The Great Trouble Read online

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2013 by Deborah Hopkinson

  Jacket art copyright © 2013 by Stephanie Dalton Cowan

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hopkinson, Deborah.

  The Great Trouble : a mystery of London, the blue death, and a boy called Eel / Deborah Hopkinson. —1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Eel, an orphan, and his best friend Florrie must help Dr. John Snow prove that cholera is spread through water, and not poisonous air, when an epidemic sweeps across their London neighborhood in 1854. eISBN: 978-0-449-81819-0

  [1. Cholera—Fiction. 2. Epidemics—Fiction. 3. Orphans—Fiction. 4. London (England)—History—19th century—Fiction. 5. Great Britain—History—Victoria, 1837–1901—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.H778125Gr 2013

  [Fic]—dc23

  2012032799

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  In memory of my dear friend Michele Hill, who, like Dr. John Snow, lived a life dedicated to truth, compassion, and service

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART ONE: MUDLARK 1. Riverfinders

  2. In Which I Save a Pathetic Creature

  3. Thief!

  4. Mr. Griggs the Tailor

  5. Urchins on Excursion

  6. Dr. Snow’s Menagerie

  7. On the River

  8. In Which I Visit Mrs. Miggle’s Lodging House

  PART TWO: THE BLUE DEATH 9. The First Coffin

  10. The Coffin Men

  11. Bernie

  12. In Dr. Snow’s Study

  13. Dr. Snow’s Patient

  14. Four Days

  PART THREE: THE INVESTIGATION 15. In Which I Am Given a Daunting and Important Task

  16. Dilly

  17. Following the Trail

  18. The Unexpected Case

  PART FOUR: THE BROAD STREET PUMP 19. The Widow Eley

  20. Something Else Unexpected

  21. In Which I Am Held Prisoner

  22. Things Look Grim

  23. The Decision

  24. The Handle

  PART FIVE: THE LAST DEATH AND THE FIRST CASE 25. In Which the Mystery Is Solved

  26. Henry and Me

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE: A READER’S GUIDE TO THE GREAT TROUBLE

  TIMELINE OF THE BROAD STREET CHOLERA EPIDEMIC

  READ MORE!

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Riverfinders

  1854

  Monday, August 28

  What we now call the Great Trouble began one thick, hot, foul-smelling morning in August. ’Course, I didn’t know it then. No one did.

  I remember that day for quite another reason.

  I was supposed to be dead. But somehow he had found me out.

  It was early, and dark enough that most mudlarks weren’t on the river yet. I liked this time best. The stink wasn’t quite so bad for some reason. And it was quiet, since most folks in London were still sleeping. The bustle and noise of the old city would start up soon enough.

  Thumbless Jake was there, of course. The rest of us scavengers wondered if he ever did sleep. And on this particular morning, Jake was on edge, I expect because of spending so much time wading in that sludgy stink we called a river. So when he spied me snatchin’ up something shiny from the murky water, he commenced hollering like a mad bull about to charge.

  And I should know. I might never have been on a farm in all my nearly thirteen years, but I’d seen my share of raging beasts at the old Smithfield livestock market, a fearful but exciting place. They’d moved it two years before, on account of the mayhem caused by throngs of cattle, pigs, goats, horses, and sheep tramping through the heart of the city. I was sad to see it go.

  “Give it here, Eel!” Jake shouted at once. He thrust out his long stick and lunged for my ankles.

  “Can’t catch me,” I taunted. I skittered out of reach, fast as I could, sticky brown mud squelching between my toes. “Don’t be greedy. It’s just a bit of rope.”

  “Liar. ’Tain’t rope at all. I seen it glitter with me own eyes. That’s copper you got there.” Thumbless Jake pointed the forefinger of his right hand—his good one—at me. “Play fair, Eel.”

  “Why should I? No one’s ever played fair with me.” I said it, but that wasn’t quite true. Even Jake himself had once done me a good deed.

  “Wicked, ungrateful lad,” Jake growled, aiming a huge hunk of spit at me.

  Jake had been a blacksmith once, or so I’d heard from Ned (we called him Nasty Ned, on account of him being the worst-smelling lad on the river). “Gin was Jake’s downfall,” Ned had told me. “And then came the day he tippled so much he slammed a great hammer down on ’is own thumb.”

  I tried to picture Jake’s muscles as they must’ve been, rippling across his back like ever so many snakes. These days he used his arms for stealing copper off the hulls of ships and trolling for bits of the shiny stuff in the brown slop of low tide.

  “You are an eel,” Jake declared. He paused to wipe his face with a corner of his ragged shirt, though I’m not sure why, as both were equally covered in filth. “Slippery and more hard-hearted than most. And that’s sayin’ a lot, with this ’ere pack of mudlarks.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.” I grinned.

  “Hand it over. You poached on my bit o’ river here,” Jake said, his voice almost pleading now. “You gotta stay on the edge. Them’s the rules, lad.”

  “You’re always goin’ on about rules, Jake.”

  I was bluffing, though, and Jake knew it. In the end, I’d have to give in. A big man like Jake could troll where he wanted. Kids like me had to keep to the edge of the grimy brown river, picking up pieces of coal, rope, rags, and wood at low tide. On a good day, I might collect enough coal to fill a pot and make a penny.

  Now that I had my place at the Lion Brewery over on Broad Street, I’d been mudlarking mostly just in the early mornings, when it was so hot even my stone cellar room seemed about to stifle me. It didn’t bring in much, but I needed any extra tin I could get.

  “Have a heart, Eel.” Jake fixed me with his wild blue eyes and tried again. “Ain’t we all riverfinders? Put on this earth to try to get by, one day at a time. We’re all we’ve got under this sky. We need to play fair and take care of one another.

  “If I’d known that sooner, I wouldn’t have lost sweet Hazel and my kiddies,” he went on, almost to himself, slapping the oily surface of the water with his stick.

  “All right,” I relented at last. “You wi
n. It’s yours. Catch!”

  The big man lunged and missed, landing flat on his face, sputtering in the churning black water. I laughed and turned to go.

  But Jake had the last word.

  “You better watch out, Eel!” He rose up, hollering at the top of his lungs. “ ’E’s been nosing around askin’ after you, ’e has. Don’t blame me—I had nothing to do with it. But ’e says a little birdie told him you ain’t dead.”

  “What?” I froze, digging my feet into the mud. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me, lad. You think you’re clever, but just you watch out,” Jake warned. “I ain’t let on I knows anything about you. But Fisheye Bill Tyler is onto you—and a nastier man never walked the streets of London. He might’ve been an honest fishmonger once. Those days are gone. He’s turned bad. Very bad indeed.”

  “What did he say, Jake?” I demanded.

  “Why, Eel, he only wants what’s ’is,” Jake replied, trying to wipe streaks of dark mud from his grizzled face, this time with his fingers. “Fisheye said he just wants what belongs to ’im by rights.”

  Jake hadn’t touched a hair on my head. But it felt as though he’d knocked the breath right out of me.

  “You ain’t seen me, Jake,” I cried. “You hear me? You know nothin’. All you know is that the Thames got me.”

  I took a ragged breath, the stink of the river almost making me retch. “You got that? I’m dead, carried out to sea in the arms of this muddy flow. Dead and gone.”

  “What did you take of ’is, Eel? You must ’ave done something to make ’im that mad,” Jake called, holding fast to the scrap of copper he’d finally fished out of the grimy water.

  I took off. My insides had begun to shake like the last little leaf on a tree when the cold fingers of a biting wind come to snatch it. How had he found me out?

  I’d made sure that Fisheye had been told I was dead, swallowed up by the dirty old river, covered by its churning waters. For the last six months, I’d kept low and out of his way. And I’d kept my secret safe.

  Until now. How much did Fisheye know? And who had snitched? It might have been Jake himself. Trust was as rare on the river as finding a gold ring. No, I couldn’t trust him.

  Thumbless Jake was right about one thing, though. Fisheye Bill Tyler wanted to control whatever he thought belonged to him—pickpockets, petty thieves, housebreakers.

  And me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  In Which I Save a Pathetic Creature

  I stormed away, sweating, grimy, and wet. You might say I was mired in my own murky thoughts. Next thing I knew, I almost had my head taken off by something hurtling down from the sky—aimed right at me.

  “Halloo, Eel,” a voice called. “Watch out!”

  I jumped back. At first I was afraid the stone arch above me had chosen this day to crumble into the river. Everyone knew Blackfriars Bridge wouldn’t last much longer without repairs. But stones didn’t screech like the earsplitting sound that filled the air.

  Eeeyow!

  Splash!

  “For you, Eel!”

  I looked up. Only one mudlark had orange hair. “What are you torturing now, Ned?”

  Before me, the strange creature yowled again, making wild splashes as it struggled to stay afloat. All at once it disappeared. The tide was coming up now, and I lunged, moving into the flow of the river.

  “Let it be, why don’t you?” Ned hollered with cruel delight. “Let’s see if it can swim.”

  I tried to scoop the creature out. It lashed at me, hard. “Ouch! That was my arm.”

  I almost left it to drown. I didn’t fancy getting scratched to shreds and having my arms turn bright red from dirty wounds. Last winter, another mudlark, a lad of only eight, had nearly lost his foot after stepping on a piece of sharp glass.

  Then I remembered my old muslin bag, which I used for carrying odd bits of rope and pieces of coal. Maybe I could catch the creature in that.

  “C’mon now,” I urged, slipping the bag off my shoulder and holding it out with both hands.

  At first it splashed and squealed and fought something fierce. I couldn’t get near it. Then it disappeared under the oily surface again. In a flash I reached below and scooped the sodden creature up into my bag. “Gotcha!”

  Wading to the riverbank, I held the bag tight against my body and peered inside. A pair of bright green eyes—green as a queen’s emeralds—stared back at me out of a mass of bedraggled black fur.

  I grinned. “You fight hard for such a scrawny animal. Now be still and I’ll rub you dry. You should be grateful I came along when I did, Little Queenie.”

  I looked up to see Ned still leaning over the side of the bridge. “You are a nasty one. What’d you wanna do that for?”

  “Aw, don’t go soft on me, Eel. It was just a bit of mischief.”

  A bit of mischief. I wondered what other mischief Ned had been up to lately. Maybe he’d been the one to betray me to Fisheye. Ned could probably be bought for the price of a hot meat pie or a pint of cider.

  In my arms the tiny cat shivered. Then, as if suddenly realizing she was safe, she tried to bury herself under the crook of my elbow.

  “Ah, Little Queenie, take my advice and don’t trust boys—or anyone,” I told her, wrapping the bag around her more snugly and tucking her under my arm. “Luckily, you’re safe with me. I’m taking you back to the Lion, where you can start earning your keep catchin’ rats. I felt one ticklin’ my toes just the other night.”

  For answer, she began to purr.

  On my way back to the Lion, I passed through Covent Garden, where the flower sellers were just setting up their stalls. Clutches of girls were busy tying violets into bunches, laughing and gossiping as they worked. The streets were already a bustle of carts and wagons piled high with vegetables, chickens, cheese, and fruit from the countryside.

  The smell of frying fish, potatoes, and onions drifted toward me, making my stomach growl. It brought me back to last winter, when just the smell of frying onions could make me almost faint with hunger.

  Then I relaxed and smiled a little. Those days were gone. I had a situation now, a good one. When I got back to Broad Street, I would have bread, cheese, and a cool dipper of good water waiting for me in my tiny corner in the cellar of the Lion Brewery.

  I moved quickly, my cap pulled low, my old shoes squelching on the cobblestones. I’d let my guard down these last few months since I’d come to the Lion. Jake’s words were a warning: I needed to keep a sharp lookout from now on. Fisheye had spies everywhere: pickpockets mostly, and the gang of petty thieves who did his dirty work for him.

  He won’t think to look for me on Broad Street, or anywhere else near the Golden Square park in Soho, I tried to convince myself as I headed north. Fisheye didn’t frequent that neighborhood much. He would expect me to be keeping low in the crowded slums—we called them rookeries—of Southwark, south of the river.

  And he won’t find what I’ve hidden. I had to make sure of that. That’s what mattered most.

  The little cat squirmed and clawed every time a horse neighed or a dog barked close by. Sometimes she held her tiny mouth on my arm and bit hard. “Stop it or I’ll let you down under the wheels of the next cart,” I warned.

  But, of course, I never would.

  I was about to cross Broad Street to the Lion Brewery when I spotted the white face of Mrs. Lewis staring up at me from the open window of her cellar. “Hullo, Mrs. Lewis. Baby wake you early?”

  “Before it was light. Poor Fanny. The wee thing has it comin’ out both ends.” She nodded at the bucket she held, which she’d just finished dumping in the cesspool in the cellar.

  Through the window, I could see that the cesspool—that deep, smelly pit where all the chamber pots were emptied—was almost full. Time for the night-soil men to come round and empty it. Thumbless Jake had told me he’d once done a stint as a night-soil man.

  “That life weren’t for me, Eel,” he said with a shake of his head. �
�I heard of one poor lad who fell in a cesspool and couldn’t get out. Nasty way to die, that was. Now, I know this old river don’t smell like roses, but at least out here I got the sky above me.”

  Mrs. Lewis put her bucket down and sighed. “If it keeps up, I might call round for the doctor.”

  “Dr. Snow?” I asked.

  Her brows knit. “I never heard of him. We call Dr. William Rogers when we needs a doctor.”

  “Dr. Snow lives on Sackville Street. He’s a smart one, Mrs. Lewis. I’ve been tending his animals all summer,” I said, unable to keep the pride from my voice. “He’s what you call a real scientist. Does all sorts of experiments.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “Dr. Snow has learned to put animals—and even people—to sleep for short periods of time with a special gas, so as they won’t feel pain,” I explained. “He made a grizzly bear that needed a tooth pulled go to sleep, and even eased the queen’s pain when she gave birth to Prince Leopold last year.”

  “If he’s doctoring giant grizzlies and Queen Victoria herself, he must be a clever one.” She wiped her forehead with the tip of her apron and picked up her bucket. “Well, I’d best be getting back upstairs before Fanny wakes.”

  “Give my regards to Constable Lewis,” I said politely. “And I hope Annie Ribbons don’t get sick.”

  “Is that what you call my girl?” Mrs. Lewis smiled. “She do like to collect ribbons and threads, I’ll say that. She’s already a better seamstress than me. But, goodness, you children and your nicknames! Seems like no child around the Golden Square ever gets called by ’is true name.”

  Mrs. Lewis put a hand to her back, as though it ached, which it probably did on account of the buckets she carried from the second floor down to the cellar. “I’ve always been curious, Eel. What’s your real name?”

  I grinned. “I’ll never tell, Mrs. Lewis.”

  And I wouldn’t. Especially now that Fisheye could be closin’ in on me. More than ever, I had to be like an eel.

  I said goodbye and turned on my heel to head across the street.