The Angel of Highgate

29 BLOOD SPORTS

It was the kind of dream one is relieved to awaken from. As Augustus Skinner surfaced from the silken veils of a laudanum dream, the images still clung to his mind like a pernicious mist — ghastly images of a surgeon, his gown splashed with gore, standing over him, scalpel in hand, operating on him. In the dream he had still been conscious, and could feel pain but was gripped with paralysis. And although he wanted to scream, he could not. He felt the knife cutting through his chest, the hand reaching in and ripping out his still beating heart, then thrusting it in his face for him to see.

He awoke shouting.

Doctor Garrette sat in the chair facing his bed, his hands folded atop the black Gladstone bag in his lap. “You were asleep when I came in.”

Augustus struggled to gather himself. He had sweated through his nightgown and the bedclothes were soaked. The drawn curtains prevented him from telling whether it was day or night. “You. At times I feel as though you are only here to prolong my suffering.”

Garrette said nothing, but opened the Gladstone bag, took out a fresh bottle of laudanum and set it on the bedside table. Skinner’s eyes lingered on the bottle. He licked his lips. He had drained the last one a few hours ago and tumbled into the warm, foaming surf of sleep.

“It is done,” the doctor gravely announced.

“What is done?”

“Your revenge. You wanted to destroy Lord Thraxton. How does one destroy a man who fears nothing, including his own death?” Garrette smiled. “One destroys the thing that man loves.”

Skinner was afraid to hear more, but terrified not to.

“Thraxton was conducting a secret liaison with a young woman from a respectable family. I arranged for that woman to be abducted by one of the foulest degenerates in London.” He stroked his side-whiskers and grinned. “As I promised — a wound that never heals.”

Skinner pushed himself up in bed, a throb of pain from his inflamed wound driving hot tears into his eyes. “What have you done? I wanted Thraxton broken, ruined financially. I never wanted this! An innocent girl? Are you mad?”

Garrette bristled at the words. “Now to the matter of money. I have my children to think of.”

Augustus Skinner spluttered with rage. “You have twisted my mind with your laudanum! You have schemed to strip my will!”

“A hundred guineas was the sum we agreed upon.”

Skinner shook his head violently. “Not a penny. Not a ha’penny. Not a farthing will you get from me! I shall summon the police and have you arrested.”

“You forget to whom you are speaking. You hired me. That makes you complicit.”

“You monster. Get out. Get out of my rooms!”

Silas Garrette snatched the laudanum from the bedside table, yanked the cork and tipped the bottle up, pouring out the liquid on the rug. Skinner groaned to watch the bottle gurgle itself empty.

The doctor hurled the bottle aside, grabbed his black bag and stalked to the door. Before he left he spun and threw a murderous look back. “I have yet to present you with my final bill, sir. Prepare yourself for the reckoning.”

Thraxton was already drunk when he reeled in through the doors of the Turnspit public house, a smoky, low-ceilinged dive in Quaker’s Alley. He bought a whiskey and paid far too much to the barkeep who could tell when gentlemen “in their cups” were not up to the mathematics of change making.

A great noise and hubbub emanated from the back of the pub.

“What’s all the din about?” Thraxton asked.

“Bit o’ sport in the back room, sir. You’re in time. They just started.”

Thraxton slid his whiskey off the bar and tottered through an arched opening into the back room. A pall of silver cigar smoke swirled about the gas lights flickering overhead. The reek of tobacco smoke, beer slops and wet fur was overpowering. A throng of men crowded around a rat pit, a rectangular ring enclosed by short wooden walls. Despite the low nature of the pub, the crowd consisted almost entirely of top-hatted gentleman with a scattering of red-tunicked army officers here and there. In the pit a hundred rats squealed in terror as a single Bull Terrier moved through them like a whirlwind, pouncing upon rat after rat. Wagers had been laid upon how many rats the dog could kill and the time taken. Beneath bellowed curses and shouts of encouragement such as “Come on, Billy!” came the terrified squealing of rats. In an attempt to get away, the rats formed heaps of bodies, scrabbling to climb the corners of the pit, but there was no escape. Billy lunged, dipped his nose into the squirming pile, bit down, shook, then tossed. Dying rats flew through the air, spraying blood that spattered the faces of the men who howled like devils ravenous for suffering.

Thraxton dropped his glass of whiskey, gorge rising. He had seen rat baiting. Indeed, he once had been a member of the cheering rabble crouched around the rat pit; but now he saw death, even the death of a rat, as an abomination. He pushed through the squeeze of bodies, vaulted into the rat pit and began seizing rats and tossing them out of the pit.

“Life is precious!” he cried. “All life! Even a rat’s!”

But his words were drowned in the resulting furor of shouts and curses. Money had been wagered on the outcome of this match and the braying mob, furious at the interference, now vented its rage on Thraxton.

A burly man, the dog’s owner, jumped into the pit, wrapped his arms around Thraxton, and slammed him against the low wall. Many hands seized and held him, and a rain of drunken fists pummeled him about the face and shoulders. He was hoisted semi-conscious from the pit and dragged through the pub, crashing into tables and knocking down chairs. The door was flung open and he was hurled into the gutter, his top hat tossed into the street, then someone flung his walking stick after. It smacked him across the bridge of the nose, flushing his eyes with tears.

Across the street, two shabbily dressed men looked at each other and grinned. One was Bobby Sharples, the other was Ned Utley. Both were members of Fowler’s mob who ran out of the Seven Dials. Sharples and Utley were known in the criminal vernacular as bug hunters: thieves who specialized in robbing drunks. Places such as the Turnspit, which attracted a crowd of gentlemen with pockets full of coins to be pilfered and gold watches to snatch, were favored hunting grounds of theirs. The two men slouched across the street and confronted Thraxton just as he was wobbling to his feet.

“What do you scoundrels want?” Thraxton asked.

“We come to collect the toll, guvnor.”

“Toll?” Thraxton asked, adjusting his dress and resettling his top hat.

“That’s right,” Ned agreed. “There’s a toll for walkin’ down this street. You tip up everything ya got…” Ned’s eyes ran up and down Thraxton’s clothes and noticed a gold watch chain. “…including that watch, and nuthin’ bad’ll happen to ya.”

Bobby Sharples slapped a cudgel against his palm. “Show him the knife, Ned.” His accomplice reached into his coat and drew out a crudely fashioned “knife” which was little more than a seven-inch piece of flat iron sharpened to a point at one end with some heavy cloth sacking wrapped around the other end to form a handle.

“I made this special,” Ned said. “For guttin’ a gennulman like a fish.”

“So that’s a knife is it?” Thraxton said. Tonight he was carrying the walking stick with a handle in the shape of a snarling silver tiger. He thumbed a catch then drew out a concealed sword with a metallic schuuulllliiiing. “This is a sword,” Thraxton said calmly, leveling the tip at Ned Utley’s throat. “I purchased it for skewering miscreants.”

The men’s eyes bugged as the sword blade flashed in the lamp light. Then, without as much as a word or look between them, both men turned and bolted, running as fast as their legs would carry them.

The pummeling he had received in the pit, followed by the tussle with the bug hunters adrenalized Thraxton, burning the alcohol from his blood. Although his head throbbed, he felt brutally sober. Now there was nothing left to hold back his constant thoughts of Aurelia.

He struck off up the road, searching for a cab, but after a few minutes walking came across a figure standing beneath a gas lamp.

A whore, plying her trade.

Why not? he thought. Anything to take my mind off Aurelia.

The woman looked young enough. Normally at the thought of such sport, he would feel a surge of lust. But now he searched himself and found nothing. Perhaps that would come once they set to the business.

“G’devenin’, sir. Care for a bit of sport?” the woman slurred. Even from several feet away she reeked of gin. “A shilling’s all I ask. Ya can do whatever ya like to me. I don’t care nuffink.”

The face, which had seemed to carry the natural bloom of youth from afar, was painted like a porcelain doll, gaudy with heavy pancake and large spots of rouge dotting the cheeks. The eyes, which would not meet his, were dulled and dead. “Yer a gent, I can tell. I know what gents like. I can lift up me skirts. And I does it all ways.”

It was the voice that sent an electric shock of recognition through Thraxton.

“Maisy… is it you?”

For the first time, the woman’s blurred eyes focused on his.

“Geoffrey?”

It was indeed Maisy, the young prostitute he had had sex with in the tomb.

“My God, Maisy! What happened? Why are you on the street?”

The girl’s face collapsed, her lower lip quivered. “Madame Rachelle chucked me out.” Maisy began to cry, tears leaving trails through the thick pancake on her face.

“But why?”

“I’m rotten with the pox, sir. I know who give it me. And him a Member of Parliament and all. I’m no good to no one no more. I’m all used up. I’d drown meself in the Thames if I wasn’t scared of goin’ to hell.”

She began to sob and Thraxton folded her into his arms and held her. “My poor child! I cannot bear to think of you suffering.” Thraxton put a hand under her chin and gently lifted her face to the light. The face beneath the thick pancake was covered with open sores.

“Come,” he said, putting an arm around her and leading her away. “I will not rest until we find you a new home.”

Thraxton pounded on the door with the ferrule of his walking stick until at last a grate slid open and a pair of piggy eyes — female — glared out at him. “We’re all full,” a woman squawked. “Come back in the morning!”

The slit banged shut. Thraxton pounded again. The slit flew open. Before the shrill voice could speak again, Thraxton held up a change purse and shook it so the coins chinked. The clash of silver spoke more eloquently than words.

On the other side of the door, a bolt shot back with a clunk and the door squealed open to reveal a stout, matronly woman.

“We’ve nothin’ but a spot on the floor…”

“Then give her your bed… and some hot food.”

“Kitchen’s closed—”

“Then open it!” Thraxton grabbed the woman’s hand and poured coins from his purse into it. “You are a charity are you not?”

The flash of silver sweetened the woman’s churlish temperament. “Well, yes, sir. Right away, sir. We don’t get many visits from gennulmen.”

“You are to treat this girl with kindness. Do you understand?”

“Oh yes, sir. All our girls are well taken care of, like they was me own children.”

Thraxton sniffed at the comment. It was impossible to envisage a man drunk enough to impregnate the bestial woman, let alone her being a mother to any resulting offspring. He laid a gentle hand on Maisy’s arm. “Here at least is a bed for you and something to eat.”

Maisy threw herself at Thraxton and hugged him. “Gawd bless you, sir. Gawd bless you.”

He kissed Maisy’s forehead and allowed the matron to lead her away.

“I shall return,” Thraxton warned. “Be kind to her.”

But as the hansom cab took him away, they passed another prostitute shivering in the halo of light beneath a gas lamp.

She looked no older than ten.

When Thraxton stumbled into his front hallway, drooping with weariness, he found a single lantern burning on the hallway table. His manservant, Harold, sat in the circle of light, and from his state of half-dress it was apparent he had been roughly awakened from sleep.

“Harold? What are you doing up?”

“You got a visitor, Lord Thraxton.”

“A visitor? At this hour?”

Harold nodded at the darkness beside the front door. A shadowy figure rose stiffly from a chair and limped forward until the light fell across his face. Thraxton gasped aloud when he saw who it was.

“Mister Greenley?”

He was almost unrecognizable. One side of his face was massively bruised — his left eye swollen shut. It was obvious he had received a horrendous beating. Although Thraxton counted the man his worst enemy, it was pitiful to see him in such a state.

“Dear God, what has happened, sir?”

“It is Aurelia,” Greenley said, his normally booming voice dried to a brittle husk. “She has been taken.”

“If we do not act now, this young lady may be dead… or worse!”

Sergeant Dawkins looked across the counter of the police station at Thraxton and Algernon and his soft brown eyes shone with sympathy. “Bushy sideburns you say? A short, stout fella built like an ape?”

“Yes,” Greenley piped in. Although badly injured, he had insisted on accompanying Thraxton and Algernon to the Mayfair Police Station. Too weak to stand, he sat propped on a bench, a white bandage wrapped around his head.

“Him and two others: a walking skeleton with a hideous face and a third I glimpsed only briefly, the one who coshed me, a huge shambling brute.”

The officer nodded knowingly. “The men you describe are known to us, sir. The first would be Mordecai Fowler, the leader of a gang of criminals and ne’er-do-wells. The other two miscreants are Walter Crynge and Barnabus Snudge, known associates of Fowler’s.”

“You say you know these men?” Algernon asked.

The police officer stroked one of his waxed and twirled mustachios as he spoke. “Everyone in the Metropolitan Police Force knows them. Fowler and his men run out of the Seven Dials, the worst rookery in London.”

Hope surged in Thraxton at the news. “Then if you know where they are, you must take your men and go after them. There is not a moment to lose!”

The officer cleared his throat and frowned. “You have no idea about the rookeries, do you, sir? Last week we tried to arrest a man in Seven Dials. I had one officer shot dead and there’s three more still in ’orspital. One who’s never expected to walk again.”

“But this is England, for God’s sake!” Thraxton said. “You cannot tell me these ruffians are beyond the reach of the law!”

“There is no law in the rookeries, sir. Right now, I’m down so many men, I couldn’t entertain goin’ into the Seven Dials — especially at night. You’d need an army to go after Fowler on his own patch and come out alive. In the morning, once it comes light, I can have a dozen more men drafted in from other London boroughs—”

“In the morning?” Thraxton interrupted. “We can’t wait until morning! Who knows what unspeakable atrocities could have been committed upon Aurelia by then? We are talking about the life of a young woman!”

Sergeant Dawkins leaned his hands on the counter and stared down at them as he spoke. “I’m sorry, sir, but that’s how it has to be. My hands are tied.”

After a fast ride home in the brougham, the three men stood in Thraxton’s rooms. Thraxton finished loading one of his dueling pistols, passed it to Algernon and warned, “Handle it with great care, Algy.” Thraxton moved to a desk, slid open a drawer and produced two leather purses that chinked with coins. He tossed one to Algernon.

“Strewth!” Algernon said. “How much is in here?”

“Fifty sovereigns.” Thraxton tucked the second purse into a coat pocket. “I’m hoping we can buy Aurelia’s freedom. If not, the pistols will have to do the bargaining for us.” He threw a quick look at Robert Greenley who sat on the edge of Thraxton’s bed, his face buried in his hands. Thraxton said nothing and crossed the room to an elephant’s foot umbrella stand which held more than a dozen walking sticks of all descriptions. Thraxton found the silver tiger walking stick and held it out to Algernon.

“Take this.”

“A walking stick? I hardly think I’ll need to strike a dapper air where we’re going!”

“Not just a walking stick. Watch.”

Thraxton released the catch and drew the blade in one fluid motion. Algernon’s eyes saucered as he found himself staring at a sword tip hovering inches from his face.

“Good Lord! I feel as if we’re going to war.”

“We are, Algy. We are.” Thraxton sorted through walking sticks until he found a stick with a handle in the shape of a roaring boar and drew it out.

“What fiendishly clever trick does that one do?” Algernon asked.

Thraxton thumbed a catch and the stick broke in two like a shotgun. Sure enough, he loaded a single shotgun shell into the breech. “Unleash hell, if need be,” he replied.