by Alex Grecian
14
Day spotted Adrian March outside the prison walls, squatting on the curb and staring at a spot in the road. Day held out a hand to stop Hammersmith, and they waited until March stood back up before approaching him.
“What did you find over there?” Hammersmith said.
“Nothing,” March said. “Well, something.” He waved his hand abstractly at the road and the empty field and the train tracks nearby as he walked toward them. “Just something left behind by children.”
“I can’t imagine children out here.”
“Did you discover anything inside Bridewell?”
“Sir Edward was right,” Day said. “At least, I think he was. By the way, where were you?”
“Me? I waited for a bit at Scotland Yard, then followed you out here.”
“Why didn’t you come with the sergeant?”
“I never saw him leave Sir Edward’s office,” March said.
“Well, it’s good to have you here now,” Day said.
“Take a look at this, Inspector,” Hammersmith said. He had knelt on the road and was pointing to the spot where March had been looking.
“It’s nothing, I tell you,” March said.
“I don’t know about that,” Hammersmith said. “I think you might have stumbled across something after all.”
Day squatted next to Hammersmith. He was privately amused that Hammersmith gave no thought to grinding the knees of his trousers into the dirt, even after being reprimanded that very morning for his appearance.
He squinted and brought his lantern in closer to the road and saw a smudge of blue chalk, distorted by uneven cobblestones. The chalk appeared to have been clumsily rubbed out, but there was still a faint impression where it had ground down into the stones.
“It’s an h,” Day said.
“From here, it looks like a four,” Hammersmith said.
“No, you’re right,” Day said. “It’s a four, all right. And an arrow.”
“You think it means something after all?” March said.
“Well,” Day said, “probably not. I don’t mean to contradict you, sir.”
“Not at all,” March said. “Your eyes are no doubt better than mine in the dark. To me it looked like a child’s scribble and nothing more.”
“It may well be,” Day said.
“But it may be something else,” Hammersmith said. “The arrow’s pointing that way, across the field.”
“Shall we follow it?”
“It may be a waste of time.”
“On the other hand . . .”
Hammersmith stood and held out his hand to Day, pulled him to his feet, and they set off moving slowly away from the prison, their lanterns held high. March hesitated a moment, then drew his revolver and followed them into the high grass.
15
The ground beneath the ground was uneven, and Jack was still unsteady on his feet. Cinderhouse needed to help him occasionally when it came time for them to pick their way over broken stones or across overfull streambeds. They left a trail of Jack’s blood behind them, and he imagined each drop that fell from his wrists blossoming from the dark soil into tall black flowers, screaming and swaying like sirens. Jack was dismayed by how much muscle tone he had lost. He assumed his coordination and strength would return, but it would clearly take some time. Cinderhouse had given him his jacket, with the black darts dotted across the front and down the sleeves, but Jack was still naked from the waist down. His legs were skinny and scratched. Cinderhouse carried both the lantern and the black medical bag from the cell.
They found a shallow place and crossed an underground pond, small darting white creatures swarming around their ankles and between their toes. They walked through dense catacombs, human bones stacked high and deep, skulls piled high over their heads, and into a large open chamber that Jack imagined was the inside of some enormous whale carcass, grey wooden ribs arcing above them.
There they found the man’s unconscious body. Cinderhouse ignored it, walked right past it and started up a staircase that he said would lead them to a higher tunnel, but Jack stopped, his hand against the wall to help hold him up. He stood over the body and watched the man breathe, his chest rising and falling arrhythmically. There was a gash in the man’s head and his leg was badly broken. Dark sticky blood had pooled beneath him, but the wounded leg had begun to clot.
“Who do we have here?” Jack said.
Jack barely whispered, but the chamber caught his question and bounced it around the walls until it boomed down at Cinderhouse. The bald man turned and stood next to Jack, looking at the other man’s still and silent form, the legs and arms splayed across the cobblestones like those of a snipped marionette.
“He’s nobody,” Cinderhouse said. “An irritant.”
“Oh, but I like irritants,” Jack said. “For instance, I’ve become quite fond of you.”
Cinderhouse scowled, but accepted the insult. “He followed me down here. He was in Bridewell.”
Jack lowered himself slowly to his knees with a grunt and bent over the unconscious man. He brushed his hair out of his eyes and sniffed the man’s face, squeezed his mouth open and smelled his breath, sucked in the air from his lungs. Jack smiled and looked up at Cinderhouse.
“What was his name? Did you know it?”
“He called himself Griffin.”
“You say he was in the prison with you?”
“Yes. He was.”
“For how long was he there?”
“Not long. I know I saw him there the day before we escaped.”
“But not before that? How odd.”
“I don’t know,” Cinderhouse said. He squinted and scrunched his features so that he looked like a child trying to remember instructions. “I don’t think I saw him before that.”
“Almost as if he arrived just in time to escape, would you say?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“That’s all right,” Jack said. “Of course you don’t, my lovely little fly. Don’t trouble yourself.”
Cinderhouse smiled weakly, unsure of whether he had disappointed Jack. Jack stared down at Griffin and reached out, gently probed the wound on his leg. Griffin stirred and groaned in his sleep. Jack put his lips to the unconscious man’s ear and murmured. “Exitus probatur,” he said.
“Ergo acta probantur.” Griffin’s voice was thick and gravelly, but Jack heard him clearly.
He looked up at Cinderhouse and grinned. “Do you know what we have here, Peter?”
Cinderhouse shook his head, thoroughly confused.
“We have another acolyte. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Is it?”
“Oh, yes,” Jack said. “Very wonderful, indeed. Why is he bleeding? Did you do this to him?”
Cinderhouse took a step back. “He attacked me.” His voice was filled with fear.
“But you got the upper hand, did you?” Jack didn’t wait for the bald man to answer. “Help me here,” he said. “Don’t worry, little fly. Here, get him under the arms, lift him up.”
“Let’s leave him here,” Cinderhouse said. “He’s of no use to us.”
“You will do as I tell you.” Jack’s voice came from somewhere deep in his chest, rumbled up and out and surrounded the bald man with his anger and his authority. His head swiveled around to Cinderhouse, and his eyes flashed with rage. His lips drew back in a snarl. With an inaudible grunt, Jack pulled himself to his feet so that he towered over Cinderhouse. “You will never question me again. You will do exactly as I say at all times.”
Cinderhouse’s eyes grew wide and his mouth fell open. A runner of drool escaped his lower lip and spooled off his chin. He stood still and useless, confused for a moment, then nodded.
“I hate to have to raise my voice to you, Peter,” Jack said. “You know that, right?”
Cinderhouse nodded again.
“Good,” Jack said. “Don’t give me a reason to be displeased with you and we will get along together like the bes
t of friends. Always the very best of friends.”
Cinderhouse handed the lantern and bag to Jack, then bent and hoisted Griffin’s upper body.
“That’s my boy,” Jack said. He was tired. Standing so quickly and raising his voice had exhausted him. His knees were sore and wet from the damp ground. His wrists and ankles were torn open, the bloody imprint of his shackles pressed deep in his flesh. The weight of the lantern pulled at him and he thought he might follow it and sink into the dirt. He didn’t think he had any inner reserves of strength left, but he did not want Cinderhouse to see how frail he really was. For all his stupidity and his weakness of will, Cinderhouse was still a predator and would be sure to take advantage of any shift in their balance of power. Jack gestured toward the tunnel they had come through.
“Carry him.”
“He’s heavy. I don’t think I—”
“Then drag him.”
“But that’s the way we came.”
“Are you arguing with me again, fly?”
“No, not at all.” Cinderhouse cowered.
“Then go. I will follow.”
Cinderhouse put his head down and maneuvered Griffin’s body around, twisting the insensible convict’s legs unnaturally, then shuffled backward across the chamber and into the tunnel. Jack had meant for Cinderhouse to be facing forward; he wanted to use the wall to hold himself up and he didn’t want the bald man to see him doing it.
He closed his eyes and drew himself up to his full height and followed along behind Cinderhouse and Griffin and did not reach out for the wall and did not think about food or water or any of the temptations that would weaken him more than he was already weak. He didn’t see the catacombs as they walked through them a second time, didn’t feel the blind white creatures beneath his feet as they forded the pond again, didn’t hear Cinderhouse gasping and grunting in the dark as he staggered with Griffin’s body over tumbles of rock and dirt and bone.
And then they were on familiar ground. Jack had not seen his cell until this very morning, but he had lived in it for a very long time and knew the quality of the air, the sound of it, the scent of it. Jack’s body odor had seeped into the stone around them and the dirt under them had absorbed his fluids, had drunk them up until he was a part of that place and it of him. He felt as though he could almost reach out and control the walls of the tunnel, bend them to his will as he would any limb of his body.
He motioned for Cinderhouse to take Griffin’s body into the cell, Jack’s own cell, and he finally leaned back against the wall as he watched Cinderhouse fasten the old iron shackles about Griffin’s legs and wrists. Griffin’s shattered leg hung uselessly. Jack smiled to think that Griffin’s skin was being stained by Jack’s blood. When Cinderhouse was done, Jack pushed himself off the wall and put a hand on the bald man’s shoulder.
“You’ve done well, my Peter. Now wait for me out there.” He gestured to the black tunnel outside the cell.
Cinderhouse went quietly out and was swallowed by the dark. Jack listened until he was sure that Cinderhouse was out of earshot. Then he leaned close to Griffin’s hanging head. When he spoke, his voice was the slightest of whispers.
“Can you hear me in there?” He licked Griffin’s earlobe, bit gently on the flesh. “Surely some part of you can hear me. I know you. I didn’t know what you looked like until now, but I know the smell of you, your foul breath. You have been delivered unto me as I knew you would be. You are the first. I will bring the others here. But for now, I will let you rot, hanging from these chains as I did for so long. I will let you stew in your own sour sweat, let you fear every approaching sound lest it be me. And I will return. I will do wonderful things to you. I will transform you as I have transformed so many others and, with your last breath, you will thank me as they thanked me. Wait for me now.”
Jack stepped away, feeling stronger, feeling mighty in his righteousness. He held up the lantern and let its light shine on the black walls that no longer held any power to cage him. He walked away from the cell and found Cinderhouse in the darkness and led him away through the passages, across the rivers and the graveyards and the ancient silent city streets.
Up and back to London.
16
Fiona knocked lightly on Claire’s bedroom door and waited until she heard Claire answer before she turned the knob and entered. The room was dark, only a single candle on the windowsill to dispel the shadows. Or perhaps the tiny flame was there to serve as a beacon for Walter, to bring him back safely. Claire was curled under an old off-white coverlet that was pulled up under her chin. Her blond hair glowed vivid orange in the candlelight, and the pillowy folds of the coverlet were grooved with deep purple bruises.
“Constable Winthrop is settled in now,” Fiona said. “He ate all the biscuits we had in the place. And he drank three cups of tea with milk. It’ll be a wonder if he can stand up from the chair.”
“He ate them all? All the biscuits?”
“I think so.”
“I was saving those.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s fine,” Claire said. She laughed. “I wasn’t really saving the biscuits. I suppose I’m just put out that we have a policeman underfoot and it’s the wrong one.”
“Yes,” Fiona said. “Why couldn’t they have sent Mr Hammersmith? We know him already. We would have felt completely safe with him right away.”
“I was talking about my husband. He’s a policeman, too.”
“Of course he is!” Fiona covered her mouth and turned to leave. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t go,” Claire said.
“I have things. I should do them.”
“Would you bring me a glass of water before you leave?”
“Of course.”
Fiona kept her eyes down and let her long hair fall across her face. She was a slender, pale girl with a calm demeanor and an inexpressive face. The youngest Kingsley girl had grown up without a mother. She had spent much of her childhood helping her father at his work in order to be close to him. She had walked around countless crime scenes with him, observing the bodies of murder victims, sketching the placement of their limbs, and making note of their wounds, a junior coroner’s assistant. Until the day Dr Kingsley decided that the morgue might not, after all, be the best environment for his daughter. He had sent her away, asked her to assist Claire until a permanent housekeeper could be found. But it was not the sort of work Fiona enjoyed.
She went to the washstand, where a ceramic cup sat next to a pitcher of water that had gone room temperature over the course of the night. Fiona noticed that the pail of dirty water from the morning’s stand-up wash was still sitting on the floor under the table. She wondered if she was supposed to empty it. Her duties in the Day household were still unclear, and it sometimes frustrated her that she didn’t know exactly what Claire wanted from her aside from simple companionship. She filled the cup and carried it to the bed, put it in Claire’s waiting hand.
“We ought to interview housekeepers again,” Fiona said. “And cooks. Cooks especially.”
“Oh, I know,” Claire said. “It’s just, I have no energy for it. We already know how hopeless it all is.” She took a long drink of water. Some of it dribbled down her chin and soaked into the coverlet.
They had had miserable luck in trying to find someone appropriate to help around the house. For some reason, the only women to apply for any position were horrible. On two separate occasions, they had hired a woman despite their misgivings, and both women had failed to return after their first days’ work. It really did seem like they were doomed to make do without help.
“So,” Claire said, “tell me about Sergeant Hammersmith. You seem terribly attached to the idea of him.”
Fiona felt herself blush. Her gaze fell on the coverlet, and she noticed a long squiggly seam of red thread. She bent and focused on it. In the shivering light of the candle, the red threads looked like letters and words, like a long sentence that progressed down the side of th
e coverlet from top to bottom and around its corner.
“What’s this?”
Claire set the water cup on the bedside table and pulled the coverlet down, bunched the side of it in her hands, and pulled it closer to her face. She smiled.
“Those,” she said, “are the names of everybody—of every woman, at least—in my family, going back for, oh, simply generations. More than a hundred years. Perhaps even more than two hundred years.”
“Their names? You mean your grandmother’s name?”
“And her grandmother. Look, here’s my mother’s name stitched in there.”
Claire pulled her feet up and Fiona sat on the edge of the bed.
“And, look, beside it there . . .” Fiona said.
“My name,” Claire said. “My mother added my name to this when I was born. It’s a sort of record of the family, passed down from daughter to daughter.”
Fiona could see the pride in Claire’s face as she read the names of her ancestors, all marching side by side down the sturdy white fabric. How many generations of housekeepers had carefully washed the heirloom? And how long since it had been cleaned? A thought occurred to Fiona, and she smiled at Claire, her eyes wide.
“If your baby is a girl . . .”
“It can’t happen.”
“Mr Day wants a boy?”
“No, no, I mean I’m rubbish at sewing. I could never ruin this old thing by stitching it up with some illegible clump of a name. Future generations would look at it and say, ‘What went wrong over here?’ And my great-great-great-granddaughter would say, ‘Oh, well, that’s where Claire Day, the infamously bad seamstress, destroyed everything.’ And besides, you’re avoiding the question about our dear Mr Hammersmith. I suppose he is rather handsome, isn’t he? Or he would be if you could somehow get him in a clean shirt every once in a while.”
