Chapter 2
2
* * *
1 February, 1827
No.'s 25-27, Mercer Street
Edge of Seven Dials
Con's valet had fussed so long with deviling him to choose between two equally garish waistcoats that his morning ritual of hot, black coffee with buttered toast and a neatly folded copy of the morning Times had been delayed.
He was certain the coffee would still be scalding hot, just the way he liked it, even though he was running late, because every one of his Mercer Street regulars knew damned well the day would not go well for anyone if he were forced to forego the one indulgence he allowed himself each morning.
And then there was the sugar. His days in Ma Dyer's so-called orphanage followed by even deeper horrors as a child thief employed by Bill Green had left him with cravings he'd taken years to stamp out. Sugar was the one thing he'd been unable to eradicate. He suspected he consumed a king's ransom in sugar each day to maintain sufficient sweetness in his endless cups of coffee
He took a deep sniff of his favorite Arabic brew before the first bracing sip and forgave himself for that particular weakness, writing it off to a celebration of having survived another day in the unforgiving world of the ruling gangs of London's underworld. He and his three brothers covered the stews of Seven Dials, Covent Garden, St. Giles, and the breadth of the London docklands. Together, the Dyer brothers were known as "The Four Horsemen."
Unrelenting and ruthless in their dealings, they were occasionally known to grant favors to worthy minions. However, when the favor was inevitably called in, the recipients often regretted having imposed upon the "Horsemen's" good will.
His hair was still damp from a morning steam shower, and his general look of a dark-haired, shaggy creature was intensified when he shook his head from side to side a bit to finish drying off.
He always took his breakfast at his desk, the better to attack the vast piles of paperwork associated with his far ranging enterprises, including a gambling hell. That wildly profitable establishment spread over two floors of one of the Mercer Street tenement buildings he'd purchased years before and had fortified structurally whilst retaining the outer look of a dilapidated tenement like many others in Seven Dials.
He heaved a huge sigh at sight of the towering pile of promissory notes from the previous night at the gambling hell.
"Crisp...why in the name of Hades are our guests losing so damned much money? If the house odds are that bad, the ton's goldfinches will stop coming here, and we'll lose our main means of turning our, um, product into true coin of the realm." Con's scowl lightened at the familiar sound of toenails clicking up the polished wooden steps from the kitchens below.
Crisp ran toward the top of the stairway, arms winged out, in an attempt to slow the hurricane of two enormous wolfhounds who whirled into Con's office, shoved Crisp aside, and hurled themselves at their master.
Con held up his arms in mock terror before collapsing with the two brutes onto a fragile gold, silk-covered settee across from his desk. Crisp shuddered and uttered a loud cry of anguish from across the room.
"Do you know how much that bit of furniture they're destroying would bring at the stalls at Covent Garden?"
Con grunted and glanced up from his struggles with Lugh and Aengus. He had Lugh secured beneath the crook of one arm whilst Aengus kept evading capture by rolling his great, shaggy head out of Con's grip. In his last jerking attempt to secure the beast, both dogs pulled their master onto the Turkey carpet where they commenced fierce wrestling and rolling about.
The deep, jeweled green and burgundy tones of the expensive floor covering undulated into rolling hills when Aengus triumphantly evaded Con by slithering beneath the folds and pulling the carpet tightly to him with his teeth.
Crisp wisely stood back and patiently waited for the daily tussle to end. At a quiet sound from the top of the staircase, both dogs abruptly ceased rolling on the floor and leapt to attention.
An uncommonly tall, slender woman attired in a somber grey uniform stood at the top of the steps. She uttered not a word, but merely stared at the two beasts. After a few seconds of quiet, longing looks, they raced to her side at the snap of her fingers. Both dogs sat obediently waiting for her to produce small nibbles from within the voluminous depths of her uniform pockets. She extended the bits of biscuit slowly to Lugh and Aengus in turn. Neither dog moved during the elaborate ritual. At a second snap of her fingers, they thundered back down the stairs.
She turned slowly toward Con and asked, "Do you have any special requests of the kitchen today?"
Mrs. Bonham had served him well for the last five years. She'd been an inhabitant of the Seven Dials neighborhood when Con had rescued her from an abusive marriage. Unfortunately, he'd arrived too late to save her from being shoved onto a pile of hot coals by her husband. One-half of her face was disfigured by burns, but the other half revealed the beauty she'd once been. However, most importantly, thanks to Con's intervention, she'd survived.
A neighbor had run to Con to beg him to stop the horrific abuse her husband had been visiting on her. He'd taken her immediately to Carrington-Bowles's dispensary on Rose Street, but there was little even CB could do. He'd cleaned the burn, applied poultices, and used laudanum to ease her pain
Mr. Bonham had not been heard from since the night a week later when the three other Dyer brothers had returned with Con to Mrs. Bonham's tenement flat to have a "talk" with him. Coincidentally, a nearby tavern was making an unusual offer of free food and ale for everyone in the neighborhood that night, which meant the Bonhams' tenement building had been deserted.
Someone had started a rumor that they'd persuaded him to try his luck in the gold fields of Australia. Most folks in Seven Dials who knew the "Horsemen" doubted that Banbury tale. Secretly, most people suspected Mr. Bonham had joined the river of unidentified bodies floating east with the outgoing tide on the Thames.
At the time, Crisp was still a new employee and had made the mistake of sending a note to Con thanking him for his benevolent attitude toward his neighbors. Con had stormed into the man's office above the gambling hell and explained in no uncertain terms that he did not perform benevolent acts. But rather, he made damnably sure no one committed egregious crimes on their bit of ground that would bring unwanted scrutiny from London's magistrates down on Seven Dials.
Duly warned, Crisp never made that mistake again.
* * *
1 February, 1827
The Coburg Hotel
Charles Street near Grosvenor Square
Marianne Oxley surveyed her wardrobe options and let out a long sigh. She needed to rent a warehouse in Covent Garden as a base of operations for her nightly forays into the homes of the purse-proud members of the ton. Her disguise choices were limited.
There was her Robin Hood costume consisting of tights, a tunic, and an envelope-like felt hat which did a poor job of hiding her long, dark curls. And no one, unless they were attics to let, would trust a renter who showed up wearing a full, grinning fairy-like mask.
All that remained of her meager supply were four black, full-mourning dresses she'd worn the three years since her mother had died at their estate in Wales. She smiled a predatory smile when the details of the story she'd give the landlord struck her. She could pretend to be a helpless female who was anxious to secure a place to store her recently deceased father's belongings. One of the mourning dresses would do nicely.
Her lady's maid, Lucinda, who'd served her mother before her, had given up trying to save Marianne from her wildly inappropriate behavior. She produced a wide swath of black netting. "You're going to need a heavy veil."
"Why?" Marianne snapped at her before stopping to think. "Oh...you're right. Wouldn't do to let anyone get a good look at me, would it? I mean, considering what I've been up to."
* * *
1 February, 1827
No.'s 25-27, Mercer Street
Edge of Seven Dials
Con's first visitor of the day was the owner of a bakery near Monmouth Street. Mister Billiage was a loyal supporter of the Horsemen's many ventures. Loaves of bread, it turned out, were incredibly versatile vessels for concealing all sorts of contraband...and secrets. His bakery had become a communications center of sorts for the Horsemen's messages that could not be delivered in the usual way by footman. And the man's breads melted in one's mouth, not to mention the rich chocolate biscuits Con could not seem to get enough of.
He leaned back and gave the man an assessing look. "I haven't seen you in quite a while. The business is doing well, I trust? Are there any problems?"
There was long moment of awkward silence. Con knew his manner of staring silently and directly at the many supplicants who came to ask for favors was unnerving. He wasn't sorry. His demeanor saved him from a lot of whining supplicants. And that's the way he liked it. Over the years, his reputation of showing little to no mercy had served him, and his brothers, well.
The man suddenly began choking out sobs. Con hadn't counted on this complication. He despised whining and crying, a holdover from his days of being forced to thieve for old Bill Green. The minute you let your adversaries know the depth of your desperation, they were sure to use your weakness against you.
"Pull yourself together, Billiage." Con spoke sharply and rose to signal he was finished listening to whatever would come out of the man's mouth next.
"She's gone. She's been taken in by the abbess at the Thrush House over on St. James Street."
"You mean your daughter...Philippa?"
"Y..yes. She ran off with a fancy man last month, and he sold her to that bitch.
Con tried to reconcile the picture in his mind of the mousy little girl who kept the fires in Billiage's massive bakehouse ovens supplied from a towering stack of faggots in her father's rear garden.
"How old is she?"
"Eleven."
"She's barely more than a child," Con argued. "Who would want an inexperienced girl?"
"Plenty of perverts who visit that house."
Con's gut dropped. Memories came flooding back of all the terrifying times he and his brothers had come together to protect their sister Nell from a similar fate. The red fog of anger he'd learned to keep at bay over the years clogged his senses.
"We'll take care of this," Con finally gritted out through his teeth. The dark look he threw the meal man was intense and devoid of light. The man's face drained of all color. "If we do this, you have to take proper care of your daughter once she's safely home with you. Don't make her work alone all day in the front of your shop. Send her to a private school so that she'll be protected."
"Yes, yes...anything."
"Secondly, if we do you this favor, you'll owe us a favor in return."
"What kind of favor?" he asked, a tremor in his voice.
"When we come to you and let you know whatever we require of you, you will do as we ask."
Mr. Billiage nodded vigorously.
"That's not enough. I need to hear you say it."
"Say what?"
"Mr. Dyer, when the time comes, I will do whatever you ask immediately without any questions."
After Mr. Billiage had repeated the required words and thanked Con profusely, he backed carefully out of the office and clattered quickly down the back stairs.
Con rang one of the call bells attached beneath his desk, and within minutes a tall, well-muscled man appeared.
"Wu, I have a job for you. I need you to visit each of my brothers and give them a special message from me."
The man crossed his arms and leaned over the comfortable dark blue winged chair in front of Con's desk. "Do you want me to wait while you write the message?"
"I don't want any evidence of this message to fall into the wrong hands. I'm going to tell you, you'll repeat it back to me, and then tell my brothers."
Wu nodded easily, as if he were used to strange requests from his gaffer.
"And then you will forget every word of that message."
His head of security nodded in assent again. Wu Yaou Tou and his brother Ho, Con's cook, had been part of a murderous gang back in their home province in China. They'd escaped by signing on as seamen aboard an East India ship and had slipped into anonymity amongst the Docklands when they'd ended up in London. They'd joined forces with the Four Horsemen after they'd pulled off a particularly lucrative theft of priceless jade pieces. Con's brother, Warrick, was so impressed with their skills, he'd recommended they become part of the Horsemen's inner, trusted crew.
"And the message?"
"Two Saturdays from now, we'll meet at six in the morning at Mrs. Kelland's Hoxley House on St. James Street. We'll require the element of surprise to make sure the abbess returns something that belongs to us...without a fight."
* * *
Con walked down the back stairs and out into the mews, pulling on his riding gloves as he went. He whistled for his groom who disappeared inside the stables to get Bucephalus. As wild and untamed as his owner, Con's favorite horse had the annoying habit of trying to bite anyone who dared weigh him down with a saddle. His long-suffering groom, young James, usually anticipated the beast's moves and had learned to duck away in time.
However, the minute the animal neared the mounting block and sensed Con's presence, he calmed and allowed himself to be mounted without further testiness. They set off at a peaceful trot down Mercer toward Long Acre and then St. Martin's Lane down to the Strand where he and Bucephalus could finally stretch out and race along a deserted path in St. James Park.
Today, a sharp breeze flowed toward the river, making the smells of the rotting refuse in the alleys and corners of the streets skirting Covent Garden a bit more bearable. The occasional wind-driven snap of laundry hanging from bars extending from tenement windows made noises like rifle shots, causing Con to stiffen at each one. He knew better than most the crowded streets of the rookeries could change from quiet to violent in an instant, depending on the mood of the crowds. Con steered Bu neatly into sidestepping a huge, steaming pile of manure whilst dancing to the side of the street.
Cries from the costermongers with food for sale filled the morning air: "Green hestins!" for peas; "Loo!" for milk; and "Two a penny!" for oranges. A toothless old woman raced out into the street and braved Bu's hooves to reach up to offer Con one of her oranges. He grabbed the fruit on a whim and threw her a coin. What had possessed him to do that? Now he'd have to carry the damned orange along on their gallop through the park. When he gave the fruit a sharp shove into the side saddle bag, Bu turned his head and gave him a glowering look. They were truly two of a kind.