The Devil in the Marshalsea - [5]

‘Gentlemen.’ Moll rose from her seat. There were fights here most nights, but they never lasted long; Moll had men she could call and a vicious long blade tucked under her skirts. I’d cut my hand upon it once, reaching for something softer. The apprentices bowed their apologies and ordered another bowl.

‘You can’t work for a nob like Sir Philip,’ Moll declared, settling back down. She took a long pull on her pipe. ‘Come and see me tomorrow. I’ll find you an occupation.’

‘What did you have in mind?’

Moll had plenty of suggestions, most of which could get me transported or hanged. Still, I had to admit that I had been drifting for too long, relying on charm and luck in the main. Perhaps I should work for Moll. For all the day’s troubles, I had enjoyed having a purpose for once. Life or death, on the turn of a card; irresistible stakes for a gambling man.

‘I’ll think on it tomorrow,’ I said. ‘With the new king there will be new opportunities, new patrons… I thought I might try my hand at writing.’

She stared at me, alarmed. ‘There’s no need to panic, sweetheart.’

I finished my punch and rose to leave. Moll came with me, flinging her spent pipe on to the table. It bounced and clattered to the floor. ‘I need a lungful of clean air,’ she said, and we both laughed. There was nothing clean about Covent Garden, especially at this late hour.

At the door, she leaned her back against the frame and gazed out across the piazza; a queen surveying her hunting grounds. There was a kind of alchemy to Moll, I thought, watching her. Her coffeehouse was not much more than a tumbledown shack. But when you were inside, and Moll was holding court, it felt like the centre of the world.

She tilted her face up to the sky. ‘Black as the devil’s arsehole. You’ll need a link boy.’ She gave a sharp whistle and a lean, ragged creature raced from the shadows, dark locks spilling out from beneath a battered little tricorn. He skidded to a halt in front of us, holding an unlit torch in his hand.

‘All on your own, mischief?’ Moll asked. She grabbed his chin to get a better look at him. ‘I don’t know you, do I?’

Some boys would have stuttered out their life story under that formidable gaze. This one stared straight back, undaunted. ‘They’re waiting on Drury Lane. Play’s almost finished. Where to?’

‘Where to, Mistress King,’ Moll corrected him sharply, then smiled. She’d worked the streets herself as a girl. ‘Light this gentleman to Greek Street.’

She turned the shack. On a whim I grabbed her arm and pressed my lips to hers, tasting smoke and brandy and a trace of sweet oranges. She giggled and kissed me back as the blood thrummed hard in my veins. This I would tarry for, even with a hundred warrants for my arrest. I remembered the last time we’d kissed, the night we heard the king had died. Three months ago now. I’d thought the world would change. It didn’t, of course. Moll’s hand moved lower.

Around my purse.

I seized her wrist and pulled her hand away. She gave a lazy smile. ‘Just testing. Wouldn’t thieve from one of my own, now would I, Reverend?’ She slipped back inside before I could answer.

The link boy rubbed his mouth to cover a grin. I frowned and tossed him a penny. ‘Light your torch.’

He did as he was told, holding it to the lantern burning at the door. As the pitch caught light it illuminated his face with a soft orange glow.

‘Why’d she call you Reverend?’ he asked. He crinkled his nose. ‘You a black-coat or something?’

Or something. Reverend was a nickname Moll liked to tease me with, knowing my history. I gestured to my blue silk waistcoat, cinnamon-coloured coat and breeches. ‘Do I look like a black-coat?’

He shrugged, as if to say he would believe anything of anyone. It was a weary gesture, and sat strangely on such young shoulders. This was what happened to boys who guided rakes and whores back to their beds in the dead of night. Knocked the innocence clean out of them. Well; there were worse ways to earn a penny in this city. He turned and trotted towards Soho, holding the blazing torch high. I settled my tricorn on my head and hurried after him, a ship following the north star home.

And I wondered, fretfully. Beneath my fashionable clothes, did I still have the look of a clergyman? I turned this unhappy thought over in my mind. Ever since I was a boy – younger than this little imp running ahead of me – I had been told that I was destined to join the Church just like my father, the Reverend Dr Thomas Hawkins. (There. He had even given me his name, so I might more easily become him one day.) Things had not gone to plan. I had always known, deep within my soul, that I was not suited to the clergy. The trouble was, I had no idea what I was suited to. Have you ever seen a child refusing to be fed? It turns its face away – no, no, no. That was how I felt about joining the Church. It didn’t matter how many times my father lifted the spoon to my lips. How many times he tried to force-feed duty and honour and decency down my throat. No, no, no.

I was so caught up in my thoughts that I took little notice as we crossed Long Acre. The streets were quiet – too late an hour for some, too early for others. We turned, then I suppose we must have turned again a few times, into a dark, narrow alley. Old timber houses sagged wearily against one another, their top storeys leaning out and almost touching across the street. One had collapsed entirely. Most of the wood had been scavenged, leaving just a rotting frame like a skeleton poking up into the night sky.