The Linnet Bird: A Novel

by Linda Holeman

  “Now,” Clancy said, “we’re here.” He pulled aside a heavy brocade curtain. Behind it was another door, plain wood, incongruous with the rest of the ornate room. There was a brass key in the lock. “Go on. It’s unlocked. He’s waiting for you.”

  “Who is he?” I asked, an unknown panic making me pull back again.

  But Clancy only gave me a look that was suddenly intent, and the silly smile that had been on his lips from the moment I’d first seen him now fell away, replaced by something uncertain. His expression was eerily like the one I’d seen on the butler’s face less than five minutes earlier.

  I also realized Clancy was much younger than I had first thought; maybe he and I were the same age after all.

  He turned the knob and pushed me through the open doorway.

  HERE THE PECULIAR sugary smell of smoke was stronger still and there was something else, another smell just under the sweetness. It was as if something was slowly, delicately rotting, taking its time, enjoying the journey. As the door behind me closed, the room fell into complete darkness.

  “Hello?” I called. It was wrong, so wrong. I wanted nothing more than to flee.

  “Come in, come in,” a voice answered. It was a soft, tremulous voice, marred by some affliction.

  “Is there no light, sir?” I asked, suddenly even more fearful. The voice had not been reassuring. “For I can’t see a thing.” I had entered so many rooms, had heard so many men’s voices. Always I had been able to see what was in front of me; although there had been too many unpleasant surprises to count, never had I had to stand in the dark, afraid of who or what might make itself known to me.

  There was the long slow sound of sucking and I saw a tiny red glow of light from the bowl of a pipe. Then there was the sighing release of air and a rustle of movement. The sharp rasp of a flint was followed by a sudden flare of light, and I saw a figure crouched in front of the marble fireplace. As the kindling caught and the fire grew, the figure moved away with a shuffling, uncoordinated gait, sinking, with a shallow sigh, into a deep winged chair positioned to one side of the fireplace. The shadows of the wings hid his features.

  “Now you must step into the light,” the man said. “And we’ll see if you’re what I’ve been hoping for. It’s so difficult to get what one asks for these days. I’ve been quite disappointed in the selection here in Liverpool. Quite disappointed,” he repeated.

  I walked to the fireplace and stood in front of it.

  “Turn your head; I want to see your hair.”

  I looked to the left, then to the right, feeling the heat of the fire behind me.

  “All right, all right.” The man’s voice had risen a tone, as if excited. What’s wrong with the way he speaks? I wondered again. “Come here now. We’ll have a lovely drink together, shall we?”

  I went toward the outline of the chair. “I’d rather not, sir. What is it you wish me to do?” I asked, feeling my nose wrinkling slightly at the sour odor that grew stronger as I neared the chair. I’d heard all the usual requests; none surprised me now, but apart from the hooded customer, I’d never known this particular threatened sensation.

  “What is your name, dear?”

  “Linny.”

  “Would you spell that, please?”

  “As it sounds, sir. L-i-n-n-y.”

  “Is that your true Christian name?”

  “No. It’s Linnet, like the bird.”

  “Ah. The little linnet bird. Do you sing sweetly as well, child?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “And yet I think I prefer Linny. Linny from Liverpool. I will remember that. Now. I want to touch it,” he went on. “Your hair.”

  I knelt in front of him, and from my lowered position I could see him in the light from the fire as it danced across his features. It was hard to tell how old he was, for his face was dissipated, the eyelids heavy over the slightly protruding, crusty eyes. They were unfocused, as if he had just awoken; his nose was veined and his lips too wet, too red. His tongue, surprisingly small and pink, darted in and out of his mouth in an uncontrollable flicker.

  “I shall pour you a drink, shall I?” His fingers strayed to a large brown bottle on a table beside his chair. “Have you ever been to France, my dear?”

  I shook my head, trying not to watch his tongue; there was something obscene in its frenzied dance, which tripped each word. I put my hand under my hair and held it toward him. “It’s free of nits, you’ll find, sir, as I—” I began, but without warning the man’s feet, in their dark blue prunella slippers, flew into the air, wheeling furiously. A heel caught me in the face, sending me flying onto my side. Holding my cheek, I sat up and stared in shock. The man was slipping down in the chair, on his back now and groaning, his legs working as fast as the knife sharpener who pedaled his wheel over on Seel Street. His hands gripped the armrests to keep from propelling off the chair and he cried out in short, jerky bursts of sound.

  The door opened and the black man stepped into the room, bowing his head so that his high turban didn’t touch the lintel. He looked down at me, then walked to the chair. As he passed, the tiny loincloth swaying, I saw that his bare foot was more than three times the length of my hand.

  “It’s . . . he’s . . . I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” I said. “I didn’t do anything.”

  Pompey picked up the man, whose legs were slowing now, and held him against his bare chest as easily as if he were a child.

  “Pompey. Pompey,” the man cried. “Make it leave; make the pain leave me. Give me my chloral. Hurry. It’s crushing my ribs.”

  Gently lowering him back onto the seat, Pompey picked up the brown bottle. He poured liquid into a small glass, then held the man’s quivering mouth, tucking the tongue in with his long-nailed index finger as he poured the liquid down his throat. “Soon, soon, master. It is almost over,” he murmured. His voice was deep and heavily accented.

  The old man’s mouth opened and closed like the beak of a baby bird.

  I watched the strange scene, fingering the lump rising on my cheek. The thought of performing an act on this horrid man made my gorge rise.

  Slowly, the man’s body slowed. His spine relaxed, and all that was left in his legs was a slight trembling.

  As I got to my knees, Pompey poured from the brown bottle until the glass was half full, then came toward me, holding it out. “I see you have not drunk yet, little mistress. Come. Take this. It is time.” His voice was even softer now, little more than a whisper.

  I shook my head, staring at his face. He had marks, I saw, wide, raised marks that were even darker than the rest of his skin, running straight down both cheeks. He had no eyelashes.

  “It will not happen again—his attack—this night,” he said. “He will have no more pain and you have nothing to fear.” I wanted to believe the soothing voice but I couldn’t.

  I glanced around Pompey, seeing the man’s now still form in the chair. “What am I expected to . . . what does he want?” I whispered, bending my neck back to look up into Pompey’s face.

  His gaze rested on my swelling cheek as he held out the glass. “Just stay quiet. Do not upset him. Drink this now, please.”

  “What is it?” I asked, eyeing the colorless liquid. “I don’t take spirits.”

  “It will go better for you. Drink, little mistress,” he said.

  I put my hand against the glass, saying, “No, I said I—” but in one swift move Pompey had seized my jaw and tilted my throat back, forcing my lips open in the same way he had with the old man. The liquid went down in a flaming rush and I choked and coughed as Pompey let go of me. I swallowed, licking my lips, but there was only the faint whisper of sweetness.

  “It is better this way,” Pompey repeated, setting the glass back on the table and moving toward the door.

  “But what’s wrong with him?”

  Pompey opened the door and stepped through. “It is called the French Welcome by some,” he said, and then stopped, looking at me. I leaned forward to hear what he would say n
ext. “Although most are more familiar with it as syphilis.”

  And then he closed the door firmly, and I heard the turn of the brass key.

  Chapter Five

  I SAT IN FRONT OF THE FIRE ON THE CARPET SWIRLING WITH RICH jewel tones. I knew the sailors often carried diseases. I tried to think if I’d heard of the French Welcome, or the other word that sounded like the sly hissing of a snake. I was suddenly sleepy, my eyelids so heavy that I had to struggle to keep them open. Finally I lowered myself so that I was lying on my side, my back to the fire, head comfortably resting on my curled arm. The throbbing in my cheek had completely disappeared; there was no pain, just a lovely, sleepy, floating sensation. The man appeared to sleep as well, breathing heavily and noisily. His tongue was also at rest, finally, a thick line of dried saliva crusted on his bottom lip. In the outer room Clancy was again singing to Pompey’s drumming, but the sound blended into one continuous murmur that was something I couldn’t quite recognize but inexplicably loved.

  I let my eyes close, the song and the rhythm of the man’s breathing and the comforting beat of the flames at my back lulling me. And then I was dreaming, strange and somehow dark and uneasy dreams. Soon the dark was banished; the sun came out, shining with an unfamiliar brittle light that hurt my closed eyes. In the dream my eyes stayed shut, and yet I could see perfectly. I was on Salthouse Dock, walking toward the water. Gulls flew overhead with mewling cries as their wings snapped in the sunlight. They swung and dipped, swung and dipped, finally flying so low that I felt the warm flutter of their wings against my eyelids, my cheeks. One came right next to the side of my head; its beak, pointed and sharp, snapped loudly in my ear. I was afraid; I wanted to get away from the mechanical clacking of the beak. I ran, but the gull chased me to the end of the pier, its cries louder now, still trying to peck me with that awful horny projection. When I could run no further I looked down at the murky water. The beak came closer; there was no choice. I jumped, and as I fell toward the water, stomach lurching upward, I saw, just under the surface, my mother’s face, white and still, eyeless, her hair floating around her head like gently waving arms of seaweed.

  I gasped, opening my eyes.

  The man knelt over me, large shears in his hand. The shears were gleaming silver with gold handles. Strands of my hair were in the blades. His eyes glittered strangely and his breathing was raspy. Excited, vibrating trills rose from his throat and his tongue was even more frenetic than it had been earlier. “Ah!” he exclaimed in a pleased way, studying my face as I blinked, trying to clear my vision and understand what I was seeing.

  I struggled to rise but he pressed me down. “Stay still, my girl, stay still. I’m not done,” he said, around the slippery tongue. “I had thought you to be dead, but it’s much more pleasant with one so warm and pliant.” He laughed delightedly, as if surprised by this suddenly realized fact.

  Striking at him with my arm, pushing him away, for he was little more than a ghost of a man, I managed to get to my feet. The room was brightly lit by the gaslights on the walls and the lamps on tables turned high. I reached upward, dully fingering short, soft tufts, all that was left on my shorn scalp. “What have you done?” I cried, my voice strange in my own ears, muffled as if I were speaking through a pillow. “Why have you cut off my hair?” It took me a long time to get out each of the two sentences.

  I looked at the long strands gleaming on the vibrant hue of the carpet. Still kneeling, the man lifted one of them, running it across his face, pieces of it catching on the gummy surface of his tongue. He laughed again, pointing behind me, and now I recognized the familiar cackle of the gull.

  I turned in the direction of his finger, unable to move quickly, every movement exaggerated, although my instincts screamed at me, again, to run, escape. I saw a tall standing trunk, opened vertically. Shelves lined one side, and on the shelves were large jars.

  “Take a look, dear heart, do go and look,” the man said.

  As if pulled by invisible sticky threads I walked toward the jars, not understanding why I would do this, why I would follow this lunatic’s instructions. The image of my mother’s face, floating under water, seemed more real than what was happening in this room at this moment.

  I looked at the rows of jars but couldn’t understand what I was seeing. The jars were filled with floating shadows. Each jar had a label, written in spidery, shaky script. Emma, Newcastle, said one. Loulou, Calais. Mollie, Manchester. I kept reading the labels. Yvette, Toulouse. Bette, Glasgow.

  “Have you ever been to France, my little Linny?” the man asked for the second time this evening. I turned, seeing him struggle to his feet. He came closer, limping heavily, one shoulder twisted forward. My eyes swiveled slowly in their sockets, seeing that his hands were behind his back.

  “It’s a beautiful, terrible place, is France. I spent too long there. Too long, with all the lovely girls. Sluts, my dear. All lovely sluts with their ripe quims, they were, like your young self,” he said. “You shouldn’t be allowed to keep on spreading your filthy diseases. Surely you’ve heard of Fracastoro’s shepherd—do you know the poem, my lovely? Syphilis sive morbus Gallicus.”

  He was within touching distance now. “‘A shepherd once—distrust not ancient fame,’” he quoted, “‘Possessed these downs, and Syphilis his name.’”

  I was mesmerized by his eyes. There was no color, only round black globes, hard as marble, as coal.

  “And so of course you must be stopped. You and all your kind, for nothing can end the agony you’ve inflicted upon me. Not the mercury salts, not the bromide nor the chloral. Temporary, all temporary relief. So I’m keeping a collection, you see, of those I’ve prevented from spreading the foulness. So many colors. And I’ve been looking for quite some time now for an addition to my collection. It had to be the perfect color,” I heard him say. “And now I’ve found it. Linny from Liverpool.”

  I looked back at the jars, staring into the one closest to my face. And then I let out an involuntary noise, a strangled gasp, and tried to move away from what I realized I was seeing. But it was as if I had joined my mother now, except my hair couldn’t float like hers, not anymore. I moved my arms in torpid arcs, attempting to swim through the thick air, swim away from the jars with their horrible contents of disembodied hair.

  Gleaming black, rich brown, deep red and bright orange, dark blond. All floating.

  The man put his hand on my shoulder and I turned with the pressure, and then something glinted above me and I thought of the gull, saw the shears in the air, silver and gold, moving toward me. Instinctively I put up my arm, not quick enough to stop the blades, but they were deflected by my forearm, and instead of stabbing into their intended target, my neck, they slid further and slashed the soft flesh over my heart in a long, crooked line, slicing through the green dress as if it were butter. I saw blood pouring from the gash, but there was no pain, no shock.

  I was deeper in the water now. There was no sound but the turgid beat of my own blood in my ears. When the shears were raised over me again, I struck clumsily at the old man, and the shears flew from his hand.

  I stooped and picked them up. I looked into the maddened eyes, and then my own arm rose and lowered in what I saw as slow, graceful movements that felt like a dance, and the old man fell, the shears finally and firmly planted in one of those terrible eyes, his mouth a round and trembling wet circle.

  I looked at him lying at my feet and my own legs gave way, and I knew I was falling, falling, back into the Mersey where my mother waited.

  THE VOICES GREW LOUDER. I recognized the faint hysteria of the boy in the flowered dress. Clancy.

  “I don’t know, do I? How were we to guess he wouldn’t kill her first, as he’s always done? Oh. Oh, Pompey, I feel terribly lightheaded. Please. Let me lean against you.”

  “Christ. What a mess. Why the hell wouldn’t he have given her enough chloroform to kill her before he started in on her? But she’s dead now, isn’t she?” asked another voice. A man, o
lder than the boy, his voice self-assured.

  “I believe so, young master.” Pompey’s voice. I thought of the drink he had given me. Him, not the old man.

  “Well, we’ll never know how this happened, will we?” the voice of the man called Young Master said, anger just under the surface. “But I knew we shouldn’t have let him keep on with his sordid game. I knew we shouldn’t set up another. And now look at this. I should have listened to my intuition.”

  I still felt nothing, although I became aware of something new, a dull, thumping surge, a minor crescendo of pain through the top half of my body. There was the fresh iron smell of blood. I felt my head being lifted and moved, my hair pushed back from my face. I was pulled up by my wrists, and cool air blew across them as my sleeves slid back.

  “Look at that mark,” Clancy squealed. “Like a fish.”

  Then I was let go, falling limply to the floor again.

  “Who brought her? Was it a pimp? Will anyone come looking for her tonight?” It was the same well-bred voice, with a touch of superiority about it. A voice no one would argue with. How odd, I thought, that I could hear and understand, but felt powerless to move so much as an eyelid.

  “I believe she was bought for the night, young master. No one will be looking for her until morning,” Pompey said.

  “What should we do, then?” asked Clancy. “Whatever shall we do about all of this? The blood. There’s so much blood.” His voice dissolved into tears.

  “Shut up, Clancy. Dump her in the Mersey, Pompey,” the man said. “Get it done right away.”