Dan Simmons - Drood

We left the wider highways and streets, and with Dickens leading, we entered into a maze of increasingly dark and narrow byways and alleyways. Charles Dickens never hesitated; he knew these terrible streets by heart from his many midnight rambles. I knew only that we were somewhere east of Falcon Square. I retained vague memories of this area from my previous expeditions into the underbelly of London with Dickens—Whitechapel, Shadwell, Wapping, all parts of the city a gentleman would avoid unless looking for the lowest sort of woman—and we seemed to be headed towards the docks. The stench of the Thames grew worse for every gloomy, narrow block we advanced into this rats’ maze. The buildings here looked as if they went back to the medieval period, when London lay fat and dark and diseased within its high walls, and, indeed, the ancient structures on either side of the sidewalk-free streets here overhung us so as almost to shut out the night sky.

“Do we have a destination?” I whispered to Dickens. This particular street was empty of people, but I could feel the eyes watching us from the shuttered windows and filthy alleys on either side. I did not want to be overheard, although I knew that even my whisper would carry like a shout through this thick, silent air.

“Bluegate Fields,” said Dickens. The brass-shod tip of his heavy walking cane—one he carried only on such nocturnal descents into his Babylon, I had noticed—clacked on the broken pavement stones at every third step of his.

“We sometimes calls it Tiger Bay, sir,” came a voice from the darkness behind us.

I admit that I was startled. I had all but forgotten that Detective Hatchery was with us.

We crossed a wider thoroughfare—Brunswick Street, I believe—but it was no cleaner or more illuminated than the rotting slums on either side. Then we were back in the narrow, overhanging labyrinth again. The tenements here crowded high and close except for the few that were total ruins, merely collapsed heaps of masonry and wood. Even there, in those tumbled or charred absences, I could sense dark shadows moving and stirring and watching us. Dickens led us over a narrow, rotted footbridge that crossed a reeking tributary to the Thames. (This was the year, I should point out to you, Dear Reader, that the Prince of Wales officially turned the wheel that opened the Main Drainage Works at Crossness, the first great step in chief engineer Joseph Bazalgette’s attempt to bring a modern sewage system to London. The cream of England’s nobility and high clergy attended that ceremony. But, setting all delicacy aside, I should also remind you that the Main Drainage Works—and all future sewer systems as well as the myriad of old tributaries and ancient sewers—still drained unfiltered shit into the Thames.)

The more terrible the streets and neighbourhoods became, the more crowded they became. Groups of men—clusters of shadows, actually—were now visible on street corners, in doorways, in empty lots. Dickens strode on, keeping to the centre of the broken streets so that he could better see and avoid the holes and reeking pools of filthy water, his gentleman’s cane clicking on cobblestones. He seemed indifferent to the murmurings and angry imprecations from the men we were passing.

Finally a group of such ragged shadows detached itself from the darkness of an unlighted building and moved to block our way. Dickens did not hesitate but continued striding towards them as if they were children come to ask for his autograph. But I could see him change his grip upon his walking stick so that the heavy brass head of it—a bird’s beak, I believe—was aimed outwards.

My heart was pounding and I almost faltered as Dickens led me towards that black wall of angry ruffians. Then another wall—a grey one with a bowler hat atop it—moved briskly past me, catching up to Dickens, and Hatchery’s voice said softly, “Move along now, boyos. Go back to your ’oles. Let these gentlemen pass without so much as another glance from you. Now .”

There was just enough light from the private detective’s shaded bullseye lantern for me to be able to see that his right hand had disappeared within his loose coat. What did he carry there? A pistol? I thought not. Almost certainly a leaded club though. Perhaps handcuffs. The ruffians ahead of us and behind us and to the sides of us would know.

The circle of men shuffled away as quickly as it had coalesced. I expected heavy stones or at least gobs of refuse to be thrown at us as we passed, but when we moved on, nothing stronger than a muffled curse was flung in our direction. Detective Hatchery faded into the darkness behind us and Dickens continued his rapid cane-tapping march to what I believed to be the south.

Then we entered the area ruled by prostitutes and their owners.

I seemed to remember having come here in my student days. The street was actually more respectable in appearance than most of those we had traversed in the past half hour or so. Dim lights shone through closed blinds on the upper windows. If one did not know better, it would be easy to think that these dwellings belonged to hard-working factory hands or mechanics. But the stillness was too oppressive. On the steps and balconies and on the cracked slabs of what passed for sidewalks gathered groups of young women—we could see them by the lamplight escaping from the unshuttered lower windows—most of them appearing no older than eighteen. Some looked to be fourteen or younger.

Rather than scatter at the sight of Detective Hatchery, they called out to him in soft, mocking girl-voices—“Hey, ’Ibbert, bringing us some business, eh?” or “Come in and relax a bit, Hib old cock.” Or “No, no, the door’s not shut, Inspector H, no neither are our room doors neither.”

Hatchery laughed easily. “Your doors are never shut, Mary, although well they should be. Watch your manners now, girls. These gentlemen don’t want none of your wares this ’ot evening.”

That was not necessarily true. Dickens and I paused near one young woman, perhaps seventeen years of age, as she leaned over a railing and studied us in the dim light. I could see that her figure was full, her dark skirt high, and her bodice low.

She noticed Dickens’s interest and gave him a wide smile that showed too many missing teeth. “Are you searching for bacca, dear-ie?” she asked the writer.

“Bacca?” said Dickens and gave me a sideways glance filled with mirth. “Why no, my dear. What makes you think I have come in search of tobacco?”

“’Cause if you want it, I’ve got it,” said the girl. “Screws and arf ounces of it, an’ cigars and all other sorts what you may want and you may well have it of me if you wish. You only ’ave to come inside.”

Dickens’s smile faded slightly. He set both his gloved hands on his cane. “Miss,” he said softly, “have you given thought to the very real possibility of changing your life? Of giving up…” His white glove was visible in the dark as he gestured to the silent buildings, silent gatherings of girls, shattered street, and even the distant line of rough men waiting like a pack of forest wolves beyond the circle of pale light. “Of giving up this life?”

The girl laughed through her broken or rotted teeth, but it was not a girl’s laugh. It was a bitter presage of a diseased crone’s dry rattle. “Give up my life, sweetie? Why not give up yours then, eh? All you ’ave to do is walk back up there where Ronnie and the boys is waitin’.”

“Yours has no future, no hope,” said Dickens. “There are homes for fallen women. Why, I myself have helped commission and administrate one in Broadstairs where…”

“I ain’t about to fall,” she said. “Unless it’s on my back for the right bit o’ payment.” The girl turned to stare at me. “What about you, little man? You look like you ’ave some life left in you. You want to come inside for a screw of bacca before ol’ ’Atchery ’ere turns sour on us?”