Chapter Sixteen
Phoebe, already feeling somewhat shellshocked by the successive revelations she’d been experiencing, followed Gabriel through the door.
She had to clench her fists to still the shaking and fight to regulate her breathing.
Being adventurous was one thing, and in itself attractive, but actively going into what seemed to her to be mortal danger in a place of horrifying nightmares was something quite different.
And now she’d been dragged, well, maybe not dragged exactly, up the most odious and malodorous set of stairs and into an attic that turned out to be just as smelly.
On the whole, she was seeing an awful lot of things that were the worst she’d ever encountered.
So maybe these stairs and Abner’s seedy accommodation should have come as no surprise.
And here she was, in the home of that very dodgy-looking gentleman from the Rat’s Castle. If you could, by any stretch of the imagination, call this dark hole a home or its unprepossessing inhabitant a gentleman. Which she could not.
Abner, it seemed, could lay claim to the entirety of the attic, which wasn’t saying much as the low ceiling sloped even lower to front and back with the cant of the roof. Only in the center could Gabriel stand upright.
An unmade bed, whose sheets appeared gray with age and blankets threadbare, and a cluttered table and four chairs were all that furnished the dusty wooden floor.
As a pile of jumbled garments lay on the end of the bed, this might mean Abner possessed a change of clothing and might be able to keep clean…
she supposed. Although the general smell that hung in the airless room suggested not.
Opening a window might help, but the one nearest to her seemed to be rusted shut.
These windows, one at the front and one at the back, and set into the sloping roof, let in dubiously gray light, mainly because Abner had clearly never thought to clean them. They were thick with soot smuts on both inside and outside, along with other things she didn’t want to think about.
On the whole, everything about the St Giles rookery was making her want to hurry home, jump into a hot bath, and scrub herself all over.
And what was that scratching sound? Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of something small scuttling along the edge of the room into one of the shadowy corners.
Please let it not be a mouse, as she couldn’t be certain Will Booth would not leap onto a chair and scream like a girl if it ran near his feet. Best not to look any more closely.
But she was stuck here now, so, as her papa would have said, she would have to make the best of it and remember how lucky she was not to have to live here.
That very thought was enough to bolster her confidence.
Or she thought he would have said it. Presumably he’d also had no idea this sort of place existed.
Who amongst the people she and Mattie had met did?
Certainly not the matrons of the marriage mart and their empty-headed daughters.
She almost burst out laughing as an image leapt into her head of their faces if they were to be dumped outside the Rat’s Castle hostelry. That would be a fine thing to see.
Gabriel, who didn’t seem to have noticed her momentary lapse, pulled out one of the rickety chairs and nodded at it. “You might as well take a seat. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”
She sat, but Gabriel went over to the window and looked out at what must be the front of the house, presumably looking to see if this Abner was true to his word and was coming. He had to spit on his fingers and rub himself a clean patch in the glass.
After a minute or two, footsteps sounded on the stairs and Gabriel slid his left hand under his coat as though he had something hidden there.
Was he armed? Did he have a pistol tucked away where she hadn’t noticed it?
To her surprise the thought sent a tingle of excitement running through her.
Now she was no longer on those awful streets or in that den of iniquity that masqueraded as an alehouse, she could see this was indeed the stuff of adventure.
Plus it made her feel a little safer to think he could protect her with a weapon.
The door banged open and the man from the Rat’s Castle stomped inside.
Upright, he was a smaller man than he’d looked when seated, as he possessed very short, decidedly bandy legs which made him walk with a rocking motion as though he might be at sea.
Or at least as though she imagined someone might walk when on the rolling deck of a ship.
Having been on a small boat on the lake at Coakham with Papa, and not liking the motion much, was sufficient to furnish her imagination.
He pulled out a second chair and collapsed into it with a sigh as though the walk and the climbing of the stairs had given him pain.
With legs like that, surely locomotion of any sort would be uncomfortable.
A small nub of compassion formed in Phoebe’s heart.
If he’d been born into the sort of family she was most familiar with, and brought up away from the foul air that pervaded here, within the rookery, perhaps he wouldn’t have ended up like this.
Gabriel took the third chair.
Phoebe folded her hands in her lap and looked from one man to the other. Both of them ignored her. Good. The last thing she wanted was to draw Abner’s attention. Or anyone’s. Not here, and definitely not on the streets.
“Well,” Abner grunted. “What yer got then? Any decent gewgaws fer me?” He really was quite difficult to understand with his mangling of the English language. The speech of none of the servants either in Hill Street or at Coakham had been so hard to follow.
Gabriel put his hand back under his coat and brought out one of the jewels she’d given him in her bedroom what now seemed a very long time ago.
It was a ring she never wore, mainly because it was so heavy and she didn’t much like the color of the nine red garnets it was set with.
He laid it on the table between him and Abner, the garnets winking in a rather lackluster fashion in the poor light.
She wasn’t sure which of her ancestors it had originally belonged to, but whoever it was would surely not object to it being redeemed for money intended to help the poor.
Mama herself would be pleased, or so she hastily told herself.
Abner, some sort of eyeglass having appeared in his hand, presumably from an inside pocket of his voluminous great coat, picked up the ring and peered at it through the glass, his whole face wrinkled in concentration. After a long silence, he spoke. “Red garnets. Not worth much.”
The cheek of it. Phoebe could remember Mama wearing that very ring one or twice and people complimenting her on it.
Not that she herself liked it, but she had other things of Mama’s and Grandmama’s she much preferred.
Surely it wasn’t without value or Mama, and Grandmama before her, would not have had it in the extensive jewelry collection that had been passed down to Phoebe.
Left-handed, Abner scribbled something on a crumpled bit of paper he extricated from his pocket. “What else yer got?”
Gabriel produced the rivière necklace that matched the garnet ring, running it through his fingers so it caught what light there was.
Phoebe knew for a fact that Mama had not liked this necklace so felt no guilt at having handed it over to Gabriel.
Although seeing it in the grubby hands of his fence did not provoke quite the same reaction.
Perhaps, after all, Mama might not be so complicit in the redistribution of her wealth.
To her surprise, Phoebe discovered that she no longer cared.
Abner snorted. “Garnets agin. You need to be a sight more picky where you gets your winnings. Look at a place before you decides on the scrap.”
He also seemed to be speaking a different language. This couldn’t be English, could it? However, Gabriel at least appeared to understand him. He gave a nod. “Maybe I will next time.”
Abner narrowed his eyes at him but nevertheless hung onto the necklace and wrote another sum on the bit of paper. “Wot next?”
As she’d only given Gabriel three items, this must be the third and most valuable of the three.
It was. Gabriel produced, with something of a flourish, the sapphire and diamond earrings she’d never worn.
They were beautiful, but long and heavy and she only had small earlobes which she didn’t want stretching.
She’d added them in at the last minute, her head full of small orphans in need of sustenance and shelter.
Right now she could quite see that her impulse had been the right one, but how she and Gabriel were going to be able to help all the poor children of the rookery, now she’d seen how many there were, she had no idea.
“Aah,” Abner intoned, his eyes lighting up as he picked up the earrings.
“Now these is somethin’ better, Joe. More up to your usual standard.
I c’n get a fair bit for these uns, once I get ’em broken up.
See how many diamonds there is?” Whereupon he must have realized he’d been badly over enthusiastic, for his face changed.
“But they’s still stolen goods, an’ don’t you forgit it.
So the price I can offer’s not goin’ to be so high as you might want.
Don’t you get your hopes up too high, just on account of them bein’ diamonds, an’ all. ”
“How much for all three?” Gabriel asked.
A bit more scribbling and the paper slid across the table.
Gabriel flicked his eyes over it. From where she was sitting, Phoebe couldn’t see what was written and didn’t dare lean over to look. She had a feeling Abner might view that as suspicious.