Chapter 1
London, January 1866
London was no place for the faint of heart. Fortunately for Barnabus Milligan, he’d stopped listening to that organ long ago.
He was a doctor, tending to the illnesses and injuries and difficulties of people from all walks of life. When not treating patients, he divided his time between writing penny serials about medicine, doctors, and related oddities and assisting in the secretive work of the even more secretive Dread Penny Society, a group of fellow “penny dreadful” authors who went about the city looking after the vulnerable and undermining the efforts of those who exploited them. His time was well and truly filled. He preferred it that way.
Barnabus stepped through the familiar blue door of the DPS’s headquarters, an outwardly unassuming London house. A meeting of the membership had been called, the second one that week. Their efforts on behalf of the poor and defenseless were being hampered by London’s most notorious criminal, the Mastiff. There was neither time nor room for hesitation.
Nolan, the Dreadful’s perpetually distracted butler, who tended to be either sleeping in his chair or perusing theTimes, sat at his post in the entryway.
“Good morning,” Barnabus said.
From over the top of his newspaper, Nolan offered a flat-jawed smile, the sort that emerged when a person hadn’t many teeth left. Barnabus was well aware that most of London’s strugglingpopulation, and a good number of the well-off folks, spent a lifetime visiting the teeth drawers.
Nolan offered his usual dip of the head. The butler was not talkative, but he was loyal. All the DPS depended upon him to help keep their headquarters and activities a secret.
Barnabus set his etched penny, the calling card of all the Dreadfuls, on a narrow table, adding to the pile already there. As the coin snapped against the tabletop, Nolan reached out and pressed the center of a carved flower on the entryway wall. That triggered a low scraping noise, followed by a wall panel sliding open, behind which was the DPS’s meeting room, a small-scale replica of the House of Commons.
Countless voices echoed out, filling the sparse entryway. Barnabus tipped his hat to Nolan, who’d set down the newspaper, his eyelids drooping. The man’d be snoozing in another minute.
With a quick smoothing of his side whiskers and mustache, Barnabus stepped inside, the wall sliding shut behind him. Martin Afola, one of the youngest members of the DPS, stood nearby and greeted him as he passed.
Three tiers of chairs sat in rows on either side of the room with a throne-like chair in the middle used by Fletcher Walker, the acting head of their organization. Barnabus made his way down the second row, stopping at the third chair from the far end—his regular seat located between Brogan Donnelly and Stone.
The former of the two, a ginger-haired Irishman, greeted him with a grin, as was customary for him.
The latter, a Black man from America’s South, greeted him with a silent nod, as was customary forhim.
Barnabus set his cane under his chair, followed by his top hat. He hung his overcoat on the back of the chair, then took his seat.
“How is your wife faring?” he asked Brogan, both out of personal interest—they were friends, after all—and professional.Brogan’s newlywed wife, Vera, was recovering from catastrophic injuries sustained during the last time the DPS had tussled with the Mastiff.
“She is better every day.”
That was reassuring. “And how is married life treating you?”
“Married life is marvelous,” Brogan said. “I heartily recommend it.”
“You’re wasting your breath, Donnelly,” Stone said. “Doc’s as confirmed a bachelor as this world’s ever known.”
That was more of an exaggeration than either of these men knew, but being the resident bachelor had served Barnabus well.
Fletcher stepped up to his “throne” and called the gathered DPS members to attention. “With me, gentlemen and lady.”
Squaring his shoulders, Barnabus joined in the recitation of the society’s pledge and guiding statement.
“For the poor and infirm, the hopeless and voiceless, we do not relent. We do not forget. We are the Dread Penny Society.”
When Barnabus had heard their motto for the first time at his first meeting with the DPS, he knew he’d found where he belonged. They had summarized succinctly the principles that guided his own life. He’d vowed fifteen years earlier, upon the tragic death of his mother, to never relent, to never forget, and to save everyone he possibly could.
“Our first bit of trouble,” Fletcher said, sitting casually in his very formal chair, “is the usual kind from the usual quarter: crime at the behest of the Mastiff.”
The room kept quiet, tension thick all around them. The Mastiff ran London’s underbelly with all the authority and precision of a general on the battlefield. He’d undermined the DPS’s efforts time and again. He’d nearly killed Brogan Donnelly’s wife. He held captive a woman the Dreadfuls were desperate to find and free. He threatened London’s streetchildren and blackmailed people in the highest level of the government. He was dangerous and growing more so every day.
“The bloke’s suspected to have set another fire a few days ago,” Fletcher continued. “Two people were caught in it. He’s outmaneuvering us, mates. And people are dying.”
“Everyone we know of in his network has gone as silent as the grave,” Elizabeth Black said. She was one of their newer members, and no one outside of their membership knew the prim and proper headmistress of a school for young ladies was actually the reigning monarch of the penny dreadfuls, writing under the nom de plume of Mr. King. “If we can’t even get a whisper of what they’re doing, how can we possibly prevent these things?”