“Victor, I shall lose my honor to them at this rate,” Lily said, feigning a yawn.
Eddie joined in the attack but complained, “The trouble is, he’s so tall. From where we stand, he’s all body and no head.”
“Still you have bested me,” I said, gritting my teeth against the struggle to strike back. I clutched my side dramatically. “I will piss blood for a week.”
“ ‘Bested you’?” Jack repeated in a simpering voice. “There’s no reward for ‘bestin’ you.’ You are dead already, only you don’t know it.”
“Yes, he does,” Lily said, with such mirth that I turned. Eddie grabbed the board again and raked it along my face. I knocked him down so hard he lay senseless in a puddle.
“What was it that spurred you just then?” she asked, jumping up. “The memory of what you are? Then think on it once more, for the last ruffian will not give up. And if my laughter is not enough, look at the brute and see our little songbird’s Harry. Imagine his heavy hand against her pimply face. Think on that and on what else Harry is doing to her this night for what you did to him the last.”
Sharp pain in my lower back so coincided with her words I thought they had cut me. Fire flashed up my spine and down my leg and made my foot jerk. I reached around. Jack’s hand was beneath mine, gripping a knife handle.
Lily gasped.
“Victor!” she said in a hushed voice.
The rage locked up inside me rushed out through the open wound, faster than blood and just as mortal—rage at this thief who stupidly sought out his own death; at Harry Burke, who, though as cruel as I, could live as a man; at Lily, who spoke such tormenting words of truth; at myself, who had felt dark enjoyment last night at the feel of bones being crushed—so much rage I trembled. The blood within me boiled to a dance that shook each limb.
I grabbed Jack’s wrist, jerked him so viciously his arm popped from its socket, and held him, dangling, his body supported now not by a joint but by tender muscle and skin that threatened to rip beneath the weight. He lifted his weasel face to the night sky and screamed. Around him decaying walls echoed both his agony and my answering laugh.
“It is enough,” Lily said firmly.
I looked down. She had come to stand beside me, an act far braver than she could ever imagine.
Like a savage inarticulate beast, I shook the body to indicate I was not done with it, causing Jack to howl again.
“It is enough,” Lily repeated, very softly, touching my hand.
What should she care, I thought, about my actions or their consequences? Defiantly I snapped Jack upward again. His scream wound down to a whimper that so annoyed me I at last swung him by the arm against the nearest building. His face striking the brick at last silenced him.
“Come with me, Victor. He will bother us no more.”
“Come with … you?” I said, trying to let the overflow of anger spill out through my panting breath. Blood beat in my ears, and my limbs throbbed. “Did you not goad me to act?”
“To do what was necessary to keep our freedom.”
Was this freedom?
Lily reached up and touched my chest.
“You are hurt, and the knife still sticks from your back. But he stabbed you through the cloak. Perhaps it is not deep.”
I reached round for the blade’s handle.
“Let me,” she said. “You must sit first. You’re too tall for me to pull it out straight. Sit there, where I was before.”
I would have made tinder of the crates had I sat. I used the sturdiest as support and knelt, sucking in my breath with the effort. Lily leaned her shoulder against my spine for leverage. The knife burned as much going out as going in and I had to steel myself against turning on her.
She unfastened my cloak, let it drop, gently pulled up my shirt to examine me.
“He stabbed you just above the hip, too close to the side to do the damage he intended. Either that, or all your insides are in the wrong place. Perhaps tonight you’re fortunate to be a monster.”
Reaching beneath her dress, she ripped cloth from one of her undergarments, wadded it up, and pressed it tightly against the wound to staunch the bleeding. Then she guided my hand to where hers had been and told me to keep it pressed there. When I twisted round with the movement, again my breath whistled through my teeth. She ripped the rest of the undergarment into strips that she tied round my waist to secure the bandage.
“When we find the doctor, you must see him, too. You may need stitches.”
With her continued display of concern, I could not trust what words might come from my lips. As if knowing how she perplexed me, she said, “Do not mistake what I do for affection. I still hate you. Yet I could not manage without your protection. I will go north with you to the islands you mentioned. When my home has been restored, you will escort me back. Till then I must, at the least, keep you alive.”
She spoke of her hate as sweetly as if she gave compliments, smiling to show a dimpled cheek. And why not? At her wedding, had not her cheeks shone beautiful and fair while the worm ate at her guts?
Yet I understood. I myself was no more than a trained horse that could strike the ground and thus appear to do sums. I write, having only the words of men and none of their feelings.
Lily was too tired to go farther, so we are resting in a sheltered corner. I grow tired of writing, so I pull my other book, Walton’s journal, from my pocket and read.
She writes: Did I think of her today? No, I did not. This morning I saw the creature’s spoor, I smelled where it marked its territory, I heard in the forest’s stunned silence that it had passed just minutes before. Should I see a pile of dung and think of her? I cannot understand her.
Did she come to Germany, come to show off her new husband, to torment me? “See how well I have lived my life without you,” she seemed to say. I thought the girl would be there, too. She said no, she must have this time alone with her husband. What shall I do? I need to see if the girl …
My head is bound with a band of gold, wound ever tighter like a clock spring, tighter and tighter, till I think it is a crown of thorns I wear.
I played the madman for Margaret’s husband—the fool!—though she herself did not seem to notice. What does that signify? That I am not so mad as I thought? Or that I was mad before, and that is why she never noticed? He actually gave me money when we parted, as if he could buy her from me. How much is a sister worth? How much a wife?
I re-read the above. So many months have passed! Could I have written such blasphemy? I do not feel the time, I do not feel the changes in me. I had thought to play the madman for her husband, but the player has become the role. I am becoming mad.
Later
Walton’s insane portrait was a mirror into which I dare not look. Just the thought of it made me restless, which woke Lily. Even though it was too late to ask for a doctor, and no fit person was awake to ask, she insisted that we leave our rough shelter and walk through the city. As she followed me, her mood became silent.
We came to a part of Drexham that sat along a river. The water churned with an awful, deliberate sound and ran muddy and opaque. No breath stirred, save the frost from our own mouths. The odor that had accompanied us since the woodshed thickened and hung rank and pungent in the motionless air.
A terrible sound tore through the night—a long, low groan that hitched up into a high squeal, then just as suddenly was silenced.
Jack had cried so with his pain.
Nodding to myself, I walked with more purpose.
The building where the cry had originated was not surrounded by others the way the tenements were crowded together. It stood apart, backing directly onto the river. Despite the hour, dim lights shone in the first floor; and an open door cast a pale yellow square onto an empty stretch of fenced-in yard.
“The sound came from there,” Lily said. She lifted her head and sniffed. “The smell, too.”
I strode to the gate, entered, and crossed to the open door. The yard was wet a
nd sucked at my boots.
The wide doorway led just inside the building to a bare room floored in stone that had been heavily tracked with mud. The smell was painful, as of something gone rancid in the hot sun. Inside the room was a small wooden pen, about chest high to a man, that opened onto the door of a second room. Lily stepped into the pen to see better.
“Oh, my God!” she cried. I followed, anticipating what she had found.
The second room was awash in blood, as was the short muscular man who stood before us, holding a dripping blade. Bits of gore clung to his clothes, his beard, his fleshy though pale face. He wore a leather apron to little effect, as his entire front, both shirt and trousers, glistened red as though splashed with paint. At his feet lay a steer, its slit throat gushing a steady stream onto the already-drenched floor. Behind him skinned and gutted carcasses hung from wooden frames, their bodies still draining. Strewn about the floor, sometimes half-covered in blood, lay severed animal heads, their watchful eyes adding to the nightmarish scene.
The cry had led us to a slaughterhouse.
After twin nights of brutality, what more fitting place for me to consider my nature?
The blood-covered butcher scowled and waved the knife.
“You gave me a start!” he said. “It wasn’t enough I didn’t knock it out with the first blow.” He pointed toward a sledgehammer leaning against the pen. “Now you made me jump and I didn’t get a good bleed. A month from now some guv’ner will get a tough piece and blame me. And will I be able to blame you? No!”
He bent over and skinned the animal with a sureness and an economy of movement that were frightening to watch.
“We British must have our beef. Biggest beefeaters in the world, don’t you know. Give a man a steak and he can conquer the most savage tribe, eh?” He gave us a glance. “Still, it’s not often I get customers at midnight, and as strange as yourselves. Although, perhaps, that’s not why you’re here?” He gestured with his butcher’s knife in a way that emphasized its deadly efficient blade.
“I need a doctor,” Lily whispered. “But …” Her eyes darted wildly from body to bloody body.
“But you’re curious, huh? Let me show you.”
He returned to work, folding the steer’s skin and laying it atop a pile on a wooden table. He quickly sliced off the head, knocked it aside, and dragged the flayed body toward an empty frame. To the animal’s rear legs he attached metal fasteners that dug into the bone; these in turn were attached to ropes that led to the top of the frame. He meant to pull the carcass up to let it hang neck downward like the others. Straining against the weight, the man’s pale face mottled with the effort.
I walked across the slippery floor, took the ropes, and with one long pull hauled the body up by myself. The man tied it off quickly. Not quickly enough—my stab wound burned. If the bleeding had slowed, it no doubt started up again now.
“That’s right gentlemanly of you, sir,” he said, tying off the ropes. “It’s properly a three-man job but with my boy sick and the other one—well, the laggard was drunk again. But I’m not so grateful as to be foolish. Men have been killed for far less than a good piece of meat.” He took up the knife again.
“The woman spoke the truth. She needs a doctor.”
“And how did you decide to be askin’ such as me for a medical reference?”
“Look at me!” Lily said impatiently. She took off her blanket, holding it high so it did not drag on the filthy floor, and stepped closer to one of the lanterns. Its flickering light emphasized her ghoulishly thin face and shadowed eyes and showed how loosely her bride’s dress hung on her frame. “And look at him!” She jerked her head at me dismissively. “Should we stop a carriage in the park? Should we ask a Beau Brummell or one of his admirers?”
The sight of what would have confirmed another man’s suspicions seemed to finally erase the butcher’s.
“My name is Bishop. Slaughterin’ Bishop is what they call me.”
He extended his hand to me. Fresh blood hid neither the network of scars that crisscrossed his skin, scars enough to rival mine, nor the missing top joint of his thumb. Seeing me stare, Bishop laughed and held both hands up for Lily to see as well. On his other, the forefinger was also missing its first joint.
“A butcher’s hands, without doubt,” he said proudly. “The Masons have their secret shake and we have ours: wiggling our nubs against each other.” He fingered what was left of the thumb. “As long as there’s enough of a stump to rest the handle against, I won’t be without work.”
He crossed to his set of knives and picked up the largest.
“This is what you do every day?” Lily asked. Another woman, a man even, might have fainted at so much blood. I did not know whether to admire her ability to be unmoved, or to fear it.
“Yes, miss,” Bishop said, “and, as you can see, many a night, too.”
He dragged a large tin tub to the newly hoisted carcass, took the knife, and split the carcass down the middle of its chest. With one seamless motion he grabbed the flow of entrails with his left hand; with his right, he reached inside toward the back to free up the liver and pull it away. Using the knife again, he sliced through the diaphragm to loosen the heart and lungs and let the whole mess spill into the tub.
If Jack had been more clever with his knife, I wondered, what would he have found in me? Suddenly the room grew dark and tilted, and I had to grab the wooden frame that held the carcass for support. Bishop mistook my leaning close as my own interest and said: “Those that know, know it’s an art of sorts. One little nick”—he pointed at the intestines—“and you’ve poisoned half your customers. Course I’d deny it, say it was a storage problem.”
“What do you do …,” I began, still dizzy. “What do you do with the rest of the body?”
I made myself step closer to the tub. I had brutalized two men when a few strong blows would have achieved the same end. Perhaps I had been led here to be reminded of what I am.
“Oh, most everything gets used,” Bishop said. “The fat makes soap, heads and feet go for glue, skins get tanned, bones get ground for fertilizer. The bits that are left get swept out that hole there and washed into the river.”
Flipping back my cloak, I forced myself to plunge both hands into the tub’s sticky, already-cooling mess, not caring that it bloodied the sleeves and front of my shirt beyond cleaning. I drew out the enormous heart, still attached to veins and arteries. I half-expected it to start beating.
“What call do you get for organs?”
“Some are considered delicacies. I’ve a mind you’re leading me to something else.”
Lily laughed, though not cruelly.
“Yes, tell where you’re leading him, Victor,” she said, “where you’re leading yourself. Tell Slaughterin’ Bishop what sometimes happens to the organs. Show him.”
Bishop backed away and held up the knife.
Dropping the heart into the tub, I took off my cloak. I gave Bishop a moment to consider my face, then I pulled up my shirt to display my chest. I could not see whether the bandage at my back had soaked through.
“I’ve been laid open and filled up,” I said. “Some days I wonder with what.”
Bishop whistled appreciatively and grinned. “Sloppy work, that is. Still, I’d like to meet the butcher that did that.”
“’Twas no butcher, sir,” Lily said. “’Twas his father. A medical man. Or so Victor says. Is it possible? Or does he lie just to be sweet? Some men have the strangest way of courting.”
Bishop frowned.
“I know nothing about courtin’, miss, and as for your question—well, I guess anythin’s possible when you’re as ignorant as me.”
He picked up the steer’s heart and held it appraisingly. “Might be too big, though, even for you. Hogs, now, there’s a thought.”
“Hogs?” Lily laughed. “Oh, Victor, you shall make your fortune hunting truffles!”
I looked at my hands, and then at the bodies, the heads, the eyes
that looked back with their own questioning gaze. I had come here to shock myself, to turn the truths I had only read about in my father’s journal into bloody reality, to discover—what? What would Winterbourne have thought if he had been present tonight? What would he have thought of me?
Abruptly I pulled down my shirt and threw on my cloak. Its bottom edges were now soaked in blood.
“It’s past time we left,” I said.
“Is it?” said Bishop. “You never did tell me your business here.”
“We did! You never answered!” Lily cried. She clutched a fistful of the white lace at her abdomen. “Do you know a doctor?”
The butcher stared at us, his eyes moving from Lily to me and back again.
“None as would be happy to see the two of you at this hour. Go down three blocks to the Fightin’ Cock Tavern. Tell ’em Slaughterin’ Bishop said to give you somethin’ to eat and a place to stay. Tomorrow noon go to High Street and ask for Dr. Fortnam.”
I nodded my thanks and gestured to Lily. When she left, Bishop grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me close.
“Tell me,” he asked urgently. “What really happened to you?”
“I do not know.”
He grinned. “Well, it was a good joke, just the same. A hog’s heart, indeed.”
The shed behind the Fighting Cock, where we are now, holds a straw mattress, a blanket, and even a candle stub. There is no basin, no water to wash my bloody hands, but there will never be water enough to wash them clean.
In the corner, Lily sleeps as peacefully as ever, influenced by nothing. Still, her continued presence is becoming an unexpected comfort even beyond its novelty.
Though she has no understanding of the place’s significance, she has said she will accompany me to the Orkneys. We must fly there all the faster.
Later
At dawn we were wakened by a loud knock on the shed and found a bowl of oatmeal and a tankard of ale outside the door. Lily gagged on one spoonful, and I ate the rest.
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