Beneath a Silent Moon

The London Docks

June 1817

The night air was like a lover’s touch. Cloaked in mystery, beckoning with promise, sweet at times but quickly cloying. And underneath, rotten to the core.

He had forgotten what a foul whore the London night was. The river stretched behind him, a smooth dark expanse, shimmering where it caught the fitful moonlight. But the breeze off the water was choked with the stench of sewage and offal and remnants from the knackers’ yards. The air was heavy with soot from thousands of fireplace grates and coal-oil lamps. It clogged his throat and clung to his skin and no doubt was turning his cravat and shirt cuffs more grimy by the minute.

He turned on the quayside. The greasy water lapped softly against the boat that had brought him across the Channel and down the Thames. Nearer at hand, the man who had sailed the boat fixed him with a gaze that was the ocular equivalent of a pointed pistol. He fished a purse from the pocket of his greatcoat and pressed it into the boat owner’s hand. ‘As agreed.’

The boat owner tugged open the drawstring on the leather bag, tested one of the coins between his teeth, and began to count them with ponderous precision. Strange to pay three times more for twelve hours huddled in a tiny hold with barrels of brandy and tins of tea and crates of turbot than one would pay for a comfortable cabin on the mail packet.

The boat owner nodded, satisfied with his payment. The man who had paid him strode away from the river. He turned up the collar of his greatcoat and drew the folds of wool about him against the night chill. Pity his sojourn in London wouldn’t allow for a visit to a tailor. One of the few things he missed on the Continent was a coat to equal those made on Bond Street.

A faded tavern sign with peeling gilt paint reminded him that he hadn’t had a proper meal since before dawn. He peered through the smoke-blackened glass of the tavern windows. Greasy sausages. Potatoes soaked in lard. Meat pies filled with God knew what and those infernal mushy peas that had been a staple in the nursery. It was going to be the devil of a challenge to get a decent meal during his stay in London. But on the plus side, it was a long time since he’d had a pint of good dark stout.

The tavern door opened to admit three men on the shady side of forty, tradesmen of the middling sort judging by the quality of their coats and the modesty of their shirt points. They were engaged in a heated discussion that appeared to concern the effect of excise taxes and smuggling on the tea trade. The rhythm of English was harsh and unfamiliar to his ears. A strange way to feel about one’s mother tongue.

Long-buried memories teased at the edges of his mind. The smell of ripe oranges on a birthday visit to Astley’s Amphitheatre. The whack of a cricket bat. The syrupy sweetness of the treacle pudding he had actually once had the bad taste to like. The shapely calves and provocative mole of the Covent Garden opera dancer who had captured his attention at fifteen.

He shoved the memories aside and strode forward along the cobblestones. He had a job to do. The sooner it was done, the sooner he could leave this dank, smoky city that had long since ceased to mean anything to him.

He’d wait until he was closer to Covent Garden before he stopped to eat. There was always the chance of finding a passable coffeehouse run by a French Emigre. He walked on, keeping to the shadows, and set his mind to the task that awaited him. The task that had begun in a shadowy past playing cricket and eating pudding and never dreaming that this sceptred isle would ever cease to be his home. The task that had taken shape in the present, thanks to the end of a war, the vengeance of a restored monarchy, and the inconvenient way secrets had of bubbling to the surface.

He hadn’t had such a challenge in some time. It went without saying that it was going to be difficult.

But then murder always was.