The Black Book of Secrets

  I shivered when I recalled the desperate chase of the previous night. I could still feel Pa’s hand on my shoulder and Ma’s screeching voice rang in my head. And then there was Barton Gumbroot’s glinting instrument of torture. I couldn’t bear to think of it. How strange that I was so far away from it all now.

  Joe was still snoring so I took the opportunity to examine the goods in the shop window. The jewellery was bright and pretty, the hurricane lamp was polished and looked in working order. The timepieces were wound and ticking. Without a second thought I put two in my pocket, but almost immediately a sharp tap on the window made me jump. Polly was right outside. She waved and I wondered how long she had been there watching me. I went out to see her. The snow was packed down where the crowd had been earlier and she stood carefully on its icy surface.

  ‘It’s quiet today,’ I said.

  ‘Same as usual,’ she replied.

  It was mid-morning and my ears listened out for the clashing cries of street sellers shouting their wares, the travelling musicians with their fiddles, the ballad singers, the clatter of cattle hooves on the cobbles on the way to the slaughterhouse, the hissing of the knife grinder’s wheel, the rows and fights that broke out on every street corner. But this was not the City and Pagus Parvus was almost silent. I heard a laugh or two and the blacksmith’s hammer but little else.

  ‘Do you want to come in?’

  ‘Can I see the frog?’ she asked.

  The frog was watching us when we went in. She really was a marvellous creature, her skin bright and glistening like a damp rock. There was no sound from the back room so I carefully lifted the lid and reached into the tank. The frog seemed a little agitated as I tried to coax her with a bug and she retreated to the far corner.

  ‘Are you sure you should?’ asked Polly nervously.

  ‘Why shouldn’t—’

  ‘Don’t touch the frog,’ barked a voice behind me and I jumped back immediately. Joe was practically next to me and I hadn’t heard a sound. An icy blast came in from the open door before Polly slammed it shut on her way out.

  ‘I only wanted to show—’

  Joe came forward and replaced the lid, pushing it down firmly. ‘You mustn’t touch her,’ he said sternly. ‘Until you gain her trust she only allows me to handle her. Do you understand?’

  I nodded and the awkward silence was broken by the sound of the door again and the hesitant enquiry of our first customer, an elderly lady wearing a monocle in her left eye. She frowned unevenly to keep it in place.

  ‘Mr Zabbidou? I have an item to pledge.’

  Joe smiled broadly.

  ‘A lovely piece,’ he said. ‘Look, Ludlow, a chamber pot.’

  Chapter Eleven

  A Midnight Visitor

  ‘Wake up,’ hissed Joe, shaking Ludlow’s arm. ‘He’s here.’ Ludlow sat up slowly and listened as the church bell struck midnight. He shivered. The fire had died down and he could see his breath. Joe put a small log on the glowing embers and lit the lamp. He placed two glasses on the mantelpiece along with a dark brown bottle and then he went to the table and laid his black book in front of the chair.

  ‘Sit here,’ said Joe to Ludlow. ‘Stay very quiet and when I give you a sign, write down everything you hear in the book. I’ve marked the page.’

  Ludlow shook off his doziness and sat at the table. He picked up the book and examined it. It was old, but well kept, thick and just too weighty to hold in one hand. On the leather cover in gold leaf were the words ‘Verba Volant Scripta Manent’.

  In the bottom right hand corner were the initials ‘JZ’ in large decorative gold lettering. A piece of red ribbon marked the new page and a quill lay waiting in the crease. The white pages seemed to glow in the half-light and Ludlow couldn’t help but run his fingers over their smooth surface. He quickly flicked through the preceding pages; they were written with a heavy hand and crackled when he touched them. Ludlow had not been told not to pry, but he had the distinct feeling that Joe would disapprove if he did. Quietly he put the black book back down as he found it, open on the clean page.

  Outside the pawnshop Obadiah Strang stood on the pavement wringing his gnarled hands. He wanted to knock but he was afraid. Perhaps the dead didn’t scare him, but sometimes the living did. Losing his nerve, he turned around and was about to retreat down the hill when the door opened behind him.

  ‘Obadiah, my dear chap,’ said Joe warmly, stepping into the street and taking the man by the arm, ‘I’ve been expecting you.’

  Once more, under Joe’s penetrating gaze, all resistance deserted Obadiah and he allowed himself to be led into the back room and placed gently on the chair by the fire. Ludlow sat without moving, a little nervous, watching everything closely. Obadiah pushed his knuckles into the soft arm of the chair and Ludlow winced as they cracked loudly.

  ‘Will you have a drink with me?’ asked Joe. ‘Something special?’

  Obadiah grunted and Joe poured two drinks from the bottle, handing one to Obadiah. He took his own and sat down opposite the gravedigger.

  ‘Good health,’ he toasted.

  Obadiah took a tentative sip from his glass, and then another longer one. Spirits were not his usual tipple and he’d never tasted one of this calibre. He savoured the sensation of warmth as the alcohol ran down the back of his throat. Feeling his knotted shoulders relaxing, he leaned back into the chair.

  ‘Why am I here?’ he asked. This wasn’t what he planned to say, but it was what came out.

  ‘Because you need help,’ replied Joe.

  ‘And you can help me?’

  Joe nodded and leaned over. ‘When I look at you, Obadiah, I see a man who has a secret. A secret that is such a burden it threatens to engulf you. It keeps you awake at night and gnaws at your guts every day.’ He leaned even closer. ‘It doesn’t have to be like that.’

  Obadiah’s eyes were shining. A small tear squeezed from the corner of one and ran down the lines that scored his cheek.

  ‘What can I do?’ he whispered desperately.

  Joe’s voice was soothing and full of promise. ‘Pawn your secret and free yourself of its terrible burden.’

  ‘Pawn it?’ Obadiah was a little bemused from the drink, and from Joe’s eyes and his soft voice. His head felt as if it was slowly sinking underwater.

  ‘You mean you will buy my secret? But why?’

  ‘It’s my business,’ said Joe. ‘I am a pawnbroker.’

  Obadiah shook his head slowly and his brow creased with confusion. ‘But if I pawn it then must I claim it back? If I don’t, you will have the right to sell it. And if you sell it, then it is no longer a secret.’ Obadiah liked to make life easy by thinking in a simple and logical fashion.

  ‘Ah,’ exclaimed Joe. ‘I think you will find my terms quite agreeable. If you wish to reclaim your secret, you pay what you took plus a little extra. If not, I will keep the secret for you for as long as you want, a lifetime if that is your wish. In fact, if you never reclaim it, I will hold it until you are in the grave and beyond, and then I doubt you would care so much.’

  ‘Well I s’pose that sounds fair, Mr Zabbidou.’

  Joe smiled. ‘Let us get started. I am anxious to set a mind at ease.’

  He nodded discreetly to Ludlow, who realized this was his cue. With a shaking hand he raised the quill and dipped it in the ink. He held the quill poised over the pristine page.

  ‘And you swear you won’t tell?’ asked Obadiah, quivering.

  Joe shook his head solemnly. ‘Never,’ he said. ‘On my life.’

  ‘Then hear this and maybe you can help. God knows, no one else can.’

  For the next hour the only sound in the room was Obadiah’s trembling voice and the soft scratching of a nib on paper.

  Ludlow’s work had begun.

  Chapter Twelve

  Extract from

  The Black Book of Secrets

  The Gravedigger’s Confession

  My name is Obadiah Strang and I have a terrible secre
t. It haunts my every waking hour, and at night when I finally manage to sleep it takes over my dreams.

  I might only be a humble gravedigger but I am proud of it. I have never cheated anyone: they get six feet, no more, no less. I have always led a simple life. I need very little and I ask for nothing. I was a contented man until some months ago when I fell foul of my landlord, Jeremiah Ratchet.

  It had been a difficult week, short on gravedigging and even shorter on tips. When rent day came around I didn’t have it. No doubt you already know of Jeremiah Ratchet. He is a hated man in these parts and I feared what he would do to me. But he surprised me and suggested that I pay double the next week. Like a fool I accepted his offer. But when rent day came again he claimed that I owed him eighteen shillings not twelve.

  ‘Six shillings interest on the loan,’ he explained with an oily smile.

  Of course, I didn’t have the extra money and a week later the debt had increased again. I paid what I could and tried to reason with him but Jeremiah Ratchet must have a hole where his heart should be. After four weeks I owed so much I could never hope to pay.

  That was his intention all along.

  ‘I have a suggestion,’ he said the next time he came over, ‘a way for you to work off your debt.’

  Although I distrusted the man by now, I had no choice but to listen.

  ‘I need you to do a job for me, something eminently suited to your skills. I will provide the tools.’

  Then he explained to me his despicable plan and I flew into a rage and threw him out. He stood on the path and called back to me. ‘If you will not do it, I will evict you. You know where I am if you change your mind. I’ll give you a week to think it over.’

  That night I cursed myself again and again for getting myself into debt to the monster. By the time the sun rose I knew that I had no choice. I sent for Ratchet and he came to the cottage to explain what I had to do. He handed me my only tool: a wooden spade.

  ‘Quieter than a metal one,’ said Jeremiah. ‘Anyone in this business knows that.’

  And what a business, the business of bodysnatching.

  That night, some time after one, I went to the churchyard with a heavy heart. How I hated myself for what I was about to do. I knew the grave in q uestion. Hadn’t I dug it myself the previous day and watched the coffin lowered into it that very afternoon? And now here I was digging it up again. With every spadeful of dirt I thought of that scoundrel Ratchet. His wealth was made off the backs of the poor. He must have half the village in his debt.

  It was raining now and the moon hid herself behind the clouds, ashamed to witness what I was doing. The wind whipped around my head. Water streamed off my hat. The cold froze my hands. The dark clay was sticky with water. It took a supreme effort to raise the shovel; it released only with a loud sucking noise as if the earth herself had come alive and was trying to pull it, and me with it, into the bowels of hell below.

  As the earth piled up on the side my sweat mingled with the driving rain. In my chest my heart pounded like a blacksmith’s hammer. At last I hit wood. I dropped to my knees and scraped the coffin clean with my hands. The lid was held down by a single nail at each corner. I forced the edge of the spade underneath and began to lever it up. The wood splintered and cracked and split. ‘Sweet Lord, forgive me,’ I muttered and crossed myself as a bolt of lightning ripped the sky apart. In its fiery light I gazed down on the poor soul within.

  He wasn’t a rich man, I could tell from the q uality of the finish on the box and the cheap fittings, but who was in these parts? Rich or poor, like us all he ended up in the dirt. He was young though, and his handsome face was unmarked by the accident that had killed him – he had fallen under the wheels of a cart. His pale hands were laid across his chest and his ashen face was peaceful. His earthly worries were over. Mine had just begun.

  I hesitated only a second, then took the poor chap by the shoulders and dragged him out of the coffin and up on to the side of the grave. I looked up at the heavens and I swore that this was the first and last time I would do this. I thought that, the soul gone, a body would be lighter, relieved of the burden of life, but I felt as if I were lifting a dead horse. I dragged him across the grass between the headstones to the church gates, where Jeremiah had said there would be someone waiting.

  I saw them. Two men dressed in black, their faces and heads hidden beneath hoods. Without a word they took the body and threw it on to the back of their cart between barrels of ale. They covered it with straw and then took off.

  I waited until I could no longer hear the horses’ hooves before returning to fill in the grave. I worked like a man possessed, shovelling with the energy of a demon, and when it was finally done I went home.

  I woke the next day convinced I had dreamed it all, but there by the fireplace was the wooden shovel. I could hardly bear to look upon myself in the mirror. Whatever my reason for doing it, I was still no better than a common bodysnatcher. Resurrectionists, they liked to call themselves, but to give a person a fancy name don’t change his nature. Doubtless the corpse was now far away, likely as not in the City, under the knife of a surgeon in the anatomy school and all in the interest of science. At least that’s what the doctors said. They paid good money for bodies, and Jeremiah was lining his pockets with it, but never had I thought I would be involved in such a grisly, sinful business.

  Jeremiah came knocking that night.

  ‘My men say you did a good job.’

  It was not a compliment I wished to accept.

  ‘And where are the valuables?’ he asked me.

  ‘Valuables? What are you talking about? Isn’t it enough that I unburied a body for you? Now you want more?’

  He shrugged. ‘I have it on good authority that that young man was buried with a silver timepiece and a gold ring. Belonged to his father. Strange custom, to bury what could be sold for cash.’

  I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Ratchet wanted me to be a thief for him as well as a bodysnatcher.

  ‘I did what you asked,’ I said. ‘The debt is paid.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I think not, Mr Strang. After all, you owe q uite a considerable sum and you haven’t collected the valuables. Next time you will have to be more careful.’

  ‘Next time?’

  I didn’t dare to argue any more for then I saw what a fix I was in. The penalty for grave robbing was prison at the very least, but only if you were lucky enough to survive the lynching by the dead man’s relatives.

  That was over six months ago and Jeremiah has called on me again and again to do his dirty work. I don’t like to think how many bodies I have unearthed. All I know is if I am caught, Jeremiah will not be the one to suffer.

  That man enjoys the fruits of my wickedness and I can do nothing about it. I lie awake until the small hours, tortured by my actions. I am betraying the trust of the villagers, a trust I have built up all my life. If they knew they would string me up as soon as they got hold of me.

  Jeremiah Ratchet. How I detest that man. If I thought I could get away with it, I’d take a swing at his big fat head with my shovel.

  Ludlow hesitated at that last sentence, but he had been instructed to write everything he heard so he did. He stole a look at Obadiah, who was as ashen-faced as the very corpses he unearthed. Then he put down his quill, laid a sheet of blotting paper between the pages and closed the book. Obadiah sat back in the chair, exhausted, and covered his face with his hands.

  ‘You’ve got to help me, Mr Zabbidou. I’m a broken man, unworthy of life.’

  Joe laid his hand firmly on Obadiah’s knee.

  ‘Rid yourself of those murderous thoughts,’ he said. ‘They will only eat at your soul. There is a natural justice in this world. Perhaps it is not as swift as we should like, but believe me, Jeremiah Ratchet will feel its force. Now, go home and you will sleep, and you will not dream.’

  Obadiah sighed deeply.

  ‘You know, Mr Zabbidou, I believe you might be
right.’ He stood up to go but Joe held him back.

  ‘Your payment, as agreed.’ Joe handed him a leather bag of coins and Obadiah’s eyes widened when he felt its weight.

  ‘I’m most grateful to you, Mr Zabbidou,’ said Obadiah. ‘I can make good use of this.’

  ‘And so you should,’ replied Joe shaking his hand warmly. ‘So you should.’

  ‘And what of Jeremiah?’ he ventured nervously.

  Joe merely blinked once slowly. ‘Be patient, Mr Strang. Be patient.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Fragment from

  The Memoirs of Ludlow Fitch

  Thus ended my first long day with Joe Zabbidou. It was after two when Obadiah left and Joe stood at the door and watched him go down the hill and into his cottage. He waited until the lights were extinguished and the place was in complete darkness before coming back in and locking up. I stayed at the table staring blankly at the closed book, my mind spinning at what I had just heard. Now I understood. It’s a book of secrets, I thought, and Joe is the Secret Pawnbroker.

  It was difficult to believe that Joe had allowed me to touch such a book, let alone write in it. How I desired to throw it open and read it from cover to cover! What other tales of desperation and despair would I find in there?

  I could hear Joe moving around in the shop and talking to the frog. Quickly I opened the book, flicking from page to page, and I read the opening lines of one confession after another: