He tapped one slightly grubby finger just off Bishopsgate. `It's owned by a fellow named Jamie Knox.'
Sebastian looked at his tiger in surprise. `You know him?'
Tom shook his head. `Never seen the fellow meself. But I've eard tales o'him. E's a weery rum customer. A weery rum customer indeed. They say e dresses all in black, like the devil.'
A somewhat dramatic affectation. It wasn't unusual for gentlemen in formal evening dress to wear a black coat and black knee breeches. But the severity of the attire was always leavened by a white waistcoat, white silk stockings, and of course a white cravat.
`Not sure what that means,' said Tom, `but I do know folks say e musta sold is soul to the devil, for e's got the devil's own luck. They say e as the reflexes of a cat. And the eyes and ears of...'
`What?' prodded Sebastian when the boy broke off.
Tom swallowed. `They say e as the eyes and ears of a cat, too. Yellow eyes.'
Chapter 15
The Black Devil lay in a narrow cobbled lane just off Bishopsgate.
Sebastian walked down gloomy streets lit haphazardly by an occasional sputtering oil lamp or flaring torch thrust into a sconce high on an ancient wall. The houses here dated back to the time of the Tudors and the Stuarts, for this was a part of London that had escaped the ravages of the Great Fire. Once home to courtiers attached to the court of James I, the area had been in a long downward slide for the past century. The elaborately carved fronts overhanging the paving were sagging and worn; the great twisting chimneys leaned precariously as they poked up into the murky night sky.
By day, this was a district of small tradesmen: leather workers and chandlers, clock makers and tailors. But now the shops were all shuttered for the night, the streets given over to the patrons of the grog shops and taverns that spilled golden rectangles of light and boisterous laughter into the night.
He paused across the street from the Black Devil, in the shadows cast by the deep doorway of a calico printer's shop. He let his gaze rove over the public house's gable-ended facade and old-fashioned, diamond-paned windows. Suspended from a beam over the door hung a cracked wooden sign painted with the image of a horned black devil, his yellow-eyed head and barbed tail silhouetted against a roaring orange and red fire. As Sebastian watched, the sign creaked softly on its chains, touched by an unexpected gust of hot wind.
Crossing the narrow lane, he pushed through the door into a noisy, low-ceilinged public room with a sunken stone-flagged floor and oak-paneled walls turned black by centuries of smoke. The air was thick with the smell of tobacco and ale and unwashed, hardworking male bodies. The men crowded up to the bar and clustered around the tables glanced over at him, then went back to their pints and their bonesticks and their draughts.
`Help ye, there?' called a young woman from behind the bar, her almond-shaped eyes narrowing with shrewd appraisal. She looked to be somewhere in her early twenties, dark haired and winsome, with a wide red mouth and soft white breasts that swelled voluptuously above the low-cut bodice of her crimson satin gown.
Sebastian pushed his way through the crowd to stand half turned so that he still faced the room. In this gathering of tradesmen and laborers, costermongers and petty thieves, his doeskin breeches, clean white cravat, and exquisitely tailored coat of Bath superfine all marked him as a creature from another world. The other men at the bar shifted subtly, clearing a space around him.
`A go of Cork,' he said, then waited until she set the measure of gin on the boards in front of him to add, `I'm looking for Jamie Knox; is he here?'
The woman behind the bar wiped her hands on the apron tied high around her waist, but her gaze never left his face. `And who might ye be, then?'
`Devlin. Viscount Devlin.'
She stood for a moment with her hands still wrapped in the cloth of her apron. Then she jerked her head toward the rear. `He's out the back, unloading a delivery. There's an alley runs along the side of the tavern. The court opens off that.'
Sebastian laid a coin on the scarred surface of the bar. `Thank you.'
The alley was dark and ripe with the stench of rotting offal and fish heads and urine. The ancient walls looming high above him on either side bulged out ominously, so that someone had put in stout timber braces to keep the masonry from collapsing. As he drew nearer, he realized the tavern backed onto the churchyard of St. Helen's Bishopsgate, a relic of a now-vanished priory of Benedictine nuns. He could see the church's ancient wooden tower rising over a swelling burial ground where great elms moaned softly with the growing wind.
He paused just outside the entrance to the tavern yard. The courtyard looked to be even older than the tavern itself, its cobbles undulating and sunken, with one unexpectedly high wall of coursed flint blocks bonded with rows of red tile. Sebastian could understand why a woman with Gabrielle Tennyson's interests would find the site fascinating.
Someone had set a horn lantern atop an old flat stone beside a mule-drawn cart filled with hogsheads. The mules stood with their heads down, feet splayed. At the rear of the tavern the wooden flaps of the cellar had been thrown open to reveal a worn flight of stone steps that disappeared downward. As Sebastian watched, the grizzled head and husky shoulders of a man appeared, his footfalls echoing in the wind-tossed night.
Sebastian leaned against the stone jamb of the gateway. He had one hand in his pocket, where a small double-barreled pistol, primed and loaded, partially spoiled the line of his fashionable coat. A sheath in his boot concealed the dagger he was rarely without. He waited until the man had crossed to the cart, then said, `Mr. Jamie Knox?'
The man froze with his hands grasping a cask, his head turning toward the sound of Sebastian's voice. He appeared wary but not surprised, and it occurred to Sebastian that the comely young woman behind the bar must have run to warn her master to expect a visitor. `Aye. And who might ye be?'
`Devlin. Lord Devlin.'
The man sniffed. Somewhere in his mid-thirties, he had a compact, muscular body that belied the heavy sprinkling of gray in this thick, curly head of hair. Far from being dressed all in black, he wore buff-colored trousers and a brown coat that looked in serious need of a good brushing and mending. His face was broad and sun darkened, with a long scar that ran down one cheek. Sebastian had seen scars like that before, left by a saber slash.
The man paused for only an instant. Then he hefted the hogshead and headed back to the stairs. `I'm a busy man. What ye want?'
The accent surprised Sebastian; it was West Country rather than London or Middlesex. He said, `I understand you knew a woman named Miss Tennyson.'
The man grunted. `Met her. Came sniffin' around here a while back, she did, prattlin' about Roman walls and pictures made of little colored bits and a bunch of other nonsense. Why ye ask?'
`She's dead.'
`Aye. So we heard.' The man disappeared down the cellar steps.
Sebastian waited until he reemerged. `When was the last time you saw her?'
`I told ye, 'twere a while back. Two, maybe three months ago.'
`That's curious. You see, someone saw you speaking to her just a few days ago. Last Thursday, to be precise. At the York Steps.'
The man grasped another hogshead and turned back toward the cellar. `Who'er told ye that didn't know what he was talkin' about.'
`It's possible, I suppose.'
The man grunted and started down the steep stairs again. He was breathing heavily by the time he came back up. He paused to lean against the cellar door and swipe his sweaty forehead against the shoulder of his coat.
`You were a soldier?' said Sebastian.
`What makes ye think that?'
`It left you with a rather distinctive face.'
The man pushed away from the cellar. `I was here all day Thursday. Ask any o' the lads in the public room;
