by Claire North
Ritte watched without a sound. Coman swayed like a drunk man, not sure whether to fight or fall down. Margot read my soul as I worked, and finally, without warning, put a hand to my cheek.
“You ridiculous, regrettable man. How long have you been alone? You should have tried harder to find me; I would have understood.” Then her forehead crinkled and her lips curled down. Her fingers tightened around my jaw, pulling me close, brow to brow, touching, as if we could pour our thoughts into the other’s skull. “What did Albert do to you? William? What did he do to our brothers and sisters?”
I shook my head, tasting bile. Her teeth flared behind her lips, and tighter now, a hunting animal, a woman with nothing left but to kill, she whispered, urgent, “Did you get them all?” A glimmer of something in her that was, for a moment, nearly human. “Did you get all the hollow ones?”
It took me a moment to realise what she meant. Then I nodded, once. “Yes. They’re all dead. I killed them all.”
“Did you get him? Did you get their maker?”
“No. I… I am a doctor. I don’t kill the living.”
Half-dead words on my lips. The feeblest excuse a killer had ever used.
Her face hardened. “Then you have done nothing with your gift. Nothing. You should be grateful that I am here to finish your work.”
Her fingers brushed my lips, and in the same moment that my soul cracked, hers stiffened, and stepping back quickly she looked Coman in the eye. “William lied to you,” she barked. “He can’t cure me. He doesn’t know how.”
Behind me, I felt Ritte straighten up, Coman grow still. I sighed, tied the last knot in the bandage on Margot’s arm, stepped away, let her read the truth of my heart. She smiled, nodded once, touched her bloody fingers to her lips.
“I know I am a monster,” she mused in the ringing silence of the church. “William doesn’t believe in God, but last night he got down on his knees and prayed. Like most people who seek intervention from the divine, he knows it is impossible. I have cursed children with Doireann just moments behind me, I have looked into their hearts, I have felt their terror. I stood by the coffins as their parents and brothers and sisters were taken to the grave, looked in the eyes of the children I have damned and I know their horror. I know that I am a monster; I have seen that too. I became a monster when I killed my daughter.”
Doireann, buried in an unmarked grave.
Vhairi, dead in America.
“This has been coming; this has always been coming,” she whispered, catching at Coman’s hand as he snatched it away. “There has always been a black book, there has always been a list of the dead, I just did it, I did what had to be done, this is why monsters exist, this is why we live, this is what is necessary, this is the only thing left, it’s what Doireann wants, it’s what she wants, it’s what Vhairi wants…”
He spun away, pressing his hands over his eyes as if he would be blind, neck twisting side to side.
“I punish the vile. I put the oldest, blackest curse on their children that their very line, their seed, may be wiped from this earth. Truth has no need for shame. Truth exists merely in reality as it is; all the rest – love, guilt, regret – are just words we put on it. I am become a monster. I am truth. I will never stop. There is no cure. Saira knew it, William – there was never a cure. We don’t need curing. That isn’t the point of us at all.”
Coman shouted, no words, just a cry that brushed back the candlelight, and for a moment I thought he might hit her. His hand flew wide, he caught himself on the side of the altar, hauling down breath, shaking, straightened up again, turned to her, eyes burning, tears dripping now down his cheeks, rolling off the end of his chin. Ritte took a step nearer, old spymaster straight and stiff, shoulder angled towards Margot like a duellist. Coman followed Margot’s gaze, saw the gun, looked to me, back to Margot.
“William won’t kill me,” Margot breathed, unblinking. “But if it will stop me, he won’t get in Ritte’s way. He didn’t know it until now, but now it is true.”
“I spoke to Saira, before she went into the desert,” I said, before Coman could speak or move a muscle. “I asked her a question. Do you know what I asked?”
Margot smiled, and for a moment her eyes drifted to me, and there she was. Just for an instant, there she was again, living, laughing, clothed in light. “Yes.”
“And do you agree with her answer?”
“Yes. I do. But it’s not enough.”
Coman’s hands were turned out to hers, like a dancing partner waiting on the edge of the floor at the end of a long night, the last candles burning out. She looked at them as if seeing hands for the first time, marvelling at the construction of finger and bone, the bend of knuckle and the bulge of flesh, of soft sense and ageing skin, of the hairs that laced the back of his hands and the lines that swept across his palms. One hand slipped into his, turning it this way and that. Ritte shifted, watching, waiting. Her eyes turned up, meeting her husband’s gaze. “I ran,” she whispered. “I let her come so close I could have held her for ever, and then I ran. I always loved you.”
Coman smiled, kissed her on the cheek. I knew an instant before he moved what he intended, but Langa was too far behind, my warning too late. He spun, ran straight for Ritte, arms out and chest flaring, and the spy raised his gun and without hesitation, fired. He put one bullet in Coman’s thigh, another in his ribcage, but Coman was already moving too fast, and the tumbling of his fall took him straight into Ritte’s throat, scrabbling with open hands for his windpipe. The two toppled backwards, the Austrian smacking his head against a pillar as he fell, and for a moment they wriggled on the floor.
I grabbed for Margot as she ran, caught the back of her coat, which slipped from my grasp, then lunged and grabbed again, tangled in a fistful of collar, pulled her back. She spun, face entirely calm, kicking out with one leather-pointed toe for my knees, scratching at my eyes. I raised a hand to shield myself as she drew her arms out from their sleeves, leaving me clinging to fur and air, then she was hobbling for daylight. I followed, and two gunshots smacked out behind me. The first was muffled, little more than a door slamming in a distant corridor. The second was deafening, a ringing, bouncing retort round the church as the pistol fired into air, not flesh.
I ducked instinctively, looked back at the two struggling men, saw Coman roll to one side. The gun was in his hand, Ritte’s fists locked tight around Coman’s own as they struggled for control. Coman’s skin was already blanching, the blood a black slick around him in the candlelight. Ritte’s eyes were open and he was gasping, surprised, one hand at his belly. Coman raised the gun, pointing it straight at me, and I half ducked, half tripped down behind a pew, wriggling on my elbows beneath the wooden bench as he sent a bullet flying wild. Looking back, I saw Margot, framed in the door, wavering, neither coming nor going, winter light turning her into shadow against the outside world. She looked at me, at Coman, bleeding out on the floor, at Ritte, and I could not see her face as she made her decision, and turned, and ran.
I peeked my head up above the pews and Coman emptied another bullet in my direction, missing by a mile, picking a hole in stone. I ducked down, crawled to the edge of the aisle, peeked out again. He fired instantly, and the pin clicked on nothing. He let his arm fall, and stared up into space. I crawled on hands and knees to the two men, hissed, “Ritte! Ritte!”
Slowly his head turned to blink at me, and lifting one hand away from his belly he said, in a reasonable voice, “I believe he got me.”
The bullet wound had burnt a charred pattern into his shirt and waistcoat, obscuring the round indent in his flesh. I cursed and slipping in blood, scampered back to the altar and ripped the whole cloth off, scattering gold and wax in an arc. Bundling the sheet into a fist, I pressed it hard into Ritte’s belly, and now, at last, he groaned with agony. Beside him, Coman watched, empty gun still in one hand. I leant over to him, ripped back his shirt, tore his trouser leg, cursed and cursed again, ran, skidded in blood to the open doo
r of the church and, cupping my hands around my mouth, called at the top of my lungs, “Police, doctor, anyone – help!”
It took thirty minutes for the cart to arrive to carry Ritte and Coman to the hospital.
By then, Coman was dead.
I held his hand as he died. He didn’t seem to mind that it was me. I thought perhaps he would tell me not to hurt Margot. I thought he might say that she was kind, or misjudged, or that there was still hope for her. I thought he might die with his daughter’s name on his lips, dead and buried in an unknown tomb. Perhaps he thought of all these things too, but he said none of them. In my experience, when death comes it takes away all lies, all self-deception and cries for meaningless, pointless hope. The only truth I have ever seen the dying say that has mattered a damn is “I love you” to those they leave behind; and Coman’s love was as dead and buried as he.
Ritte’s wound smelt of faeces, and I told him he’d be fine.
He said, “You’re a liar, William Abbey,” and I believe it was a compliment.
I stayed with him through the night, and in the morning he was still alive, and I wasn’t sure if that was a mercy.
I walked through the Paris dawn, covered in other men’s blood, and people steered clear of me and avoided my glare, and in the hotel room I washed, and put my bloodied clothes in the fireplace, and wrote to the Austrian embassy to inform them of Ritte’s location and condition, and packed a light bag of everything I might need, and went to the telegram office.
I sent a single message, to Professor Albert Wilson, care of Her Majesty’s Government.
Margot knows coming for you for your child STOP
That done, I got on the fast train for Calais.
Chapter 73
“You saved his life?”
I couldn’t stop myself asking the question, it seemed so ridiculous.
Abbey’s head tilted to one side, watching me like a cat. The professor stared at the end of the bed, at the flat sheets where his son’s legs should have been. Something tore open the earth outside, made glass tinkle in windows, the floorboards creak.
“You think I should have let him die, Sister Ellis?” A gesture to sleeping Richard Charlwood, dreaming an ether dream between us. “He was just a child. Not yet ten years old. I saw it in Margot’s eyes, as she picked apart the truth of my soul. I saw her understand, know about the truth stations, about Albert’s experiments and all he had done. I knew what she’d do next. ‘You should be grateful that I am here to finish your work.’ So yes. I telegrammed London. Murdering Albert’s victims was easy. They were not living people any more, they were trapped in hellish torment, doomed to pain. But killing Albert in cold blood? Cursing his child to do it? That was a very different proposition. Besides, I have always been a coward.”
The professor didn’t look up as Abbey spoke. Wetted his lips like he was going to speak, then didn’t. I didn’t know if he was angry, or ashamed, or anything else.
A thump of shell shook the room, a rattling through the floor, a swaying of shutter and a sloshing of water in the glass by the bed. I held tight to the bedside table, half closed my eyes and thought I heard a rifle crack, or maybe a branch break in the garden outside, and snapped, “What happened to Ritte?”
“He lived. For a few years more. He never ate properly again, and the Austrians were if anything even more displeased with the outcome of his exploits than they had been before. But he was not. He had, at last, I think, found a little truth about himself. I don’t know whether it was the shadow, or the face of death, that gave him the peace he was looking for. Perhaps a bit of both.”
Another shudder as a shell fell, a little nearer. Smoke drifted by the window, footsteps ran in the corridor outside, voices raised in brisk, busy command, trying to disguise fear. The professor finally looked up, glancing past Abbey to the world outside, and murmured, “Perhaps…?” and stopped, gesturing at his son.
“They won’t evacuate us,” Abbey replied, eyes half closed. “We’re not important enough to send trucks for, not right now. We have to sit it out.”
“How did you know she’d go after Richard?” I demanded, anger spinning inside me, though I didn’t know why. “How could you be sure?”
“I wasn’t sure when. It might take her years. But I knew she would. She had looked into my heart and seen Albert sitting there with scalpel and drill. And she meant what she said about our shadows – that they were a blessing, not a curse. Albert made them a curse. It was only a matter of time before she destroyed him. I thought of letting it happen. It would have been easy, it would have been… a kind of justice, but a child – a child – I kept on thinking – a child. Coman was dead and I am disgusted by what I am, but on those few occasions when I am at peace with myself, it is when I am a doctor. Do no harm. Do not let a child die. I assumed that on receiving my message Albert would send his son into hiding. He was a brilliant man; he would deduce the meaning of my warning. However, when I reached London, imagine my surprise to find that not only was Richard not in hiding, he was being flaunted in plain sight.”
“Not flaunted, it wasn’t—”
“I am compelled to speak the truth,” Abbey snapped, cutting off the professor with a scowl. “Albert, as you can see, is not. He knows that ‘flaunted’ is a perfectly good word for it. ‘Paraded’ might also be another way of putting it. He paraded his son, turned him into bait. It was a trap, of course – one set for me as much as for her. I didn’t need Langa to recognise the danger. From the first moment I set foot in Dover I could feel the claws of my former masters closing in, every policeman and railway porter across England alerted to my – and her – presence.”
“Tell the truth,” snapped Albert. “If he is near, tell the goddam truth!”
Abbey sighed, closed his eyes, too tired to fight the compulsion on his tongue. “The Nineteen made him do it. Catching us was considered worth the risk.”
“I wanted to hide him. I tried to send him to Scotland, get him away, but they stopped me, my own people, they stopped me,” snapped Albert, eyes blazing, not at me or Abbey, but at his sleeping child. “They made us prisoners in our own house, prisoners in a golden cage, they said…” He caught himself, and I wondered what words he might have uttered, if his shadow made him speak. But he turned away, stared at his hands. Finally: “He is my son. Margot lost her daughter, and it made her mad. He is my son.”
Abbey watched him a long moment, and there was a flicker of something on his face, a rounding in the eyes, a pushing-out of breath, that I thought might have been… a thing that fools called compassion. Then it was gone, and there was just tiredness, and the truth.
“I had been on the road for so long, and learnt many tricks. Truth and deception were second nature then, and so I watched Richard and his father as they went to church, walked together across Richmond Hill; visited tutors and colleges, friends of the family, the opera, the music hall, public lectures and events. The child was barely old enough to chant his nine times table, and there he was, every night, being dangled in public, while a ring of men waited for me; for Margot. Whatever the… the circumstances of the thing… Albert baited a trap for us with his own child. And you think our current predicament isn’t a kind of justice?”
“Not for him it isn’t,” I barked, tilting my chin towards the sleeping lieutenant. “You two play your games, but not for him.”
A shrug from Abbey, forced, a struggle. Silence from the professor. Then: “Finish it, William. Let her have the truth.”
So he did.
Chapter 74
Waiting, in London.
December 1909 gave way to New Year 1910, and still Margot didn’t come. Once I had seen that Richard was a trap, not just her next victim, everything changed. I should have run; should have just let the jaws close. Every minute I spent in that city was an old terror, waiting for the things that come in the dark. The knock on the door; hooded men; chains and the surgical table, the knife in my skull. Every stranger was watching me, every othe
r street carried a picture of my face. But I couldn’t leave. I had thought I was saving a child’s life by warning Albert, but all I had done was put Margot in danger of the surgeon’s blade. I could not cure her, or make her stop; neither could I let another child die. What else could I do? What else was there?
I waited and she did not come. January gave way to February, and I began to dream the dreams of my neighbours. By day I lodged in Whitechapel in a room with seven others, rubbed dust into my skin, dined on eel and boiled potato. By night I stalked Albert’s son, circling the ever-moving perimeter of guards set upon him until I knew the faces of every man. They nearly caught me a half-dozen times, and a half-dozen times more than that I lost my nerve, until Langa came.
He’s coming, he came, he comes, truth is not reality, we filter all things through our hearts, the truth of our hearts, Richard is waking Albert is so scared more scared than he’s ever been nothing matters except now, this moment, he would lose it all for his son and didn’t know until this instant that this was what love was, he comes, he comes, she is coming, he is coming!
At night, I waited for the Nineteen to come and pluck me to my death, and instead, Langa came.
My old friend. Returning to me at last.
Everything was easier. Everything simpler. I looked down upon my prey and knew the truth of men’s hearts, and I rejoiced in the knowing. God-like, this is how Margot feels as she tears into the souls of men, their every sin washed through me, their every thought my balm. How many must die for her new world, let it all burn, let everything burn, this war will wash away the old world in blood, a new world, there is no place for us in it but let it burn, let us burn, all of us burnt as the tree, Langa comes, my sweet, blessed boy, he comes at last and with him comes the answer, all the answers, the truth drenched in darkness, thank you, thank you Langa, thank you!
It was with Langa at my back, that I finally saw her.
