Helen smoothed down the front of her breeches and sat on the edge of her bed, regarding her hessian boots. Their close fit made them the devil to put on by herself, particularly with Reclaimer strength; it was far too easy to misjudge a tug or pull and rip a garment apart. She had already destroyed one shirt. However, she could hardly call in Darby to help, not when she meant to creep out of the house unnoticed. With a rallying breath, she picked up the right boot and worked her stockinged foot into the long shaft.
The sound of departure rose from the foyer downstairs. She listened, finding the squeak of carriage springs and the jingle of the harness as Lady Margaret and Delia stepped into the carriage. They were headed for the Devil’s Dyke, a nearby picturesque place of interest, and a rendezvous with another informer. Helen had excused herself from attending the expedition, claiming a sick headache from her courses. In fact, she intended to visit Kate Holt’s bawdy-house to find Martha Gunn’s informer, Binny, and ask her if Lowry had visited recently – perhaps to hide the journal – or if Philip had been seen in the area. After all, she had seen the Deceiver herself twice near the Steine, and Kate Holt’s house stood in the nest of lanes in the Old Town, just west of it.
Helen had to admit she was daunted by the idea of setting foot in such a depraved place. From what Martha had said, it was a den of perversions. Lud, they probably fornicated in front of one another, counting it as one of the attractions. She certainly did not want to witness the carnal act again. As it was, she could not rid herself of the memory of seeing it for the first time in Vauxhall Gardens – the horror of the Deceiver thrusting into his victim against a wall as he drained away her life force. Helen shuddered. How was she to walk into a fleshpot that sold the most private parts of a woman for the use of any man and still maintain a complacent face, as if fornication were nothing more than sport? And what if her disguise was not good enough and she was unmasked as a woman? Would she have to fight her way out? Lowry would certainly hear of such a commotion and abandon any plan to take refuge in the house.
Even so, Helen knew she had to act before Lord Carlston returned from London. She and Mr Hammond had to retrieve the journal before his lordship discovered it, then she must secure the Ligatus and hand it over to Pike. If that meant braving the bawdy-house, she must put aside her sensibilities and get it done.
She yanked the tight instep over her foot and blew out a relieved breath. Boot and foot still intact. She picked up the other hessian and worked her foot down to the instep, pulling hard. A closer sound – Darby’s familiar tread across the dressing room carpet and the opening of the clothes press – swung her around to face the adjoining door.
“Do not come in, Darby. I am not well.”
Yet the door opened. Darby stood at the threshold, Helen’s green gentleman’s jacket in her arms.
“I told you not to come in,” Helen said.
“Forgive me, my lady, but I thought you might need some help getting ready.” Darby lifted the jacket.
Helen busied herself with her boot. Her maid was too perceptive. “Getting ready for what?” She finally felt her foot slide into place.
“Going out on your own, my lady. Testing yourself. Mr Quinn has been wondering when you would finally come to it. He thought you might not do so at all, but I knew you would.” She regarded Helen’s frown. “It is what you intend, isn’t it?”
It was close enough. “You were expecting it?”
“Mr Quinn says that all this training is nothing without the confidence to use it. At some point, he said, you would have to prove to yourself that you can do what the Dark Days Club demands of you.” She walked across to Helen and held out the jacket. “Shall I help you into it, my lady?”
Helen crossed her arms. “It would seem that my progress, or lack of it, is the subject of much speculation in this house.”
Darby’s hands dropped a little, the jacket sagging between them. “It was not meant with any meanness of spirit, my lady.”
Helen relented. Darby only had her well-being at heart. “I’m sure it was not. Your Mr Quinn is the least mean-spirited man I know.” She stood and held out her arms for the jacket. “Have you spoken to him about the Terrene ritual?”
“I have,” Darby said, her voice dropping into a whisper as she threaded Helen’s arm expertly into the tight-fitting sleeve. “It is a blood-bonding, my lady. He explained the basics of it – a mix of blood and milk and burned hair, drunk by Reclaimer and Terrene – but he was adamant that the intricacies were best left for Lord Carlston to explain. I pressed him, but he became a little suspicious. I did not want to alert him to our plan so I turned the conversation to other matters.” She threaded Helen’s other arm into its sleeve and, with a hoist that had all her weight behind it, fitted the jacket over Helen’s shoulders. The force sent Helen forward a step. “I am sorry I could not find out more, my lady.”
“I understand.” Helen squeezed her maid’s shoulder in reassurance. “We must find another source of the ritual.”
It must be recorded in a book somewhere. She would make a thorough search of the alchemy books that Lord Carlston had left for her perusal.
“There,” Darby said, smoothing a last crease out of the wool. “You look very fine. What do you plan to do, my lady?”
Helen rolled her shoulders into the tight fit. “I am not sure yet.”
“You should do something very male,” Darby said. She smiled tentatively. “You could go to Raggett’s Club, or drive the gig down the main street by yourself.” At Helen’s smile, she gathered momentum. “You could even eat your lunch at a chophouse. At a bench!”
Helen placed her hat upon her head. Or I could visit a bawdy-house, she thought dryly. There was nothing more male than that.
Half an hour later, she strolled along Union Street, a dingy laneway in the Old Town, with a red apple in hand, still smiling from the few moments she had spent conversing with the apple boy on the corner. She had passed him the coin, and the boy, with a lift of his sandy brows, had called, “Catch it, sir?” Helen had nodded, and her neat grab of the apple high in the air had earned her a grin of admiration from the lad before he turned to his next customer.
She could not, of course, bite into the fruit – even gentlemen did not eat in the street – but she lifted it to her nose as she weaved her way around the other pedestrians. Its fresh green scent was the sweetest she had ever inhaled.
She nearly walked past her goal: the sign above Holt’s Coffee-house was blackened with grime. It stood in a row of close-built wooden shops, each three storeys tall and in some disrepair. The draper’s next door was open, a basket of cheap cloth set outside to tempt buyers inside and a display of sprigged dress lengths in its window. Holt’s, however, looked ominously deserted.
Helen tried the stout red door. Locked. The view through one of the window’s small panes showed a dark room. A single shaft of sunlight caught the curve of a roughly made stool and the corner of a table.
“Ain’t open, mister,” a young voice said. “Not ’til after midday.”
Helen turned to find a girl of ten years perhaps watching her from beneath a rough knot of brown hair, one dirty hand clutching the bricks that quoined the corner of the building. She wore the bedraggled remnants of a woman’s dress, its flowered print faded into ghostly roses and vines.
“You lookin’ for the whores?” she asked, hoisting up the gaping neckline.
Her voice was very loud for such a small girl. Helen checked the street before answering. A man in fisherman’s trousers and a smock strode by, intent upon his own thoughts; and a dark-skinned couple dressed in sober blues, Quakers perhaps, on their way to the Meeting House, hurried past, their chins tucked to their chests. Outside a butcher shop, a group of filthy children were floating sticks in a puddle reddened by drained blood, their squabbling like the sound of agitated geese. No one was heeding her at all. It was rather thrilling to be standing in a street by herself without a chaperone.
“I am looking for one girl in particular,” she said.
“They all be asleep,” her informer offered. “We opens the same time as the coffee-’ouse.”
“I want to speak to Binny. Do you know her?” Helen asked.
The girl nodded, her watery blue eyes as wary as those of a kicked dog.
“Would you please fetch her for me?”
“The girls don’t like to be woked, mister.”
“Oh.” Helen looked in the window again, at a loss. She had not expected the child to refuse her request.
The girl edged a step closer, hand still gripping the bricked edge of the building. “Give us a penny an’ I’ll do it.”
Of course, everything here was a commercial transaction. Helen juggled the apple into her other hand and dug two fingers into her breeches’ pocket. She pulled out a penny.
“I will give you this now. And a sixpence too, if you go and tell Binny that Martha’s friend is here, and bring her back to me without disturbing anyone else.”
The girl drew in a breath. “A sixpence? You gullin’ me?”
“No, I am telling the truth. But you only get the sixpence if you bring me Binny quietly.”
The girl held out her hand. Helen dropped the penny into the cupped palm. The girl tapped the coin against a crooked front tooth. It seemed that it, and Helen, passed assessment for she jerked her pointed chin towards a sliver of dirt path that ran up the side of the coffee-house. “Follar me.”
“What is your name?” Helen asked as they edged along the narrow space between drapery and coffee-house. It was overhung with cords strung with greyed washing. The dank smell of human urine caught at the back of her throat and she coughed, hearing the sound bounce off the close-set stucco walls.
“They calls me Sprat.” The girl skirted a pile of old rope with practised ease. “Course when I start swivin’ next year I’m gunna call meself Janey.” She climbed over a small pile of broken bricks, her bare feet seemingly immune to the jagged edges, then squinted back at Helen. “Pretty name, ain’t it? You’d like that if you was lookin’ for a ladybird, wouldn’t you?”
Helen translated the girl’s words, steadying herself against the wall as she came to their awful meaning. “But you are a child.”
Sprat stopped, pale brows furrowing into a frown of indignation. “I’m near twelve.”
Heaven forfend; only twelve. “What do you do now?”
“Fetchin’ and cleanin’, and sometimes I’m allowed to keep the times and knock on the doors. Not for the floggin’ rooms though, ’cause them’s the spesh-ee-al-itee.” She sniffed back a nose full of mucus. “I can tell the time by a clock and count up to a hundred.”
A side glance checked that Helen was impressed. Helen was appalled, but she nodded and smiled.
They had arrived at the back of the coffee-house. Along the length of a small yard yellowed drying cloths hung from cord strung between two wooden stakes that leaned inwards from the burden. Behind the line of laundry, Helen could see a solid whitewashed outbuilding, fairly new by the look of it, that formed the opposite wall of the yard. The back door of the bawdy-house stood open and a greasy smell of roasted mutton turned Helen’s stomach.
“Best stay ’ere,” Sprat said. “Binny ain’t gunna like being woked at all.” She regarded Helen for a moment. “What’s yer name?”
“Tell her it’s Martha’s friend.”
Sprat gave a nod and headed into the kitchen, batting the washing on her way past.
Helen surveyed the quiet yard. A selection of long birch rods had been propped against the outbuilding wall, a wet circle on the cobbles beneath them. Newly washed, Helen surmised, and set into a patch of sun to dry. She eyed them uneasily, remembering Sprat’s description of the house speciality. A tabby cat observed her discomfort from its position on the opposite roof, then yawned as she took the few steps across the rough cobbles and parted a curtain of limp linen to look at the outbuilding.
It was a solid wooden box, the only apparent source of light and air obtained from a rectangle cut high into the door and lined with six wide-set iron bars. A cell then. Helen hesitated; perhaps it was something to do with one of the bawdy-house perversions. She wrinkled her nose: a rancid smell, like rotting flesh, emanated from within.
Hand pressed against her nostrils, she edged closer, peering through the bars into the dim interior. A straw pallet had been shoved up against the back wall, a jumble of blankets bunched at its end. A bucket, stained and buzzing with flies, stood in the corner. Nearby, an array of gnawed bones – no doubt the source of the rancid stink – lay piled carefully on the dirt floor, their own collection of flies weaving lazily above. A long chain snaked across the floor, the dirt around it swept smooth except for a churn of footprints to the left that clearly showed the chain’s extent stopped well short of the side wall and a wooden chest pushed against it.
Suddenly, the chain rattled and pulled tight. A face reared up at the bars, yellowed teeth bared.
“Sweet heaven!” Helen yelped and jumped back.
“You got somethin’ for Lester? You got somethin’ for Lester?”
A filthy hand curled around a bar and a pair of green eyes, the corners red and inflamed, blinked rapidly. The bared teeth, Helen realised, were a smile.
She straightened. Somehow she had ended up in a combat crouch three feet away. This must be Kate Holt’s mad son. The Unreclaimable.
“You got somethin’ for Lester?” The hopeful voice turned a little mournful, as if many times there had been nothing for Lester.
She could see now that underneath all the filth was a young man of about twenty-five, with thick black hair matted into hanks and a strong cleft chin. Lord Carlston had said that the vestige energy could sometimes overburden an offspring’s mind and manifest itself in fits of extreme violence, promiscuity, or, as it seemed in Lester’s case, a descent into pitiful madness. Would Lord Carlston end up in such a state if they could not find a cure? Helen pushed away the awful thought.
“Hello, Lester,” she said gently, then realised she did have something to offer. She held out the apple. “Would you like some of this?”
A female voice answered, “I’m not rightly sure he’s ever had one.”
Helen spun around. A girl stood just outside the kitchen door, a broad hand clutching an old pink flowered banyan robe around her plump body. Sprat stood at her side. They both flinched at Helen’s sudden turn.
“Are you Binny?” Helen asked.
“Course she is,” Sprat said, rallying. “You got my sixpence?”
Helen retrieved the coin and held it out. “Here.”
Sprat darted forward and collected it. “See, told ya,” she said to Binny. She scuttled off to the gate, treasure closed tight in her hand.
Binny picked her way across the yard. Her pair of high wooden pattens, designed to raise the wearer above the muck, clunked against the cobbles.
“You really gunna give it him?” she asked, nodding at the apple.
“Yes, of course. If he wants it.”
“You gotta go up nice an’ easy,” Sprat advised from the gate. “Some of the girls tease ’im and snatch stuff away, so he’s a bit grabby. If he gets yer hand, he won’t let go.”
“He likes to spit too,” Binny added.
“Spit,” Lester echoed.
Helen approached the door carefully and held out the apple. A hand, the wrist painfully thin and ingrained with dirt, shot out and grabbed the fruit.
“Ta, ta, ta, ta,” Lester called.
He disappeared from view. Helen heard a loud crunch of apple flesh and a low hum of delight.
“Sprat says you’re Martha’s friend,” Binny said softly.
Just as Helen nodded, a man’s voice, high-pitched and vicious, rang out from the kitchen. “For Chrissakes, girl, take the man’s money and get in ’ere. He don’t want to be standin’ in all that shite.”
Helen peered down the yard, glad that the brim of her beaver shaded her face from view. A dim figure stood in the doorway, then moved away again. Kate Holt’s husband?
The order sent Binny across the small distance between them. She clutched the banyan tighter, creasing the front of it around an ample bosom. She was perhaps a few years older than Helen, with a ruddy country complexion sprinkled with freckles. Her eyes were round, a pretty dove grey, and, at that moment, wide with fright.
“Pretend you’re havin’ a fumble,” she whispered and pulled aside the front of the banyan to expose one heavy breast. She grabbed Helen’s hand and pressed it against her warm flesh, squeezing her fingers around the soft weight.
Helen froze. Dear God Almighty! She felt locked in place, her eyes fixed upon the girl’s chest.
“Mrs Gunn says I was to speak only to a lady. No one else. You seem like a decent cove, sir, but Mrs Gunn was real particular. Only a lady, so I can’t tell you nothin’.” She stopped, watching Helen’s face. “Ain’t you never touched one afore?” She bit her lip, trying to hide a smile.
Face hot with horror, Helen pulled her hand free.
“Lordy, you never been with a girl, have you?” Binny said.
Helen squeezed her eyes shut. How could she act as if such casual obscenity did not matter? Yet she had vowed she would put aside her sensibilities and be a Reclaimer.
Pushing past her shock, she whispered, “I am the lady.”
“What?”
Helen opened her eyes. “I am not a man. I am the lady Mrs Gunn told you about.”
Gritting her teeth, she caught Binny’s hand and pressed it against her own chest, pushing the girl’s fingers around the small curve that the breast-band could not fully disguise.
Binny gasped. “Glory!” She patted Helen’s chest again. “Dressed in men’s clobber. Like them actresses.”
“Yes.”
Binny glanced over her shoulder. “Come with me.”
She bent and ducked under the linen, pulling Helen after her with surprising strength. They landed side by side against the wall of Lester’s cell. Binny pressed her finger against her lips.
“I’ll tell Mr Holt you just wanted a knee-trembler,” she whispered. “But you’ll need to give me the coin so’s I don’t get a hidin’. Deal?”
Although not quite sure what Binny had said, Helen nodded. The core of it was clear: she needed money to avoid a beating.
“Sorry ’bout stickin’ yer hand on me pap. I didn’t know,” Binny continued.
“No, of course not,” Helen said, feeling fresh heat rise to her face.
“I never sent you a message, my lady. I ain’t seen no sign of the cove you want – Mrs Holt’s brother, MacEvoy.”
“You do know what he looks like though?”
“That I do.” She grimaced. “Last time I saw him was about a month back. Mrs Holt give him little Lizzie.” Her voice dropped to an even softer whisper, barely more than a breath. “He cut her up bad and did things to her here.” She tapped her head. “She still screams at night. He’s real bad folk.”
Helen sounded her agreement; Lowry was the worst folk. At least her suspicion that he would come here to take refuge with his sister was right.
“Have you seen Mrs Holt hide anything special, or has she told you to stay away from some place?”
Binny shook her head. “We ain’t allowed in her particular room, nor where she and Mr Holt live, but that’s always been so.”
“Where are those rooms?”
She pointed up. “On the second floor. At the back.”
Helen studied the small window that Binny had indicated. “Did her brother stay up there too when he was last here?”
“He spent his time down below, past the molly rooms. Him and poor Lizzie.”
“Have you seen anyone else watching the house?”
“I ’ave,” Sprat said, peeking around the corner of the building.
Binny glared at the girl. “What have I told you about sneakin’ round watchin’ us?”
Sprat lifted a bony, truculent shoulder.
“Who have you seen?” Helen asked. Perhaps Philip was watching the place too. “A tall red-headed man?” She touched her own hat, searching for the right cant word. “Wearing a gray nab like this?”
“No. A go-by-ground, black hair. Looked real smoky.”
Helen translated, a short man with dark hair who looked suspicious. So not Philip, but perhaps the swarthy companion she had seen at his side near Edward Street.
“Did he come inside?”
Sprat shook her head. “Never. Just stayed in the daffy house opposite watchin’.”
Helen floundered for a moment. Daffy house. Ah, gin house.
“I knows where ’e lives,” Sprat added. “I follared ’im one day.”
Binny clicked her tongue. “Mrs Holt told you not to fork no more. Leastways, nothin’ that could be traced back here.”
Fork: Sprat was a pickpocket too.
“Will you show me where he lives?” Helen asked.
Sprat regarded her expectantly, crooked teeth showing in a sly grin of encouragement.
Helen stifled a smile at the girl’s cheerful venality. “Yes, all right, for another sixpence.” She gripped Binny’s arm for a moment in thanks. “You know where to send a message if MacEvoy comes back?”
“Twenty German Place,” Binny said.
“Yes. As soon as he comes back.”
“Soon as,” Binny promised. “And you’ll tell Mrs Gunn that I done what she said? She’s gunna teach me how to dip ladies.”
Helen nodded. She pulled out more coins. “How much?”
Binny stared down at the money for a moment, clearly at war with herself, then said quickly, “Just a crown.”
Helen handed her the coin. “Thank you.”
Binny stepped aside, aiming an admonishing finger at Sprat. “Don’t you do nothin’ on the way. Go straight. Got it?”
Sprat nodded her agreement, and pushed open the gate. It chewed along the broken cobbles in a harsh grind. “Come on then.”
The walkway at the back of the bawdy-house was even narrower than the one at the side. Helen followed Sprat apace and found herself squeezing through a twitten, the passage between the two buildings so tight that the bungaroosh walls scraped at her back and belly and left her coat and breeches smeared with a fine sandy dust. They emerged into the middle of busy Black Lion Street, their sudden appearance causing no interest whatsoever from the other pedestrians intent upon their own business.
Helen brushed down her jacket and adjusted the set of her hat, and then they were on their way again, Sprat leading the way past the Free School and up to North Street. They took the downward incline of this steep and very busy road, passing the Chapel Royal and the General Coach Office, the front of which was blocked by the ten o’clock stage preparing to leave for London. Passengers called out directions to the coachmen for the placement of their luggage atop – mostly ignored – and milled around waiting to climb into the large carriage. Helen saw Sprat eyeing a few of the gentlemen whose coats were agape, but the girl resisted temptation and forged onward down the hill.
A left turn brought them onto the Steine beside the Castle Tavern. Helen wondered how much further they were to go. Apparently past the Marine Pavilion, for Sprat marched alongside the carefully planted green that fronted the Prince Regent’s favourite home, not even looking at its splendour. Helen, however, snatched a moment to admire the classical circular building that formed the centre of the residence – its high dome supported by graceful pillars – and the two large wings that extended elegantly on either side of it. There was, she decided, a very beautiful symmetry to the whole. The Prince Regent might not be the most sensible of monarchs, but he did have excellent taste in architecture.
Leaving the Pavilion behind, they crossed the road to Grand Parade, dodging through what seemed an endless stream of wagons, gigs, phaetons and carts. Finally, Sprat stopped beside a grand house and hoisted up her dress again with an air of finality.
“Is this it?” Helen asked, looking up at the four-storey townhouse.
“Across the way,” Sprat said, jerking her head to the handsome row of houses on the road opposite: Marlborough Row. “The one with the green door.” She considered Helen for a moment then said, “I thought you was a man. You really a girl?”
There was no use denying it; Sprat had plainly heard all her conversation with Binny.
“I am.” She couldn’t resist asking, “Did you really think I was a man?”
“Yep.” Sprat squinted up at her, watery eyes earnest. “Are you gunna kill Mrs Holt’s brother?”
“Good Lord, no,” Helen said.
Sprat’s mouth bunched sideways into disappointment. “If I was a man, I’d kill ’im.”
“You do know that killing is wrong, don’t you?”
Sprat regarded her for a long moment. “There’s some people don’t deserve to breathe. Not wiv what they does.” She held out her cupped hand. “You’re ’ere now. All done.”
Helen dug in her pocket again and brought out the promised sixpence. “One last thing,” she said, holding up the coin. “Do you know who lives there?”
Sprat shrugged. “A swell. That’s all I know.”
Helen dropped the coin into the girl’s cupped hand. “Thank you.”
“Bye, mister.” Sprat gave a sly giggle and was off, darting back across busy Grand Parade.
Helen pulled her touch watch out of her fob pocket and flicked it open, clicking the three lenses into place. She settled in to wait, leaning against the corner of the end house with her arms crossed in as manly a manner as she could manage.
Thirty-five minutes later, the green door opened. Helen straightened. The little dark-haired man that she had seen at Philip’s side emerged holding a cane. He opened the front gate and stood waiting, his attention fixed upon the doorway. So he was a manservant of some kind – a valet most likely by the good cut of his brown jacket – waiting for his master. She lifted her lens to her eye: the glow around him was bright blue, and a long bruise-black feeder tentacle extended from his back, weaving through the air like a sightless snake. As suspected, another Deceiver.
For a moment, Helen lost sight of him behind a particularly high-set phaeton making its way along Grand Parade, and then she saw the tentacle reaching for the paler life force of a youth walking past the house. It curled for a second across the young man’s belly, unseen by all except Helen, then slid across the top of his thighs and groin. The youth dipped his hat to the Deceiver, never suspecting that some of his life force had just been stolen.
Helen lowered the lens, nauseated. She would never get used to seeing those feeder tentacles. There was something so inherently disgusting about the sickly colour and serpentine weave of them.
The Deceiver’s relaxed posture suddenly stiffened into obeisance. She squinted, making out another man in the townhouse doorway. It was too dim to see the features of his face below the brim of his fashionable beaver, but he was clearly speaking to the Deceiver, for the creature bowed. Helen strained to hear the words above the grind of the passing gigs and carriages.
“I am dining with the Murrays this evening, Lawrence. The new blue waistcoat, I think?”
She knew that smooth voice, even before the elegant gentleman stepped into the sunlight and full view. Helen’s heart clenched into a hard beat. Philip’s dark companion served the Comte d’Antraigues.
In reflex, she stepped back against the safety of the wall and watched the Deceiver – Lawrence – hand the Comte his cane. What did the association mean? She had seen Lawrence in Philip’s company, and she knew Philip served the Grand Deceiver. Did that mean Lawrence did also?
She pressed her hand to her mouth, stifling a very female gasp that brought a startled look from a man walking past. Helen turned her face and pretended to cough. Holy heaven, was the Comte d’Antraigues the Grand Deceiver? It was possible, of course; yet somehow it did not seem likely. Not after their interview with him at Lady Dunwick’s rout. Then again, Helen thought, as she watched the Comte stroll out of the gate, he had set Lord Carlston upon the search for the journal, and his man was watching the bawdy-house.
Whatever the case, there was one very sobering truth that could not be denied: the Grand Deceiver, whoever he may be, knew that Lowry had the journal. But did he also know it was a Ligatus?