Chapter 11
Daniel was off in a flash, sprinting down the slope toward the lake and the melee. I followed as quickly as I could.
Alas for his assailants, Mr. Fielding was not the docile man of the cloth he appeared to be. He spun from his attackers’ grips before bestowing swift and precise blows on the surprised toughs. They found his elbows in their faces, his handmade leather boots connecting with abdomens.
By the time Daniel arrived to assist, the assailants had thought better of their situation and took to their heels. They dashed back along the path that skirted the lake, then across a field toward a far fence.
Daniel and Mr. Fielding watched while the two men scaled the iron railings and disappeared back into the streets.
I reached Daniel, breathing hard with exertion. “Who on earth were they?” I demanded. “Are you all right, Mr. Fielding?”
Mr. Fielding pulled a pristine handkerchief from his pocket and touched it to a bleeding cut above his lip.
“I will be. As to who they were, I do not know. They followed me all the way from Shadwell. I thought I’d given them the slip at last, but apparently not.
I apologize, dear lady, if they frightened you. ”
“I am made of sterner stuff than that,” I assured him. “I am more worried for you. Why should two ruffians follow you about? I doubt they thought to rob you. It would be a lot of trouble for the few coins a vicar has to rub together.”
“I’m certain they had more on their minds than stealing.
” Mr. Fielding removed the handkerchief from his lip and frowned at the scarlet stain on it.
“They meant to incapacitate me, either to encourage me to stay out of their territory or to let me die of my wounds. I’m not certain.
” The anger in Mr. Fielding’s tone did not bode well for the toughs.
“You believe it defense of their home ground?” Daniel asked. “A clergyman is no threat to them, unless they knew who you really were.”
“Hired, probably.” Mr. Fielding dabbed at his wound again, then folded the handkerchief back into his pocket.
“What have you stirred up, Mrs. Holloway? I look into a deceased woman, long gone, and suddenly bullies are following me and attacking when they have the chance. Who was this lady? A spy for queen and country?”
“A woman someone wanted me to know about,” Daniel answered before I could. He studied the route the ruffians had taken to flee. “I’m not certain if it was from benevolence or to lure me into a place where I’d be unwanted and possibly a target.”
Mr. Fielding brushed dust from his jacket and righted his clerical collar, which had become twisted in the fight. “Well, it was me who bore the brunt this time. Tell me the truth, brother dear, before I relieve my pique on you, as I did when we were lads.”
“I remember.” Daniel rubbed his cheek as though recalling their scraps.
“You were fast with your fists, but I was sturdier.” He switched his gaze to the gate through which we’d entered.
“It is possible that this Mrs. Kerr had the keeping of me when I was a lad. Not that I remember anything about it.”
Mr. Fielding’s eyes went wide, and he swung to me in impatience. “Why the devil didn’t you say so? I would have asked more probing questions, uncovered everything there was to know about her.”
“Would you have?” Daniel asked, while I gazed back at Mr. Fielding, unwavering under his annoyance. “You and I have fallen out time and again over the years. You might have kept something of importance from me out of spite, or perhaps to gain some sort of control over me.”
Mr. Fielding stared at him, lips parted, then he snapped his mouth shut and gave both of us a fearsome scowl. “Dear God, the pair of you. I’d stomp away in righteous indignation if I wasn’t so curious.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Daniel said with conviction. “If you’re curious, then lead us to this house and satisfy your interest.”
I could see that Mr. Fielding was not as put out as he pretended, only miffed that I hadn’t confided all Daniel’s secrets to him. I noted that he hadn’t denied Daniel’s accusation that he’d withhold information for his own purposes, which told me he’d done so in the past.
Daniel told him the tale now as we walked back toward the gate, about Banks and how he’d tried to approach Daniel and had been murdered before he could reach him.
I then related how I’d interviewed Mr. Ramsay in Mr. Banks’s rooms, and what he’d told me.
Mr. Fielding listened with interest and growing concern.
“The two of you must indeed have stirred a hornet’s nest,” he said. “One man murdered, me followed and attacked. Well, let us see what we can find out.”
We exited through the gate and back across the small bridge over the canal.
The house in West Street Mr. Fielding guided us to was a small but tidy redbrick edifice. With two stories plus attic, it reposed in the middle of a row of equally tidy houses.
This was a lane of respectable people who could not afford to live anywhere else, I recognized. They crowded together at the edge of the slums, likely blessing their lot that they hadn’t fallen into the slums themselves.
We stood back and let Mr. Fielding knock on the door of Number 7, where he said Mrs. Kerr had lived. A maid or the woman of the house would be more likely to open the front door to a vicar than to Daniel in his work clothes or even me in my years-old coat and hat.
A maid who did not look pleased to see anyone at all answered. “Mistress is out,” she snapped to Mr. Fielding’s polite good afternoon. “So’s the master. They don’t have no money to give to your charities, anyway.”
“Nothing like that, my dear,” Mr. Fielding assured her. “I only wish to inquire—”
“They’re out,” the maid repeated firmly and slammed the door in his face.
“Such a pleasant young woman,” Mr. Fielding said mildly. “Never mind. Perhaps the neighbors will know a thing or two.”
Daniel gazed up at the house, studying it from the dormer window that peeked from the slate roof to the dark green shutters that framed the windows.
He was trying to remember, I decided. Waiting for any memory to come to him, however distant or vague.
I said nothing, not wanting to interrupt his contemplation. As Mr. Fielding moved briskly to the house on the right, Daniel looked at me and shook his head.
“Not even an inkling?” I whispered to him.
“Nothing.” His shoulders sagged. “Either I was never here or I was far too young to recall.”
I clasped his arm, trying to convey comfort.
As much as my mother had struggled, I’d always had the sense of her being there with me, of a place of refuge that was my home.
Even now, when I happened to stroll down Bow Lane, I felt a sense of ease, as though I could run into the rooms where we’d lived, and my mother would look up and smile at me.
I’d lost her years ago, but I knew every inch of Bow Lane, had many warm and happy memories associated with the house in which we’d lodged.
Daniel had nothing like that. He’d lived in South London with Mr. Carter and his gang, but that house had been burned the night Mr. Carter had been killed.
Daniel had spent the rest of his life trying to carve a niche for himself, to make a place in the world where he fit. He’d succeeded in part, but he still was restless, roving between lodgings and the house he’d made his own, never settling anywhere for long.
No one answered at the house on the right, but a gray-haired woman in a pinafore with a broom in her hands opened the door of the house on the left.
“They’re out, love,” the woman told Mr. Fielding, indicating the house next door. “Out on their ‘good works.’ Or so they say. Wouldn’t you know that?” She eyed his collar with an amount of disapproval. “If you’re helping them canvass for money around here, you won’t get much.”
“This is not my parish,” Mr. Fielding said in soothing tones. “Nor would I wander through mine asking people to hand over their hard-earned coins. I touch the wealthy in the West End for that.” He chuckled. “I am Mr. Fielding, from Shadwell. And you are, good lady?”
“Mrs. Forbes,” she said, a bit reluctantly. “What you want with the Kingstons, then?”
“Nothing at all. I am inquiring about the woman who used to live next to this house. Mrs. Kerr? I know she passed on long ago, but I’m looking into the whereabouts of others who lived with her.”
“Oh, yes?” Mrs. Forbes leaned on her broom as though happy of the chance to rest. “I knew her. I was a girl at the time—my folks had this house, and now it’s mine.
I were maybe twelve at most when she went away.
Ill, poor lamb. Never saw her again. That was, hmm, twenty year ago now? No, thirty. My, how time flies.”
“She passed away about thirty years ago, yes.” Mr. Fielding took on a sorrowful expression. “She fostered children, didn’t she?”
A fervent nod. “I remember them. Overran the house, but none of them bad lads or lasses. Some were my playmates. Some would be adopted off, but not many, because Mrs. Kerr didn’t trust none to look after them as good as herself.”
“What became of those children?” Mr. Fielding asked. “When Mrs. Kerr died? I am trying to locate one,” he added hurriedly, when the woman’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
She softened again. “I don’t know, love, I’m sorry. One day, they were all gone. Older ones, little ones, all of them. She locked up the house and walked away. I don’t know if she took them with her or sent them to someone else to look after.” The woman shrugged. “I truly don’t know.”
“Do you remember one of them called Banks?” Mr. Fielding asked, while Daniel and I remained mutely in the background. “Howard was his Christian name.”