Joanna Bourne - Rogue Spy

Nearby, two girls sat cross-legged on the curb, skirts drawn up over their knees, washing watercress in a bucket. Another, this one older, tied the leaves into plump, practiced little bundles and arranged them in rows in the flat basket at her side.

Children of the market. Natives of this dangerous jungle, sweet-faced and hard-eyed. They’d know.

She wandered casually toward them, not meeting eyes but just looking out over the square. She held her hand, thumb and index finger making an L, in the shadow of her cloak so that only those three girls could see. She said, “I want to buy a service,” as if she were asking about green beans. The words had been the unvarying formula of request for more years than anyone could count.

The L was for Lazarus. Magistrates and bailiffs enforced the law of the land elsewhere. In Covent Garden the King of Thieves ruled. Through the rookeries of St. Giles, along the docks of Wapping, even in considerably more respectable places, no barrow wheeled, no booth hawked its wares, no prostitute inveigled a customer into her room upstairs without paying a pence to Lazarus. To the ruler of London’s own horrific underworld. He was threat and brutality and a kind of rough justice.

One watercress girl looked at another. Eyes shifted to an old woman twenty paces away.

That was all the direction needed, a nod being as good as a wink.

The watch house was surrounded by a low wall and iron railings with spikes on top. It was well lanterned down the walk to the door and inside the windows. At this hour it was quiet as the grave. Nothing less than riot would open that door and call out the watch.

She’d send her message to Lazarus within spitting distance of the watch station. Her world was compounded of irony and discomfort this fine morning.

The woman sat on the little wall, wearing shabby black, her back to the rails and the light. She held a basket of apples in her lap. This time the signal of introduction brought no reaction, except that the woman took an apple out of her basket and began to polish it on her skirt. That went on for perhaps half an apple before she said, “Wotcher want?”

“I need to buy a service. Can you send the message?”

“Mebbe.”

So. She’d found the first link in the chain, one of the legion of street sellers, pickpockets, peddlers, and beggars who occupied the fringes of Lazarus’s realm.

“Wot service?” The woman spat on the apple, regarded it dispassionately, and polished some more. Not a woman spendthrift with her words, the apple seller.

“You don’t need to know.” She gave another hand sign, then, this one old and powerful. Baldoni are taught such secrets in the cradle. “Can you pass a message to a man who understands that?”

Can I even use that sign? Is it forbidden to someone running from a sworn vendetta?

The woman finished the fine polishing of the apple, set it in a basket, and chose the next. “Might be I could. Might not.” Her expression was compounded of slyness and greed.

“If you have work more important than carrying my message . . .” She held up a shilling. “I’ll find another messenger and leave you in peace.”

“I’ll send it. I’ll send it. Didn’t say I wouldn’t.” The apple seller made a grab for the coin.

The shilling stayed in hand. “Here’s my message. ‘The old man in the red castle asks a favor.’”

“‘Man in a castle arsks a favor.’”

“‘The old man in the red castle.’ Then say, ‘I need four trustworthy and discreet men for three days.’”

“Keep going on, don’cha? I ain’t the bloody post office.”

“Twenty words.” Because she was tired, her mind started turning the words into the simplest of substitution ciphers . . . URW HGCKN . . . before she stopped herself. “That’s not heavy as messages go. Say it back to me.”

“You want four men and they keep their gob shut.”

“That’s not the message.”

The apple seller fingered across the basket, apple to apple, with a surprisingly delicate touch and repeated the message, word for word, without flaw or hesitation, catching the original accent and intonation. “I don’t forgit things.” She smiled sarcastically. “And I don’t go to that part of town in the dark. After it gits light, then I’ll carry it.”

“Good enough.” She flipped the coin and watched it disappear into layers of rags. “Where can I sit for three or four hours, out of sight?”

The Coach House taught many lessons. Nobody died of being tired was one. One can sleep sitting up was another. Even three hours of sleep would improve this coming day no end.

The rags rearranged themselves. Another apple came out of the basket to be shined against the skirt. “I’m not a bloody inn. Try the man what sells beets and carrots up that way. Fowler, his name is.”

“Where should I wait for a reply? And how long?”

“Dunno. Go where you please. They’ll find you when they wants you.”

“So that’s the Merchant.”

“A reasonable likeness.” Pax smudged white into the black line of the underjaw, pulling three dimensions out of the shadow. Then thin charcoal to define the chin. This was the seventh copy he’d made. He was fast now, sketching.

Hawker said, “I’ve seen him.”

“You chased him from the Moravian church.”

“Not that. I know the face from somewhere.”

The finished drawings were spread out over the tables, still damp from the fixative. Hawk studied the copies, then helped himself to one of the quills and stroked it back and forth between his fingers, pacing fireplace to window and back, crossing between two of the big, shabby leather chairs. Finally he stopped at the window and looked out, keeping well back so he couldn’t be seen from the street. “It’ll come to me.”

“France, maybe.”

Hawker shook his head. “Somewhere. He doesn’t look like a Frenchman anyhow.”

White chalk brought the bridge of the nose out. “He passed for French sometimes.” Making copies of a face meant catching the little tricks of the likeness again and again. Not easy. “I don’t know where he came from. He told different stories.”

“Handsome fellow.” Hawk came to stand behind him and watch him work, not blocking his light.

“People find him charming. He uses that.” He’d fought the temptation to reveal the monster. He’d forced himself to set down only the surface of the man. The shape of the eyebrows, the width of the nostrils. The face he drew was just a face, absent arrogance and cold disdain. Absent the evil.

He sharpened his lead and etched thin pencil lines at eye and mouth. Added a touch of white to the eyelids to show the first puffiness. He hadn’t seen these details in that glimpse in the Moravian church. This was his guess of how age had changed a monster.

Done. Anything else was just playing with it. With chalks, you had to know when to stop.

Hawk was right. This was a pleasant face. The Merchant smiled and smiled and was a villain. My mother wasn’t the only woman he destroyed.

Hawk leaned next to him, across the back of the chair. “You’re damn good. He almost breathes.” With one finger, not touching the surface of the paper, he circled the calm eyes, the mouth with the almost smile on it. “You think this Caché woman of yours finds him charming?”

“Not in the least.”

“She’s working for him,” Hawk said.

“If I thought that, I wouldn’t have let her get away.”

“Or else you would have.” Hawker shrugged. “We make mistakes about women.”

“I don’t.”

“You haven’t before. Doesn’t mean you won’t now.” Hawk shifted to view the sketch from a different angle. “The whole of the city of London’s full of women harmless and beautiful as kittens and you consort with Death’s Handmaiden.”

Laughter welled up out of his chest, surprising him. “Cami’s not a kitten, thank God.”

“More like . . .” Hawker frowned. “What was the name of that Greek chit who chased men down and drank their blood? Head of a woman, body of a snake. If Doyle weren’t downstairs organizing a search of Soho he’d provide the Classical allusion.”

“I cut that knife wound on myself. That’s not her work.”

“You are a man of deep mendacity and I already figured it out about the knife cut.”

Of course Hawk had known. Doyle probably did, too. “That’s only one of the lies I’m telling. Hawk, I’m going to . . .” He couldn’t finish that. “I’m in trouble with the Service already and it’s going to get worse. You will keep out of it.”

“I doubt that, somehow. It’s a novel experience, trying to keep you out of trouble instead of the other way around. You’ve annoyed Galba in ways even I don’t attempt. Hard to believe you’re being stupid over a woman. I thought you were an island of sanity in a sea of rutting dogs. You aren’t going to let go of her, are you?”

Nobody like Hawker for the delicate approach. “I’m using her to—”

“She’s using you. And you’re not going to see that till it’s too late.”

“We’re using each other.” But it didn’t feel like that. Nothing calculated had happened between them. Nothing wise and thin and careful. He’d swear she was no more able to stop what flared between them than he was.

He dropped the last chalks into the box and closed the lid.

Hawker went back to the window and pushed the curtain aside half an inch. “I was barely out of bed this morning when I got my orders. I’m supposed to see you don’t kill the Merchant when we get close to him. That and some other minor injunctions.” Hawk’s attention remained fixed on Meeks Street. “I am to be the voice of reason. I told Doyle that was not my forte.”