“The contamination of the water of the Thames by the sewage of London, which here falls into the stream on both sides, by the refuse of gas works and chemical factories, had, probably, much to do with the rapid decomposition of the bodies. In consequence of the danger to the health of the community it was found absolutely necessary to inter many of the bodies before they could be claimed by their friends.”

The Wreck of the Princess Alice (Edwin Guest, 1878)

In 1966, Ewan MacColl wrote ‘Sweet Thames Flow Softly’, a haunting and romantic folk song which we first encountered in a recording by Planxty (Planxty, 1973).

“Swift the Thames runs to the sea, flow sweet river flow.”

Yet a century earlier, the Thames was not considered so sweet, as we have mentioned in earlier posts. Try this cartoon, for example:

“Father Thames Introducing His Offspring to the Fair City of London. (A Design for a Fresco in the New Houses of Parliament.)” engraving by John Leech. Punch magazine, July, 1858

Twenty years after the above cartoon was drawn, on 3 September 1878, the Princess Alice pleasure steamer was in a catastrophic collision with the colliery boat Bywell Castle, a collision which resulted in the loss of up to 700 lives.

Edwin Guest’s contemporary account, quoted at the start of this piece, listed the names of those whose death was confirmed, but others were lost, some unnamed, to the sludgy waters. In the period which followed, attempts were made to ship effluent from the area, and to purify at least some of the sewage discharge. But the Thames remained more polluted than sweet for many years…

It is in such a grim spirit, that we return to our serialisation of  Alan M Clark‘s illustrated novella Mudlarks and the Silent Highwayman…

MUDLARKS AND THE SILENT HIGHWAYMAN

SEGMENT 9

Surprised that he had not hurt himself, Albert rose awkwardly. His feet, still in his shoes, sank deep into mud. That didn’t seem right. But then he remembered that Hardly had been in pursuit. Albert tried to look back that way he’d come, and found he couldn’t change the angle of his vision.

His muddied head wouldn’t move! His right cheek and ear rested on his shoulder. Everything appeared sideways.

Albert turned his body—the only way to realign his vision—glancing around quickly.

The pier—gone!

Something happened…I don’t remember…

Had he fallen in the water and been carried downstream?

He kept trying to move his head, looking out for danger.

Nothing there, or, at least, very little. Everything, including the sky, had taken on a similar shade of gray. A near featureless foreshore extended into the dreary distance to either side and behind him.

Why can’t I move my head? Have I broken my neck?

He reached up to feel with his hands.

Yes—he felt bones pushing the muscle and skin of his neck outward. Yet he felt no pain.

That fall should have killed me!

He felt fortunate to have survived, and thought of another incident in his life in which luck had safeguarded him. A draft horse had kicked him in the head while Albert reached for a farthing that had got away from him and rolled off the kerb to lie beneath a wagon. The force of the blow had tossed him at least ten feet onto the flagstone footway, but he had walked away with only a gash on his forehead.

Albert would have to be careful not to make his neck worse before he could mend up. He might need a surgeon’s help.

An odd quiet suggested his hearing had somehow suffered from the fall. Snapping his fingers, told him that wasn’t so. What had happened to the rumbling hubbub of the city surrounding the river, the sounds of countless feet, hooves, and wheels upon the stones of the roads, the innumerable voices of the inhabitants, the ringing grind and clank of industry, and commerce on land and in the river?

The disorienting sideways view became tolerable in short order. He saw clearly the chill, gray river, its slow current lapping at the colorless mud along the edge. The bank had a different shape from what he’d expect to see near the West India Docks Pier, it’s curve more gentle. With the morning sun low in the eastern sky behind the embankment at his back, he should see its light shining upon the buildings across the moving water to the west. Instead, he saw merely dim silhouettes of the landscape; a couple of rocky prominences, a couple of dead trees, and no more. He saw no river traffic.

Yes, taken downstream. Just don’t remember.

Albert turned to his right and began walking upstream.

In the distance, he saw a figure, a scavenger perhaps. Abandoning his natural caution, Albert ran toward the figure, but his vision, bouncing with his head on his shoulder, became too disorienting. Slowing, he got a good look. A boy, it seemed, crouched on the foreshore, poking at the mud with a stick. He wore several layers of mud-caked clothing, mostly rags, and some sort of large, cumbersome hat upon his head. No—not a hat, but a mass of filth-clotted, tangled hair, also caked, as if he, too, had fallen head-first in the mud. The figure seemed a growth on the gray landscape. Displaying no curiosity, let alone wariness—something unusual in a scavenger—the child didn’t look up as Albert approached.

“Tell me, please,” Albert said, “where are we on the river?”

Like an old man, bent and broken with age, the boy rose slowly. For all his filth, he had a gold watch chain fixed to one of his numerous waistcoats, the end disappearing into pocket, where, presumably, a watch rested. So, indeed a scavenger, and a successful one too.

Finally, he lifted his head.

Albert gasped to see the features beneath the rat’s nest of hair. Yes, a child—the rounded shape of the face told that—though wrinkled with untold years of wear on what otherwise had a boyish shape. The lips and nostrils suffered cracks at the edges. The eyes, dull and somehow vacant, held the smallest hint of a great yearning deep inside. Indeed, Albert could see in the silent pleading gaze a curious and inquisitive boy, a poor waif trapped within an ancient, slow-moving body.

Revulsion drove Albert back a few stumbling steps. He felt the tingling of his skin tightening into gooseflesh.

The ancient boy dropped the stick, raised his hands toward Albert. The fingernails were several inches long, curled in upon themselves, some raggedly broken.

Albert turned and ran despite the disorienting effect of his bouncing vision.

MUDLARKS AND THE SILENT HIGHWAYMAN

SEGMENT 10

The grayness seemed to absorb Albert. His mind having nothing visual to grab onto, he lost all sense of direction and feared that he might make a circle, running into the boy again. Albert stopped and turned, saw the boy not too far away. He’d picked up his stick, gone back to poking at the mud, and didn’t appear to be a threat.

A muffled cry of, “My eye!” seemed to come from the mud beneath his stick.

“My apologies,” the boy said in a thin, cracked voice.

Did I awaken or is this still dream?

Albert looked closely at the back of his right hand, saw a smear of soil caught in the tiny hairs, the grit trapped beneath his nails, and a bit of dried grass caught in a sharp split of his thumbnail. He pressed that nail hard into his index finger until he felt pain.

No, not dreaming.

A tap on his left shoulder, and he spun around.

George Hardly!

Albert stumbled back and fell on his arse, scramble backwards on all fours to get away. Hardly followed.

Albert could see only the boys torn breeches and feet, the shoe missing from the left foot. He turned onto his left side to see more of him.

Hardly held his hands out to his sides. His scarred face, wide eyes, and trembling lips had a pleading look.

Even so, Albert covered his head with his arms for protection, drew his knees to his chest.

“I mean no harm,” Hardly said, his voice tremulous.

Albert peeked up a him from between fingers. The older boy appeared on the verge of tears. Hardly reached out a hand. Though reluctant, Albert finally took it and stood with assistance. The two boys looked at one another.

Hardly’s shirt was bloodied and had a hole in it on the left side of his chest. “He had a bigger knife,” he said with a grimace. “I fell down the bank, got lost. I recognize you, but nothing else.” He grimaced again. “What happened to your head?”

“I fell on it.” Albert backed away. “Leave me be.”

“I know… I-I harmed you,” Hardly said. “I don’t expect you’ll forgive, but I need to find my brothers. This wants help.” He gestured toward the hole in his chest, looking fearful. “Your head wants help too.”

Albert continued shuffling backwards. Hardly kept up, walking slowly.

“Stay away,” Albert said, and the other boy slowed, following from a distance.

MUDLARKS AND THE SILENT HIGHWAYMAN

SEGMENT 11

Albert saw the figure of a young girl ahead, another filthy waif in rags, not quite so bent with age as the ancient boy he’d seen earlier. She’d lost most of her right arm. A withered nub, hung out of her gray, rotting shift. Moving toward the girl, Albert watched her poke at something in the mud with a stick held in her remaining hand. “Just a rock,” she said, presumably to herself. She spoke slowly, as if the effort was practiced, not natural. “No life, no memories.”

He stopped to speak to her. Hardly became still about fifty feet away.

“Can you tell me where I am?” Albert asked.

She looked him in the eye. Although appearing sad and withdrawn, her gaze didn’t frighten. She had crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes, creases around her mouth, much like those of Albert’s mother. Her skin had the liver spots of someone much older still.

“Sticks,” she said, simply.

He looked at the stick in her hand.

“What did she say?” Hardly asked.

Albert waved the older boy’s words away. “Do you live hereabouts?” he asked the girl.

Her eyes widened briefly at the word, “live.” The crow’s feet disappeared. For a moment, she looked like any little girl. She seemed to search his face for meaning.

Albert became uncomfortable, trapped within her gaze.

Then a look of fright fixed her features. The crow’s feet returned. “The woolen mill, that’s where I…” Her voice trailed off for a moment. “The machine was so thirsty, never got enough of the oil, never satisfied. Had a hunger too…” She left the stick upright in the mud and rubbed the nub of her right arm. “…and a mean bite.”

Finally the girl frowned and her gaze shifted. She shrugged, and took up her stick. “You’ve only just come, you and your friend,” she said, turning away and poking the mud. “You know nothing.”

Hardly had approached. “Do you live here?” he asked the girl.

“No live,” she said, “no die. No coins. One hundred years before I can go without paying the fare. Maybe tomorrow—don’t know how long I’ve been here. Not as long as he has been.” She gestured toward the boy Albert had first approached, now a mere thirty yards away.

The air having cleared slightly, Albert saw several other children wandering the river’s edge in the hazy distance. Their movements slow and unnatural for children, he assumed they all suffered the same condition, whatever that was.

“Which way to Limehouse?” Hardly said. He grabbed the girl by the shoulders. The nub of her right arm broke off in his grip. He threw it to the ground as if it had stung him, and looked at the girl, his mouth gaping in horror. She made no complaint, nor any expression of pain or surprise.

Hardly’s astonishment emerged as a great whooping sound. Then he was in a rapid stumble to get away. He disappeared into the grayness.

Albert, transfixed by the drama, stood dumbly wondering how he might help the girl. “Are you…?” he began.

The girl looked briefly at the nub of her arm on the foreshore before turning away toward the river.

Is she so ill she cannot feel? Has he made them all sick?

Albert hadn’t wanted to believe Thomas’s tale of the Silent Highwayman, but now he easily accepted that the skeletal phantom existed.

He’s done this, and now…

“Luck is with you,” the girl said, pointing out over the water. “He comes for you.”

Albert saw a small boat, much like his wherry. From its stem, a green lantern swung, sending out a sickly light that infected nearby mists. A gaunt cloaked figure stood at the tiller. The water appeared unusually troubled beneath the boat.

A panic in Albert’s chest shifted to his throat, raising his head upright, and he ran, the muddy foreshore sucking on his every step.

to be continued…

You can also see the full story of mudlarks on the Thames unfolding daily here:

https://ifdpublishing.com/blog/f/mudlarks-and-the-silent-highwayman

The Mudlarks book itself, illustrated throughout by Alan, is available now on Amazon, and directly from the publisher through the links below:

mudlark ebook – ifd publishing

mudlark paperback – ifd publishing

Despite our intent to drift on to other topics, we have too much booky stuff yet to cover – so here’s a quick mention of two brand new things old greydog has edited. But for relief, we do also have the next three parts of  Alan M Clark‘s short novella, which we’re serialising.

Two buses turned up at once yesterday – the latest issue of Occult Detective Magazine (#7), edited by John Linwood Grant & Dave Brzeski (Cathaven Press, 2020), and the first volume of Sherlock Holmes and the Occult Detectives, edited by JLG (Belanger Books, 2020).

Utilising our slick patter and proven promotional techniques, we suggest that, uhh, you have a look and buy them if you fancy them. A compelling argument, we think.

Occult Detective Magazine #7 is packed with brand new stories, reviews, articles and art – we have horror from Guyanese folklore, and the tale of a sangoma in Southern Africa; a Mayan investigator, a Japanese priest, and a half-Punjabi psychic, plus Aleister Crowley in London and horror in the United States. In print now on Amazon UK and US, Kindle to follow.

Sherlock Holmes and the Occult Detectives Volume 1 offers you Van Helsing hunting the Whitechapel Murder, and a mystery for Mary Morstan. Irene Adler’s daughter asks for help; a dark community is discovered in the Welsh hills; there is Russian murder and espionage, and Holmes debates with Dr John Silence. 350 pages of period mysteries, puzzles and horrors. Print and Kindle on Amazon UK and Amazon US, Volume Two to follow.

Right, on to more of Alan’s spooky period novella…

N.B. For segments 3,4 & 5, see http://greydogtales.com/blog/mudlarks-part-two/

or  see the full story unfolding daily here:

https://ifdpublishing.com/blog/f/mudlarks-and-the-silent-highwayman

MUDLARKS AND THE SILENT HIGHWAYMAN

SEGMENT 6

“If Papa were here—” With the thought of his father, anger welled up in Albert, cutting off his words.

The strain lifted from Mum’s features for a moment. “He would give me that smile of his,” she said in a wistful, dreaming voice. “Oh, how he could grin.”

Papa had used his winning smile on her every time she caught him in a lie or he failed to do his part and disappointed her.

Albert Gladwick senior had been a good father before he went off to the war. Young Albert recalled that on his seventh birthday he and Papa had made a climb into a church tower to get above the incessant coal smoke haze and view the stars. His father had carried him most of the way up on his shoulders. On that magical night, they’d seen green wisps of the northern lights. “Rare, that is,” Papa had said with a warm smile, “a gift given only to good boys.”

At present, Albert remembered that event as the happiest moment of his life.

Because watermen had many of the skills required to crew ships—knowledge of piloting among currents, anticipating tides, and dealing with changes in weather—the Royal Navy had pressed many of them into service during the Anglo-Egyptian war, Albert Senior among them.

If Papa had died in Egypt, Albert thought, at least I’d have the memory of who he’d been. He made that all a lie.

Missing a leg, mustered out of the Royal Navy with no pension, and tormented by experiences of which he spoke only cryptically, Papa had become a bitter, broken man, good for nothing. He could not go back to work on the river. Young Albert had done for him while Albert senior drank away the household funds. In addition to the charring work she did by day, Mum had taken to selling matches, flowers, and pencils on the street at night to help keep the family fed. Some nights she’d be out until dawn, trying to earn.

“Common tail, you’ve become,” Papa said one morning when she came home. “I know how you earn. Don’t try to tell me different.”

He raised a hand to strike her and young Albert grabbed his wrist. Albert senior wrenched the hand loose and backhanded him with it. The boy fell, struck his head on the bed rail, and began to cry.

“If you were my son,” Papa said, his sweating, unkempt face a fright to look upon, “you wouldn’t weep so easily.”

Albert ceased to cry, and stared at his father’s crazed features, not understanding.

Papa had a brief look of shame, said sadly, “You’d be better off if I crossed the river.” Then he’d fled the room.

That had been over a year ago. Papa had never come back.

Albert didn’t look for his father in South London. He didn’t think the Thames was the river he’d meant.

If Papa still lived, having but one leg, his prospects were poor. If he’d been whole, Albert could have imagined all sorts of reasons for his disappearance. Men went missing from London all the time. No, if Papa had not died, he’d become lost on the streets or somewhere in the relief system.

Albert’s sadness for the loss of his father had slowly turned to anger.

What had he meant to say to Mum about Papa? “If he were here, willing to do his part…,” Albert began anew.

“The illness will pass,” Mum said with a stern look.

He knew that if Albert Gladwick senior stood before them in that moment, she would defend him and his worst deeds, still smitten as she was with his smile.

In his disgust at the thought, Albert nearly walked out to return to the wherry.

But then Mum looked him in the eye, said, “I have you, and you’re a good boy. You have done your best to look after me, better than I’ve done for you.”

With her words and the warmth in her eyes, he felt like a grown man, capable and honorable, a good feeling in the hard world in which he found himself.

No, he could not leave his Mum in her time of need.

Near dusk, Albert realized he’d lost an entire day that could have been used to salvage from the wherry. He fought with himself, finding his unwillingness to abandon his mother unreasonable. Still, he could think of no falsehood that would give him the time he needed to do the work at the river. Even though making his salvage from the wherry would help Mum too, he couldn’t bring himself to admit to her that he’d been lying about how he made his earnings. On his third trip that day from their lodgings to the public pump to fetch a bucket of water, he almost abandoned the errand to go to the river. Darkness had crept up on him, and he decided as he had before that the light necessary to work at the wherry would only bring unwelcome attention to the wreck in the night.

Returning to the dimly-lit interior of their room, he nearly tripped over the heavy porcelain chamber pot resting in the middle of the thin walkway between the bed and the table. The pot, rather full, needed dumping again. Tiny flecks of white swirled about in the colorless waste within.

His mother had returned to bed.

Albert placed his bucket on the open central shelf of the corner hutch, dipped water from it into a cup for Mum, and set the cup on the bedstead. Lifting the brimming chamber pot, he carefully took the vessel out and poured the fluid into the privy vault. He’d already performed the chore six times that day.

Returning to the room, he found Mum inclined in the bed, drinking from the cup he’d filled for her. Much of the liquid spilled down her stained nightshirt. Although constantly thirsty, she’d had no appetite since falling ill. Her retching produced little but a clear liquid.

“I’m hungry, Mum,” Albert said, hoping she’d send him out for food. If she did, he’d have the excuse to visit the wherry, perhaps cut a few rushes from elsewhere along the foreshore to throw atop the vessel to help keep it hidden. If he ran the whole way there and back, she might not miss him. He might even have time to stop in the marine store to sell the linen cloth.

“Bit of toke,” Mum said, her words gummy from lack of spittle. She gestured toward the upper cabinet of the hutch where she stored the edibles.

Resentfully—he felt little hunger, despite his protestation—Albert found and ate the crust that remained of a loaf of bread, the last bit of food in their room.

Not long after dark, he began to suffer a severe loosening of the bowels, with a thin, watery discharge. He tried not to think that he would soon find himself in the same condition as his mother. During a lull in the seemingly endless evacuation, he donned his nightshirt, got in the bed on the side next to the wall, and lay down beside Mum.

MUDLARKS AND THE SILENT HIGHWAYMAN

SEGMENT 7

Albert found a fitful slumber. He tossed and turned through much of the night. During a dream of scavenging the wreck of the wherry, he knew himself to be partly awake. In that half-dream, he found beautiful porcelain, and a shilling amidst the silt near the boat’s prow. He seized upon that vision of discovery, reliving it several times in an effort to give substance to the hope it seemed represent. Each time the discovery was a little different; the porcelain became table silver; the single shilling became two, then the coins became gold sovereigns.

A rumbling gut and a memory of something Papa had said about gold brought him fully awake for a moment. Albert turned to face the wall as he remembered. His father had been drunk and ranting angrily. “Gold has no worth but what the fancy of men give it. Those in the upper classes, though they have the advantage, they are not truly our betters.”

What an odd notion, Albert had thought at the time. Must be the drink—everyone knows gold is valuable.

Returning to his half-dream, he saw George Hardly approaching the wreck. Albert crouched down among the rushes, fearing he might have been seen. He scooped up a handful of mud to throw at Hardly if necessary, and held his breath, watching silently. The older boy seemed unwilling to look directly toward the area of the white lead works drain. He gave it a wide berth and moved on along the curve of the muddy foreshore.

Albert plucked the coins— now three gold sovereigns—out of the silt near the prow of the wherry, placed them in the hidden pocket inside the buttoned waistband of his breeches, and hurried away.

Half awake, he knew the vision to be pure fancy. Still, the sense of hope it gave allowed him to ignore the misery of his situation.

Since his mother no longer made an effort to keep from fouling the bed, Albert also allowed himself to let go his bowels as he lay there. He would help Mum clean the mattress ticking and stuff it with fresh straw later. For a short time, he found deeper slumber.

~ ~ ~

Fully awake at last as morning light entered the sooty window of their lodgings, Albert rocked in the damp, chilly bedclothes, unable to gather the will to rise. Finally, the wetness beneath him and the malodorous night air in the bed drove him to his feet. Although he felt worse than he had the night before—truly wrung out—Albert had to find his strength. With Mum down with illness, providing the daily victuals fell to him.

Again, he thought resentfully of his father.

Even if he were about, he’d be no help. Good riddance.

Mum remained asleep, lying on her back. She slept so peacefully, even her usual soft snoring had ceased. Her lower left leg hung over the edge of the mattress. Albert lifted the stiff gray limb and placed it back in the bed. Her skin felt cold to his touch. Trying not to disturb her for fear that she’d keep him from leaving, he pulled the untidy bed clothes over her, tucking them up around her shoulders and down around her dry feet.

A hollow ache in his gut told him to eat, but they had nothing left. Just as well—he had to make his salvage, sell what he could, hopefully earn enough to buy some meat or fish. He would eat later.

His muscles moving with reluctance, Albert removed his sodden nightshirt and dressed himself for the day. Fluid ran down his legs and into his shoes as he opened the door. Thinking of the embarrassment he would experience if anyone saw he’d wet his breeches gave him little pause. He stepped from the lodgings and staggered along Narrow Street, then south on Bridge Road.

MUDLARKS AND THE SILENT HIGHWAYMAN

SEGMENT 8

The Thames had made Albert ill again. Even as he struggle to return to the water’s edge, he bore the shame of having brought the sickness from the river to Mum as well.

Common wisdom said that illness came from bad smells, those of the river and the night air of privies and the countless other places of rot and decay. Some said that illnesses didn’t come from bad odors and instead from creatures in the water so small they couldn’t be seen. Albert’s few attempts to imagine such beings, were not frightening enough to be believable.

He might have blamed the grundylows, but had somehow decided they were pure make-believe.

No, the sickness is the Silent Highwayman’s doings, he thought, trying unsuccessfully to cast aside his feeling of guilt.

A few who saw him struggling along the street gave concerned looks, yet nobody stopped to ask after his welfare. He didn’t expect any attention or help. So many children wandered the streets, ragged, ill, neglected, and unwanted. At least he had his Mum.

Albert passed the Limehouse Basin, crossed over two locks, took a right into Cuba Street, headed for the West India Docks Pier.

With little distance to go before reaching the path that led down to the water’s edge, he heard, “Little boy!”

The voice came from behind him. He twisted his stiff neck around to see George Hardly emerging from between two warehouses about a hundred yards away.

Albert hurried forward, his throat clenching on dryness as he tried to swallow, the pulse in his throat suddenly rapid, his head clearing even as he felt a separation from his body.

“Where are you going?” Hardly shouted. “Stop, or you’ll be sorry.”

The sound of rapid footsteps came from behind.

Having taken that trek so many times in recent days, Albert was able to move in an unthinking manner, somehow keeping his frantic feet under him. He dreaded the twenty-foot climb down the steep embankment beside the pier almost as much as he feared George Hardly catching up. If he got to the water, he might hide among the stumps of old pilings beneath the pier.

A group of laborers parted to allow Albert to stumble past on the footway. Shortly after, Hardly’s rapid steps ended abruptly and with a short outburst, as if bodies had collided.

“You want to take more care,” someone said in anger.

“Out of my way,” came Hardly’s voice.

“He’s got a knife!” came another voice.

“Yeah, but it’s such a little one,” came a third, with a scoffing chuckle.

Albert didn’t look back. Where the cobblestones of Cuba Street ran out, he dodged to the left around the iron pier, slowed, and started down the eroded bank seam.

“Let me by,” Hardly shouted, then came the sounds of a scuffle and a sharp cry.

Albert tried to take more care with his steps. Some of the loose granite cobbles of the road had tumbled partway down the steep incline and become wedged in the seam long ago, providing footholds. Albert put his weight on one and it gave way. He rolled sideways, hit the rough dirt to his left, and tumbled forward ten feet through the air.

Landing headfirst on the dense sand at the river’s edge, he heard a loud crack in his neck and shoulder, and the world around him lost some of its color, everything going gray as he became still.

The full Mudlarks book itself, illustrated throughout by Alan, is available now on Amazon, and directly from the publisher through the links below:

mudlark ebook – ifd publishing

mudlark paperback – ifd publishing

Did you know that until recently, you were still able to get a ‘mudlarks’ permit for the Thames? £85 a year for an adult, no digging deeper than three inches. True!

Anyone searching the tidal Thames foreshore from Teddington to the Thames Barrier – in any way for any reason – must hold a current foreshore permit from the Port of London Authority. This includes all searching, metal detecting, ‘beachcombing’, scraping and digging.

Port of London Authority

And why do we tell you this? Because now we continue our serialisation of Alan M Clark‘s short illustrated novella Mudlarks And The Silent Highwayman, with three new segments today.

For segments 1 & 2, see http://greydogtales.com/blog/mudlarks-and-the-silent-highwayman/

MUDLARKS AND THE SILENT HIGHWAYMAN

SEGMENT 3

Albert couldn’t go home until his clothes had dried some or his mum would know he’d been in the river.

He slipped the cloth inside his shirt for safekeeping, and made his way along the foreshore. Finding himself headed south on the western edge of the Isle of Dogs, he decided to risk a quick exploration among the rushes growing near the drain for the white lead works, a good spot to check since most of the scavengers avoided the area. While much of the foreshore of the Thames offered a firm gravel or sand surface at low tide, the stretch he presently walked held pockets of deep, thick mud that made progress difficult.

Approaching the structure that supported the drain, he saw an unusual dark shape among the oversized grasses, one that he told himself was likely mere shadow. As he got close enough to see between the foliage, the doubt protecting him from unreasonable hope began to fall away. Indeed, the shape held true form and mass—he’d found the wreck of a clinker-built wherry, much like the one his father had once piloted to carry fares up and down, to and fro, along the Thames when he was a waterman.

Pushing the long leaves out of his way, Albert made out the shapes of several crates, a metal chest, and a firkin, all held fast in the mud within the boat.

Though he wanted to shout for joy, he knew better than to draw attention to the find. Instead, he stood holding his head, his heart thumping giddily in his chest. Plainly, the boat had sat unnoticed for a while, lying on its side, half-buried in the silt among the rushes. He imagined the vessel got free during recent wind storms, possibly at night while no one was watching. In his mind’s eye, he saw it wander down-stream beneath dim, flickering stars until it fetched up on the foreshore beside him.

How might he present the possible treasure trove to his mother without her knowing where it came from?

That he did not have her permission to work the river had always rankled. “It’s too dangerous,” she’d said the first time he’d brought it up. “The grundylows don’t just spread disease—they like to pull children down. You want to be the next to go missing, turn up drowned?”

Albert had told Turvey what his mother said. He’d laughed. “They’re not grundylows! They’re grindylows. The mums of all scavengers tell that tall tale to keep their children from the water’s edge.” Turvey shook his head, giggling. “You are a gulpy one.”

“I didn’t say I believed!”

“You needn’t have done. I’ve seen the way you look at the water.”

That forced Albert to reason it out. If there were such creatures drowning mudlarks, Turvey would have gone missing long ago. Albert had never seen anyone so willing to venture out into the river.

With all that, he still imagined the creatures just beneath the glare on the rippling surface whenever he dangled his legs close to the water, or while wading out into it.

Despite the childish fears, Albert was simply drawn to the water and scavenging. The possibility of finding unexpected reward held his interest like nothing else had in his short life. And ever since his father had run off, a year past, Albert had thought he should make decisions for himself about how to earn. After all, he would soon be a man.

Knowing how much Papa’s departure had hurt her, Albert didn’t want to challenge his mum or bring further grief by disappointing her, so he’d kept his activities at the river a secret.

He knew what she’d say: “You’ll be charged as a thief!”

Yet here he’d made a real find, at long last—valuable goods, gold, jewels perhaps!

Albert pried at the crates trying to get them open.

The landlord hasn’t been paid in almost a month. She knows we must take every chance to earn. Yet I must know what I’ve found before I say anything, or she’ll become cross with me. If it’s worth enough, if it’s wonderful, Mum’ll have a change of heart.

The lids to the crates were nailed down tight.

“Bloody butt and six toes,” he cursed aloud. Then, fearing that someone might have heard, he calmed himself and looked up and down the foreshore. Though he saw no one nearby, he crouched lower amidst the rushes and felt himself sink further into the mud.

He abandoned the crates in favor of the metal chest. That, he decided, was the most promising container. The thing was a foot square and half a foot deep. Trying unsuccessfully to open it, he found a keyhole and decided it was locked. That meant it indeed held something valuable. He wiped some of the grit and mud from its surface. Seeing that where exposed, the metal gleamed brightly, he stopped.

How might he keep it concealed while carrying it? He thought that heaping more mud on the chest would help disguise the shape, but anyone seeing him would know he carried a large object. Though he’d be able to lift the heavy box, he couldn’t run with it if spotted.

Likewise the crates and firkin would be heavy and stand out if he tried to carry them away. Too bad he’d lost his heavy canvas sack in the fight with the tree limb. He needed to get the containers open and find a new sack to put things in, one he could dirty up and throw over his shoulder. A shapeless thing like that—no one would suspect he carried anything of value. The only other sack he had big enough hung on a hook back at the lodgings.

With the shadows grown long, Albert knew the hour had become late. He didn’t have what he needed to open the containers and reveal his treasure, let alone haul it all away with him.

He sat back and surveyed the scene again. Resting high on the foreshore beside the drain, surrounded with dense orange rushes, and hidden within the deepening shadows, the wherry wasn’t easy to spot. With the unusual color of the plants, and a fear that the drain exhausted poisons into the river, most of the scavengers, including George Hardly, avoided the area.

The coming high tide wasn’t likely to dislodge any of the find from the mud’s tight grip, yet Albert had small hope that the wherry would remain hidden for long. Eventually, even if Hardly didn’t find it, someone on nearby Hutching’s Wharf would see the wreck and investigate, or another river scavenger unconcerned about the drain would stumble upon the site. Albert would return with a lantern to aid his salvage in the dark, but feared that would only draw attention to the find.

No, he had to go home. Mum would be in their lodgings in Narrow Street, preparing a meal with what little they had. The salvage would have to wait until morning. Hopefully, no one would stumbled upon it in the night.

Albert pulled his feet from the sucking mud. Placing them on the firmest patches of the foreshore, he made his way north toward home. One misplaced step found his left leg penetrating the muck half-way to the buttoned knee of his breeches. He wriggled and tugged it loose, and kept moving.

MUDLARKS AND THE SILENT HIGHWAYMAN

SEGMENT 4

Filthy and panting heavily in the chill autumn air, Albert arrived at the shadows under the West India Docks Pier. He was relieved to find his shoes, socks, and jacket still in the spot where he’d hidden them; a hole beneath a collapsed stone stairway that began at the base of the eroded embankment. Though his shoes had become hopelessly ragged—holes in their soles and the right one missing its heel—another scavenger would gladly take them. The leather alone could be sold to makers of Prussian-blue pigment.

Mr. Halpert, the marine store dealer, would buy almost any common item found along the river, if only for a tiny sum. He’d take anything made of metal, any type of bone, any spun or woven materials, as long as the items weren’t too rotten. Those who made fertilizer would buy items of paper, wood, or small dead animals.

Albert took the easiest route back to street-level, a steep erosion seam, worn into the crumbling bank by weather and the passage of countless others like him.

Seeing Thomas Conway standing near the cast iron bridge of the pier, Albert hid behind a stack of containers. Not wanting the bother of talking to the boy, he would wait for him to turn and look away before crossing the road.

The tow-headed child, a year younger than Albert, stood about five feet from the where the bridge met the river bank at the end of Cuba Street. Thomas craned his neck as if looking for someone. He seemed unaware that he was in the way, as a group of merchants moved around him. One of the gentlemen smacked him on the back of the head as he went by. Thomas stumbled under the blow and ran into a laborer carrying a heavy coil of cable. The man shoved the boy to one side, nearly knocking him down. The lad took the rough treatment without complaint.

New to the river banks and green, the younger boy was a nuisance. His clothing—gray woolen jacket, blue cotton shirt, brown woolen breeches, and gray socks—though worn and patched many times over, didn’t look ragged. His brown shoes had been carefully repaired with pieces of black leather. Someone looked out for the boy.

“Where’s the best place to search for valuables,” Thomas had asked on the day they’d met.

“Salvage turns up most anywhere along the river,” Albert said, with an indefinite wave toward the water. “The thing is to be the first to find it. Take care not to anger the others with prying questions.”

The advice did little good. The younger boy tried to befriend and question all the other scavengers in a similar way. He had purple bruises and a black eye after approaching George Hardly. Then, Thomas’s father, a frightening Irishman who earned writing gallows ballads, came to the river and set the scavengers straight on how his son should be treated.

Thereafter, none of the boys, nor the few girls who scavenged the river, would talk to Thomas. All, that is, except for Albert, and he made certain no one saw him speak to the lad.

When Thomas finally turned and looked away, Albert slipped from behind the containers and hurried into Cuba Street, mixing with those walking beside the warehouse to his right. He thought he’d got by unnoticed.

No such luck. “Albert!” Thomas cried. Something about his tone suggested he’d found the one he sought.

Albert stopped, looked around, saw no one of any concern watching. He walked back around to the western wall of the warehouse and faced the river as the boy approached.

Thomas held a single leaf torn from a newspaper or a magazine between two of his grubby fingers, as if he didn’t want to hold the page tightly. A breeze tried to snatch the paper away. With a grimace of reluctance, he added more fingers to his grip.

“My mother give me this. It’s from Punch. It’s old, but she says he’s still on the river, looking to nail children, and take them to the underworld.”

Albert looked at the illustration on the yellowing, wrinkled page. The engraving depicted a phantom in the form of a cloaked skeleton, rowing a boat on the river. Dead animals bobbed on the nearby surface of the water. “Looks a bit like Hardly, does he?”

“You don’t think…?” Thomas asked, his eyes wide with fear.

“No,” Albert chuckled to hear the boy take the suggestion seriously. “What are the words beneath the picture,” he asked, embarrassed to reveal he couldn’t read.

“‘The Silent Highwayman: Your Money or your Life.’” Thomas’s dirt-smudged brow furrowed with concern.

“He the ghost of a waterman?” Albert thought about his father, presumed dead.

“No, he’s not like us—never lived among us—an evil on the water, is all. Mother says he puts the bad smells in the river, the ones what make illness. Then he harvests the children as die, takes them away with him.”

That sounded something like what Mum had said about illnesses.

Albert’s father, Albert Senior or just Papa, had talked about a ferryman of the dead, named Charon. Papa’s mother, whose family had come from Greece, had filled him full of ancient Greek tales that he shared with young Albert. “Belief in Charon is very old,” he’d said. “My mum thought him mere fancy. But serving in the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean, I met some who still believe we cross over a river to reach the afterlife. Told one fellow I’d been a waterman and he looked at me like he were seeing a ghost, had no more to do with me after that.”

With his father’s dread description of the gaunt Charon, Albert had found a fear of one day meeting up with the ferryman. Since his father had abandoned the family, Albert tried not to think about the things he’d said.

Thomas’s picture of the Silent Highwayman, had resurrected the foreboding, and Albert got a chill.

Since beginning his work of mucking about in the river, he’d become ill numerous times, mostly ailments of the gut, yet he’d also had sore eyes and skin, strange rashes, and cuts on his feet, legs, and hands that had swelled with corruption and given him fevers before slowly healing. He’d succeeded in hiding most of that from Mum.

Albert looked out on the water for the Silent Highwayman, glanced around the vicinity of the pier again to make certain they weren’t watched. George Hardly stood out in the water two hundred yards away, poking around the weed and refuse caught up on the stump of a rotten dolphin.

Turning back to Thomas, Albert saw the boy’s eyes brimmed, tears glistening, ready to fall.

Is he truly so fearful?

“She doesn’t want me to work the river,” Thomas said. “I-I don’t want to believe her.”

Thomas’s mother didn’t want him working the foreshore no doubt for the same reasons Mum didn’t want Albert doing it: the risks of disease and accidents. And Thomas’s mother was trying to dissuade her son with fear, much the way Mum had tried to scare Albert. Mum knew nothing of the dangers of the likes of Hardly. Albert had told her he worked as a pure finder, collecting dog shit from the streets for the Rouel Tannery in Bermondsey.

“Do you believe he’s on the river?” Thomas asked, waving the illustration in his hand. He gave an impression he might not want the answer. “Have you heard anyone say?”

Albert wanted to point to Hardly—still poking around the rotten dolphin—and say, He’s the one you should worry about. Instead, he decided he should try having a hard heart. Thomas’s fear of the phantom might keep him off the river. “A word or two…”

Thomas’s look of concern deepened and his eyes grew wide. He let go the magazine page. The paper flipped over and lifted on the breeze, floating around the corner of the warehouse.

The younger boy turned the corner too, and ran away from the river along Cuba Street.

The page danced upward through the hazy air, flying northward. Though Albert had a chuckle watching the boy run, he didn’t like encouraging Thomas’s fear.

Mum had done the same to him, putting the grundylows in his head. Whether the fears were well-founded or pure fancy, Albert did have a feeling that something more terrible than George Hardly made sinister mischief along the river.

Occupied with his dark thoughts, he sat, donned his tattered socks and raggedy shoes, and trudged home.

MUDLARKS AND THE SILENT HIGHWAYMAN

SEGMENT 5

Mum was up and down in the night many times to use the chamber pot. Trying to sleep in the bed next to her, while full of excitement over the hope of the salvage, Albert got little rest.

In the morning, to his frustration, he found himself attending Mum in her illness.

“I am expected to deliver my collection to the Tannery’s man this morning,” he told her.

“Before you go, fetch water for me,” she said.

Seeing that they were indeed out of fresh water, Albert winced, but dutifully picked up the bucket and went out. The closest public pump was in the passage to White’s Rents. He ran there, about a quarter mile, then wobbled his way back home along the stone streets as fast as possible, trying not to spill.

Mum drank deeply of the water upon his return. “You must steady me to the privy and wait to aid my return,” she said. “I’ve become light in the head, and fear a fall.”

She remained in the crooked wooden privy behind their lodgings long enough that he might have run to the wreck of the wherry and returned. Not that that would have given him the time he needed, but the thought fed his frustration. Just as he considered making his excuses and leaving her to fend for herself, she stepped out and grasped his steadying arm.

Over the next few hours, he found no reasonable excuse to leave her without admitting his goal and revealing that he scavenged the river.

Mum was in a desperate state. He continued to fetch and tote for her through the afternoon, as she had little strength to do for herself. She moaned and writhed, complained of muscle cramps, and retched to no effect in the basin several times. When she lay back on the bed, to his alarm, he saw a rapid pulsing of the vessels in her neck.

“Shall I get someone to help?” he asked, “Aunt Gert is on my way to meet the man what pays for my findings. I could tell her to come help you.” If he got away from his mother, he might look in on his find. Aunt Gertrude lived in a room in Tooke Street on the Isle of Dogs, very close to the wrecked wherry. At the least, he could go to the marine store—not nearly as far away—and sell his half of the linen cloth he and Turvey had found.

“Your findings will not go bad. The tannery can wait. Aunt Gertrude has her own problems, and I need you.”

Albert felt ashamed of himself for trying so hard to deceive his mother.

Although he had seen Mum looking rough when ill before, he’d never feared her beauty would not return as he did presently. Her rich auburn hair was plastered to her head with perspiration, dark circles grew under her beautiful eyes, and her soft skin looked increasingly pale and gray. Albert didn’t know what to do for her. He grudgingly accepted her need to have him nearby.

Segments 6 & 7 follow in a couple of days. You can also see the full story unfolding daily here:

https://ifdpublishing.com/blog/f/mudlarks-and-the-silent-highwayman

The Mudlarks book itself, illustrated throughout by Alan, is available now on Amazon, and directly from the publisher through the links below:

mudlark ebook – ifd publishing

mudlark paperback – ifd publishing

In which I provide sundry reflections on being a writer and getting published which turn out to be quite irrelevant to your own situation, and we all laugh merrily…

Let’s start with the cheerful stuff. It’s a harsh game, writing; an unreliable ‘you may get lucky, you may not’ sort of business. It doesn’t generally pay well, nor is it a reliable income when crisis looms. And don’t be fooled – no one really needs your work, even if a few might occasionally want it – ‘occasionally’ being the key word there, and ‘want’ being rather relative.

Despite your inspiration, your commitment or your craftsmanship, the finished product will frequently not achieve the quality level you yourself set when you started. Fine ideas on envelopes turn out to make pedestrian short stories and aimless novels. Those tales of yours that you do like are too literary, or too pulp, or too ‘not what we’re looking for at the moment’. Oh, and they’re also too short, or too long, or too in the middle – whatever isn’t required right now.

As for publishing deals, editors may make unreasonable demands, and contracts may be bizarre or unfair. Agents won’t reply, or will send you a form email ‘no thanks’. Smaller presses will fold, go on hiatus or implode; larger presses will go off you and abandon the third book of your trilogy. Everything will take far longer than you’d hoped, and sometimes it won’t even pay in the end anyway.

Someone popular with the literary critics and the media influencers will receive far more headlines for less skilful work than yours. Productive authors will use the same idea/theme/character as you came up with, but they’ll be in print before you got round to even picking up your pencil; most people will never know your best work exists anyway, so won’t be able to buy it or comment.

Decent targeted marketing will be too expensive, random marketing will achieve nothing, and most of your review requests and press releases will be ignored. Your friends and family won’t read much if any of your work, despite what they say on the phone. They’re already bored listening to you rattle on, and it’s probably not their sort of thing…

I, greydog, am nobody. A minor constructor of weird fiction and period supernatural stories, plus the odd pastiche – and an awful lot of nonsense and parody for amusement (mostly my own). An ephemeral fish in an ill-defined pond… but here I am, on the fourth anniversary of getting into print in the weird/supernatural field.

And I feel fine.

Because this is not a Council of Despair. It’s the Call of Reality. Part of the reason I feel fine is precisely because I know all the stuff I just mentioned. I live alongside it, rather than beating my head or my fists to a pulp against the nearest wall. After all, I’m the one who would have to mend and clean the wall afterwards. I’m not a very good stoic, but I do like me a bit of Seneca:

No man has been shattered by the blows of Fortuna unless he was first deceived by her favours. Those who loved her gifts as if they were their own for ever, who wanted to be admired on account of them, are laid low and grieve when the false and transient pleasures desert their vain and childish minds, ignorant of every stable pleasure. But the man who is not puffed up in good times does not collapse either when they change. His fortitude is already tested and he maintains a mind unconquered in the face of either condition: for in the midst of prosperity he has tried his own strength against adversity.

I was fifty eight years old when my first weird tale first published, in 2016. I must have had some forty or fifty paid stories published since then, almost all of them substantial pieces, plus a novel and a novella. I’ve also edited four anthologies, and seven issues of Occult Detective Magazine. Which means that if you are twenty eight, thirty eight or forty eight years old, and still relatively healthy, but believe it’s too late to get anywhere, shut up (I mean this fairly politely, of course). You don’t know. You can’t know. You could abandon writing completely for a decade or more, and then find yourself in my position. You darn kids…

As for meticulous planning, my first sale was the first story I submitted, a YA horror story, to a Texan press I’d never heard of, for $25. I had no intention of writing YA horror – it was an opportunity, and I had a suitable idea. It wasn’t a bad story. I followed that with a Lovecraftian weird tale set in Alaska, and a 28,000 word Last Edwardian novella set mostly in Yorkshire. I knew right from the start that it was a Good Idea to get paid for being seen, rather than working for the old ‘exposure’.

Speaking of knowing things, if you’re a white male, don’t piddle on about there being no markets, all your chances being wrecked by inclusiveness, political correctness and so on, also shut up (not so polite). I may have a somewhat quirky and colourful approach to life, but if an unknown Yorkshireman the colour of an uncooked pork chop who was almost sixty could get published, that bit probably isn’t the issue.

But whatever I say about getting a load of stuff published, those two or three stories of yours which someone else reads, and genuinely gets, may be the ones which matter. Despite the fact that I write for money, there are personal messages or comments I’ve had which encouraged me more than a hundred sales. After all, there are tripe and trite pot-boilers on Amazon which have multitudes of high star reviews; that status may be good for awareness or income, but it’s not a quality mark in itself.

I’m fairly sure that I was lucky – and I was there at the right time, and flexible. I really am no authority on being a writer (this isn’t that sort of article), but if you play the game at all, you should know what you need to do already:

1. Read lots of decent prose, plays and verse by other people, especially not in the field in which you write;
2. Observe and/or interact with real human beings rather than relying on media portrayals and stereotypes;
3. Learn at least basic grammar and punctuation;
4. Sit down and write;
5. Pause, think, then go back and do it properly this time;
6. Send it to a market that might want it, in the format they want, by the due date.

Those six not-so-stunning secrets are likely to get something of yours into print, somewhere. Eventually. They’ll give you at least the two or three stories that someone out there appreciates. Whatever else you do – writing groups, creative writing courses, panel attendance – is extra, and up to you. Useful for some, less relevant for others. Oh, and buying extra software packages won’t solve your problems if you can’t manage the above.

We live with images of writers – scraggy drink-and-drug-riddled recluses in attics; tiresome literary sorts sharing their latest manuscript with Jocasta, their charming wife, in their airy home; disaffected householders slamming out twenty novels a year and gaming the review systems… whatever. You are the sort of writer you make yourself.

I’m pretty much the sort of writer I was four years ago, but more aware of the potential disasters, the flaws in the system, the cruelty of the game – and better for it. And should you meet with Fortuna, and be briefly blessed by her, I shall be there to borrow a fiver before she changes her mind…

The seventh secret of getting published, by the way is: Don’t be an arsehole.

Veteran author Tim Waggoner has many, rather more useful comments on being a writer, and writing in general, on his blog, such as this one here: http://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/2019/11/let-it-go.html

John Linwood Grant is a pro writer/editor from Yorkshire, UK, with some fifty short stories published in a wide range of magazines/anthologies over the last few years, including Lackington’s Magazine, Vastarien, Weirdbook, and Space & Time. He writes disquieting dark fiction, particularly Edwardian supernatural tales. ‘His Heart Shall Speak No More’ was picked for Best New Horror #29, and his novel ‘13 Miller’s Court’ (with Alan M Clark) won the 2019 Ripperology Books award. He is the editor of Occult Detective Magazine (with Dave Brzeski) and various anthologies. He is fanatical about lurchers, and owns his own beard.