‘You know where to send a message if MacEvoy comes back?’
‘Twenty German Place,’ Binny said.
‘Yes. As soon as he comes back.’
‘Soon as,’ Binny promised. ‘And you’ll tell Mrs Gunn that I done what she said? She’s gunna teach me how to dip ladies.’
Helen nodded. She pulled out more coins. ‘How much?’
Binny stared down at the money for a moment, clearly at war with herself, then said quickly, ‘Just a crown.’
Helen handed her the coin. ‘Thank you.’
Binny stepped aside, aiming an admonishing finger at Sprat. ‘Don’t you do nothin’ on the way. Go straight. Got it?’
Sprat nodded her agreement, and pushed open the gate. It chewed along the broken cobbles in a harsh grind. ‘Come on then.’