“Hey, buddy. Take us to the Old Nichol.”

The cabbie slid back an aperture and stuck his head in the hole. “Beggin’ your pardon, miss. This heat have me addled. I could’ve sworn you said Old Nichol.”

“You got it, pal.”

The cabbie’s luxuriant eyebrows arched like small fish. “Old Nichol? West End to the Old Nichol? Is the tourist having me on, young sir?”

“No,” replied Riley gloomily. “She ain’t.”

The cabbie spat into the street. “Well, beggin’ yer pardon, but I ain’t taking you into the stink. The bleeders would have the shoes off me mare. I’ll drop the pair of ye at Bethnal Green, and you can risk yer own skins from there.”

Poverty and crime are never very distant in London. Even in the modern metropolis, cast an eye down any alley and there is an unfortunate making himself as comfortable as the pavement allows. But in the nineteenth century, the Old Nichol rookery had been saturated so thoroughly by destitution and neglect that not even a postcard-sized area was exempt. Each building was a tenement, each citizen was crooked with disease, and every occupation dealt with the immediate preservation of life. Even the climate seemed worse there, creating a chill, damp principality inside the boundaries of London proper.

As Chevie Savano and Riley walked along Boundary Street, all hope of a bright future seeped down into their boots and onto the uneven cobbles. There wasn’t a shantytown in the modern world that could compare with the Old Nichol for sheer grim despair.

Walls of greasy bricks rose from the cracked paving stones, story plonked upon story. Windows, apparently placed at random, were rarely glazed, and were curtained by busted crates or flapping rags. Street stalls were piled with decayed objects that would have been on the rubbish heap in any other market. The fruit was gray and pulped, the bread tinged with green, and rock hard.

Even the people in this place seemed the offspring of a different, meaner god. Gone was the irrepressible cockney spirit, and in its place the hacking cough or the threatening leer. The inhabitants moved with a peculiar shuffling gait, shoulders hunched and elbows tight to their sides, protecting themselves as much as possible.

Chevie could not keep the shock from her voice. “This is... It’s like hell on earth.”

Riley hung on to her elbow. “We need to get ourselves inside. Put some solid planks between us and Old Nichol before nightfall. I must get my head down.”

A slovenly woman stood, elbows on a half-door, staring vacantly into the street.

Riley approached her, ignoring the filthy urchins nudging his knees like cleaner fish.

“Any spare digs, ma’am? We are requiring a lurk for the night.”

The woman eyed them suspiciously from underneath a fuzz of curls.

“Chink?”

Riley nodded tightly, hiding his nausea. “At the ready. We have firearms, too, but only shot enough for the bluebottles.”