Chapter Twenty
T he hot stench of unwashed mankind met Jack at the door of The One Tun. That and the noise of the occupants. Even this early in the evening, they must have been there for some time, for drunken shouts filled the air, mingling with screams and screeches from the women, doxies all of them. Thank God he’d saved little Josie and her fellows from a fate such as this.
The beamed ceiling hung low, and Jack was glad he no longer had his tall top hat. He took off his grubby cocked hat and, holding it to his chest, followed young Benjamin through the crowd as he elbowed his way toward the bar. To right and left stood tables crowded with the source of all the noise, the knives and forks chained down. What sort of a place needed to prevent the theft of eating utensils in this way? And did they ever wash them in between uses?
Despite the hat, it bore in upon him that he stood out the way a woman in a ballgown would have done in White’s, that bastion of male dominance. Every head turned to stare and, as he progressed behind Benjamin, silence fell as if from the wake of a boat to spread out behind him. These were a people deeply suspicious of anyone who wasn’t a part of their world, and Jack could not have looked more so had he tried. The temptation to glance back over his shoulder or from side to side burgeoned, but he fought it off. He must betray no lack of confidence in front of them, or they would pounce on it.
Benjamin reached the bar, by dint of everyone falling back as though afraid to catch some disease of the rich Jack might be carrying, and leaned upon it in an attitude of casual arrogance. His sharp, street-wise face fitted in here as though he’d been born to it. Which he had.
“Ben Sharpe,” the innkeeper said, without pausing in his wiping out of tankards with a less-than-clean rag. He was a swarthy individual with bushy brows that met above his nose and a thatch of matching dark hair hanging so low over his forehead as to have almost joined in. A rash of dark stubble covered his lantern jaw, and a couple of gold teeth glinted in his mouth as he spoke. “What brings you down here to The Tun ?” But his gaze was on Jack even as he posed the question.
The silence in the room bristled with tension, suspicions bouncing around the walls as though given living substance. If Jack looked over his shoulder, he’d find the customers pressed up close behind him in open threat, probably fingering whatever weapons they had about them. Was everyone in the tavern agog and listening?
“Come to see my pa,” Benjamin announced. “I b’lieve as he can help this cove.” He gave an expressive shrug of his scrawny shoulders. “If he’s a mind to, that is.”
An indrawn gasp at Jack’s effrontery hissed around the low rafters.
Everyone was indeed agog and listening to his business.
Jack had never felt quite so intimidated. His sword stick would be no use whatsoever against so many, and his pistols were hidden in an inner pocket and, if an emergency arose, could only take out two at most. A quick glance around at his audience showed him that most of the women had melted away, and in their place a motley array of characters as threatening as the innkeeper were standing, eyeing him with suspicion. Most worryingly, all had set aside their tankards of drink, and a good few of them clutched knotted staffs in their equally knotted hands. One of them gripped a piece of rope on the other end of which a scarred bullterrier strained, piggy eyes fixed on Jack as though he were a piece of prime steak. Or a rat.
The innkeeper rubbed his sizeable nose, from which sprouted hairs as dark and bristly as his eyebrows. “Your pa know you’re comin’?”
The crowd edged half a step closer.
Jack determined not to give them another glance.
Benjamin shrugged again. “I don’t know what business you think it is o’ yours, Tom Havelock, but so far as I’m concerned, ’tain’t nothin’ to do wi’ you. I’ve gotta speak with my pa, an’ you ain’t stoppin’ me.”
Havelock drew himself up to his considerable height, puffing his chest out. “Mr. Sharpe don’t give an audience to jus’ anyone, and well you knows it. You can go in, young Benjamin, and no question. I ain’t arguin’ with that. But this cove’s a swell’un by the look of him, an’ he don’t go in unless he states his business an’ gets searched, or I’ll be in trouble with the guv’nor.”
A battle of heavy stares ensued, but Havelock carried the day, as age and experience triumphed over brash youth. Benjamin shrugged yet again, as if to imply his setback was of no importance. “Awright then. If you has to know. My gen’leman cove thinks my pa might know somethin’ to help him find his little nipper wot’s been taken ’gainst his will.”
A young woman in a low cut scarlet dress that might once have graced a more salubrious establishment than this one, shouldered her way to the front of the audience of men. Auburn hair hung in unruly curls down her back. At any other time she would have aroused Jack’s interest, but not now, for more than one reason. “His little nipper, eh?” She surveyed Jack from head to foot, a speculative look in her eyes. “A swell’s little nipper, no less. What’s Reuben Sharpe got to do with nippers? He ain’t got nothin’ to do wiv anyone as’d snatch littluns, nor no bands of pickpockets, if that’s what you’re implyin’.”
“No one said he did,” Benjamin snapped. “Keep yer nose out, Molly Bragg. Ain’t nothin’ to do with you, neither.” He turned back to the innkeeper. “He’s here, then, I s’pose?”
The innkeeper pulled a face not unlike that of the scarred bull terrier. It didn’t improve his appearance any. “He’s in the back room, where he always is. But I got to search your swell cove before he can go in.”
Another shrug. “Help yerself then. It ain’t no skin orf my nose.”
Havelock shot Jack a challenging look and stumped out from behind the bar. Like Jack, the top of his head brushed the low, soot stained roof beams. “Arms out.”
What Jack would have liked to have done was plant the man a facer to knock him flat, but that would have got him nowhere, possibly even killed by the looks on the faces of his audience. So what he actually did was to lift his arms while the man ran his beefy mitts over his body. Not unexpectedly, he found the two dueling pistols straightaway.
“Wot’s this then?” He held them up delicately between thumbs and forefingers, like a duchess with a teacup, fixing Jack with a low-browed scowl. “Thinkin’ of goin’ in to see the gov’nor armed, were you?”
“I always travel armed when I enter the Devil’s Acre,” Jack said, enunciating his words clearly for the benefit of the watching crowd. “I’d be a fool not to.”
“Then I think I’ll keep ’em here for you, while you’re seein’ the guv’nor. He don’t take to coves who bring weapons to the table. Hidden weapons.” He laid the two pistols on the bar.
Jack fixed him with a hard stare. “They’d better be here when I return for them.”
Havelock gave a snort. “If I says they’ll be here, then here they’ll be. You think we’re all thieves in The One Tun?”
Best not to answer this one, as that was exactly what Jack was thinking.
Benjamin straightened his skinny limbs and pulled himself up from his position lounging at the bar. “Then we’re goin’ in.” He turned to Jack. “You’d better come wi’ me right now. I daresn’t leave you alone in here.” He grinned, showing his crooked, yellowed teeth. “I don’t think this lot likes the look o’ you too much.”
In agreement on that, Jack followed Benjamin as he edged through the surly, still threatening crowd, who seemed less inclined, now, to move than ever, toward the far side of the tap room. There, a low door lurked in a shadowy corner, guarded by two enormous men, their beefy arms folded across their wide chests. By their cauliflower ears and broken noses, they looked as though the fighting ring was their preferred milieu. Probably bare knuckled fights like those Jack had gone to watch and bet on in his reckless youth.
Both of them surveyed Jack out of hostile eyes for a moment before the one on the right unfolded his arms as though this were a great chore. He wore a dirty, collarless shirt, the sleeves rolled up to above the elbow to exhibit a tangled mass of tattoos. With a curl of his hairy upper lip, he tapped on the door with the delicacy of a duchess, while never taking his watchful eyes from Jack’s face.
“Enter.” A deep rumble of a voice Jack well remembered answered.
The tattooed man jerked his head at Jack and Benjamin, and with one muscle-bound arm, pushed the door open. Jack had to duck to pass through it. Even Benjamin, who was small and wiry, had to stoop to avoid losing his own jaunty cap.
The room Jack entered was small and square and hung like the taproom with low beams overhead that brushed the top of Jack’s head. A coal fire blazed in the hearth and in the center of the room sat a solid oak desk, much gouged about on top and most of its polish gone. Behind the desk reclined a mountain of a man who made both Havelock and Jack look slight, and who, like them, would have found it difficult to stand upright in the room. Time had not been kind to him. Not only was he tall, but in possession of a huge gut that he’d not had when Jack had last met him eight years since. The buttons of his brocade waistcoat strained across it, intent on giving up the challenge to hold him in. In front of him, on the table, lay the remains of his dinner—a well-picked chicken carcass.
“Jack Deveril, or I’m a niffy-naffy feller. Well, strike me down.” The man’s piggy eyes, nestling within flaccid, pouchy cheeks, ran up and down Jack in obvious assessment. “The years’ve done you well, I see.” His greasy lips curved in a smile. “I didn’t think you’d dare venture into my neck o’ the woods ever again.” He coughed into a voluminous handkerchief. “Although I’ve heard about your exploits snatchin’ children off the streets. Rumor has it you’ve been cookin’em and puttin’em in pies.”
He gave a great guffaw which ended wheezily in more coughing. Was that blood on the handkerchief?
Jack fought to hang onto his self-control. His son’s life depended on his comportment now. He mustn’t put a foot wrong. “Well, here I am.”
The two burly guards had shouldered their way into the room behind Jack and Benjamin and their meaty, solid presence rendered the room airless and claustrophobic. Did they imagine Jack might try to harm their guv’nor even now, with all those men out in the taproom just feet away? He wasn’t an idiot.
Reuben Sharpe wiped his mouth and waved a dismissive hand at them. “You can wait outside. My boy’s enough guard for me tonight. And me an’ this gentleman’re old acquaintances.” He nodded at Benjamin. “You got your barking irons, boy?”
For answer, Benjamin tapped his waist where his loose coat covered the top of his trousers. “I don’t come out wivout’em, Pa.” The two guards, faces wreathed in disappointment that they weren’t to be involved in the battering of such a swell cove, and whatever profits that might generate, retreated, and Benjamin closed the door behind them.
Reuben nodded, a satisfied grin spreading across his face, and Jack had pause to wonder if it had been a good idea to entrust himself to Benjamin’s tender care. The boy had spent more than half his life in his father’s company and been nearly a man grown when his mother had escaped that life, and was also used to going about armed. Perhaps his present employment was all a sham. It didn’t do to take people at face value.
Reuben pushed aside the plate of bones. “Warren said you’d come.”
“Warren?” Jack frowned. What did Sharpe mean by that? It wasn’t lost on him that Warren had been Mary’s surname and thus it was Edward’s as well. But who was this Warren and how was he someone Reuben Sharpe knew? Mary had told him she’d had no family to turn to, and that she’d been quite alone in the world. It seemed Reuben Sharpe was already well acquainted with Jack’s reason for being here. That would save some time.
“Know the name, don’tcha?” Reuben was enjoying this, his eyes dancing with malicious fervor.
Of course he did. Jack’s mind leapt back to the day he’d first met Mary Warren, ten years ago. She’d been singing in a tavern, in Limehouse, when he’d come in with some friends for a dare. It hadn’t been the sort of establishment men of the upper echelons of the Ton were wont to frequent, but he and his fellow young blades had taken it upon themselves to visit every tavern in London between them. The Angel, Limehouse, had been on Jack’s list, and back then it had happened to be the tavern run by Reuben Sharpe.
Mary had been the evening’s entertainment. As Jack and his friends had settled with their tankards of ale, she’d taken to the makeshift stage, such as it was, to sing Farewell and Adieu to you Spanish Ladies . An aptly chosen ditty, which had fitted her dockside audience who joined in with the rousing chorus with gusto. Most of them, as Jack found out later, were sailors who’d been, or still were, part of the force fighting against the French.
Jack and his friends had raised their glasses to her and sung as lustily as the denizens of The Angel, but Jack had only had eyes for the singer.
Mary had been the most beautiful girl Jack had ever seen, with her wild black hair cascading about her almost naked shoulders, her slanting cat’s eyes and her luscious red lips. A look of the exotic about her, but an accent that was pure Welsh valleys. Young and full of bravado, with a heart already swelling with love, he’d raised his own tankard of ale in salute to the beautiful young singer and the brave sailors who surrounded him. And that had been the start of the relationship that had led to her death two years later.
“Who is this Warren?” Jack asked. Was he mistaken in his belief that Mary had possessed no relatives? She’d been gone so long, now, it was hard to recall. And her death in childbirth had left him so racked with despair his reaction had been to shut out all memories of her. Only her child had remained, consigned, at first, to a wetnurse chosen from amongst his tenants at Broxbourne Park and only later part of his life in London.
But Reuben wasn’t about to reveal all his secrets straightaway. He leaned forwards suddenly, pointing a stubby, dirty-nailed finger at a rickety chair. “Sit yerself down, why don’tcha? Milord.” That last word came out as a sneer, the effect somewhat marred by another fit of coughing. This time it was obvious he was coughing up blood. Of course, consumption—with his pasty almost gray skin and hollows around his eyes, it was clear the man had that death sentence of an illness.
Jack eyed him in speculation for a few seconds. But, if he wanted to find out what was going on here and retrieve his son, he’d best do as he was asked. He sat down, and Benjamin retreated to the door, which he leaned against, arms folded across his scrawny chest.
“That’s better.” Reuben wheezed a chesty cough again, this time producing nothing. “I got a lot to say to you.”
Jack resisted the inclination to say, “Well, get on with it then,” and stayed silent.
Reuben rubbed his stubbly chin. “I can’t say as I ain’t got no axe to grind wi’ you, my fine lord, because I has. And you well knows it. You prigged my wife’n’fam’ly more’n eight years back, and I ain’t a man as takes that lyin’ down.” He grinned, flashing an array of brown teeth and a couple of gold ones at Jack. “Though I’m a man as likes to take his time with things like revenge. No rushin’ in like a bull in a china shop for Reuben Sharpe. I’m a man as likes to savor his revenge when it comes. A patient man, that’s me.”
That this was revenge had occurred to Jack as soon as Sharpe had mentioned Mary’s surname. Whoever this Warren who’d taken Edward was, he must have known she’d worked for Reuben in the past. And eight years ago, when Jack had helped Martha Sharpe escape her bully of a husband with her brood of terrified children, Reuben had sworn Jack would live to regret it. The man was right. He’d waited a long time to hit back, if that was what this was. And perhaps the arrival of this man Warren had triggered this.
“You have my son?”
“Do I?” Reuben smiled. “You thinks I do, most clear. But do I? What would I want wiv a lad like him? A twig off the grand trunk of milord Jack Deveril? A small an’ snivelly twig, at that. Cries like a baby, so I’m told.”
Jack held his tongue. If he spoke now, he might end up leaping over the table and seizing the man about his doughy throat.
Reuben smirked. “Another has your boy, not me. Another who has a right to him in law. He come to me for help, seein’ as the last he saw of the boy’s mother was in my tavern in Limehouse. Seein’ a way to make you pay, I agreed.” He coughed again, his whole body wobbling with the effort. “And seein’ as I don’t have much longer on this Earth, I thought as it were high time I fulfilled my promise to you. And made you pay for stealin’ my wife away from me. So me and this other cove, this Warren, we’re working together on this. You’re dicked in the nob if you think I’m goin’ let you have your brat back fer nothin’.”
Jack’s fists clenched.
“You owes me bad, fer what you did eight year back. You prigged my fam’ly and deprived me of their use. A man’s wife is his property, same as his dog and his business, and you took my wife away from me. Now, with Warren’s help, I’ve done the same to you.” A self-satisfied smile crept across his sweaty face.
“What is it that you want?” the words came out through Jack’s gritted teeth.
Another smirk graced that ugly face. “What does anyone want from a wheyfaced nob like you?” He laughed. “Money. Me and Warren wants money from you, or you’ll never see your boy agin. He wants money for what you took from him, and I want money for what you took from me. Same thing.” He coughed again, bloody spittle on his lips. “Only I wants money that I can’t take with me—for my boy.” His eyes went to Benjamin where he still stood leaning against the door. “To set my boy up in honest business, and to look after my little ones that I’ve got from my second wife.”
Whoever had provided Sharpe with further children could hardly be his wife, as he’d never divorced Martha Sharpe or Jack would have heard about it. He forbore from pointing out that Benjamin already possessed an honest occupation working at the docks. “Who is this Warren, then? Tell me, and I might believe he exists and this is not all down to you.”
Reuben stuck his fingers in the pockets of his waistcoat, a difficult undertaking due to his enormous girth, and leaned back in his seat, a toad of a man whose great tongue might well come snaking out to snatch a fly from off the ceiling at any moment. Repugnant, evil. “He’s your doxie’s husband, that’s who. Back from sailin’ the ocean blue in the king’s navee. Back to find his wife gone, stole from him by a swell cove with too much blunt to know what to do with. The wife Able Seaman Warren loved, what should’ve bin waitin’ for him on his noble return. But he comes home to find her gorn from where he left her, dead, in fact, and all that’s left to him is her little lad. A lad that should by rights be his. A lad what bears his name and what you stole.”
Jack’s stomach lurched. “Her husband?” He couldn’t keep the shock out of his voice.
Reuben grinned. “Aye, that’s addled your pate for you, my fine lord, I c’n see. Din’t tell you that, did she, when she was climbin’ her way up through the theaters you’d introduced her to? Via your bed. Usin’ you as a ladder to success. Kept her man quiet, p’raps thinkin’ he’d never be comin’ home. Happens often enough with sailors—they dies for lots of reasons thousands o’ miles from home. Their wives don’t never know what happened to’em. Thought she’d get away with forgettin’ him. Well, now he’s back, and he wants a cut of what should be hers by right and therefore his. Payment for services rendered, call it.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Reuben appeared unmoved by this statement. “B’lieve what you likes. He has the boy—his boy by law as he were born while she were wed to him. He’s keepin’ him if you don’t settle wi’ him, quick like.” His face contorted into a leer. “An’ I hear he’s goin’ back to sea wi’ the boy if you don’t pay up.”
Her husband. His Mary, the woman he’d thought the love of his life had been living a lie. Causing him to live a lie. He’d spoken to her of marriage, content to go against his father’s wishes for his love of her, and she’d lied to him. She’d said she had to put him before herself, that she could never bring him down to her level and disgrace him before his family. And every bit of it had been a lie. She couldn’t have married him if she’d wanted to, and she’d let him think her reasons for refusal noble.
The pedestal he’d relegated her to after her death came crumbling down as images cascaded through his head. Her shock, when she’d found out she was pregnant, the difficulty he’d had persuading her not to resort to a back street abortionist, the badly disguised anger she’d shown when her increasing girth had halted her singing career. Of course, he’d said she should go back to it after the baby was born—his baby—but she’d never been able to do that, dying in a welter of blood on the bed in the house he’d bought her.
She’d been a liar.
But that didn’t alter his love for her child. His child. The child who, along with Martha Sharpe, had prompted his own altruistic endeavors. The child who could have grown up backstage in a theater and in tawdry rooming houses with his mother, who instead had grown up on a viscount’s country estate and in a mansion in the city. He’d think about Mary’s perfidy later. Right now he had to get their son back.
“How much does he want?”
Reuben licked his lips with relish. “You can ask him fer yerself. He’s upstairs. Been stayin’ here for a week while he took a spyglass to the lay of the land. Told him it’d be no good goin’ face to face with the likes of the gentry. Told him the only way was to come at you sideways and force your hand.” He held up his own pudgy hand as Jack half turned toward the door. “Hold yer horses. The boy ain’t with him, an’ if he don’t get back to the boy, safe an’ in one piece, you’ll not be seein’ the lad again. Mark my words. You keeps your hands off of him.”
Jack’s shoulders rose and fell as he fought to control himself. He had to stay calm. He had to, for Edward’s sake. He must mean nothing to this man who called himself Mary’s husband other than a meal ticket to untold riches. The man would not care if the boy died. He was not his true father, whatever the law said.
“Very well. Take me to him.”
Reuben nodded at Benjamin. “First room at the top o’ the stairs. You go in with him. I don’t trust him not to cause a mill. I’m trustin’ you to watch him for me, boy.”