Paul Lawrence - The Sweet Smell of Decay

We stopped on Fleet Street at the mouth to Shoe Lane. I watched nervously the characters that wandered in and out the tops of the narrow alleys that led down into Alsatia, dirty rogues, walking slowly and without haste, masters of their territory. The streets were narrow, doors were public thoroughfares, and the noise from within tumbled out loud and crude. The area swarmed. Houses so overfilled and overpopulated that the sewage formed a thick river that covered the width of the street. This was the dirtiest and unhealthiest district in the whole of London.

Dowling strode over, having been stuck in conversation with the driver of the coach. The coach rumbled forward gently and came to a stop at the top of Salisbury Alley.

‘We all four go together, Harry, it’s safer that way.’ Dowling took my jacket in his hand and shook his head sorrowfully, gazing at my oldest and least fashionable clothes. Still they might as well have been the King’s robes. Snatching my jacket out of his hand I pushed him forward, I had no appetite for discussing it. We paused at the top of the alley and looked down. Walls closed in on either side of the running sewer. Faces stared out from doorways and windows.

‘Right, let’s take him.’ Dowling and one of the others hauled Hewitt out onto the street and pushed him forward. Someone had put an old linen bag over his head. We walked with purpose following Dowling into the maze. I didn’t try and avoid the eyes of the dirty flea-bitten wretches that stared at me with greedy malice, but I didn’t hold their gaze long either. I tried to look unworried and disinterested, as if I was on my way home after a day at work. Dowling led us onwards, marching forward, keen not to linger. My boots sank into the filth with every step I took and I felt the shit seep through the leather and into my stockings and soak up my hose. Every face in every window, every body on every street corner, turned to watch us walk by. Conversations died, laughter stopped, arguments were postponed. Suspicious faces, frowning countenances, beetled brows, low murmurings. People here had all day to do nothing very much.

A trio of particularly ugly and vicious-looking young men kicked their heels as we walked by, then slowly followed. One of them carried a long truncheon, two feet long and made of hard, dark wood. This was the upright man, the leader of the pack. There was no stepping off these dank and humid lanes, for the doorways led straight into people’s living spaces, and the alleys were blocked with piles of rotting rubbish. Eyes watched us out of every door and window. The old and young hung out of every upper-floor window. There was nowhere to stop or rest, no coaches to hail, no wharf or boats. The lanes wound on, lined with eyes, watching and waiting. I thought we were about to die.

‘Have at thee, Dowling. What have you there?’ The upright man drew alongside Dowling and poked Hewitt with his stick. My chest relaxed and fell, my breathing resumed. I felt like dancing. Then he grinned at me, an unpleasant display of thin, sharp, brown teeth. His brow was greasy, his eyes dull and cruel. He lifted his truncheon and held it out to one side, its end resting gently on the floor.

‘Nothing that would interest you, my friend.’ Dowling smiled lazily. Friend? The upright man laughed and slapped Dowling on the back. A loud buzz rumbled forth from all around, tumbling down towards the river, a thick cloud of disappointment. The mob had wanted a fight. Heads dropped, faces sneered, and the rabble went back to their chattering and bickering. The upright man didn’t care. He was the pack leader, free to please or displease.

‘This way.’ Dowling headed towards what looked like no more than a crack in the wall, but it was a tall, narrow alley, dark and wet. The upright man stopped and watched us squeeze down it. He turned, leered, and was gone. What next?

The alley was quiet. Now the only noise was the abrupt sound of little running feet, rats emerging into the cover of darkness, interrupted by the occasional scream and groan or drunken laugh escaping from behind walls and unseen closed doors. We slid slowly down the slope, until Dowling stopped. Pushing open a door to his left, he led us into a gloomy room with crumbling walls. The floor was covered with wet straw mixed with the excrement of the two chickens and the pig that scrambled out of our way. The chickens were scrawny, all skin and bones, but the pig was plump and well fed. Stolen. Holes peppered the walls and the air was foul. An old woman sat on a chair with her head bowed. She looked up as we entered, licking her lips and rubbing her hands. Struggling to her feet, back bent and twisted, she gasped as she steadied herself. Shuffling forward with tiny crabby steps, feet not leaving the floor, she put out her hand.

‘Davy. What you bring us today?’

‘Thomas said that I might use your basement for a while. I have something I need to keep in there.’ Dowling took a coin from his pocket, that I had given him, and pressed it into the old woman’s hand. ‘I have paid him some already, and will pay him more by the day, so long as my goods stay unharmed and untouched.’ He had ‘paid him some already’ with my money, too.

‘That your goods, is it?’ The old woman answered eagerly, stepping quickly over to look closely at Hewitt. She pulled at the silk of his jacket and ran her fingers up the cloth of his trousers. ‘Precious, are they?’

‘Aye, precious and dangerous, Mary. This is one that you’d best leave be. I don’t want to find him gone, nor untied, nor stripped of his clothes. He would kill you without fear nor hesitation.’ Dowling gently pushed her hand away.

The old woman laughed in a hoarse whisper. ‘Have some sack. Best sack in Alsatia.’ She turned and hurried back into the shadows. ‘Only a penny a bottle.’ I would have paid a guinea if I thought it would help, but Dowling swore and spat on the floor, and told her a halfpenny or nothing. The old woman laughed quietly to herself and came back with a basket full of dirty-looking bottles that she lined up on a table. Opening four of them, she poured their contents into filthy cups. I wiped at the rim of the cup with my thumb and forefinger, determined not to examine too closely what might be floating in it. The sack was strong and acidic, twice as strong as it ought to be. My stomach and throat burnt.

‘So what you be in Alsatia for, my little flower?’ The old woman held out the bottle to refill my cup. Dowling’s friends laughed along at her joke.

I held my cup in front of my nose and tried to ease myself gently away. ‘This is fine sack.’

She followed me as I stepped backwards, clinging like a leech. ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

Dowling took the bottle off the old woman. ‘He’s got the same interest as me, Mary. I’ll pay thee well if you keep this bundle safe. But you think to market it yourself for whatever you can get, then mark my words all you’ll get is your throat cut.’

‘All’s rug here, Davy.’ The woman stood up close to me, studying my face. I nearly choked on the smell of rotting meat that blew out of her diseased mouth, struggling to keep the look of disgust off my face. Dowling tapped her on the shoulder and waved a hand, urging her to fill up the others’ cups. She looked sadly at the table, covered in empty bottles, whereupon Dowling pressed upon her some more pennies. Sighing happily, she pulled out another two bottles from the basket, then returned to me.

‘I be an unholy wretch, my pretty gentleman,’ she grinned, eyes bright, ‘which be my role in the world, but I don’t profit by it. If I am to look after your goods then I do you a service, for which ye shall pay me well. And if you pay me well, then you may leave your goods here, and be sure they will still be here upon your return.’