Tallowgate

Below the High Street of Old Green the town tumbles down to the Medway by lanes too steep for any cart, and Tallowgate runs along behind the wharves at the bottom. Chandlers, tallow-melters and sail-menders have it to themselves, and the lane smells of all three trades at once, so strongly that a man who has lodged a week nearby can be smelt across the Bull's parlour. Beyond it lies Bargemen's Hard, where the river craft sit on the mud between tides.

The best-known shop in the lane is Norwood's, the chandlery of Peter Norwood, who stocks candles, rope, pitch, lanterns, oilskins and everything else a bargeman needs. He also holds a licence to sell powder by the pound, and each sale is written down against the buyer's name, so that any company working the river comes to his counter sooner or later for powder and oilskins together. Old Green's own saying is that Norwood will sell a man rope for anything but his own hanging, and powder only to a name.

Up a stair above one of the sail lofts is Newbold's, where Gideon Newbold keeps a card room and will take a wager on the sculling, on the price cherries will fetch at the Borough, or on anything else that will be decided before morning. The heavy money on the Hulkham Yard Fifteen comes over the water to his table, and this year the side bets on the August race, Strood's watermen against the yard's own crew, are said to match the sixty-pound stake. Julian Nethersole, nephew and heir to the Dean, is whispered to have lost eighty pounds at the tables over the winter, and Wat Trudgeon, who fixes things on the river for anybody who pays, takes care never to fix anything that could be laid at the card room's door.