Chapter 9: The Dead Man’s Clothes

And yet, Jared’s face lit up with what looked like genuine, unadulterated delight. “Oh, thank you, Guv’nor! That’s… that’s wonderful! These are just the things we need.”

The "things" in this wretched hole consisted of some battered pots and pans, a cracked ceramic bowl, and a few threadbare, greasy blankets. Heaven only knew how many hands these grimy relics had passed through, and now they belonged to a dead man. A wave of revulsion, cold and visceral, washed over me; my modern soul, born of hygiene and sanitation, simply could not accept it.

“Aye, well, don’t thank me,” Bartholomew grunted, clearly pleased with his own magnanimity. “Just remember to pay your dues on time.”

It all clicked into place. I now understood why this brute had welcomed Jared into his subterranean kingdom. Jared must have been paying him protection money for months, earning the right to this squalid little refuge. In return for his regular "tribute," this sewer king offered a thin veneer of goodwill and the "generous" gift of a dead man's hovel. Still, it was a world away from MacDuff’s tyranny. MacDuff saw the children as his property, and therefore, everything they earned was his property too. He took it all, leaving them with nothing but empty bellies, threadbare rags, and the constant threat of a beating. It was no wonder Jared had been so desperate to escape.

But then another thought struck me. If Jared was meeting MacDuff’s quota, and also paying off Bartholomew, and, as he’d mentioned, stashing away food on the side… then his skills as a thief were far greater than MacDuff had ever realized. Or perhaps Jared was simply getting better, his talents evolving, while MacDuff, in his brutish ignorance, remained completely oblivious. The man couldn't even properly assess the value of his own prize pig.

“Well then, I’ll leave you two to it,” Bartholomew said with a leering, meaningful grin that made my skin crawl. “Hope you have a… pleasant first night.” He turned to leave.

“Wait,” I forced out, my voice weak and raspy. “The… the body…” Surely he wasn't going to leave us with a corpse? Was this "home" also to be a tomb?

“Ah, so she speaks!” Bartholomew turned back, a look of mild surprise on his piggish face. “Thought you was a mute, girl. What, you asking how the poor sod pegged it? Don’t know, meself. Seems he was just warming himself by the fire and… dropped dead.” He shrugged, a gesture of profound indifference. “Happens all the time down here, love. Bad gin, the coughing sickness, worked to death in the factories, a knife in the ribs… folk die every day. Nothing strange about it. Stick around, Jared. Maybe a better room’ll open up for you tomorrow, eh?”

I could see it, even with my failing eyes. The dead man’s face had a purplish, bluish tint, and his lips were a ghastly, unnatural cherry-red. Combined with the burnt-out brazier in the middle of the tiny, sealed alcove, the cause of death was obvious: carbon monoxide poisoning. A simple, stupid death from burning charcoal in an enclosed space. A piece of knowledge utterly foreign to these poor, desperate souls who knew only the gnawing cold.

“No need for a new room, Guv’nor, this one’s perfect,” Jared said with a cheerful grin that seemed utterly mad in this context. “I’ll handle the body. Don’t you worry your head about it.” He’d switched his allegiance so quickly, already calling this new brute "Guv'nor." It was clear he was determined to make a go of it here. Bartholomew grunted his approval and, without another word, disappeared into the oppressive gloom of the tunnel.

The moment he was gone, Jared carefully placed me on a relatively clean patch of stone and turned his attention to the corpse. With a grim sort of efficiency and a flicker of a smile I hadn't seen on him before, he began to strip the dead man's clothes.

“What… what in God's name are you doing?” A cold dread, different from the fever, crept over me. The body hadn't yet begun to properly decay, but an instinctual revulsion made me want to recoil. But Jared… he moved with a practiced, disturbingly familiar ease, as if this was far from the first time he’d scavenged from the dead.

“Hey, these clothes ain’t half bad,” he chirped, his voice filled with genuine glee as he held up a grimy shirt. “And look! A few coppers left in his pocket! What a bonus! Bartholomew really is a generous sort, not like that bastard MacDuff. Knew I was right to come here.” He neatly folded the dead man’s trousers, placing them beside him.

“You’re… you’re keeping a dead man’s clothes?” I asked, horrified. The disrespect was one thing, but… wearing them? The thought was sickening. “Of course! Now Parula has a new set of clothes! Something to keep the cold out. You should be happy!” By now, he’d stripped the corpse bare, taking everything of value, or what passed for value in this wretched place. He even ran his fingers over the dead man's hands and checked his ears for rings or studs, though it was obvious from the state of him that this poor wretch owned no such luxuries.

“What? You want me to wear clothes from a corpse? No. Absolutely not!” I clutched the filthy blanket tighter around myself, a visceral disgust making me tremble.

“But, Parula, you’re sick! You’ll freeze to death if you don’t keep warm!” Jared’s cheerful mood evaporated, replaced by an agitated frustration. My reaction had clearly thrown a pail of cold sewer water on his triumphant mood.

“Even so… I won’t!” I understood his logic, his desperate, brutal pragmatism, but I couldn't do it. It was a line my soul, my very being, couldn't cross. “Please, Jared. Just… get rid of them. The clothes, and… and the poor man. Please.”

He frowned, a conflict warring in his young eyes. He didn't throw the clothes away, but he did listen to me about the body. For a young lad, he moved the dead man with a surprising, matter-of-fact strength. The corpse was as emaciated as the rest of us, and Jared, showing no squeamishness at all, simply grabbed the body under the arms and began to drag it out of the alcove. A thought occurred to me. How was one boy supposed to dispose of a body? He could barely drag it. He couldn’t possibly haul it up those steep, slick stairs to the street. And if he was seen dragging a corpse through the city, he’d be branded a murderer and likely torn apart by a mob or collared by the peelers.

But my worries, it turned out, were based on the logic of a world that no longer existed. A world with rules. Jared dragged the body to the edge of the stone platform, and with a single, unceremonious heave, shoved it into the dark, gurgling water of the canal. It landed with a quiet, sickening splash and was quickly swallowed by the current, gone as if it had never been.

“You… you just threw him in?!” I gasped, another wave of shock hitting me. “Of course. It’s how we handled the bodies back at MacDuff’s place too,” Jared said, his tone utterly nonchalant, as if he’d just tossed a bag of rubbish. “The river carries them out of the city, see? Out to the estuary.”

“But… won’t the canal be filled with corpses? How can anyone drink the water?” The thought was horrifying. This couldn’t just be Jared’s method; it had to be common practice for him to be so casual about it. “Oh, someone deals with ‘em,” he said with a shrug, wiping his hands on his trousers. “There are the corpse-collectors, the ones in the black robes. They fish ‘em out. I’ve even heard some folk—resurrection men, they call 'em—will pay good coin for a fresh body, for the medical schools and such. Pity I don’t know who to ask. Maybe I’ll look into it, eh?” He looked at me with an expression of genuine, hopeful speculation, as if he was seriously considering a new, macabre career path if the price was right.