The Law of Dreams Page 24

  “I suppose they can. There are gents with money at the Dragon. Merchants and all.”

  “Sounds like a big, fat fuck house.” She sounded amused. “Were you a fuck boy, Fergus?”

  He shook his head and walked faster.

  “Why’d they keep you then?”

  He ignored the question.

  “Oh, don’t look so queer! Come along, tell me, what did they want you for, if it weren’t the old fizz? Did you stoke fires? Clean boots? I reckon they wanted something.”

  “They were my friends.”

  “Oh ho, they were going to put you to work, a fresh boy like you! Of course they were. You can’t blame them.” Molly tightened her grip on his arm as a glossy tide of people carried them along. “Hang on to me, man, or I’ll drown in this road.”

  Tousled and hungry, a sparrow she seemed, furious for something. He said nothing of his fears. They were carried along, buoyed on the crowd. If he told her he was afraid of losing her, it might come true.

  “WHAT IS it, Fergus?”

  They were standing in Bold Street, staring at the gap in the terrace where he was sure the Dragon had once existed. Now there was nothing between two adjacent houses but a flight of white marble steps leading nowhere, and heaps of bricks and charred beams, and a gap of sky.

  “Perhaps you have it wrong. These streets look all the same.”

  Molly looked over her shoulder and called out to the butcher’s boy walking down the other side of the street. “Boy, do you know the Dragon?”

  “What happened to them inside?” Fergus called. The boy wore a white apron and carried a paper package stained with blood.

  “Burned out, they was.”

  “Come, man, let’s get away,” Molly said, tugging Fergus’s arm.

  “Burned out and sent to Hell, every single one. Hey you, Mike, are you one of them?”

  “Come on, Fergus, it’s no use, let’s get out of here.”

  Drawing a steel knife from his belt, the butcher’s boy stepped out into the road.

  “Where are they?” Fergus asked.

  “Nest of murderers and traitors it was — they got what they deserve.”

  “Are they dead? Shea? Mary? The baby? All of them?”

  The boy shrugged. “Big pawky funeral they give ’em, very grand.”

  “Come on, come on.” Molly began pulling Fergus away. He looked back and saw the boy capering in the road, slashing the air. “I’ll fix your Irish bollocks!” He was still shouting as they turned the corner into Hanover Street where the rush of traffic, hundreds of carriages, thousands of people, drowned everything.

  Letting go his hand, Molly plunged ahead, slipping and dodging so neatly through the stream of well-dressed people coming at them that he almost lost sight of her.

  Stunned by the murders of his friends, he had no sense where they ought to head now.

  Neither did she, but she wasn’t looking back. Moving so lithe through the heavy crowd. It was taking all of his attention to keep up, not to lose sight.

  Letting go of everything else, he gave himself up to the pure motion, pure forward, two of them struggling like salmon against the stream of Liverpool.

  Tim the Jew

  ON THE QUAY AT CLARENCE DOCK they stood watching a steamer slip into the dock basin. “These are only the monsters back and forth for Ireland and I would rather drown than go back there,” she said.

  A wall behind them was plastered yellow with shipping bills. She looked at the runners leaning on upturned barrows smoking penny pipes and waiting to dive upon the emigrants. “Foxes they are. Muck said they run baggage wherever it suits them. Whatever lodging house or ticket broker pays their tip.”

  Even before the steamer had tied up, the people were pitching their trunks and baggage over and leaping onto the quay, and the runners came alive, moving in. Fergus watched a boy wrestle a grip out of a woman’s hand and fling it in his barrow. “They’re thieves!”

  “They’re quick boys, and we ought to engage one to find us a clever fellow. Someone who’d take the watch off us without getting all fussy.”

  Arthur would have known the business; Shea would have helped. He watched the runner dashing away with the grip in his barrow, the poor woman howling after him.

  Without friends you are vulnerable. Anyone can take a jab at you.

  “Can’t we sell it to a navvy, or a sailor?”

  “Show gold to sailors? We’d be robbed, murdered, and thrown in the river. Anyway, no sailor nor navvy’s likely to have the price, is he?”

  “I don’t know. What is the price?”

  “Yes, well, I do — trust me.”

  “Why did they have to kill them, Moll — it was only Arthur they wanted.”

  “I don’t know, Fergus. No use asking why things happen. They do, that’s all. Only you must think what is going to happen next. Now, we might try selling the watch to a sea captain or a gent, but it’s risky, he might turn us in. No, we really want a clever fellow, and must hire a runner to find him. Come on, man, let’s cruise.”

  Leaving the quay, they started up one of the alleys. “It’s a fierce old town. The stomach of the world,” Molly said. “Don’t think about them, man. Leave them behind.”

  PASSING A victualer’s shop in the alley called Launcelot’s Hey, she studied a group of runners outside, leaning on their upturned barrows, laughing and smoking.

  “Too risky, a pack of them. Turn on you like dogs these fellows.”

  It had started raining. A pungent whiff of noise, liquor, and beef smoke leaked out from the beer shops and spirit vaults in the alley. The whole world was guzzling.

  “We need one fellow, alone, who we can handle, if he tries to sharp us. Wish we had a knife or a blagger. Then we could handle anyone.”

  A runner came rushing through the alley, bawling the way clear, trailed by a pack of emigrants trotting like cattle.

  Fergus thought of Arthur, gently shepherding the Ruths from the savage dockland to the night asylum.

  Molly clutched his arm. “Here’s our fellow” — indicating a solitary runner standing in the doorway of a spirit vault, keeping out of the rain. He was munching a sausage roll. His barrow parked on its nose.

  As they passed by Fergus studied him quickly, trying to calculate whether he could beat him in a fight.

  He felt physical power flush through his muscles like a pure dose of rage.

  “He’s alone all right,” said Molly, looking back over her shoulder. “He’s a meager-looking fellow — I wonder if he knows his way about.”

  They walked on a little farther, stopping where the alley ended at a busy street. A dray rumbled past, headed for the docks, freight strapped down under canvas. The teamster held the reins between his knees and was eating his dinner from a pail while rain streamed off his hat.

  “Ever wish you was goods, Fergus?”

  Molly’s bonnet was soaked, and the skirt of her gown was black from the rain. Smoldering, pelting, pavement Liverpool. Through a lit shop window, he could see a man slitting a wheel of gold cheese. Everyone else in the city seemed to be eating.

  “Used to wish I were a horse.”

  “Horses are treated worse. I’ve wanted to be a wheel,” she said. “I’ve wished I were a crop of wheat standing in a field.” She gripped his arm. “Come on. Let’s see what this fellow knows.”

  The runner had noticed them, and as they came back along the alley he was watching them. Close up, he looked even slighter. Narrow skull, thin blond hair, eyes darkly rimmed.

  “What are you looking at?” Some illness or delicacy lurked behind the sharky Liverpool face. “Get away, you awful micks. Clear off.”

  “We’ve some business.”

  The boy wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “What business?”

  Molly held out Muck’s watch and the runner glanced at it. Taking a splinter from his pocket, he began picking his teeth with elaborate indifference. “That’s a common, cheap old guzzard, Mary. I don’t want the thing
.”

  Fergus saw Molly hesitate. They glanced at each other, and she slipped the watch back into her pocket.

  “We ain’t barking with you. Bring us to a clever fellow.”

  “What price? If I might ask.”

  “Fair price.”

  “Come along, Mary, what price?”

  “Bring us to a clever fellow. You’ll get a chop.”

  “Say your price. Perhaps I’d buy her myself.”

  Molly said nothing. The runner looked at Fergus, who shrugged.

  “Let me see her again.” The runner sighed.

  This time he picked up the watch, and Fergus tensed, afraid he might try running off with it.

  He held it to his ear, then handed it back. “Well, I might give you five shillings for the thing.”

  “It is French,” Fergus said. “It is a watch. You wind it. It never shall stop.”

  “Is that so? And can you tell us the hour, Michael?” the runner, smirking.

  “I cannot,” he admitted.

  “How do you know she works?”

  “Listen to the tick! Sure she works!”

  “Seven minutes after five o’clock,” said Molly. “Shut up, man. Let me handle this.”

  The runner laughed. “Six shillings, then.”

  “No. I ain’t selling to you. Take us to a clever fellow —”

  “Seven I shall give you,” the runner said. “You won’t do better. You’d better be careful, barking stolen goods in Liverpool, there’s fellows would turn you in for the pleasure —”

  Fergus stepped between the boy and Molly. “Don’t threaten.”

  The boy stepped back. “What’s in it for me?”

  “Five shillings,” said Molly. “If we get our price.”

  Fergus stared at her, shocked. Nearly two days’ pay on the tip.

  “What price?”

  “You’ll know when we get it.”

  “Tim the Jew,” said the runner. “He’s the fellow you want.”

  “Lead away,” she said, “lead away.”

  A MILE from the docks, the runner turned into one of the raw, new streets off the Vauxhall road. Isolated terraces stood in fields of mud; Fergus could smell the clay of new brick. Turning his barrow on its nose, the runner peered through the window of a corner shop. The interior was gloomy, but they could see a man, woman, and child eating by candles at a table in the rear.

  The little runner knocked on the glass and the man, without looking up, waved them away.

  “Tim’s eating his dinner — he’s very nice about his food, Tim is. We’ll go for a guzzle and come back later. I knows the beer shop that’ll do you fair.”

  Molly rapped impatiently. The man ignored her.

  “Damn your eyes. You greedy fellow! Come and do business.” She kept rapping, and the man suddenly arose and came across the floor. They heard the door unlocking. It cracked open a few inches.

  “What is it?” Tim was a young blond man with a neat beard.

  “You remember me, Tim — it’s Walter. We done business together? Silver spoons.”

  “Come back tomorrow.”

  “No, listen, Tim, I have brought people with business —”

  “They’re strangers. I don’t do business with strangers. Go away.”

  “No, Tim, I think you’ll want to,” the runner said hastily, turning to Molly. “Show him.”

  Molly held up the watch.

  The man glanced at it. “Come back in the morning.”

  “Tim, Tim! I only brought them as I knew you liked the good stuff —”

  “No, let him eat his supper,” Molly said. “We’ll do our business someplace else.”

  “We’ll have to go down the street and give Terry’s a snap at it, Tim, or one of them little disaster shops in the Goree. These people are going for America, they’re in a rush.”

  Molly turned to Fergus. “Let’s go.”

  Tim stared at them through the crack. “How did you come upon it?”

  “My man’s.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Dead on the line.”

  “How?”

  “Killed by a horse.”

  “Which line?”

  “Chester-and-Holyhead.”

  “Which contract?”

  “Mr. Murdoch’s.”

  “Where did he acquire the watch?”

  “France.”

  “Where in France?”

  “Rouen when they was building the line.”

  Tim glanced at Fergus. “Who’s he?”

  “Off the line. Wages in his pocket. We ain’t knockers, we’re going for America.”

  Opening the door, Tim stepped aside for them to enter.

  The little shop was crowded with clocks, barrels of swords, and the coarse smell of polish. A chorus of mechanical chirping sounded like a summer’s night in a field. There were clocks on tables, clocks standing in shiny wooden boxes the size of upright coffins, and solemn white clock faces clicking on every wall.

  Swords in scabbards hung on the wall. Dozens more were crowded into wooden barrels.

  Taking the watch, Tim lit a lamp and sat down at a crowded workbench, Molly standing at his shoulder.

  Fergus extracted one sword from a barrel. A slightly curved, slender thing, short blade — a rapier, gleaming in its nickel sheath. He started drawing it and the blade came out smoothly, with a pleasing rasping sound. Blued steel, a little greasy. He touched the edge; it seemed quite keen. Testing the hone, he scratched his thumbnail, peeling off a filament of tissue.

  Purely sharp it was.

  He made some brisk cuts and flourishes and the blade sang sharply, slashing the air.

  Tim’s wife and child were eating supper. Beef, bread, hot onions, and the sweet aroma of beer. The child stared at him glumly.

  Walter the runner stood picking at calluses on his hands.

  It was powerful to hold a rapier. You immediately began to consider the meaning of death.

  He made another slash.

  “Gallant,” Walter smirked.

  The blade cutting the air made a sound like bedsheets tearing.

  Molly glanced over her shoulder. “Stop goosing.”

  “Not French,” the clever fellow said. “Swiss — L. F. Audemars. A robin escapement, see?”

  Clutching the rapier, Fergus approached the bench.

  “A two-arm compensation balance, that’s very nice.” The clever fellow held the exposed machinery in his palm where it trembled like the warm insides of a small animal or bird freshly killed. “Spiral steel balance-spring and regulator, very nice.”

  “I told ’em you was the mince, Tim,” Walter said with satisfaction. “A pleasant piece of equipment.”

  “Nobody knows the tickers like Tim,” the runner said.

  Opening the lid with his thumbnail, the clever fellow studied the face. “Enamel dial, very nice. Very Swiss. And the hands, blued steel —”

  “It’s made of gold, ain’t it?” Molly said sharply.

  “Yes.” Tim smiled, hefting the watch in his hand. “Engine-turned gold case.” Snapping it shut abruptly, he held it out to Molly.

  “Don’t you want it then?”

  “That all depends. What price?”

  “Ten pounds.”

  Fergus saw the clever fellow glance across the room at his wife, then back at Molly, then at the watch in his hand.

  “Fair enough. Done.” He unlocked a drawer, and Molly looked dismayed — she’d asked too little. Tim took out a purse. “Hold out your hands.”

  Instead, Molly pulled off her bonnet and held it out. Tim began counting coins and dropping them into the bonnet, one by one.

  A rapier in your hand gave a feeling of power. The weight was pleasant, organized, nicely balanced.

  He watched the clever man dropping coins one by one. Clink, clink, clink.

  Killing is an action, only an action. Less effort than whipping a horse. Less than fucking.

  Rush the steel right through his heart.


  The smell of food was rich, cloudy. Fergus glanced at the woman, cutting meat into little pieces, feeding herself and the child. The child stared back.

  It wasn’t pity. You knew your brain would be ruined by another murder, you’d become inaccessible to yourself: sectors of your thought stripped, ruined, untouchable. That was what stopped you. That was all.

  Germans

  OUTSIDE THE SHOP MOLLY COUNTED five shillings into the runner’s hand. Nearly two days’ pay on the line. “Now bring us to a lodging house, Walter, and I mean a fair place. None of your vermin shrouds. Someplace clean, civil, and not too steep, and we shall pay you a good strong tip.”

  “Maguire’s,” said the little runner. “Maguire keeps Germans; they’ve all got money. It’s clean there.”

  “Is it far?”

  “Not so very. Just up from Princes. Come along.”

  They had to run to keep up with Walter, who seemed incapable of any other pace. Gasping, out of breath in an alley not far from the quays, Fergus and Molly stared up at the countless windows of Maguire’s lodging house. River mist and the scent of ship tar hung in the air.

  “I don’t often bring trade here,” Walter said. “Maguire don’t pay commish.”

  “Looks fair,” said Molly.

  “Fair? Fair it is, I’d say. Best emigrant keep in Liverpool, I’d say.”

  Molly flipped him a coin, and he shook hands with both of them, then seized the handles of his barrow and trotted away, quickly vanishing into the gloom.

  They looked at each other, then back at the building.

  “Great block of a monster she is,” Molly said.

  “Will they have us?”

  “Oh Jesus, yes. We have only to knock the bloody door. Go on.”

  The building’s size and hardness were intimidating. He hesitated.

  “It’s only money. Go on. They all wants our money, Fergus.”

  Sucking in his breath, he stepped to the door and hammered with his fist until he heard it unlock. It swung open. An elderly porter scowled.

  “We’re after lodgings —”

  “We can pay,” Molly added.

  They were grudgingly admitted. “Stand here.” The porter tugged on a bell pull then glared at them. The house smelled of tea and washing. A door opened at the end of the hall and another old man approached, cowhide slippers slurring on the floor.