Chapter 19
Since Bow Street Runners did not in general drive around London in their own carriages, Sebastian had arrived at the Isle of Dogs in a broken-down hackney driven by a gnarled old jarvey who refused to nudge his mule out of a slow trot. But Sebastian had better luck on the return journey, the hackney swaying along at a satisfying clip as they bounced over the bridge spanning the Limehouse Cut and swung into the long, straight stretch of the new Commercial Road.
It was only by chance that Sebastian glanced back in time to glimpse the dark-coated man astride a raw- boned gray trotting along behind them. Sebastian had noticed the man before, lounging in the door of a coffeehouse near the wharf.
It could be a coincidence, of course. Anyone wishing to return to London from the West India Company docks would inevitably travel this same route. Leaning forward, Sebastian spoke to the driver. “Turn left here. Just wind your way down toward the river.”
“Aye, gov’nor,” said the jarvey in surprise.
They swung into a narrow lane bordered on one side by an open field, on the other by a long row of new houses. This was a part of the city that was expanding rapidly, transformed by the massive new construction of docks and warehouses that had accompanied the war. They ran past the long rope walks of Sun Tavern Fields and, beyond that, the spicy fragrance of a cooperage and the blasting heat of a foundry.
The dark-coated man on the raw-boned gray kept pace behind them.
“Where now, gov’nor?” called the jarvey.
“Pull up at that tavern halfway down the lane.”
The tavern was a new two-story brick structure with twin bay windows. As Sebastian paid off the jarvey, the dark-coated man trotted past, then reined in at the base of the hill overlooking the quay and the warehouses that bordered it.
Sebastian entered the tavern and ordered a glass of daffy. The tavern was crowded with dockers and day laborers who filled the small public room with their voices and the smoke of their pipes and the pungent scent of their hardworking, unwashed bodies. Gin in hand, Sebastian took a seat at an empty table near one of the windows overlooking the street.
At the mouth of an alley directly opposite the tavern stood Dark Coat. As Sebastian watched, he lit a white clay pipe, the blue smoke wafting about his face as he drew hard on the stem. He looked to be in his early thirties, a medium-sized man with a crooked nose and a powerful jaw shaded blue by a day’s growth of beard. He sucked on his pipe, one shoulder propped against the brick wall of the shop beside him, his eyes narrowed against the smoke and the inevitable reek of the alley.
Sebastian set his drink on the table untasted and walked out of the tavern. He had to check for a moment and wait while a dray piled high with coal rumbled past. Then he stepped off the footpath into the churned mud of the unpaved lane. Dark Coat turned his head away, his attention seemingly all for the forest of masts that filled this part of the Thames.
Sebastian planted himself directly in the man’s line of vision. “Who set you to follow me?”
The man’s eyes widened, but he otherwise managed to keep his face admirably blank as he pushed away from the wall. “I don’t know what the bloody hell yer talkin’ about.”
Experience had taught Sebastian to watch a man’s hands. He saw the flash of the knife the instant before it slashed up toward his face. Flinging up his left fist, Sebastian knocked the man’s forearm with his own in a sweeping block as he took a quick step backward.
Too late, Sebastian felt his boot come down on a trampled sludge of rotten cabbage leaves and mud. The leather of his sole skidding dangerously, he slid sideways, one leg shooting out at an awkward angle.
Dark Coat pivoted and ran.
“Shit.” Catching his balance, Sebastian raced after him, past smashed hogsheads and broken crates and dust bins of refuse that reeked of fish guts and offal. They erupted out of the end of the alley through an open gate and into a coal yard. Sebastian heard a hoarse shout from one of the workmen as they pelted past, dodging between towering mountains of gleaming, blue-black coal, their feet kicking up foul clouds of fine coal dust.
The man ahead of Sebastian swerved sideways. Scrambling over the yard wall, he darted out into the traffic of the quay. Dodging lumbering drays and the cracking whip of a bellowing teamster, Sebastian pelted after him.
The dark mouth of a warehouse yawned before them, a vast vaulted chamber whose dank air breathed the heady, forbidden fumes of the Bordeaux and the Cote d’Azure. Dark Coat plunged down the stone steps, the string of lamps above flickering with his passing. Sebastian raced after him. Racks of wine casks towered over them, threw long shadows across a cobbled floor gleaming damp in the wavering lamplight. Somewhere, moisture dripped—wine, or a residue of last night’s rain—a slow drip-drip that formed a counterpoint to the slap of boot leather and the rasp of gasping breath.
“What the hell do you want from me?” shouted the man, his voice echoing back as he took the stairs at the far end of the wine cave two at a time.
“Who hired you?”
“Go to hell!”
At the top of the steps, the man veered right. Wary of an ambush, Sebastian slowed. By the time he emerged into the blinding light of the afternoon, the man had disappeared.
Breathing hard, Sebastian let his gaze travel over the darkened warehouses around him. A couple of drunken flaxen-haired sailors stumbled past warbling a German sea song. From the distance came the sound of coopers hammering at casks on the quay, the rattle of chains flying up on a crane . . . and, from the warehouse to his right, a
This storeroom was dark, without the string of lanterns that had turned the wine warehouse into a long cavern of dancing shadows. Sebastian entered cautiously, giving his eyes time to adjust. With each step, his feet
