by Lyndsay Faye
It may have occurred to the reader that allowing Becky Clarke to flee the scene of a murder—with the murderess, no less—was not my most shining instance of altruism. I was sixteen years old, however, sixteen and nigh berserk to escape, delirious with the old instinct to run which had brought me to Lowan Bridge in the first place. Only this time, I would not be friendless and bereft; this time, I would have someone beside me who wanted, however inexplicably, to be there.
If sixteen-year-olds are accounted selfish generally, then reader, how much greedier was I in the face of freely offered loyalty?
“London,” I breathed in Clarke’s ear as I took her hand. “Where else would we go save for London?”
• • •
We fled on foot to the main road, fearing to look behind lest the hornet’s nest had upturned and sent swarms flying after us. The alarm had not yet been raised, however, and the grounds proved as empty as they always were of a Sunday—or had been ever since Granville and Taylor had been caught fleeing years ago and were returned by an obliging seller of trinkets who thought the sight of two unescorted girls demanded his immediate assistance.
The fact that Granville had died soon afterwards, though Taylor had scarcely been punished at all, surely does not require explanation at this late juncture. As for Clarke and me, we scaled the pocky wall next to the black wrought iron gate and tumbled to the ground with no worse consequences than scuffed shoes—or no worse consequences yet, unless I acted with miraculous rapidity.
Clarke threw her apple core at Lowan Bridge School, a final gesture of defiance. Half a dozen times, perhaps, we had all visited the village a quarter mile away to inflict Miss Lilyvale’s Christmas hymns upon the town square, and only gradually did I realise I was taking us there. London sent out new filaments continually, cast shimmering tendrils like the spread of shattered crystal—we had seen this from the roof every year, when London swelled and burst and swelled and burst again—but it was hardly feasible to walk there. Not with Mr. Munt stiffening over his desk.
“Who do you think it was?” Clarke asked.
Swallowing a spike, I shook my head. “The room looked ransacked. Robbers?”
My friend angled her head, curls twice gilded with late afternoon sunlight. “Maybe so.”
My heart constricted painfully. “Why couldn’t it have been?”
“Oh, it could. It’s just that … possibly someone wanted to find something other than money.”
“What sort of something?”
“Well, you never returned Miss Lilyvale’s letters. I read them, and then you … kept them. As protection, I assumed. But you never returned them.”
At the thought of whey-blooded Miss Lilyvale plunging a makeshift dagger into the cords of Vesalius Munt’s throat, I laughed so hard that a fox or a badger or some such went crashing away through the bracken.
“All right, she isn’t the bravest woman I’ve ever met,” Clarke agreed, half smiling in a way that sent me into further fits. She slapped my arm. “Jane, stop.”
“If she was looking for the letters, she took an unnecessary risk in slaying him, for I burnt them,” I gasped. This was factual, but Clarke need not know that I had shoved them in the dormitory fireplace after stabbing our headmaster. “In any case, why should I have given them to him?”
“What I mean to say is, we hated Mr. Munt—every student, better than half the teachers, the domestics. Isn’t it much more likely that someone he wronged took revenge?”
“He ought to have been at the sermon during that time,” I insisted, abruptly no longer amused, “so it would have been the perfect occasion to burgle his sanctum. It was a complete accident that he was present at all. Someone else was there, someone up to no good, and Mr. Munt caught them.”
My words skated so close to truth telling that I sliced my eyes to Clarke; shrugging, she nodded.
“You’re probably right, but I’m right too—that person could have been any of us.”
I pretended to ponder this theory—as if I were upset at the implication that such a monster could hide in the skin of a young girl or a teacher undetected, when in fact I was upset at the fact we could at any moment be dragged back by our hair. The village inn rose before us, half-timbered and sagging at the roof like the shoulders of an ancient farmer, a comfortable pile of lumber emitting a faint aroma of meat pie. Clarke sagged in concert with the building, swallowing audibly in her ravenous state, even as I stiffened.
“What is it?”
“An idea,” said I, gazing with impetuous hope at the vehicle resting on the cobbles. “Come along, we’re filling you with a hot meal.”
As Vesalius Munt was only my second murder, in the immediate aftermath I imagined that a black reaction would set upon me with razor teeth; such was not the case, however. My mind was piercingly clear, and I recognised the shabby manure-spattered coach which had carried me to purgatory at age nine as soon as I glimpsed it, thinking, Here—if we are very lucky—perhaps is an ally.
The instant we entered the tavern, Clarke leaning weakly against my arm, I spied him: Nick, the driver who had conveyed me here so long ago. Swiftly, I ushered us to a table. A cheerful wench wearing an apron which perhaps had been used to muck out the stables previous to dinner service grunted at my order and, upon her departure, I leant across the table to grasp Clarke’s frail hands.
“Eat your curry when it arrives, slowly. I need to speak with someone.”
“Who could you possibly know here?” Clarke asked, but I was already striding towards the coachman.
Nick sat, nursing a pint, staring at grooves carved in the bar by time and dissolution. The same forces had done a workmanlike job with his face, for his mouth was bordered by stark crevasses, and his oncered nose had abandoned its unheeded alarums and subsided to a sulky yellow.
“Nick, I think.” I nearly coughed at the ripe cloud surrounding him. His boots were worn, which gave me hope, and his fingernails were cracked. “It’s a long time ago we met, but I hope you—”
“I dun’t know ye,” he slurred, slurping at the beer. “I live on the highway, Lunnon to Manchester, Manchester to Lunnon, picking up fares. Never a respit’, never two nights i’ the same bloody place. Unless yer a sprite after hauntin’ my carriage, and ye look a sprite right enough, by Jesus, I dun’t—”
“You brought me here when I was a girl. I gave you a potted rabbit luncheon I couldn’t eat for nerves.”
“Chestnut—he’s a horse, mind—knows me better than me own pillow, us having spent considerable more time together, and I’ve never clapped eye on ye before. I tell ye, I never stop moving—”
“‘The world is a hard place, and I live in it alone,’” I whispered.
Flinching, Nick narrowed red-rimmed eyes at me. “By George,” he husked at length. “Is that ye in the flesh, then? The wee miss wi’ the tragic eyes I dun brought here from Highgate House? Yer alive?”
“And in need of your help.”
Nick spat, recalling to my mind his alacrity at this skill. “Help, ye say? What daft breed o’ thickheaded are—”
“I gave you a basket full of food once. Now I’ll pay you six shillings to carry my friend and me to London.”
“Stomached enough o’ Lowan Bridge, then?” he puzzled, wiping his brow with his wrist.
“You couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate phrase.”
“And now I’m meant to risk my hide when Vesalius Munt hasn’t let a charge disappear in nigh—”
“He’s dead.” My eyes brimmed—for myself and Clarke, for dread of shackles and scaffolds. “There will be no consequences to you, Nick, upon my honour.”
Were I to picture my honour, I imagine it might resemble a less attractive than usual tadpole; Nick owned no inkling of this, however, and his bleary eyes boggled.
“Mr. Munt dead? The shite-arsed bastard what bilks the factory lads from here to three counties hence?”
“Bilks them?”
“Bilks them!” Nick cried, livening at la
st. “Aye, he never delivers a meal at discount save he’s less ten portions promised. Says as benefactors can’t give beyond their means or they’d turn paupers themselves! I’d love to see that feller stuck through the—”
“Someone beat you to it. Oh, please, Nick! We can’t go back, and you know how hard the world is.”
Nick considered, thoughtfully gathering spittle. I thought then that kindness had not deserted him, and I think now that he needed my money, for he did not look well. We are all of us daily decaying, after all; the speed is our only variant.
Nick spat; Nick finished his beer.
“I’ll oblige ye, after I’ve rounded up the other fares what have already paid.” He took my coins and dropped them straightaway upon the bar as he nodded to the serving lass. “But if ye thought the world was hard before … cor, will Lunnon ever throw ye to the wolves. She were suckled by a wolf mother, they say,” he added with a faint flash of his old dire humour.
“At least she was fed,” I muttered as Nick called for the bill to be settled.
When he departed, I returned to our table and passed a gentle hand over Clarke’s pallid brow, promising to return upon the instant after using the privy and imploring her to be patient as she finished her modest meal. The pressure within my cranium had grown nearly unbearable by then; half-frantic with fear, sidling behind her so that my semi-conscious friend might not see, I bore my trunk to the outhouse, barred the door, and deposited my bloodied uniform therein. It was not a perfect solution—but it was foul enough to serve, and anyhow, I reminded myself grimly, it seemed that most of my solutions to conundrums fell considerably shy of the mark.
• • •
By nightfall, Clarke and I were seated together upon the same threadbare object masquerading as a cushion on which I had ridden to Lowan Bridge seven years previous. Across from us sat a lean farmer and full-bosomed girl with a fresh cap and apron who I thought must be seeking domestic employment, as she looked such equal parts terrified and jubilant.
“London,” Clarke whispered, resting her head upon my shoulder. The meal had thoroughly drained her, her body flummoxed by bounty; lacing our fingers together, she settled our hands in her lap. “We’ll find a new home, a better one. Anyhow, you’re home.”
Wincing freely since Clarke could not see me with her head tucked under my chin, I squeezed her fingers. I ought to have felt trepidatious, reader; I ought to have felt both culpable and contrite.
I felt thrilled in knowing that upon the morrow, a worthy battle could be fought—even if I, poor leaky vessel of the devil’s and never of God’s, was chosen as its champion. No less, I felt achingly grateful, and I watched the blue sweeps of blood through Clarke’s emaciated wrist for an hour or more. Knowing that home was hateful to us both, I imagined that her calling me by the word meant I was expedient, or sturdy; but if I could only keep her hand in mine, I knew I would give my four limbs and my heart for the privilege, becoming instead four walls and a roof.
ELEVEN
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.
Shortly, reader, you shall experience chronological leaps which may startle the timid. Jane Eyre contains the delightful passage, A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play, thus I likewise embrace abrupt shifts even as I abhor the imminent subject matter.
We arrived in London, Clarke and I, homeless and horridly inexperienced, as coral dawn lit the charred air draped over the centre of the British Empire.
“Oh!” Clarke snatched at me as we crossed a deep wheel gouge, further slowing the already painfully lethargic Chestnut.
I steadied my friend, but said nothing; for never had I fathomed such a sight as passed before me like a parade through the coach window.
Some cities bustle, some meander, I have read; London blazes, and it incinerates. London is the wolf’s maw. From the instant I arrived there, I loved every smouldering inch of it.
A lad hunched against a shoddy dressmaker’s dummy slumbered on, cradled by his faceless companion. The atmosphere was redolent—meat sat piled up to a shop door’s limit of some six feet, the butcher sharpening massive knives before his quarry. Yesterday’s cabbage was crushed underfoot, and tomorrow’s cackling geese were arriving in great crates, ready to kill. So early, the square we passed through ought to have been populated only by spectres. Instead, sounds reverberated from all directions—treble notes from a bamboo flute; the breathy scream of a sardine costermonger; the bass rumble of a carrot vendor, his cart piled with knobby red digits, shouting as his donkey staggered in the slick.
It was not welcoming, but it was galvanising. Arguing with London was useless; she was inexorable, sure as the feral dawn.
“Where are we?” Clarke fretted. “This is nowhere near where my parents live.”
“I haven’t the faintest notion.” Bending, I touched my brow to hers. “Are you ready, though?”
Clarke grinned—an easy grin which made me long to buy her hearty sausage and pastry breakfasts. The carriage halted before a dingy public house with a small paved yard. Clarke stumbled out with her carpetbag and I followed, sharp pinpricks running up and down my legs.
“Thank you,” I called up. Nick sat like a turtle in his shell on his high plank seat. “I hope that one day—”
“Neither of us hope to see t’other again, ye mad child.” He took a long pull from his flask.
“I’m grateful, though. With all my heart, I am.”
“Then let it be fer this advice. I’ve food enough and drink enough to keep what they call a life, but that’s all’s I can say on the subject. Treat yerself better—keep yerself a good girl, and sleep in a bed wi’out interruptions. Can ye manage that?”
“Yes.” I stepped back, passing an arm around Clarke’s horridly small waist. “I can, I promise.”
Nick had already snapped the jangling reins and pulled away—a man who lived not much better than his horse did. Meanwhile, I knew precisely which vice he was warning me against, and in starker detail than he might have imagined; words like virtue and chastity and fallen were lobbed over our heads like so many shuttlecocks at Lowan Bridge, but I had read Mr. Munt’s “love letters,” and so understood the mechanics of the practice.
Some form of employment had to be found, and at once, for when I caught Clarke’s bright green eye and thought of all which could befall her—rough hands against her freckled shoulders, chapped lips at her slim throat—a swell of disgust rose. Becky Clarke, in a way which had not been true since my mother’s sad, soft-edged smile and her cool hand against my cheek, belonged to me.
“First, a celebratory breakfast,” I decided. “The man across the street with the sign for hot ham sandwiches—doesn’t he seem like an expert toaster of cheese and meat?”
“Indeed. And after eating the best ham sandwiches in all of London?”
I lifted my luggage as the smile faded from my face, willing myself not to say, I haven’t the faintest idea.
• • •
Dark days followed, and far darker nights.
After inquiring after lodgings, all priced too dear, we passed the night in the back room of a public house, Clarke’s flaxen hair mingling with the straw strewn across our shared pillow. We passed a night in the spare room of a cottage outside town when we retreated; but we could think of no employment thereabouts and returned to the city. We passed a night hemorrhaging precious funds upon a cheap hotel, knowing we had no means of replacing the currency. We passed a night propped one against the other on an empty crate, dozing fitfully, until a peeler arrived to tidy the red-brick alleyways he imagined belonged to him.
Sssshriiiek! cried his whistle, and off Clarke and I went like arrows from a bow, both knowing that we could not live this way for long.
For five days we wandered, growing steadily, silently despairing, washing our faces with rainwater trapped in old cisterns and weathered statuary. We were not wretched, nor were we rich. We simply did not appear to be trustworthy—we were blue dirt, green clouds—nothing about us made sense. Over and over, we crossed the fat, sombre river seeking new neighbourhoods, but all were either putrid hovels with mutton bones scattered about for the snarling dogs or else brick buildings with maniacally pristine windowpanes, and both frightened us. If approaching a cheery town house with a few cracked vases in the window and a ROOMS TO LET sign, we were turned away for want of references. Should we broach a wreck reeking of sewage and solitude, we would be sent packing on suspicion of thievery (which was, I own, a fair criticism).
“It isn’t like I thought,” Clarke said.
We had crossed London Bridge again, and I believe now that we were in Southwark, for though the street names blurred feverishly, I recall the thick sparks and steam and soot of the train station and the tooth-jarring clatter of the engines. Having located a squat public house with dull brass fixtures, we had stopped for a pot of tea, and were now loath to leave the place, instead having rested upon an empty wine barrel in the alley behind, the remains of trampled lettuce surrounding us.
“It isn’t like I thought either. There’s so …”
“So much of it,” Clarke sighed.
Her skeletal arm slid off my waist when I stood. “You rest here—you look positively done and I’ve a lucky feeling. I’ll be back directly.”
Clarke wanted to believe me and did not, which hurt horribly; she watched me quit the corridor.