Chapter 1
1
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Church Lane, London
December, 1816
Con stood in the growing darkness of the rancid alley on the other side of Church Lane and for a moment, a single moment, he was the twelve-year-old boy who'd debated whether death was better than to cross that street. Evening fell quickly in December, especially in St. Giles where darkness clung to the narrow lanes and alleys like a sweat-damped shirt no matter the hour. From where he stood, he had a perfect view of the now ramshackle house and walled-in garden where he'd grown up. He had no desire to move any closer.
The afternoon rain had not succeeded in washing away the familiar odor of overrun privies, rotting vegetables, and the faint scent of some whore's cloying perfume which he would not have noticed at all as a boy. He found the notion odd that twelve years might make a man more sensitive to the smell, and the cold, and the miserable damp of a place that had not troubled him at all when he was a child. Then again, he had not concerned himself with much in those days save avoiding beatings and finding his next scrap to eat.
"You light that, and Bow Street will know we're here dead to rights," Ban whispered harshly. Fam grinned at their brother and scratched a match against the wall of one of the buildings on either side of the alley. The sulfur flared and Fam touched the flame to the cheroot clenched between his teeth before he dropped the match into the puddle of water at his feet.
"Bow Street already knows we're here," Con observed, as he studied the familiar, powerfully built man in nondescript clothing no doubt meant to help him blend into the stews. He stood under the flickering light of the torches mounted to the several carts at the gates to Ma Dyer's. "At least Colwyn does. The others are too afraid of where they are to notice."
War snorted. "Too bloody right." He glanced back at the far end of the alley where their horses stood silent and still, the fog of their breaths the only indication they were there. "Looks like the Runners have this in hand. She's done for. Fucking cold and the rain's about to start again. I'm for home and a glass of brandy."
Fam and Ban murmured their agreement. If War said rain, you could wager your best hat on it. Ten years at sea gave a man an eerie sense of the weather.
"Grown soft in your old age?" Con asked, as he raised the collar of his heavy wool greatcoat and then flexed his hands, clad in the most expensive fur-lined leather gloves Weston could provide. At nineteen, his brother Warrick was hardly in his dotage. As a child of the rookeries, however, especially one who'd been dumped at Ma Dyer's baby farm at the age of three, gone to war with the Royal Navy at nine, and had survived to muster out as a first lieutenant a few months back. The fact he'd reached nearly twenty years was a damned miracle.
"Fuck you," War replied. "I don't want to be here. We've managed to avoid Church Lane all these years. There's no reason we need to be here now." He stared mutely at the scene across the street. A Runner led half a dozen children, none older than five years or so, to one of the carts stood at the gate to the brothers' old home and helped them up to the cart-bed where another Runner wrapped them in blankets. Headed to the Foundling Hospital, no doubt. Good.
"To see that its finished," Ban said as he handed the cheroot back to Fam. "It's enough now. Past time. She has to pay for what she's done. She has to pay." He shoved his hands in the pockets of his coat. The wind whistled down the alley and blew past them into the lane.
Con watched as Archer Colwyn lifted his head from his notebook and turned to study the alley from his place just outside Ma's front gate. Men were going in and out of the house and around to the back garden where Con knew they would find outbuildings, chickens and pigs, the steps to the cellar, and... Colwyn nodded. Yes, this Runner had known they were in the alley all along. Why wouldn't he? He knew these streets as well as Con and his brothers.
Which was why Con had sent for him when the dead babies started showing up in the Thames again after all these years. Three baby boys in the last six months, red ribbon tied around their necks and their bodies wrapped in ragged flour sacks from the old burned down Albion Mill. Con would have let be. He had no desire to take a chance on bringing Ma Dyer back into their lives. They'd established themselves as leaders of the four most lucrative criminal enterprises in London. They'd survived with their lives if not their souls intact. That was enough for him.
But it wasn't enough for Ban, and if the brothers had a soft spot for anyone in the world, other than their sister Nell it was their youngest brother Banshee Dyer. So, Con had sent information about Ma's baby farm to Archer Colwyn, and the Runner had done the rest.
"Shite," Fam murmured and dropped his cheroot. "There she is."
His brothers moved to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Con. They might have been made of stone save for the vibration of tension that ran through them like the air before a lightning strike. War took a step forward. Con stayed him with a hand on his shoulder.
"We agreed we'd let Colwyn do this. We're already more involved than I want," he said. "They have her now. She won't slip away this time."
"She'll be able to slip away 'til she's a rotting corpse," Ban said.
"From the looks of her that won't be long." Fan started to light another cheroot. Con shook his head, and Fan returned the cheroot to his coat pocket.
He had the right of it. Ma Dyer had not aged well, not that Con had any idea of her age. She was still a short round woman, but her skin hung from her frame, her hair had gone from dingy brown to dirty greasy grey, and her face carried the deep lines and bulbous red nose of one not long for this world. He'd seen those signs time and again in St. Giles: too many meals of bad ale and worse gin strong enough to take the boot black off his best Hoby boots.
She shuffled along, shackled hands and feet. The two Runners helped her none too gently into an empty cart where two more Runners waited, fowling pieces at the ready, to stand guard over her. Con had warned Colwyn not to give her the chance to escape. Once she disappeared into the rookeries, they'd never find her. The cart bearing the children had left before Ma had been taken from the house. Some of the Runners continued to swarm over the property whilst a few others brought boxes out to put on a third torchlit cart.
"Can we go now?" Fam asked. "They seem to have this in hand." He gave a slight shudder. "I didn't want to come in the first place." His voice held the hard edge that signaled he was about to go cold and draw into himself. Never a good thing.
Con opened his mouth to agree when he saw Archer Colwyn headed toward the alley. Two Runners started to follow him, but he stopped them with a wave of his hand. With a simple jerk of his head, Con indicated Ban should catch up the horses and bring them to stand right behind the four of them. Just in case. No sense in tempting Fate.
"You found the ribbon and the bags?" Con asked, once Colwyn reached them.
"We did, and some baby clothes she had not yet sold. I'll take them to the mothers and see if they can identify them." He acknowledged Con's brothers with a nod.
"Check those shops I gave you and the rag men. You'll find more. Ma never kept anything there was even a chance might bring her a coin or two."
"Already done. I have people at Bow Street going through everything I found that she sold. Might help to find someone to claim the children she had locked in the cellar." He scrubbed one hand over his face. "Christ, Con. What kind of woman does this?"
Con shrugged. "You said mothers. The babies you fished out of the river..."
"Their mothers came forward once the story came out in the broadsheets. I talked to them. They'd all been sending Missus Dyer money for months. They're devastated."
"Should have kept their babies," Ban said, his tone chilled enough to freeze blood.
"Ban," Con warned. One of the first things they'd learned when they'd taken over Bill Green's gang--never give anyone personal insight to use against you.
"I just hope we have enough to send her away," Colwyn said, as he opened his notebook. "The ribbon and bags and clothes are good. God knows the condition of those children is criminal all by itself."
"Find her sons," War suggested. "They'll likely turn on her in a thrice if you threaten them with the noose or Newgate."
"Her sons?" Colwyn scribbled in his notebook.
"John and Jack Dyer," Con explained. "Her "Dogs" she called 'em. Two murderous bastards she set on us if we broke her rules."
"'Til Fam nearly killed 'em one night," Ban said, his grimace of a grin startling in the moonlight. Fam, on the other hand, turned away to stroke his horse that stamped the cobbles against the cold.
Colwyn paged through his notebook. "According to the neighbors, Jack danced at the end of a rope in Suffolk a few years back for murdering a tavern maid. John ran off and apprenticed himself to a blacksmith in Aldeburgh."
"Wish I'd known about Jack," War mused. "I'd have paid a monkey at least to play the hangman." Colwyn stared at Warrick in disbelief. Sometimes Con forgot the Runner was civilized now and growing more so every day he spent on the west side of London.
"You might pull a bit of information from Ma's daughter, Beth, though she spent most of her days locked up in the tower." Con nodded toward the odd sort of turret structure at the top of the house. "We only ever saw her staring from the window."
"I can't believe the woman had children of her own and did what she did to..." His face lit by the low riding full moon, Colwyn's complexion went a bit green. "This Beth was supposedly married off to a coal merchant in Chelsea last year, but they moved away recently." He closed his notebook. "None of the neighbors knows where."
"Nell might know," Fam suggested. "She was the only one of us allowed to see or spend time with Beth."
"We're not dragging Nell into this," Con snapped. He met his brother's gaze. "She's out of the rookery life. Sally Big'uns got her out, and she won't tell me where Nell is. Neither will that toff friend of yours, Colwyn. The one who shows up in the Dials these days to tend the sick and injured. His aunt is the grand lady Sally persuaded to find Nell a housekeeper position in some house on the west side. You might ask your friend if--"
"If Lady Camilla won't tell Carrington-Bowles, she damned well won't tell me. Neither one of us can afford to get on her bad side, Con Dyer, and neither can you. She scares the shite out of me."
"Never met her," Ban said. "But I like her."
"So do I," War said.
Con looked past Colwyn to the Runners milling about the gates and the carts containing Ma Dyer and the things they'd taken from the house, proof he supposed, against Ma. He glanced at War. After a few moments silent communication his brother gave a curt nod.
"Send your Runners to the back of the garden, along the garden wall," Con said, his eyes still on the house that had served as he and his brothers' personal torture chamber. "Tell them to dig along the wall."
"What are they digging for?" Colwyn's question indicated he already knew the answer, but he was going to make Con say the words. The wind stirred the bare branches of the trees in front of the house. They rattled like dry bones in a box. A December breeze should taste crisp and clean like the sheets Con demanded be changed daily on his bed. Here, on Church Lane, the taste was thick with wood too old to keep out the rain, unwashed bodies, and old death. Worse, that same icy blast reminded Con of every broken bone and twisted muscle with an ache only a hot bath and a bottle of brandy could cure.
"Graves," Con said. "Small graves. A few dozen at least."
"How do you know?"
"Because we dug them," Fam said, as he swung up onto his horse. "Time to go, Con." He nodded toward a couple of Runners who had taken several steps toward the alley. Colwyn didn't say a word as Con and the others mounted up and turned their horses toward the heart of St. Giles.
"We both know I'll have to arrest you one day," the Runner said, whilst Con walked his horse past him.
"But not today, Archer Colwyn," Con replied.
"No, not today."
They rode away from Church Lane and didn't look back. Oddly enough, Con trusted Colwyn to be a man of his word. Few if any men could claim the trust of Con Dyer. By the time they reached the corner the rain began to fall.
Archer met the Runners in the middle of Church Lane before they had a chance to intercept the Dyer brothers. Besides, apparently, they had graves to uncover, children's graves. His belly lurched.
"Don't know how you can stand there and talk to them like yer a couple of lads having a pint after a cricket match, Colwyn." Jeffers shuddered as if someone had walked over his grave. "Gives me the willies just to be near them. Their eyes, like there's no one there at all. They say the four of them sold their souls to the Devil the night Bill Green died."
"I happen to know for a fact that is not the case, Jeffers." Col stared after them as the brothers disappeared into the suddenly thickening fog like wraiths. "Their souls were stolen from them long ago. By the time Bill Green died the Horsemen had nothing left for the Devil to buy." He flipped up the collar of his greatcoat and studied the seemingly harmless old woman loaded into the prison cart headed for Bow Street. When she smiled at him, a cold chill coursed down his spine.
"The Horsemen?" Lennox snorted. "They're men like the rest of us. Take more than a bunch of superstitious shite to scare me. They're mortal men and they'll burn in hell for the lives they've led, mark me."
"The people in the rookeries call them the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. If one of them comes for you he'll likely only end your ability to walk, or perhaps your ability to see. If the four of them come for you..." He snapped his notebook closed. "They'll end your world. Mark me, Lennox. The Four Horsemen have been to hell. Hell spat them out."