The Rookery of St Giles is an entire shanty town pressed into the space of a single city block. Thieves and forgers, murderers and whores live there; the dregs of society with nowhere further left to sink. Those who live lower than the gutter and if they look to the stars see nothing but fog, and the boot-heels of their fellow men.
Most accommodation in the Rookery is damp, rotten, slurry-stained, overcrowded and smelling of any number of unpleasant excretions both human and animal. It's not uncommon for eight or more people to share a room, nor is it uncommon to wake up with a corpse in one's midst, as disease, privation or a penny-shiv have taken their toll and an unfortunate's life during the night.
There is one room at St Giles, larger, dryer, warmer, cleaner and far less crowded than all the others – it is, if slums can have such a thing, the grand penthouse suite – although that isn't saying much. The windows have not only glass panes but curtains, the floor has a rug; both are worn and faded but hold a memory of colour, pattern and better days in their weave. There is even a fireplace housing a small blaze and a smaller copper kettle.
There are three occupants in the room; a man who sits by the fire, steaming as the rain evaporates from his coat, a woman with ratty blonde hair and a suggestively pink dress who's edging towards the door, and a younger woman who is pacing.
The younger woman wears a boy's morning coat over a rag-tag concoction of layered petticoats and corsetry; mismatched matron's gloves warm her hands. Her hair is dark; when the firelight catches it, it turns the colour of congealed blood. The viper's nest of curls is badly pinned, giving her the air of the deranged spinster aunt whom nobody talks about. Her face is unmarred by disease, but her marl-blue eyes are several lifetime's old and bruised with shadows. Her voice is fraught and low.
"I said it didn't I? Never saw it – never saw it – an' I always see the end, don't I? Whether I want to or not... I told you – knew he weren't made t'drown, was why I laughed at all them black bands, silly bleeders weepin' an' wailin'..."
The man at the hearth stretches his fingers closer towards the fire. "Emmy, wot the 'ell you talkin' about now, girl?"
"You put something in your pipe?" the blonde woman asks with a strained, rictus smile.
"Shut y'face, Jenny Penny," is the sharp retort. "Y'know I never touch the stuff."
"Sometimes I wish you would," she mutters. Jen never knows what to do when Emmy has one of her nights – and tonight is proving to be a particularly bad one. Lord knows what set her off.
"It pays t'watch, always pays t'watch... All that crush o'water couldn't take 'im, weren't where he was headed..." she tells the skirting board, hooking her fingers into claws and latching them onto her wrists beneath the sundry coverings of cloth.
"Emmy..."
"The boss-cat went, everybody knows a cat can drown in tuppence of water and that was more than tuppence – so cold and so far..."
Jen silently appeals to the man at the hearth for help, but Davey ignores her, watching the flames instead, damn him. She rallys herself, approaching the other woman like an arachnophobe trying to trap a spider in a cup. "Emmy, stop it – sit down for godsake! Oh god, I hate it when you scratch at your arms like that – Emmy please..." The door opens and she looks to the newcomer hopefully for aid. "Charlie!" she greets the tall, sodden young man, not giving him time to warm or dry himself. "Ere, thank god, she's 'avin' a right turn. Look t'her would you? I'll get us a shant o'gin."
Emmy's monologue breaks and she snaps, "I don't want any bloody gin!"
"Well I bloody do!" Jen cuts back as she flees.
"Emmy – Emmy! What is it?"
"Trouped in an' out all day," Davey mutters, knowing both that the young man wants the explanation and that it won't do him the slightest good to have it. "Jeb and Lizzy came from the city, Brent from the docks. Was after Old Lil came by, gave 'er news from Marylebone, an' she went glocky."
Charlie stands in front of her, holding her by the shoulders, needing to anchor her in the here and now. "C'mon, leave yer arms alone, tell me..."
She twitches, attention shifting to the face before her: skin pale with chill, hair plastered flat, eyes a deep green tinged with worry. She lifts a hand to wipe some of the raindrops from his cheek. "Oh Charlie you ain't drowned – I ain't havin' you drowned jus' 'cos he's back – no, no - nobody's f'drownin' tonight!"
He hugs her close, trying to soothe her mounting agitation. "Is alright, is just a bit of rain is all, I'm still here, I'm here."
She quiets in his arms. After a moment, muffled by his coat but in a voice both calm and put-upon she says, "You're all wet."
He laughs, releasing her. "Rain's a bugger for it." He gives Davey a nod, drags over a footstool to the hearth and sinks down with a sigh which might be relief or might be fortification for all that's to come. "Now. What's got you in a fit?"
Her head tips to the side and she blinks at him, entirely mystified. A fit – she's in a fit? Then her thoughts tumble lose and she suddenly grins, childish and manic. "He's come back!"
"Who's come back?"
"The Don Jack."
In stark contrast to her glee his expression is pained. "No – no Emmy, don't start this again – please don't. Christ... He's dead."
She shakes her head. "He ain't."
Charlie rubs at his eyes with a grimace. He can't cope with this again. It has been two years – longer – since she's been that bad and for his money it was the bloody Don's death that set her off. Irritation sparks as if he hopes to bully her back to sense. "So all o'London was wrong then? Sea o'bloody sackcloth, letters t'the papers, all that wailin' and gnashin' o'teeth – waste o'bleedin' time was it?"
She grins then and starts to giggle as if it's the greatest joke of all.
"It's not bloody funny! He's gone, all right?"
"His Crow wrote it up an' everythin' – papers were full of it," Davey rumbles in Charlie's support.
"He drowned Emmy – remember?" Please let her not have forgotten, please god let her not start again...
"He ain't soaked," she says clearly.
Charlie sighs, head hanging in defeat. He looks up at her and waits with long suffering patience. Emmy has quite a few names amongst the different cants of the city, unlike the Rook or Old Jago, no one seemed happy to settle for just one moniker. 'The Giles Witch' or just 'the Witch' was growing strong however, and Charlie thinks it's easy to see why.
Emmy has senses cracked open too wide; she sees everything, hears everything, a thousand little details driving though her head like a pound of copper tacks. Her thoughts jump unsteadily across the ice-flow of information, barely able to focus on eating breakfast let alone anything else, until some question or event pulls facts and thoughts to it like iron to a load-stone and she'll suddenly say 'this will happen' or 'he'll do that', 'he hid it there' or 'that's what she's up to'. It's as uncanny as it is off-putting.
But since (as Charlie's mother had said for the scant time she was alive) even a shilling has two sides, for every flash of insight there was always a long night of madness as every thought strained at the leash and sought to flee her head. It remained to be seen whether Emmy's current state was because her mind was about to be brilliant or whether it was being a bloody mess in payment for some brilliance of the past.
"He's back," she tells him, eyes wide and tone conspiratorial. "Out o' twig as usual - cunning bleeder... London's got the Don Jack back!" she crows, twirling round as if she can dance a jig for the heart of the city.
"Don't be daft," Davey opinions.
She stops abruptly, off kilter, joy sinking into horror in an instant. "But he won't last..." Her eyes flicker, reading something writ in the air invisible to all but her, her breath catching in her throat. "No," she moans. "Oh – no – no no no..."
Charlie is on his feet in an instant. "Emmy!"
"Old Sour Face won't find 'im in time – late again – an' the dragon'll have 'im!" She is taut as a bow-string, her hands clenched into fists, nails digging into her palms, shivering. "No!"
"Christ, stop screamin', please Emmy..." He shakes her and then staggers as she drops from his grasp like a corpse, landing heavily on her knees, head bowed. He kneels close, his hand to the side of her face, tangling in her hair as he tries to get her to look at him, to acknowledge something real. "Emmy?"
"I ain't wearin' black for 'im," she spits, a desperate iron edge creeping into her voice. "We gotta find 'im."
Charlie makes an exasperated noise, the beginnings of a protest on the futility of searching for a man everyone knows is dead and buried.
Her head snaps up and she glares at him, eyes a deranged blue. "D'you believe me?"
"I..."
"Do you believe me?" she demands.
He looks at her, deeply, fondly, and his mouth twitches at the corner into a sorry smile. "I always believe you Emmy, you know I do."
She nods, still shaken in the wake of her personal storm, but satisfied. "We gotta find the Don Jack 'fore he does for 'imself. There ain't much time."
"How you gonna do it?" Davey asks, turning away from the flames for an instant. "Can't scour the city in a night. 'Specially not a night like this." Looming large in the undertone of his words is also 'and not for a ghost', but saying so aloud would only spark another argument.
Her head cants to the side, a devious expression lighting her features, making her look vixen-like and hungry. "No need. He'll be in the Ratcliffe."
"How..."
She speaks quickly, running through the explanation like someone pelting across a log, worried it might spin and throw her off at any second. "He'll pick a flash-house not a gent's club f'what he's doin'." A blink. "He ain't here... Black Nick an' Cheapside Bill do skirt, not smoke. Jago's Isle's got smoke a-plenty, but it's harder t'get to without a boatman an' he'll want t'walk on his own two feet without trippin' over ten Lascars and six bully boys lookin' for a mandrake. Leaves the Mint an' the Ratcliffe. Ratcliffe's got the most Flower Houses - Yellow King's stock in trade. Stands t'reason."
"Still leaves us a lot of lookin', girl," Davey complains. "Steppin' on the Rook's toes or that yellow bugger t'do it, too."
She ignores him, thoughts and patterns weaving together in her mind until she's sifted probabilities to reach the most likely answer. "Be somewhere not too dossy, not too classy neither – jus' 'cos it's a flash-house don't mean he wants t'lie in a puddle o'piss - he's got some dignity. One of the Dens on Gun Lane off Commercial." She nods, the single dipping of her chin a signal to the world that all she has said is irrefutable.
The door opens to admit Jenny and a bottle of gin; the whore opens her mouth to announce her return, but shuts it again when she sees Emmy and Charlie kneeling on the floor, Emmy with that particular look she's grown to loath.
"We'll need his Crow – an' that spike o'his so he's on the up. Sour Face won't give us the time o'day like as not... Find Clarky – he'll be in Bread Street Ward - he's a good Ketch, he'll listen."
"Aw god Emmy," Charlie rocks back on his heals. "Why'd we 'ave t'go near any of 'em?" He does not often speak against her when she's so single minded, but he has a lifelong dislike of the Yard.
She rises to her feet: Queen Victoria herself commanding armies in her splendour could not be more self-possessed. She stalks towards Jenny and takes the grimy gin tumbler, draining off a mouthful before returning it. "Give the word," she orders the room in general. "I want runners t'fetch the Crow an' Clarky. Tell 'em to high tail it t' the Gun or they'll be wearin' sackcloth tomorrow."
Jenny looks from Charlie to Davey and back again. "Who's she on about?"
Heading out the door, ivory pipe in hand, eyes glinting, Emmy's lips split into a grin. "The Don Jack," she says as she leaves.
"Wot - Sherry?" She stares incredulously at the woman's retreating back and then at Charlie as he trails after. "But he's dead!"
Her lieutenant shrugs his narrow shoulders. "Not yet he ain't."
NOTES
Rookeries – Rookeries were slums in the city, rife with crime and disease. Ones of note were: Jago's Isle, St Giles (also known as Seven Dials), The Mint, Petticoat Lane, Old Nichol Street and the Ratcliffe/Radcliffe. In the real world the rookeries had been cleared by the 1880s, but in this fiction they still thrive and are run by Old Jago, the St Giles Witch, Marmalade Jack, Cheapside Bill, and Black Nick respectively. The Ratcliffe is 'shared' by the Yellow King (Chen) and the Rook, with Chen running the opium dens and the Rook dealing with all other business.
Shant 'o gin – a bottle of gin
Glocky - mad
Don Jack – Great/Clever Detective.
Crow - doctor
Out of twig – unknown, in disguise.
The dragon - opium
Flash house - a public house patronized by criminals.
Mandrake - homosexual
Flower House – opium den
Ketch – policeman (taken from Jack Ketch the hangman in Punch & Judy shows)
Sherry – from 'Sherridan Hope' a name Doyle considered for Holmes and which I've decided he uses when slumming it.