The Dark Assassin (10 page)

"There must
be . . ." She tried to think and realized she had no idea. "Hundreds,
I suppose."

"I don't
mean where we get water up," he explained. "I mean them wots closed
over and goes away secret like."

"Are there?"
She did not know why it troubled him, still less why he should have come to her
about it.

He understood
and grimaced at his own foolishness. "Thing is, Miss 'Ester, there's
'undreds o' navvies workin' on all this diggin'. 'As bin for years, wot with one
tunnel an' another for sewers, roads, trains, an' the like. It's 'ard work an'
it's dangerous, an' there's always bin accidents. Part o' life. But it's got
worse since all this new diggin's bin goin' on. Everyone's after a bit o' the
profit, an' it's all in a terrible 'urry 'cos o' the typhoid an' the Big Stink
an' all, an' Mr. Bazalgette's new drawings. But it's gettin' more dangerous.
People are usin' bigger and bigger machines, an' goin' faster all the time 'cos
o' the 'urry, an' they in't takin' the time ter learn proper where all 'em
streams an' springs is." His face was tight with fear. "Get it wrong
an' clay slips somethin' 'orrible. We've 'ad one or two cave-ins, but I reckon
as there'll be a lot more, an' worse, if folks don't take a bit more care, an'
a bit more time."

She looked at
his drawn, tired face and knew that there was more behind his words than he was
able to tell her.

"What is it
you think I could do, Mr. Sutton?" she asked. "I don't know how to
help injured workmen. I don't have the skill. And I certainly don't have the
ear of any person with the influence to make the construction companies take
more care."

His shoulders
slumped a little, looking narrower under his plain, dark jacket. She judged him
to be in his fifties, but hard work-much of it dangerous and unpleasant, plus
many years of poverty-might have taken more of a toll on his strength than she
had allowed. He might be younger than that. She remembered how he had helped
all of them at the clinic, but most especially her, tenderly and fearlessly.
"What would you like me to do?" she asked.

He smiled,
realizing she had given in. She hoped profoundly that he did not know why.

"If
anyone'd said ter me a year ago as a lady oo'd bin ter the Crimea would take
ol' Squeaky Robinson's place an' turn it inter an 'ospital fer tarts off the
street," he answered, "an then get other ladies ter cook and clean in
it, I'd 'a throwed a bucket o' water at 'em till they sober'd up. But if anyone
can do somethin' ter get them builders ter be'ave a bit safer, it's you."
He finished his tea and stood up. "If you can come wi' me, I can show you
the machine's wot I'm talkin' about."

She was
startled.

"It'll be
quite safe," he assured her. "We'll go ter one o' 'em that's open,
but yer can think wot it'd be like underneath. Some tunnels is dug down, then
covered over. Cut and cover, they call 'em. But some is deep down, like a
rat'ole, under the ground all the way." He shivered very slightly.
"It's 'em that scares me. The engineers might be clever wi' all kinds o'
machines an' ideas, but they don't know 'alf o' wots down there, secret for
'undreds o' years, twistin' an' seepin'." She felt a chill at the thought,
a coldness in the pit of her stomach. The daylight was coming in brighter now
through the windows into the scullery. There was a sound of footsteps across
the cobbled yard where deliveries were made.

She stood up.
"How close will they let me come?"

"Borrer a
shawl from one o' yer patients an' keep yer eyes down, an' yer can come right
up close wi' me."

"I'll go
and speak to Miss Ballinger."

But it was
Claudine she met just outside the kitchen door. She began to explain that she
was going to be away for a few hours. The books would have to wait. She was
happy enough to stretch out the task as long as she could.

"I
heard," Claudine said gravely, her face puckered into lines of concern.
She was unaware of it, but her anger was so fierce that her sense of social
class had temporarily ceased to register. "It's monstrous. If people are
being injured by hasty work, we must do what we can to fight it."
Unconsciously she had included herself in the battle. "We can manage
perfectly well here. There's nothing to do but the laundry and the cleaning,
and if we can't manage that, then we need to learn. Just be careful!" This
last warning was given with a frown of admonition, as if Claudine were somehow
responsible for Hester's safety.

Hester smiled.
"I will," she promised, aware for the first time that Claudine had
become fonder of her than perhaps she herself knew. "Sutton will look
after me."

Claudine
grunted. She was not going to admit to trusting Sutton; that would be a step
too far.

In spite of
there being little wind, it was fiercely cold outside. The narrow streets
seemed to hold the ice of the night. Footsteps sounded loud on the stones, and
the brittle crack of puddles was sharp in the close air. This was the time of
year when people who slept huddled in doorways could be found frozen to death
at first light.

She walked
beside Sutton, Snoot trotting at their heels, until they came to Farringdon
Road and the first omnibus stop. The horses were rough-coated for winter and
steamed gently as they stood while passengers climbed off and on. Hester and
Sutton went up the winding steps to the upper level, since they were going to
the end of the line. Snoot sat on Sutton's knee, and she envied him the warmth
of the little dog's body.

They talked most
of the way because she asked him about the rivers under London. He was
enthusiastic to tell her, his face lighting up as he described the hidden
streams such as the Walbrook, Tyburn, Counter's Creek, Stamford Brook, Effra,
and most of all the Fleet, whose waters once ran red from the tanneries. He
talked of springs such as St. Chad's, St. Agnes', St. Brides, St. Pancras'Wells,
and Holywell. All had been reputed as sacred at one time or another, and some
became spas, like Hamp-stead Wells and Sadler's Wells. He knew the underground
courses and bridges, some of which were believed to date back to Roman times.

"Walbrook's
as far up as yer could get a boat when the Romans was 'ere," he said with
triumph.

He animatedly
recounted earlier travels, including the danger of highwaymen, until they
reached their stop.

They alighted
into a busy street, workmen crowding around a peddler selling sandwiches and
hot pies. They were obliged to slip out over the gutter onto the cobbles to
pass them, and were nearly run down by a cartload of vegetables pulled by a
horse whose breath was steam in the air.

At the corner
half a dozen men huddled around a brazier, talking and laughing, tin mugs of
tea in their hands.

"Not sure
as I like so much change," Sutton said dubiously. "Still, can't be
'elped."

Hester did not
argue. They had only a few yards further to go before she saw the vast crater
of the new tunnel. It would carry not only the sewer but beside it the gas
pipes for the houses that had such luxuries. Skeletons of woodwork for cranes
and derricks poked above it like fingers at the sky. There was a faint noise
from far within of grinding and crushing, scraping, slithering, and the
occasional shouts and the rattle of wheels.

Hester stood on
the freezing earth and felt the freshening wind from the tide on the river,
with its smell of salt and sewage. She turned to her left and saw the roofs of
houses in the near distance, and closer, the broken walls where they had been
flattened to make way for the new works. To the right it was the same, streets
cut in half as if they had been chopped by a giant axe. She looked at Sutton
and saw the pity in his face, as well as the fury he was trying to suppress. To
build the new they had broken so much of the old.

"Keep close
and don't meet no one's eyes," he said quietly. "We'll just walk
through like we got business. There's 'em as knows me." And he led the
way, making a path through the rubble and keeping wide of the groups of men.
Every now and again he put out his hand to steady her, and she was grateful for
it because the rubble was crumbling and icy. Snoot trotted along at their
heels.

There was a
thick fence around the actual pit in which the men worked, possibly to keep out
the idle and to prevent the careless from falling in.

"Got ter go
round the end there." Sutton pointed and then led her through a shifting,
slithering wasteland of debris. The line of pipes was easy enough to trace with
the eye by the wreckage that lay in its path. Twice they were stopped and
questioned as to who they were and if they had any business there, but Sutton
answered for them both.

She kept silent
and followed him patiently. At last-her feet sore and her boots and skirt
splattered-she reached the point below which the men were actually working by
flares at the face of the tunnel. The earth was excavated deeper than she had
expected. She was close to the edge of the drop, and a feeling of vertigo
overcame her for a moment as she stared down almost a hundred feet to the
brickworks at the bottom of the abyss. She could quite clearly see the floor of
what would be the new sewer, and the arching brick sides already laid and
cemented. There was scaffolding over it holding the walls apart all the way up.
Here and there other pipes crossed it. Fifty yards away, well on the other
side, a steam engine hissed and thumped, driving the chains that held heavy
buckets and scoops to draw up and empty the rubble and broken brick.

She turned and
met Sutton's eyes. He pointed down to where she could see men below,
foreshortened to funny little movements of hands and shoulders. They walked,
pushing barrows. Others swung pikes or heaved on shovels of soil and rock.

"Look."
Sutton directed her eyes towards the walls on the far side. The earth itself
was held firm by planks of heavy wood, supported by crossbeams every few yards.
Then she followed Sutton's gaze and saw the water seeping through-just a dribble
here and there, or a bulge in the wood where the boards had been strained and
were coming away.

On the bank
opposite, stokers were keeping the great steam engine going. She could hear the
wheeze and thump of its pistons and smell the steam, the oil.

She was aware of
Sutton watching her. She tried to imagine what it would be like to work down in
that cleft in the earth, seeing nothing but a slit of sky above you and knowing
you couldn't get out.

"Where's
the way up?" she asked almost involuntarily.

" 'Alf a
mile away," he answered quietly. "All right ter walk ter, if yer in
no 'urry. Nasty if yer need ter move quickish-like if 'em sides spring a
leak."

"A leak?
You mean a stream ... or something? You don't mean just rain?" The picture
of that bulging wall giving way filled her mind-a jet of water gushing out, not
just dribbling as it was now. Would it fill the bottom? Enough to drown them?
Of course it would! Who could swim in a crevasse like that, with freezing water
coming down on top of you?

"That's a sewer,"
he said quietly, standing close to her. "The sewers o' London takes
everythin', all the waste from all the 'ouses an' middens in the 'ole city, an'
from the sinks an' gutters an' overflows everywhere. If yer a tosher or a
ganger, yer know the tides an' all the fivers an' springs, an' keep an eye ter
the rain, 'cos if yer don't, yer'll not last long. An' o' course there's the
rats. Never go underground alone. Slip and fall, an' the rats'll 'ave yer.
Strip a man ter the bone if yer unlucky an' fetch up where they can reach yer.
'Undreds o' thousands o' 'em down there, there are."

Snoot had
pricked up his ears at the word rats.

Hester said
nothing.

"An'
there's the gas," Sutton added.

"Is that
what that pipe is?" she asked, gesturing to the one that crossed the deep
gash in the earth about fifteen feet down, going diagonally on a quite
different track from the cutting.

Sutton smiled.
"No, Miss 'Ester, that's gas fer lights an' things in there. I'm talkin'
about the sort o' gas that collects up under the ground 'cos o' wot sewers is
for carryin'. Gives off methane, it does, an' if the air or water don't carry
it away, it's enough ter suffocate a man. Or if some fool lights a spark, with
a tinder or a steel boot on stone, then whoomph!" He jerked his hands apart
violently, fingers spread to indicate an explosion. "Or there's the
choke-damp wot yer gets in coal mines an' the like. That'll kill yer,
too."

Again she said
nothing, trying to imagine what it would be like to have no skill except one
that obliged you to labor in such conditions. And yet she had known navvies
before, in the Crimea, and a braver, harder-working group of men she had never
seen. They had built a railway for the soldiers across wild, almost uncharted
terrain, in the depth of winter, in a time most others had considered totally
outside any possibility. And an excellent railway it was, too. But that had
been aboveground.

The great steam
engine was still pounding away, shaking the earth with its strength, hauling as
men and beasts never could. Foot by foot were forming the sewers that would
make London clean, safe from the epidemics of typhoid and cholera that had
carried away so many in appalling deaths.