Her grandfather, as Sera soon learned, was out. "Went off an hour or two past on some errand—no, I don't know where he might be," Caleb said irritably. "I reckon he'll be back afore long, if he knowed you was coming."
With spirits undimmed, Sera bade Caleb an unusually dulcet good afternoon and climbed the two flights of stairs to her grandfather's living quarters in the attic.
There, she removed her hat, her shawl, and her mittens, and draped them over a ladderback chair. Sera moved about the attic with easy familiarity, lighting a fire in the red brick fireplace in Jenk's little sitting room, hanging a kettle of water over the flames to boil. Humming a half-remembered tune under her breath, she arranged plates, cups, and saucers on a table, found a dish for the cider cake and another for the buns. She searched a cupboard until she found a loaf of dry bread, cut off two slices, skewering them on long-handled forks, and arranging them in a rack on the hob to toast.
By this time, the kettle was only just beginning to steam, so Sera opened the work basket which she kept at the bookshop, rummaged through the contents until she brought forth a frilled shirt of her grandfather's. It was so old and fragile that it was coming apart at the seams. Seating herself in one of the two wing chairs by the fire, she threaded her needle and set to work.
So she was when Gottfried Jenk entered the sitting room a short while later. The old bookseller paused, unnoticed, on the threshold, enjoying the pretty scene of comfortable domesticity thus presented. In the heat of the fire, the wild roses in Sera's cheeks were more vivid than ever; her glossy dark head was bent in concentration as, with tiny careful stitches, she mended the ancient shirt.
He had only a moment to observe her, before Sera looked up and saw him standing by the door. "There you are, Grandfather. You have come just in time. The water is boiling, and the teapot is warming on the mantel," she said as Jenk moved slowly across the room and bent stiffly to kiss her on the forehead. "You look tired, my dear. I hope you aren't ill?"
"I have not slept much of late." As he spoke, Jenk walked over to the open cupboard, took down a small painted chest of eastern design, and set it on the table. The box contained a black tea from the Orient, blended with dried raspberry leaves.
"No, no, I assure you that I am not ill. Nor am I of unquiet mind," he added hastily, as Sera's dark brows came together. "It is only that my . . . studies . . . occupy so much of my time." He continued to move slowly about the room, preparing the tea, taking down a crockery jam pot and putting it down on the snowy tablecloth. "I am old, my dear, and I have not many years ahead of me. I wish to make good use of the time that remains."
Sera looked up from her mending, hesitated a moment before speaking. Mistress Sancreedi's influence was fading, and she was beginning to remember certain conversations and observations that had worried her before. "When I came to see you two weeks past, I stopped in to visit Mistress Harefoot and Mistress Leer along the way. In both shops I heard a story, a most disturbing story—I didn't like to ask you about it before, when Caleb Braun was present. You have not—please tell me that you have not begun dissecting bodies, as they say. The risk of disease, especially to a man of your years . . ."
Jenk sank down wearily in the other chair. "The dissection of the human body," he said, with as much dignity as he could muster, "is illegal. Or rather, it is an act forbidden to all but members in good standing of the College of Chirurgeons, who perform their experiments under the Prince's warrant."
"Yes, yes, I know that," said Sera. "But I know, also, that the men of the Watch may be bribed to overlook—"
Jenk cut her off with an imperious wave of his hand. "I am not dissecting bodies, Sera, or indeed, engaging in any other activity of an illicit nature. It is true that I maintain a primitive sort of laboratory in a room down below, but if you wish to examine it in order to set your mind at rest, why then, you are welcome to do so."
As he had anticipated, Sera shook her head; she would never question her grandfather's word. How easily (thought Jenk) I have learned to lie to her. Yet is it not entirely for her own good?
"If you say that you are doing nothing wrong, Grandfather, then naturally I must believe you," said Sera.
When the tea had steeped, the old man poured a small amount into his own cup and an equal amount into Sera's. He smiled at his granddaughter over the teapot. "Do you remember—but of course you will recall—how you used to see pictures in the tealeaves? You used to amuse me with your . . . well, I suppose one might even call them predictions, for they were often amazingly accurate."
Sera felt an odd, fluttering sensation in her stomach. She remembered those "predictions" very well, for all she had labored so earnestly to forget them. As she remembered, also, certain terrifying childhood experiences, which this conversation with her grandfather had already brought to mind.
She recalled, with particular horror, a series of recurring nightmares, in which, seeming to rise from her little bed in the attic and walking barefoot down to the bookshop, she had seen her grandfather, in a strange dark wig, bending over an open coffin which contained a putrefying corpse . . .
Sera shuddered, remembering the livid face of the dead man, the sickening stench of the decaying flowers that lined the casket. Sitting up a little straighter, she resolutely put the memory out of her mind. "I fear that I was a dreadfully fanciful child! How fortunate that I've grown wiser with the years."
Her grandfather smiled at her, a smile both wistful and quizzical. "Wiser, my dear? I wonder. Had you chosen to train your intuition instead of suppress it, it is possible you might have been capable of great things."
But Sera would not—could not bear to—give any credit to her disquieting childhood fantasies. "You know I put no faith in intuition, or in anything of the sort," she said firmly.
Rather than disturb her further, Jenk allowed the subject to drop. He poured another cup of tea for himself, brought the toast to the table, and spread it with damson jam. Between sips of tea and bites of cider cake, Sera went on with her sewing.
When she finished mending his shirt, she folded it neatly and brought out the work basket again."I really do not know how you manage to mistreat your handkerchiefs so badly," she said, displaying a particularly disreputable specimen for his inspection. "And here is one that is even wor—" She broke off with an exclamation of surprise and dismay. "Why, it—it looks exactly like a tiny shroud."
For a moment, Gottfried Jenk struggled to find the words. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, shook his head, and passed a trembling hand over his brow. Then he managed to collect himself.
"You are acquainted with Mistress Vogel, who comes in to scrub for me? She was here with her niece but a few days past. The child brought a family of wooden poppets and her bits and pieces of sewing; she was making a gown for a little Rose-Bride. It is that time of year, is it not?"
"Yes. It is that time of year," said Sera. But she had not failed to notice his temporary confusion. A faint doubt crept into her mind, the first she had ever entertained as to her grandfather's veracity.
Yet, though she instantly and resolutely pushed that doubt to the back of her mind, it remained with her, and would emerge again and again to trouble her in the weeks to come.
CHAPTER 10
Which the Sensitive reader may wish to Omit,
but Ought to be read, nevertheless.
The tavern known as the Antique Squid was a great untidy elephant of a house, built of grey stone and half timber, with dormer windows and cupolas and chimneys starting out of the roof and the upper stories in unexpected places. It was a crazy old house, all curves and odd angles, with shutters hanging loose on broker hinges, doors that regularly jammed (or refused to close at all) and a slate roof carpeted in a patchwork of shaggy green moss and ruddy houseleek.
The taproom at the Squid was long and narrow, rather resembling an attic lumber room for its low, beamed ceiling and the number and variety of its furnishings: scarred oak tables, upholstered armchairs with broken s
eams and horsehair sticking out in wiry tufts, benches, settles, stools both high and low, trunks, and packing crates. In addition, the taproom boasted two fine fire-places, each with a cozy inglenook, a dozen or so clocks (some of these even kept time), and a number of dim old paintings done in oils. Perhaps the most striking feature was the many-tentacled sea-creature preserved in formaldehyde in a bottle behind the bar, the antique squid for which the tavern was named.
The tavern had a reputation for solid comfort combined with a convivial atmosphere. Folk came to the Squid for good brown beer and well-aged cheeses, for steaming bowls of purl or mulled wine, for demon fiddlers who could play all night long with scarcely a pause, and for comely, good-natured barmaids.
It was customary among the Watchmen who nightly patrolled the eastern bank to meet at the Squid and drink a tankard of ale or porter before walking their evening rounds. Matthias and Walther, Oderic and Theodor, Abel and Thaddeus: big men with loud voices, they dominated the crowded taproom with their presence.
They had met as usual, one particular evening near the end of the season, and claimed an inglenook for their private use. The ale was excellent, a fine fire blazed on the hearth, and the fiddlers were just tuning up. But conversation lagged, largely due to Theodor, who sat in a shadowy corner of the nook with his tricorn pulled down over his eyes, and answered the sallies of the others with grunts and disspirited monosyllables.
After about a quarter of an hour of this, Oderic gave his partner a friendly shove. "You're in a black mood this night, cully. Another squabble with your old woman, was it?
Theodor put down his tankard with a thud. "Molly's all right—I got no quarrel with her. Tell you what: I'm surprised the rest of you ain't a good deal more sober, seeing what night this be."
The others exchanged a puzzled glance.
"It's the thirty-seventh," said Theodor. "And the Gentlemen is always active around this time. And when I think of finding another dead girl, like the one we discovered last year this same time . . . well, it makes me sick, and I ain't ashamed to say so."
The other constables all moved uneasily in their seats, unnerved by this unwelcome reminder. But Matthias spoke out loudly and heartily, perhaps a little too heartily, to disguise his own discomfort. "That may be. But two seasons has passed since the boys on the west bank made their discovery—and that was just one of the Gentlemen themselfs, with his tongue cut and his throat slashed—not one of them poor sacrificed girls. Seems to me as if the Knights of Mezztopholeez has turned their hands to less bloody-minded mischief than they was inclined to afore."
Theodor shook his head glumly. "Not likely—not bleeding likely, cully. Those as have a mind to them amusements ain't inclined to take satisfaction in no milder entertainment. They'll be up to their old tricks soon, if they ain't already, and when they does . . ." Theodor did not finish the sentence, but he did not have to. They were all familiar with the handiwork of those "gentlemanly" blackguards the Knights of Mezztopholeez, and it was not a subject that any of them cared to reflect on.
Particularly not Matthias, who pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. "It may be as you say, but I for one ain't inclined to spoil my whole evening, adreading of something that may never come to be. Come along, Walther, we got a job to do."
With an apologetic glance in the direction of the others, Walther followed his partner out of the tavern and into the street.
The night was damp and windy, and the moon was thin but waxing. Not a comfortable sort of night, thought Walther. He felt all jumbled and jumpy inside; he started at every moving shadow, and whenever a wisp of cloud passed over the moon, a chill of fear crawled down his spine.
Matthias, on the other hand, was set on maintaining a bold front. As he and Walther walked their rounds, the big red-head swaggered on ahead, humming a tune under his breath and swinging his nightstick jauntily—a performance that fooled neither of them and only served to increase Walther's nervous jumpiness.
When Walther hesitated at the mouth of an ominously dim and malodorous alley, Matthias snickered nastily. "You're an old woman, Walther, and I never knew it."
"And you're a braggart and a blowhard!" his partner countered "You can hum your songs and flourish your nightstick but I ain't fooled. You're sick right through to the marrow of your bones just the same as me, thinking what we're like to find."
"Maybe I am, and maybe I ain't," said Matthias. "But if I am—where's the sense in brooding on it?"
"I can't help but think on it, said Walther, with another shiver as a cloud passed over the moon. "Them poor butchered girls. I lived among violent men all my life, and I can understand a deed of passion or revenge. But the Knights and their d----d heathenish rituals, it's wicked, Matthias, it makes my skin crawl. Why do they do it? No one knows. No, nor no one knows who they be—not until one of them turns up dead. And no one knows their number neither. There could be a hundred of them, and nobody's wife or sweetheart safe, no man's sister, and no child's mother."
"Mostly it's whores," Matthias pointed out. "The last five girls they found was—"
"Some of the nicest girls I ever knowed is whores," Walther retorted.
Matthias shrugged that one off, just as though he were not on a first-name basis with half of the girls on the streets. He turned and entered the alley, swinging his truncheon as before and humming that same annoying tune.
After another moment or two of hesitation, Walther hurried to catch up with him. His eyes slowly adjusted to the deeper gloom of the alley just in time to see the shadowy figure of Matthias go down right in front of him, cursing fit to raise the dead.
Walther stood where he was, extended a groping hand into the darkness below. "You all right, Matthias?"
"I ain't busted nothing," came the reply. "But I twisted my ankle and scraped my hands."
"What made you stumble?"
"You know d--n well what it was made me stumble. You been talking of nothing else since we left the Squid." Matthias rose painfully to his feet. "Help me to drag the body out into the light, so we can see what we got here."
Matthias took the shoulders and Walther searched around until he found the feet. He was pleased to discover that the corpse had thick ankles and was wearing a pair of men's shoes. They carried the body out of the alley and down a wider street until they came to a circle of yellow lamp light. The corpse landed with a heavy thump as it hit the cobblestones at the foot of the lamp post.
"Just as I thought," said Matthias, squatting down on his heels, the better to examine the corpse. The dead man wore a well-cut coat of crimson velvet; diamonds sparkled in the bloody lace at his throat and on the buckles of his shoes. Evidently he had been a man of some consequence. "Tongue cut and throat slashed from ear to ear." Matthias removed a purple velvet mask covering the upper part of the dead man's face. "And his brow marked with the sign of a traitor, written in blood. One of their own they feared might blab. Pity they got to him afore he was able to speak out. We'll take the pin for ourselves and leave the fancy buckles for the Chief."
Walther removed the diamond stickpin, gingerly, so as not to touch the clotted blood staining the lace. But then he made a discovery: "Look here—over his heart: a powder burn and a hole in his waistcoat. Shot with a pistol, he was! That ain't regular—that ain't the usual thing at all."
"No more it is," agreed Matthias. "No need to shoot a man once you've cut his throat. And as for plugging him first and cutting him afterwards, I never knew the Gentlemen to be so merciful."
It seemed a more thorough examination of the body was in order, so the two constables set distastefully about the task. In a pocket of the dead man's flowered waistcoat they found a scrap of bloody parchment. Four words were written there, in a flowing aristocratic hand. Neither Walther nor Matthias could read, but those four words they recognized, for they had seen them before under similar circumstances: The Knights of Mezztopholeez.
Walther straightened up. He removed his tricorn and scratched his head. This was a p
uzzle and no mistake. "But maybe it weren't the Knights, after all. Maybe 'twas an ordinary murder, made to look like . . . no, not likely. There ain't many know the proper signs, except for the Watch and the Gentlemen themselves."
"Well, it ain't for us to worry our heads over, anyways." Matthias pushed himself up off the ground. "Leave that to the Chief Constable and the lieutenants. All we got to do is bring the body in. You stay here and I'll go for a cart."
Matthias limped down the street and disappeared around a corner. Walther—not best pleased at being left alone with the corpse—leaned up against the lamp post. But Matthias reappeared much sooner than his partner had expected, and without the cart. Hobbling as fast as he could go, he gestured wildly. "Leave that there. Come see what I found."
Walther sprang away from the lamp post and followed Matthias around the corner.
"Blister me if it ain't another corpse!" breathed Walther.
"Shot through the heart, then slashed and marked, just like the other one," said Matthias grimly.
Walther shuddered profoundly. "Two in one night, that ain't regular neither. Theodor was right: they took so long between killings, they've busted out worse nor ever. I don't like it, Matthias. I don't like the feel of it."
"No more do I," said Matthias. "I reckon there'll be worse mischief afore this night is done."
CHAPTER 11
Containing Scenes rather more Adventurous than Revealing.
Had the Knights of Mezztopholeez known, at that very moment, all that Matthias Vogel and Walther Burgen knew, the men of that secret brotherhood might have echoed their apprehension. Men of violence though they were, the bloody deaths of two of their brethren formed no part of their plans for the evening.
The Gentlemen (as they were called) were members of an ancient brotherhood with a lurid history of black magic and bloodshed—a history far more terrible than the people of Thornburg guessed, because the Chief Constable and his immediate predecessors, partly to prevent a panic, partly to prevent a public outcry against their own inability to unmask the Knights and bring them to justice, had veiled their deeds in a dark shroud of secrecy. Yet word leaked out, and rumors about these nobly born rascals and their activities were rife. Everyone had heard of the Knights of Mezztopholeez, but not everyone believed in their existence; of those who did, only a few outside the Watch knew the full extent of their wickedness.
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