Information about the book
6 December 1735
i
Two days ago I should have been celebrating my tenth birthday at my home in Queen Anne's Square. Instead my birthday has gone unremarked; there are no celebrations, only funerals, and our burnt- out house is like a blackened, rotted tooth among the tall, white- brick mansions of Queen Anne's Square.
For the time being we're staying in one of Father's properties in Bloomsbury. It's a nice house, and though the family is devastated and our lives torn apart, there is that to be thankful for at least. Here we'll stay, shocked, in limbo – like troubled ghosts – until our future is decided.
The blaze ate my journals so beginning this feels like starting anew. That being the case, I should probably begin with my name, which is Haytham, an Arabic name, for an English boy whose home is London, and who from birth until two days ago lived an idyllic life sheltered from the worst of the filth that exists elsewhere in the city. From Queen Anne's Square we could see the fog and smoke that hung over the river, and like everybody else we were bothered by the stink, which I can only describe as 'wet horse', but we didn't have to tread through the rivers of stinking waste from tanneries, butchers' shops and the backsides of animals and people. The rancid streams of effluent that hasten the passage of disease: dysentery, cholera, polio . . .
'You must wrap up, Master Haytham. Or the lerg'll get you.'
On walks across the fields to Hampstead my nurses used to steer me away from the poor unfortunates wracked with coughs, and shielded my eyes from children with deformities. More than anything they feared disease. I suppose because you cannot reason with disease; you can't bribe it or take arms against it, and it respects neither wealth nor standing. It is an implacable foe.
And of course it attacks without warning. So every evening they checked me for signs of measles or the pox then reported on my good health to Mother, who came to kiss me good night. I was one of the lucky ones, you see, who had a mother to kiss me good night, and a father who did, too; who loved me and my half- sister, Jenny, who told me about rich and poor, who instilled in me my good fortune and urged me always to think of others; and who employed tutors and nursemaids to look after and educate me, so that I should grow up to be a man of good values, and of worth to the world. One of the lucky ones. Not like the children who have to work in fields and in factories and up chimneys.
I wondered sometimes, though, did they have friends, those other children? If they did, then, while of course I knew better than to envy them their lives when mine was so much more comfortable, I envied them that one thing: their friends. Me, I had none, with no brothers or sisters close to my age either, and, as for making them, well, I was shy. Besides, there was another problem: something that had come to light when I was just five years old.
It happened one afternoon. The mansions of Queen Anne's Square were built close together, so we'd often see our neighbours, either in the square itself or in their grounds at the rear. On one side of us lived a family who had four girls, two around my age. They spent what seemed like hours skipping or playing blind man's buff in their garden, and I used to hear them as I sat in the schoolroom under the watchful eye of my tutor, Old Mr Fayling, who had bushy grey eyebrows and a habit of picking his nose, carefully studying whatever it was that he'd dug from the recesses of his nostrils then surreptitiously eating it.
This particular afternoon Old Mr Fayling left the room and I waited until his footsteps had receded before getting up from my sums, going to the window and gazing out at the grounds of the mansion next door.
Dawson was the family name. Mr Dawson was an MP, so my father said, barely hiding his scowl. They had a high- walled garden, and, despite the trees, bushes and foliage in full bloom, parts of it were visible from my schoolroom window, so I could see the Dawson girls outside. They were playing hopscotch for a change, and had laid out pall- mall mallets for a makeshift course, although it didn't look as if they were taking it very seriously; probably the two older ones were trying to teach the two younger ones the finer points of the game. A blur of pigtails and pink, crinkly dresses, they were calling and laughing, and occasionally I'd hear the sound of an adult voice, a nursemaid probably, hidden from my sight beneath a low canopy of trees.
My sums were left unattended on the table for a moment as I watched them play, until suddenly, almost as if she could sense she was being watched, one of the younger ones, a year or so my junior, looked up, saw me at the window, and our eyes locked.
I gulped, then very hesitantly raised a hand to wave. To my surprise she beamed back. And next she was calling her sisters, who gathered round, all four of them, excitedly craning their necks and shielding their eyes from the sun to gaze up at the schoolroom window, where I stood like an exhibit at a museum – except a moving exhibit that waved and went slightly pink with embarrassment, but even so felt the soft, warm glow of something that might have been friendship.
Which evaporated the moment their nursemaid appeared from beneath the cover of the trees, glanced crossly up at my window with a look that left me in no doubt what she thought of me – a peeping Tom or worse – then ushered all four girls out of sight.
That look the nursemaid gave me I'd seen before, and I'd see it again, on the square or in the fields behind us. Remember how my nurses steered me away from the ragged unfortunates? Other nursemaids kept their children away from me like that. I never really wondered why. I didn't question it because . . . I don't know, because there was no reason to question it, I suppose; it was just something that happened and I knew no different.
ii
When I was six, Edith presented me with a bundle of pressed clothes and a pair of silver- buckled shoes.
I emerged from behind the screen wearing my new shiny- buckled shoes, a waistcoat and a jacket, and Edith called one of the maids, who said I looked the spitting image of my father, which of course was the idea.
Later on, my parents came to see me, and I could have sworn Father's eyes misted up a little, while Mother made no pretence at all and simply burst out crying there and then in the nursery, flapping her hand until Edith passed her a handkerchief.
Standing there, I felt grown- up and learned, even as I felt the hotness in my cheeks again. I found myself wondering if the Dawson girls would have considered me rather fine in my new suit, quite the gentleman. I'd thought of them often. I'd catch sight of them from the window sometimes, running along their garden or being shepherded into carriages at the front of the mansions. I fancied I saw one of them steal a glance up at me once, but if she saw me there were no smiles or waves that time, just a shadow of that same look worn by the nursemaid, as though disapproval of me was being handed down, like arcane knowledge.
So we had the Dawsons on one side; those elusive, pigtailed, skipping Dawsons, while on the other side were the Barretts. They were a family of eight children, boys and girls, although again I rarely saw them; as with the Dawsons, my encounters were restricted to the sight of them getting into carriages, or seeing them at a distance in the fields. Then, one day shortly before my eighth birthday, I was in the garden, strolling along the perimeter and dragging a stick along the crumbling red brick of the high garden wall. Occasionally I'd stop to overturn stones with a stick and inspect whatever insects scuttled from beneath – woodlice, millipedes, worms that wriggled as though stretching out their long bodies – when I came upon the door that led on to a passage between our home and the Barretts'.
The heavy gate was padlocked with a huge, rusting chunk of metal that looked as if it hadn't been opened for years, and I stared at it for a while, weighing the lock in my palm, when I heard a whispered, urgent, boyish voice.
'Say, you. Is it true what they say about your father?'
It came from the other side of the gate, although it took me a moment or so to place it – a moment in which I stood shocked and almost rigid with fear. Next, I almost jumped out of my skin when I saw through a hole in the door an unblinking eye that was watching me. Again came the question.
'Come on, they'll be beckoning me in any minute. Is it true what they say about your father?'
Calming, I bent to bring my eye level with the hole in the door. 'Who is this?' I asked.
'It's me, Tom, who lives next door.'
I knew that Tom was the youngest of their brood, about my age. I'd heard his name being called.
'Who are you?' he said. 'I mean, what's your name?'
'Haytham,' I replied, and I wondered if Tom was my new friend. He had a friendly looking eyeball, at least.
'That's a strange sort of name.'
'It's Arabic. It means 'young eagle'.'
'Well, that makes sense.'
'How do you mean, 'makes sense'?'
'Oh, I don't know. It just does somehow. And there's only you, is there?'
'And my sister,' I retorted. 'And Mother and Father.'
'Pretty small sort of family.'
I nodded.
'Look,' he pressed. 'Is it true or not? Is your father what they say he is? And don't even think about lying. I can see your eyes, you know. I'll be able to tell if you're lying straight away.'
'I won't lie. I don't even know what 'they' say he is, or even who 'they' are.'
At the same time I was getting an odd and not altogether pleasant feeling: that somewhere existed an idea of what constituted 'normal', and that we, the Kenway family, were not included in it.
Perhaps the owner of the eyeball heard something in my tone, because he hastened to add, 'I'm sorry – I'm sorry if I said something out of turn. I was just interested, that's all. You see, there is a rumour, and it's awfully exciting if it's true . . .'
'What rumour?'
'You'll think it's silly.'
Feeling brave, I drew close to the hole and looked at him, eyeball to eyeball, saying, 'What do you mean? What do people say about Father?'
He blinked. 'They say he used to be a –'
Suddenly there was a noise from behind him, and I heard an angry male voice call his name: 'Thomas!'
The shock sent him backwards. 'Oh, bother,' he whispered quickly. 'I've got to go, I'm being called. See you around, I hope?'
And with that he was gone and I was left wondering what he meant. What rumour? What were people saying about us, our small family?
At the same time I remembered that I had better get a move on. It was nearly midday – and time for my weapons training.
