“Well, then everyone’s fucked,” she says with a wink.
“I’ve enjoyed my time here. Half of me would rather stay.”
“Clearly, you have a traumatic brain injury.” She gives a halfhearted smile. “Listen, Basil. I’m glad I met you. I’d say you’re more human than most of the people I’ve met. A better human, to tell it right. I’ll miss you.”
He nods, saving his strength.
“I’m sorry if I was mean to you,” she adds. “Even if you deserved it.”
“I wish we had met at a different time, under different circumstances, but I suppose everyone says those words at least once in a lifetime. I’ll miss seeing you, hearing your voice, smelling you …”
She slips her hands over his bloody, fang-filled mouth.
“Inappropriate,” she tells him. “Now get out of here before I start hating you again.”
Basil eases into the passenger seat of Herbert’s car. Boothe finds an open space too. Herbert fires up the engine and turns to his injured friend.
“You’ve got a long way to go,” Herbert says. “You going to make it?”
“I’ll be fine.”
As Herbert pulls away, Basil scans the area for his nemesis, Edna Babych. There’s no sign of her, save her spangled denim jacket, left unceremoniously in the middle of the parking lot.
“What do you expect to find when you get back home?” Herbert asks.
“Bedlam. But I’ve seen worse.”
He’s not so sure.
Herbert turns on the radio. The announcer drones on about dropping corn prices in light of higher yield and falling demand for U.S. exports.
“Herbert, what the hell are you listening to?”
“The IA-NE Farm Report,” he says.
“I know what it is. But why?”
“It calms my nerves. I don’t even listen, really. I just like the fact that it’s always there.”
“So is cholera. Can you please put on something soft, soothing? Classical music, jazz—something civilized. I’d rather not have my last moments above ground filled with prattle about corn futures.”
The car speeds past a small sign that reads: YOU ARE NOW LEAVING BEAK. COME BACK SOON.
Not likely.
“Your vehicle has seen better days,” Basil says. “I’m afraid I’m not helping matters any. The upholstery’s ruined. Please forgive the carnage.”
“Let’s call it incentive to upgrade this ancient hunk of junk.”
Basil wants only to sleep the dreamless sleep. Every limb hurts. His skin feels hot and sticky. He’s lost so much blood. Too much. Nausea overtakes him. He breathes deeply through his nose, out through his mouth, until the feeling passes.
“Herbert,” Basil says. “I expect great things from you.”
“Likewise. Will I see you again?”
“It’s difficult to say. I suppose Lubos will have something to say about that. Boothe should stay with you. Here in Beak, or wherever you end up. He likes you. He’ll make a good companion.”
“Based on how tightly he’s clutching your leg, doesn’t look like he intends to stay here. Besides, I know nothing about housebreaking minor fiends.”
“Forgive me, Herbert, but I need to rest.”
Basil’s limp body moves in sync with the car, forehead smacking the cracked windshield each time Herbert steers into a pothole. His horns scrape the fabric-stripped ceiling as a tire clips the caved-in carapace of a snapping turtle lying dead in the road.
Basil closes his eyes. The engine whines, working harder than it should have to. Boothe voices its inquisitive chirps. Then, everything goes silent.
Chapter 32
The Fall
My eyes scan the exodus for someone who might help me in my darkest hour. Filthy ditch diggers and pickmen shamble along the clay-lined channel dimpled with hoof prints. Coal dust and dirt coat the bare shoulders of men and boys alike, the patina broken only by rivulets of their own sweat.
My eyes dart from one face to another, searching for the only man who might show me some kindness. Henry. I wish I knew his last name.
My spirit rises as I see him bring up the rear. A fresh scab has browned on the side of his face. He eyes me as he climbs out of the channel, scurrying up a mud-caked timber like a man much younger than his years.
“Where you been?” he asks me. “We ain’t worked alongside each other in half a week.”
“Trying to keep the whole ball of yarn from unraveling. Listen, Henry—”
“Can’t do it.”
Although he barely knows me, he knows me well enough to know what’s coming.
“I’m not asking for money,” I insist.
“Whatever it is, I don’t have.”
“A place to room. An overnight.”
“You’d rather wander, you said.”
“Not for me. For my wife.”
“Didn’t realize you were hitched up.”
I have erred again, for he knows not a whit about me, or I about him.
“Put her to work,” he tells me. “Have her take up a trade. There’s money to be had for people who ain’t afraid to work.”
I let the insult pass, the insinuation that I would not suffer such troubles if I had been digging in the dirt beside him all this time. He knows I can outwork him. To his mind, a man’s no longer a man if a day passes without a pick in his hand.
“She ran an apiary before,” I tell him. “She kept bees.”
“Bloody lot of good that’ll do here. Can she whore?”
“She’s my wife!”
“So what.”
“She’s pregnant.”
“From whoring?”
“Say that again and I’ll brain you.”
“Calm down, lad, before you hurt yourself. I’d help if I could, but I don’t have the room to give.”
“She’s with child!”
“We can’t very well put that in a pot and cook it, can we? What would you have me do?”
“Show mercy.”
“I told you: We’re full up.”
“I’ll pay you.”
Henry pauses to consider my offer.
“How much?”
“I don’t have much to give.”
“Everything.”
“Pardon?”
“All your wages. Day’s pay for each night you take up the wee bit of space in my home somebody else ain’t already claimed as theirs. That’s just for the floor to lie on and the roof to keep the wet out.”
“Be sensible.”
“Hitch it back to Berwick.”
“She’s just come from there. She’ll never forgive me.”
“We all got our ditches to dig.”
Henry looks past me and extends one of the three remaining fingers of his gnarled right hand. As I turn, my eyes settle on the spire of a church near the entrance to London Bridge.
Henry tells me this: “You want mercy? Get it from God.”
He passes me, nearly clips me with the mud-caked pick slung over his shoulder.
The sky darkens.
And that is when the lightning bolt hits. I know what I must do.
* * *
The sun sets as I arrive at the stone steps of Saint Botolph’s Church. No sign of Old Billy. Parishioners come and go through the massive oak door. They seek the same thing I seek—aid, relief, sanctuary from the storm—though our similarities end there. I have come not to give but to take.
I stand in shadow, an eye out for anyone who might suspect my treachery. The cellar windows are dark. I expect to see Old Billy slither through the unbarred window and blend into the night. No sign of him, after nearly an hour. Either he has long gone or he remains dead to the world, asleep in the cellar wall.
Given my predicament, I have no choice but to risk an encounter with him. My fate hangs in the balance either way. Still, his warning lingers in my thoughts.
I wonder what she’s doing now, my bride. Alone in a city she does not know, the darkness climbing around her.
&nb
sp; I must hurry.
My feet slide along slippery cobblestones and lead me down the alley toward the church’s rear. I hesitate at the window well and test the glass with my foot. The window yawns open. I wait for claws to latch onto an ankle and yank me to my gory demise. I then crouch down and slip inside, careful not to end up face first on the floor this time. The cellar looks the same. The same musty smell surrounds me. My eyes instinctively move to the hole in the wall, and for the briefest of moments I imagine two yellow eyes peering out.
I make haste for the exit and push through the door, entering the church proper. Every room is quiet and still, so I must be the same. I remove my boots to muffle my footsteps. My bare feet clap against dusty wood as I slink down the corridor. I stop at a half-open door and poke my head through, pleased to find the room empty.
I place my boots just inside the doorway. My hands overturn the contents of every unlocked drawer. I find only papers and nicely folded pieces of cloth and ampoules of sacred oil. Important to someone, worthless to me.
The sound of a clicking lock echoes from somewhere close by, followed by the approach of footsteps. I sprawl behind a large wooden desk and wait for the footsteps to pass. I peer out from my hiding spot.
A priest enters the room, struggling with a wicker basket. We have met once before, he and I. The same priest accused me of trying to rob the church and then drove me away with his bronze staff. Turns out he was right about me all along—prescient, in fact—a devil in a man’s body.
The priest moves to the far end of the room, past the drawers I already raided, and kneels before a waist-high cabinet. He swings open the door to reveal an ancient strongbox. He works the lock, opens the latch and pours in the contents of his basket. Coins join a deep sea of others, based on the ruckus they make. The plume of coins slows to a trickle as the priest diverts his attention. He leaves the empty basket by the strongbox and moves toward the exit. He sees something.
My boots.
He stops at an open drawer and notices the dangling cloths—the effect of my sloppy rummaging. He then picks up one boot, studies it. He tests the sopping fabric between his fingers. His gaze falls to the floor, no doubt seeing my wet footprints, drawing a line straight toward the desk. Toward me.
“Hello?” he says. “Someone there?”
My boot falls to the floor. The priest takes a few cautious steps toward the desk.
I eye the open lid of the strongbox.
“I said: Is someone there?”
I am had.
My bride needs me, and I need every penny in the strongbox to make things right. I rise from my hiding spot. The priest’s eyes grow wide.
“You again,” he says.
“I want no trouble, Father.”
I step toward him, and he darts from the room.
“Coward,” I whisper, thankfully.
Before I know it, I am kneeling by the strongbox, taking shillings and pennies by the handful and dropping them into the priest’s wicker basket. I am rich. A few loose coins bounce off the lip of the basket and skitter onto the plank floor.
A heavy blow to my back drives me forward, onto the basket. The woven fibers crunch beneath my weight. I turn to see the priest, wielding his bronze staff as if it were a truncheon.
“You devil,” he says.
“I’ll take only what I need,” I tell him. My back burns from his assault.
“God decides what we need. Leave now and repent while you still can.”
“I want no trouble from you, Father.”
“And yet you’ve found it,” he gasps. “Return every coin and you’ll be forgiven. God hasn’t damned you yet.”
The bronze staff looks heavy in his weathered hands. He is an old man, weak and tired, though I am a young man, weak and tired. I remind myself he deserves no ill will from the likes of me, but I did not ask for my troubles either.
He is a man of God, allegedly, but to me he is an obstacle to be overcome. I return to the strongbox and clutch another handful of coins.
A fist strikes my cheek. The blow deadens the side of my face, from my temple down to my chin. I turn and see the pain on the priest’s face, horrified by what he has done. His outstretched hand quakes—with fear, with rage, with regret, all the same feelings that consume me.
“God has a plan for you, son,” he tells me. “This thievery cannot be part of it.”
Without thinking, I cuff the priest on the side of the head. He drops like a dead horse. His staff clanks to the floor. I kick him once in the gut and move to deliver a second, but I stop myself. I have more important battles to fight.
Yet the priest refuses to go peacefully.
He grabs onto my leg, swatting at my shins with his feeble fists. I bend to teach him a lesson, and his fist connects with my chin. The blow stuns me, knocks me on my arse. The priest straddles me, his knees trying to pin my arms to the floor. His fingers grind away at my Adam’s apple.
“You … animal!” he says. “You … fiend!”
His hands tighten around my throat.
I reach up and return the favor, squeezing with all the strength in my ruined hands. His grip loosens, though he quickly finds a new target. Fingernails claw at my wrists, and this invasion—this penetration, of his flesh into mine—enrages me. I thrust my hips forward and pull the priest by the collar. His face smacks into the plank floor, and he goes still. I turn him over. He is conscious but dazed. A feeble moan escapes his lips.
“Leave here, you damned devil,” he whispers.
The command is too much for me to bear. The beast within me takes over. I cannot imagine I am beating him as my fists rain blows upon his head—five, six, seven times—until his blood tints my knuckles. His moans cease. Supine, arms at his side, his face a crimson mess, he must be dead.
My chest heaves. The outcome of this cocked-up scheme brings tears to my eyes. Yet I must finish what I have begun. To have spilled his blood for no reason, this shame would haunt me forever.
The strongbox.
I shovel more shillings and pennies into the ruined basket—more money than my eyes have ever seen. The priest remains motionless on the cold floor. His blood colors the wood grain, fills the empty spaces between planks.
I drag the basket toward the door so I can collect my soggy boots. I toss them into the basket and hoist my take, surprised by the weight. My hands fail to do their job right—fingers broken, knuckles bruised and bloody. Coins spill through gaps between snapped wicker branches and drop to the floor.
The half-dead priest lifts his head. He spits out a tooth.
I exit the room with my take and move down the corridor, past open doorways, an eye out for the exit. I take a left through an open door and find three men huddled around a table, their mouths full of porridge. They are appalled to see me, as I am to see them. I back away and keep moving, knowing they will surely follow.
Panic grips my chest. Coins spill from the basket in a steady stream. I find my way into the main hall of the church and sprint past the altar. My foot slips on the smooth marble and I sprawl to the hard floor. The basket crashes to the ground and comes undone. Coins scatter like spilled gin. I clamor to collect as many as I can. Pennies and shillings fill my pockets.
“Stop!”
Three men stand by the altar. The priests I am robbing, I suppose.
A dozen or so parishioners watch from the pews. I feel the weight of their revulsion.
Coins trickle from my pockets as I race down the center aisle. My shoulder slams into the oak door, and the night chill seeps through the widening crack. I then spill down the slick stone steps. More coins jangle from my pockets. More coins, lost. My left ankle turns. The kneecap of my right leg shatters.
“Thief!”
I try to run, but my crippled legs reduce my gait to a stagger. The rains have stopped, the skies clear. The streets have gone empty.
There may still be hope. If I can drag myself into the shadows, I can hobble back to my lonely bride with enough for a
few nights off the streets.
I can buy time, if nothing else.
Something hard as stone cracks the back of my skull. My vision goes white, and I collapse. More coins roll away and settle in the unseen cracks between sunken stones. Time passes, but I have no good way of knowing how much. I feel poisoned. All too slowly, the haze clears to show me the constable and his eager truncheon, well equipped to brain me. It seems he already has.
“That’s him,” says a fat, gray-haired man, likely one of the priests from Saint Botolph’s. “That’s the bugger.”
“His crime?” the constable asks.
“He’s killed and burgled,” the priest says.
“Murdered, did he?”
“Close enough to it,” the priest insists. “Father Edward has a hole in his head he didn’t ask for, thanks to this dirty bugger. This one here, he burgled his way in and swiped every blessed coin from God’s coffers. Every penny. Likely this one’s the same godless reprobate who’s been defacing the church grounds, streaking the windows with his waste.”
A crowd surrounds me.
“Let him dangle from the gallows,” someone shouts.
“Dice him up and feed him to the dogs,” says another, the voice female.
A boot connects with my gut. Then comes another, taking my wind. I shield my head and curl myself into a ball, but the blows keep coming, too many for my body to know which parts hurt and which do not.
The constable tries to quell the crowd. There are too many, their thirst for my blood too intense. Finally, he gives up and lets the crowd have its way.
They tear at my clothes, making sure not a single coin remains.
“Pitch him into the Thames!”
Cheers of assent fill the night air.
My body passes from grip to grip. A fist clubs my testicles. Fingers pinch the skin of every extremity. Hands yank tufts of hair from my tender scalp. My pleas for clemency go unanswered.
I do not dare ask God to intervene.
They drag me toward the balustrade, punching and kicking along the way. An inky mist shrouds the Thames, but I can hear the river passing below. Its wretchedness fills my nostrils. As I look up, toward the silhouette of Saint Botolph’s Church at Owlsditch, my eyes serve only to deceive. Old Billy, the so-called Beast of London Bridge, dangles playfully from the church spire, an audience to my demise. One hideous hand and snakelike tail hold fast to the Christian cross, supposedly pointing the way toward Heaven. The light of the moon outlines his fur-slicked body. He raises a hand to offer the slightest wave, as if to say, “Fare thee well.”
Burn, Beautiful Soul Page 28
