The Black Book of Secrets Page 6

  As most customers came in wheezing after climbing the hill, Joe instructed that a chair be set by the door and it was gratefully received. Ludlow watched them from behind the counter, gasping and coughing and complaining. Eventually the noise would subside and they would come over to show whatever sorry item they had brought. Joe would hold it up to the light and turn it this way and that. Sometimes (but very rarely) he would take out his jeweller’s glass and examine the object close up. All the while the customer stood by hardly breathing, fists closed and white-knuckled, hoping that Joe would take the useless object. He did of course and they were all grateful, immensely so, and thanked Joe profusely. Often that was the end of business and they would back out of the door still saying thank you. But sometimes the person hung on, hopping from one foot to the other, pretending to be interested in Saluki.

  Eventually Joe would turn around and ask quite innocently, ‘Is there anything else?’ The hint of a smile danced at the corner of his mouth.

  Invariably they would talk about Jeremiah Ratchet.

  ‘You must be a brave fellow, Mr Zabbidou. There’s not many would stand up to Jeremiah.’

  They were referring to that first day when Joe had dared to disagree with Mr Ratchet. It had made a great impression upon the villagers.

  Joe’s response was always the same. ‘I simply stated the truth.’

  ‘He’s thrown another family out on the streets, you know,’ they would continue, undeterred by Joe’s apparent indifference. ‘At least, he had those brutes do it for him. They wear masks over their faces so we don’t know who they are. And for the sake of a few pennies’ rent, Mr Zabbidou. It’s not right.’

  If they expected Joe to do something about it, they were disappointed. He merely shook his head sadly.

  ‘A terrible business,’ he said. ‘A truly terrible business.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Fragment from

  The Memoirs of Ludlow Fitch

  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 the
ir 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.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Horatio Cleaver

  ‘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. ‘Com
e 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?’