It would happen like this.
East along the great highway of the River Isis, thronged with slow-moving brick-barges and asphalt-boats and corn-tankers, way down past Henly and Maidenhead to Teddington, where the dide from the German Ocean reaches, and further down still: to Mortlake, past the house of the great magician Dr Dee; past Falkeshall, where the pleasure-gardens spread out bright with fountains and banners by day, with tree-lamps and fireworks by night; past White Hall Palace, where the king holds his weekly Council of State; past the Shot Tower, dropping its endless drizzle of molten lead onto vats of murky water; further down still, to where the river, wide and filthy now, swings in a great curve to the south.
This is Limehouse, and here is the child who is going to disappear.
He is called Tony Makarios. His mother thinks he’s nine years old, but she has a poor memory that the drink has rotted; he might be eight or ten. His surname is Greek, but like his age, that is a guess on his mother’s part, because he looks more Chinese than Greek, an there’s Irish and Skraeling and Lascar in him from his mother’s side, too. Tony’s not very bright, but he has a sort of clumsy tenderness that sometimes prompts him to give his mother a rough hug and plant a sticky kiss on her cheeks. The poor woman is usually too fuddled to start such a procedure herself; but she responds warmly enough, once she realises what’s happening.
At the moment Tony is hanging about the market in Pie Street. He’s hungry. It’s early evening, and he won’t get fed at home. He’s got a shilling in his pocket that a soldier gave him for taking a message to his best girl, but Tony’s not going to waste that on food, when you can pick up so much for nothing.
So he wanders through the market, between the old-clothes stalls and the fried fish seller, with his little daemon on his shoulder, a sparrow, watching this way and that; and when a stall holder and her daemon are both looking elsewhere, a brisk chirp sounds, and Tony’s hand shoots out and returns to his loose shirt with an apple or a couple of nuts, and finally with a hot pie.
The stall holder sees that, and shouts, and her cat-daemon leaps, but Tony’s sparrow is aloft and Tony himself halfway down the street already. Curses and abuse go with him, but not far. He stops running at the steps of St Catherine’s Oratory, where he sits down and takes out his steaming, battered prize, leaving a trail of gravy on his shirt.
And he’s being watched. A lady in a long yellow-red fox-fur coat, a beautiful young lady whose dark hair falls shining delicately under the shadow of her fur-lined hood, is standing in the doorway of the Oratory, half a dozen steps above him. It might be that a service is finishing, for light comes from the doorway behind her, an organ is playing inside, and the lady is holding a jewelled breviary.
Tony knows nothing of this. His face contentedly deep in the pie, his toes curled inwards and his bare soles together, he sits and chews and swallows while his daemon becomes a mouse and grooms her whiskers.
The young lady’s daemon is moving out from beside the fox-fur coat. He is in the form of a monkey, but no ordinary monkey: his fur is long and silky and of the most deep and lustrous gold. With sinuous movements he inches down the steps towards the boy, and sits a step above him.
Then the mouse senses something, and becomes a sparrow again, cocking her head a fraction sideways, and hops along the stone a step or two.
The monkey watches the sparrow; the sparrow watches the monkey.
The monkey reaches out slowly. His little hand is black, his nails perfect horny claws, his movements gentle and inviting. The sparrow can’t resist. She hops further, and further, and then, with a little flutter, up on to the monkey’s hand.
The monkey lifts her up, and gazes closely at her before standing and swinging back to his human, taking the sparrow-daemon with him. The lady bends her scented head to whisper.
And then Tony turns. He can’t help it.
“Ratter!” he says half in alarm, his mouth full.
The sparrow chirps. It must be safe. Tony swallows his mouthful and stares.
“Hello,” says the beautiful lady. “What is your name?”
“Tony”
“Where do you live, Tony?”
“Clarice Walk”
“What’s in that pie?”
“Beefsteak”
“Do you like chocolatl?”
“Yeah!”
“As it happens, I’ve got more chocolatl than I can drink myself. Will you come and help me drink it?”
He’s lost already. He was lost the moment his slow-witted daemon hopped on to the monkey’s hand. He follows the beautiful young lady and the golden monkey down Denmark Street and along to Hangman’s Wharf, and down King George’s Steps to a little green door in the side of a tall warehouse. She knocks, the door is opened; they go in, the door is closed. Tony will never come out – at least, by that entrance and he’ll never see his mother again. She, poor drunken thing, will think he’s run away, and when she remembers him, she’ll think it was her fault, and sob her sorry heart out.
IT IS NIGHT