Chapter 3 - The Master of the Ward
The man who stepped out from behind the stack of empty tallow barrels was broad-shouldered, but his height had been stolen by a permanent, heavy hunch between his shoulder blades. He wore a greasy moleskin waistcoat over a grey flannel shirt that had no collar, his neck thick and red like an ox that had spent its life under the yoke. His left eye was milky, clouded over by an old cataracts scar, but his right eye was clear, dark, and sharp as an iron awl.
"Monsieur Silas," the boy whispered, the sandwich slipping from his fingers into the dust. Every ounce of color drained from his face, leaving the soot look like bruised ink against his skin. He didn't try to run anymore; his entire body went slack, the resignation of a dog that knew the length of its chain.
"Get up, Toby," the man said, his voice dropping into a low, wet rumble. He didn't look at the boy; his single good eye was fixed entirely on Evelyn’s velvet cloak and the glint of the small gold watch pinned to her lapel.
"You’ve been out three hours and haven't brought back a single copper copper-bit. Instead, you're sitting here taking charity like a common beggar-brat. Get down to the cellar before I take the strap to your legs."
Evelyn rose from the mud, her knees shaking so violently she had to lean against the brickwork to keep her balance. She pulled Clara behind her, her body forming a shield between the hunchback and her daughter.
"His name is not Toby," Evelyn said, her voice rising out of its tremor into a sharp, aristocratic hiss that had the weight of three hundred years of landed gentry behind it. "His name is Julian Vance. He is the son of Arthur Vance of the Admiralty. He was lost in the river five years ago."
Silas let out a short, wet laugh that smelled of sour beer and shag tobacco. He took a step closer, his heavy leather boots squelching in the mud. He reached out with a thick, calloused hand and gripped the boy by the shoulder, his dirty thumb digging deep into the child’s collarbone until the boy let out a small, muffled gasp.
"He's been 'Toby' since the winter of '81, lady," Silas said, his milky eye twitching.
"Found him floating on a timber raft near the Limehouse stairs myself. He didn't have no name then. Couldn't speak nothing but gibberish about a 'silver horse' and a 'green room.' I fed him. I gave him a straw bed in the cellar. The law says if you keep a stray dog for three winters and pay the parish beadle his sixpence a year, the dog belongs to the house."
"He is not a dog!" Clara cried from behind Evelyn’s coat, her small face red with a sudden, fierce anger. "He's a boy! And he was hungry!"
"Hush, Clara," Evelyn whispered, her mind racing through the legal labyrinths of the city. She knew Silas was lying about the law, but she also knew that in the rookeries of East London, the law was whatever the man with the heaviest fist said it was. If she called for the watch, if she screamed for a gendarme, Silas could disappear into the network of cellars and coal-hatches behind the gin palace before the first whistle could be blown. And Julian would vanish with him.
"How much?" Evelyn asked, her hand moving down to her waist, searching for the small silk purse she kept tucked into her corset lining.
Silas stopped his laughing. His good eye narrowed until it was nothing but a black slit in his grease-streaked face. "How much for what, Milady?"
"For the boy. For his ledger. For the three years of straw you've given him." She pulled out the purse, her fingers clumsy as she emptied the contents into her palm: five gold sovereigns, three silver half-crowns, and a small diamond bar-pin her husband had given her for their last anniversary. "Take it all. Every bit of it. Just let me take him to the carriage."
Silas looked at the gold, his thick lips twitching with greed, but then his gaze drifted past Evelyn’s shoulder toward the mouth of the alley. A black brougham carriage had just pulled up to the curb, its silver lamps gleaming through the rain. Standing by the carriage door was a tall, thin man in a formal black overcoat—Evelyn’s brother-in-law, Stephen Vance.
"Stephen!" Evelyn called out, her voice breaking with relief. "Stephen, come quickly! It’s Julian! He’s alive!"
Silas saw the gentleman in the black coat move toward the alley, his hand resting on the gold head of his walking stick. With a sudden, vicious yank, the hunchback dragged the boy backward into the dark recess behind the tallow barrels.
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"No deal, lady," Silas hissed, his face dark with a sudden, inexplicable fear. "Toby's got an agreement with the house. You come back with the law, and you'll find him at the bottom of the basin with the dead dogs."
Before Evelyn could scream, Silas slammed his heavy leather boot against a rotten wooden door in the brickwork behind him. The door gave way with a splintering crash, and both the man and the boy vanished into the black, subterranean dark beneath the warehouse, leaving nothing behind but the half-eaten sandwich rotting in the rain.
