The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins Page 3

  ‘He’s running an errand,’ Kitty said.

  Gonson ignored her. ‘Mr Burden has asked me to write a warrant for his arrest. But I must interrogate the boy first.’ Burden began to protest, but Gonson hushed him. ‘I follow the law, sir.’

  ‘For the scum of St Giles?’ Burden sneered.

  ‘For all men.’ Gonson puffed out his chest, staggered by his own magnanimous spirit.

  ‘Mr Gonson, with great respect, sir – this is a nonsense. I stood guard at Mr Burden’s door last night. No one entered the house and no one left it—’

  ‘—you let him sneak past, damn you!’ Burden interrupted.

  ‘You told me your housekeeper had been dreaming. That she was mistaken.’

  Burden coloured. ‘My boy Stephen swears he saw the brat. Let me fetch him, sir.’ He hurried next door, calling loudly for his son.

  Gonson frowned and took out his watch.

  ‘Mr Gonson,’ Kitty called to him. ‘I can vouch for Sam. He was here last night.’

  He looked at her for the first time, his gaze steady beneath hooded eyes. ‘And what use is the word of a whore to me?’ he drawled.

  I took half a step forward. Kitty slipped from behind the counter and grabbed my hand, squeezed my palm in warning. I hesitated, then exhaled slowly. What was the punishment for striking a city magistrate? A whipping? A few hours in the pillory? Gonson watched me, straight black brows raised high. My temple began to throb, slowly.

  Burden returned, pushing his son Stephen ahead of him into the room. I had never met the boy before – he had just returned from school. At fifteen he had the thin, tangled limbs of a young calf, and his cheeks were chafed red from shaving more often than needed. But he had the same storm-grey eyes as his father, the same strong, square face. He would be handsome enough in a year or two. I smiled to myself. Here was trouble brewing. His clothes were drab and old-fashioned – on his father’s orders, no doubt – but he was without question a young rake in the making. One can tell a lot about a boy from the way he ties his cravat.

  His gaze darted about the shop, as if there just might be a nude portrait hanging on the wall or a couple of whores groping each other in a corner. Ah . . . the disappointments of youth. I caught his eye and winked.

  ‘Tell Mr Gonson what you saw,’ his father commanded, oblivious.

  Stephen hesitated, then lifted his chin. ‘I’m not sure what I saw, sir. It was very dark.’

  Burden glared at him, open-mouthed. Was this the first time his son had defied him? And in such a public fashion, too. He drew back his arm and gave the boy a vicious blow across the back of his head. ‘Impudent puppy! Tell them!’

  I winced, but the blow only made Stephen more defiant. ‘There was no thief,’ he declared. He gave his father a sly, sidelong glance. ‘Are you sure I should tell them what I saw, Father? What I truly saw last night?’

  I was sure Burden would beat Stephen again for his insolence, but he seemed frozen, of a sudden.

  ‘Mr Burden,’ Gonson prompted, ‘have you wasted my time, sir?’

  Burden found his voice at last. ‘I . . . Forgive me, sir. A misunderstanding.’

  ‘Well,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Thank you, gentlemen, for your visit. If you wish to purchase a book, I could recommend—’

  ‘Damn you!’ Burden snarled. ‘Damn your foul books.’ He reached for the nearest shelf and dashed the contents to the floor, tearing the pages from one and crumpling them with his fist.

  Gonson grabbed his arm and muttered in his ear. Burden’s shoulders slumped. He threw the pages to the ground and stormed out, dragging his son with him.

  Kitty dropped to the floor, gathering books and ripped pages into her apron.

  Gonson picked up his cane. ‘You’re amused by this, sir?’

  ‘No, indeed.’

  ‘It is a game to you – to set a son against his father. To provoke a decent citizen to violence. A neighbour.’ He prodded at a book, broken-spined on the floor. ‘I’m told you are an educated man, sir. A student of Divinity. Peddling filth. Corrupting the ignorant. Do you have no sense of shame? No sense of Christian duty? Those disgusting books and pamphlets you sell – fie, fie, sir – do not deny it! The men who pass through my court – the men I send to the gallows – these are your customers, Hawkins. You help set them upon that path. Can you not see the harm and suffering you cause? Do you not want your city to be free from crime? To end the squalor and the misery?’

  He halted, the zealous fire dying in his eyes. He could see I was unmoved. I was a parson’s son – the first skill I’d learned was how to ignore sermons. I was unsermonisable. He scowled, black brows knotted tight. ‘Perhaps you are worse than I dared imagine,’ he mused. ‘Perhaps it is not this shop that pollutes the neighbourhood. Perhaps it is you, Mr Hawkins. Perhaps you lie at the heart of all this corruption and vice. A black spider in a filthy web.’

  I laughed, incredulous. Was I to be blamed for all the vice in London? I was almost flattered – until I caught the quiet fury in his expression.‘Mr Gonson . . .’

  ‘I’ve heard dark stories about you, sir. Dark and terrible. I’ve heard rumours that you killed a man, down in the Borough.’

  Behind him, Kitty faltered for a moment, reaching for a book.

  ‘I paid them no heed,’ Gonson continued softly, almost to himself. ‘I fear I was wrong. I shall look into the matter.’ He fixed his hat and left.

  Kitty sank to the nearest chair and lifted her eyes to mine. She looked terrified. We both knew the rumours were false. But if Gonson investigated the events of last autumn . . . If he talked to the wrong people down in the Marshalsea gaol . . . He just might discover the truth. ‘Oh, Tom . . .’ she breathed, and began to shake.

  ‘He has no proof, Kitty. No witnesses.’

  ‘No. But he will dig and dig until he finds something.’ She set her shoulders, resolute. ‘I won’t let him take you from me, Tom. I’d rather die.’

  Chapter Three

  Sam was not on an errand. Kitty had lied to spare him Gonson’s interrogation. But where was the boy? He was not in his room at the top of the house, nor in the narrow storeroom where he sometimes lurked, tucking himself into impossibly cramped spaces to read uninterrupted. I wouldn’t mind, but the books weren’t even contraband. There was something disturbing about a boy his age choosing Newton’s Principia over Venus in a Smock.

  I propped myself in the doorway to his room, gaze travelling across the charcoal portraits he’d sketched. There must have been twenty or more pinned to the wall, curling at the edges from damp. Pictures of his family, of neighbours and street traders. I recognised his father James – straight-backed as a soldier, with a piercing look in his eye. A handsome woman drawn in profile with a sweep of black hair about her face: Sam’s mother, I guessed. A baby sister, merry-eyed and chewing a tiny fist. I searched for affection in the drawings, but there was more precision than love in Sam’s pencil. A mirror that did not always catch the best angle. He had drawn me sitting at my desk, my hand resting on a book. I looked bored. Petulant.

  ‘Mr Hawkins?’ Jenny, our maidservant, emerged from her garret room across the landing. She’d learned to hide herself when Gonson appeared. She attended the same church and did not want him to discover where she worked. ‘Is it true? Will they arrest Sam?’

  I smiled at her. ‘Heavens, no. There was no thief. Alice had a bad dream, no more.’ I thought she would be reassured by this, but if anything she grew more agitated, shifting her weight from foot to foot.

  ‘Your pardon, sir. Alice ain’t a foolish girl. She knows when she’s dreaming.’

  I studied her for a moment, wondering how Sam might sketch her with that unflinching eye of his. She did not seem well – her complexion was almost grey, her eyes red-rimmed and sore. ‘What troubles you, Jenny?’

  ‘It’s Sam, sir, he’s the thief,’ she said in a rush. ‘He’s been . . . creeping about the house.’

  ‘Well – that is the way of him, Jenny. I am not sure he m
eans anything by it.’

  ‘In the dark, sir. When we’re asleep. I woke the other night and he was stood over my bed.’

  I flinched. It was not like Jenny to tell tales. Not like her to offer an opinion on the weather, she was so timid. ‘I didn’t hear—’

  ‘I made to scream but he clamped a hand over my mouth. And his eyes – I thought he meant to kill me! But then he was gone so fast and it was so dark I thought I’d dreamed it. But now Alice says she saw something . . .’ She tailed away, looking up at me with a hopeful, expectant expression, as if I might snap my fingers and make all well with the world.

  ‘This is strange indeed,’ I said, baffled. ‘I will speak with Sam—’

  ‘No, oh please, sir, no! Please don’t say nothing. I’m so afraid of him. The way he stares . . . He’ll murder me in my bed, I’m sure of it!’ She broke down, wiping away the tears with the back of her hand.

  ‘Jenny, come now. There is no need for this. Sam was here in the house all night. I saw him myself. He can’t be in two places at once.’

  She sniffed, and shot me a frightened look. ‘The devil finds a way, sir.’

  I promised Jenny that I would think further on the matter. I also promised to fix a bolt on her door. I was unsettled by her story, but what more could I do without confronting Sam, which she had begged me not to do? There was a chance she had indeed dreamed it all. I had my own reasons not to trust the boy, but I had seen him with my own eyes last night, while the thief was supposedly scurrying about next door. Shadows in the dark, that was all.

  I headed downstairs, stomach rumbling. Dinner – that would help banish the gloom. I poked my head into the shop but Kitty had vanished, replaced by . . . ‘Ah, damn you. There you are.’

  Sam was reading a book of anatomy, black curls falling across his face. His gaze slid briefly to mine, then dropped back down to an illustration of the heart, labelled in close detail.

  I tapped the page. ‘So. You’re learning the mysteries of the human heart.’

  ‘Ventricles.’

  A month ago I would have been perplexed by this response. But I had learned to form sentences around the odd word he deigned to expel into the air. In this case: ‘No, sir. I am not studying the mysteries of the human heart, but its mechanics. Including, for example, ventricles, a word I will now say out loud for my own unfathomable amusement.’

  His lips curved into a faint smile.

  ‘Where’s Mistress Sparks?’

  Nothing.

  ‘The magistrate paid us a visit. Mr Burden accused you of breaking into his house. He claimed Stephen saw you – though Stephen denied it. What do you say to that?’

  Nothing.

  ‘I defended you. Miss Sparks lied for you. Sam,’ I prompted, exasperated. ‘When a gentleman defends you against an accusation of theft, it’s customary to express gratitude. Much obliged to you, sir, for example. Thank you, Mr Hawkins, for defending my character. I am in your debt.’

  Sam closed his book. ‘Bliged.’

  Just one vowel short of a word. A triumph. When Sam first arrived at the Cocked Pistol I’d thought he was shy with strangers, or missing his home and family. As the days had passed, I’d come to realise that this was his natural temperament. He was a strange boy, no doubt – but I had not considered him a danger to the house. Had I been too trusting of him?

  I was about to venture out in search of a decent meal when a young lad entered the shop. His clothes were badly patched but clean, and he was well fed. One of James Fleet’s boys. I glanced at Sam and caught the slightest flicker of fear in his eyes. Afraid of his father? Well – he was not alone in that.

  The boy handed me a slip of paper.

  Hawkins. I have something for you. Come at once. Bring Sam.

  I paid the boy and sent him on his way. I could feel Sam’s gaze upon the note from across the room.

  ‘Your father wishes to see you.’

  His brows twitched. Ach, I knew that anxiety well enough. Tell a boy his father has summoned him and nine times out of ten it’s trouble. I’d spent half my childhood in my father’s study, staring at the floor while he expounded upon my failings. Weak. Obstinate. Wilful.

  ‘I’ll change,’ Sam said.

  I blinked, confused – as if he had somehow read my mind. By the time I understood him he had slipped around the counter and was climbing the stairs to his garret room.

  ‘You are dressed well enough,’ I called up to him.

  ‘Too well.’

  A good point. I returned to my own room and threw on my drabbest waistcoat and breeches, and a fraying, mouse-coloured greatcoat. No silver buttons, no embroidery. Not for a trip to St Giles.

  St Giles is barely a ten-minute stride from Covent Garden but it might as well be another country. The Garden is not without its perils – especially at night – but the stews of St Giles contain some of the deadliest streets in the city. The last time I’d ventured in I had crawled out again upon my hands and knees, battered and bloody, lucky to be alive. I had been led there by a linkboy I’d paid to light my way home. Instead he had tricked me, leading me through the twisting maze of verminous streets into an ambush, where I had been robbed and beaten.

  The same boy was at my side today.

  Sam’s father, James Fleet, was captain of the most powerful gang of thieves in St Giles. I would call them infamous, but their success hinged upon the quiet, secret way they went about their business. Fleet was careful not to make a name for himself, except where it mattered: whispered in the shadows. While other gangs swaggered about the town boasting of their deeds, Fleet’s men were stealthy, silent and – if caught – never peached another gang member. For ten years James Fleet had ruled St Giles – and barely a soul knew it.

  As we left Drury Lane and crossed St Giles’s road I put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. It was a little over three months since he had led me into the stews. I was tolerably certain I’d forgiven him. We had been strangers at the time, after all – and indeed his father had made amends, later. But I still remembered the look of pride and curiosity on Sam’s face as I was beaten to the ground. The satisfaction of having pleased his pa. ‘Do you remember the last time you brought me here?’

  He tilted his face and looked up at me, black eyes cool and unwavering. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve never apologised for it.’

  He thought about this for a moment. ‘No.’

  I gave up.

  The city streets are never fragrant, but St Giles wins the honour of being the foulest-smelling borough in London. It is impossible to walk a straight line – one must gavotte around the piles of shit, the clotting pools of blood, men lying drunk or dying in the filth. Sam weaved through it all with an easy tread, while I caught my heel in something so rancid I almost added my own vomit to the street. I reached for my pocket handkerchief, then thought better of it. There would be narrow eyes watching us from every alleyway, every rooftop. I did not want to enter St Giles waving my hankie to my nose like some ridiculous fop.

  When Sam had first come to stay with us there had been a trace of the St Giles perfume trapped in his clothes, his hair, his skin. We had given him fresh clothes, clean linen, and several trips to a nearby bagnio where his skin was scrubbed and scraped and rubbed in sweet-smelling oil. I’d suggested that he might wish to shave off his curls as well, to discourage lice and other pests. Disdainful silence. Now he was back in his favourite ‘old duds’ – a battered hat tipped low over his face, a torn and shabby coat, thin breeches. His father could have paid the best tailor in town to stitch a new set of clothes for his only boy, but that would have drawn unwanted attention. Where did he get the chink for such rum togs, eh? No one in James Fleet’s gang wore fine clothes. Clean and modest – that was the order. That’s how I’d known the boy with the note was one of his.

  Hawkins. I have something for you. Come at once. My stomach tightened.

  A few nights before I had made a grave, foolish mistake. By chance I had met with Sam’s father n
ear St James’s Park. It was not his usual haunt and he had looked somehow diminished, wandering through such a respectable part of town. Indeed he had seemed so lost that on a whim I had invited him to join me at the gaming tables near Charing Cross.

  I did not think to wonder what he was doing in St James’s. A man such as Fleet is not stumbled upon by chance. I am sure now that he had been waiting for me, but I did not even consider the idea at the time.

  He had caught me at a ripe moment and he knew it, the cunning bastard. The Marshalsea had cast a long shadow on my soul. I had almost died, and it had changed me – I could see it when I studied myself in the mirror. I did not trust any more to: ‘and all will be well’. I was no longer the careless boy I had once been. But what was I then, in truth? Not a clergyman, despite my father’s wishes. So then . . . what? What was my purpose? I couldn’t say. And a man without a purpose is easy to trap.

  I took James Fleet to the gaming house as if I were leading a pet lion upon a leash. Look! See what I have brought with me! I gambled away all the money in my purse and I drank until the floor pitched like a boat beneath my feet. All the vows I had made when I left prison fled before that cheap, seductive thought: damn it all to hell – life must be lived! I had won my freedom from gaol. I had won Kitty’s heart. I had won my safety. The game was over. So what now?

  Another roll of the dice, of course. Because the game must never end.

  I sat with James Fleet in a tavern – so drunk I cannot even remember the name of it. And I confessed to him what I had barely admitted even to myself. That I was suffocating. That I had begun to suspect that a life without risk for a man of my nature was in fact a kind of slow death. Fleet had leaned forward, interested. ‘I could use a man with your talents, Hawkins.’ The next morning I’d woken with a pounding headache and the uneasy feeling that I had accidentally made a pact with the devil.

  And now he had something for me.