‘Toss her! crush her skull!’
‘Skewer that bitch.’
‘Stamp on her. Again. Give it to her.’
The bull’s hide was slick with sweat. His eyes rolled back in his skull. He dipped his horns to charge the crowd, and those who’d got too close leaped back, eyes wild with excitement. The chain securing the bull snapped taut and the dogs seized their moment. One darted in and fastened her teeth deep in his flank. He bellowed and dipped his head again, spearing one of the other dogs with his horns. Sweat and blood sprayed the crowd, as he tossed her into the air. They cheered.
We were in one of the fields that banked Deptford Creek. I had heard the noise from the road, and come up here to take a look. Most of the crowd were fixated by the bait, while others were taking advantage of the action to conduct a little business. The fine clothes, groomed beards and sun-darkened complexions of one group drew my attention. Sea captains. I went over and introduced myself as a friend of Captain Vaughan. Warm with ale and the thrill of the bait, they were happy to talk to me.
‘Not Brighthelmstone,’ one said, in response to my queries. ‘Not Margate either.’ He thought for a moment, pipe-smoke wafting in the breeze. ‘Bath, it was. Vaughan’s gone to take the waters.’
‘You cannot believe that?’ another said. ‘He’s with one of his women – induced her to leave her husband and ran off to Spain. Vaughan has family there.’
‘I heard he was dead,’ said a third. ‘A jealous husband put a knife in his guts and dropped him in Deptford Reach.’
‘Is there any evidence for that?’
The man grinned. ‘It’s probably horseshit. Vaughan could cuckold the Devil himself and still talk his way out.’
I’d heard more answers to the question of Vaughan’s whereabouts than I’d had hot pies. I could only conclude that he didn’t want to be found. I wondered if he’d decided to get out of Deptford and lie low. As The Dark Angel’s captain, he would have given the primary account of the voyage to John Monday’s insurers. He had more to fear from Tad’s inquiry than most. Yet there was also his state of mind to consider.
I was about to return to Deptford Strand to make further inquiries, when I noticed two men standing beneath a large oak tree on the fringes of the fray. The magistrate, Peregrine Child, and The Dark Angel’s third officer, Frank Drake, heads bent together over the inevitable bottles in their hands. It was the first time I’d seen either of them since Drake had attacked me in the alley. I walked over to join them.
‘For a man who doesn’t believe in conspiracy, Mr Child, the pair of you look positively cabalistic.’
Drake scowled, and Child laid a soothing hand on his arm. ‘What can I do for you, Captain Corsham?’
He listened, frowning, as I told him about Amelia and the other murders. Drake only smirked.
‘Archer is dead. His sister and her maid are dead. Two London Africans are dead. Daniel Waterman is a cripple because of this man you drink with here. How many more people are going to get hurt before you act?’
Child turned to Drake, and I realized this was the first he’d heard about Waterman.
‘Didn’t he tell you? I’m sure it was a fair fight. That boy must have weighed at least a hundred and thirty pounds.’
Drake’s bright blue eyes glittered dangerously. ‘The boy was a thief. I confronted him, and he came at me with a knife. I had a right to defend myself.’
‘I suppose you were defending yourself against me too, when you and Isaac attacked me in those alleys?’
He grinned. ‘You said it.’
He seemed so confident that I wondered if he was paying Child off. Or if there was another aspect to their relationship I didn’t understand.
‘I hear you’ve been having trouble with dead birds, Drake. Bones, rats, dolls? Scare you, does it?’
Drake licked his lips. ‘It’s nothing. Nigger magic. Miserable cowards.’
‘You’d know.’
His ruined drinker’s face flushed scarlet. ‘You know why I had it out with Waterman? Because Mr Monday told me to. You know why I drowned those slaves? Because Captain Vaughan ordered it. You know why I didn’t kill your friend, though Christ knows he had it coming? Because Mr Monday ordered that he not be harmed.’
This was new. ‘When was this?’
Drake hesitated, but Child gave him a nod to continue. I wondered if he wanted to hear Drake’s answer as much as I.
‘The morning before they found his body. Monday had heard that Archer was back in town. He summoned me and Brabazon to his house, and said no one was to touch him. So there we are.’
‘You don’t strike me as a man who does what he’s told.’
‘Shows what you know. My family have sailed the Middle Passage since the days of the Virgin Queen. There have been Frank Drakes here in town ever since the first Drake set out to find black gold on the Guinea coast and knocked up a Deptford doxy on his way through town. I was twelve years old on my first voyage. I saw a Negro put a spike through my best friend’s skull because he hadn’t followed orders. On a slave ship the captain’s word is God, and it’s good discipline that keeps a crew alive.’
‘You weren’t on a slave ship when Archer was killed.’
‘If I ever hoped to be again, then I had to do what Monday said. A man gets blacklisted, he’s finished in this town.’
‘That’s true,’ Child said. ‘And I believe Jamaica Mary told you she was with Drake in the bathhouse all night.’ So he had heard about my visit there. No prizes for guessing who’d told him. ‘It seems to me that Mr Drake is in the clear. As I believe I told you myself some days ago.’
‘Where is Captain Vaughan?’ I asked Drake.
‘How the hell should I know? In some cat-house probably.’
‘You spend a lot of time in brothels?’
‘What do you think?’
I took the silver ticket from my pocket and showed it to him. ‘You ever see one like this before? In any of your brothels?’
‘No.’
‘How about you?’
I thought I caught a trace of unease on Child’s face, but he shook his head. ‘You could buy half the whores in Deptford for the price of that ticket.’
I returned it to my pocket, and took out my notebook and pencil. ‘Would you write your name down for me, please, Mr Drake?’
‘What the devil for?’
‘A letter was left for me at the Noah’s Ark a few nights ago. Its author threatened my life. He used some choice phrases that reminded me of you.’
‘I don’t have to listen to this.’ Drake threw his bottle over his shoulder into the field. ‘Fuck your questions. Fuck your friend. Fuck you.’
He strode over to join the bait, and I raised my eyebrows at Child. ‘For an innocent man, he seems very upset.’
‘He can’t read or write. It is common with seafaring men. Perhaps if you tried harder not to upset people, then you wouldn’t receive such letters.’
The bait was growing louder, nearing its climax. I raised my voice over the bellowing of the bull. ‘Mrs Grimshaw says you were fixing a window in the inn on the day the letter was delivered. Did you see anyone who could have left it there?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
Child had been in London when Proudlock was killed. He had looked into The Dark Angel while he was there. Should I treat him as a suspect? I couldn’t see a motive. And surely he was too short to be the man I’d encountered last night at Marylebone? Yet I couldn’t quite put my finger on Peregrine Child.
‘On my last visit here, I asked you about The Dark Angel. You pretended you’d never heard of her. How was your trip to Whitehall? Did you find anything interesting in the ministry’s archives?’
If he was surprised that I knew his movements, he didn’t show it. Like Brabazon, he had sangfroid. ‘Just keeping myself informed.’
‘I confess I hadn’t associated you with such diligence.’
‘Ad altiora tendo. We all strive to better ourselves.’
His flippancy angered me. ‘Do you ever think about the dead slaves? I do. They fought, I have heard, but their limbs were wasted. They threw women and children to their deaths too. Did you know that? The infants screamed for their mothers, but their mothers couldn’t help them. They must have sunk like stones when they hit the water. What would you have done? Stood by and watched?’
My words sparked a greater reaction than I had anticipated. Child moved so fast, he caught me by surprise. He grabbed me by the collar and slammed me up against the trunk of the oak tree. He put his face up to mine, so I could make out the network of broken veins around his nose.
‘I don’t care how many Yankee soldiers you’ve killed. Or whose arse you kiss at the War Office. Talk to me like that again, and I’ll break your nose.’