Chapter 7 - The Gathering at the Docks
The cabin of the river police cutter was small, hot, and smelled of the petroleum lamps that swung from the iron deck-beams. A small iron stove in the corner was choked with anthracite, its door glowing a dull, pulsing red that cast long, nervous shadows across the faces of the four people gathered around the narrow wooden table.
Julian sat on a sea-chest, wrapped in Hawke’s heavy pilot-coat, his small, grey feet tucked into a pair of dry wool socks that were five sizes too large for him. He held a tin mug of sweet tea between both hands, his lips still grey with the cold, but his eyes were fixed entirely on Arthur Vance’s face.
Arthur had not spoken since he had entered the cabin. He had come down to the wharf with the midnight watch, his top hat gone, his fine wool trousers covered in the black soot of the coal-shoot where he had helped Hawke drag the boy out of the water. He was on his knees before his son, his long, white fingers reaching out to touch the boy’s cheek, then pulling back as if afraid the child would dissolve into smoke like the memories of the past five years.
"He doesn't know me, Evelyn," Arthur whispered, his voice cracking, the granite mask entirely gone, leaving nothing but the old, raw grief of a father who had forgotten how to look at his own blood. "He looks at me like I’m one of Silas’s men."
Julian set the tin mug down on the chest. He looked at Arthur’s long fingers, then reached out with his own small, dirty hand and traced the silver watch-chain that hung from Arthur’s waistcoat. He found the small, oval fob—the one carved from green jade that Arthur had brought back from his mission to the China station when Julian was a baby.
"The horse," Julian muttered, his voice very small, the street-bird rhythm slowly giving way to something older, something softer.
"The green horse that lived in your pocket. You let me hold it when the rain came. You said it was a magic horse that could run over the water."
Arthur let out a sound that was half-sob, half-laugh, his head dropping onto the boy’s knees, his shoulders shaking beneath his damp coat as his arms finally closed around his son’s thin back.
"Yes, Julian," Arthur wept, his fingers burying themselves in the soot-choked curls of the boy’s hair. "It’s the magic horse. It brought you home. It brought you all the way back from the dark."
The door of the cabin swung open, and Inspector Hawke stepped inside, his face grave, his oilskins dripping black water onto the floorboards.
"We’ve cleared the cellar at the Red Lion, Mr. Vance," Hawke said, looking at Stephen Vance, who sat in the corner of the cabin, his hands secured to the iron bulkhead rings by a pair of silver-plated watchman’s irons.
"The girl Martha found the ledger—the old one Silas kept for the parish burials. It’s all there, sir. The registry of the money paid by your brother’s clerk into the Wapping bank every quarter since the winter of '81. Thirty pounds a year to keep the boy out of the papers and out of the light."
Stephen didn't look up. His face was the color of a tallow candle, his white teeth biting into his lip until the blood ran down his chin. "Arthur, please," he muttered, his voice dropping into a whine that had no dignity left in it.
"The debts... the brokers in Epsom said they’d take the carriage horses if I didn't settle by Christmas. I didn't hurt him. I told Silas he was to be kept fed. I told him he was to have a dry bed."
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Evelyn rose from the table, her shawl falling from her shoulders, her blue eyes colder than the river water that was splashing against the cutter’s hull.
"You left him in the mud, Stephen," she said, her voice dropping into a level, terrifying whisper that made the younger brother shrink back against the iron rings. "You sat at our table every Sunday. You watched me light the candles for his memory. You watched Clara cry for her brother. You took our gold to pay your jockeys while our son was picking through the cabbage crates for a crust of bread. The law will give you a dry bed, Stephen. But it will be made of stone, and it will be in Newgate."
