I tried to keep my tone light, hoping that I’d got it wrong.

‘What do you know of Black Bill, Zillah?’

I tried to hide the hatred in my eyes. I only knew Bill through Eustace but I wasn’t ready to tell Lucien about him yet, not how I’d loved him or how I blamed Bill for his death.

‘You can’t grow up in St Giles and not know him,’ I said.

That was true enough. All the Blackbirds were well known, and none better than their leader. Before Eustace had made it clear that I wasn’t interested, one or two of Bill’s henchmen had tried to recruit me, but I hated that Eustace had got himself involved with them and never wanted any part of it myself. I’d seen the impact that being a Blackbird had had on some of the other girls that lived around St Giles.

Maisie was a few years older than me and lived around the corner from Mrs Bradley. She used to give me sweets when she saw me – ‘presents from my gentlemen’, she’d say. At nineteen she’d been stabbed by a john and left to bleed out in one of the Rookery’s alleyways. Rose, on the other hand, hadn’t done too bad. She’d lived well for a few years on the profits from house-breaking but eventually the law had caught up with her and now she stayed at Her Majesty’s pleasure in Newgate. Swings and roundabouts was the talk in the streets.

Bill was one of the few employers who’d pay a Black man or woman a fair whack for their work, and there weren’t too many in St Giles who could afford to worry about whether what they were doing was legal or not. If a job went sour, it wasn’t Bill’s fault. But I’d never forget what he let happen to Eustace. I was sixteen when he was hanged. And the blame for that lay firmly at Bill’s door.

‘He’s not a man I like to do business with,’ said Lucien, ‘but if you want to find the Leopard Lady, he is our best option.’

Lucien was right. No one was more likely to get a tip as to the Leopard Lady’s whereabouts than Bill. Much as I hated to accept his help, if I’d have thought of it myself, he’d have been the first person I’d have gone to.

‘To finding the Leopard Lady,’ I said and raised my glass. It wasn’t a toast, but a solemn vow, to myself as much as to her.

XXV

An Encounter with Black Bill