Margo opened her mouth to bite out a sharp reply; then managed to bite her tongue at the last instant. “I’ve been to New York,” she said, instead, voice rough. “It stinks. Almost worse than this.” She waved a hand at the poorly dressed, hard-working people bustling past, at the women loitering in Church Passage, women eyeing the men who passed, at the ragged children playing in the gutter outside the Sir John Cass School, children whose parents couldn’t afford to send them for an education, children who couldn’t even manage to be accepted as charity pupils, as Catharine Eddowes had been many years previously, whose parents kept them out of compulsory public-sector schools in defiance of the new laws, to earn a little extra cash. How many of those dirty-faced little girls tossing a ball to one another would be walking the streets in just a few years, selling themselves for enough money to buy a loaf of bread and a cupful of gin?
They left Mitre Square and headed east once more, crossing back into Metropolitan Police jurisdiction, and made their way up Middlesex Street, jammed with the clothing stalls which had given the street its nickname of Petticoat Lane. Margo and Shahdi pushed their way through the crowd, recording the whole scene on their scout logs. Women bargained prices lower on used petticoats, mended bodices and skirts, on dresses and shawls and woolen undergarments called combinations, while men poked through piles of trousers, work shirts, and sturdy boots. Children shouted and begged for cheap tin toys their mothers usually couldn’t afford. And men loitered in clusters, muttering in angry tones that “somefink ought to be done, is wot I says. We got no gas lamps in the streets, it’s dark as pitch, so’s anybody might be murdered by a cutthroat. And them constables, now, over to H Division, wot they care about us, eh? Me own shop was robbed three times last week in broad daylight by them little bastards from the Nichol, and where was a constable, I ask you? Don’t care a fig for us, they don’t. Ain’t nobody gives a fig for us, down ‘ere in the East End . . .”
And further along, “Goin’ to be riots in the streets again, that’s wot, mate, goin’ to be riots in the streets again, an’ they don’t give us a decent livin’ wage down to docks. I got a brother in a factory, puts in twelve hours a day, six days a week, an’ don’t bring ‘ome but hog an’ sixpence a week, t’ feed a wife an’ five children. God ‘elp if ‘e comes down ill, God ‘elp, I say. Me own sister-in-law might ‘ave to walk the streets like that poor Polly Nichols, corse I can’t feed ‘er, neither, nor ‘er starvin’ dustpan lids, I got seven o’ me own an’ the shipyard don’t pay me much over a groat more’n me brother brings ‘ome . . .”
Margo cut across to Bell Lane, just to get away from the press of unwashed bodies and the miasma of sweat and dirt and despair rising from them, then led the way north along Crispin to Dorset Street, one of London’s most infamous thoroughfares, lined with shabby, unheated doss houses. It was even money that every second or third woman they saw on the street was up for sale at the right price. “Dosset Street,” as it was nicknamed by the locals, was still half asleep despite the fact that the sun had been high over London’s rooftops for hours. Many of the women who used these doss houses worked their trade until the early hours of the morning, five and six A.M., then collapsed into the first available bed and slept as late as the caretakers would let them.
Miller’s Court, site of the fifth known Ripper murder, lay just off Dorset Street, through an archway just shy of Commercial Road. Directly across the street from the entrance to Miller’s Court lay Crossingham’s Lodging House, where Annie Chapman stayed by preference when she possessed the means. The killer had chosen his victims from a very small neighborhood, indeed.
Margo and Shahdi Feroz ducked beneath the archway, passing the chandler shop at number twenty-seven Dorset Street. This shop was owned by Mary Kelly’s landlord, John McCarthy. Six little houses, each whitewashed in a vain attempt to make them look respectable, stood in the enclosed court where the final Ripper murder would take place, some three months from now. McCarthy’s shop on the corner did a brisk business, it being a Friday. The younger McCarthys’ voices were audible through the open windows, squabbling in a boisterous fashion.
At one of the cottage windows, a strikingly beautiful young woman with glorious strawberry blond hair leaned out the window to number thirteen. “Joseph! Come in for breakfast, love!”
Margo started violently. Then stared as a thickset man hurried across the narrow court to open the door to number thirteen. He gave the beautiful blonde girl a hearty kiss. My God! It’s Mary Kelly! And her unemployed lover, the fish-porter, Joseph Barnett! Mary Kelly’s laughter floated out through the open window, followed by her light, sweet voice singing a popular tune. “Only a Violet I Plucked From My Mother’s Grave . . .” Margo shuddered. It was the same song she’d be heard singing the night of her brutal murder.
“Let’s get out of here!” Margo choked out roughly. She headed for the narrow doorway that led back to Dorset Street. She had barely reached the chandler’s shop when Shahdi Feroz caught up to her.
“Margo, what is it?”
Margo found dark eyes peering intently into her own. Shadows of worry darkened their depths even further. “Nothing,” Margo said brusquely. “Just a little shook up, that’s all. Thinking about what’s going to happen to that poor girl . . .”
Mary Kelly had been the most savagely mutilated of all, pieces of her strewn all over the room. And nothing Margo could do, no warning Margo could give, would save her from that. She understood, in a terrible flash of understanding, how that ancient prophetess of myth, Cassandra of Troy, for whom Ianira Cassondra was named, must have felt, looking into the future and glimpsing nothing but death—with no way to change any of it. The feeling was far worse than during Margo’s other down-time trips, worse, even, than she’d expected, knowing it was bound to strike at some point, during her Ripper Watch duties.
Margo met Shahdi Feroz’s gaze again and forced a shrug. “It just hit me a lot harder than I expected, seeing her like that. She’s so pretty and everything . . .”
The look Shahdi Feroz gave her left Margo’s face flaming. You’re young, that look said. Young and inexperienced, for all the down-time work you’ve done . . .
Well, it was true enough. She might be young, but she wasn’t a shrinking violet and she wasn’t a quitter, either. Memory of her parents had not and would not screw up the rest of her life! She shoved herself away from the sooty bricks of McCarthy’s chandler shop. “Where did you want to go, now? Whitehall? That’s where the torso will be found in October.” The decapitated woman’s torso, discovered between the double-event murders of Elizabeth Stride and Catharine Eddowes and the final murder of Mary Kelly, generally wasn’t thought to be a Ripper victim. The modus operandi simply wasn’t the same. But with two killers working together, who knew? And of course, the rest of London would firmly believe it to be Jack’s work, which would complicate their task enormously as hysteria and terror deepened throughout the city.
Shahdi Feroz, however, was shaking her head. “No, not just yet. To reach Whitehall, we must leave the East End. I have other work to do, first. I believe we should go to the doss houses along Dorset Street, listen to what the women are saying.”
Margo winced at the idea of sitting in a room full of street walkers who would remind her of what she’d fought so hard to escape. “Sure,” she said gamely, having to force it out through clenched teeth. “There’s only about a million of ‘em to choose from.”
They set out in mutual silence, walking quickly to keep warm. Margo would’ve faced the prospect of viewing piles of people left dead by the Black Death with less distaste than the coming interview with doss-house prostitutes. But there literally wasn’t a thing she could do to get out of it. Chalk it up to the price of your training, she told herself grimly. After all, it wasn’t nearly as awful as being raped by those filthy Portuguese traders and soldiers had been. She’d survived Africa. She’d survive this. Her life—and Shahdi Feroz’s—might well depend on it. So she clenched her jaw and did
her best to stay prepared for whatever might come next.
Chapter Thirteen
Cold and rainy weather inflicts enormous suffering on those with lung ailments. The dampness and the chill seep down into the chest, worsening congestion until each breath drawn is a struggle to lift the weight of a boulder which has settled atop the ribcage, crushing the lungs down against the spine. Worse than the aching heaviness, however, are the prolonged coughing spells which leave devastating weakness in their wake, transforming a simple stroll across six feet of floor space into a marathon-distance struggle.
Cold, wet weather is bad enough when the air is clean. Add to it the smoke of multiple millions of coal-burning fireplaces and stoves, the industrial spewage of factory smokestacks, smelting plants, and iron works, and the rot and mold of anything organic left lying on the ground or in the streets or stacked along water-logged, dockside marshes, and the resulting putrid filth will irritate already-burdened lungs into a state of chronic misery. Toss in the systemic, wasting effects of tuberculosis and the slow deterioration of organs, brain tissues, and mental clarity brought on by advanced syphilis and the result is a slow, pain-riddled slide toward death.
Eliza Anne Chapman had been sliding down that fatal slope for a long time.
The summer and early autumn of 1888 had broken records for chilly temperatures and heavy rainfall. By the first week of September, Annie was so ill, she was unable to pay for her room at Crossingham’s lodging house on Dorset Street with anything approaching regularity. Most of what she earned or was given by Edward Stanley—a bricklayer’s mate with whom she had established a long-term relationship after the death of her husband—went to pay for medicines. A serious fight with Eliza Cooper, whom Annie had caught trying to palm a florin belonging to a mutual acquaintance, substituting a penny for the more valuable coin, had left Annie bruised and aching, with a swollen temple, blackened eye, and bruised breast where the other woman had punched her.
She had confidently expected to receive money soon for the letters she’d bought from Polly Nichols, to pay for the medicines she desperately needed. But no money was forthcoming from Polly or from the anonymous writer of the letters she carried in her pocket. Then, to Annie’s intense shock, Polly was brutally murdered, more hideously stabbed and mutilated than poor Martha Tabram had been, back on August Bank Holiday. Even if Annie had wanted to ask Polly who the letter writer had been, it was now impossible. So Annie had dug out the letters to look at them more closely—and realized immediately there would be no money coming, either, not anytime soon. Had Annie been able to read Welsh, she might have been able to turn the letters into a substantial amount of cash very quickly. But Annie couldn’t read Welsh. Nor did she know anyone who could.
Which left her with a commodity worth a great deal of money and no way to realize the fortune it represented. So she did the only thing she could. She sold the letters, just as Polly had sold them to her. One went to a long-time acquaintance from the lodging houses along Dorset Street. Long Liz Stride was a kind-hearted soul born in Sweden, who bought the first letter for sixpence, which was enough for Annie to go to Spitalfields workhouse infirmary and buy one of the medications she needed.
The second letter went to Catharine Eddowes for a groat, and the third Annie sold to Mr. Joseph Barnett, a fish-porter who’d lost his job and was living in Miller’s Court with the beautiful young Mary Kelly. Mr. Barnett paid Annie a shilling for the last letter, giving her a wink and a kiss. “My Mary lived in Cardiff, y’know, speaks Welsh like a native, for all she was born in Ireland. Mary’ll read it out for me, so she will. And if it’s as good as you say, I’ll come back and give you a bonus from the payout!”
The groat, worth four pence, and the shilling, worth twelve, bought Annie the rest of the medicine she needed from Whitechapel workhouse infirmary, plus a steady supply of beer and rum for the next couple of days. Alcohol was the only form of pain medication Annie could afford to buy and she was in pain constantly. She felt too ill most of the time to walk the streets, particularly all the way down to Stratford, where she normally plied her trade; but the medicine helped. If only the weather would clear, she might be able to breathe more easily again.
Annie regretted the sale of the letters. But a woman had to live, hadn’t she? And blackmail was such a distasteful trade, no matter how a body looked at it. Polly had dazzled her with fanciful dreams of real comfort and proper medicines, but in Annie’s world, such dreams were only for the foolish, people who didn’t realize they couldn’t afford to indulge their fancies when there was food to be gotten into the stomach and medicine to be obtained and a roof and bed to be paid for, somehow . . .
Being a practical woman, Annie put those brief, glittering dreams firmly behind her and got back to the business of staying alive as long as humanly possible in a world which did not care about the fate of one aging and consumptive widow driven to prostitution by sheer poverty. It wasn’t much of a life, perhaps. But it was all she had. So, like countless thousands before her, “Dark Annie” Chapman made the best of it she could and kept on living—without the faintest premonition that utter disaster hung over her head like the executioner’s sword.
* * *
Skeeter Jackson had an uncanny nose for trouble.
And this time, he landed right in the middle of it. One moment, he was intent on reaching Urbs Romae to join the Festival of Mars procession, having been delayed by a man moving suspiciously behind a woman gowned in expensive Japanese silk. The next, Skeeter found himself stranded between a solid wall of Angels of Grace Militia on his left and a whole pack of Ansar Majlis sympathizers and construction workers to his right.
He tried to backpedal, but it was far too late. Somebody’s fist connected with an Ansar Majlis sympathizer’s nose. Blood spurted. A roar went up from both sides, Ansar Majlis Brotherhood and Angels of Grace Militia. The crowd surged, fists swinging. A kiosk full of t-shirts and Ripper photo books toppled. Someone yelled obscenities as merchandise was trampled underfoot. A reek of sweat abused Skeeter’s nostrils. Combatants plunged, dripping, into Edo Castletown’s goldfish ponds, sending prehistoric birds flapping and screeching in protest from the trampled shrubbery. Then a ham-handed fist clouted his shoulder and the riot engulfed him.
Skeeter spun away from the blow. He tripped and teetered over the edge of the overturned kiosk, trying to keep his balance. Somebody hit him from the side. Skeeter yelled and slammed face first into a total stranger. He found himself tangled up with a viciously swearing woman, who sported a bleeding nose and a black uniform. Her eyes narrowed savagely. Angels of Grace hated all men, unless they worshipped the Lady of Heaven, and even then, they were suspicious of treason. Skeeter swore—and ducked a thick-knuckled fist aimed at his nose. He twisted, using moves he’d learned scrapping in the camp of the Yakka Mongols, trying to stay alive when the camp’s other boys had decided to test the fighting skills and agility of their newly arrived bogdo.
Skeeter’s lightning move sent the screeching woman into the waiting arms of a roaring Ansar Majlis construction worker. The collision was spectacular. Skeeter winced. Then yelped and ducked behind the toppled kiosk, dodging another pair of locked, grappling combatants. He stared wildly around for a way out and didn’t find anything remotely resembling an escape route. Not four feet away, Kit Carson stood calmly at the center of the riot, casually tossing bodies this way and that, regardless of size, mass, onrushing speed, or religious and political affiliations. The retired scout’s expression wavered between disgust and boredom. A whole pile of bodies had accumulated at his feet, growing steadily even as Skeeter watched, awestruck.
Then a crash of drums and a screaming wail from a piper jerked Skeeter’s attention around. The Festival of Mars processional had arrived. Just in time to be engulfed in battle. Skeeter caught a confused glimpse of misshapen, shaggy shapes like hirsute kodiak bears. Women in ring-mail armor who resembled a cartoonist’s vision of ancient valkyries staggered into view, complete with shields, spears
, and swords. Mixed in were several keen-eyed old women in ragged skins, whose screeches in Old Norse lifted the hair on Skeeter’s nape.
Kynan Rhys Gower appeared from out of the melee, dressed in the uniform he’d been wearing when the Welsh bowman had stumbled through that unstable gate into the Battle of Orleans, fighting the French army under the command of Joan of Arc. Several other down-timers sported Roman-style armor, hand-made for this very festival out of metal cans and other scraps salvaged from the station’s refuse bins. There was even a Spaniard clutching a blunderbuss, wild-eyed and shouting in medieval Spanish as the procession slammed headlong into the riot.
The shock of collision drove tourists scattering for their very lives.
Shangri-La’s down-timers fought a pitched battle—and they fought dirty.
A wild-eyed construction worker reeled back from a sword blow, blood streaming down his face from the gash in his scalp. A black-unformed ferret staggered past, locked in mortal combat with a six-foot bearskin draped over the head and down the back of a six-foot-eight Viking berserker. Skeeter dimly recognized the man under the bearskin as Eigil Bjarneson, a down-timer who’d stumbled through Valhalla’s Thor’s Gate several months previously. A sushi lunch stand swayed and crashed to the floor, spilling water and live fish underfoot. Several combatants slipped on the wriggling, slippery contents of the broken aquarium and fell. Skeeter caught a glimpse of onrushing motion from the corner of one eye and jumped back instinctively. A spear missed his midriff by inches, whistling past to embed itself in the wooden slats of a bench behind him
The spear’s intended victim, a roaring Ansar Majlis sympathizer, pulled a mortar trowel from his tool belt and launched himself at the ring-mail clad woman who’d thrown the spear. Then a giant Angel in black, screaming obscenities in tones to bend metal, lunged right at Skeeter. Obligingly, Skeeter grasped the woman’s outstretched arms and assisted her on her way, planting one foot and turning his hip in an effortless Aikido move he’d been practicing for months, now. For just an instant, the startled Militia Angel was airborne. Then the park bench behind Skeeter, complete with protruding spear, splintered under the Angel’s landing. If Skeeter hadn’t been practicing—and teaching his down-time friends—martial arts moves like that one, he’d have been under that mountain of curse-spitting Angel.
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