THERE WAS NOWHERE ELSE to sit except on the narrow, hard bed and the ward wasn’t that warm so after a little while, Murdoch followed Traveller’s example and got under the blanket. Candles were burning in the wall sconces but they were inferior wax and threw off little light. He shifted, trying to make himself comfortable. He would have liked his pipe; he would have liked one of Katie’s hot stews, but most of all he wished he had something to read. There was nothing to do except go to sleep and it was only a quarter past six.
“You’re looking like you’ve lost your best friend.” Traveller had opened his eyes and was grinning at Murdoch. “Finding the life a little quiet, are you?”
“Like the grave. I’m tempted to rouse all the men and start up some sea shanties. That’d liven things up.”
“You’d get thrown out in no time. The bosses don’t like rowdy behaviour. You might get away with singing a few hymns, but you’ll have a hard time finding many in this bunch who know the words. Besides, hymns aren’t popular with this lot of unrepentant sinners. They’ve had them stuffed down their gobs too many times and had to act grateful … Just a minute, this’ll cheer you up.” He brought his hand from underneath the blanket and keeping whatever it was hidden in his fist, he handed something to Murdoch. “Be careful. There’s always somebody ready to do a Judas for an extra bowl of soup.” He pressed a small vial into Murdoch’s palm, then rolled onto his back and closed his eyes. “Save some for me,” he muttered.
Murdoch glanced around him. As far as he could tell in the poor light, nobody was watching him. He waited a few minutes, surreptitiously unscrewed the top of the vial, then slid down the bed and pulled the blanket over his head. Carefully, he took a couple of sips from the bottle and almost choked as a burning liquid hit his throat. He struggled to suppress his coughing and waited while the fire in his empty belly raged. Still under cover of the blankets, he replaced the top of the bottle. Save some for me, indeed. One sip would last him a week.
He felt a tap on his shoulder and pulled the blanket down to nose level. Traveller was leaning across the gap between the beds.
“You all right?”
“What the hell was that?”
The tramp chuckled. “It’s homemade. I got it from a toby in the country. He calls it witch’s milk. Powerful, ain’t it?”
The burning in his gut was subsiding a little now and Murdoch was feeling a bit light-headed.
“If you’ve had enough, give it back to me. Don’t let it be seen,” said Traveller.
Murdoch handed over the little bottle. “How did you smuggle it in here?”
“Easy. My truss comes in handy.”
Murdoch felt a spasm of uneasiness at the memory of how warm the vial had been. Traveller disappeared underneath his blanket and Murdoch heard a smothered cough. A few minutes later, the tramp’s head reappeared, his face even redder than before.
“That’ll make you forget your troubles in no time.”
Murdoch burst out laughing. “It’ll make you forget more than your troubles if you drink too much of it. What is it?”
“It’s a secret formula, but I think my chum makes it from potatoes.”
Alf giggled from the next bed. He hadn’t been asleep after all. “Can I have some?”
“No, you cannot,” said Traveller. “We drank it all.” He pushed down the blanket and sat up. “I’m wide awake now. That’s the sinister side of that drink. It don’t put you to sleep right away.”
The simpleton bounced on his bed like a child. “Will you tell us a story, Mr. Traveller? Mr. Williams hasn’t heard your yarns before.”
Murdoch seized the opportunity the boy was giving him. “Great idea, I’d like that, as I’m awake now myself.”
“What story do you want, Alf?” Traveller’s voice was indulgent. Even in the dim light of the candle, Murdoch could see the tramp’s eyes were glistening. He must have taken a really good slug of the witch’s milk.
“Tell him how you got your stripes. That’s a good one.”
Murdoch laughed. “I have to admit I was curious about them myself. They look kind of severe.”
“Thirty-five lashes. Fifteen the first time, twenty the second, and I got them while I was detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Now I suppose you want to know what I was doing in the penitentiary?”
“If you want to tell me.”
“Why wouldn’t I? I ain’t ashamed. Not everybody who goes to jail is a criminal, you know.”
Not wanting to stop him, Murdoch nodded sympathetically.
Traveller settled himself more comfortably and laced his fingers across his chest. “I was born and bred in Newfoundland, but I left when I was fourteen. No future there that I could see. My family was most wiped out by the influenza so there was nobody to weep for me. I signed up on a whaler. Got to see a lot of the world. I was a hot head, drank too much even for a sailor, but I was doing well on the ship. You can make a lot of money on just one voyage if you’re lucky. But then, like now, there’s always some cove who wants to pull down a big healthy lad and in back then, it was the first mate, a weasel fart-catcher of a bastard who took a scunner to me from the moment I put my foot on the deck. Like I said, I was always a hot head and I took exception to the sneers and the duties I’d pull, which were always the coldest and the messiest. According to him, they was never done right so I was always up on some charge or other and me pay docked. He was always ready to hand me a stotter to the head if he thought I looked at him the wrong way. One night, he went too far and shoved me headfirst into a bucket of fish guts. I took exception and turned around and slugged him.”
“Hooray,” exclaimed Alf in delight and he boxed the air with his fists.
Traveller continued to stare up at the ceiling. “So the cove, he fell down, cracked his ugly head on the mast. He’s a drivelling idiot for the rest of his life. I was charged and sent down, but the captain gave me a good testimonial so I only got three years and a bit of triangulation. Fifteen stripes. I wouldn’t have got that except I wouldn’t eat humble pie. Why should I? I was defending myself.”
He paused and Murdoch saw that even after so many years, he was still bitter about his treatment.
“Well, like I said, I’ve bin given thirty-five all told. Those first ones for standing up for myself, the other twenty for the same reason. Near the end of my sentence, I took on a guard who could have been the kith and kin of the first mate. He wanted to stick my head in the piss bucket. I refused and another three years was added on to my sentence for that little tap.”
Alf laughed in delight. “Some little tap. I know your little taps, Traveller.”
The tramp frowned. “Be quiet, Alf. Our friend here will get the impression I’m a violent man, which I ain’t.”
Trevelyan was presenting himself as a wronged man and Murdoch wondered how true that was.
“Like I said, Mr. Williams, I was a hot head in those days, but I’m as meek as a lamb now. Fighting ain’t worth the trouble it brings.”
“But you’d do it again, surely? You couldn’t stand for that kind of treatment.”
“That’s the truth, I couldn’t, but I have a cooler head now and I’m more canny about seeing trouble coming. The tobies all know I won’t put up with shite and they keep their distance.”
“They’re ascared of him,” chirped Alf.
“Anything else you want to know, son?” Traveller asked Murdoch.
“How’d you end up a casual?”
“Same way you have, I don’t wonder. I’d lost my appetite for the sea when I came out of the peg, but I couldn’t get a job that was steady. I never was much good about gaffers, but when I came out the aversion was even stronger and I couldn’t abide any man who always had to prove he was boss. If they paid fair and treated me decent, I’d work for them and willingly, but that kind of cove was hard to find. To most of them I was as low as an un-baptized savage. They acted surprised sometimes that I could even understand English. Given that I also like to keep on the move, that I get stir crazy now if I stay in one place too long, you have what you see here, a wayfarer, as they like to call us.”
“Hooray,” said Alf again. He’d spoken too loud and Bettles, who was in the bed opposite, growled out a curse. The dormitory was quieter now, most of the men seemed to be resigned to going to sleep.
“It must be a hard life,” Murdoch said softly.
“Not if you know the ropes, it ain’t so bad.” Traveller winked at him. “You ain’t said much about yourself though.”
“Not much to tell.” Murdoch braced himself for the questions he expected to come at him, but the tramp suddenly yawned.
“Why don’t we save it till the morning? I’m in need of my kip, now while I can. Alf, you lie down and close your eyes, do you hear me?”
“Yes, Mr. Traveller.” The boy immediately slid under his blanket. “Good night, Mr. Williams.”
“Good night, Alf. Good night, Traveller.”
The tramp rolled over onto his side and grunted a response. Murdoch lay back. He was feeling ravenous. He sighed and rolled over onto his stomach to flatten the emptiness. The sour smell from his pillow was nauseating, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
Murdoch didn’t know what time it was because the room was too dark to see the clock, but he felt that he hadn’t slept long. He hadn’t been able to fall asleep after Traveller’s story and was still awake when the old nabber had come in to blowout the candles at nine o’clock. After that, he’d tossed and turned for what seemed like more than an hour. Silence must be observed, the attendant had said, but the dormitory was noisy. Men snoring, talking in their sleep, getting up to make copious water in the bucket. One man had the deep racking cough of the consumptive that he knew all too well from hearing Arthur Kitchen’s for the past four years. Somebody at the end of the row had a nightmare and had started crying out. Two or three men closer to him shouted curses at the fellow, whoever he was. Alf giggled nervously even in his sleep.
Traveller was right about the room getting cold. The stove was not stoked up and drafts poured through the gaps around the window frames. One blanket was not enough and Murdoch wished he had his own warm quilt. Added to all that, the straw mattress was prickly and hard. Was this all worth it? he wondered. So far he hadn’t come across any new evidence. Ed’s departure for the infirmary had saved Murdoch’s bacon, but it also meant Ed hadn’t identified his own boots. The description Mrs. Bright had given of a tramp walking across the Gardens could fit anyone of a dozen men here, as could that of the man Mr. Swanzey had encountered in the greenhouse. He tried to cheer himself up with the hope that his suspect was here, one of the handful of men who were repeaters.
Murdoch sensed rather than heard somebody beside the bed. He opened his eyes, saw a silhouette of a man bending toward him. He had something in his raised hand. With one swift movement, Murdoch rolled onto the floor, dropping into a crouch, and straining to see in the dark. The figure backed away and he heard a familiar giggle.
“Alf, what the hell are you doing?”
Murdoch tried to keep his voice low but the youth had startled him. Anger followed.
“You said you was hungry,” whispered Alf. “So I was going to surprise you and put a piece of bread under your pillow.” He showed a crust to Murdoch. “I smuggled it in my boot, but I wrapped it up good in some newspaper.”
Murdoch got to his feet. “That was kind of you, but I’ll wait until morning. Why don’t you go back to bed.”
“Yes, why don’t we?” growled a voice from the bed across from them. Murdoch heard the scratch of a match and a light flared, illuminating Bettles’s face. There was a sconce directly behind his bed and he reached up and lit the candle.
“What the hell’s going on?” Kearney stirred in the adjacent bed and also sat up.
“Little Alf was having a tryst with his sweetheart.”
“He was giving me a piece of bread,” said Murdoch.
“My, touchy, aren’t we?” Bettles turned to Kearney. “What do you think, Sean? Have we uncovered a couple of nancy boys?”
Kearney swung his legs over the side of his bed. Bettles did the same. The simpleton knew exactly what was in store for him. He dropped to the floor and scuttled underneath his bed, whimpering like a frightened dog.
Somehow, Bettles had managed to smuggle one of the bathhouse towels into the dormitory. He’d covered his pillow with it and now he pulled the towel away and began to twist it into a rope.
“Perhaps these two need a bit of a lesson, Sean.”
Kearney had a towel as well and he picked it up and started to twist it. “I’d say that’s a good and necessary thing to do.”
Both men stepped across the aisle, blocking any chance Murdoch might have to get away from the wall. He was trapped between Traveller’s bed and his own, both of which had heavy metal frames bolted to the floor. He had nothing to defend himself with except the thin pillow and he grabbed this and held it in front of himself.
Bettles grinned. “Fat lot of good that’s going to do you, Mr. Nancy Boy. This is the casual ward, or did you forget? I’ll split that thing in two with one swing.”
The moment hung in the balance, Murdoch on his feet, ready for the attack, the two men opposite him, just as ready to move in on him. Nobody had raised his voice and the rest of the ward appeared to be fast asleep.
As far as Murdoch knew, that included Traveller, but suddenly, with as quick and easy a movement as Kearney had made, he sat up and pushed away the blanket.
“Put it down, Bettles, that’d be despoiling of public property and we can’t have that, can we?” His bare feet dangled over the edge of his bed. He was no longer a young man, but at that moment, nobody would have doubted his ability to make good his command. In his hand, a blade gleamed dully in the light of the candle. It was a razor.
Bettles grimaced. “I ain’t got no truck with you, Traveller. This fellow’s a Miss Molly.”
“No he ain’t.”
“Alfie here was a going to climb in bed with him.”
“No he weren’t. The lad’s as simple as a puppy dog. Now, I suggest we all calm down and get some kip. Before you know it, we’ll be called.”
Traveller got off the bed with such speed that both Bettles and Kearney jumped back.
“Suit yourself,” said Bettles. “He’s in the bed next to you, not me.”
If Traveller hadn’t been blocking the way, Murdoch would have swung a punch at the man and hang the consequences, but neither Bettles nor Kearney were within reach. They slowly eased back to their own beds, allowing the towels to untwist.
“Maybe we’d better leave the candle lit,” said Traveller. “Just so we know there won’t be anybody wandering around where they shouldn’t. And I mean anybody.”
Alf giggled and stuck his head out from under the bed.
“You can come out now,” said Traveller. “Get into your own bed and don’t stir till sun-up even if the whole ward is starving. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Mr. Traveller.”
Alf scrambled into bed and Traveller sat back down.
“Thank you,” said Murdoch.
Murdoch looked over at Bettles and Kearney, who were stretched out on their beds, as ready and alert as wolves. Had they guessed he was a police officer and used Alf as an excuse to trounce him?
“Don’t worry about them two,” said Traveller. “I’ve had all the sleep I want. You can get some more kip and I’ll make sure our friends don’t move.”
“No, I’ll do it. I’m wide awake myself. What have we got, another two hours until the call? I’ll stay up.”
It was true what he said. He was hardly going to fall asleep when the man in the next bed possessed a vicious-looking open razor that he clearly would have no hesitation in using and two husky thugs across from him wanted to see blood.
Traveller shrugged. “Suit yourself. Wake me if you need to. Don’t even let those two take a piss.” He lay down and pulled his blanket up around his shoulders. “Don’t let that fool boy bring me his mucky sandwich either.”