"A friend, Sissy. That is all."
She grumbles at this, because she knows she will win no more information from me, at least not anything she can achieve from something as plain as common conversation.
"So she’s gone and taken up a friendship with you, hmm?" Her attention flits towards Chissick before the edge of her bonnet succumbs to the pull of gravity and flops down in front of her face, momentarily protecting the both of us from her unsettling gaze. "And what do you have to say about this heat, Sir?" She pronounces this last word with a hint of audible disdain. "Quite an unnatural occurrence, I’m sure you’d say. Perhaps it’s the end of days upon us, eh? Of course, you’d know all about such apocalyptics and prophecies, what with your background."
I hear Chissick’s slight intake of breath, but my hand on his arm prevents him from goading her further. "I don’t need your party tricks, Sissy." My words bring her good eye back towards me, but the milky one remains fixed on some indefinable place beyond Chissick’s shoulder. "And you can stop rooting around in his head, thank you very much. His thoughts belong to him and no one else."
This causes her to shut both of her eyes tight, and when she opens them, they’re both directed towards me, pinning me in place. Beside me, Chissick steps forward, his left boot squelching in something that sends aloft an unsavoury odour. He looks down at Sissy, his gaze at once expectant and yet filled with censure.
"Out with it," Sissy says, pre-empting any speech either of us may have been about to make, while her swollen fingers hover over the tiles. "I’ve no patience for the niceties, all of that drawing room chatter you lot go and pride yourselves on."
Chissick’s mouth opens and closes, his lungs unable to draw in a single breath of air. Clearing his throat, he glances at me, waits for my nod, and begins again. "Miss Hawes tells me you might be able to help us, that you have a gift," he says. "I assume not much unlike that of Miss Hawes."
A curse from her, but the laughter that rumbles through her chest dulls its blasphemous edge. "Very unlike that of our Miss Hawes here, and you’d be a wise un’ to note the difference."
"Yes, well. We were wondering if you could... I mean, if you would..."
"Erghghm." That is the sound, at least, that erupts from Sissy’s throat before she smacks her bosom with the flat of her hand. "I take it Our Miss Hawes hasn’t been able to accomplish much thus far?" she finally warbles after a moment, her voice skipping over a few of the less important notes.
"On the contrary, she’s been quite—"
"Quite, yes. I’d say that about sums her up." Leaning back, her bonnet flattens on the wall. Her right hand hovers over the tiles and her thumb taps on two letters in succession: R and Y.
"They blame us, you know," says the old woman, lowering her voice to a rasp that scrapes wetly along the back of her throat. And before either of us can ask as to which "they" she refers, she presses onward. "Accusing us of gettin' in, of corrupting the Queen, as if she ain't skilled at doing enough of that all by her own. And there's this weather, saying we've gone and made it hot, because anything hot must be doing with the devil." She shifts and spits, the thin legs of her stool creaking in protest. "I wonder what all they'd be chattering about if it had gone and stayed cold all summer. Ice and snow in July, hmm? Wonder what they'd be saying then."
Chissick takes this opportunity to lean quite close to me. There is a strong smell of sweat from him, and the air about us is so warm that when his breath touches my cheek, I feel no additional rise in temperature.
"Can we trust her?" he asks in a low whisper.
"No more or less than anyone else."
"Yes, but if she steers us wrong…"
"Ah, right. Of course." At once, I realise that my comment does little to alleviate his fears. And so I place a hand on his forearm, my touch gentle. "Don’t worry. You can trust her, for the most part."
"Ay, you can trust ol’ Sissy!" she barks, following it with a wet laugh that ends in a round of coughing. "Especially when this one doesn’t have all the answers," she adds with a gesture towards myself. "Oh, Marta thought you could be stronger, always wanted to be pushing you, but… tch… you knew when to rein things in." Her milky eye swims before seeming to fix on me. "Better for all of us, that way."
Beside me, a brief movement. Chissick has returned to fidgeting, his collar now the victim of much smoothing and straightening. But the poor thing won’t react to his ministrations, the heavy fabric too soaked with sweat to do more than take on an extra crease or two.
"You're not as close as you used to be," Sissy says, drawing my attention back to her. "Oh, your head used to be a thing. Couldn't breech it with a hammer and chisel, but no, you're not near as close as you used to be. You’ve gone and let something slip through. Careful, careful."
She taps another tile. Her thumb still pressed to it, she opens one eye, dull and milky in the shade of her bonnet, and peers down at the letter.
"A," she sighs, and wrinkles her nose. "Never much liked that one."
At moments such as this, I find no other option but to settle my heels into the ground. The woman is determined to take her time, to leech away one’s patience, until her victim is left grasping at politeness, giving her the benefit of the doubt that these protracted visits are simply her crooked way of winning a few minutes of much sought-after companionship. I don't allow myself to assume that she enjoys this, that she is revelling in the power, the control she believes she is wielding. But all we need is a few clues, something I don’t trust my own mind to provide.
"But it don't bother," she says, her jaw already working around the next batch of saliva. "I tell you, it don't bother, not one bit. Those lads from Scotland Yard come in here, waving their sticks about, acting like they're doing us a service, like I'm not the one paying to keep their collars starched, but it don't bother. A few more weeks, and there won't be any of us left to carry away. You seen the way people are leaving town? Well, I'd leave misself, if it wasn't for my..." Her feet wriggle out from beneath the stained hem of her dress, her ankles thick and swollen, flesh spilling out the tops of her ill-fitting boots. "...condition," she finishes, with a delicacy that deserves some credit.
Slowly, the various parts of her face shift into a more thoughtful expression, and I'm reminded of another time she wore such a look. Her eyes were clearer then, and both of those shining orbs graced me with an appraisal that seemed to see through all my layers of clothing, my skin, my flesh, all the way down to something I'm still not quite convinced can even be seen by the naked eye. And I'm convinced she saw it that night.
"But you'll stay here," she says. "The both of you, you will." And she says it again, nodding to herself, before her right hand turns a circle through the air and her meaty thumb alights twice on the next letter on the tray: L
"Oh, it's that, is it?" She pushes at her bonnet, wipes away the sweat gathered in her eyebrows and shakes the moisture off the tips of her fingers. "Ryall," she mutters, as if she's exercising her ability to speak for the very first time. Her good eye settles on me. "So it’s a Lord that’s gone and gotten hisself tangled up with this. He is a Lord, ain't he?"
I swallow over my next breath, currently lodged in my throat. "Yes. Yes, he is."
"Lord Ryall," she pronounces, her fleshy lips disappearing between her teeth before spreading into a grotesque smile. "Mmm, I remember him. Never met him. My sort didn't run in circuits with the likes of his, but you were up there for a turn, hmm? In the upper echelon, as they say?"
Chissick makes a move to speak, but a shake of my head, too slight to even worry the loose tendrils of hair plastered to my neck, and he releases his breath into the air.
In the ensuing silence, Sissy’s hand returns to its place above the tiles, hovering for a full minute before the fingers pick up a rhythm she seems to pull out of the air. Her clear eye closes, and the clouded eye fixes on nothing as she strikes one tile after another, her movements lacking hesitation this time around.
"Ca-pal-di."
She tests the word that her fingers spelled out. "Capaldi. Funny sounding thing, hmm? That ring any bells in your head?"
"I don't..." But I find I'm unable to finish the thought. I notice Chissick’s fingers, frozen in place at his collar, his entire form rigid, but his eyes blinking rapidly—squinting, almost—before his gaze settles on something far away.
A push from me is all it takes. The lightest of touches, and there, in the back of his mind, teasing with the faintness of a childhood memory, I hear that word spoken above his head. And then I realise that it's not a word, but a name. And yet the memory continues to tease, to frustrate, until I'm forced to swear under my breath as the knowledge, just out of reach, fizzles and finally slips away.
"Oh, pret-ty words from you!" The old woman laughs, or wheezes, or makes an attempt at one before the weight from her chest presses her into the other. She coughs once more, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and gasps out another chuckle. "Never thought I'd hear a lady say such things."
"I rather doubt there should be any comparison between my behaviour and that of a true lady, if indeed any such creature exists." I reach for one of the tiles. Small, flat, perhaps square at one time, but over the years the corners worn down to something not quite round. The letter is a simple mark, crudely gouged into the pale surface of the wood, filled in with black paint that chips away with a quick flick from my fingernail. "What about you?" I ask, purposely ignoring Chissick, while I turn the tile between finger and thumb. "Does that name mean anything to you?"
A twist of her mouth, and a sputtering sound that could be another shot of laughter. But, as if recalling her last show of merriment, she stifles the breath with a quick thwack of her fist against her chest. "Names don't mean a thing to me. Never have. And besides, it's not from out of my head. I'm only here untangling that mess you've got up there between your own ears."
She reaches up, tugs at her bonnet, and scrapes the back of her wrist across her nostrils. The fidgeting continues for another minute, but all the while, her gaze flutters back to the tiles, her eyes seeming to reflect each letter in the dark center of her pupil.
"I hear Marta's gone and nabbed herself a new girl. You seen her yet?"
I shake my head, then speak when I notice she's not looking at me. "No, I haven't had the pleasure."
"You should, you know. Check in on her, like. Make sure Marta knows what she's dealing with this time around. I'm always worryin' about her, wonderin' if she's gettin' herself mixed up in things that are too much for her." A meaningful glance in my direction. I bear it for as long as I can stand, finally turning my attention to the crumbling edge of the wall behind her.
"I've no doubt that Marta is quite capable of taking care of herself."
"Hmm, right. Quite capable." I look over to watch her nod, her chin disappearing into the ring of fat that hides most of her jaw from view. "You know, you look like hell, if you don't mind my saying." She chews at the corner of her mouth, her blackened teeth nearly indistinguishable from her rotten gums. "Is it still your head?"
Instinctively, I touch my forehead, my thumb burrowing into the ridge above my nose, grazing the abrasions left from the night before.
Her wiry eyebrows push upwards, nearly disappearing beneath the brim of her bonnet. "You've been having your pains again?"
At this, Chissick shakes himself from his trance and returns his full attention to me. "Pains, Miss Hawes? What does she mean? Are you all right?"
"Oh, don’t you go worryin’ yerself over her," Sissy tells him. "The Four Horsemen will come and go and she’ll still be here, livin’ and outlastin’ all of us."
I try not to dwell on the bleak picture she paints with these words. I should be accustomed to it by now. The circuitous route her conversation takes, circling around the main topic with the same cunning a hunter uses to stalk his prey.
"Is it the voices, as well?" This spoken in such a bland, informal manner, as if she's about to pronounce her thoughts on the day's weather, or the state of this morning's porridge. "Have they come back?"
"I wasn't aware they'd ever left."
"Oh, well." She extends her hand over the tray, fingers rising and falling slightly, floating on a breeze that stirs nothing but those five plump digits. "You disappeared for a time, hmm? Heard Marta went and had you put away in one of them asylums, you know. The kind for folks who aren’t sick in the body, but rather sick somewhere else." She grins and taps the side of her head with a greasy finger. "Only started to thinking maybe the spirits had gone and abandoned you, given you something of a reprieve, or the like. Either that, or I figured you'd up and tossed yourself off a bridge." She spits over her left shoulder. "One of the two."
I remove myself from the area around the miniature puddle she's produced, only to step in something else that slips beneath my heel. My adjustment allows me a moment to arrange what I want to say next. It's not an easy subject to broach, especially with Chissick so near, but after discarding several introductions, I take a deep breath and jump right in.
"Sissy, have you seen many bodies lately?"
"Bodies, hmm?" She closes one eye, leaves the milky one to its watery inspection of the ether. On her mouth is a small smile. Here's the main topic, finally arrived, after how many half-starts and diversions. "Not very specific, are we? Can't do much with that. Are we talkin' about what we see in our heads, or what's out there for the rest of the world?"
My fingers close around the small tile, turn it over, palm it again. "Dead bodies, Sissy. Real, dead bodies. Slashed across the throat. And the skin there, well... burned, I guess would be the best way of putting it."
She pulls a face, her lips stretching back in disgust. "That doesn't sound very nice."
Chissick clears his throat. "I assure you, it's not."
"Hmm, no. No, I ain't laid eyes on nothing like that." Her hand stills, but the fingers remain tense, poised even. "But there's something else, hmm? No, no, don't go shutting yerself up, trying to fill up all them chinks you've got forming in that head of yours. Just let me see it. Let me feel it. There's more to this you're not telling me."
"No." I take a step back. "You’ve done all you can. We’ve taken up more than enough of your time this morning."
I toss the tile back onto the tray. The strength of her glowering is potent as she picks up the small letter and sets it to rights with the others.
Her hesitation is nearly enough to undo me. Her eye, the good one, glazes over for a moment, maybe two. Her fingers stretch out, the skin pulled taut across her palm while her joints bend backwards as far as the various bones and ligatures will allow. Another moment, and her eyes find mine, both of them pinned to my face, and I find I cannot blink, I cannot even breathe beneath that merciless gaze.
"Then you should be off with yerself."
I swallow, a laborious movement that seems to sap every reserve of strength I possess. A few more seconds, and I can blink again, even turn my head away, but I'm too late. She has succeeded in breaking through, and she has seen inside of me, located that small kernel of darkness that only she bore witness to all those years ago.
She shifts her weight. Not to stand, for I doubt she's moved from the stool since before sunrise, but simply to turn her shoulders, her head tilted towards the alley, eyes narrowed, seeking each face that passes by for the prospect of a new customer.
It is during this moment of reprieve I reach for Chissick’s arm, my fingers grasping a small fragment of his sleeve. But Sissy is already ahead of me, and her grasp on the tail of his coat is much stronger than my own.
"What about my payment?" she demands, the question directed at me while she holds Chissick as a hostage.
"Pardon me," Chissick begins, but I cut him off, reach into my pocket and retrieve a few coins, tossing them onto her tray before I can get a good look at them. His coat now released from her grasp, Chissick turns to leave. A glint catches my eye, and I realise that in my haste, I’ve gone and given away my last sovereign.
S
issy’s lips twitch as she regards the money, and I fear she might spit on the ground near my feet, but she holds onto her overflow of saliva for the moment. Instead, she winks at me. Or perhaps it is merely a spasm of the muscles that frame her damaged eye. And then she does something that surprises me. She reaches out to touch me. But worse than that, she grabs my wrist, her fingers making quick work of pushing back my sleeve, exposing my scarred forearm to daylight.
"You’ve already tried to escape once, didn’t you?" Her whisper is a contrast to the harsh pressure of her thumb, tracing the pale welts that slash across my wrist. "But it’s not in your power to go dyin’ whenever you like." She laughs, a thick sound that claws its way out of her throat. "You know, I'd go with thinking you being more afraid of death than you are." Her fingers slide, my wrist twists, and she releases my arm, lets it fall back to my side. Slowly, she shakes her head. "But you're not like us, hmm? Never was, I don't think. The things you hear, the things you know. I always told myself there was something a bit scary about you."
I have trouble keeping up with what she says, so I calm myself with the lie that it's all gibberish, every word of it. This is what I tell myself. That she's descended into a train of thought incomprehensible to anyone beyond herself, and yet I find I cannot look away. Not when that milky eye of hers fixes on my face with such a forward glare, as if that one eye, clouded and swirling, leaking fluid that dries to a crust on her eyelashes, has the ability to commune with the entities fighting to be heard inside my head.
"Oh, it's no doing, struggling like you are." She exhales and her head sinks back onto the brick wall, the strings of her bonnet disappearing among the ripples of flesh beneath her chin. "It goes and turns them angry against you, makes the spirits try all the harder to have a go at you."
The Half Killed Page 8
