Sylvia waited at their usual corner. She looked up and down the street. It was a busy thoroughfare: carriages came and went in both directions; beggars and street sellers tried their luck; maidservants carried baskets of fruit and vegetables back to their houses; men ducked in and out of taverns; and those who emerged wrapped their cloaks tightly around them against the bitter February cold. The sky was overcast, with that sharp frowning grey that seemed to press down against the streets. It was not a day to be outside if you could help it. Sylvia shivered.
A coachman shouted a series of obscenities at a black carriage that had pulled over not far from the school. He only just managed to avoid crashing into it. ‘Are you a complete eejit?’ he shouted at the rival coachman who, in reply, calmly raised his middle finger.
Sylvia looked away. James would be here soon. Already a line of blue-coated boys were beginning to file down from the school. Suddenly she saw him, his fair hair visible under the schoolboy cap. Sylvia smiled, but knew better than to wave. She ducked back around the corner into the Haymarket. It was a game they played: he would come around the corner whistling to himself as if he didn’t expect to see anyone, and she would stand with her back to him and then turn around as if surprised.
‘James Lovett, is it really you?’ she’d say, her eyes wide.
‘Mademoiselle Purcell,’ he’d reply. ‘Quel plaisir!’
She was wondering what he might say today, when she became aware of the commotion surrounding the carriage. From where she stood she could see the heads of the first pair of horses rearing in protest at being pulled up so suddenly earlier. Curious, she went back to the corner. There, she saw the door of the black carriage, the same one she had seen outside the school, slam shut, and heard what sounded like the rap of a cane on the roof. Hearing the noise, the coachman cracked his whip and shouted, and the horses moved off swiftly. The carriage thundered along the cobbles far faster than it should have been travelling on that crowded road, and Sylvia could see irate walkers racing for the shelter of the farthest edge.
And then it was gone. She looked back up the street, where just minutes ago she had seen James walking towards her, but he was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he was playing her game, and hiding to make her come and look for him, but that was unlike James. Games had to wait until he was out of sight of the school; he was very unlikely to try to tempt her to go where they might be seen.
Nonetheless, she turned into the street and walked hesitantly in the direction of the school. She passed the point where she had seen James, but there was no sign of him. Sylvia scoured doorways and alleyways but to no avail. She even went up to the door of the Bluecoat School in case the boy she had seen hadn’t been James after all and James had been kept in for some reason. When a porter finally answered her knock, he told her that every boy had left the school long since. Then, fighting off the anxiety that lay in wait at the back of her mind, she thought she might have missed him somehow, and that he had gone home without her.
She raced back to Phoenix Street and was out of breath when she rushed in the door.
‘What’s wrong, girl?’ her mother asked as Sylvia almost knocked her down.
‘Is James here?’
Her mother looked at her in surprise. ‘Isn’t he with you?’
Sylvia kept looking past her mother as if James might be somewhere behind her.
‘Maybe he went with one of his friends,’ Nancy said.
‘No, he was there, and then he wasn’t. There was a carriage, a black carriage.’
As she said the words Sylvia knew with absolute clarity that James had been bundled into the carriage and she had no doubt that he had been taken to his uncle’s house. ‘Oh mother,’ she wailed, ‘what are we to do?’
* * *
As soon as they got him into the carriage they tied a gag around his mouth and bound his hands behind his back. The carriage hurtled through the city so fast James would have fallen from his seat if he hadn’t been held fast by the man who had bundled him in from the street. Across from him, the unmistakable form of the chief Ugly leaning forward so that his large face was only inches from James.
‘Not so brave now, are you, without your butcher friends?’
He slapped James hard across the face, in case his words might not be trusted to do their work. James reeled from the blow and again only the other man’s arms saved him from plunging to the floor. Grady prepared to strike him once more but the other man raised his arm.
‘Let him be,’ he said. ‘Or there could be trouble when we get there.’
Grady held his arm in mid-air for a moment, as if he couldn’t decide whether to complete the blow or let it drop. Through the expressions in his face James could read the ponderous machinery of his brain considering the problem. At last, with painful reluctance, he let his arm return to its place.
‘You just wait,’ he said. ‘You just wait and see.’
James tried to make out where they were going, but Grady, delighted to be able to do something to frustrate him, pulled the blinds down on the carriage windows. James knew they had been headed south when they took him, and the carriage hadn’t turned, so they must have crossed the river. He felt the carriage slow as it climbed a hill and then turn to the right and pick up speed again. It must be Thomas Street, James thought. We must be headed westward out of the city. He pictured the city in his mind. From Thomas Street they would go past the workhouse towards Kilmainham, unless they went near the Royal Hospital.
James gave it up. What did it matter? It was not as if he might send out a signal to the butchers of Ormond Market to let them know where he was. Still the carriage kept hurtling on, out of James’s map of the city. When eventually it stopped, he calculated that they must be deep in some country place full of fields and trees. Well, they could provide cover enough for escape. Wherever they were bringing him, they would not succeed in keeping him long, he would make sure of that.
‘Journey’s end,’ Grady announced, pulling a black cloth from his pocket and binding it with unnecessary force across James’s eyes so that he could see nothing. He felt himself being manhandled roughly out of the carriage and carried into some building. Then his stomach lurched as he felt Grady descend a flight of steep steps. Cold, damp air filled his nostrils, reminding him of Newgate. He could hardly …? But no, they had travelled too far for that. He was set down on a cold stone floor and heard the clink of a chain as his left hand was grabbed and shackled. His gag was removed, and Grady gave a snort of pleased laughter as he looked down on his handiwork.
‘Can’t you at least remove the blindfold and unbind my arms?’ James said, and immediately regretted it.
‘Poor diddums,’ Grady said. ‘Aren’t you comfy?’
He found this so funny he almost choked on his laughter before James heard the sound of a heavy door closing.
* * *
John Purcell tried to console his daughter. ‘He can’t be far away,’ he said, though in his heart he knew James didn’t have to be very far away to be entirely out of the reach of his family. But he knew his daughter, and knew she wouldn’t be satisfied with general remarks.
‘I’ll find out,’ he said. ‘Someone must have seen something, and the city is full of wagging tongues. I’ll start in Queen Street.’
‘Let me come with you,’ Sylvia said, and Purcell nodded. It was better that she be out doing something than fretting at home.
* * *
The door opened. James heard footsteps approach. He steeled himself for a blow, but none came.
‘Wakey, wakey’ came the voice of the thug as he pulled the blindfold off and removed the gag. Finally, he unbound James’s arms and removed the shackle.
‘Where am I?’ James said.
‘Hell,’ Grady said as he grabbed him by the collar of his coat and dragged him up the steps.
The cellar steps led up into a kitchen and James was amazed to see Mrs Rudge and Smeadie standing in front of him.
‘The poor creature,’ Mrs Rudge said. ‘What have they done to you?’
Smeadie contented himself with a non-committal nod.
‘Haven’t you work to attend to?’ Grady barked, pulling James out of the kitchen.
They entered a wide, stone-flagged hall. A few paces down, they came to a high double door. Grady knocked and James heard his uncle’s mild voice commanding them to enter.
He was standing in front of a blazing fire. Miss Deakin sat in a chair beside the fire, her small eyes fastened on James.
‘Nephew,’ Dunmain said. ‘Welcome to our house. How was school today?’
‘What am I doing here?’ James asked, ignoring the taunting civility.
‘Your mouth has brought you here,’ Miss Deakin hissed from her chair.
‘What do you mean?’ James said.
‘Running around the city telling every ragamuffin and fishwife that you’re the real Lord Dunmain,’ she said.
Dunmain raised his hand. ‘We mustn’t quarrel,’ he said.
‘Is it the fact that I say it, or that it’s true that grieves you?’
‘Do you hear the boy, Richard, how impudently he addresses me?’
Dunmain sighed. ‘Understand this, James: while I live you will never be Lord Dunmain.’ The civility was gone, his voice now pure steel. ‘Surely that much is obvious? You’re a clever boy, after all.’
‘Not just while you live, either. The boy will never come into the title.’
Dunmain frowned impatiently at this intervention.
‘I plan to remain alive for some time yet,’ he said.
James still couldn’t see what he was doing there. Unless … No, he pushed the thought away. But it wouldn’t go away.
‘Do you plan to kill me then? To get me out of the way of your plans?’
James realised that this would be the perfect solution. Was this to be the end, then? His heart raced, and he saw that his hands were trembling. He didn’t want to die.
Dunmain eyed James, as if considering this possibility carefully. ‘It would be one solution, wouldn’t it, James? And it would be hardly noticed. Do you know how many boys die in this city every week, every day even? Typhus, pox, fever, starvation, falling under the wheels of a carriage … You could spend your time going to their funerals.’
‘The Purcells would notice. The Ormond Market butchers would notice …’
James found it hard to believe he was even having this conversation. For the first time he had a clear realisation of just how much danger he was in. More than any displays of fury or violence, it was his uncle’s calmness that disturbed him. He seemed to be the kind of man who could contemplate anything without flinching, without so much as raising an eyebrow. He thought of Sylvia waiting for him at the Haymarket. He felt a sharp stab of pain when it came to him that he might not see her again.
‘Yes,’ he heard his uncle saying, ‘your butcher friends are a slight nuisance, but a band of Popish troublemakers will not cause as much difficulty as you might think. Death is not an unreasonable, or even an unusual outcome.’
He let the words sink in. ‘As it happens, it is not entirely necessary.’
James had no idea what he meant by that.
‘The world is a big place, and great distance can easily achieve what only death might once have done,’ Dunmain said.
He examined James’s school uniform. ‘I hope you made the best of your scholarship,’ he said. ‘For your school days are over now. It’s time for new horizons. Isn’t that right, Grady?’
James had forgotten that Grady was in the room. He turned around to see the grinning thug coming straight towards him. James instinctively put his arm up, but the blow had connected before he saw it. He felt his head spin around and the image of Miss Deakin’s widened eyes flashed into his brain before the room exploded with bright lights and then he saw nothing more.