The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins - [6]

I rubbed my lips. Curious. Ned was a good-natured soul. It was unlike him to ignore a neighbour in such a blunt, unfriendly fashion. Strange too that Burden’s door had been locked – that seemed an odd precaution for an imagined thief. I drew back from the window before Mrs Jenkins spied me.

Kitty and I lived in two connecting rooms on the floor directly above the shop. When we weren’t abed we would leave the doors between these rooms open, forming one large space, with a sitting room and hearth at the front and the smaller bedroom at the back. I could hear her chattering to a customer downstairs in the shop, voice bright and friendly. She loved to keep herself busy and had a gift for turning a profit. And I suppose I had a gift for spending it.

I frowned at the small desk beneath the window. For the last three months I had spent much of my time translating obscene literature to sell in the shop. I’m not sure this was quite what my father had in mind when he bundled me off to school. Not sure it’s what I had in mind either – sitting hunched over a desk for days on end. All those hours spent writing about stiff cocks, and all I gained in return was a stiff back.

I riffled back over my latest masterpiece – an intimate conversation between an experienced abbess and a naive but eager young novice, translated from the French. I’d called it Instruction in the Cloister. Now it was complete I must take it to a Grub Street printer to set and bind the pages. Then we would sell it, along with all the other secret books and pamphlets, the bawdy poems, the intimate drawings, the scandalised yet curiously detailed discussions of sodomitical practices. This was how Fleet had run the Cocked Pistol without being slung in gaol. Unlike Edmund Curll, his closest rival, he had never taken out advertisements or engaged in public spats with writers to gain notoriety. He had been discreet – and where discretion was not enough, he’d bribed and intimidated his way out of trouble.

When Kitty inherited the shop, she’d cleaned the place and brought order to the jumbled shelves. Aside from that, the business had not changed. Wary customers soon realised they could still purchase the same scurrilous material, and be served by a deuced pretty girl, too. They could even buy more respectable works if they were so inclined – political pamphlets, treatises on diverse matters of natural philosophy, poetry. Books of recipes and the lives of criminals sold particularly well. If we could find a murderous cook we’d make a fortune.

A commotion outside drew me back to the window. Half a dozen constables were marching up the street, clubs resting on their shoulders. Ahead of them strode a purposeful figure in a brown coat with old-fashioned cuffs, sharp chin thrust forward, cane striking hard against the cobbles.

Bugger the world. Twice.

I grabbed my wig and thundered downstairs into the shop. ‘Gonson!’

The elderly gentleman at the counter gave a yelp of alarm and tottered out on fat legs, thrusting his parcel of books in my chest as he passed. I slung them through a hatch into the cellar below while Kitty flew about the shop gathering up anything incriminating. She pulled a hidden lever on a back shelf and dropped everything into the secret cupboard behind, slamming it shut again as the door to the shop burst open.

John Gonson, city magistrate, paused in the doorway. Towering behind him stood Joseph Burden in his leather work apron, fists bunched at his side. The guards remained on the street, poking the dirt with their clubs and chatting idly. Not a raid after all, it seemed. Kitty and I exchanged relieved glances.

‘Mr Gonson.’ I gave the shortest bow I could make without causing offence.

Gonson stepped over the threshold, dropping his head to pass through the door. He was a trim, energetic man with a narrow face and a clear complexion that made him appear younger than his thirty-odd years. Here was a man who slept well and drank in moderation, who never placed a bet or took a bribe. Incorruptible and resolute.

His gaze flickered across the shelves, thin lips preparing to curl in disapproval at the first sight of something immoral. Gonson was not only the magistrate for Westminster – he was also a dedicated member of the Society for the Reformation of Manners. The Society had been founded many years past to rid the city of whores, thieves, and sodomites. One might as well aim to rid the sky of stars, but Gonson was patient and determined. He had brought a new vigour and order to the Society. His spies had infiltrated brothels and molly houses, and, while most of their stories were dismissed, some had reached the courts. Two poor wretches had been hanged for sodomy on evidence from one of Gonson’s informers, and he’d sent scores of women to Bridewell.

Gonson was – in other words – that very dangerous and compelling animal: a man of vision. And the Cocked Pistol was obscuring his view. Indeed, its mere existence was offensive – and in the last few months he had considered it his holy duty to tear it down. Many of our customers were men of influence, which afforded us some protection. But Gonson made sure to visit at least once a week to disrupt business.