Cold Stone and Ivy

by H. Leighton Dickson

  Ivy growled, crumpled the paper into a little ball, and dropped her head into her hands.

  What had she done?

  She sat now, knees up, with her back against a Gothic brick corner of Lonsdale Abbey. It was cold and windy and she could see a bank of dark clouds looming over the Bay. But still, the nurses sat with their patients out on the lawn, blankets drawn, umbrellas at the ready. Her mother sat, staring with unseeing eyes at the grass. Grigori was on the roof high above them, shouting in Russian and threatening to leap to his death, but no one seemed to pay him any mind. Lizzie Borden was apparently chopping wood for fires but the automaton assigned to help her was now in pieces across the lawn. Agnes Tidy had tucked Mr. Home into his chair after he had finished his levitations for the day. He had completed an entire circuit of the Abbey this morning and he was tired.

  Madness, thought Ivy. It was all an exercise in madness and she was certain it was catching.

  She wrapped her arms around her knees and shuddered. She had kissed the Mad Lord of Lasingstoke last night, and the taste of him lingered on her lips. She had rarely even kissed her fiancé. Kissing was not proper behaviour for respectable folk in London, and Christien, of all things, was a gentleman. She knew the feel of his hand in hers—soft and supple and skilled. She knew the smell of his skin, his clothes, the slightly sharp odour of carbolic soap and astringent. She knew the lean, graceful strength of his body—she would make a point of leaning into him when on a walk or in a crowd of people. And he had kissed her on the cheek, on the forehead, and always with utmost respect. She had never been a romantic girl, but last night, she had stolen a kiss, become the romancer, and she found her mind racing with the implications.

  She had finished her story last night as well. Penny Dreadful and the Ghost of Lancashire had almost ended with a kiss but she’d stopped short, afraid of what that might mean for Penny and Julian. Julian would certainly never approve of the rogue Alexander Dunn, would never understand how a girl’s heart could be stolen as easily as a necklace or a locket or a ring. No, most certainly, Julian would never understand.

  Would Christien? Did she?

  There was a rumble of distant thunder but the nurses made no move to take the patients indoors. Ivy shook her head. Lonsdale was a strange place indeed.

  The locket around her neck began to hum, and she looked up to see Sebastien walking from the Abbey to the lawn. He had been shot less than two days ago and she was surprised he was up and moving. He was checking a pocket watch, hair and greatcoat whipping in the wind. Behind him, Frankow wheeled on the little contraptions strapped to his feet, the mallard’s-head cane doubling as an umbrella, and she wondered if his legs would rust in the rain.

  “No, Sebastien,” she could hear the doctor say over the wind. “This is not a good idea.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the Mad Lord answered. “The Chevalier should be here shortly. Carl, Vickers, and Toewes will help with the cables.”

  “You are still losing blood.”

  “Your wire stitches have me put together most ably.”

  “You do not need to do this. I will speak to Bertie.”

  “They are using Christien to get to me,” growled Sebastien. “I won’t have that. Not Christien. Not while I live.”

  “Christien is a grown man,” said Frankow. “And he does not believe. He will be hard pressed to do what they ask of him.”

  “Bertie said they’d already met with success.”

  “Bertie would say anything to get you into the Club.”

  “He made mention of some damned locket—”

  At the mention, the locket around her neck leapt with colour. Slowly, Sebastien turned his head in her direction and she was certain her heart stopped beating.

  “Periculosum est,” he said. “Periculosum et pulchra.”

  Ivy swallowed and pushed herself to her feet. His eyes were changing colour again, of that she was certain, cycling from brown to the lightest blue, and it seemed the locket was matching shades. She could not tear her own eyes away and her heart was thudding like airships over Lasingstoke.

  She was not a romantic girl, she told herself. She was not a romantic girl.

  “Dangerous and beautiful,” he muttered. “Everything has changed.”

  And once again, all time seemed to slow save the beating of her heart.

  The skies were growing dark as Frankow glanced from Mad Lord to Girl Criminologist and back again. The heartbeat was growing louder.

  “Shall we continue this inside, Sebastien? Miss Savage? It seems we are all expecting storms tonight . . .”

  Thudding, racing, roaring, causing umbrellas to pop and nursing caps to fly and Ivy threw a hand over her bowler to keep it on her head. A black shadow fell across the Abbey and they all looked up as, once again, the underbelly of an airship came into view.

  THROUGH THE HIGH-paned window of Frankow’s office, Ivy watched as the Chevalier dropped cables to the grassy grounds, trying to steady herself in the buffeting winds over the Bay.

  It was a beautiful airship, she thought, and the canvas a work of art, with horses and hounds and red-coated riders chasing a fox around the balloon. Depending on the light, the fox appeared then disappeared at different points in the design. The gondola was polished oak and the bowsprit a rearing golden horse. Her name was carved into her stern—Chevalier. French for horseman.

  “It seems our Christien has got himself into some small trouble,” said Frankow, sitting behind his desk, sipping his tea. “Is this why he gave you that bauble, Miss Savage? You do not seem the type for fine jewellery.”

  “He said the Ghost Club was interested in it,” she said, ignoring the insult and turning back from the window. “He said they wanted to take it apart.”

  Frankow sipped his tea but said nothing.

  “Why, sirs? What does it do?”

  “She,” Sebastien said, his first words since entering the office. He had not touched the tea that had been poured for him. “Her name is Ghostlight.”

  Frankow turned his bespectacled gaze on the Mad Lord.

  “Ghostlight, yes. It belonged to your father, a very long time ago. It’s a very powerful device but it seems to have no effect on Miss Savage. I wonder what effect it may have had on Christien for him to give her away. Or, for that matter . . .” He smiled his patronizing smile. “What effect it may be having on you?”

  “She is having no effect on me,” Sebastien said.

  “My mistake.”

  “But what does it do?” asked Ivy again. “Why would the Ghost Club want it so?”

  “I can only imagine,” said Frankow. “Renaud was a secretive man, not given to sharing his discoveries with others. But obviously, the locket has some strong connection to the de Lacey men. It has not stopped dancing.”

  It was true. The locket was continuing to spin and flash, and Ivy was thankful there were no snowflakes like the night in Milnethorpe.

  “Do you want it, Sebastien?” she asked.

  “Yes. No. Yes.” He shook his head, eyes settling to brown once again. “No. I think she would not be best with me. She is far too loud and seductive. I could destroy the world with her power.”

  Ivy swallowed, wondering then if he had even noticed her kiss.

  “Now, now, Sebastien,” said Frankow, rising to his feet at the whoosh and thump of the pneumatic pipes. “Be content with your pistol and bullets, please.”

  The doctor slid the capsule open, his lenses spinning and clicking as he read the note inside. He looked up.

  “You will excuse me,” he said. “Grigori has jumped from the roof yet again and has broken all his bones. This is the third time this week. It is most annoying.”

  And with that, he hissed and clanked out of his office, leaving Sebastien and Ivy and the uncomfortable silence.

  “Why do you do that?” asked Ivy, tucking the locket into her corset to mute its flashing. “Shoot people, that is.”

  “To quiet the dead.” He sighed. “They are most pe
rsistent.”

  “So, you see them, then? With your eyes, the way you would see me or Christien or Rupert?”

  “The same way,” he said. “Although I feel them first. They invariably bring the frost with them.”

  “I see.” When, in fact, she did not. “Would things have gone differently in Milnethorpe if I hadn’t been there?”

  “Quite likely. I’m certain that’s why I slipped up. She is so very loud.”

  “Slipped up? You mean—”

  “Got myself shot. Yes. That.”

  “Oh.” She swallowed, feeling her throat grow tight. “I’m very sorry, then.”

  So they sat for a few minutes more, the only sound the thwupping of the airship’s engines outside and the shouting of the men as they sought to moor her against the powerful winds.

  “No, Miss Savage, I’m sorry.” Sebastien sighed. “I’m sorry you had to witness it.”

  “You killed a man, sir. You shot him in the head.”

  “I am a crackerjack shot.”

  “It was a horrible thing to do.”

  “He was a murderer.”

  “And so are you.”

  “No, Miss Savage. It is entirely different.”

  “Please tell me how, Sebastien. Because I’m not seeing it.”

  “You weren’t meant to see it, Miss Savage. I distinctly remember asking you to look away.”

  She folded her arms across her chest, like armour.

  “Do they . . . tell you . . . whom to shoot?”

  “They?”

  “The voices. The ghosts. The women of Seventh. Do they tell you somehow and you do it?” She noticed his expression. “You may as well answer me, sir. I am quite persistent, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Indeed. You are a bloody badger.”

  He looked down at the teacup next to him. There was a thin film of cream spreading across its surface, the consequence of letting it sit too long. He sighed and raised his head, but oddly enough, did not look at her.

  “The dead show themselves to me and I must deduce who they are, how they died, and hopefully who killed them. If I do make these connections, then I am at liberty to dispense justice as dictated by the victims and permitted by the Crown.”

  “So you work for the Crown?”

  “I am loyal to Lonsdale and Lonsdale is funded by the Crown. For some reason, they have a stake in my welfare. Don’t ask me why. I certainly don’t shew for the sittings of the House of Lords. I hate London. I would rather die than set foot on its accursed streets.”

  She studied him as he sat, wondered at the traumas that had created someone like him, wondered if such things could possibly be true, and lastly, wondered at the strange tightening in her chest. She was not the sort of girl to be carried away by starry-eyed notions of love or fairytales or princes on white horses. She was a mystery writer, cerebral and detached, preferring a good murder to a love-story any day.

  And besides, she told herself, Sebastien’s horse was grey.

  The office door opened and Frankow entered, hissing and clanking toward his desk.

  “Grigori has indeed broken all his bones, but he is healing well,” said the doctor. “He should be up and about by tea time.”

  Behind him, Agnes Tidy wheeled the unseeing, unmoving form of Catherine Savage in her wheeled chair.

  “Oh,” gasped Ivy. “Mum . . .”

  “I thought, Sebastien, that you might wish to meet Catherine Savage.”

  “Why?” asked the Mad Lord.

  “Life is funny, yes?”

  “You did promise,” said Ivy.

  Sebastien sighed and rose to his feet.

  “How long has she been like this?”

  “Seven years,” said Ivy, moving from the window to take her mother’s pale hand in hers.

  “No,” Sebastien snapped. “Let her go. Move away. Move away.”

  Ivy swallowed but did as he asked.

  “Curious,” he said, and then nothing more for some time.

  Very patiently, Ivy waited, watching for him to do something miraculous. Frankow pushed back his spectacles, waiting as well. Sebastien stood for several minutes studying the woman, arms folded across his chest, forefinger tapping his lips as if deep in thought.

  Ivy glanced at Frankow, who shrugged.

  Finally, the Mad Lord knelt down, took Catherine’s hands in his, pressed his thumbs into her palms. Turned her palms over, slid his hands up to her wrists. Ivy remembered that he had done the same thing to her in his study, wondered what it meant. He moved them up to her forehead now, first with his palms, then with all fingers pressed into her hair.

  Finally, he rose to his feet and moved over to the window, began to scan the lawns and grounds of the Abbey.

  “Sebastien?” asked Frankow.

  “She’s not here,” he answered quietly. “I can’t make her out anywhere. How long has she been like this again?”

  “Seven years, sir,” said Ivy.

  “And where did she die?”

  “She . . . she’s not dead, Sebastien.”

  “Right. Where did he die? Your brother, I mean. The little one. Where did he die?”

  “In the Thames. St. Katharine’s docks.”

  “Right, then. Miss Savage, you will accompany me.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Ivy. “We’re going back to Lasingstoke?”

  “No, Miss Savage. We’re going to London.”

  “But . . . but why?”

  He sighed but smiled, and for the first time in days, Ivy saw the man she thought she knew.

  “Your mother is not here. Her ‘soul’ is not here. There is a dichotomy in her mind and body. You said once that she died when Tobias died; therefore, we must go to where Tobias died.”

  “This is a bad idea, Sebastien,” said Frankow.

  “Yes, quite probably,” he said. “But we can kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. Miss Savage, if we wish to find your mother, we must go to St. Katharine’s docks. We will find her and I will send her home, here, to her body. Then I will hunt down this London Ripper for the Ghost Club and I will kill him with my father’s pistol. I will then contact dead Prince Albert at Sandringham for Old Vic and be back by All Hallow’s Eve. Unless, of course, Arvin is right and it all goes to hell in a handbasket. Then I’m in very big trouble and might never return. Have you ever been in an airship?”

  And this time, his smile was as bright as the regal French sun.

  Her heart skipped a beat as she realized one very strange but sure thing. The Mad Lord of Lasingstoke was the greatest mystery she had ever encountered, greater by far than anything she could have ever written in one of her Penny Dreadfuls. She could never settle now for a “normal” home somewhere in Kensington or Stepney, could never abandon her writing in favour of elegant parties or games of whist. Not when there were stories like him in the world and places like Lonsdale filled to brimming with the fantastical. It wasn’t the fantastical she was searching for anyway, she had begun to realize, but simply life. Proof that she was young and alive and that the world was truly an amazing, tumultuous, breathtaking place. As much as she loved her parents, as much as she admired Christien, she knew she needed to write her own story, not simply be a character in someone else’s.

  She had no clue what that might mean for her mother, for her fiancé, or for her doomed, blossoming career, but of one thing she was certain—wherever the Mad Lord would go, like one of his dogs, she would follow.

  September 27, 1888

  Dear Boss,

  I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they won’t fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores, and I shan’t quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to
write with but it went thick like glue and I can’t use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope. Haha. The next job I do I shall clip the lady’s ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly, wouldn’t you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck.

  Yours truly,

  Jack the Ripper

  Don’t mind me giving the trade name.

  P.S. Wasn’t good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands, curse it. No luck yet. They say I’m a doctor now. Haha.

  End of Part I

  Part II

  LONDON

  Chapter 26

  Of Butchers, Mortuaries,

  and Meat Pies in the Clarence

  SEPTEMBER 28, 1888

  Lambeth Road, Southwark, London

  It looked like a butcher’s packet, tied in brown paper and lying on the side of the road.

  The boys had been out early that morning, shovelling coal at the Blind School on Lambeth. It was a hard job, but it was a job, and at the ripe old age of nine, all three of them could boast regular pay of a shilling a month, split among them. For nine-year-old boys, it was enough to keep them in taffy and Penny Dreadfuls for weeks at a time.

  Sharpie spied the package first in a puddle under the wrought-iron railing of the fence.

  “What’s that, then?” he cried as the others moved round to see.

  “Looks like bacon,” cooed Martin Alcorn.

  Sharpie’s eyes gleamed. “Y’ think some butcher dropped it, then?”

  Martin shrugged. “Or Mrs. Tumblemorrey. She’s always losing her markets.”

  “We could sell it,” whispered Ronnie Shipley. “Me mum’s always selling old meat in the rooks.”

  “Can ye get it, then?” asked Martin. “Try and get it.”

  The package was wedged beneath the railing, and Sharpie dropped to his knees, pushed his arm through the grass, and slid the package through the puddle towards them. He had begun to tug at the string when white powder spilled through onto the stones.