Burton & Swinburne 1 - The Strange Affair Of Spring Heeled Jack (27 page)

“You've seen all you need?”

“Yes, I believe so. We'll leave you in peace.”

Smike accompanied them to the front door and, as they stood on the step and shook his hand, asked, “The young 'uns, sir-will they be back?”

“That I can't answer, I'm afraid,” replied Burton.

He and Swinburne took their leave and strolled toward New Kent Road, intending to pick up a cab there.

“Interesting,” muttered Burton. “It's the tall boys who aren't returning. What does that mean, I wonder?”

“But I say!” cried Swinburne. “What the dickens put you on that particular track?”

“You did! When you were looking into the mirror in Jacob Spratt's room I realised that it was leaning against the wall at an angle exactly suited to someone of your height; considerably taller than little Ned and Charlie. I then checked the shoes and slippers in the rooms and saw that they were all of a comparatively large size.”

“Auguste Dupin!” screeched the poet excitedly, jumping around the older man like a whirling dervish.

“Calm down, you silly ass!” The king's agent chuckled.

Swinburne, though he became uncharacteristically silent, did not calm down. As they walked along, his gait became increasingly eccentric, until he was practically skipping, and he wrung his hands together excitedly, twitching and jerking as if on the verge of a fit.

By the time they'd waved down a hansom and were chugging homeward, the poet could contain himself no longer, and exploded: “It's obvious, Richard! It's obvious!”

“What is?”

“That I have to masquerade as a chimney sweep!”

“What the devil do you mean?”

“You must see the Beetle again and arrange for me to join the League. I'll work in the Cauldron and will put myself in harm's way until I get abducted!”

“Don't be bloody ridiculous!” snapped Burton. “I have enough deaths on my conscience; I'll not add yours.”

“You don't have any choice. If you don't help me, I'll do it despite you!”

Burton's eyes blazed. “Blast you, you little squirt! It's suicide!”

“No, Richard. It's the only way to find out where the werewolves come from and where the boys are being taken. Look at me: I'm the same height as Jacob and Rajish and Benny and the other missing lads! I'll wander the streets after dark until I get myself kidnapped, and, somehow, by hook or by crook, I'll get a message to you!”

“I forbid it, Algernon! I absolutely forbid it! For all you know, the boys have been killed. And how the hell will you send a message?”

“I'll carry a parakeet with me!”

“It won't work! You'll not find one that'll be content to sit in your pocket without swearing at the top of its voice. It'll attract attention and you'll end up with your throat cut, if not by the loups-garous then by an East Ender.”

“I don't know how then, Richard, but I'll find a way. It's our only hope of solving this case!”

“Our only hope? What do you mean, our? Since when did you become my assistant?”

“Since just now-and I'll not be dissuaded; this plan will work and you know it!”

“I know no such thing.”

Their argument raged on until they reached Swinburne's lodgings, by which point Burton had concluded that nothing he could do or say would convince the little poet of the madness of the scheme. He was even tempted to mesmerise his friend but Swinburne's personality was so eccentric that his behaviour under magnetic influence was impossible to predict and might prove just as dangerous as his crazy plan. So, reluctantly, he agreed to talk to the Beetle later in the day.

At the back of his mind, an idea was emerging, and he realised that a return visit to Battersea would also be required.

When he arrived home, Sir Richard Francis Burton found that the roadworks were now right outside his house. The two workmen were obviously toiling with far greater efficiency than the average labourer, digging a deep, narrow trench and filling it in behind them as they progressed.

“Fast blighters, ain't they, Cap'n?” came a voice.

It was Mr. Grub, the chestnut vendor.

“They are indeed, Mr. Grub,” agreed Burton. “You're taking the day off.”

“Not by choice. Some idiot lost control of his penny-farthing and knocked my Dutch oven over. Put a whacking great dent in it. I had to send it off to my brother-in-law, the metalsmith, to hammer it back into shape. A darned hazard, all these new contraptions, don't you think?”

“I do, Mr. Grub. I do. I wonder what they're up to?”

“The diggers? They're laying a pipe. Probably a new gas main.”

Burton looked at the two workmen; funny-looking chaps, he thought. More like gravediggers than labourers.

He bade Mr. Grub farewell and entered his home.

Mrs. Angell confronted him in the hallway.

“Now then, sir,” she said, with hands on hips and a tapping foot. “They finished the new window a half hour ago and I've made your room shipshape again-but I would very much like to know what all that nonsense was about. I've put up with your ungodly carousing on countless occasions but you've never caused such mayhem before. Who was that white-skinned scoundrel?”

“Make us a pot of tea, Mother Angell, and I'll join you in the dining room. I think it's time I told you about my new job!”

When my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tongue

Gould scarcely cry “'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!”

go your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

-WILLIAM BLAKE, SONGS OF INNOCENCE

Thwack!

“Please-no-yes-aah!”

Thwack!

“Oh my-my-ceh-yow!”

Thwack!

“Oh! Ah!-Oh! Ha! Ha!-It burns!”

Again and again, the leather belt struck Algernon Swinburne's buttocks with terrific force, sending wave after wave of pleasure coursing through his diminutive body. He shrieked and howled and gibbered rapturously until, finally, Master Sweep Vincent Sneed grew tired, threw the belt aside, took his hand from the back of the poet's neck, stepped away from the wooden crate over which Swinburne was bent, and wiped his sweaty brow.

“Let that be a lesson to yer,” he snarled. “I'll 'ave none o' yer backchat, yer little toerag. Stand up straight!”

Swinburne stood, rubbing his backside through his trousers. He was wearing a flat cap, a stained white collarless calico shirt, a threadbare waistcoat, fingerless woollen gloves, and trousers that were too short-they stopped some inches above his ankles. On his feet were ill-fitting boots with loose soles. His face, hands, and clothes were smeared with soot and his teeth had been made to look yellow and rotten.

“Sorry, Mr. Sneed,” he whined.

“Shut yer cakehole. I don't want another peep outa yer. Pack the tools. We've got a job on an' it's gettin' late.”

Swinburne left the crate-which the master sweep used as a table-and limped over to the workbench where the brushes and poles, which he'd been cleaning all morning, were laid out. He started packing them into a long canvas holdall.

Sneed plonked himself onto a stool and sat with legs akimbo, elbows on knees, and a bottle of moonshine in his right hand. He watched Swinburne and sneered. The League had supplied him with this new boy three days ago and the little git was too mouthy by half.

“I'll beat some respeck inter yer, that I will,” he mumbled, “yer blinkin' whippersnapper.”

In aspect, Sneed resembled a stoat. His thin black hair was long and greasy, combed backward over his narrow skull, his gleaming scalp shining through it. His low forehead slid down into a pockmarked and sly-looking face, the whole of which seemed to have been pulled forward by his gargantuan nose-so much so that his beady black eyes, rather than being to either side of it, seemed to be on the sides of the astonishing protuberance. That nose had earned him his nickname, which he despised with a passion. Woe betide anyone who uttered the words “the Conk” within range of his little cauliflower ears!

His small lipless mouth and receding chin were partially hidden by a ragged, nicotine-stained moustache and beard. Through the tangled hair, two big uneven front teeth could be glimpsed.

Over his short, thin but powerful frame, the Conk was wearing baggy canvas trousers held up by a pair of suspenders, a filthy shirt with a red cravat, and a bizarre blue surtout with epaulettes, which may well have been a relic from Admiral Nelson's day.

“29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields,” he grunted. “One flue, narrow. We'll take a goose, just in case.”

Swinburne stifled a yawn. He'd experienced three days of exhausting work. His hands were cut and blistered. His pores were clogged with soot.

“Ain't you finished yet?”

“Yes,” answered the poet. “All packed.”

“So shove it in the wagon and 'itch up the 'orse. Do I 'ave to tell yer everything?”

Swinburne went out into the yard and did as directed. His buttocks were burning from the beating he'd taken. He would have whistled happily were he not so tired.

A little later, he and the Conk, wrapped in overcoats and with their caps pulled down tightly, were seated at the front of the wagon and heading northwestward across Whitchapel. As the vehicle rumbled over the cobbles, its bumps and jolts sent pain lancing up through the poet's sensitised backside.

“Heavenly!” he muttered gleefully.

“What's that?” grunted the Conk.

“Nothing, sir,” Swinburne replied. “I was just thinking about the job.”

“Think about steering this old nag. There'll be time to think about the bleedin' job when we get there.”

It was half past four. Spots of rain began to fall. The weather, unpredictable as ever, was taking a turn for the worse but it could never rain hard enough to wash away the stench of the East End. After three days, Swinburne's nose was becoming attuned to it, blocking out the mephitic stink. There were always surprises, though; areas where the putrid gases threatened to overpower him and bring up what little he had in his stomach.

The sights, too, were sickening. The streets were crowded with the worst dregs of humanity, most of them shuffling, slumping, or sprawling aimlessly, their eyes desolate, their poverty having pushed them into an animalalmost vegetative-state. Others moved about, seeking a pocket to pick, a mug to rob, or a mark to swindle. There were beggars, prostitutes, pimps, drug addicts, and drunkards in profusion; children, too, playing desultory games in puddles of filth; and, occasionally, the white bonnets of the Sisterhood of Noble Benevolence could be seen bobbing through the mob; the women travelling in threes, trying to do good-distributing gruel and roughly woven blankets-managing to move through this destitute hell without being harmed; how, no one knew, though some claimed they possessed a supernatural grace which protected them.

There were labourers, too: hawkers, costermongers, carpenters, and coopers, tanners, slaughterhouse workers, and builders. There were publicans, of course, and pawnbrokers, betting touts, and undertakers; but the majority of the employed were invisible, locked away in the workhouses and factories where they slaved backbreaking hour after backbreaking hour in return for a short sleep on a hard bed and a daily bowl of slop.

Through this milling throng, the wagon passed. Swinburne steered it along tight lanes bordered by rookeries whose gables leaned precariously inward, threatening to topple into each other, burying anyone on the cobbles beneath. Grimy water dripped onto him from strings of hanging garments.

The sweep and his apprentice stopped and picked up a goose from a poulterer's, pushing it into a sack that the Conk kept squeezed between his legs as they continued their journey.

“It's a struggler,” he noted, approvingly.

Ten minutes or so later they reached the Truman Brewery and turned into Hanbury Street, drawing up outside number 29. The premises was a large building with many rooms and an ironmonger's shop at the front. A notice in the window announced: “Rooms to Let. Apply Within only if Respectable. Strictly No Foreigners.”

“'Obble the 'orse and unload the 'quipment,” ordered Sneed, jumping down to the pavement. With the sack in his hand, he went into the shop while Swinburne chained the horse's ankles together.

The poet dragged the heavy holdall from the back of the wagon and waited. A moment later Sneed emerged and gestured to a second door.

“This way,” he grunted, pushing it open.

Swinburne followed his master down a passageway and through a second door which opened onto a backyard; a patchwork of stone, grass, and dirt. It was surrounded by a high wooden fence and contained a small shed and a privy. Three steps rose to a back door, which the Conk knocked on. It was opened by an elderly crinoline-clad woman, her hair in curlpapers, who gestured for them to enter.

They moved through a scullery and kitchen into a short hallway then passed through a door to the right and found themselves in a small parlour.

“All right, ma'am-you can leave us to it,” said Sneed.

“Mind you don't chip me china,” advised the old lady as she departed.

Swinburne looked around but couldn't see any china. The room smelled musty and damp.

“Jump to it!” snapped the Conk. “Lay out the sacking.”

He sat on a shabby armchair and pulled the bottle of moonshine from his pocket, taking swigs, watching Swinburne work, and giving the sack between his knees an occasional slap.

Swinburne soon had the floor and furniture, what there was of it, covered.

The master sweep slipped the bottle back into his jacket, slid off the chair, and poked his head into the fireplace, looking up.

“Nope,” he grunted. “You'll not get up there. Why the Beetle 'ad to send me a hulking great helephant like you I don't know.”

Swinburne grinned. He'd been called many things in his time but “hulking great helephant” was a first.

The Conk twisted, shot out a hand, and slapped the poet's face. Swinburne gasped.

“You can wipe that smile off yet ugly mug!” snarled the Conk. “You've got too much hattitude, you 'ave.”

They returned to the wagon outside and Swinburne untied the ropes that secured the ladder. Sneed slid it off-it was too heavy for Swinburne-and heaved it up until its top rested against the side of the roof, its topmost rung just below the eaves.