River Daughter. Jane Hardstaff
touch it if I was –’
Too late. Moss was crouching by the muddy object, trying not to retch on the foulness that clawed its way down her throat.
It was a ball of matted fur, caked with river mud and what looked like old blood. Moss grabbed a stick and poked at it, rolling it over slowly. The matted fur was odd-looking. Speckled with a strange pattern, though it wasn’t easy to see through all the mud. The ball tipped on its side.
‘Oh!’
Moss jumped back.
Two startled eyes stared up at her – huge and black-ringed, faded by death. A lolling tongue poked through four enormous fangs. It was the head of some poor dead animal. Washed up by the tide.
Salter was beside her now. He whistled. ‘That is one big cat. What’s it been feedin on? All the other cats in town?’
‘That’s no cat,’ said Moss.
‘Got cat ears,’ said Salter. ‘Got cat eyes. And I reckon them straw things plastered to its fur are whiskers.’
‘Look at its teeth,’ said Moss. ‘When did you last see a cat with fangs the size of parsnips?’
‘Well, what is it then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Hey, what are you doin? Don’t touch that thing!’
Moss had lifted the head by the scruff of fur between its ears and was carrying it to the water’s edge. It was heavy. She swilled it in the grey water until the mud had rinsed off. Then she carried it back up the shingle and laid it down.
The creature’s head was covered in a strange pattern of round black patches, like a beautiful plague that spread from the line between its eyes across fawn-yellow fur.
‘It’s a good thing it’s dead,’ said Salter. ‘Those jaws would rip yer face off soon as look at you. Whatever that creature is, it ain’t from round here.’
At Salter’s words, something clicked inside Moss’s head and it filled with the memory of animal roars from long ago.
‘But it could be from round here.’
‘Eh?’
‘This creature. It could have come from the Tower.’
‘What? ’
‘From the Beast House.’
Salter nodded slowly. “I heard about that place. Wolves an’ snakes an’ weird birds, ain’t it?’
‘I only know what the Tower folk told me. That they are the King’s beasts. Rare and strange animals sent by the kings and queens of far away places.
‘You ever see em?’
‘No. I never went into the Beast House. Normal Tower folk weren’t allowed, only the keepers. On Execution days we’d walk right past and I’d hear the animals howling and roaring, but the keepers kept it locked.’
‘So,’ said Salter, ‘if you ain’t never seen em, what makes you think that mangy head is one of em? An’ even if it was, what’s it doin washed up on the shore?’
‘I don’t know.’
She stared up at the Tower. Its walls gave nothing away. Once these walls had encircled her whole world. Where she and Pa had lived almost her entire life. Stark and sheer, they blocked the sky. A howl echoed across the turrets, joined by another and another, as if the animals of the Beast House were crying out, trying to reach beyond the walls. Moss had never heard them howl like that in all the time she had lived in the Tower.
She looked down at the head of the beast. Its face was a frozen snarl. However this creature had died, she was pretty sure it hadn’t passed away peacefully in its sleep.
‘We’ll bury it,’ she said.
‘You what?’
‘It shouldn’t be here. We can’t leave it slopping in and out with the tide.’
Salter spent the next ten minutes grumbling while they scrabbled a hole in the shingle near the bank, deep enough to take the creature.
When the head was buried, Moss walked back to the mudline.
The rotten smell was still there. It was everywhere. In her hair, in her nose. She could taste it on her tongue. It was the smell of death and it hung around the Tower like a stinking fog.
‘Ready fer breakfast?’
‘Not really. Anyway, we’ve no food. Or money.’
There was a flicker in Salter’s eye. Tiny. But Moss caught it.
‘Salter, no.’
‘What?’ He laughed. ‘You don’t even know what I’m plannin!’
‘And I don’t want to know.’
‘Look, I ain’t lyin to you. It’s a scam all right. But it only takes from the pockets of them that can afford a groat or two. Nothin big. Nothin fancy. We won’t get caught. All you need to do is –’
‘No. Just . . . no. We’ve been in London one night and already you’re talking about thieving ?’
‘You got a better idea? Unless you want to turn round an’ walk back to the village right now?’
She didn’t.
Right now they needed food and a place to sleep. Surely there must be someone who’d give them shelter. Just for a night or two.
‘You lived on the river long enough,’ said Moss, ‘You must know somewhere we can go?’
‘Ain’t no one I can ask,’ said Salter. ‘It’s every man, woman and child fer themselves in this city. Ain’t no one who’ll take us in without a groat to show fer ourselves.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Moss. In her memory, a thought stirred. A name from the past. She’d never met him, but Salter had talked about him. A boy. Someone Salter went to for . . . well, she wasn’t quite sure what he went to him for. But she remembered that he had helped Salter once, maybe twice.
‘Eel-Eye Jack!’ she cried. That was his name.
Salter’s brow creased.
‘Eel-Eye Jack,’ said Moss.
‘I heard you the first time. What about him?’
‘He’s your friend, isn’t he?’
‘Eel-Eye Jack ain’t no friend.’
‘You know what I mean. He helped you didn’t he? Helped you find me when I went to Hampton that winter.’
‘Eel-Eye Jack don’t help people.’
‘Oh, come on, Salter. We can ask him for a bed and a bit of food, just enough for a few days.’
‘No.’
‘What do you mean no?’
‘I mean no pussin way. I mean Eel-Eye Jack ain’t the kind to be askin favours from.’
‘Salter, don’t be ridiculous. We’ll find a way to pay him back.’
‘I’m serious. I ain’t never been in debt to Eel Eye Jack. Done all me business on an equal foot. An’ there’s good reason for that. When he calls in his favours, you don’t know what he’ll ask.’
‘What are you afraid of, Salter?’ Moss could feel the heat rising in her throat. ‘You don’t want to ask for help? Is that it? You take care of yourself, let others take care of themselves. You’d lie and steal rather than ask a friend for help.’