by Claire North
His curling hair was flecked with grey; his beard had grown almost spherical around his weather-worn face. He had lost weight, his eyes sinking deeper into their sockets, the mischievous light of adventure long since replaced by a different flame; but there was still enough of him there, beneath the dirt and braces. A panel showing the crucified Christ was above his head, but he looked neither at it nor me.
For a while, we just sat there, to the click click click of Madame Rossi’s gun.
Then: “Is it true?” I asked. “Is it Margot?”
His eyes flickered to me, studying my face. He leant a little closer, then drew a little back, then smiled. “Oh. You don’t know.”
“Tell me.”
“Where’s your shadow, Abbey?”
“Far behind. I’m asking, not knowing. Is it true?”
“Then you’ll have to wonder for yourself, and do without knowing, won’t you?”
I sighed, and now that I wasn’t moving, dragging myself through Milan’s streets, the aches and settled indignities of the day were beginning to grow into something brutally sore and stiff across my whole body. Coman watched me, hunched and crooked, a man still counting up avenues of escape, waiting for his chance. Finally: “Thought you were dead. Thought the Nineteen shot you.”
“They didn’t. They decided to scoop my brains out and turn me into a gibbering automaton to spout the truth. My colleague over there chained me to a wall for a while too. Water under the bridge, as they say. Is it true?”
He drew back, and said not a word. “It’s her,” I sighed. “You wouldn’t be here, following her path, if it wasn’t. Margot is doing this. Margot is cursing the children. Why? What happened, Coman? What in God’s name is happening?”
A half-shrug, and even that was too much like cooperation for Coman, as he turned his face away.
Langa comes, he comes, and the truth of my heart is… is that I believed many things all at once. I still do not know what I believe. That is the truth of the thing.
“When he told me,” a nod towards Ritte, “what Margot was doing, I didn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it. You lived with her for all those years. Had a daughter with her. Loved her. I know you didn’t fear the truth of your soul, but that was before she started murdering children. I wonder what the truth will be now, when my shadow comes?”
He was silent for a while, staring into nothing.
When he finally spoke, it was at first too quiet for me to hear it.
“What?”
Again, a whisper, staring at the wall. Then almost a shout, a sudden fury, snapped across the table loudly enough that I nearly jumped. “It’s your fault! It’s your fault!” For a moment I thought he’d try and hit me again, and across the room, Madame Rossi paused in her ministrations, little pistol held close to her chest. Ritte’s index finger bounced along the barrel of his own gun. “It’s your fault, you led them to us, you destroyed everything, she is my wife it’s your fault!”
He was out of breath, so I let him breathe a moment. “Yes,” I replied simply. “It is.” And finally, the question that has been lurking just behind it all, driving the knife in his hand and the fire in his eyes. “Where’s Vhairi?” Langa is not here, but he recoils like a man punched in the gut, and I know. But some truths have to be said, to be real. “Where’s Vhairi?”
He shook his head, but that wasn’t enough.
“Where’s Vhairi?”
For the longest time, I didn’t think he’d answer. Perhaps a minute. Perhaps five. When at last he did, he spoke to no one except himself.
Chapter 70
“She was hurt,” he said, “In New York. Not Vhairi – Margot. The night you betrayed us, they chased us through New York, and Margot was shot. She said it wasn’t bad; the pistol was fired from a long way behind, the bullet caught her in the calf. For a while she could even walk, run. We ran so far that night. By the end it was like we had only one person’s courage left between the two of us, passed round like a ball. Sometimes I had it, and I was brave enough that we could slow down, stop, see that she was bleeding. Then I’d hear a door slam or a man shout, and I’d drop what courage I had and just run, and we’d run until finally Margot was brave enough to tell us to stop, and then we’d stop a little, by the Hudson or below the railway tracks, until the sun came up. That was when Vhairi started crying. She’d been such a good girl, all night such a good girl, but she started crying then and that made it all real, and that was when Margot collapsed.
“The bullet wasn’t deep, but she’d been bleeding all night, and we’d just made it worse, much worse, by running. I didn’t know where to go, or who to trust. I told her that bastard Abbey had betrayed us, betrayed us all, but Margot said no, you were as surprised as us, she knew the truth of your heart, knew every part of you, it made me sick, our daughter was crying and she was defending this…
“There was a smith in Brooklyn, shoed horses, who was sympathetic to the Society. He knew how to pull stones from hooves and a bit about setting an animal’s leg, and he was the best we had. He gave Margot a bottle of rye and pulled the bullet out on the pantry table. There was so much blood, I didn’t think such a little thing could bleed so much, and he dug around so deep to get to it, but we didn’t know where else to go. Vhairi had stopped crying. I didn’t understand then that she’d seen her mam shoot a man in the face, didn’t know what that meant; but I never saw her cry again, or smile, or laugh.
“Margot was too weak to move after we pulled the bullet out, but her shadow was coming. She’d left the picket lines too soon, doubled back to New York before her time, there wasn’t enough distance between her and Doireann. She started speaking the truth, saying it out loud, the next night. The smith was a good man, but he didn’t need that. He wanted us gone, and she said it, and that made it real, but she wasn’t walking anywhere. It wasn’t just the pain; she couldn’t bend her leg properly, it didn’t hold her. I fashioned her some crutches but she was only doing a step at a time, a little step at a time. I knew we needed to get her on a train, get her far away from her shadow, but the station was being watched, the docks too. They were everywhere.
“I hired a carriage to take us north, towards Bridgeport, just me and Margot and Vhairi, but it was so slow. So slow. Margot lay across the seat and stared at us and just… ranted. Ranted and raved, but all of it was true. How I’d never forgive her for all the men she’d been with who weren’t me, how I didn’t know for sure if Vhairi was even mine, how her daughter could never forgive her either, wanted to run away. In the end I made Vhairi ride outside with the driver, her lips going blue in the cold, and she didn’t say a word, never complained.
“By the time we got to Fairfield I knew we weren’t moving fast enough. The roads were wet and bad, and we kept on getting bogged in mud. Our driver wasn’t one of the Society, just a greedy man, and the more urgent I said it was, the longer he seemed to want for his break, to relax and have a cigar, or the longer he said the horses needed to rest. At the end of the first day, he called a stop at seven p.m., and said we’d start again at dawn the next day and it wasn’t safe to ride by dark. Margot was half-delirious now, the hole in her leg this big, purple, veiny thing, hissing secrets at the dark. That was when I stole the carriage. I didn’t know what else to do. I just knew we needed to get to a boat, a train, somewhere they weren’t looking for us, but they were looking everywhere. They were just… everywhere, men who knew our faces, our descriptions, hunting for the People’s Society. The telegram travelled faster than any shadow, waiting for us wherever we went.
“I suppose it was inevitable that the horses would get hurt. I drove them too fast in the night. We didn’t hit anything, but it only takes a bad road, a hole, and one of the beasts fell badly and broke its leg. That was when we were in the middle of nothing, just the three of us in broken mud and turned fields far as the eye could see. We waited in the coach for dawn, and by the time help came Margot was burning up, stammering truth through chattering teeth. A farmer came b
y, helped us into his cart, but no sooner were we on our way again than she was telling him the state of his soul, pouring out his secrets, and he threw us out again. That’s when I drew her gun, threatened him, stole his cart. I knew he’d run to get help, but what else could I do? Doireann was coming and we were moving so slow, so slow, every step we took was so, so slow, and she was coming.
“All the time Vhairi watched, and listened, and didn’t smile, and didn’t cry and didn’t say a word. Not even when her mam looked her in the eye and said, ‘Yes, yes, it’ll be you, you’ll die first, you’ll be the one that dies.’ Vhairi already knew that was true, of course. She’d never doubted but that her mother loved her.
“I think that was what broke Margot’s heart, breaking just when her daughter’s did. I think maybe they broke together. She caught my hand in hers, and her skin was ice and slippy with sweat. ‘Kill me first,’ she hissed. ‘Kill me first you’ll do it thank you thank you you’ll do it…’
“She was right. I would. If killing Margot would save our child, I’d do it. God help me, God forgive me, I’d do whatever it took and she knew it, and she understood and smiled at me like she was grateful, before the truth came again. But first, I had to try to save them both. Whatever it took, I had to try.
“The law was waiting for us in Bridgeport. They’d been sent our descriptions, the three of us travelling together. They didn’t know what we’d done, just that we needed to be arrested, locked up. There wasn’t any fighting it; nowhere left to run. Margot was in and out of sleep by then, so when I saw the bobbies closing in I told Vhairi to run. I didn’t want her to see what I might have to do to her mother; didn’t want her to see how Margot died. But she shook her head, didn’t smile, didn’t cry, just sat there, shook her head.
“‘Run, for God’s sake, run!’
“She didn’t. She just sat there and Doireann was coming, she was coming, and I had to kill her mother to save Vhairi’s life, it was the only way, but she was just watching me and she wouldn’t goddam run!
“That was when I failed. It’s… my fault.
“The bobbies grabbed us and I should have killed Margot first, I should have put a stop to it all, but Vhairi just stared at me and I couldn’t do it. Not in front of my child. I couldn’t do it, I just…
“They took us to the gaol, just a few cages in a red-brick building where the law drank rye and counted dollars from the local protection rackets. Put me in one cage, Margot in another. Sat Vhairi down by the detectives’ desk and gave her a cup of hot cocoa and asked her if she wanted something to eat, nice girl like her, shouldn’t go hungry, and what she knew about what her mammy and pappy had done. Vhairi didn’t say a word. She didn’t touch the drink they gave her, or the food, just stared at me and her mam as Margot blabbered the truth of men’s hearts, until finally the bobbies couldn’t take it no more and they gagged her, and she just kept on talking through the rag in her face.
“The doctor came to look at her leg, and thought it might have to be amputated. He needed to take her to the infirmary, and reluctantly the bobbies agreed and carried her out like an old bunch of flowers, still rattling the truth of their hearts through spit and cotton.
“Vhairi just sat, and waited.
“It was quiet, with her mam gone. Just the clock ticking, and men talking outside.
“Finally she got up from her stool and walked to my cell. It was all one big room, so the law could watch the law-breakers from the comfort of their desks, feet up and coffee in hand. No one stopped her; no one paid a child much of any attention. She sat down by the door and put her hands through the bars, and I sat down on the other side of it and held her close, pressing her into me as much as ever I could through the cold metal cage.
“I held her there, don’t know how long.
“The clock ticked and ticked and ticked and she held me and I held her and I couldn’t let go and we waited. I held her so tight that when it came, when Doireann crawled out of her frozen heart, almost nothing else changed. She didn’t slump in my arms, cos I was holding her so close. She didn’t gasp in pain or let go of my hands; just grew cold and a little loose in her fingers, which then grew stiff again. I’d never seen Doireann before, couldn’t see much of Margot’s dead daughter in the face of this shadow as it pulled itself hand over hand out of the heart of my child, and she faded almost as quickly as she’d come, turning like a lost traveller before finding her magnetic north and walking on her way. Didn’t let go. Didn’t let go. Didn’t let go.
“It was only when the policeman asked Vhairi if she wanted to sit by the fire, and she didn’t answer; only then that they came over; only then that they asked what was happening, only then that they pulled her from my arms, tiny, limp, skin already grey and lips purple, only then.
“Just then.
“Just the breaking.
“Just that.”
He stopped talking.
Sat a while.
Watched nothing.
Heard nothing, except perhaps memories.
Then, a turn of his head, a change in the depth of his gaze, remembering perhaps for a second where he was, where he was not. “After,” he muttered, and stopped, and tried again. “After. The infirmary was four miles from the gaol. That was good. That meant I’d be dead soon. Margot loved me, and now that Vhairi was dead, I’d be next. That was good. It would be quick, and it would be soon, and it was better than living without my daughter. But I was wrong. You hadn’t betrayed the Society – not yet. Ever since New York, the survivors had been looking for us, tracking us first by Brooklyn, then by the road we travelled and the things we did. Before the doctor could cut off Margot’s leg, they were there, bustling into the infirmary like they owned the place, grabbing her from under the law’s nose and putting her on the back of the fastest carriage they could find. Me they broke out at gunpoint, and I told them to leave me, to let Doireann come, to let it end, and they told me I was special. Important. That the revolution needed me. I never hated them until that moment. Revolution. What self-important, arrogant little monsters we were. But I was still a vain man, and in that moment, I did not want to die.
“We left Vhairi in Bridgeport. We left her to be buried by men who never knew her name. I left her.
“Let it burn. All of it. Revolution, freedom, the Society, it can all burn. All of it, burn, just…
“I don’t remember much of the next three months. The Society moved us from safe house to safe house, but the law was all over us. Arrest after arrest, there was nowhere we could go where we weren’t being hunted. They kept me and Margot together, as if I wanted to ever see her again, as if I could look her in the eye. I thought she’d die, but she didn’t. The fever broke. She slept, and didn’t scream the truth. Then she’d wake, and say nothing, and then sleep again, and sometimes have nightmares, but I think they were all her own. It wasn’t until Boston that she woke properly, looked at me, and knew. It wasn’t Doireann that told her. It wasn’t a shadow. She just knew. She didn’t scream, at least not on that first day. It was near a month later when I found her shouting at the wall, bent over double as though she was about to pull her own belly out. I couldn’t hold her, didn’t have any comfort to give. Then she was quiet again. We were both just quiet.
“In Charleston, we realised the game was up. The law was waiting for us at the house of a friend, someone who should have been able to give us shelter. We barely got out alive, the last of our friends in America gunned down trying to protect us. They didn’t stop to ask questions; we were anarchists, blackmailers, we deserved everything that was coming for us. The Society was dead. Now we were on our own.
“We stole, lied and robbed our way to Mexico. I had a friend there, not one of the Society, just a friend. He gave us shelter for a week, said we could stay longer, but I knew we couldn’t. Doireann would come. She would always come.
“Margot said, ‘Does it matter?’ and I knew she didn’t love me, and perhaps would never love again, and thought maybe that was fine, an
d we could sit here, together, her and me, and wait for the shadow to kill someone, and hope that someone was me.
“But running was habit, so I packed our bags instead, and took the boat to Caracas, and I got some work labouring in the docks of La Guaira, and she sat indoors and stared at the wall, and one night I told her we needed to talk, we had to speak to each other, and she looked right through me like I wasn’t even there and said, ‘Why?’
“And I didn’t have an answer.
“What could we possibly say that wasn’t already known and true?
“I hadn’t counted the days properly; every day was the same, working and waiting, that time just grey, coming, passing, nothing. I didn’t realise how close Doireann was until Margot left her room one ordinary day, and looking our landlady in the eye simply proclaimed, ‘It is a sin. And you’ll do it anyway,’ and spun on her heel and walked away.
“Even then, I didn’t drag her to the docks. In a way I was daring Margot to do it, to look me in the eye and tell me that her shadow wouldn’t kill her, that I wasn’t still her husband, the father of our child. I wanted her to scream at me, to beg me to run, to tell me that my life mattered, but she just sat at the end of the bed, hands in her lap, and waited. She knew what I wanted, and it didn’t matter. None of it mattered.
“The day before the truth became unstoppable, a babble on her lips, I asked her to walk with me by the sea. She looked at me, then looked away, then rose and without a word walked by my side.
“We didn’t talk.
“The truth was enough between us.
“I would head south in the morning, without her, and maybe she would stay and maybe she would run, and maybe Doireann would come and I would be dead within the week, and maybe she had never loved me at all. Who was to say? I was no truth-speaker. I would not know, until the end, but I hoped she loved me, and I wanted to live.
