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Back Cardinal Black Save as PDF
Chapters (44)
  1. Title Page
  2. One: Into the Storm
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Two: London Calling
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Three: The Malignant Seven
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-One
  26. Twenty-Two
  27. Twenty-Three
  28. Four: Squirrels and Cats
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. Twenty-Five
  31. Twenty-Six
  32. Twenty-Seven
  33. Twenty-Eight
  34. Twenty-Nine
  35. Thirty
  36. Thirty-One
  37. Thirty-Two
  38. Five: Revelation
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. About the Author

What could I do to survive? I was fourteen years old. What could I do, except for what to me was the unthinkable. Well, I realized I could do what my mum had trained me to do: I might become a street dancer and earn some coin from the passersby. And I did that through the spring and summer, living in an abandoned warehouse in Whitechapel with a number of other castaways like myself. You knew them as the Black-Eyed Broodies, though I imagine my group was not the same as yours. My relationship with them began as a threat of violence. Since I was dancing on the streets of their territory, I was made to give up half my earnings to their treasury. In time we worked out an arrangement. I would only dance on their territory, and only if I was made a Broodie and came under their protection. And so that was how I got the tattoo and went through the same initiation ceremony you likely did.

And now, Matthew, we come to the part of my life when RakeHell Lizzie began to awaken. Or perhaps she was already awake, and just waiting.

We were four and we were attacked by six of the Mohock gang. You might have had some encounter with them yourself. It was late night, we were coming back from the tavern that fed us—in our territory—and they jumped us from a passing wagon. They were painted up like the savages from the colonies. As I say, six of them—all male—and four of us, two male, myself and my friend Audrey. The Mohocks had daggers and sabers. They cut down the two boys before one of them could blow his warning whistle. Then they were on us. We fought, but they had very hard and capable fists. They threw us in the wagon and were off, and the whole thing probably didn’t take over a minute.

They blindfolded us and took us somewhere that smelled of old damp. A cellar, of course. I was prepared to be raped again and killed, but it wasn’t to be. Oh, they kicked me around a bit but they laid off the other. I found out later that they’d hit Audrey too hard in the first attack and she died early the next morning. So they were in trouble because they’d been paid to deliver two girls of a young age to a house that I learned was in Shoreditch, close to the prison.