Amid the excitement, Tooler seized his opportunity. His light fingers brushed the major’s sash, unhooking the watch chain in one swift movement. In the blink of an eye, the watch was passed underarm to Jem Whistler’s outstretched hand. Turning immediately, Tooler and his stickman separated and within seconds the two boys had dissolved into the crowd, with neither the major nor his companion aware that the theft had taken place.
Behind them, Benbow was responding hard. Figg wilted under the Cornishman’s two-fisted attack. Blood and mucus flowed from his split nose as the mob shouted itself hoarse. There was no finesse in the way the two fighters traded blows. The bout had degenerated into a ferocious brawl. So fierce was the battle that the spectators closest to the ringside were splattered with gore.
Ignoring the growing excitement, the two pick-pockets weaved their way through the mass of bodies. At the rear of the yard lay the entrance to a narrow alley. The boys ducked into it, unheeded by the lookouts, who were more interested in the outcome of the fight and scanning the area for uniformed law officers than the passing of two grubby children. In no time Tooler and his stick-man had left the babble of the stable yard and entered the maze of lanes that lay behind the inn.
As they picked their way through dark, damp passages lined by walls the colour of peat, the boys paid little attention to their surroundings. They were on familiar ground in this netherworld of densely packed tenements and grim lodging houses; buildings so old and decrepit it hardly seemed possible they were still standing. An open cess trench ran down the middle of each alley. Rats skittered in the shadows. The waterlogged carcass of what could have been either animal or human floated in the effluent. Vague, sinister shapes haunted dark doorways or hovered in silhouette behind candlelit windows. Only the occasional voice raised in anger indicated that the slum was inhabited by humankind. With the late afternoon sun sinking slowly below the cluttered rooftops, the boys hurried deeper into the warren.
Mother Gant’s lodging house was nestled into the side of a small courtyard at the end of a hip-wide passage. With its overhanging eaves, narrow doorway and dirt-encrusted windows, it was typical of the many doss houses that infested the area. A tumbledown sty occupied one corner of the yard. Two raw-boned pigs rooted greedily in an empty trough. They looked up, snouts thrusting, grunting with curiosity as the boys ran past.
The hovel was low roofed, dim lit and smoky. The soot-blackened walls were of bare brick, the floor unboarded. A hearth ran along one wall. An oaken table took up the middle of the room. Seated around it were a dozen children of both sexes. Pale, unwashed, dressed in threadbare clothing, they ranged in age from six to sixteen. An old woman, garbed in black with a tattered shawl around her shoulders, stood at the hearth, ladling the contents of a large cooking pot. She looked up as the boys entered. In the flickering glow from the coals, her rheumy eyes glittered.
No one knew Mother Gant’s age, only that she had run the lodging house for as long as anyone in the neighbourhood could remember. It was well known that she had outlived three husbands; two had succumbed to disease, the third had disappeared one dark night never to be seen again. Rumour had it that the latter had been dropped into the river, his throat slit from ear to ear, after a tavern brawl. A drunkard and a wastrel, he had not been missed, certainly not by the Widow Gant.
The children seated around the table were not Mother Gant’s blood kin. The old lady had been named not for the size of her own brood but due to her habit of taking in waifs and strays. This display of generosity was not born of a sense of charity. It was greed that made Mother Gant open her doors to the orphans of the borough. She expected her young tenants to pay for the roof over their heads and the food in their bellies. And the rent she exacted was not coin of the realm – though that would not have been refused – it was contraband.
Mother Gant was a receiver of stolen property. She took in her orphans, she fed them and she housed them. Then she trained them and sent them out into the streets to steal for their supper. And woe betide anyone who returned empty-handed.
Fortunately for Tooler and Jem, their afternoon’s activity had yielded a good haul: three watches, two breast pins, a silver snuffbox, and no less than four pocketbooks. As the proceeds were deposited on the table, Mother Gant left the cooking pot and cooed softly to herself as she sifted through the valuables.
“You’ve done well, boys,” she simpered. “Mother’s very pleased.”
The old woman picked up the silver snuffbox and turned it over in her hands. Lifting the lid, she placed a pinch of snuff delicately on to the back of her hand, lowered her head and snorted the powder up each nostril in turn. Snapping shut the lid, she wiped her nose on her sleeve, grinned ferally, and slipped the box into her pocket.
“Extra helpings tonight, my lovelies,” she whispered, hobbling back towards the hearth. “Them as works the ‘ardest deserves their reward. Ain’t that right?”
At which point a long shadow fell across the open doorway.
“Hello, Mother – got room for one more?”
Mother Gant’s eyes blazed with alarm as the visitor stepped into the room.
The man was tall and dressed in a midnight-blue, calf-length riding coat, unbuttoned to reveal a sharp-cut black waistcoat, grey breeches and black knee-length boots. He was bareheaded. The face was saturnine, the hair black, streaked with grey above the temple. What was unusual, given the fashion of the time, was his hair, which was worn long and tied at the nape of the neck with a length of black ribbon. Below the man’s left eye, a small ragged scar was visible along the upper curve of his cheekbone.
If Matthew Hawkwood had expected an extreme reaction to his entrance, he was not disappointed. Even as his gaze fell upon the pile of stolen artefacts, the room erupted.
Stools and benches were overturned as the children scattered like rabbits before a stoat. In a move that was remarkably sprightly, the old woman twisted and hurled the soup ladle towards the new arrival, at the same time letting loose a high-pitched screech. Whereupon the massive figure seated in the corner of the room who had, up until that moment, remained still and silent, rose to its feet.
All told, Mother Gant had given birth to three sons and one daughter. Her first-born son had been smitten by the pox, the manner by which her first and second husbands had met their demise. Her second son had also been taken from her, but not by illness. Press-ganged at the age of sixteen, consigned to a watery grave at the age of eighteen, his innards turned to gruel by a ball fired from a French frigate during an engagement off the coast of Morocco. As for the daughter, no one knew her exact whereabouts. Last heard of, she was earning a precarious living as a whore, working the streets and arcades of Covent Garden and the Haymarket. Which left Mother Gant’s youngest son, Eli, as the only child not to have flown the coop. Though, if the truth were told, it was doubtful if the youth could have survived the separation.
At the age of twenty, Eli had the neck and shoulders of a wrestler, forearms the size of oak saplings, and the hands of a blacksmith. But though he possessed the body of a man, he had the brain of an infant. Unable to fend for himself or perform anything beyond the most menial tasks, he had become little more than a chattel to his widowed mother, who used him as she might have done a dray horse: as a beast of burden. On the occasions that she conducted the more nefarious of her enterprises, however, she used his size and strength for intimidation and protection. Eli’s sole purpose in life was to serve his mother, a duty he carried out unconditionally.
As Tooler and Jem and the other children ran for the door, the lumbering, moon-faced figure of Eli Gant emerged from the gloom. Hearing Mother’s cry, Eli was reacting solely on instinct. The shrill note in the old woman’s voice told him that there was trouble and that she needed his help. That was all he needed to know. When he rose to his feet, the cudgel that had been propped against the arm of the chair was in his hand.
Hawkwood avoided the thrown soup ladle with ease. As the utensil clattered against the wall a flicker of amusement passed over his face. Then he caught sight of the apparition looming towards him and his expression changed. He turned to confront the