Page 17 of Who Cries for the Lost

Jeeper Jones tightened his grip on his pipe and squinted up at the screeching gulls that circled overhead. “First they let theaters open up in the City, then they come up with sprung carriages, and now they’re puttin’ up all these blasted bridges.”

The Watermen’s Company had historically been large and powerful, and over the centuries they had fought long and hard to stop all of those changes, at one point even successfully bullying the Crown into passing a law that banned hackney carriages. That hadn’t lasted long, but for years they had successfully prevented any new bridges from being built over the Thames. Westminster Bridge wasn’t finally approved until the 1740s, with Blackfriars Bridge following soon after. And now three more bridges—one at the Strand, one at Vauxhall, and another they were calling the Southwark Bridge—were set to open in the next few years.

Jeeper Jones coughed up a mouthful of phlegm and spit into the muck at his feet. “I hear people sayin’ that next thing ye know, we’re gonna see steam boats on the river, that they’re gonna put us wherrymen out o’ business for good.” He eyed Hero thoughtfully. “You think that’s true?”

Hero stared out over the wide river to where the soot-stained brick walls of the barge buildings rose on the far side. “I don’t know,” she said tactfully, although she frankly thought it inevitable.

He didn’t look as if he believed her.

“At least the bridges must cut down on the number of drownings,” she said.

The wherryman let out his breath in a scornful huff. “Don’t know about that. We still pull bodies out the water all the time. I reckon there’s anywhere between a hundred and fifty to two hundred bodies fished out the river every year. Sometimes in a dense fog there’ll be twenty or more people lost in jist a day or two—and those are the ones that’re found.”

Hero looked up from scribbling her notes. “Have you heard about the lord’s son who was recently found in the Pool?”

“Oh, aye. They say somebody done cut off his pr—” The wherryman broke off, his eyes widening as if he’d reconsidered what he’d been about to say. He swiped an open hand across his mouth and said instead, “Hear somebody messed him up real good, somebody did.”

“Where do you suppose he went in the river? Is there any way to know?”

“We-ell.” The wherryman pulled at his ear and stared thoughtfully at a barge making its slow way up the river, the sun glinting off the water curling away from its bow. “It’s hard to say, really. Someplace in Southwark is more’n likely, but there ain’t no way to know fer sure. Things can churn around in that river real good when the tide comes in and goes out.” He brought his gaze back to her face. “Was he somebody close t’ ye?”

“No. A mere acquaintance only. He served with my husband in the Peninsula.”

Jeeper’s eyes narrowed as he regarded her in silence for a moment. “I hear Old Hookey’s gettin’ ready t’ invade France next month. Ye know anything about that?”

“Only what I read in the papers.”

He looked out over the sun-spangled river, his throat working as he swallowed. “My youngest boy, Michael, is on HMS Royal Anne. Got impressed three years ago—him and his brother Micah both at the same time. But Micah, he died of fever after jist six months.”

Hero sucked in a deep breath scented with tar and hemp and all the sun-soaked smells of the river. The Navy was always impressing wherrymen, largely because they were already familiar with life on the water. “I’m sorry.”

The wherryman nodded his acknowledgment and blinked. “At first we heard Michael was bein’ sent t’ America t’ fight the Yankees. But when Boney busted loose, the Admiralty decided t’ keep his ship here. It’s gettin’ to where I’m wondering if he’ll ever be let go.”

“Surely he will be home soon,” said Hero. “At least now the war with America has finally ended, and I don’t see how this new conflict with Bonaparte can last long.”

“Even if it don’t, I reckon they’ll jist start a fight someplace else. I was impressed meself back in ’seventy-six, and they got me da twice in his day. I know one wherryman impressed seven times, he was.”

“Merciful heavens,” said Hero.

But Jeeper Jones simply laughed.

It was after Hero had pressed several coins into the wherryman’s hand and was climbing the worn stone steps that led up to the inn where she’d left her carriage that she felt it: that tingling at the back of her neck that told her she was being watched.

She kept walking.

Jeeper Jones’s work base—assigned to him by the Watermen’s Company—was the old Hungerford Stairs, at Hungerford Market near Charing Cross. The worn two-story stone building that housed the market was now nearly a hundred and fifty years old, and it was not prospering. As she passed the market hall’s old colonnade, Hero paused beside one of the stalls to study a colorful display of ribbons. Then, as she turned to walk on again, she allowed her gaze to drift casually over the motley collection of stall keepers and housewives, cooks and housemaids, hawkers and porters, beggars and thieves, who crowded the square.

But if someone was watching her, they had obviously looked away.

Keeping her pace unhurried, she turned down the narrow street of squalid houses to where she had left her carriage.

“Everything all right, my lady?” asked one of her footmen, leaping forward to open the carriage door and let down the steps.

For a moment she paused again, her hands fisting in the skirt of her simple fustian gown as she glanced back toward the market. “Yes, thank you,” she said, and turned to mount the steps.

But the sense of disquiet lingered even as the carriage swung out onto the Strand and the market was lost from sight.

Chapter 11

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