CHAPTER 31

SNICKERSNEE

Amos did not drown. He plunged into the canal just as something snatched at his neck. He felt the leather strap that held the “Mute but Intelligent” brass around his neck yank his head back and then snap, and then he was underwater and breathing in river until everything went black…

… and then he was out of the river and flat on his back and somewhere on the other side of the water from where he had gone in, coughing and spluttering, aware that someone was sitting on his chest and pumping him as if he was some kind of engine. His rescuer was emptying his lungs of river by squashing his rib cage and then releasing it again; he felt like some kind of human accordion.

He waved his hands and sat up.

His rescuer stepped away and looked at him in the light of a meagre camp-fire, which was smoking fitfully and throwing more light than warmth. The man who had saved him was a tinker. That much was apparent from the large pack drawn up to the fire, hung with tinware of all shapes and sizes, with a small knife-grinding machine strapped to the back of the pack. The tinker prodded him.

“You all right, matey?”

Amos nodded.

“You might have drownded, weren’t for me,” said the tinker. “Would have, more like. Dead as a stone. Saved you.”

Amos looked at him. He was not a pretty man. His head was bulbous at the top and fell away in an alarmingly triangular fashion to an undershot jaw which was almost indistinguishable from the neck it disappeared into. As he swallowed, Amos saw his Adam’s apple was more prominent than his chin.

“Might thank a fellow as has plucked you from a watery end?” said the tinker. His tone was both querulous and demanding. “A fellow as has got himself wet through in the process.”

Amos signed that he could not talk. The tinker looked at him.

“Cat got your tongue?” he said.

Amos nodded and pantomimed his inability to speak for the second time. Then he took the man’s hand–cold and boneless, like a wet sock–and shook it enthusiastically to show his thanks.

“You’re a simpleton, are you?” said the tinker. “Well, there you go. You sit there by the fire and get what wits you do got back, eh?”

Amos moved closer to the mean fire. A cast-iron pan sat in the embers at the side with a blackened pair of sausages in it. He was conscious of the tinker looking back across the river. He wondered if the Sluagh were there. He tried to see them or hear anything that might give a clue.

All he could hear were the tinker’s thoughts, like a whisper.

“Something strange out there in the night. What was he running from? Maybe he’s a thief. Maybe it was bogles. Never seen a bogle. Don’t want to see a bogle. Mind, if it is a bogle we’re safe enough. Always safe we are, carrying so many iron knives in our pack. Never hear of any tinker getting bogle-led or taken. Enough iron in that pack to scare off a whole squadron of bogles. Bogles don’t like iron is what the old dad said, and he never got bogled any…”

Amos felt something slippery in the way the tinker thought, word tumbling after word, like a barrel of fish being poured onto the slab at Billingsgate market. He was used to judging people as much on how they thought as on what they thought, and people who thought like the tinker, people whose thoughts were a cascading babble, were not usually trustworthy.

A point proved by the tinker’s next flurry of thinking.

“What about the idiot then? Strange looker. More’n a touch of the tar-brush in him. Someone’s darkie, a servant, likely, slave blood from the West Indies or such. Stolen something and on the run maybe. Money in his pocket. Felt it go clink. Good shoes. Belt is new. Get something for his coat. He can’t talk. Who’s he going to tell? Knock him on the head and by the time he wakes up in the morning we’ll be long gone. No. No. Maybe he’s clever. Maybe he’s a one as can write. If he can write he can tell on us. Not good. So cut him. Cut him fast after he’s taken his coat off. Don’t want blood on it. Snickersnee across the throat and skip away sharpish cos it always sprays so. Don’t look till his heels stop drumming on the ground. We done it before. Trick is don’t think too much. Do it quick and don’t look till he’s gone and the body’s still. Then we’ll have his money and his shoes and that belt and we’ll plop him back in the water with a big stone round his neck and the eels can have him.

Tidy night’s work.

And it’s not like real murder cos if we hadn’t picked him out of the water he’d have drownded anyway and all that money and his nice things would have been no use to anyone. Eels don’t need nice shoes. No more’n a darkie does. No feet on an eel. Now, quiet now as we opens the knife and then snickersnee quick as thought once we’ve told him to take the jacket off. Tell him we’ll a-dry it for him, before he catches his death…”

“Tell you what, matey,” said the tinker solicitously. “Why don’t you take that jacket off and hang it over the fire so it can dry quicker, before you take a mortal chill?”

Amos nodded and slipped his arms out of the wet coat one at a time.

“Wait till he turns to hang the jacket over the fire. Then snickersnatch at his throat from behind. He won’t feel a thing. And he can’t scream anyway, dumb idiot as he is.”

Amos knew about fighting and moving fast from his uncomfortable fostering with the other Templebane “brothers”.

He only turned long enough to grab the handle of the iron pan, and then swung back as hard as he could.

The tinker was closer behind him than he had thought, and his elbow hit the man’s hand, knocking the knife wide, while the arc of the heavy cast-iron ended in a thunk against the tinker’s head.

Something cracked nastily.

The tinker staggered back stiff-legged, something unnatural in the angle of his neck. He stumbled out of the ring of firelight, and then suddenly disappeared with a splash.

Amos went to the edge of the river and looked down.

No more splashing.

No body.

No tinker.

The river had taken him.

He watched the water flow past for a long while. He was shaking, and trying to think if he’d done a bad thing.

Then he shrugged, unable to decide, and went back to the fire.

He felt a little sick at what he’d done.

But not too sick to look for those two sausages.