Thames River

The Thames River connects the visible business of London with the hidden routes and private reckonings that run beneath it. Around Billingsgate Market it borders a working harbor; at Westminster Bridge it becomes the focus of Bill Kraken’s thoughts about his place in the world. In the city’s underground system, the river also marks the final destination of bodies secretly moved through the sewers.

A working river at Billingsgate Market

At Billingsgate Market, the Thames River is part of a busy morning scene. From the embankment, Willis Pule sees fishing boats and sailing vessels among the masts and ropes, while men land fish along the docks. The water is placid beneath a streak of orange light, and the wet streets make the market seem briefly calm. Pule, however, has not slept: he needs another carp for Theophilus Godall’s efforts to restore Joanna Southcote, and hopes fish from Chingford’s fisheries may be available for sale.

The riverbank is also where Pule meets Bill Kraken and buys him brandy. Kraken’s account of fish and religious prophecy draws Pule’s attention, but their exchange takes place amid the practical traffic of the market: a boy brings the bottle, receives a shilling, and pushes his barrow farther along the embankment. The river here belongs at once to commerce, scientific need, and the street-level negotiations of the characters.

Westminster Bridge and Kraken’s crisis

After failing to recover the Keeble box from Ignacio Narbondo, Kraken spends much of a day and the preceding night wandering London beside the Thames River. The lights of Westminster Bridge allow him to read, while the river’s movement and the nearby men’s conversation take on a significance he cannot quite settle. He recalls Ashbless, whose writing repeatedly draws on rivers, and finds that the Thames gives its abstractions a concrete setting.

Kraken’s wandering through Holborn, the City, Whitechapel, and the London docks sharpens his sense that other people’s lives follow an intelligible order while his own has come apart. At the bridge, he reads in Ashbless and considers the image of the rejected stone becoming a cornerstone. He wonders how he might gain entry to Captain Powers’ shop again and concludes that the emerald is his only route. The river scene thus precedes a decision: despite the destruction he expects may follow, he sets out toward Soho and Pratlow Street to recover it.

The river at the end of the sewer route

The Thames River is also the endpoint of a concealed urban system. In the Kermit Street sewer, sinking ground has formed cesspools and left the passage difficult to level and flush. Billy Deener has used these hidden spaces to dispose of murdered men. At high water, their bodies can be carried from the sewer into the Thames River, where they are found bloated and faceless and recorded as drownings when no more plausible explanation is available.

This route turns the river from an open, public thoroughfare into the outlet of a secret network. The sewers conceal the passage from street-level view; the current then removes evidence into the river. Against the visible docks and orderly movement Kraken observes, this submerged connection shows how London’s waterways and infrastructure can support both ordinary commerce and the concealment of violence.