by Steven Price
Foole studied his face in the pier glass. Cracks at the corners of his eyes, the skin sallow and bruised. His aged eyebrows, his nose raw in the cold, the heavy grooves lining his mouth. Somehow the light in his eyes had failed him. He stood in his baggy nightshirt feeling a cold seep through his stockings and thinking of Pinkerton, the mudlark, the tunnels. They had emerged exhausted and shivering into Leicester Square and parted ways with a silent handshake. They would meet again in two nights’ time at a public house on the edge of Shadwell and proceed in search of the Lascar’s opium den and there had been in the big man as he walked away some slow assured sadness that Foole had noticed and weighed.
He drifted across the room to the small writing desk under the window and sat, the folds of his nightshirt blooming around him. The curtains stood cracked and he could see the grey winter sunlight in the windows of the terraced house opposite. A widow lived there, he knew, a lonely woman who used to find any excuse to exit her house whenever Foole exited his. The follies of the grieving. Before going into the sewers Pinkerton had interviewed Martin Reckitt and discussed him, Foole. He did not believe it any real risk. No one but Fludd knew the truth of Edward Shade. He tried to imagine Reckitt sitting across from a man like William Pinkerton and betraying the confidences of the flash world and he could not do it. But then the Reckitt he had known hadn’t yet been ten years in the Tench.
What he wanted was some clarity. After a moment he withdrew a sheet of writing paper from a cubby and dipped a pen into a jar of ink and began to forge a letter of introduction from Mr. Gabriel Utterson, solicitor, to the wardens of Millbank Penitentiary.
Sometimes the only way to get, he thought, is by going. In the mid-morning chill he walked through the crowds of the Mall with the falsified letter in a satchel and cut through St. James’s Park and made his way down to the brown flats of the river, the low wall of the Embankment blue in the frost. He went alone and told no one of his going. When he looked out he could see the Albert Embankment across the river and the silhouettes of lampposts with arms upraised like crucified thieves. He crossed the frosted setts at an awkward slide.
After Brindisi he had sworn off revenge but some part of him still burned at a low boil and something else, some reluctant thing in his heart, made him understand visiting Reckitt now was the closest he would come to seeing Charlotte again in the quick. Was it a farewell he sought, was it some kind of leave-taking? A settling of accounts? For ten years he had kept himself from the Reckitts, their old haunts, their old accomplices, struggling to forget South Africa. The old thief would think his coming now a weakness, he knew. As perhaps it was.
At Millbank he presented his falsified letter with its seal to the gatekeeper and stood with his hands clasped in the small of his back waiting while the massive gates were lifted from their anchors and drawn back. I never seen you here afore, the gatekeeper muttered, opening the visitors’ book in the gatehouse. Foole blew on his cold fingers. He was dressed like a junior solicitor and carried a card to that effect and he frowned importantly.
The visitors’ hall was in a central wing on the lower tier. A long narrow room with spider-cracked walls and plaster peeling overhead and a row of dusty tables under windows. Foole shivered as he waited. Through the far door he saw a guard escort a grey withered man in brown prison-issue clothes. His wrists and ankles were shackled and he walked with a pained shuffling gait and it took Foole a moment to recognize his old accomplice. His chains were unlocked and drawn clanking through an iron anchor set into the wall beneath the table and then relocked and then the guard walked bored back to the far door. Reckitt glanced balefully behind him, as if longing to be returned to his cell.
Millbank had roughened him. He looked so much thinner, almost transparent, like a sheet of tissue paper held to a flame. Foole tried to see in the creature seated before him the confidence man of Port Elizabeth, that old elegance, but he could not do so. His fingers swollen, the nails cracked. A blue web of veins visible in his cheeks, his forehead. When he closed his eyelids he looked almost another man, leaning his face back into the shaft of sunlight coming in through the high window.
So Adam Foole has come to Millbank, Reckitt said, his voice creaking. He opened his eyes and met Foole’s stare and his own eyes were clear, pale, calm. It is true then, he said. About Charlotte.
Foole cleared his throat.
You would not be here if it weren’t, Reckitt said. His eyes hardened. I have been reminding myself that we are all here by the grace of the Lord. That His purpose is kindness.
Kindness, Foole muttered. He felt already unbalanced. He remembered uneasily this man’s talent for seizing and twisting a conversation.
What I did not expect, Reckitt said, is how difficult the fact of it would be to accept. I understand it is true. Charlotte is dead. But I do not believe it. I do not believe it because what happens in the outside does not happen in here.
Foole was silent. The grey light fell in squares across the far wall.
We are born dying, Reckitt murmured. Tell me, who would design it so? Why would the good Lord give us a body which must suffer? Reckitt paused. Unless He is not the good Lord after all. Unless goodness is not His concern.
If I wanted to talk faith I’d go to a priest. A real one.
There are no real priests. Reckitt studied his ravaged hands. You think I sound mad. I do not care. A man can stare at a thing for years and not see it for what it is.
Foole shook his head. I came to tell you I mean to find him, he said. Charlotte’s killer. I mean to make him suffer.
That is not why you came. What are you doing back in London?
Charlotte wrote me.
Charlotte.
Foole nodded, watching the thief’s sudden stillness. What she was working on, he said. She wanted to bring me into it.
Reckitt lowered his face and now Foole saw undisguised that plunging darkness he had once feared, years ago, a vortex inside the man’s heart vicious and without end.
You are a liar, Adam Foole, Reckitt said softly.
An ugly satisfaction rose in Foole, rose and was gone, leaving only a heaviness in its place. He was surprised by his own meanness despite their common grief and all at once he wanted to get the meeting over with. William Pinkerton came to see you, he said.
Reckitt tilted his head to one side, as if he had not heard.
William Pinkerton came to see you and you spoke with him.
I imagined shame would have kept you from coming here, Reckitt murmured. Do you know how the Church defines shame?
What did you tell Pinkerton, Martin? What did he ask?
Reckitt removed his hands from the table and settled them in his lap, the chains clinking. He studied Foole. The nature of the devil, he said quietly. That is what we discussed. Evil.
Evil.
Among other matters, yes.
I was one of those other matters.
Reckitt gave him a long hooded look. I see I am not the only one Mr. Pinkerton has visited, he said. Do you know what the devil is, Adam? He is our own deceit. Our own deceit made flesh. We make him by being what we are.
Pinkerton is not the devil, Martin.
Not Pinkerton.
Foole wondered if some mania had devoured the man after his long years alone in Millbank. You saved my life once, he murmured. Then you took what was mine by rights and left me in Brindisi to die. If you had—
I did not save your life, Adam.
Foole blinked.
I did not save your life. I spared it. Reckitt’s reptilian eyes held his own in a hard bright stare. I have often asked myself, would I know the truth if I met it? If I stood before it, would the truth know me? The ancient thief leaned in closer, he lowered his voice. Charlotte never came to you in Brindisi, as she was supposed to, Adam. Why? All those years ago, when she came back from Port Elizabeth, when I came to you in Brindisi. I spared your life why?
Something went through Foole then, some presentiment of dread, a lightness in his sk
ull. He could hear a machinery working deep in the blood box of his ears. Why? he said.
The old man gave him a disgusted look. Because she was with child.
With child.
Reckitt raised his fists over his head and shook his chains for the guard. The clatter was harsh in the quiet room. Foole watched the figure detach from the wall, drift lazily towards them.
You’re lying.
Reckitt shrugged.
Charlotte never had a child. You’re lying.
All right.
Prove it. Where’s this child now?
The old thief looked at Foole and Foole saw then all of the loneliness and brutality that was in himself also. The guard shambled nearer.
Reckitt leaned in close. Foole could smell the sour-milk smell of his skin.
It died, he said.
In better years the crates that arrived at the Emporium arrived sometimes weather-worn, the grey wood shrunken from salt water, jungle rainfall, the sudden cold of the English weather, and Foole would brace a knee against the first plank and with a crowbar begin to twist and pry back the warped nails in their beds. He had such a feeling inside his chest as he came out of the penitentiary. The sky was brown, the light in the faces he passed white and eerie. At a busy corner he waited for an omnibus and when it reined to a stop it was already packed. He clung to the roof seats as the nails in his heart creaked and bent slowly back.
He did not believe Reckitt’s lie, he was not so foolish as that. He got off the omnibus in a black mood, vicious with himself for having met with the man. Already the day had deepened though it was only just noon, the cold crackling its way across the slate roofs of the city. He was walking fast to keep his body distracted. Past a papery shop, writing implements and leather notebooks fanned out in its windows, past a tailor’s, a dry goods emporium, and on. He could not say what he had expected from Millbank but if he was honest with himself it was something to do with forgiveness and grief.
His throat began to ache. The warped nails prying loose. He slowed to a walk and then he stopped, a still figure in the centre of the footpath, while the city flowed on around him and under him and past.
Mr. Foole? a voice said at his elbow.
He glanced up and saw a florid face, a throat wrapped and double-wrapped in a scarf. It was Gabriel Utterson.
The unlikeliness of it left him staring in confusion and he raised his eyes and saw across the street the arched entrance to Utterson’s court offices and he saw the solicitor’s leather satchel tucked up under an elbow as if he was on pressing business and Foole did not understand how he had walked so far.
Gabriel, he said thickly.
I’m just stepping out, sir. Is it pressing? Then Utterson paused, peered into his face with a cold assessing eye. You are looking for me, sir?
He was startled to feel the man’s grip at his elbow, to feel himself guided to one side. No matter, the solicitor murmured. I am pleased to have found you. I had intended to seek you out.
Foole buttoned the uppermost eyelet of his coat and turned up his collar. He wanted only to be alone.
I’ve been thinking of what we discussed, the solicitor said. Rose has been much distressed. About Charlotte, I mean. He shifted his bulk, grasped Foole’s arm again. Rose believes she has found a contact for you. But it is complicated, there are conditions to be met.
Foole did not immediately reply. Seeing in his mind’s eye a blood-soaked bed, stained sheets bundled by candlelight, hearing the long low keening wail.
I’ve offended you, Utterson said. It was kindly meant, sir.
You haven’t. Foole held up a tired hand. You haven’t, Gabriel.
The solicitor’s left eye twitched under its lid. Rose says there has been talk, on the other side. She is willing to try to reach your Charlotte. The circle can be closed Tuesday next, sir, if the signs remain favourable. But success is not certain. I am told the attempt would be much magnified if you were to bring with you a particular companion.
How particular?
Not your Mr. Fludd. He would tear the room apart looking for conspirators. No, Rose has someone else in mind. A great advantage to reaching Charlotte would be if someone who was with her near her end were to sit with us. One of the last to see her alive. Something flickered in Utterson’s eyes, a quick sleek menace, and was gone.
Foole did not at first take the man’s meaning and then he did. Pinkerton?
Indeed.
That’s madness, Gabriel. That’s inviting the devil to dine.
Utterson folded his chin into the scarf at his throat. We would need to be cautious, yes.
The man will start a file on all of us.
I rather expect he has already started on you.
Foole paused, his breath clouding in the cold. I won’t ask Pinkerton, Gabriel.
Are you so protective of him?
I won’t see the man provoked. Nor should you.
Utterson’s eyes were sharp. I hear stories, Mr. Foole. Stories I can scarcely credit. Midnight excursions among the mudlarks of Blackfriars, for instance. I was sure they were mistaken, that you would not keep such company as William Pinkerton.
Company you would share.
To facilitate the seance, sir. Only that.
The two men stood under the cold archway while crowds of law clerks crushed past and the horse-drawn omnibuses rattled by in the loud street. Foole thought of Charlotte sitting convalescent at an afternoon window watching sunlight play across a turned-over garden and he imagined a silence inside her. He refused to concede his private business to a man such as this.
Adam, Utterson was murmuring, you know my sister’s integrity. She makes no assurance of contact. It is not a deceit. Sometimes the worlds come together as we would wish, sometimes they do not. Rose can only promise she is willing to try.
High overhead the stone buildings loomed, canescent and sinister.
If one opens their ears, it is a beautiful message, sir, Utterson was murmuring. Beautiful. And yet so few wish to hear it. How stubborn we are. How easily frightened.
Foole could glimpse a melancholy in his voice like light through the cracks in a floor though it was a light he could not stand on and a floor that would hold no weight. Grief was selfish, grief was angry. He would damn any who would take it from him. He knew this the way he knew he was right-handed and that a scar cut like a question mark deep into his cheek under his whiskers. Grief was a part of him, a part of how he had lived, what he had been made from.
I’ll sit with her, he said. But I make no promises about Pinkerton.
He was a dead man when he left the field hospital outside Cheat Mountain and already buried in a soldier’s grave when he fled north, into Ohio. The war had drained the country even then and he walked in ruined shoes through deep snow feeling the wind biting at his neck and seeing no sign of life. Waggons standing unhitched in the road. Farmhouses with doors standing open and snowdrifts blown inside. Christmas morning found him asleep in a barn rolled in straw and the animals long since gone. When the year turned a week later he was huddled under a railroad bridge in west Pennsylvania with two other deserters none trusting the others while a low fire burned in a rusted barrel. He was by that time wearing women’s gloves with the fingers cut out and a farmhand’s woollens and boots that reached halfway to his thighs. The men huddled with him looked old and savage but they gave him his space and he wondered for the first time how he himself must look. When he broke the ice to clean his face the next morning he saw hollow eyes, a gaunt stare, the haunted face of a grown man. All night trains rattled past overhead, snow sifting through the ties all around them in the darkness dreamlike and sad.
By the tenth of January he had caught a boxcar in the freezing wind and ridden across the state to New York, starving, feeling a lightness burn up out of his legs and hands. He did not know what he was. He was not exactly a deserter but nor was he a free man. He would think sometimes of his old captain, wondering if he had found the death he had sought. Foole trie
d his hand at pickpocketing in the railroad stations but he was too weak and miserable-looking and could not get near his marks. He knew legally that Sergeant Shade had died and so at last he gave up and enlisted again under a new name in a regiment out of Rikers Island. Once more he pocketed the forty-dollar advance on his bounty and shortly afterwards he leaned his rifle against a rough barricade in the frozen mud pits around the unfinished Capitol and fled from his picket into the night.
A door had opened, he had glimpsed a new kind of war. In February he made his way north to Boston, he enlisted under a third name in exchange for a further forty dollars. This bounty he accepted like a boy just in from farm country, like a boy dazzled by the sight of it. He had burned through that first bounty in dice games with the other recruits but now he had it in mind to set something aside for a venture after the war. He jumped again and re-enlisted back in New York the following week feeling a kind of eerie shadow at his back and here his luck failed him at last. The parade ground was clear of snow but hard-packed and cracking from the frost when he heard a familiar voice call out, Sergeant? and when he glanced lazily back he found himself staring up into the crossed blue eye of Captain Roemer.
Sergeant Shade, Roemer said. He was leaning on a crutch, his left trouser leg folded back and pinned at the knee. His sharp teeth smiled in disbelief.
You’re mistaken, sir, Foole said. And walked calmly away.
But that night two soldiers came for him in his bunk and hauled him half dressed into the cold and beat him severely. He was handcuffed, interrogated, beaten again.
It was the end of March by then. He was held in a stockade in that northern military camp for several weeks with two other deserters and there was a desperation and a fear etched in each face for they knew what lay ahead. Roemer had come limping into the stockade one day with a quiet triumph and explained to the guard that the three prisoners were to be shipped south to the Army of the Potomac as deserters and cowards. There would be no court martial. In the Capitol they would be held until the army mobilized and sailed for the James River. When the battles began the deserters would be shackled in irons and shoved stumbling into the front lines without weapons and forced at gunpoint to run at the Confederate positions.
