I dropped my walking stick and seized him. Bill fought furiously. Auberge and Grenville emerged from Bill's lodgings, and two of Denis's men ran up behind me.
'Let me go,' Bill screamed. 'I didn't do it.'
I shook him. 'Didn't do what?'
'Let me go,' he moaned.
'There you are, ye little bugger.' Denis's man, who'd looked in on us earlier, breathed hard in anger. 'Let me have him, Captain. I'll thrash him for you.'
'What did he do this time?'
'Didn't stop when we said to. He were trying to hide something, he was, but he runned away when he saw us coming.'
My grip tightened on Bill's bony shoulder. 'Bill? What are you hiding?'
'Nuffing. It ain't nuffing. I didn't do it. Let me go.' He began to weep.
I shook him again, but Bill only cried in gasping sobs, and I knew I'd get nothing coherent from him. 'Show me,' I said to Denis's man.
He hoisted his lantern. 'This way, sir.'
I dragged Bill along. He tried to twist away from me, but Grenville caught his other arm, and together we half-carried him back down the lane. Denis's lackeys, whose names I had never learned, led us down a street.
The plaque on the nearest wall that named the street was so worn I could not read it, but I had a vague idea where we were from my searching this morning. This narrow lane led us in a meandering course to a flight of stairs that went down to the river. Another plaque, this one more legible, assured us that these stairs had once been used by Elizabeth the Queen, two hundred and more years before. A house stood at the top of the stairs, worn and crumbling.
'Not in there, sir,' the man with the lantern said. 'Over here.'
He led me to a triangle of space between the house and the top of the stairs. The triangle was about three feet on a side, the remains of someone's attempt at a tiny garden. The earth had been turned up here, as though someone had been digging. On the stair side, the bank tumbled away to the roiling Thames, and the house pressed its other side. Nothing the size of a girl could be buried here.
Bottle Bill whimpered. I let him go, and he sank to the stones in front of the house, pulling his knees to his chest.
'Why were you digging here, Bill?' I asked, but not forcefully; I knew he would not answer.
'He was burying something.' The lackey with the lantern swung it over the patch, and the second one squatted down and started digging with a flat knife.
I pulled a clod of earth away and saw the glint of glass. Denis's man slammed his knife into the earth in disgust. 'It's gin. Bottles of gin. Bloody son of a bitch was burying bottles of gin.'
Behind me, Bill twitched. 'I didn't do it.'
I sighed in exasperation. I pulled out three bottles, green glass and heavy, and let them fall to the cobbles. 'Damn you, Bill.'
Denis's man with the lantern yanked out one more bottle, which I had missed, and smashed it to the ground. Bill winced, cringing from the broken glass.
'Sorry, sir,' Denis's lackey said. 'It's for nothing.' He started to turn away.
'Wait,' I commanded. 'Bring the light back. Shine it just there.'
I pointed to where he'd pulled out the last bottle. I'd seen something when the dirt fell away, but I was not quite certain what. I scrabbled in the mud, disliking the cold ooze, but I was beyond caring. I scraped away earth from what I'd seen, and the others crowded in behind me.
'It's a board,' I said. I started to lift it away, then I realized it was nailed in place. I wrenched it, hard, and the rotted thing at last gave way.
I almost slithered forward into a hole about two feet in diameter. Denis's man grabbed me in time, but I shook him off. I lay down and inched forward until I could peer into the dark hole. Dank, fetid air washed over me, sickening and heavy.
'There was a covering here of some kind. It's mostly gone. Give me the lantern.'
Denis's man nearly hit my face with it in his eagerness to hand it to me. I passed the lantern down into the hole.
I recoiled as a small rat climbed up the dirt, scrambling to get away from the light. I waited, but none others followed. It was either alone, or its fellows were braver. I leaned in again.
'Careful, Lacey,' Grenville said behind me.
Denis's man held my legs, his weight like a rock. I doubted I'd fall, unless the man suddenly decided to rid Denis of a problem called Captain Lacey for once and for all. I risked it, lowered the lantern inside, and shone the light about.
This must have been part of an old cellar, but it, like Bottle Bill's room, had been bricked off from the rest of the house. Perhaps the original wall had leaked, long ago, and the owner found it easier to seal off the room. The brick to my right was infested with slime and mold. To the left, rotting timbers barely supported a wall that had crumbled to let in the dirt of the bank. About ten feet below me, or as near as I could judge, was an earthen floor, hard packed.
I withdrew. 'Help me get down there.'
Grenville had pressed a folded handkerchief to his nose. 'Lacey, it cannot be healthy down there. It smells like a cesspit.'
'If rats can exist there, so can I.' I turned to Denis's man. 'Will you lower me until I can drop to the ground?'
He nodded stoically. I stripped off my coat and handed it to Grenville. He shook it out and folded it carefully over his arm, like a good valet.
'I, too, will go down,' Auberge announced.
'No,' I said. 'Let me see how safe it is first. I do not want us all plummeting down there and caving in a wall.'
'You should let one of us go, sir,' the man who'd held the lantern said. 'Mr. Denis will be angry if something happens to you.'
I eyed their burly, muscular bodies and shook my head. 'You'll never fit. Now lower me until I tell you to let go.'
So saying, I lay on my belly and swung my legs into the hole, letting my booted feet drop in first.
I had a sudden and vivid flash of one of my soldiers lowering me into a similar hole on a Spanish summer night, so I could rescue a group of Spaniards who had gotten trapped when the building above them collapsed under canon fire. Their eyes had gleamed in the darkness, teeth flashing in grins as I came tumbling in with ropes. They'd hidden in a cellar full of wine and had seen no reason not to indulge while they waited, believing themselves buried forever.
That cellar had been dry and warm; this hole was foul with damp, rats, and rot. Denis's man got on his knees and held me under the arms. He strained his weight against mine as he lowered me slowly. When I judged that I was about four feet from the floor, I told him to let go.
He removed his hands, and I slithered down through mud and earth, a little farther than I'd thought, then my feet landed, thud, on the hard-packed floor.
'Lantern,' I barked. My words fell flat on moist walls, close around me. The lackey lowered the lantern to me, and I reached up and grabbed its handle.
The light showed me little but a narrow tunnel with mildew-encrusted brick on one side, rotten boards and mud on the other. The air was fetid and as Grenville had remarked, smelled of cesspits, but as I stepped forward, the smell receded, as though it had been trapped here but released when we opened the hole.
I heard the voices of the men I'd left on top. 'You all right, Lacey?' Grenville called down. 'Please answer. I am the smallest man out here and do not relish climbing in to pull you out.'
I knew full well that Grenville would ruin his coat climbing down if necessary. He'd destroyed gloves, waistcoats, and fine suits in his adventures with me without a word, much to his valet's despair.
'I am fine,' I said. 'I am moving forward, following the house wall.'
So saying, I took a few steps, hoping I did not come to a rotted part of the floor that would send me plunging
