The Black Book of Secrets Read online

  Our days were always busy. I had my jobs to do and Joe had his, but we were never rushed. Being in the shop sometimes felt like being in another world where everything happened at half speed. I never saw Joe make a hurried movement; there was no urgency to his life, but, for all that, it was difficult to shake off the feeling that we were waiting for something to happen.

  In the late afternoon, when it was quiet, Polly and the Sourdoughs would have been and gone, we would both sit by the fire and enjoy the warmth and the comfort it brought. At such times I couldn’t imagine ever returning to the City.

  ‘I’m never going back,’ I said to Joe one night.

  ‘Never say never,’ Joe replied quickly. ‘All things change.’

  Certainly my fortunes had changed. In my eyes Joe was the father I had always wished for. I had new clothes which he had given me. As for my rags, we both enjoyed watching them burn on the fire. At least once a fortnight I relaxed in front of the fire in a huge tin tub filled to the brim with hot water, and every day we had two decent meals. The Pagus Parvians had proved most hospitable and hardly a day passed without some sort of food parcel being left on the doorstep: rabbits, pigeons, sparrows (a delicacy in these parts, marvellous stuffed with onion and alium) and occasionally a whole chicken from the butcher’s.

  ‘Bribes,’ laughed Joe. ‘They think if they feed me I will change my mind.’ He didn’t, but he still threw the meat in the pot.

  As the harsh memories of my previous life faded my mind started to play strange tricks on me. I began to worry that life was too good. Surely a boy such as I, with my past and the crimes I had committed, deserved punishment not reward? Joe tried to reassure me.

  ‘It’s common enough to think like that,’ he said, ‘to feel unworthy of good fortune, but have you forgotten what I said to you about luck?’

  ‘You said we make our own luck.’

  ‘Exactly. You made yours by coming here. Now you work hard and you deserve what you have.’

  ‘But I never intended to come here,’ I insisted. ‘It was chance that Ratchet’s carriage was outside the Nimble Finger.’

  ‘But it was you who chose Jeremiah’s carriage.’

  ‘What if I had gone down the hill instead of up? I might have worked with Job Wright shoeing horses. Then you would have taken on one of the Sourdough boys when they came up to see the frog.’

  ‘That is a possibility,’ said Joe, ‘but the Sourdough boys are slow-witted.’

  ‘I can only do that because I went to Mr Jellico.’

  ‘But you sought him out.’

  And so it would go on, in circles, until one evening Joe asked, ‘Are you happy here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if you could go back in time, to the City, what would you change?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘If I had done something different then I might never have met you.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Joe with finality. ‘Everything that happened to you, bad or otherwise, ultimately brought you here.’

  There the conversation ended because the shop door opened and someone called for service. Joe always woke at the sound of the door, no matter how deeply asleep he seemed, but in case he didn’t Saluki gave a violent belch whenever she heard someone approaching. I felt it was a warning.

  For a frog, Saluki was good company. When I had the chance I liked to feed her, to watch her tongue shoot out across the length of the tank and, almost too quick to see, the bug or grub or insect would be gone. I had not taken the lid off the tank again since that first day. Joe had forbidden me to do so and I didn’t want to touch her. Occasionally he took her out and held her in the palm of his hand. He would stroke her back with such gentleness and she seemed to glow and burped softly. I hadn’t forgotten what he had said about gaining her trust and I hoped that one day I would.

  I remember those days in the shop well, warm and cosy, away from the cold outside world. But of course the outside world still came knocking at the door. The villagers were obviously grateful for everything Joe had done for them and gradually, one by one, they were freeing themselves from Jeremiah’s iron grip. But their previous desperation was now replaced by anger – that Jeremiah had treated them so badly for so long, that he had taken so much from them, that he had kept them living in fear. As each managed to pay Jeremiah back the money they owed, they wished to pay him back in other ways too.

  One night we had a visit from the local physician, Dr Samuel Mouldered. I wasn’t surprised. After all, Joe had sought him out the previous day, as he did all his midnight customers, and invited him up. Like most, he had an interesting tale to tell.

  Samuel Mouldered was a rather morbid man with a permanently gloomy expression on his face so his patients never knew if they were to live or die. They may have been alarmed to discover that often the doctor did not know either. You see, Mouldered wasn’t a doctor at all, just a convincing quack who was on the run from a posse of duped customers who had discovered that his miracle cure was little more than boiled nettles and corked wine.

  Pagus Parvus was an ideal hiding place for such a man. To be fair, Mouldered was quite harmless. Since coming to the village some ten years ago he practised medicine on the premise that most illnesses burned themselves out over the course of seven days. Thus he prescribed his miracle cure (now a more palatable mixture of honey and beer) for a week’s duration and on the whole achieved quite remarkable results. As for death itself, no one ever questioned the unusually high occurrence of heart attacks in the area. They trusted the doctor and his diagnoses.

  Samuel Mouldered’s greatest fear was that Jeremiah would discover his secret.

  ‘I cannot promise that Jeremiah will never find out,’ Joe had said, ‘but he will not hear it from us. You have my word.’

  Joe held the door open, but Mouldered seemed reluctant to go.

  ‘The man is a monster,’ he declared. ‘For years we have suffered at his hands. The villagers want revenge. I know they hope you will help them.’

  ‘What can I do?’ asked Joe quietly. ‘I am merely a pawnbroker.’

  ‘That’s not what they think,’ muttered the doctor as he stepped into the street. Joe merely shrugged and handed Dr Mouldered a purse of coins.

  ‘Vincit qui patitur,’ called Joe after him, but he was already out of earshot.

  I looked at him.

  ‘Who waits, wins.’

  I listened to Dr Mouldered’s confession, writing it all down as was my duty, but I was uneasy. I asked Joe again if he didn’t think we should do something.

  ‘People’s lives might be in danger,’ I said. ‘Dr Mouldered doesn’t know what he is doing.’

  Joe was adamant. ‘He’s not doing any harm. And there is no one else in the village who could do his job.’

  I protested some more and Joe had to remind me that we were in the business of keeping secrets.

  ‘How long do you think we would last if we gave away this information? The business would be in ruins.’

  The business, I thought. What business? We certainly weren’t making a profit. Surely the money had to run out eventually and what would happen then? But I had slipped into this way of life so easily and I couldn’t bear the thought that it might change, so I kept my doubts to myself because, whether or not I understood what was going on, I was unwilling to do anything that might upset Joe.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Jeremiah Has a Plan

  Jeremiah Ratchet was close to his wits’ end. He had had just about enough of Joe Zabbidou’s apparent disregard for his standing in the community. His business, his lifestyle, his pleasures were all in jeopardy because of that man. He could hardly bring himself to say his name and even then he could only spit it, usually accompanied by a shower of brown stringy saliva and crumbs. Jeremiah liked to mull things over at dinner.

  Jeremiah rarely ate in his magnificent dining room and usually took his meals in the study with a dinner tray on his lap. It was a room of generous proportions, though badly
lit, and shelved from floor to ceiling. Each shelf was packed tightly, bowing under the weight of an extensive array of books. Jeremiah was a collector. He loved to have things, sometimes for no other reason than that. He was not much of a reader, mind; he found the concentration required quite a strain on his head. As a rule he only kept books that he thought would impress others or increase in price. As a result the titles tended to be obscure and either full of facts that he didn’t understand or plots that he couldn’t fathom. Jeremiah was a fine example of the sort of person who knew the cost of everything but the value of nothing.

  In his study Jeremiah bit into a mouthful of lamb and chewed thoughtfully on Joe Zabbidou. The man was a complete menace. Earlier that day Job Wright had come up to Jeremiah outside the baker’s and presented him with a purse of money that covered over half his debt. Then, after lunch, Polly told Jeremiah about the pair of horseshoes she had seen in the pawnbroker’s window and Jeremiah knew that once again Joe Zabbidou had been at work.

  ‘They’re lovely and shiny,’ Polly had said innocently. ‘I should imagine Joe paid very good money for them.’ She left the room quickly and Jeremiah was certain he heard her sniggering all the way to the kitchen.

  ‘I should have thrown him out that very first day,’ he said ruefully. ‘I left it too late.’ But even Jeremiah suspected that it would never have been that easy.

  Jeremiah realized of course that his tenants’ sudden ability to pay was directly linked to the display in the pawnbroker’s window. He reckoned, however, that Joe could not possibly finance everyone’s debt and that sooner or later he would be out of business and then everything would be back to normal. But Joe did not operate within the usual constraints of commerce.

  Jeremiah shook his head slowly. ‘How can a man thrive when he pays a small fortune for worthless junk?’ he asked himself every day. And every day he waited for Polly to come back from the Reverend Stirling’s so he could hear the latest report on the shop window. And every day it plunged him deeper into depression. How it had pained him to call upon Stirling for help when he had proved to be little better than useless.

  ‘What shall I do?’ moaned Jeremiah as he saw his income dwindling further, for once all the arrears were paid, he couldn’t possibly survive on rent alone.

  He still had money in the bank, inherited from his father, but it had been greatly depleted over the years by his frequent gambling. Jeremiah’s high living had a price. He owed money to his tailor and his hat maker, to his wig maker and his boot maker, and he preferred not to think of the debts that were mounting at the card table.

  There was blackmail, of course. Since he had unearthed Horatio’s little secret there had been no shortage of fresh meat in his kitchen. And until recently there was Obadiah and the grave robbing. Unfortunately, as far as grave robbing was concerned, things weren’t looking too good at present and not only Joe was to blame. Jeremiah’s bodysnatchers (who also doubled up as bailiffs during the day when Jeremiah needed help with an eviction) had brought him the bad news a couple of nights ago.

  ‘The anatomists in the City don’t want the old bodies no more,’ said one of the bodysnatchers. ‘They want fresh young ones.’

  Jeremiah groaned. ‘Don’t they understand? There aren’t any young corpses in Pagus Parvus.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be a problem,’ said the other man carefully.

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Jeremiah.

  The wily pair exchanged knowing glances, which was not easy through their black face masks, and burst into throaty laughter. ‘Well, let’s just say there’s a young lad up the hill, in the old hat shop, who would make a nice specimen.’

  ‘Ludlow?’ asked Jeremiah. ‘But he’s alive and kicking.’

  ‘The fresher the better,’ said the first.

  For a fleeting moment Jeremiah actually considered just what they were suggesting. Many times he had wished never to have to meet Ludlow’s knowing gaze again but, as a solution to his problems, out and out murder was a little extreme even for Jeremiah.

  ‘No, no,’ said Jeremiah hurriedly. ‘I’m sure that won’t be necessary. There must be another way. What about teeth?’

  ‘Teeth?’

  ‘I heard you can sell them,’ began Jeremiah, but the two men just laughed. ‘Oh never mind,’ he ended despondently.

  The men shrugged in unison. ‘Then there’s nothing else we can do for you. Give us our money and we’ll trouble you no more.’

  And that had been that.

  Jeremiah set aside his plate, the meal only half eaten, and slouched back into his chair. He had no appetite. He was too depressed to look at his books; not even The Loneliness of the High Mountain Shepherd – his all-time favourite, on account of the fact that shepherds tended to have a limited vocabulary and to tell a simple story.

  If Joe stayed in the village and continued as he had done up until now, Jeremiah knew that it could only mean more trouble for him. He was going to have to take matters into his own hands.

  ‘Pagus Parvus is not big enough for the two of us,’ he declared to the shadows. ‘One of us will have to go.’

  Feeling very sorry for himself he trudged upstairs and prepared for bed. He couldn’t resist looking out of the window. By now it was an obsession. He could see the pawnbroker’s shop at the top of the hill and the smoke that curled out of the chimney every night into the early hours.

  ‘What is he doing up there?’ he asked himself for the hundredth time.

  Jeremiah was still no nearer to finding out why the pawnbroker received visitors well into the night, and he lacked the imagination to come up with an explanation on his own. He had heard someone say that Joe was giving advice but he could discover no more. He asked Polly many times if she knew what it was all about, but she just looked at him blankly.

  If only I could find out, thought Jeremiah, then perhaps I might be able to do something. But whatever night-time trade was going on at the pawnbroker’s, no one would talk about it. So Jeremiah drew his own conclusions and decided that it was all part of Joe’s plot against him. Having concluded thus, he was even more desperate to know the truth. One morning, therefore, when the oldest Sourdough dropped off the bread, he was waiting for him outside the kitchen door and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck.

  ‘I want you to do a little job for me,’ he muttered.

  ‘Does it pay?’ asked the boy.

  Jeremiah laughed and the poor lad was treated to a panoramic view of the inside of his mouth. That mottled tongue, the fleshy uvula, those stained teeth, the meat and piecrust from the previous night still wedged firmly between them.

  ‘I’ll tell you what you’ll get if you don’t do it,’ he hissed. ‘I’ll tell your father that I found you sneaking around my kitchen looking for something to steal. Something like this,’ and with a sleight of hand that would have surprised even Joe, Jeremiah somehow managed to take a silver candlestick out of the boy’s pocket, upon which trick the poor chap burst into tears.

  Jeremiah released his hold. ‘Just do what I say,’ he growled, ‘and you’ll be no worse off. You must find out what’s going on at the pawnbroker’s.’

  The lad hesitated, but the threat of his father was enough. He really had no choice. It took him a week, standing hour after hour in the freezing cold at midnight around the back of the pawnbroker’s shop. And every night it was the same. He heard the crunch of snow and the knock at the door. He watched as Joe handed his visitor a drink and sat him by the fire. In the corner he could see Ludlow writing furiously in a large black book. He could not hear what was being said, but he guessed quite quickly what was in the leather bags that Joe handed over at the end of the meeting. Eventually he decided he had learned as much as he was going to (he was also becoming increasingly afraid that Joe had seen him) and duly presented himself in Jeremiah’s study.

  ‘So?’ asked Jeremiah eagerly. ‘What did you find out?’

  ‘They talk to Joe and Ludlow writes down what they say in a big black book.�
�

  ‘And that’s it?’ It wasn’t at all what Jeremiah expected.

  The boy nodded. ‘Whatever they’re telling him, it’s worth money. Joe pays them, bags of it. Dr Mouldered was there the other night. I couldn’t quite hear what he was saying, but his face looked as if it might be important. And I know my own father has been up there.’

  So did Jeremiah. Elias Sourdough had paid him nearly all his rent owing.

  ‘And what of the frog?’ asked Jeremiah in desperation. He couldn’t see how any of this was going to help him.

  ‘She’s called Saluki. Joe treats her like she’s something special. He won’t let anyone touch her, but sometimes she sits in his hand. I reckon she might be worth a few shillings. I’ve never seen anything like her.’

  Jeremiah was perplexed. As he lay in bed that night thinking over what he had been told, it gradually dawned on him that, in fact, the Sourdough boy had given him exactly what he needed to know.

  ‘The book,’ he said out loud and sat bolt upright. ‘The book holds the answer.’

  Jeremiah’s mind was racing. Whatever was in that book, Joe was prepared to pay handsomely for it. It made sense that if Joe somehow lost the book, or perhaps it was taken from him, then he would also pay handsomely to retrieve it. Or, better than that, perhaps he would agree to leave Pagus Parvus and pay up in order to get the book back. With Joe gone, all Jeremiah’s problems would be solved. Jeremiah’s excitement mounted. What a fine revenge he could exact for all the trouble Joe had caused him. But there was one small flaw in the plan.

  How do I get the book in the first place? he wondered. But just before sunrise he had the answer. The time had come for Jeremiah Ratchet to pay Joe Zabbidou a visit.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Cat’s Away

  Ludlow stirred. A log split on the fire beside him and a new flame burst from its heart. He welcomed the warmth. Joe had long since reclaimed his cloak.