The man didn’t relax his grip on James’s shoulder and kept his sword firmly in place until James stopped struggling and his hands dropped slackly down by his sides. James’s chest rose and fell slower and slower, and blood was pouring out over the front of his white shirt so that it looked as if he were wearing a wide crimson cravat.
Beatrice remained in the open bedroom doorway, paralyzed with horror. She thought of grabbing Florence’s hand and trying to run past the man and out of the door, but he would only have to tug his sword out of James’s neck and he could strike them down both before they had even reached the top of the stairs. Her Toby pistol was still in her purse, but her purse was lying on the armchair on the other side of the sitting room.
James gave a final convulsive shudder. His eyes were still open but his head fell back, and now the man drew out his bloodied sword and turned towards Beatrice, and she could see her own distorted reflection in his looking-glass mask.
‘Now let’s silence you, madam, shall we?’ he said, in his croaky voice.
For an instant, Beatrice thought of screaming for help. But even if any of the girls heard her, and came running, what could they do against a man with a sword? One of them might run outside and try to find a constable, but by the time they had brought him back here, she and Florence would both be dead.
As the man came towards her, she slammed the bedroom door shut. It had no lock, so all she could do was hold on to the knob as tightly as she could, to try and stop him from twisting it open, and to press herself against it. He rammed it with his shoulder, so that it shook, and then he started to kick it.
‘It’s no use!’ he croaked. ‘You were warned but you didn’t listen, did you? You’re a witch, if anybody is, and you know how we punish witches, don’t you?’
Beatrice said nothing, but grimly held on to the doorknob. The man kicked at the bottom door panels again and again, and after the seventh or eighth kick the right-hand panel splintered and cracked. She knew that it could only be a matter of minutes before he broke in.
Florence was standing on the other side of the bed in her rose-patterned dress. She had stopped crying now, although her eyelashes were still glistening wet, and she was staring at Beatrice and anxiously biting at her thumbnail.
The man kicked again, and again. ‘Witch!’ he panted. ‘You just wait – witch!’
Beatrice said, ‘Florrie... under the bed... where the potty is... there’s that big metal hook.’
‘What?’
‘That hook, Florrie – that hook we found down by the river! Can you crawl under the bed and pull it out?’
Florence looked bewildered for a moment, but then Beatrice snapped at her, ‘Florrie! Crawl under the bed and pull that hook out now!’
The man kicked again, and this time he split the door panel from top to bottom, so that half of it dropped out, and she could see the black leather toecap of his shoe. ‘Ha! Nearly got you now – you and your little witchling!’
Whimpering, Florence knelt down beside the bed and then crawled underneath it.
‘Come on, Florrie, hurry,’ Beatrice urged her, as the man began to kick at the left-hand door panel. All she could see of Florence now was her legs.
‘It’s stuck,’ said Florence. ‘It won’t come out.’
‘Pull harder!’ Beatrice told her.
‘It’s still stuck.’
‘Try pushing it away from you, and then pulling it.’
Seconds passed. The man cracked the left-hand door panel.
‘Florrie? Have you got it free?’
More seconds passed.
‘Florrie, have you managed to get it free yet?’
‘Yes, Mama,’ said Florence, and she began to edge her way out backwards from under the bed, dragging the grappling hook after her.
‘Bring it over here, darling,’ said Beatrice, and Florence carried it across to her, flinching every time the man gave the door another kick.
‘Now go and crouch down behind the bed, and close your eyes,’ Beatrice told her. ‘Make believe that you’re back at home in Sutton, and that it’s bedtime, and that you’re sleeping.’
Florence frowned at her, not really understanding what her mother was trying to tell her, but she made her way around the bed and sat down on the floor, although she didn’t close her eyes.
Beatrice kept a tight hold on the doorknob with her left hand but she reached down with her right and picked up the grappling hook. It was much heavier than she remembered.
Please God, give me all the strength you can. Give me my own strength, but give me the spiritual strength that I inherited from Francis, and give me the strength that James sacrificed in trying to save me.
The man kicked again, so hard that his foot smashed completely through the left-hand door panel, up to his ankle. He tried to twist it out again, but his large silver shoe buckle was snagged by the splinters, and Beatrice could tell that he must be off-balance.
‘Bugger!’ he swore. ‘Bugger and bloody damnation!’
Beatrice wrenched the door open as wide as she could, a few inches at a time, with the man hopping on one foot and clinging on to the edge of the door to stop himself from keeling over sideways. His hood had fallen back, and above his looking-glass mask his head was bald and knobbly.
Neither of them spoke, and there was an eerie moment when Beatrice felt that time had stopped altogether and all the laws of reality were suspended, and that they would stay in these improbable postures forever.
But then – with a sharp crackling of splinters – the man pulled his foot out of the door panel, tugging off his shoe as he did so. He swung his sword and lurched towards her, but at the same time she had lifted the grappling hook high above her head. He managed to take only two stumbling steps before she swung it down and struck him with such force in the dead centre of his mask that she shattered the image of her own face.
The man stopped, and staggered, letting out a cry that was more like a high-pitched cough than a scream. His face was a jumble of blood and broken fragments of mirror, and he sank slowly to his knees, dropping his sword and raising his hands to try and pick the sharpened pieces out of his forehead and his eyes.
Beatrice took a short step back, breathing hard. God give me strength, but please God, forgive me.
She lifted the grappling hook a second time, paused, and then hit him so hard on top of his bald head that she hurt her hands. The barbed steel prong cracked into his skull, but somehow he still managed to stay upright. He lifted his head as if to show her that no matter what she did to him, she wouldn’t be able to kill him.
She tried to pull out the grappling hook so that she could hit him yet again, but it was wedged fast in the top of his head, and no matter how she levered it, it refused to come out. He was kneeling in the doorway like a wounded stag with three-pronged antlers. He didn’t speak, or couldn’t, because his lips had been cut to ribbons by broken glass. All he could do was sway from side to side, so that the grappling hook kept knocking against the door frame.
Florence started crying again – deep, painful sobs. Beatrice hesitated for a few seconds, to make sure that the man was incapable of standing up and coming after her, but she could see that he was stunned, and that he was probably dying. She made her way around the bed and picked up Florence in her arms and hugged her.
‘It’s all over, Florrie. The bad man can’t hurt us now. But you must close your eyes, and pretend that you’re not here at all. I don’t want you to see him, and I don’t want you to see James, either, because the bad man has sent James to heaven.’
Florence’s mouth was turned down and tears were dripping down her cheeks, but she nodded, and shut her eyes tight. Beatrice carried her towards the doorway, and as she did so, the man in the black cape toppled backward, his knees still bent and the grappling hook still sticking out of his skull.
As the back of his head struck the sitting-room floor, some of the jagged pieces of his looking-glass mask fell away from his face, like a bloodst
ained kaleidoscope. Although the point of the grappling hook had crushed the bridge of his nose and his cheeks were so lacerated, Beatrice recognized him immediately. It was Edward Veal, George Hazzard’s accountant.
She stared down at him for a moment, her stomach churning, her heart beating painfully hard. When James had told her that George Hazzard was out to silence her, she had believed him, but here was the physical proof. He had sent Edward Veal here to close his account with her forever. If she had eaten breakfast, she would have brought it up all over the carpet. As it was, her mouth was flooded with saliva.
Pressing Florence’s face close against her shoulder, she managed to inch sideways past Edward Veal’s body. She hadn’t wanted to look at James, but she had to step past him to pick up her purse from the sofa, because she knew that she would need it. James was sprawled backwards on top of the tipped-over chair in his blood-soaked shirt, with his sightless eyes staring at the ceiling, but once she had collected her purse she turned her head away. She didn’t want to remember him like that, and it hurt too much to think that he had been killed trying to save her.
*
She had just started to make her way down the stairs when Eliza came climbing up towards her, panting. Her hair was a tangled mess and she was barefoot and still wearing her nightgown.
‘What’s ’appenin’?’ she said. ‘I ’eard all this bangin’ and crashin’ but when I went to Mrs Smollett and asked ’er what it was, she said that it was only the chippies come to mend your door. She said I ’ad to stay in my room till they’d finished, but I thought, sod that.’
Beatrice didn’t stop, but continued to carry Florence as quickly as she could down the stairs. Eliza turned around and came down close behind her.
‘We have to leave here as quickly as we can,’ Beatrice told her. ‘A man broke into our rooms and tried to murder us. It was Edward Veal, George Hazzard’s accountant. Poor James Treadgold from the Foundery tried to protect us, but Veal killed him first.’
Eliza looked back up the staircase in disbelief. ‘You’re jokin’, ain’t you?’
‘Not at all, Eliza. We’re going directly to Bow Street to report this to the justice office.’
‘Fuckin’ ’ell. But Mrs Smollett said it was chippies.’
‘Oh, no. Mrs Smollett knew exactly who it was.’
‘But I don’t understand. Why was George ’Azzard trying to do you in?’
‘I’ve offered to go to court and testify against him, that’s why. You know those seven missing girls I was telling you about? They were all found dead yesterday at George Hazzard’s factory, and I have evidence that he was behind it.’
‘So ’Azzard sent this cove around to stow your whids and plant ’em? And Mrs Smollett must ’ave been wise to it, mustn’t she? Chippies, I ask you!’
They had reached the hallway now. They could hear voices in the kitchen, and the banging of cooking pots, but the kitchen door was closed and there was nobody else around.
‘Let’s go and fetch No-noh,’ said Beatrice. ‘Then we have to leave at once.’
‘I’m comin’ with you,’ said Eliza.
‘You’re not even dressed,’ Beatrice told her.
‘I don’t care. I’m coming with you. ’Cause after you’ve been to the runners, where will you go?’
‘I hadn’t thought about it, Eliza. We just need to get out of here.’
‘You can come and stay at Black ’Orse Yard if you like, with me and my aunt. And I’ll tell you somethin’ else, I’ll stand up next to you in court and say what Mr ’Azzard was up to, and that Mrs Sheridan. I never saw them killin’ no girls, but I knew they was ’urtin’ them, and ’urtin’ them somethin’ dreadful, and there was randy coves what called themselves gentlemen payin’ good money to watch them do it.’
‘Eliza – you don’t even have any shoes on!’
‘I don’t bloody care, I’m comin’ with you.’
Beatrice and Florence went to the laundry room beside the back door, where No-noh was still asleep in his basket. Florence picked him up and said, ‘Come on, No-noh. We have to run away.’
Beatrice lifted their capes down from the hooks in the hallway, but after she had fastened Florence’s cape, she wrapped her own around Eliza’s shoulders. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll be warm enough, and it won’t take us long to get to Bow Street.’
She opened the front door, but as they stepped outside they heard an ululating wail from upstairs, and then Ida screaming out, ‘Murder! Murder! Beatrice, where are you? Beatrice! Anybody! Help! Somebody call for a watchman! It’s murder!’
41
Outside, on Aldersgate Street, they hailed a hackney to take them to Bow Street. Beatrice was feeling so shaken by what she had seen and what she had done that she found herself incapable of talking sense, so Eliza had to tell the moon-faced jarvis where they wanted to go. Once Beatrice had climbed up into her seat she couldn’t stop shivering, and so Eliza dragged her cape over her shoulders so that they could share it.
As they set off, Florence was silent at first, but she cuddled No-noh, and kept kissing the top of his head, while Eliza couldn’t stop chattering.
‘Blimey! I don’t know what my Auntie Vi’s goin’ to say when I turns up again. She must ’ave thought that she’d seen the last of me, and good riddance, too, I’ll bet she thought that. And my three cousins – what? I can just see them three pullin’ faces!’
They were only halfway down Ludgate Hill, though, when Florence let out a long, mournful wail. Her wailing grew louder and increasingly hysterical, and by the time the hackney had started to jostle its way up Fleet Street she was red in the face and she could hardly breathe. Beatrice put No-noh down on the floor of the hackney and picked her up, and it was then that she realized that Florence had wet herself.
‘Ssh, Florrie, shh,’ she told her, rocking her gently in her arms. ‘It’s all over now. That bad man is never coming back.’
Then she said to Eliza, ‘I can’t expect Florrie to come to the justice house in this condition. Do you think we could turn back and go to your aunt’s place, and settle her down? Then I can go to Bow Street on my own, if you’ll be kind enough to take care of her while I’m gone. You wouldn’t mind that, Florrie, would you, if Eliza looked after you for a little while?’
‘Poor little scrap,’ said Eliza. ‘Yes, I’d be ’appy to.’
She stood up and leaned around the hackney’s hood so that she could shout up to the jarvis, ‘’Ere, cully, we’ve changed our minds! Take us to Black ’Orse Yard, will you?’
‘Black ’Orse Yard?’
‘Just off of Spittle Market.’
‘I know it. But I’ll still ’ave to charge you for comin’ as far as ’ere.’
It took them another ten minutes to turn around and go back along London Wall to Bishopsgate Street and into the crooked maze that led to Black Horse Yard. Most of the shops and houses here had survived the Great Fire, and were timbered buildings of three and four storeys high, with damp-stained facades and tiny leaded windows. The streets were cobbled but many of the cobbles were loose or broken, and they were never swept, so that the chilly morning air was filled with the pungent smell of horse manure and raw sewage.
Florence had stopped wailing, but every now and then she let out a quivery little moan, and No-noh looked up at her worriedly.
Black Horse Yard was a small, gloomy court with tall lodging houses on three sides and a brown-brick stable on the other. When Beatrice had paid the jarvis a shilling and sixpence, Eliza led them to a narrow doorway and knocked.
‘I hope we’re going to be welcome,’ said Beatrice.
‘Oh, she’s all right really, my aunt. She’s ’ad a ’ard life, though. ’Er first ’usband died of the barrel fever and ’er second disappeared like a conjuring trick and ’er third got twisted for stealin’ two glimsticks. But she’s always ’ad ’er fair share of fancy men, so I don’t think she’s that bothered, not these days.’
She knocked again, louder, a
nd then took a step back and shouted out to the first floor, ‘Auntie Vi! Auntie Vi! It’s me, Eliza! Open the bloody door, will you? It’s taters out ’ere!’
She knocked one more time, and after about a minute the door opened and a grey-haired woman in a peach-coloured day gown appeared. She blinked at Eliza and then she blinked at Beatrice and Florence, and then she said, ‘I’m dreamin’.’
‘No, you ain’t,’ said Eliza. ‘It’s me. There’s been some rare old trouble at the girls’ ’ome and we’ve ’ad to scarper. This is Beatrice what took me into the ’ome in the first place, and this is ’er little girl, Florrie.’
‘So what do you want me to do about it?’ the woman asked.
‘Oh, come on, Auntie Vi! Some cove breaks into the ’ome and ’e was supposed to top Beatrice, and ’e did top ’er friend. So Beatrice ends up toppin’ ’im, doesn’t she?’
‘You’re ’avin’ a laugh, ain’t you?’
‘It’s true, Auntie Vi. It’s that George ’Azzard. Beatrice found out that ’e murdered some girls and now ’e’s after ’er, so as she can’t say nothin’ against ’im in court.’
‘Not that same George ’Azzard what took you into Leda’s?’
‘’Ow many fuckin’ George ’Azzards do you think there are?’
‘And ’e’s murdered some girls?’
‘Seven all told. Well, eight, because there was another one, a black girl, and they only cut ’er bloody ’ead off.’
‘Bloody ’ell!’
Beatrice took a deep breath and said, ‘My name’s Beatrice Scarlet, madam. What Eliza has told you is absolutely true, otherwise we wouldn’t have come to you for some temporary refuge. My little girl Florence here is desperately distressed by what she’s seen this morning, and she’s cold, and she needs a change of clothing. May I beg you to let us in for a while?’
The Coven Page 31
