The Society of Blood

by Mark Morris

  For a few moments he’d been able to do nothing but gape at the grandeur around him. It was Hawkins who’d snapped him from his stupor by coldly reminding him why he was here. The man’s message was grim: one of the two watchers who’d been assigned to keep tabs on the Thousand Sorrows had been found in the Thames, his body hacked open and his innards removed, and the other was missing. Hulse’s messenger had said the word ‘eviscerated’ with great care, pronouncing it with a hard ‘c’ instead of a silent one.

  ‘That was what Mr ’ulse said to tell you, sir,’ he mumbled now, staring at the cap in his hands. ‘Them’s were his exact words.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘Well… thank you for letting me know. Here’s something for your trouble.’ I blindly handed him a couple of coins.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like a cup of beef tea before you go,’ said Clover, ‘to warm you on your way?’

  The man’s muddy eyes lit up. ‘I wouldn’t say no, madam. Thank you kindly. Only there is one more thing…’

  ‘Then tell us quickly,’ growled Hawkins.

  ‘It’s more by way of an askin’ than a tellin’. Mr ’ulse wanted to know whether he should send two more fellows to keep watch in Floral Court, then two more after ’em, if needs be.’

  I shuddered. It was bad enough having the blood of even one man on my hands, never mind a steady stream of them.

  ‘On no account. Please tell Mr Hulse that I’ll be taking direct charge of the situation from now on.’

  The man nodded. ‘Very good, sir.’

  As soon as he’d gone Clover said, ‘Don’t tell me you’re still planning on your little excursion to Limehouse after this?’

  I looked at her, surprised. ‘Why not? I don’t see that it changes anything. In fact, it just confirms that we’re getting closer.’

  ‘Closer to the grave maybe.’

  I scowled. ‘We always knew what we were doing was dangerous. What did you think? That once we tracked down the Wolves they’d meekly hand the heart over?’

  ‘No, of course not. It’s just…’

  ‘Just what?’

  ‘Well, is it wise facing them in these circumstances? On their own territory? On their own terms?’

  Frustration made me snappish. ‘We’ve waited three months for a lead like this, Clover. We can’t afford to let it slip through our fingers now. Or I can’t, at least.’

  Clover looked at me, then at Hawkins. She sighed. ‘So what’s the plan?’

  I shrugged. ‘There isn’t one. Apart from the fact that I go there and play it by ear.’

  ‘We go there, you mean.’ She gestured at all three of us. Hawkins nodded.

  I shook my head. ‘No, just me. I’m not risking your lives as well as my own.’

  Clover scowled. ‘Bollocks to that! Those fuckers destroyed my club! They killed Mary, and half my customers, and maybe even some of my girls! This is just as personal for me as it is for you, Alex. Those bastards deserve some payback.’

  I laughed bitterly. ‘And how are we going to give that to them? I’m prepared to go along because… well, because I’m not convinced that they want me dead. And because you’ve given me faith.’

  ‘I have?’ said Clover, surprised.

  ‘Well, not you personally. But the fact that you’ve seen me when I’m older – and that you wouldn’t be here, couldn’t be here, if I hadn’t survived. You’ve seen me with the heart. You’ve seen me controlling the heart. That must count for something?’

  She looked uneasy. ‘I don’t know if it proves anything. And neither do you. We’ve talked about this, remember? We’ve talked about it until we’re blue in the face. What if history can be changed?’

  ‘Yeah, but what if it can’t?’

  As Clover had said, we’d had this conversation, or variations on it, many times before, and as such I knew full well that I was on very shaky ground.

  Angrily she said, ‘So what you’re saying now is that you’re impervious to harm just because I’ve seen you in the future? You’re saying that if I were to put a bullet through your head at this moment nothing would happen?’

  I shrugged. ‘Not in so many words. But you’ve got to admit, evidence of an older me is at least kind of reassuring. And it goes without saying that we won’t get anywhere by running away from danger whenever it rears its head. He who dares and all that.’

  Clover rolled her eyes. ‘For fuck’s sake! Who do—’

  Then, from upstairs, Hope screamed, and our conversation ended instantly.

  A look flashed between us. I guessed we were all thinking the same thing: What if they’re here? What if they’ve got in?

  Clover jumped to her feet. ‘It’ll just be another bad dream,’ she said, as if trying to convince herself. ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘I’m coming too.’

  ‘Perhaps we should all go,’ suggested Hawkins, but Clover shook her head.

  ‘We don’t want to terrify the poor mite by crowding her. She’ll be confused enough as it is.’ She touched Hawkins on the arm. ‘We’ll call you if we need you.’

  Like a heroine in a Gothic melodrama, she swept from the room, across the hallway and up the stairs in her satin gown. I followed, but as we reached the upper landing I put a warning hand on her arm and moved ahead. Hurrying along the corridor, I noticed that Hope’s door was ajar and leaking a line of flickering light.

  Clover and I entered the room more or less simultaneously, my gaze immediately drawn to the wardrobe opposite the bed against the far wall. I’m not sure what I expected to see: the door hanging open, something monstrous and spindly emerging from it – or perhaps even dragging Hope through the rack of clothes into some dark Narnia beyond?

  But the wardrobe doors were firmly shut, so my head snapped in the other direction, fixing on the bed towards which Clover was already moving. Her gown was so voluminous it all but blotted out the lamp on the bedside table, throwing the bed into shadow. My first impression was of something bulky, back humped like a huge caterpillar, at the end of the bed. Above that a dim figure seemed not only to be oddly twisted, but to have two heads and too many limbs.

  Then my perception shifted, and I realised I was looking at Mrs Peake, in a long white nightgown, leaning over Hope, her back so arched that her grey head and Hope’s blond one seemed almost to be touching. Hope was on her back, shuddering with cold or shock. She had kicked her eiderdown off, so it was hunched at her feet. Mrs Peake was gently stroking Hope’s arms and making shushing noises to try and calm her.

  ‘Oh, Mr Locke, Miss Monroe,’ she said, turning towards us as we entered, ‘thank goodness you’re here. I was shocked awake by the poor girl’s scream. I had no idea what time it was.’

  Mrs Peake was a slim, rangy Irish woman in her late fifties, with flat feet and big hands. I’d always secretly thought she resembled a startled tortoise: she had deep bags under protuberant eyes, a wrinkled little mouth and virtually no chin. Despite her naturally dour expression, though, she possessed a heart of gold and bags of patience, and she doted on Hope.

  She shuffled aside to let Clover kneel at the bedside. Placing a hand on Hope’s forehead, Clover said, ‘She’s burning up.’

  I moved to the other side of the bed. Hope, flushed and sweaty despite the chilly night air, was wriggling and moaning.

  ‘It’s that bloody infection,’ I said, ignoring Mrs Peake’s frown of disapproval at my potty-mouth. ‘If only we had some antibiotics.’

  ‘I have my Beecham’s Pills, Mr Locke,’ Mrs Peake said. ‘Shall I fetch one?’

  I shook my head. Knowing how much Mrs Peake swore by her Beecham’s Pills I’d asked the doctor who regularly attended Hope what was in them and he’d told me they contained little more than aloes, ginger and soap. What this meant was that they made you sweat and they made you vomit, which to the average Victorian was as good a cure as you could expect from modern medicine. If you were ill and you couldn’t puke it up or sweat it out you were buggered.

  ‘I don’t think they’ll do any g
ood,’ I said, anxiety making me more blunt than I’d intended.

  Mrs Peake looked offended, as if I’d insulted a cherished family recipe. ‘A bread poultice then? To draw the poison out?’

  Clover touched Mrs Peake gently on the arm. ‘You’re a darling, Mrs Peake, but why don’t you go back to bed and let Alex and I deal with this? It’s not fair depriving you of sleep when you have to be up so early.’

  Mrs Peake slid a glance at Hope, still shivering and twitching on the bed. ‘But I do so worry about the poor scrap.’

  ‘As do we all. But really, Alex and I will attend to her. We’ll sit up all night if we have to.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure…’

  ‘I am. Goodnight, Mrs Peake.’

  We didn’t sit up with Hope all night, but we sat up with her for the best part of the next hour. Clover wiped her face with a damp cloth to bring her fever down, while I examined her arm as best I could by lamplight.

  The flesh around the metal graft was discoloured and leaking a trickle of foul-smelling discharge, but it looked no worse than it had on previous occasions. There was no doubt, though, that Hope’s condition was deteriorating. Whether that would continue as a gradual decline or whether the infection would suddenly take hold and irreparably poison her system was impossible to say. Dr Pasco, who had given me the lowdown on Mrs Peake’s Beecham’s Pills, thought that Hope’s only chance of survival was through immediate surgery – a suggestion I’d so far resisted. Without surgery, Pasco believed, Hope would die within months, if not weeks, whereas if he were to amputate the infected limb she would have a twenty per cent chance of surviving the operation and making a full recovery.

  I had no doubt that Pasco knew his stuff – he was an experienced police pathologist with an excellent reputation – but Clover and I had decided the odds were unacceptable. We knew we were playing Russian roulette with a little girl’s life (and if she died we’d never forgive ourselves), but we also knew that if we could find the heart and get Hope treated in the twenty-first century, her survival chances would leap from twenty per cent to near one hundred per cent.

  At last we managed to get her fever down and she started to settle. I lifted her out of bed and into an armchair so that I could change her damp bedding. While I was doing that Clover carefully peeled Hope’s sweat-soaked nightie over her head and replaced it with a fresh one. Hope stayed asleep and compliant throughout the process, but as Clover lifted her back into bed she opened her eyes.

  ‘Hey, sweetie,’ Clover murmured, kissing her forehead while I pulled the eiderdown back over her.

  Hope blinked sleepily, and for a moment I wondered whether she was properly awake. Then she asked, ‘Has he gone?’

  ‘Who, honey?’

  ‘The Sandman. I don’t like him. He frightens me.’

  Clover and I exchanged a glance. The Sandman again. Something crawled in my gut.

  ‘There’s no one here,’ I said. ‘It was just a dream.’

  ‘No.’ She raised her good arm and pointed into the far corner of the room, to the left of the wardrobe. ‘He was there. Sand came out of his eyes. Then he opened his mouth and sand came out of that too. Then I screamed and Mrs Peake came in and he went away.’

  I felt so unsettled I had to fight down an urge to argue with her, to get her to admit she’d been dreaming.

  Softly Clover said, ‘And he’s not coming back, I promise. Now close your eyes and go to sleep.’

  ‘That’s what he wants me to do…’ But Hope’s voice was drowsy; she was already drifting away.

  Clover smoothed the ruckled edges of the eiderdown over Hope’s chest and gently pushed away a few errant strands of hair.

  ‘Don’t make promises you might not be able to keep,’ I whispered.

  Clover looked at me, surprised. ‘What do you mean?’

  I crossed to the corner Hope had pointed at and knelt down. I was disturbed enough to want to prove to myself that she had been dreaming. But when I touched the carpet my fingers came into contact with something gritty. I clenched my hand into a fist and stood up.

  Clover rose slowly from the bed when I turned towards her. A little fearfully she asked, ‘What have you got there?’

  I crossed to the lamp that Mrs Peake had left on the bedside table. Slowly I opened my hand.

  Clover gasped as she saw what I’d picked up, and what was now trickling through my fingers.

  Grains of fine black sand.

  THIRTEEN

  THE THOUSAND SORROWS

  It wasn’t quite a ‘London Particular’, but the fog that rolled in from the Thames in billows and swags, bringing the stink of effluvia with it, was clammy and dense. Combined with the snow, it spared us the foulest details of Limehouse’s mean streets, transforming the area – packed with sailors’ lodging houses, pubs, marine stores, oyster shops and shipyards – into a maze that you might encounter in a dream. The fog blurred every outline, smeared every surface, muffled and distorted every sound. It seemed to turn our surroundings into a realm of ghosts, a place where time had slipped its moorings, and echoes from the past haemorrhaged into the present.

  Although the fog compromised our senses, I had to admit I was grateful for it. Not only did it keep the majority of people indoors, but it also meant Hawkins and I could go about our business shrouded in a blanket of invisibility.

  That worked both ways, of course. We might have been able to use the fog to cloak ourselves, but then so could our enemies – or any other threat that might come our way.

  We stumbled across the gamblers just as we were beginning to lose our bearings; just as the fog was beginning to seem less a boon and more a hindrance.

  We heard what was happening a few minutes before we saw it. Drifting from the fog came the high, crazed squealing of animals, the guttural cries and low, nasty laughter of men. Reverberating through the thick, white soup that swirled around us, the sound seemed – quite literally – hellish.

  I halted and grabbed the sleeve of Hawkins’ overcoat.

  ‘Christ! What’s that?’

  Unflappable as ever, Hawkins cocked his head one way and then the other, trying to tune in.

  ‘Something to be avoided,’ he murmured.

  The sounds rose and fell again like a bad radio signal.

  ‘Where’s it coming from?’

  It was impossible to tell. One moment the cries seemed to swoop down from above, the next they seemed to sneak up from behind. It was as if the billows of fog formed a series of reflective surfaces that bounced noise in all directions.

  We had no option but to keep moving cautiously forward, keeping close to the walls, looking out for street signs. Even so, we were still surprised when we rounded a corner and suddenly a dozen men manifested in front of us, hunched forward, facing the wall in a rough semicircle. Their voices – all at once shockingly clear – barked encouragement or brayed laughter at something which the dark wall of their bodies concealed from view, but which squealed like an animal, or several, maddened with rage and pain.

  Hawkins, a few paces in front of me, came to an abrupt stop, stretching a warning arm out across the front of my body. I stopped too, the snow crunching and scuffing beneath my feet. But it was too late. We’d been spotted.

  The wall of bodies broke apart as the men turned towards us. Through the gap, dimly, I saw what their attention had been focused upon. Within a makeshift arena of wooden fruit boxes, a pair of rats had been set against one another. Squealing and thrashing, they were still locked together, claws and teeth sunk in one another’s flesh. On the ground by the men’s feet coins were dull, brassy pockmarks in the snow.

  ‘Well, well,’ one of the gamblers said. ‘And who might you fine gentlemen be?’

  ‘No one who need concern you,’ Hawkins replied, his voice considerably more cultured than the man who’d asked the question. ‘We wish only to pass along this street. Return to your sport.’

  ‘This street?’ said the man in mock surprise. He was a bulky silhouette t
hreaded with tendrils of white fog. ‘Why, this street is our street. And there’s a fee to be paid for setting foot upon it.’

  ‘Then we’ll find an alternate route,’ Hawkins said, but before we could turn away the man sprang forward, arm upraised, the dull gleam of a blade in his hand.

  ‘I’m afraid the damage is already done, gentlemen.’ His cronies grunted assent behind him. ‘So I suggest you hand over your purses without further ado.’

  I drew my howdah from my pocket and pointed it at the man’s head. ‘And I suggest you put that knife back in your pocket, chum, unless you want to be paid in bullets.’

  Immediately the crowd of men shrank back, muttering. Their leader froze, then slowly lowered the knife.

  ‘No need for that, shipmate,’ he said. ‘We was only joshing with yer.’

  Behind him the rats, ignored now, continued to tear one another apart. I kept my gun trained on the man’s head as he put the knife away, then raised his hands in a placatory gesture.

  ‘As you seem to know these streets so well, perhaps you can help us find our way through them,’ I said.

  The man dipped his head in a half-bow. ‘I’m sure nothing would give me greater pleasure.’

  ‘We’re looking for an establishment somewhere near here – the Thousand Sorrows. Have you heard of it?’

  The man’s head snapped up. His cronies froze, as if playing Statues.

  ‘I can see you have,’ I murmured.

  ‘Tell us what you know of the place,’ ordered Hawkins. ‘Quickly now!’

  Despite Hawkins’ tone the knifeman chose his words carefully. ‘I’m not familiar with the establishment in person, you understand, and I have no interest in the business what’s conducted there – but if it’s the pleasures of the pipe you’re after I’d advise you to seek them under a different roof.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ I asked. ‘What have you heard about the Thousand Sorrows?’

  ‘Stories. Rumours. No more than that.’