Joan Crale

The known face of the Bellmarsh Black Net’s message chain, running word through a string of laundries across four wards faster than the post and leaving nothing a court could subpoena.

Joan Crale is one of the few faces London attaches to its syndicates, which keep no roll of members. She runs the Bellmarsh Black Net’s message chain through a string of laundries, moving word across four wards faster than the post and leaving nothing a court could subpoena. Where other shadow powers sell passage, protection or stock, the Black Net sells delivery: a message sent, a message kept, and no paper afterwards.

Her method depends on the ordinary. Laundries take in linen from every kind of household and send it back again, and a folded note travels as easily in a shirt as a coin in a pocket. Those who have used the chain say she is quick, exact and entirely without curiosity about what she carries, which is precisely why so many are willing to trust her with it. She is also said to remember every account, and the rare customer who has tried to follow a message to its end has not been served again.

Companies meet her when a message must cross the wards unread by anybody official, or when they need to learn quietly whether someone is still in the city. She will name a price and a time and keep both. A company that tries to read what it is paying her to carry, or to trace where it goes, will find the laundries closed to it thereafter.

In person

A compact, wiry woman of about forty and of middling height, Joan Crale has dark auburn hair cut bluntly just below the ears, a narrow face with a pointed chin, large dark-green eyes, a short upturned nose and an unusually wide mouth. A small crescent-shaped scar sits under one eye, and she wears several mismatched earrings. She dresses practically in a dark skirt and fitted jacket, sleeves rolled when she is working, her hands stained with dye, soap and paper; a leather satchel, coded laundry tags and a pocket watch are her usual companions, and she is not always unarmed.