“A question,” Matthew said. “Is it known at the Old Bailey that you’re the judge’s son?”
“It is not. I am hidden from view under a false family name and a false history. He thought it best that when he petitioned for my employment—as his eyes and ears, so to speak—our relationship should not be known. My father has always been a private man, and the justices by nature are not social animals. Also…we know that two of them are in the employ of the professor. There was a third, but someone murdered him back in September.”
“Not your father?”
“No. My father concluded long ago that he should not visit violence upon a justice or an attorney, no matter how tainted the robes and the purse. To expose the corruption of those offices would have to be done by legal means. Judge Fallonsby’s throat was cut and he was hanged from a flagpole. His entire family was—”
“Murdered as well,” Matthew recalled hearing from Rory. “I know this story. Fallonsby was found with an inverted Cross cut into his forehead?”
“That’s correct. He was for several years instrumental in dismissing criminal cases that Fell wished to be dismissed. My father has no firm proof of that, of course…the trail leads into a dense thicket of lawyers and a politician or two. But he and I both have been keeping records of the proceedings, and we’ve seen the connections between Fallonsby, Fell’s legal machine and the goings-on on the streets.”
“Do you know if Fell had Fallonsby killed, and why?”
“We believe,” said Steven, “that Fell had nothing to do with that. Fallonsby was an important part of his apparatus. Whoever murdered Fallonsby is a new player on the scene, and obviously extremely vicious…also obviously somewhat anti-Christian.”
“Ah.” Matthew nodded. “The soddy cat and the throat-cutting rat.”
“Pardon?”
“This new player seems to be wanting to attract Fell’s attention as much as Albion is…or was. Now, about Newgate. Why?”
Steven couldn’t hide a small, wicked smile. He took a drink of coffee to urge it away. “My father,” he said, looking into Matthew’s eyes, “was quite taken with you from the beginning. He told me how he paused at the door before he entered the courtroom…he was reticent, and my father is hardly ever reticent. He said he didn’t know how he was going to handle you, and what he would find if he pushed you. He said…if you weren’t tough enough to fight back against what he was going to throw at you, you would be no use to us. He was afraid, really…that this chance to lure Fell from his hiding-place might be an illusion. But…you passed with flying colors, obviously.”
“My flag was almost lowered to half-mast in Newgate. Why the hell did he put me in there?”
“Again, to test your toughness. To see what you were made of, he told me. But he knew he had to act quickly, because there’s a pattern to the attacks on new inmates there. If it’s going to happen, it will be the first night and a two-hour period roughly between one and three o’clock.”
“Oh, there’s a formula to this?”
“Records of attacks clearly show the pattern. That is, of those who survive. We’re not barbarians here, Matthew. We do keep such records and the guards are told to make their rounds in that period of time, especially if there’s—as they call it there—more fuel for the furnace.”
“Yes,” Matthew said. “I nearly got my ass burned.”
“Unfortunately,” Steven continued, “the guards won’t do very much without being bribed. My father knew that the only way to protect you in Newgate was to enter on the first night and basically scare the hell out of everyone there, at the same time giving a gesture that he hoped would convey a measure of protection.”
“That worked smoothly enough, but how did he manage it?”
“Well,” said the clerk, with a slight shrug, “since I’m a bit more slim than my father, it was my role that night. You were placed into Newgate for another reason: that reason being, a cell in the dungeon has a hole in the wall at ground level that leads to an underground passage. It’s not a rare thing, there are passages everywhere under the city. A man dislodged the stones and escaped through that hole several years ago. Money has continually been afforded to Newgate to seal up the hole, and the money has continually been used in the purchase of bad wine, bad women and off-key songs for the officials who should be in charge of the prisons. My father knows this. He also knows the layout of Newgate very well and can draw a suitable map. While you were travelling by coach, I was walking across the Birdcage to Newgate with orders signed by Judge Archer to have you placed in Cairo, which is the nearest chamber to the dungeon.”
“Nice,” said Matthew. “You had a skeleton key, I’m presuming?”
“Years ago, my father attended a ceremony of appreciation in which he was given a key that fits all locks in Newgate Prison. He keeps it in a frame in his office. Very proud of that, really. There were two locks to defeat: the cell door itself, which is kept locked even though the cell is unused, and the gate that separates the dungeon from the rest of the prison. I left my lantern at the top of the steps. Had to feel my way along the wall. I heard all the commotion, put on the mask, and it seems I reached you at a critical moment.”
“Not an inch too soon.”
“I performed my little show, I backed up—nearly fell on my ass climbing the steps—and I got out the same way I came in. The departing of the phantom,” said Steven, “leaving you, sir, with the respect you so honestly deserve.”
“Hm. Then I’m supposing you and your father worked out the arrangements for me to be sent to Houndsditch? And of course you knew the route that was always taken.”
“Yes, always. The coach drivers are creatures of habit. That is the shortest route, and therefore the least taxing to man and beast. But my father was waiting very near the gate, so it would be impossible to miss you. I arranged your release from Newgate with some—I will admit—artful forgery, since I do have access to all the signatures and wax seals.”
Matthew pondered that for a few seconds. He looked out through the front window and watched wagons and pedestrians going by in the dim gray light. Wind whipped cloaks and caused people to grab hold of their hats. “Great effort was expended for this,” he said, returning his gaze to Archer’s son. “What’s the ultimate purpose? Luring Professor Fell out of hiding, yes…but what then?”
Steven sipped his coffee and took his time formulating the reply.
“Albion was born,” he said at length, “on Cable Street, in front of the hospital. When my mother was struck down by a member of the Black-Eyed Broodies who had been made insane by the White Velvet, my father…became a different man. Oh, he’d always been high-minded, perhaps rigidly so, but he realized—as he told to me—that the entire civilization of England was being threatened by this one man who considered himself an Emperor of crime beyond the reach of the law. Fell hides behind so many layers of underlings, attorneys, judges and politicians…and now even deeper, because of the influence of the Velvet. My father believes there’s some drug in it that hastens the process of addiction.”
“I believe the same,” said Matthew.
“This singular drug,” Steven progressed, “is responsible for a tremendous rise in the rate of crime, stemming not only from Fell’s hand but from the despair of the streets. Fell has unleashed a demonic force upon England…a corrupting brew of need, greed and violence that reaches the highest levels of our entire country. When my mother lay dying in hideous pain in that hospital, my father came to the conclusion that Fell must be challenged…he must be brought into the open, and possibly by responding to this challenge he will make some mistake that will open him to the judgment of the law, which at the present time is too overburdened to attempt to seek him out.”
“A plan, but still a vague one. Your father decided to begin this challenge by murdering criminals who’d escaped the courts?”
“All individuals who’d been freed by the machinations of Fell’s attorneys acting upon compliant judges, two of w
hom are themselves addicted to the Velvet.”
“I doubt,” said Matthew, “that some of these men he’s murdered even knew who they were working for.”
“That may be, but the deaths were statements made to Fell…that, indeed, someone knew he was behind their crimes and their subsequent releases from gaol. It was…is…my father’s belief that a dramatic figure was needed to present this challenge. He was always very athletic and an excellent swordsman…at one time in his youth he was a fencing instructor. He’s also taught me very ably.”
“So he caught on the idea of wearing a mask to appear an avenging phantom?”
“Yes. He also knew that if he created a character dramatic enough, the Pin would fix upon it. In fact, it was the Pin that supplied the name of ‘Albion’.”
“The mythical protector of England,” said Matthew. “It suits the costume and also the purpose.”
“It does. I bought the gold-colored fabric from a merchant in Oxford. My father’s elder brother lives in Colchester and is a saddler, and from him we got the tooled piece of leather to create the beard. The leather was painted, a bit of stitching was done, holes for the eyes were cut out and a leather strap was attached to hold the mask in place…and there you have a golden-masked hope for the future of England.”
Matthew said grimly, “Your father has been playing a dangerous game.”
“Is there any other, when a creature like Professor Fell is involved?” Steven let that sentence hang for a few seconds. Then he said, “My father says there is a freedom of the mask, but it is also a wearying responsibility. And…you know…he has come to consider his true mask the one he wears every day…and in particular, the mask he was wearing when he first spoke to you in his courtroom at the Old Bailey.”
Matthew thought that now was the time to produce the paper with the verse he’d copied at the Pin, and so he brought it out and spread it upon the tabletop. “Explain this to me.”
Steven knew it by heart so he had no need of study, but he did express surprise. “Interesting that you have this! Well, I suppose your visit to the Pin was worth your while. You may have already known who it was that gave the name of ‘Joshua Oakley’?”
“The description Mr. Luther supplied rang a bell, but I wasn’t sure in which direction the tower stood. Now, about the verse?”
“A direct challenge to Professor Fell to come to the Tavern of the Three Sisters after midnight, to be delivered in the next issue of the Pin a few days hence.”
“The date is not indicated?”
“My father and I have taken to haunting the Sisters as regulars, complete with tattered clothes and dirtied faces. That, we’d learned, was a center of the Velvet being poured upon Whitechapel, and a source of revenue for the Black-Eyed Broodies. We’d been to the Sisters often enough to recognize the other regulars from strangers, and we thought it would be quite apparent when someone came in who didn’t belong. We planned to hold vigils there every night for one week after that challenge sees print.”
“It’s a nice verse,” said Matthew, “but rather a lame challenge, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s rather a very powerful challenge.”
“How is that?”
“It conveys to Professor Fell,” Steven said, “the fact that Albion has learned his first and middle names. You see the initials ‘D’ and ‘I’ in the second line? The full name is Danton Idris Fell, and that information was gleaned from sources mined very carefully by—shall we say—friends of Judge Archer. And if he walked into the Sisters one night at the tolling of the bell, we would immediately know him.”
“Why would that be?”
“Professor Fell is a mulatto,” said Steven. “He is fastidious in his dress and his demeanor. In a tavern like the Sisters he would be instantly recognizable…by us, at least.”
A mulatto, Matthew thought. That complemented what he’d already suspected, since Fell was the son of the governor of Pendulum Island, in the Bahamas, and that his own son was tormented and beaten to death on a London street partly due to the color of his skin.
“My father has been counting on Fell’s curiosity driving him to the Sisters.” Steven finished off his coffee with a final sip. “Fell has to be wondering who Albion could possibly be, and he would be somewhat nettled at the idea that his underlings are being executed by this person. He would likely wonder how much is known about him, and surely he would rather this irritating golden-masked individual be put to death…after a period of severe interrogation, of course. So…when he enters the Sisters Fell will find at least two ragged wretches drinking their ales and muttering their complaints, and they will quickly leave while the professor waits for a meeting that will not happen. But when he exits…Albion will strike him down on the steps in the narrow confines of Flint Alley, where the movement of defense by his bodyguards will be severely constricted.”
Matthew said, “Of course this plan is sweetened by the fact that Danton Idris Fell or someone of his circle reads in the Pin that Matthew Corbett has allied himself with Albion, and by a midnight meeting at the Sisters Fell might brush aside the latter and get hold of the former, whom he really wants?”
“As I say…you are the bait in this.”
“Was the bait,” came the quick reply. “If you recall, your father is currently lying gutshot in the hospital, which actually is to the good for both of you. Does your father wish for you and he to follow your mother so recklessly? That plan was suicide! It hinged on too many ‘ifs’.”
“It was our best chance of getting at him.”
“It was no chance!” said Matthew. “All right, maybe he might have showed up at the Sisters. But getting through the men he’d have around him…close enough to drive a sword into him, and his men likely to have pistols? No. It was a desperate plan that would end with both of you dead…if you were lucky.” Matthew shook his head, amazed at the foolish audacity of what he’d just heard. “Your father…he’s a pillar of the law, yet he’s let himself become a murderer! And your plan wasn’t to deliver Fell to the law, but to kill him on the Flint Alley steps! Don’t you see the irony in this? Your father has let Fell corrupt him as much as the Velvet corrupts the drinker!”
Steven said, “I understand what you’re saying. I understand it clearly. But as I say…Albion was born that day on Cable Street. My father—and I—loved her very much. She was not perfect, but she was very near an angel. To think of the misery that Fell has caused, and will continue to cause…to think of all the suffering, and the deaths, the despair, the betrayals, the darkness that is already descending on this country. It’s not just for the love of my mother that we’ve done these things…it’s that we love our country, and we don’t wish to see it destroyed from within. If someone—someone—does not act, it shall be destroyed.” He looked across the table with tortured eyes. “The things we do for love,” he said, “are sometimes themselves crimes…but if no one dares to do anything…then all is lost. Don’t you see?”
“I see your point and I wish it were an answer, but no two men, however well-intentioned, can save people from themselves…or save a country,” Matthew said. “Fell and others like him always aim for the easiest target, which would be the baser instincts of human beings. Against that there is no defense.”
“I’d say an able defense would be a swordblade across the throat.”
“There will always be another to take his place. That’s why your father is better serving England as a real-life Judge Archer than as a mythological Albion.”
Steven stared into his empty cup. He looked out upon the street scene, and Matthew could tell by the slump of his shoulders that his battle had come to an end.
“Your father should go to the constables’ office with what he knows,” Matthew offered. “He should give any information he has to the proper authorities.”
“Proper authorities,” Steven repeated, with obvious gall. “Don’t you understand that we don’t know who to trust? Not even the new man, Lillehorne. And upwards from th
e constables’ office, the bribery is rampant. Any information about Fell would likely be burned in a fireplace grate and the man who brought it to the proper authorities murdered or made to appear killed in an accident. It wouldn’t be the first.” Steven balled up his fist and Matthew thought he was going to strike the table with it, but then all the fight seemed to go out of Steven and the fist came down to quietly bump the tabletop.
“Luring Fell to Flint Alley and killing him on those steps…that was the only way we could see that might work,” he said. “Now…I can’t do it alone.”
“And don’t try,” Matthew said. “Your father needs a son, not another gravestone.”
“I pray he doesn’t soon become one.”
“They greatly respect him and your mother there. They’re going to do everything possible.”
“I know.” Still looking out the filmy window upon the gray day, the young man drew a long breath and let it out as a sigh of resignation. “I’m going back to the hospital and stay with him. What will you do?”
“Walk,” said Matthew. “Where to, I’m not certain.”
“I’d say we were sorry we got you into this, but you were already well into it long before you came to England.”
“That’s what made me valuable to you as bait, isn’t it?”
“Of course. When you return to the colonies, I’d keep a watchful eye out. If two men can’t save a country, neither can two men save a collection of small countries bound together by commerce and circumstance. I’d suspect the White Velvet will likely be showing up in New York soon.”