The Black Book of Secrets (8 page)

The City was grey from dirt and disease; Pagus Parvus
existed in a grey light that was cast by clouds that never
seemed to go away. I soon learned the weather in the region
varied little from what I had experienced the night I
arrived. Sitting as it was on the exposed side of a mountain,
covered in snow eight months out of twelve and rained on
for the other four, Pagus Parvus was not popular with outsiders,
and those who lived there left it rarely. Although
rumours had reached them of a vehicle that moved by itself,
they had not yet seen one of these great iron beasts, and the
parallel tracks it rode on were not coming in the direction
of Pagus Parvus. If given a choice Pagus Parvians preferred
to travel by horse and carriage, but that was a privilege of
the few, so mainly they were on foot.

If it had not been for Joe there was little to keep me
here, but still I began to think of it as home. My days as a
pickpocket were long over and I was glad not to have to
thieve any more. I continued to wear Ratchet’s gloves and
scarf, however. It was worth it to see how he stared whenever
we met.

At night, after supper, we would sit by the fire and talk.
We discussed many things but seldom reached any conclusions.
Joe was a man of few expressions; his face rarely gave
anything away, although he became quite animated when we
talked about Saluki. That frog was treated like a queen. Joe
fed her the finest bugs and snails and worms and the Sourdough
boys were up almost every day just to fuss over her.

We also talked about Jeremiah Ratchet. Whenever the
shop bell rang I had taken to guessing whether it would
be a pledge or merely another complaint about Jeremiah.
The blustering buffoon had practically the whole village
beholden to him. He seemed to spend his days either threatening
to evict his tenants or sending his masked men to do
just that. Every time I heard his name I became more and
more frustrated that no one in the village seemed willing,
or able, to challenge him.

‘Why do you think the villagers tell you so much about
Jeremiah Ratchet?’ I asked Joe.

‘Because they are impatient.’

It was a typically brief reply. Sometimes conversations
with Joe were like riddles.

‘Jeremiah,’ he continued, ‘is a heavy burden for a small
place like this.’

‘Then why don’t they do something? There are enough
of them.’

Joe shook his head. ‘Jeremiah is a cunning fellow. Each
person is so caught up with his own predicament that he
cannot see true strength is in the crowd. To overthrow Jeremiah
they must work together, but he has them divided and
held hostage to their fears. They believe he has informers
in the village.’

‘Surely the villagers wouldn’t betray each other?’

‘No doubt they are forced to,’ said Joe. ‘And because
they cannot trust each other then they are unwilling to plot
against Jeremiah in case he finds out. They talk to me
because I am a stranger and Jeremiah has no hold over me.
In their desperation they think I might save them from that
scoundrel.’

‘And will you?’ I asked. Silently I willed Joe to take him
on.

‘However bad the situation, I cannot change the course
of things,’ he replied and would not be drawn on the subject
any further.

I cannot count the number of times Joe said this. It
always left me wondering: was he suggesting that he knew
the course of things? And although he maintained that he
was unwilling to bring about change, his very presence had
already had a noticeable effect on the villagers. After all, he
had come to Pagus Parvus a stranger, opened his shop and
in a matter of days he had gained the respect and admiration
of all around him. We were all drawn to him, like the
moths that fluttered noisily outside the lighted windows at
night. Some people make their presence known with loud
voices or grand gestures, but Joe didn’t have to do that. He
was a soft-spoken man who didn’t waste words. But you
could just feel when he was near.

As for how Joe made a living, well that was a complete
mystery to me. After all, what sort of business was it to give
money away? How else could you explain what he was
doing? The window display was growing daily, but although
he paid for many items, I rarely saw him sell anything.

And then there was the Black Book of Secrets. Pagus
Parvians were quick to take advantage of the service he
offered and at midnight Joe was handing out bags of coins
to all and sundry. There were many secrets in Pagus Parvus.
During the day the place seemed nothing more than what
it was, a small mountain village. It was only in the hours of
darkness that it became obvious all was not well. All those
wakeful nights I spent looking down the hill, I knew that
behind the windows each glowing lamp, each flickering
candle told a tale. Shadows moved across the curtains, silhouettes
paced in the dark, pressing their knuckles against
their foreheads in frustration and guilt.

Joe listened intently to every tale of woe and, regardless
of the confession, he never passed judgement. I know he
paid well, but I did not know upon what basis Joe calculated
a secret’s value. I did ask him once where his money came
from and he simply replied, ‘Inheritance,’ and made it clear
the conversation was over.

Elias Sourdough came up one night from the baker’s and
admitted that he had been cutting the flour with alum and
chalk. That was worth four shillings. When Lily Weaver
came by and said she had been cheating her customers out
of cloth by using a short measure, he gave her seven. Even
Polly paid us a visit, sneaking out of Ratchet’s house late one
night to admit to stealing his cutlery. Joe, and I, knew this
already. Polly had pawned a knife and fork only two days
previously but it wasn’t until she was gone that we noticed
Jeremiah’s initials on each piece. I had to admire Polly’s
cheek. She knew we couldn’t put them in the window
(though wouldn’t I have loved to have seen Jeremiah’s face
at the sight of his own cutlery on display). Instead Joe used
them for his dinner.

Each night Joe stoked up the fire and set the bottle of
liquor and two glasses on the mantel and I took the Black
Book from its hiding place and filled the inkwell. Then we
sat and waited, he in his chair by the fire and I in mine at
the table. There was hardly a night went by without a knock
on the door as the church bell struck twelve. I played my
part. As the villagers gave their confessions, I sat in the
shadows and wrote it all down, word for word.

Sometimes it was hard not to shout out at what I was
hearing. Every so often I would sneak a look at Joe sitting
by the fire resting his elbows on the arms of the chair, his
fingers slightly touching. His face was like a blank page,
whatever was said. Very occasionally he would bend back
his forefingers for a split second, make circles in the air with
the tips and then bring them back together again. But not
once did his expression change.

‘He’s a murderer,’ hissed the oldest Sourdough. ‘He takes
his chopper in the middle of the night and goes hunting for
fresh meat. Man meat.’

‘And he puts it in his pies,’ added the middle brother
while the third, the youngest, began to whimper.

The three boys stood outside the butcher’s window
watching as he sharpened his knives. They loved the scrape
of the blade on metal and to see the sparks that flew around
his head.

‘If you know this,’ asked the youngest tremulously, ‘how
come he’s not in jail with all the other murderers?’

His brothers poured scorn on this ridiculous suggestion.

‘There’s no proof, stupid. You can’t put a man in prison
without proof.’

‘And the proof is in the pies,’ said the other. ‘By the time
the murder is discovered, it’s too late.’

‘Yeah, cos they’ve been eaten!’ shrieked the pair in
unison.

As for Horatio Cleaver, the subject of this slander, as
soon as he saw their wet noses against the window he roared
at them and ran to the door and shook his knives violently
in their direction.

‘Get your filthy noses off my p-p-panes,’ he shouted.

The trio ran away screaming and laughing, tripping and
skidding down the icy hill with their arms flailing.

Ludlow and Joe arrived just in time to see the Sourdough
boys disappearing in the distance. Horatio was still
standing at the door of his shop, his fists clenched, when he
noticed them. They were a strange sight. Joe stood out
from the crowd and not only on account of his unusual
height. He strode with a confidence, despite his limp, that
was both disarming and enviable. Even people who had
lived in the village all their lives could not negotiate the
steep icy slope with such ease. Ludlow was always a few
steps behind, no higher than Joe’s elbow, trotting to keep
up.

Horatio quickly slipped back inside behind the counter.
Joe stood for some moments looking in the window, eyeing
the butcher’s wares. Today he had for sale a selection of
‘Prok Peyes’, a ‘Brayse of Fessants’, best ‘Lam Clutets’ and
‘Hole Pukled Chikins’. Horatio had not often seen the
inside of a schoolhouse.

‘I won’t be long,’ said Joe, and he went in, leaving
Ludlow outside, where he stood and watched.

As a butcher, Horatio Cleaver was far from the best, but he
was the only one the village had so people made do. His
father, Stanton Cleaver, had been renowned near and far for
his meat-carving skills and was remembered fondly by all
his customers. He could butcher a whole cow, head to tail,
in under three minutes, a feat he performed annually to
wild applause at the county fair. Who could forget the sight
of Stanton holding up the Butcher’s Cup to deafening
cheers, his white apron sodden with blood and his hands
stained pink?

Horatio certainly couldn’t and, unfortunately, he was
never likely to take his father’s place on that stand. He was
reminded of this fact every day when he heard the disappointed
sighs of his customers and the ‘tut-tuts’ as he
hacked at their joints and their chops. But they always
took the rather roughly hewn cuts of meat he handed
them, for if they got more than they asked for, they certainly
paid less than it was worth. Horatio had never been
good with numbers and the complex relationship between
weight and price was one he hadn’t quite managed to
grasp.

And if it wasn’t the customers sending him scornful
looks it was Stanton himself, for painted on the wall
behind the counter was a life-size portrait of the man complete
with a boning knife in his hand and a sneer on his
face. Horatio could feel his eyes boring into the back of
his head and he grew nervous and stammered – a legacy
of his time serving his father. It was only on his p’s, however,
and most noticeable when he was nervous or his
temper was roused.

Stanton was not an easy man to forget. Despite the fact
that he had been in the grave nearly five years, he had a long
reach. Late at night Horatio would wake, gasping for breath
as if the master butcher’s hands were around his neck,
suffocating him. Horatio had not had a happy apprenticeship
and his father had often been driven to violence by his
son’s poor butchering skills.

Horatio had started in the shop as soon as he could
reach the counter and over the years the young butcher had
begun to take on the appearance of the meat with which
he worked all day. He had gradually become more solid in
the body, rather like a bull, and his thick hairless forearms
were shaped like two shanks of lamb. His skin was the
colour of hung meat, a sort of creamy blue, and of similar
texture. His face was long and his nostrils flared and his
brown eyes surveyed his surroundings with mild interest.
The tips of his fingers were thick and blunted; for a man
who made his living working with knives he was surprisingly
careless.

Horatio wiped his bloodied palms on his greying striped
apron and greeted Joe with a pleasant ‘Good afternoon’ and
a nervous smile. He nodded in the direction of the fleeing
children.

‘I should make sausages out of them,’ he joked, the
blades of his knives glittering in the lamplight. Outside
Ludlow shuddered at the sight.

Joe laughed politely. ‘Let me introduce myself,’ he said.
‘I am Joe Zabbidou—’

‘The p-p-pawnbroker,’ interrupted Horatio.

Joe responded with a small bow.

‘You’re up in the old milliner’s shop. I hope you do
better than Betty P-p-peggotty.’

Joe raised his left eyebrow quizzically.

‘She made hats,’ continued Horatio, blowing on his
huge red hands. The temperature in the shop was only
marginally higher than outside. ‘Very expensive, mind.
P-p-peacock plumes, ostrich feathers, silk flowers and all
that sort of thing. Not to my taste. Too fancy. Me, I like a
p-p-plain hat.’ He touched his white butcher’s cap proudly
and left specks of gristle on the brim.

‘So I see.’

‘She couldn’t make any money so she went to the City,
to run an alehouse, I believe.’ He secured a piece of pork to
the counter with the heel of his hand and hacked at it
absent-mindedly with a knife.

‘Wrong location, see. Too far up that cursed hill. No
one goes up that end these days unless they’re laid out in a
box. Even then they have to be p-p-pulled up. Takes six
horses. And the noise of that coffin on the cobbles! Would
wake the dead.’ He stopped, knife in mid-air, to laugh at his
own joke.

‘They come up to me,’ said Joe.

‘So I’ve heard. Well, maybe you’ll have more luck than
she did.’

‘Jeremiah Ratchet thinks not.’

Horatio spat with contempt into the sawdust.

‘Didn’t take him long to stick his oar in.’

‘He said he was a businessman.’

‘P-p-pah!’ exclaimed Horatio. ‘That slimy toad. I’ll
wager he’s made a deal or two with the devil in his time.
He lives off the backs of the p-p-poor. Lending money,
then taking all they have when they can’t p-p-pay it back.
Throwing them out of their homes for the sake of a few
days’ rent. He’ll bleed this village dry. No wonder he got
on so well with my father; they were cut from the same
cloth.’

He brought down his knife with a tremendous crash,
sending a huge pork chop spiralling into the air and over the
counter. Joe caught it with lightning speed.

He looked straight into the butcher’s sad eyes and
though Horatio wanted to look away, for some reason he
couldn’t. His ears filled with a soft noise, like wind through
trees, and he felt his legs go weak. His deadened fingertips
seemed to have developed pins and needles.

‘You sound like a man who needs to get something off
his chest,’ said Joe quietly. ‘Come up to the shop tonight.
Maybe I can help.’

‘I doubt it,’ replied Horatio slowly, mesmerized by Joe’s
gaze.

Joe was insistent. ‘After midnight, so no one knows.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Excellent,’ said Joe smiling broadly and breaking the
spell. ‘Until then.’

‘What about my p-p-pork chop?’

‘I’ll have it for my supper,’ said Joe. ‘I’ll pay you later,
when you come up.’

The church bell sounded midnight as Horatio pulled his
coat closer and raised his fist to the door. The pale half-moon
watched quietly as he dithered, in two minds
whether to knock. He hadn’t meant to come and he didn’t
really understand why he was here, but as midnight
approached his restless feet had taken him out of the door
and up the hill. How could this stranger help him? In fact,
how did this stranger even know he needed help? He
remembered how Joe had looked at him. Had he sucked his
thoughts out of his head?

Horatio raised his fist, but before he could strike the
wood Joe opened the door.

‘Horatio, come in,’ he said warmly. ‘We’ve been
expecting you.’

He led the silent butcher into the back room, where the
fire was blazing. Horatio lowered his sturdy frame into the
offered chair and frowned as it creaked alarmingly. Joe
handed him a glass of the golden liquid and he took a long
draught, then another. His cheeks flushed and his eyes
shone.

‘A powerful drop,’ he said and drained his glass.

‘I believe you have a secret you’d like to pawn,’
prompted Joe.

Horatio’s eyebrows met in a quizzical frown. ‘What do
you mean?’

‘It is what I do,’ explained Joe. ‘I buy secrets.’

Horatio considered the proposal for a short moment.
‘Then buy this,’ he said.

Ludlow was already settled at the table, the Black Book
open before him, and Horatio began.