Tenfold More Wicked

by Viola Carr

  I knot my crackling dark hair, and check my reflection, sans spectacles. Christ, we looks a sight. This dull gray dress makes me out like a ghost, corpse-pale face and shadow-ringed eyes. I giggle. I feel like them ladies of the night from Soho, putting on a fancy fakement. Sir, you make me blush. Be gentle!

  Or maybe the particular sort. I pout, and crack an imaginary whip, ka-chishh! You’re a bad boy, Gerald. I shall spank your skinny arse with this handy riding crop until you repent. Ha ha! Plenty o’ cringing weasels in Soho would pay good coin for a whuppin’ from Dr. Eliza. Missed her calling, that’s what.

  Giggling, I creep down the back stairs. In the alley, chilly air hangs damp, them promised warm nights of summer stubbornly unarrived. Fog haunts the streets, shrouding the almost-full moon. When I reach New Oxford Street, thick clouds streak. By the time I stomp down the twisting lane with the cracked blue-lit doorway, it’s raining, her stupid dress is soggy to my skin, and I’m gripped by a right foul mood. On the broken wall by the entrance, someone’s scrawled this season’s revolutionary claptrap.

  INCORRUPTIBLE

  I salute it, mocking. Vicious crop of bomb-happy madmen, if you ask me, though Eddie Hyde seems to enjoy their antics. Shoot Her Crazy Majesty down, lads, and her god-rotted Philosopher with ’er. Suits me.

  Chilly rainwater drips from my hair, seeping down into my bodice. I knock. The beady-eyed door-keeper’s head pokes out. “What?”

  I leer. “The watchword’s let me the fuck in, snotface.”

  He grunts and oozes aside, for he recognizes me. The boss’s daughter, Princess Lizzie of the Rats’ Castle, second only to King Eddie hisself.

  Don’t work like that, o’ course. No jeweled tiara, none o’ that shit. Only that Eddie cares for me, and they say you mess with Eddie’s cares at your peril. Right. Tell it to Becky’s red-caped killer.

  I sashay down the pitch-black corridor in the musty sweetness of fairy dust. Push aside a creaking leather curtain and I’m in.

  My eyes boggle. Magic ripples over my skin, creeping beneath my clothes to pleasure me. The noise smothers, voices and laughter and music of all sorts, endlessly layered and reflected. So loud it judders nails into my bones.

  In here, your perception stretches, drunken yet alert. Most of the Rats’ Castle lies underground, bigger than you’d think possible from outside. A vast atrium, gallery stacked upon gallery, down and forever till I can’t see no bottom. Giddy plank walkways criss-cross, lurching above nothing. Rat-nosed boys, squirrel-tailed urchins, and odder chimeras caper and swing, whooping with the thrill.

  Around the galleries, the crowd heaves and roars, a force of nature. Deformed, warped folk, half-man and half-beast, the magical and the mad. If the god-rotted Royal would burn you, this be the place for you. Hair of all colors, frilled skirts and rough-spun coats, weirder rigs of silk and brocade, from rags to the richest finery. I smell perfume, pig shit and noisome coal smoke, gin and absinthe, and the storm-rich scent of aether.

  Curious fingers tug my skirts. A blueberry-faced boy thrusts a sloshing drink into my hand. Wine, sin’s bloody red. I drink deep. “Hail to the King!” I yell, and a pig-snouted bloke cheers. “Incorruptible!”

  The buzz is immediate, intoxicating . . . but I’m troubled. Something’s off tonight. The crowd’s pushy, hungry, ripe with muttered curses. They flex yellow claws, bare sharp teeth in thirsty grins. I can taste their rage, bitter and fragile like my own, the sulfur-piss tang of gunpowder. The air bristles, armed, a battle poised to erupt.

  But I lets ’em sweep me along, down ladders and across bridges, beneath archways and down drainpipes, always down, to where Eddie’s carnival dances its tipsy waltz. His carousel, wacky plaster creatures draped in electric lights, bobbing in that eerie organ melody. Men on stilts, acrobats flipping, fire-eaters and blade-swallowers and sultry belly dancers with naked breasts soaked in gin. All roads lead to Eddie.

  Here’s a card game, deep in some dim-lit corner of a forgotten gallery. A fire pit glows red, and the table’s heaped with strange collateral. Coins, clothing, a hedgehog in a wicker cage. A broken piece of Enforcer, two brass forearm bones and a jointed hand. A coil of green hair tied in a stained love knot. A pot of congealing blood. Is that a kidney in a box? Here, you really can bet your life.

  My father’s slouched in a winged chair, dented top hat askew. Empty bottles litter the floor. He points with his cigar, a wave of foul smoke, and laughs his fucking head off.

  Drunk, Marcellus Finch might say, as a skunk. Excy-llent.

  I glance around for Johnny the rat-fink traitor, thicker with my father than he dared, for ten years, to let on. Don’t see him. Good. I’m still too heartsore and guilty to face Johnny now.

  I strut up behind Eddie, clap fingers over his eyes. Inhale him, booze and sadness and darksweet alchemy. “Gin,” I announce. “Game’s mine.”

  “Eliza?” Weary, alight with hope.

  Fuck him. I drop a kiss on his forehead. “Try again.”

  A grin erupts. “Lizzie, m’darling. Thought you was someone else.” He jumps up, flinging his cards aside—his hand were rubbish anyway, a pair o’ tens is all—and knocking the hedgehog to the floor. The cage smashes, and the creature’s spiny arse scuttles away. A furry-faced cove sprints after it, snuffling with a long agile nose. Mayhap the hedgehog’s his lady friend.

  “Your Majesty.” I spread Eliza’s prim skirts, a proper lady.

  “How do?” My father flips me a bow. He ain’t tall—his shoulder’s sort of hunched, if you must know, and he lurches about lopsided like a cross-eyed tortoise—but somehow he’s graceful, too, vigorous as a man half his age.

  “Not too shabby. We need to talk.”

  “Good day, I trust you’re well, how quaint, good golly gosh, is that the time?” He thumps me again with that rakish Eddie grin, what must’ve spelled doom for so many enraptured ladies in its day. Hell, today’s still its day, because I want to be sore at him for loving Eliza best—doesn’t everyone, God rot their eyes?—but suddenly I ain’t.

  I ain’t. He gives me those big, mad eyes—storm-gray, like hers and Henry’s, but glimmering like thunder clouds with the weird—and I want to grab him and dance. Laugh like jackals to the stars, dive into madness together and die.

  He twirls me on one hand, flaring my skirts. Tough hands, roughened like no gentleman’s should be. “Holy goat’s balls. Don’t know ’bout the rest of these giddy bastards, but I’m in love.”

  This is Eddie’s idea of charm.

  “Piss off,” mutters I as we go to the gallery’s rail to survey his domain. “I’m out of twig, all right?”

  “What for? You in trouble?” Those storm clouds blacken, ominous. A muscle jumps in his cheek, and his once-handsome mouth twists into something cruel and ever-hungry.

  This, my friends, is how murder looks. Unless you’re a red-haired loon with a razor, but that’s a knottier sack of eels. And even as my guts recoil, my stupid girlish heart overflows.

  So easy, what with Eddie’s wild romantic soul, to forget what he is. The rascal what spat Henry Jekyll’s good intentions to the dust, what took the good doctor’s wife to bed on the sly, and produced us—and then hurled her down the stairs when she wouldn’t have him no more.

  The devil what gave Eliza her elixir, and cursed me to this nether-life forever.

  “Ain’t nothing.” A drunken funeral cortege staggers through the carnival, black crepe and lacquered coffin. A fat tattooed dwarf howls a dirge, accompanied by groaning organ pipes. “Setting a trap, is all. A toff square-rigged, stabbed a girl in Seven Dials. Hooked nose, wears a red-lined cape.”

  Hyde’s expression clears. “You might try Mrs. Fletcher’s in Soho. The girls there cater to his sort.”

  I wonder what “his sort” means. “Rich and ugly?”

  A wicked-sweet grin. “Been there myself. ’Cept I always act the perfect gent.” Emphasis on the act.

  I grin, too, but I’m squirming like a wet worm. What the hell do you say t
o your father, when he starts on about whorehouses? Ho ho, good one, Papa, go and get your rocks off?

  But it’s worse than daughterly embarrassment. His brutal smile unnerves me. I’ve heard the sin-black whispers. God help the sorry lady of pleasure who lucks into Eddie for a customer.

  “Where’s the Queen of Tarts tonight? Powdering her pig?” His lady, green-skinned and lithe and nutty as a Yuletide pudding.

  His grin don’t fade. “She disappointed me.”

  And I eyes that severed green lovelock on the card table, and wish I never asked.

  I get to business. “Have I got a deal for you,” says I, and tell of the Philosopher stopping Eliza in the street. A truce, Royal and Rats. Cease fucking fire. “Talk is, you’ve got new friends,” I add. “Those boom-happy Incorruptibles and their Mr. Nemo. I dunno, Eddie. Them new Enforcers, half human . . . there’s a bloody lot of ’em. Maybe some arrangement?”

  Eddie laughs.

  Raucous, reckless laughter. The fire pit flares, and far above, fireworks shower green and golden. When Eddie Hyde laughs, lights shine brighter. It’s contagious. The card-table folk are guffawing, tears streaking pockmarked cheeks. Everyone’s lost it, an outbreak of mirth fever with no cure.

  I start, too. I can’t help it. Hoarse, belly-splitting howls. It feels good.

  At last, it subsides. We wipe away tears. God forgive me, Eddie, but I love you. And you won’t never love me back. Not the way you love her, all hopeful and starry-eyed. I’m forever the embarrassing stepchild, and deep in the rotted bilges of my soul, I burn to KILL her for it.

  “Arrangement,” sputters King Eddie, still chortling like the loon he is. “You’re fucking joking.”

  And that’s all that need be said.

  An hour later, the parlor of Mrs. Fletcher’s high-class whorehouse in Soho. Brocade drapes, lacquered white furniture, and a girl named Rose in silk stockings and a French maid’s outfit. Sixteen if she’s a day, pert boobs and a heart-stoppingly high bottom.

  Rose chews a candied apple, pigtails bobbing. “Depends. You a snout?”

  I point at Eliza’s drab skirts. “Do I look like a copper’s whore?”

  “Fucking copper’s wife, more like. Aye, I knows ’im. Or should I say,” she adds, dropping into a fancy accent and tittering girlishly, “yes, most definitely, I’m acquainted with this fine fellow. What you might call a most singular visage. Heh heh! How awfully quaint.”

  She’s startled me, I confess. Didn’t think she’d talk so easy. “He got a name?”

  “Milord.” Back into bored Soho drawl. “As in, ‘Certainly, milord, I’d be honored to suck you off,’ or, ‘God, yes, milord, jam it up my arse, please!’”

  Snicker. “Is he a lord, then?”

  “He never said he ain’t. I figure he’s in the Commons at least. Forever on about committees and petitions and the like.”

  I scrunch my nose, recalling Eliza’s snotty insults. Have some self-respect. The whores, I get. But why would some Parliament-minded cove hoof it down to Seven Dials and slaughter Becky Pearce? Don’t make no sense.

  Rose rouges plump cheeks. “Anyway, your red-caped gent’s rich. Flashes gold as if it ain’t nothing.”

  “How much does he pay?”

  She names the figure.

  “Jesus wept. What d’you do that’s worth that?”

  She lips her lolly. “Pay and I’ll show you.”

  I smirk. “Likes it exotic, then?”

  Rose blanches, just a little. “He’s all right. Talks fancy, likes a game. Harmless once you get your hand on it. It’s his gang of roughs what’s the trouble. They ain’t gents, not especially the bigger one. Tips extra if you fake it while he bites your titties.”

  Charming. My erstwhile pursuer, stuffed into sausages as we speak? Or—more likely—his still-breathing mate with the rusty nicked knife?

  “But I ain’t ’is regular,” Rose adds. “The red-caped bloke, I mean.”

  And now we gets to it. I flick her a pair of crowns.

  She checks for clipping with an experienced eye. “Saucy May,” says she. “We rents upstairs rooms to streetwalkers. She’s one. Skinny chit, yellow hair.”

  “Thanks.” I halt, inspired by some impulse I don’t comprehend. “Last thing. You know a cove with a parrot?”

  Rose sucks her lolly. “Sure. Pirate Ship Gino. Raw-boned lag with three gold earrings and the clap.” Smirking, she waggles her little finger. “Likely got it fucking that bloody bird, if you get my meaning.”

  In Soho’s stinking rainbow streets, I’m asking for Saucy May.

  I’ve coin, so it’s quick work. A fat, sloppy cove shrugs, a flower girl shakes her lice-cropped head. But a half-drunk Turk sloshes gin on my skirts and waves me towards Crown Street—sixpence—and then a skinny Creole boy with a furred growth on his face points me towards a side lane. Tuppence, thanks very much, and cheap at the price.

  This lane looks dark and noisome, hell of a place for a working girl. I slosh through puddles towards it, to look for Saucy May . . . but a flash of multi-colored waistcoat swings my head.

  Upturned like a bad shilling, it’s Sheridan Lightwood.

  In a gin palace doorway, reflected in gleaming mirrors to infinity. Disheveled, that glossy hair loose, holding nasty palaver with stormy-faced Penny Watt. Penny’s tricked out like a Covent Garden “lady,” her tight-laced ivory bodice showing acres of skin, and she’s snapping at Sheridan like a shark.

  I sidle into the shadows, peel my ears back.

  “I didn’t ask you to . . . I don’t care!” The rest’s drowned out. And then, louder. “You can’t keep doing this, Sherry. Leave me be. You’re not my responsibility anymore!”

  Sherry snaps something back, a cruel glint in his eye. She slaps him, pow! He recoils, and arcs up to hit her back, but cries off at the last second. She smirks and struts away, a shimmer of auburn curls and satin-black satisfaction.

  Sherry curses and kicks the mud. Grabs up his bag—a big one with a buckled top—and storms off.

  In my direction.

  I slip deeper into the shadows, and trip on something in the slosh. A dead bird stares up at me, his yellow plumage grot-soaked. Neck twisted backwards, like a dog snapped it. A parrot.

  Heh. Chin up, Gino my lad, wherever you are. Skanky fowl had the clap anyhow, I heard.

  Sheridan storms by, muttering with discontent. I wait until he’s all but swallowed by the gloom, and sneak after.

  He knocks at the door of a creaking two-story house. What’s this place? No sign outside. Candlelight leaks from a cracked shutter above. Door opens, Sherry enters . . . and inside, I spy a hooked nose, slashing dark brows, a flurry of satiny scarlet.

  Holy shitwallop. Red Cape.

  A man of particular politics, Rose said. Lurking in a flophouse? I’m thinking this ain’t no law-abiding Tory establishment. Money’s changing hands, Sherry’s pulling a dark cylindrical shape from his bag . . . I can’t hear their jawing. Frustrated, I inch closer, into the finger of candlelight.

  A heavy grip bruises my arm, yanks me about. “If it isn’t the same nosy tart.”

  Big body, squashed head, pale eyes hard like a starved dog’s. Red Cape’s henchman, the hulking brute what bites titties. An extra tip if you fake it.

  Shit.

  I struggle, ripping free. He just grabs me tighter. I kick. He dodges. I bite. He slaps me across the forehead. Boinng! My vision bounces, my ears ring, and when I fetch back my senses, he’s dragging me into a crack between two decaying buildings.

  “Let me go, you rot-crotch son of a louse!” I fight, rage, kick up mud. No one pays me mind. Another yowling dolly ain’t no front-page news. I fumble for Eliza’s stinger, but he knocks it to the mud, and voltage cracks harmlessly and snaps out.

  He hurls me against a wall and rummages in his trousers. “Shut it, twat. I’ll teach you to spy where you’re not wanted.”

  “Would you, sir? I’d be ever so grateful.” I fly at him, biting, clawing, jabbing my knee fo
r his balls. If he’s hard, so much the better.

  But his lips stretch into a whack-job cannibal’s grin, and it ain’t his cock he pulls out.

  It’s that jagged, rusty blade.

  He slashes. Rrrp! My skirts tear. I scream, shock rather than pain. He covers my lips, slamming me back against the splintery wall. Not a happy place, Miss Lizzie. My heart’s thumping, so fierce I can’t hear a goddamn thing, not his lustful panting, not his giggles, nor that blunt notched blade hacking for my flesh . . .

  Wet warmth splashes my face, blinding me.

  His hulking frame jerks. His grip falters . . . and he’s gone.

  I stagger, gasping. Paw the wet stuff from my eyes.

  The henchman flops in the mud, blood spurting from his neatly slashed throat. His fingers jiggle. The spurt dwindles to a trickle, and he’s still.

  Silver flashes in the dark, a crimson-licked blade. Drip, drop, you’re dead. And a shifting shadow by the wall coalesces into a man.

  A man with luminous eyes, green like fairyshine and just as mad.

  Mr. Todd bows. “Excuse me, madam. Was this fellow bothering you?”

  A MURDERER’S AUTOGRAPH

  W-WELL,” STAMMERS I, “THIS IS UNEXPECTED.”

  Mr. Todd tips his hat, that razor still dripping in his left hand. Black tailcoat, red necktie with a gold-and-diamond pin. The perfect deadly gent. “Forgive me, we’ve not been properly introduced—”

  “I know who you are.” My sweaty fingers clench. My stinger’s lost, buried in the mud. And I can’t get past him. This forsaken dead-end alley’s too narrow. Brilliant. The murderer what covets Eliza’s blood just saved my life, and I’m cornered. Weaponless, too, but for a flirty smile and a pair of juicy thighs, and I wouldn’t wager a bunch on those to distract this death-loving loon.

  Still, I can’t help but stare. He and I ain’t never met in the flesh. He’s a lean man, is Mr. Todd, but striking for all that, sharp chin and cheekbones and inquisitive nose. In the gloom, that candlelight seeks him out like a cheating sweetheart, abandoning all else to darkness.