Chords and Discords (20 page)

“Hugh,” I said. “That girl’s situation is abominable and if I could help her I would, but – ”

A woman’s scream tore the air.

We were both startled into immobility. I stared at the ancient, leaning house, the blank reddened windows, the shuttered shop, the slant of sunshine across the lichened tiles.

“In heaven’s name!” Hugh said.

Then we were both running, dodging carts that trundled down the hill. I stumbled on a projecting cobble, and Hugh drew ahead, dashing up to Holloway’s door and battering on it.

“The back of the house!” I called. Hugh spun for the alley between Holloway’s shop and its neighbour; I was so close behind, I almost trod on his heels. The alley was narrow
and dark, the yard at the back small; the bulk of the Castle mound reared up suddenly behind the house, overshadowing the yard and making it gloomier still.

The back door was open. Hugh ran inside. I followed, stopped.

Whispers...

It was as if a crowd of people were all trying to talk to me at the same time, muttering, whispering, moaning. I gasped and put up my hands to stop my ears, thought I caught a glimpse of
brightness, spun round, saw a flicker of light sliding from an overhanging beam. My heart raced...

The noise ceased. A great silence. Then the whispering started again, ebbing away from me. I saw a flow of light like water, over the walls, on to the ceiling, up the banisters of a stair at the
back of the room. The light ebbed away and left me, shaken and alone, in near-darkness.

I was in a small room, low-ceilinged with timbers. One tiny window gave on to the gloomy backyard. The room was evidently used for storage; it was piled with boxes and parcels, and mysterious
rolls of material. A strong smell of tanned leather made me cough.

Voices upstairs: Hugh’s voice, Holloway’s. Gathering my wits, I ran for the stairs. They rocked under my feet as if about to give way. The upper floor was brighter; a night light
burned on a table, the reflections of a branch of candles gleamed in a mirror.

Two rooms. The first was the room Holloway and I had talked in before. The voices were coming from an inner room. I ran through into a bedroom.

Across the bed, with his breeches round his ankles and his bare knees to the ground as if he had been caught in the act of praying, was sprawled John Holloway. His hands were tied to the brass
bedhead, and his back was reddened with blows.

There was no sign of the maid.

Hugh was shouting at Holloway who was groaning inconsolably. I pulled Hugh back.

“For God’s sake, leave him alone!” I bent and picked at the knots that tethered Holloway’s hands to the bedhead. My hands were shaking and I fumbled ineffectually. A
spirit slid on to the bedhead, on to the rope, across the back of my wrist. I jerked back, tried to shake it off. It slid up my arm and back on to the bedhead.

“Ravisher,” Hugh was raging. “Where is she?” Holloway merely groaned. “Damn it, tell me!”

“Hugh,” I began.

He was past listening. “She must have run off.”

“Hugh – ”

“I’m after her, Charles.” He was already running for the door, yelling back over his shoulder. “Don’t let him go!”

The spirits were gathering again, humming like a river in full flow. I pulled back, heart pounding, took a step towards the door.

“Don’t leave me!” Holloway groaned.

“Keep those damned spirits away from me.”

He groaned again.

“I mean it, damn it!” I was shaking with anger. “Keep them away from me or I’ll leave you here. And it’ll be morning before the shop lads come back and who knows
whether they’ll find you even then?”

He muttered, but he must have known he could not refuse me. If the lads came up here tomorrow and found him bare-arsed and freezing cold, all shrivelled and bruised, he’d never be able to
face them again.

“Go away,” he said, to the spirits. “Yes, yes, I know he doesn’t like you. Devil take it, do as I say!”

The flecks of light withdrew and clustered together on the crumbling wall. I steeled myself to cross to the bed.

“Untie me,” Holloway moaned.

“Tell me first why you set those spirits on me.”

He twisted to stare up at me. “Set them on you? Patterson, they do as they wish. I can’t order them about!”

I realised he thought I meant the spirits in his house. “The spirits in the alley, damn it, the ones who attacked me when I came in answer to your message.”

He stared. “Which message? Spirits in the alley? No, no, he doesn’t mean you. What?” I wondered he didn’t strain his neck as he struggled against his bonds to see the
spirits on the wall above him. “Oh, the press gang victims? No, no.” He twisted back to me again. “Patterson, I had nothing to do with that!” I heard panic in his voice.
“Ruffians like that – do you think I’d associate with riff-raff!”

There was no mistaking the sincerity in his voice. Gritting my teeth, I reached for the knots that bound him. They were tightly bound and took some unravelling; I tore my nails and fingertips.
But at least the spirits made no attempt to approach me again, although they continued to hiss and mutter on the wall above us.

Holloway’s hands were at last free. He lifted them to his head. His wig had dropped off on to the bed and his scalp was covered by a dark stubble scattered with grey. He looked older,
gaunt.

He gathered his shirt-tails about his loins in a pathetic gesture of modesty.

“For God’s sake, man, pull your breeches up!”

He struggled to make himself presentable. “Damn woman.”

A spirit glided along the bedhead, slid down the rope that had tethered Holloway’s hands and glistened on the bedclothes. I stood very still, trying to ignore it.

“I take it she didn’t like your attentions?”

“I pay her enough.” He twitched his head as if the spirit was saying something to him.

I was hard put to disguise my contempt for him. “Not the first time, then?”

“She’s a servant, Patterson. What else is she good for?”

“Your brother-in-law thinks the same way, does he?”

He snorted. “William’s been enjoying her for years! Since she came to the house.”

“How old was she then?”

He mumbled irritably. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to the spirit, or trying to justify himself. His fingers pulled at his clothing, trying to rearrange it. I leant forward, grabbed his
shirt. “How old?”

“Ten, twelve? Who knows?”

I let him go, feeling dirty. The spirit gleamed on his shoulder. “So why did she suddenly object to your attentions today?”

“Who knows? Damn it, Patterson, who asked you to come in here? Get out of my house!”

I did not move. “She tied you up very thoroughly.”

He tried to regain his old arrogant, airy manner. “What I do in the privacy of my own house – ”

“ – is none of my business,” I finished. “True, but tell me this, Holloway. If you were all tied up and at her mercy, what had she to scream about?”

For a moment, fear showed in his face. He started to shiver and splutter and twitch. The spirits were muttering now, louder and louder. I was shaking with fear again but, damn it, I
wouldn’t gratify them by running. “You like your spirits, don’t you, Holloway? Talk to them all the time, like to share everything with them?”

“No, no. I mean – well – ”

“Even your women?”

He burst out: “What’s the harm? Why should they be deprived of a little pleasure because they’re dead? Yo u don’t know, Patterson, you can’t know!”

I turned my back on him and walked out. Out of that damned room. Striding quickly to escape the sudden roar of sound, and the rush of brightness over the timbers. Clattering down the stairs to
the back door just ahead of the wash of light. Once I was out of the house they could not touch me. Into the yard and blessed cool air.

Damn them, damn them all.

The yard was shrouded in darkness; a last stray finger of sun touched a window in the roof above. Hugh was nowhere to be seen. Still breathing heavily, I turned back to the
alley, then glimpsed another opening in the far corner of the yard. A second tiny alley, hardly wide enough to accommodate a man and low enough to force me to stoop. Through its turns and winds, I
came out on to the twilight Sandhill and stood looking at the remnants of the Fish Market. This must have been the way the girl ran when she fled from Holloway, but where had she gone from
here?

And where was Hugh? In the gloom, I walked up to the Cale Cross that stood at the foot of Butcher Bank. From the Bank opened a dozen or more chares, narrow stinking alleys packed with sailors
and keelmen and their families; a small band of children stood at the entrance to one of the chares with a dog whining miserably about their heels. The dog was tethered by a piece of string to one
of the children, and looked very much as if it was trying to get away.

Standing irresolutely on the corner of Butcher Bank, I looked down on the Sandhill again where a man was hanging a lantern outside the coffee house, creating a small pool of brightness in the
dusk. Was there any point in trying to find Hugh and the girl? She must have been long gone before he came out into the street.

I started back down to the Sandhill.

And heard Hugh shout.

I turned on my heels. The children had scattered; three were running up the dark street, another two dived into the chare with apparent glee. The dog, accidentally released, had loped across the
road to the far side where it hunched against a wall, shivering and whining, ears flattened against its head.

Hugh yelled again.

I ran, panting and struggling for breath as the street steepened, and swung into the chare.

I stopped. In a gloom relieved only by the flicker of candlelight behind a window, a group of men, ten or twelve strong, were grinning at me. I turned back. Another three or four were lounging
at the entrance to the chare. Damn. Cursing myself for an impetuous fool, I put my back to the wall of a house.

Hugh’s voice came again – from one of the houses. The men were still grinning. They were savouring the moment, I thought, enjoying my fear and anticipating the pleasure to come. I
pressed myself back against the house wall. My hand touched something cold. It clattered to the ground.

I risked a glance down. It was a stick, rough-hewn from a branch and sharpened to a vicious point at one end. I dipped for it, held it in my hand like a sword.

One of the men laughed. He was of middle-years, grey-haired, lean and hard. His clothes were torn and as he shifted I smelt the reek of gin.

“Now, lad,” he said, chidingly. “Give us the stick. No point in mekking things worse.”

“I’ll give you it when I’m out of here,” I said.

“Well, lad.” He shook his head. “You were the one that wandered in. No one brought you.”

I was in a mess, no denying it, but I had a weapon in my hand and the reassuring roughness of old brick at my back. They would not find me easy meat.

“I want my friend.”

“The fellow with the fine coat?”

A woman on the edge of the crowd said something indistinguishable; they all roared with laughter.

“Aye,” said the man. “Our coat now. It’s a simple matter, lad. We’ve no use for your body – ”

“Speak for yersel,” the woman shouted. Another roar of hilarity.

“But those clothes are another matter. They’ll bring in a pretty penny.”

I regarded the men with wry gloom. The clothes that I wore were old, much darned and not expensive even when new. Compared to what Claudius Heron or John Holloway wore, they were rags. Yet for
these destitutes, they would pay for a month’s food. Or gin.

Two or three men blocked the narrow entrance to the chare. The children had crept back and the dog had been recaptured; it was whining and squealing and desperately trying to pull away. I stared
at it. The dog – what was worrying me so much about the dog?

The middle-aged man was sauntering towards me, pushing up his ragged sleeves. Behind him came three or four others. One of them gave the distressed dog a kick.

I lifted up the stick, backed myself into a corner where two crumbling walls met, swung the stick to cover their approach. I was merely delaying the inevitable, but damn it, if they wanted me,
they would have to come and get me. The first man came at me, lean, hard-faced, plainly used to scrapping. I swung the stick wildly. It cracked against his arm and he let out a great roar of pain.
Half a dozen of the other fellows thought that a great laugh. He lunged at me, snarling.

Then I heard the dog squeal as if in pain. Someone shouted in alarm.

I remembered what dogs feared almost above anything else.

I glimpsed a great flickering light in the evening darkness. Then a blow from the air knocked me sideways. The men scattered in alarm. A gleaming cloud swarmed over me, hissing
in my ears, crawling in my hair. The dog howled.

I swung my arms, tried to bat the spirits away. A silvery gleam slid over my sleeve, across the back of my hand. Something cold slipped along my spine.

Walls reeled. I hit hard stone, squeezed my eyes shut. Something, some
one
, crept across my eyelids. There was an enraged screeching in my ear.

A distant voice; the men shouted. Warm living fingers gripped my arm, pulled –

And I felt a kind of flowing, like water receding, ebbing away.

Silence.

I opened my eyes. I was on the Key, at the far entrance of the chare. Lanterns burned with comforting brilliance over shops and brothels. Seagulls screeched overhead; passers by looked on
curiously. And behind me in the dark chare stood a knot of men, regarding me with fear and anger.

The maid, Jennie McIntosh, was ranting at them. Hair and cap askew, she was flushed with exertion and bright-eyed with fury, screaming at the men, calling them cowards and idiots and a dozen
other names beside. I remembered a hand in mine, an unexpected scent of lavender. The maid must have seized me, dragged me out of the chare...