Mask of Night Read Online Free Page B

clutching a small boy by the hand.
    Farnaby looked across the street to the speaker.
    “She had another at Candlemas.”
    “It perished,” said someone else, a man this time.
    “That was two doors away,” said the woman.
    “No matter where it was or what the baby did,” said Farnaby. “In the matter of this dwelling now, constable: secure the door in the prescribed form with padlocks. After forty days you may remove the locks. All this to be at the charge of the parish.”
    I looked at the slit between sacking and wall. No sign of an eye. But there were surely ears pricked up inside that dark room, listening to their fate. Now Alderman Farnaby directed his fire at the pair of hag-like women who were standing to one side, cowled and expectant.
    “I don’t have to tell you your duties, do I?”
    “We know them,” a voice came quavering from one of the scarfed heads.
    “Are you honest and discreet?”
    “We are, sir,” said the second scarfed head.
    “Vigilant and skilful?”
    “Now, sir,” said the first, “I should say we are that too, though we should be the last to claim it – but if you were to ask these good neighbours standing here – ”
    Alderman Farnaby wasn’t interested in the old woman’s meanderings and cut her off with a wave of his hand. He took one last look at the constable and the old women before sweeping his eyes across the group on the other side of the street. He paused as he glimpsed Abel and me. Perhaps we appeared out of place among the usual inhabitants of Kentish Street. His look seemed to say to all of us, “You’ve had your entertainment.”
    What he actually said was, “The keeper has just called you ‘good neighbours’ . . . well, you will show yourselves good neighbours to these unfortunate Turnbulls and, er, the person called Watkins in the following manner. This house remains undisturbed for the prescribed forty days. These two honest and discreet women will act as nurse-keepers. There is to be no intercourse with the occupants except through them. A warder will be appointed at the charge of the parish to ensure that no one leaves this place. The mark on the door will not be touched. Anyone who tries to wipe the mark off the door, or who enters the house, or who aids the unfortunate occupants to depart before the end of forty days will find himself – or herself – clapped into the stocks or the House of Correction.”
    Then, without waiting to see the effect of his words, he strode off, unhitched the white palfrey and mounted it. He turned the horse’s head towards London and rode off at an even pace.
    “A fig for you too, Farnaby,” said the woman who’d given the number of occupants in the Turnbull household as eight. The words were almost shouted, and accompanied with the appropriate thumb-through-fingers gesture, although not until the alderman was at a safe distance. The small crowd nodded or murmured approval. One or two laughed. Seeing this, the little boy whose hand she was holding glanced up at her and laughed too.
    “Now, now,” said the constable, no doubt feeling the pull of his office, “the gentleman is doing no more than what is prescribed.”
    “The bugger should be prescribed himself,” said the woman. “Him and his prescribes. Laying down the law.”
    “He’s not the only one who likes doing that,” said one of the two crones who’d been appointed nurse-keepers. She crossed the street to stand in front of the woman with the boy. The crone was less ancient that I’d taken her for at first. The quaver had gone from her voice. I wondered whether she’d assumed an older, more feeble manner for the benefit of the alderman.
    “We all know what you’re going to get out of it, Mistress Johnson,” said the woman with the child. “You and your sister. Alderman Farnaby should’ve asked me. I’d’ve told him. You know why you are called keepers? Because whatever you get your griping paws on, you’ll never let go of. I’d rather have