She nearly walked past her goal: the sign above Holt’s Coffeehouse was blackened with grime. It stood in a row of close-built wooden shops, each three storeys tall and in some disrepair. The draper’s next door was open, a basket of cheap cloth set outside to tempt buyers inside and a display of sprigged dress lengths in its window. Holt’s, however, looked ominously deserted.
Helen tried the stout red door. Locked. The view through one of the window’s small panes showed a dark room. A single shaft of sunlight caught the curve of a roughly made stool and the corner of a table.
‘Ain’t open, mister,’ a young voice said. ‘Not ’til after midday.’
Helen turned to find a girl of ten years perhaps watching her from beneath a rough knot of brown hair, one dirty hand clutching the bricks that quoined the corner of the building. She wore the bedraggled remnants of a woman’s dress, its flowered print faded into ghostly roses and vines.
‘You lookin’ for the whores?’ she asked, hoisting up the gaping neckline.
Her voice was very loud for such a small girl. Helen checked the street before answering. A man in fisherman’s trousers and a smock strode by, intent upon his own thoughts; and a dark-skinned couple dressed in sober blues, Quakers perhaps, on their way to the Meeting House, hurried past, their chins tucked to their chests. Outside a butcher shop, a group of filthy children were floating sticks in a puddle reddened by drained blood, their squabbling like the sound of agitated geese. No one was heeding her at all. It was rather thrilling to be standing in a street by herself without a chaperone.
‘I am looking for one girl in particular,’ she said.
‘They all be asleep,’ her informer offered. ‘We opens the same time as the coffee-’ouse.’
‘I want to speak to Binny. Do you know her?’ Helen asked.
The girl nodded, her watery blue eyes as wary as those of a kicked dog.
‘Would you please fetch her for me?’
‘The girls don’t like to be woked, mister.’
‘Oh.’ Helen looked in the window again, at a loss. She had not expected the child to refuse her request.
The girl edged a step closer, hand still gripping the bricked edge of the building. ‘Give us a penny an’ I’ll do it.’
Of course, everything here was a commercial transaction. Helen juggled the apple into her other hand and dug two fingers into her breeches’ pocket. She pulled out a penny.
‘I will give you this now. And a sixpence too, if you go and tell Binny that Martha’s friend is here, and bring her back to me without disturbing anyone else.’
The girl drew in a breath. ‘A sixpence? You gullin’ me?’
‘No, I am telling the truth. But you only get the sixpence if you bring me Binny quietly.’
The girl held out her hand. Helen dropped the penny into the cupped palm. The girl tapped the coin against a crooked front tooth. It seemed that it, and Helen, passed assessment for she jerked her pointed chin towards a sliver of dirt path that ran up the side of the coffee-house. ‘Follar me.’
‘What is your name?’ Helen asked as they edged along the narrow space between drapery and coffee-house. It was overhung with cords strung with greyed washing. The dank smell of human urine caught at the back of her throat and she coughed, hearing the sound bounce off the close-set stucco walls.
‘They calls me Sprat.’ The girl skirted a pile of old rope with practised ease. ‘Course when I start swivin’ next year I’m gunna call meself Janey.’ She climbed over a small pile of broken bricks, her bare feet seemingly immune to the jagged edges, then squinted back at Helen. ‘Pretty name, ain’t it? You’d like that if you was lookin’ for a ladybird, wouldn’t you?’
Helen translated the girl’s words, steadying herself against the wall as she came to their awful meaning. ‘But you are a child.’
Sprat stopped, pale brows furrowing into a frown of indignation. ‘I’m near twelve.’
Heaven forfend; only twelve. ‘What do you do now?’
‘Fetchin’ and cleanin’, and sometimes I’m allowed to keep the times and knock on the doors. Not for the floggin’ rooms though, ’cause them’s the spesh-ee-al-itee.’ She sniffed back a nose full of mucus. ‘I can tell the time by a clock and count up to a hundred.’
A side glance checked that Helen was impressed. Helen was appalled, but she nodded and smiled.
They had arrived at the back of the coffee-house. Along the length of a small yard yellowed drying cloths hung from cord strung between two wooden stakes that leaned inwards from the burden. Behind the line of laundry, Helen could see a solid whitewashed outbuilding, fairly new by the look of it, that formed the opposite wall of the yard. The back door of the bawdy-house stood open and a greasy smell of roasted mutton turned Helen’s stomach.
‘Best stay ’ere,’ Sprat said. ‘Binny ain’t gunna like being woked at all.’ She regarded Helen for a moment. ‘What’s yer name?’
‘Tell her it’s Martha’s friend.’
Sprat gave a nod and headed into the kitchen, batting the washing on her way past.
Helen surveyed the quiet yard. A selection of long birch rods had been propped against the outbuilding wall, a wet circle on the cobbles beneath them. Newly washed, Helen surmised, and set into a patch of sun to dry. She eyed them uneasily, remembering Sprat’s description of the house speciality. A tabby cat observed her discomfort from its position on the opposite roof, then yawned as she took the few steps across the rough cobbles and parted a curtain of limp linen to look at the outbuilding.
It was a solid wooden box, the only apparent source of light and air obtained from a rectangle cut high into the door and lined with six wide-set iron bars. A cell then. Helen hesitated; perhaps it was something to do with one of the bawdy-house perversions. She wrinkled her nose: a rancid smell, like rotting flesh, emanated from within.
Hand pressed against her nostrils, she edged closer, peering through the bars into the dim interior. A straw pallet had been shoved up against the back wall, a jumble of blankets bunched at its end. A bucket, stained and buzzing with flies, stood in the corner. Nearby, an array of gnawed bones — no doubt the source of the rancid stink — lay piled carefully on the dirt floor, their own collection of flies weaving lazily above. A long chain snaked across the floor, the dirt around it swept smooth except for a churn of footprints to the left that clearly showed the chain’s extent stopped well short of the side wall and a wooden chest pushed against it.
Suddenly, the chain rattled and pulled tight. A face reared up at the bars, yellowed teeth bared.
‘Sweet heaven!’ Helen yelped and jumped back.
‘You got somethin’ for Lester? You got somethin’ for Lester?’
A filthy hand curled around a bar and a pair of green eyes, the corners red and inflamed, blinked rapidly. The bared teeth, Helen realised, were a smile.
She straightened. Somehow she had ended up in a combat crouch three feet away. This must be Kate Holt’s mad son. The Unreclaimable.