‘There you are,’ said a low voice triumphantly.
Turning round in shock I saw Second Voice walking towards me, through the shops, the passage from one shop to another unbarred. He must have broken in somewhere else. Throwing myself towards him I caught him by surprise. He had expected me to run again. I seized him by the neck with my left hand. He grabbed at me with both of his, leaving me free to punch at his face and ribs with my right, which I did, in panic, with much force. He gasped and fell, losing his balance. I kicked him in the side of the temple, and then kicked him again, before throwing myself back out of the window and onto Godliman Street. Feeling no pain, only the thrill of having escaped and the fear of being chased, I ran east, sprinting, not stopping until I came to the corner of Bread Street. I turned and ran up the middle of the street, not bothering to stay in the shadows, towards home.
My windows were dark and the door was closed. I shook my head and tried to ignore the agonising pain at the back of my skull. Instead I looked to All Hallows, with its broken spire, struck by lightning a century ago. The pain at my temples cut again like a long-bladed knife. I opened my eyes, but couldn’t see properly, just a small bright light, which slowly expanded into a curling whorl with blue and green teeth, pulsating and flashing. My stomach contracted and I thought I was going to shit and vomit at the same time. Couldn’t see, couldn’t walk. Stumbling into the graveyard of All Hallows I prayed that no one was watching me. I made my way slowly to the rear of the graveyard trying to keep my head totally still. There I found a big square gravestone and sat behind it, my back against the stone and my legs out straight in front of me. Closing my eyes, I tipped my head back, waiting grimly for relief from the agony in my head. I stayed in that position for three hours, enduring the pain and the freezing cold, the effort of it exhausting. The pain stayed with me, teasing me, while my joints stiffened, and new pains came. I cannot describe it. At last the cold winter sun rose, casting a red light on the dead morning. My head was still sore, but the sharpest edge of it was dulled. I climbed to my feet gingerly. The streets were still empty, too empty for me to go wandering. Paul’s would be busiest soonest. I walked the short distance to the churchyard there; the biggest open space there was in London, silent and comforting at this time of day. Leafless trees stood like twigs in the long grass, their branches quivering in the gentle morning wind. Standing still, I looked up at the great square Norman tower. God’s house, indeed. And what the boggins was God trying to do to me?
When Dowling saw me he held one hand to his forehead and just stood there in the doorway of his shop. He danced out like a younger version of Harry Hunks and fussed over me like an old woman. Dirt was ingrained into my skin, hair and shoes. I felt like a dug-up corpse. A dug-up corpse in need of a bath, a drink and a soft bed.
‘What happened to you?’ He steered me through his shop and out into a room at the back. ‘I went to your house yesterday night and that Jane was wailing and gnashing her teeth. She found your wig on the floor, with blood on it, no less. I had every butcher’s boy from Newgate searching London for you.’
‘I was apprehended.’ On the back of the head. My head still throbbed inside and outside and I felt like I was going to be violently sick. The soft morning light speared through my eyes like sharp, shiny skewers. I really wasn’t in the mood for talking. ‘Can I go to bed now, please?’
There was a woman out the back cleaning up. She was a little old for my tastes, but her calves were lithe and muscular. When she turned to look at me I saw bright blue eyes and a kind, intelligent face. Aye — I could go for that, I reflected. Not now, though. Now bed.
‘Meet my wife,’ Dowling said proudly. ‘Lucy.’
I waved a hand at her, not wanting to bow my head. The room sort of shimmered, with soft, little white lights glistening where there could be no soft, little white lights. Then it suddenly shot off to the left. When I opened my eyes again I could see both Dowling and his wife staring down at me, the ceiling behind their faces. I had never been in so much pain since about an hour before. I spoke very softly so as not to disturb my eyeballs. ‘May I lie down on a soft bed in a dark room, please?’
The best part of two days I spent lying in a large lumpy bed in a dark room that actually didn’t smell too bad given that it was Dowling’s. The back of my head swelled up to the size of a grapefruit and my right eye was now the size of an apple. My ribs pushed down on my chest like the bars of an iron cage and made it hard to breathe. When I did fall asleep I was plagued by visions of Joyce’s head swaying on the end of a stick on top of Nonsuch; grey, drawn face, white eyes bulging from red-rimmed sockets. A woman with no eyes, grinning and talking, while blood slowly dripped from two bloody sockets. Though it was winter, I lay bathed in my own cold sweat. The only respite was being able to watch Lucy Dowling’s beautifully rounded mature buttocks shift beneath her heavy skirt, imagining my hands stroking them gently.
The third day I woke with a linen bandage wrapped round my head. Dowling sat perched on a tiny three-legged stool next to my head.
‘That’s a fair old hole you got in the back of your head, Harry,’ he said softly. ‘Four inches long and half an inch deep. Reckon I saw the bone. The edges are still blue and puffy, but I think we’ve got the worst out of it.’
‘Thank you.’ My mouth was dry. Dowling handed me a cup of ale.
‘What happened?’
Though my head still throbbed like a ripe maggot I told him my story. Once I’d finished he sat grim-faced.
‘I know Mottram,’ he said at last. ‘He has the brains of a big cow. His usual trade is thieving or cullying. He works with a partner. He stands up and looks big whilst his partner does the talking. He is a menacer. Never heard of him killing. Methinks you had the Lord’s arm about your shoulder, Harry. If it were not Mottram sent to dispatch you, methinks you’d be swinging from that pole as we speak, neck as long as my arm.’
‘Do you know where Mottram lives?’
‘Aye, Shoreditch, but he won’t be there now. He’ll be hidden now that he’s failed, his mate too. In fear of their own lives, if they be sensible. Whoever it was that paid them to kill you will be determined to make them pay for their failure.’
I closed my eyes.
Dowling cleared his throat and sat back up straight, thick lines across his weather-beaten forehead. ‘Harry, you want my wisdom, then I’ll tell you that you was saved for a reason. You didn’t escape out of your own cleverness. It was God’s will. If he saved you then he saved you for a reason. Fear not, saith the Lord, for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name, and thou art mine.’
‘Aye,’ I muttered.
‘If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed then ye shall say unto this mountain — remove hence to yonder place — and it shall remove.’
‘It is like a church in here. Ye know I don’t have that faith.’
‘I know that, Harry, one of your many faults. But you need faith now. Think on it. The Lord giveth wisdom.’
I fell asleep — as I always did in church — and dreamt of clerics with big shapely arses, large breasts and, no matter how hard I tried to change it, Dowling’s face.
Chapter Fifteen
The leaves of this plant swarm with lice in the month of June, on account of their exceptional sweetness.
Commotion. Dowling talking animatedly with someone in the front room. My name. John Giles’s name. Sitting upright I forced my stiff limbs to lever me up onto my feet. I staggered out towards the noise, the muscles in my legs tight and bruised. Dowling staring at me with his mouth open, already dressed. The door open. Men waiting outside. They were all about to go somewhere. The look on Dowling’s face said that something important was happening. It was dark and freezing cold — still night.