Chapter 6 - The River Patrol
The Thames at midnight looked like a river of black oil, its surface broken only by the yellow reflection of the coal-fires burning on the decks of the lime-boats and the distant, green eye of the river police station at Wapping.
Evelyn sat in the stern of the small wooden skiff, her fingers gripping the gunwale until the wood groaned against the iron rowlocks. She had taken off her velvet cloak and her white gloves; she was wearing nothing but a plain wool shawl she had bought from an old woman at the fish-stairs, her hair soaking wet, clinging to her cheeks in long, dark strands that tasted of salt and coal smoke.
Beside her sat Inspector Hawke—a short, thick-set man with an iron-grey beard and a coat that smelled intensely of tar and fried herrings. He held the long steering oar between his knees, his eyes fixed on the dark shadow of the Custom House quay half a mile ahead.
"It’s a bad business, Mrs. Vance," Hawke said, his voice dropping into the low, flat register of a man who had pulled three hundred bodies out of the river-reach.
"If the boy’s on the Black Diamond, we can't touch her once she drops her moorings and gets into the mid-stream. The Newcastle colliers have got a charter from the Board of Trade; the river watch can't board them without a warrant from the Lord Mayor himself unless we see the boy with our own eyes."
"He is there," Evelyn said, her teeth chattering so hard she could barely form the words. "The girl Martha told my maid. Stephen paid Silas twenty pounds to clear the ledger. My own brother-in-law, Hawke. He used the family trust money to buy the boy’s passage to the coal-pits."
"We don't know that for a fact, Milady," Hawke said, his hand tightening on the oar as a heavy barge rolled past them in the dark, its wash splashing cold water over Evelyn’s ankles. "The word of a gin-shop girl ain't worth much in the Guildhall. If Mr. Stephen Vance says he was in his club all evening, the judges will believe his shirt-front before they believe our mudlarks."
A sudden cry rose from the shadow of the Custom House wharf—a sharp, high scream that was instantly cut off by the heavy blow of a timber spar against the water.
"There!" Evelyn shrieked, standing up in the small boat until the skiff rocked violently, nearly throwing Hawke into the river. "Look at the crane! Near the coal-shoot!"
In the yellow glare of a tar-barrel fire on the quay, two men were struggling on the narrow wooden stage that overhung the river. One was Silas the hunchback, his moleskin waistcoat dark with grease, his iron-tipped boot stamping down on the fingers of a child who was clinging to the edge of the coal-shoot.
The boy was Julian. His face was white, his blue eyes reflecting the orange light of the fire as he hung five feet above the black water, his strength failing as the hunchback brought his heavy stick down onto his knuckles.
"Let go, you little devil!" Silas roared, his voice carrying over the water like the barking of a mastiff. "The skipper’s waiting for the hatch-cover! Get down into the hold or I’ll drop you under the paddle-wheels!"
"Julian!" Evelyn screamed, her voice breaking through the roar of the river.
She didn't wait for Hawke to turn the skiff. She scrambled over the bow of the small boat, her boots striking the slippery timber of the piling, her hands clawing at the wet weed as she dragged herself up onto the wharf-stage by pure, maternal fury.
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Silas turned at the sound of her voice, his milky eye widening in the firelight, his stick raised to strike. But before he could bring it down, the boy let out a sharp cry and bit the hunchback through the leather of his boot-heel.
Silas roared with pain, losing his balance on the greasy timber stage. His arms windmilled through the air, his heavy moleskin waistcoat catching on the iron hook of the coal-crane for a brief second before the fabric tore with a loud rip, and the master of the Red Lion cellar tumbled backward into the black, churning water of the pool, leaving nothing behind but his grease-streaked cap floating in the scum.
