A Very Peculiar Plague (12 page)
Snell beamed his thanks. ‘Bob’ll be right grateful,’ he assured Alfred, ‘for his own son is ’prenticed at the markets, and Bob’s wife won’t let the lad set foot there since hearing about them missing boys . . .’
Jem grinned sourly as Snell chattered on. How nice it would be to have a mother who cared about your safety! No one cared about Jem’s safety. No one had bothered to ask him how he felt about tackling another bogle. Alfred hadn’t even consulted him about taking Birdie along with them.
It didn’t matter, though. That was what Jem told himself. The important thing was that they were returning to the neighbourhood around Newgate Street.
For it was there, beneath the unsuspecting noses of London’s largest collection of magistrates, that Sarah Pickles had cleverly chosen to hide herself.
From down on Farringdon Street, the viaduct bridge was a dazzling sight. Its ironwork was a tangle of flowers and dragons, picked out in red and gold. Its pale stone plinths were carved and gilded. At either end of the bridge, the two staircases connecting Farringdon Street with the road above it were encased in a pair of elaborate, five-storeyed buildings, each of which looked to Jem like a cross between a palace and a big white wedding cake.
But the iron gates beneath the arch weren’t quite so ornamental. They were barred like prison gates, with a lock on them that could have kept out an army of elephants. ‘Sam’s ganger has the key,’ said Hugh Purdy, who had arrived at the bridge just minutes before Alfred’s small crew. After being introduced to Miss Eames and Birdie, the plumber explained that he’d parted company with Sam Snell earlier that morning – but that Sam would be bringing his ganger, Nathaniel Calthrop, to meet them all.
‘What is a “ganger”?’ Miss Eames inquired. She and Birdie both wore dark, sturdy fabrics: brown holland, grey tweed, black worsted. Each of them carried a pair of wellington boots in a drawstring bag made of canvas. Birdie’s hair had been pinned up under a small, untrimmed bowler hat.
‘Why, a ganger is a foreman,’ Purdy replied, just as a series of thumps and clicks startled everyone. These noises seemed to be coming from the wooden doors behind the iron gates. Then the doors swung inwards, revealing Sam Snell and a plump little man with an enormous red moustache.
Both men were dressed from head to toe in waterproof clothing.
‘Come in, come in!’ Sam Snell exclaimed, unlocking the gates from the inside. ‘This here is Nat Calthrop. Mr Calthrop, this is Mr Bunce, and Mr Purdy, and . . . um . . .’ He trailed off as he spotted Miss Eames, who promptly stuck out her hand and said, in a brisk and manly way, ‘Miss Edith Eames. How d’you do?’
Snell shook hands vigorously, grinning with delight. His boss didn’t look quite so pleased. With his jaundiced skin, orange moustache, sour expression and squat, round shape, Calthrop made Jem think of a giant lemon. The ganger nodded at Purdy and grunted at Alfred. Jem received only a suspicious glare. When Miss Eames smiled, Calthrop mumbled a greeting. But he stared at Birdie in dismay.
‘Naebody said aught about a wee lass,’ he protested.
‘Oh, she’ll not be a bother,’ Snell assured him cheerfully. ‘Don’t you fret, Mr Calthrop.
I’ll
look after her.’
‘I can look after myself!’ Birdie retorted, much to Snell’s amusement.
‘Is that so?’ he said with a chuckle. Then Calthrop asked him if he wanted to spend all day loitering on Farringdon Street, and Snell said no.
Soon they were marching up a short flight of narrow stairs, following Calthrop’s safety lamp into the depths of the viaduct.
Jem was amazed at what he saw as he trudged along. He’d been expecting something small and damp and dirty, but the brick-lined tunnel into which they finally emerged was about six feet wide by ten high, with a solid stone floor. Along one wall ran a bundle of pipes and cables, which Sam Snell identified as gas and water mains, telegraph wires and pneumatic tubes. In the arched ceiling, gratings admitted pools of light from the street above. The sewers, Snell explained, were at the bottom of another, vaulted chamber that lay below their feet.
‘And beneath
that
is the low-level sewer, which crosses under the viaduct, along Farringdon Street,’ the flusher concluded. ‘But that ain’t connected to the viaduct ventilation shafts.’
‘If yeer boggart climbed onto a roof, as Sam claims, it maun bide in the subway sewer,’ Calthrop volunteered.
‘Aye, but
where
in the sewer?’ said Alfred. Jem could understand his concern. The subway looked endless, and the sewer beneath it had to be just as long. How were they going to find the exact location of Purdy’s unfinished house from down in this dark, underground burrow?
‘If someone lifts me up, I can peek through that grate over there,’ Jem offered. ‘Mebbe we’ll get our bearings if I do that.’
Sam Snell burst out laughing. ‘Why, there ain’t no need for circus tricks, lad!’ he exclaimed. ‘We got every street and house number marked along here, so the connections can be cut in an emergency.’ He then lifted his safety lamp, illuminating all the words and numbers painted on the northern wall.
‘How clever,’ said Miss Eames, in an admiring tone. ‘So we simply have to find the correct number and go straight down from there?’
‘Through the nearest manhole. Aye,’ Calthrop agreed.
‘It ain’t far.’ Suddenly Hugh Purdy spoke up. He had been peering at the house numbers. ‘No more’n a hundred yards or so to the west, I’d say.’
‘Then off we go!’ his friend declared happily. It was Calthrop, however, who took the lead again.
They moved off in single file, past drainpipes and belltraps that connected the road above to the sewer below. Calthrop didn’t say a word, but Sam Snell entertained everyone with an account of the remarkably large rats that infested the sewers. He also kept reassuring Miss Eames that she had nothing to fear from coal or sewer gas. ‘For we tested the air with Davy lamps this very morning, and found nothing amiss. Why, I could light a pipe in perfect comfort!’
Jem wanted to to ask why, if there wasn’t any gas, the air still smelled faintly of sewage. But before he could speak, Birdie nudged him and whispered, ‘Did you see Eunice Pickles on yer way here?’
He shook his head.
‘If I knew what she looked like, I could watch for her myself,’ said Birdie. ‘Does Mr Bunce know?’
Again Jem shook his head. ‘And don’t you tell him, neither.’
‘Shhh!’ Up ahead, Alfred turned to hiss at Jem. ‘Shut yer mouth! Ain’t no way o’ knowing how many bogles lurk down here. D’you want to lure one out too soon?’
Jem fell silent, blushing. A few minutes later they reached their destination, which was marked by a number painted on the northern wall. Alfred began to light his dark lantern as the two flushers cast around for the nearest manhole.
Calthrop was the one who found it.
‘Why – what’s this?’ he spluttered. ‘The cover’s off!’
Snell looked mystified. Miss Eames said, ‘Perhaps the bogle is to blame.’
‘The boggart, aye – or some bauchling sneckdraw of a flusher!’ Calthrop grumbled. Meanwhile Alfred crouched beside the dark hole and peered into it, wrinkling his nose at the smell, as Jem asked Sam Snell in a shaky voice, ‘Won’t we be needing oilskins down there?’
‘Not if you stay on the platform.’ Snell explained that a shelf had been built along one side of the subway sewer, for ease of movement. ‘In the low-level sewer, you’d be up to yer knees in water,’ he said, ‘but the viaduct sewers is the friendliest I ever saw.’
‘Even so, Birdie and I should probably put on our rubber boots,’ Miss Eames declared. Before she could open her drawstring bag, however, Alfred said, ‘Wait.’
‘But—’
‘I can’t see nowt from up here. And no one’s a-going down no sewer till I’ve had a good look at it.’ Alfred turned to Calthrop. ‘That shaft we saw on the roof o’ the house – it starts under here?’
The ganger nodded. He explained that each ventilation shaft ran from the arched ceiling of the sewer, sideways over the house vaults, and then up the party walls. So yes, he said; the opening of the shaft must be close to the manhole.
‘There’s a ladder to climb, if ye’ve a mind to it,’ Calthrop added. ‘But ’tis a very
long
ladder, ending on a very narrow ledge.’
Alfred grunted. Then he dropped his sack, clamped his teeth around the handle of his dark lantern, and lowered himself into the sewer. Soon he was out of sight – much to Jem’s consternation.
‘Are you a bogler yerself, Miss Eames?’ asked Sam Snell, after a slightly awkward pause.
‘No, Mr Snell, I am a folklorist,’ Miss Eames replied. ‘I have a scientific interest in bogles. I study them.’
‘Ah.’ Snell nodded, though Jem wasn’t convinced that the flusher had entirely understood her. It was Hugh Purdy who said, ‘You’ve come to investigate the plague, I daresay?’
Miss Eames blinked. ‘The what?’
‘The plague o’ bogles hereabouts,’ Purdy reminded her.
‘Oh.’ Miss Eames looked a little flustered, Jem thought. ‘Well . . . naturally it concerns me . . .’
‘I’ve bin a-thinking on it myself,’ Purdy continued, ‘and wonder if it might be accounted for by the Fleet River. Which runs just beneath here – don’t it, Sam?’
‘That it does,’ Snell confirmed, nodding enthusiastically. ‘Through the low-level sewer along Farringdon Street, all the way to the Thames.’
‘Is that true?’ Birdie had been squatting at the edge of the manhole, trying to catch a glimpse of the sewer beneath it. Now she glanced up to address Nat Calthrop. ‘Is there a river under Farringdon Street?’
‘Aye,’ said the ganger. ‘And a burn under Smithfield Market, running along Cowcross to the old Fleet Ditch. And another under Newgate Street—’
‘
Newgate
Street?’ Jem exclaimed, before catching Birdie’s eye.
‘And all of ’em’s connected through the Fleet,’ Purdy concluded. ‘Which is where them bogles might live, when they ain’t moving about in the streams and sewers.’
He shot an inquiring look at Miss Eames, who opened her mouth, then shut it again. Birdie sat back on her heels, awestruck. ‘I never knew about no underground rivers!’ she marvelled, before leaning forward to address Alfred – who was on his way back up the ladder. ‘Did you hear that, Mr Bunce? Mr Purdy says as how all the bogles might be gathering hereabouts on account of a river beneath Farringdon Street!’
Alfred didn’t respond. He was too busy trying to haul himself out of the manhole without dropping his lantern. It was Miss Eames who observed thoughtfully, ‘A lot of English folk monsters
are
found in lakes and streams. Eachies and grindylows, for example.’
‘So mebbe it’s the river-sewer we ought to be searching,’ Birdie suggested, as Hugh Purdy reached down to help Alfred out of the manhole.
‘We’ll be searching no sewers,’ Alfred rasped. ‘Not today.’
‘Why not?’ The plumber frowned. ‘Ain’t there a bogle, down below?’
‘Oh, there’s a bogle. Mebbe more’n one. But the platform is too narrow.’
‘For the ring o’ salt, you mean?’ asked Jem.
‘Aye.’ Alfred straightened, peering around in the gloom. ‘We must do the job up here, where there’s space enough to lay a trap.’ Then he glanced at the two flushers and said, ‘The fewer folk is on hand, the better.’
Calthrop sniffed. ‘Ye dinnae want us here?’
‘It might take a long time,’ warned Alfred.
‘Then I’ll bid ye good day, for I maun attend to my business.’ Calthrop gave his keys to Sam Snell. ‘You can let yeer friends out. And I’ll have those keys back on the morrow, at first peep.’
‘Yessir.’ As his ganger began to clomp away, Snell turned to Alfred. ‘I cannot leave you in the subway unescorted, Mr Bunce. It’s against the rules. But I’ll stand wherever you wish.’
‘Over there, then. With Miss Eames,’ Alfred replied. ‘And you, lad – I want you just here. Where I can see you.’ He gave Jem a prod. ‘Birdie? I’ll be putting you in the trap today, if you’ve no objection.’
‘Oh,
no
!’ said Birdie. ‘I’ve no objection at all!’
And as Alfred fished around in his sack, looking for the bag of salt, her face split into a wide, happy grin.
Jem was amazed. He himself was beginning to feel very frightened, for Alfred’s warnings were echoing around the inside of his head.
Mebbe more’n one . . . this corner o’ town ain’t like no other . . . ain’t no way o’ knowing how many bogles lurk down here . . .
What if he had to face two bogles at once? Or three? Or four? Or fifteen? What if they hunted him down like a pack of wolves?
Even Alfred wouldn’t be able to fight off a whole
stampede
of bogles . . .
Jem skulked against the north wall of the subway, staring at the uncovered manhole about twenty feet away. Behind him, at a safe distance, Sam Snell, Hugh Purdy and Miss Eames were waiting and watching. Alfred had stationed himself against the opposite wall, to Jem’s right. In front of them both, on the other side of the manhole, a safety lantern stood at Birdie’s feet.
The ring of salt encircled her, sparkling like a diamond necklace.
Then Alfred nodded at Birdie. Though her back was turned to him, she saw his nod reflected in the mirror that she was holding. And she immediately burst into song.
I am a broken-hearted milkman, in grief I’m arrayed
Through keeping of the company of a young servant-maid,
Who lived on board and wages, the house to keep clean
In a gentleman’s family near Paddington Green.
Birdie’s voice echoed off the walls like the chiming of silver bells. Jem was astonished at how clear and strong and sweet it was. She didn’t sound like a street-singer; not anymore. Every note cut through the air as cleanly as a knife-blade, without a trace of breathiness.
She was as beautiful as a butterfly and proud as a queen
Was pretty little Polly Perkins of Paddington Green.
Beyond Birdie’s small, straight, narrow figure lay an empty void. Alfred had thought it unlikely that anything unexpected would creep up on her. There were too many adults in the way, he’d said. Nevertheless, he’d told Jem to keep his eyes fixed on the dim space in front of Birdie, while Alfred himself watched the manhole.
