shuttered for the night, the streets given over to the patrons of the grog shops and taverns that spilled golden rectangles of light and boisterous laughter into the night.
He paused across the street from the Black Devil, in theshadows cast by the deep doorway of a calico printer’s shop. He let his gaze rove over the public house’s gable-ended facade and old-fashioned, diamond-paned windows. Suspended from a beam over the door hung a cracked wooden sign painted with the image of a horned black devil, his yellow-eyed head and barbed tail silhouetted against a roaring orange and red fire. As Sebastian watched, the sign creaked softly on its chains, touched by an unexpected gust of hot wind.
Crossing the narrow lane, he pushed through the door into a noisy, low-ceilinged public room with a sunken stone-flagged floor and oak-paneled walls turned black by centuries of smoke. The air was thick with the smell of tobacco and ale and unwashed, hardworking male bodies. The men crowded up to the bar and clustered around the tables glanced over at him, then went back to their pints and their bonesticks and their draughts.
“Help ye, there?” called a young woman from behind the bar, her almond-shaped eyes narrowing with shrewd appraisal. She looked to be somewhere in her early twenties, dark haired and winsome, with a wide red mouth and soft white breasts that swelled voluptuously above the low-cut bodice of her crimson satin gown.
Sebastian pushed his way through the crowd to stand half turned so that he still faced the room. In this gathering of tradesmen and laborers, costermongers and petty thieves, his doeskin breeches, clean white cravat, and exquisitely tailored coat of Bath superfine all marked him as a creature from another world. The other men at the bar shifted subtly, clearing a space around him.
“A go of Cork,” he said, then waited until she set the measure of gin on the boards in front of him to add, “I’m looking for Jamie Knox; is he here?”
The woman behind the bar wiped her hands on the apron tied high around her waist, but her gaze never left his face. “And who might ye be, then?”
“Devlin. Viscount Devlin.”
She stood for a moment with her hands still wrapped in the cloth of her apron. Then she jerked her head toward the rear. “He’s out the back, unloading a delivery. There’s an alley runs along the side of the tavern. The court opens off that.”
Sebastian laid a coin on the scarred surface of the bar. “Thank you.”
The alley was dark and ripe with the stench of rotting offal and fish heads and urine. The ancient walls looming high above him on either side bulged out ominously, so that someone had put in stout timber braces to keep the masonry from collapsing. As he drew nearer, he realized the tavern backed onto the churchyard of St. Helen’s Bishopsgate, a relic of a now-vanished priory of Benedictine nuns. He could see the church’s ancient wooden tower rising over a swelling burial ground where great elms moaned softly with the growing wind.
He paused just outside the entrance to the tavern yard. The courtyard looked to be even older than the tavern itself, its cobbles undulating and sunken, with one unexpectedly high wall of coursed flint blocks bonded with rows of red tile. Sebastian could understand why a woman with Gabrielle Tennyson’s interests would find the site fascinating.
Someone had set a horn lantern atop an old flat stone beside a mule-drawn cart filled with hogsheads. The mules stood with their heads down, feet splayed. At the rear of the tavern the wooden flaps of the cellar had been thrown open to reveal a worn flight of stone steps that disappeared downward. As Sebastian watched, the grizzled head and husky shoulders of a man appeared, his footfalls echoing in the wind-tossed night.
Sebastian leaned against the stone jamb of the gateway. He had one hand in his pocket, where a small double-barreled pistol, primed and loaded, partially spoiled the line
He paused across the street from the Black Devil, in theshadows cast by the deep doorway of a calico printer’s shop. He let his gaze rove over the public house’s gable-ended facade and old-fashioned, diamond-paned windows. Suspended from a beam over the door hung a cracked wooden sign painted with the image of a horned black devil, his yellow-eyed head and barbed tail silhouetted against a roaring orange and red fire. As Sebastian watched, the sign creaked softly on its chains, touched by an unexpected gust of hot wind.
Crossing the narrow lane, he pushed through the door into a noisy, low-ceilinged public room with a sunken stone-flagged floor and oak-paneled walls turned black by centuries of smoke. The air was thick with the smell of tobacco and ale and unwashed, hardworking male bodies. The men crowded up to the bar and clustered around the tables glanced over at him, then went back to their pints and their bonesticks and their draughts.
“Help ye, there?” called a young woman from behind the bar, her almond-shaped eyes narrowing with shrewd appraisal. She looked to be somewhere in her early twenties, dark haired and winsome, with a wide red mouth and soft white breasts that swelled voluptuously above the low-cut bodice of her crimson satin gown.
Sebastian pushed his way through the crowd to stand half turned so that he still faced the room. In this gathering of tradesmen and laborers, costermongers and petty thieves, his doeskin breeches, clean white cravat, and exquisitely tailored coat of Bath superfine all marked him as a creature from another world. The other men at the bar shifted subtly, clearing a space around him.
“A go of Cork,” he said, then waited until she set the measure of gin on the boards in front of him to add, “I’m looking for Jamie Knox; is he here?”
The woman behind the bar wiped her hands on the apron tied high around her waist, but her gaze never left his face. “And who might ye be, then?”
“Devlin. Viscount Devlin.”
She stood for a moment with her hands still wrapped in the cloth of her apron. Then she jerked her head toward the rear. “He’s out the back, unloading a delivery. There’s an alley runs along the side of the tavern. The court opens off that.”
Sebastian laid a coin on the scarred surface of the bar. “Thank you.”
The alley was dark and ripe with the stench of rotting offal and fish heads and urine. The ancient walls looming high above him on either side bulged out ominously, so that someone had put in stout timber braces to keep the masonry from collapsing. As he drew nearer, he realized the tavern backed onto the churchyard of St. Helen’s Bishopsgate, a relic of a now-vanished priory of Benedictine nuns. He could see the church’s ancient wooden tower rising over a swelling burial ground where great elms moaned softly with the growing wind.
He paused just outside the entrance to the tavern yard. The courtyard looked to be even older than the tavern itself, its cobbles undulating and sunken, with one unexpectedly high wall of coursed flint blocks bonded with rows of red tile. Sebastian could understand why a woman with Gabrielle Tennyson’s interests would find the site fascinating.
Someone had set a horn lantern atop an old flat stone beside a mule-drawn cart filled with hogsheads. The mules stood with their heads down, feet splayed. At the rear of the tavern the wooden flaps of the cellar had been thrown open to reveal a worn flight of stone steps that disappeared downward. As Sebastian watched, the grizzled head and husky shoulders of a man appeared, his footfalls echoing in the wind-tossed night.
Sebastian leaned against the stone jamb of the gateway. He had one hand in his pocket, where a small double-barreled pistol, primed and loaded, partially spoiled the line
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