But the lane was so narrow, with no sidewalks, that she had literally no place to stand clear. She had only seconds to react. She flattened herself into a recess in the stone wall. Coach lamps cast swaying cones of light onto the paving slates at her feet as the carriage rumbled past. The coachman at the front, and footman at the rear, paid her no heed. Muddy and disheveled, she didn’t exist, or it was beneath their dignity to take any notice of her.
With the thundering noise of hooves fast receding, Katie glanced down. She truly was a sorry sight. Her grey gloves, once soft as silk, were greasy and muddy; her dress and cloak, caked in grime.
A shadow swooped overhead.
A seagull?
She hastened down yet another narrow pathway, following the cry of the gull overhead, but came to a grinding halt when she heard the faint noise of words lost on the wind.
Angry words.
She raced on until she came to a lonely corner with a statue of Eros on a pedestal.
The sound of her approaching boots clattering on the cobblestones made a woman standing under a streetlamp glance up.
The woman, whose face was in shadow, had hiked her skirts up at the prospect of soliciting business, but when she saw it was only Katie crashing down the street, she let her petticoats drop to the ground with a whoosh. Katie wanted to scream for her to go home. Jack the Ripper killed two women tonight! He could easily—
Katie suddenly realized that she, too, was alone. She, too, could be the Ripper’s next victim.
Katie was about to scoot past the woman when she heard the voices again, and recognized them. She ducked behind the statue of Eros, where she crouched, her head drumming, her lungs aching. Katie read the inscription at the base of the statue: “ANTEROS: ANGEL OF CHARITY.” So it wasn’t Eros, she thought. It was his twin. Katie thought about the twin Collins in her life and shuddered. Where was her Collin now?
“You’re all a pack of blithering idiots!” came the voice, all too familiar. Major Brown’s voice. “You lost all three of them!”
So Collin and Toby had escaped!
Katie felt an urge to shout for joy, but made her breathing go shallow. She didn’t want to make a sound. The smell wafting up from the gutter behind her made her want to gag. She put her fist in her mouth and forced herself to stay perfectly still.
“Return to the Ten Bells,” Major Brown shouted to the two officers at his side. “See if they doubled back. I’ll head down to the river and have a talk with Mrs. Tray. If anyone knows where Tobias is, she will.”
“Won’t tell you nofink. Not Mrs. Tray from Traitors’ Gate.”
“Oh, she’ll tell me,” said Major Brown with authority.
“She’ll put a hex on you, she will,” said the second officer.
“Superstitious hogwash. Who’s that?” came Major Brown’s voice.
Katie held her breath as Major Brown passed within feet of her. She could see his profile in outline. The long, hollow face, the eagle nose.
One of his officers lit a match and it curled up into flame. “ ’Tis only a street walker, sir.”
“Get her out of here. Take her home, sergeant. It’s dangerous.”
The other man sputtered. “Who give’s a rat’s curse about a gin-soaked harlot? Let her—”
“I care, Sergeant Drummond. Do as I say—now!”
“But, sir. ’Tis naught but Mary Jane Kelly!” The sergeant made a sneering gesture.
Mary Jane Kelly?
Katie squinted in the gloom, peering around the statue, trying to make out Mary Jane’s features. Mary Jane Kelly was going to be the Ripper’s next-to-last victim, a brutal and gruesome murder. Katie shuddered. Mary Jane, age twenty-five, would be flayed alive, and then her limbs amputated and her organs sent through the post to the police.
Sergeant Drummond strode up to the girl and gave her a powerful shove. “Move along, Mary Jane!”
“Stop that, sergeant,” barked Major Brown. “You shall escort Miss Kelly to her lodgings. It’s not safe for her to be out tonight. And you will comport yourself like an officer of her Majesty the Queen.”
“She’s rip-roaring drunk, sir!”
“More’s the reason to escort her home, sergeant,” Major Brown said with grim resolve.
The officer moved to grab Mary Jane’s arm.
“You cursed son of a swine! Take your ’ands off me,” screamed the alcohol-soaked voice of Mary Jane Kelly as she reached into the bosom of her blouse with fingerless gloves and tugged out a gin bottle. Consoling herself with a long pull from the chipped bottle, she hiccupped twice and belched.
The shutters on the bottom window of a padlocked storefront behind Mary Jane began to bang in the wind. Katie blinked in that direction. A reflector lamp, with a candle, showed itself in the second floor window. A minute later the window was thrown open, and a man wearing a stocking cap thrust his head out.
“Pipe down!” shouted the man. “I’ll set the police on you, I will!” An instant later the window slammed shut, but the reflector lamp, with its candle, continued to burn on the sill like a cheery beacon at Christmas. Only this wasn’t Christmas, and nothing about the scene was cheery.
Mary Jane stumbled sideways, closer to Katie, and Katie almost gasped. In the moonlight the girl was so strikingly beautiful she could have been a movie star. Golden-haired and strong-boned, she looked like a Norse goddess. So unexpected was her exquisite face that Katie would have been rendered speechless even if she weren’t trying to be silent.
The girl’s clothes were of good quality: a claret-colored velvet bonnet and matching short cape. Again Katie had to blink several times. In an age of disease-ravaged skin, Mary Jane Kelly’s features were as perfect as a china doll’s—with pink dimpled cheeks and shining dark eyes under arched eyebrows, and a full painted mouth above a round chin. She was a dead ringer for Anna Nicole Smith or Marilyn Monroe.
When she spoke, all resemblance to a china doll or a celebrity disappeared. Standing with her feet planted apart, Mary Jane Kelly let out a string of curses in a gravelly, demonic voice. Katie could see that several of her teeth were missing, and her remaining eyetooth was black with decay.
Sergeant Drummond bristled beneath his three-collared policeman’s coat and grabbed Mary Jane Kelly.
Mary Jane screamed and screamed just as a flicker of lightning flashed in the distance, lighting up the Thames.
The river was so close; Traitors’ Gate, even closer.
If only I could slip away. . . .
Chapter Fifty-one
This Could Be Sinister say the Bells of Westminster
Ten minutes after Sergeant Drummond led Mary Jane Kelly away from the corner lamppost and the Angel of Charity statue, Katie found herself stealthily following Major Brown to the river.
At first she hung back, darting into doorways and ducking behind trees, shadowing him like they do in the movies. But when Major Brown strode down the muddy slope of the Thames embankment, Katie moved rapidly to close the gap between them.
Instead of veering toward Traitors’ Gate as Katie had expected, Major Brown made a sharp detour toward a row of oddly shaped houses close to the river. Bigger than lean-tos, but smaller than cottages, the structures resembled gypsy caravans anchored on stone foundations, with chimney stacks that pointed straight into the dark sky like witches’ hats—the thatching along the rooflines like the straw of a broom. In front of the fenced-in yards was a long line of crooked trees, hunched and bowed over as if the wind had pummeled them for years in a downward direction. Moonlight slanted through fast-moving clouds making everything appear blue-black and murky.
Katie peered out from behind one of the gnarled trees and watched as Major Brown strode toward a house in the center of the row and knocked loudly. A dwarf-sized door flew open and a moment later, stooping low to get under the lintel, Major Brown disappeared inside, and a candle appeared at the window.
Darting from one tree to the next, Katie crept forward until she was forced to hopscotch across the gn
arled roots bulging up from the ground. She had an irresistible urge to race across the yard and peek into the window, but held back. The house was so small that a face peering in from outside would be like a goblin jumping out of a jack-in-the-box—conspicuous and startling.
Still . . .
She edged closer, her eyes fixed on the spot of light from the candle flickering on the sill, even as the wind blew against her eyelids.
Maybe if she put her ear to the door . . .
Then, as if someone were listening to her thoughts, the candle window opened outward like a small door, beckoning. As she neared the front stoop, every crunch of gravel set Katie’s teeth on edge. She tiptoed to the window and crouched beneath a flowerbox that was bursting with blood-red geraniums.
“Tell me where he is, Mrs. Traitor!” boomed Major Brown’s steely voice through the window, followed by the twinkling, church-organ sound of Mrs. Tray’s.
“Why, Gideon! You haven’t called me Mrs. Traitor since you were a boy in knee-breeches!”
“I’m on official business, Mrs. Traitor—as you well know. Where are they?”
“They?”
“The three young people. Tobias Becket, Collin Twyford, and an American girl named Katherine Lennox. They are together, no doubt. And I’ll wager you know precisely where that is. I should have come to you earlier. Toby’s been hiding here, hasn’t he?” Major Brown’s voice sounded odd, almost hoarse.
Katie straightened up slightly, the better to hear the stomping, scraping noises coming from inside—as if Major Brown were hauling furniture around.
“Ha-ha! Caught you!” she heard Major Brown snarl. And then, “What the blazes! You? What are you doing here, Molly Potter? Where’s Toby?”
“Molly arrived this evening, Gideon,” Mrs. Tray stated. “Tobias brought her. Molly and her unborn child are under my protection. No one shall harm them.”
Molly Potter? Katie almost bumped her head beneath the flowerbox. She’s here? She survived the Ripper!
Katie felt a rush of relief surge through her. She wanted to high-five the air, but a moment later, the doorlike window banged shut, followed by the rusty sound of a handle-latch snapping into place.
I need to hear what they’re saying!
Katie crept around the side of the house, mud-bubbles gurgling up through the gravel at her feet as she moved through an opening no bigger than the width of her body, down a narrow path hemmed in by a neighbor’s sidewall, and into Mrs. Tray’s backyard.
But the back door—down a narrow stairwell—was shuttered and locked, so Katie retraced her steps. She was just about to round the corner to the front of the house when she heard the front door burst open.
“Tower Bridge? Are you sure, Mrs. Traitor?”
Katie shied back.
“So be it,” came Major Brown’s voice, followed by the stomp of his boots echoing away into the night.
Katie counted slowly under her breath. When she reached fifty-Mississippi, she peeked out from around the side of the house and squinted into the distance. Major Brown was just a blur in the predawn light.
“Katherine? Katie-of-the-Stone? Is that you?” came the old woman’s voice. “Come here. Come here. There’s no time to waste.”
Katie rounded the corner fully. She blinked at the old woman standing in the doorway dressed all in black. “Mrs. Tray—
“Toby’s not at Tower Bridge, Mrs. Tray,” Katie said, forgetting for a moment that the old woman was blind.
“Of course he is, my dear.” The woman stared in Katie’s direction, a watchful tension in her wrinkled face.
“No. We agreed to meet at—” Katie stopped. She wasn’t sure she could trust the Oracle of Traitors’ Gate.
“Tobias is not at Traitors’ Gate, Katie-of-the-Stone, if that’s what you think. He is hiding under the pilings on the construction pier below the scaffolding on Tower Bridge.”
“But Major Brown wants to arrest Toby! Wants him to hang for the murders of—”
“Stuff and nonsense,” came the church organ voice. The old woman’s eyes were as grey and foggy as the mist rising off the Thames in the distance.
“There’s no time, Katie-of-the-Stone, so I shall speak quickly. There will be a death at the bridge tonight. Either Gideon Brown shall perish, or—”
Mrs. Tray’s plump little hands, in their fingerless black gloves, motioned to Katie. “Quickly. Let me explain.”
“But if Toby’s at the bridge, I’ve got to get there!” Katie cried. “I’ve got to warn him.”
A small, feminine voice called out from inside the house. “Mrs. Traitor?”
“Just a minute, Molly, dear. We have a visitor.” Mrs. Tray compressed her wrinkled lips, then peered at Katie through the cloudy formations in her sightless eyes. “That’s Molly Potter. Tobias brought her earlier. Don’t be alarmed. Molly is perfectly safe here. Her baby shall arrive in a fortnight.”
“But Mrs. Tray!” Katie gasped. “If Major Brown knows that Molly Potter is here—”
“Yes, my dear?”
“He’s Jack the Ripper! He’ll kill her! He’ll slice—”
“Goodness! Is that what you think?” The fog swirls in the old woman’s eyes seemed to twirl round and around in a hypnotic kaleidoscope. “I’m afraid, my dear, that you—”
“I’ve got to go, Mrs. Tray. I’ve got to warn Toby!”
The old woman put her hand out and touched Katie’s shoulder, level with her own as she stood a foot above Katie on the stoop.
“Katie, my dear. I had trouble seeing your aura when first we met at Traitors’ Gate, but not now. Which means you must return home — to your home—immediately. You have so little time left. When the sun breaks fully in the sky, it will be too late. You must return to the London Stone at once. You haven’t a moment to lose.”
“But I can’t! Toby’s in danger. If he’s at Tower Bridge and Major Brown is on his way there . . . Oh, Mrs. Tray. I know you didn’t mean to, but you’ve put Toby at risk! Major Brown’s going to arrest him. He’ll be . . . hanged.”
The old woman’s voice rose and fell and rose again like a church organ at a funeral. “When you are safely back in your own time, my dear, I shall explain everything to Tobias. Go now.”
Katie turned to leave. But the thought of a pregnant Molly Potter meeting the same fate as Catherine Eddowes—slashed and eviscerated—made Katie stop in her tracks. “Mrs. Tray, about Molly Potter . . . She’s not safe. You may have saved her tonight, but she’s still in danger. If Jack the Ripper isn’t stopped, Molly Potter will die.”
“She is safe, my dear. I promise. She and her baby, a boy she will name Harold, will live long, full, productive . . . and perhaps,” said Mrs. Tray, chuckling, “even charmed lives.”
“How can you be sure?”
“It’s already been written. It’s in the cards.” Again the soft, tinkling laughter. “Of course, Molly can’t play cards as she can’t read or do sums. But she will be safe. I promise. And her son will grow up to be a fine young man—as will his great-grandson. You shall have to trust me on this, my dear.” Again the chuckle.
Katie took a deep breath remembering Mary Jane Kelly’s being led away cursing and hollering by Sergeant Drummond.
“If you can save Molly Potter, can you save a girl named Mary Jane Kelly?” Katie asked. “She’s supposed to die on November ninth. Her death will be horrible. She’ll be . . . tortured.”
The misty whirls in Mrs. Tray’s sightless eyes swirled faster. “I know Mary Jane Kelly well. But I’m sorry, my dear. There is no hope for poor Mary Jane.”
“But—”
“Leave now, Katie-of-the-Stone. Before it is too late.”
“But what about Toby? Is he going to be all right? Will he be charged for these murders? Have I caused history to be changed?”
“Only you can determine that, my dear . . . by your actions on the third pier near the scaffolding at Tower Bridge. But afterward, you must go as quickly as you can to the London Stone. Don’t ta
rry. I fear it is already too late.” Her words fell with a heavy, chilling weight. But what Mrs. Tray did and said next was even more unnerving. She hobbled off the stoop and rooted about the ground until she found a jagged rock embedded in the muddy gravel and held it out to Katie.
“You, my dear . . . you who are of the Stone and from the Stone. You have my blessing to use this—” She handed Katie the heavy rock. “Nothing and no one is who they appear to be. But remember this, Katie-of-the-Stone. When you return to your own world, you must choose the hard right over the easy wrong.”
And with that, Mrs. Tray hobbled back onto the stoop and disappeared into her tiny cottage.
Chapter Fifty-two
You Gave Your Promise say the Bells of Saint Thomas
Amid the gloomy dark waves and shadows rippling across the River Thames, Katie could see pale gleams of light from bobbing boat lanterns. By day this vast waterway would be overflowing with sewage and teeming with tug boats, barges, cargo vessels, and clipper ships, whose tall masts would sway and soar and puncture the sky like giant church spires.
At sunrise, the clatter of horses’ hooves would mingle with the shouts of boatmen and the lap of the tides—but for now, in the predawn dimness, the only thing Katie could hear was the dying-goose wail of a foghorn competing with the clinkity-clank of buoy bells.
The hard right over the easy wrong. What had Mrs. Tray meant by that? Katie wondered as she hurried along the embankment toward the river. And why did Mrs. Tray give her this heavy rock? She reached into her pocket and felt the jagged edge of the stone.
With only the sharp scent of wet earth to guide her along the footpath, Katie veered away from the embankment down a sloping expanse of grass toward a gravel causeway running parallel to the river. She was brought up short minutes later by a fenced-off area with “Danger!” signs posted on wooden crosses in the mud flats beyond. The split-rail fencing, enmeshed with wire, showed spiky points across the top. Katie squinted, trying to discern objects and shapes in the gloom on the other side of the fence. In the waning moonlight, she could make out piles of bricks and metal crossbars, beams, pulleys, swags, and chains scattered across the green-glimmering slime of the riverbank—the skeletal bones of what would soon be the most talked-about bridge in the world. This was the construction site for Tower Bridge. The turrets and battlements of the famous structure had not even been built yet—in their place, nothing but dark sky.
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