Cardinal Black

by Robert McCammon

  “I’m not sure she wanted her escort and coach driver to be murdered, as they were,” Lillehorne reminded the other. He took another sip of the strong black coffee. There were over two thousand coffee houses in the city; part of his mind was wondering where else he might get free cups. “The situation of Madam Candoleri concerns me, but until someone comes up with real news I and the street constables are equally at a loss to speculate.”

  “That brings me to some b’ness,” said Nack. “I need ta’morra night off.”

  “Tomorrow night? What’s the reason? I would bring it to your attention that you have worked only three nights this week, that you have a very short route and reasonable hours in a safe district and that I have pulled quite a few strings to get you a fair trial as a fledgling constable.”

  “Fledglin’ or not, I’m in for a dice game at the Jackal and I mean to be there. So I need you to get me off ta’morra night.” Nack cocked his head to one side, his ears awaiting an affirmative reply.

  Lillehorne shifted uneasily in his chair. He mused that if this damn fool before him didn’t know about the hundred pounds Lillehorne had skimmed from the New York treasury—and also about that certain lady of the town to whom most of the money had gone—then he would dismiss this request as much as he would’ve dismissed the demand for Nack to come with him to London. But there was the wife and her parents to consider, and God help the poor soul who crossed that bunch. Nack would certainly go running to them at the first opportunity to cause mischief, if he were not coddled in check.

  “Very well,” came the reluctant answer. “I suspect, however, that your association with those cretins at the Jackal tavern might be your undoing.”

  “I can handle m’self.” Even sitting down, Nack managed to swell his chest in indignant pride. “Anyways, they all knows I’m a constable and I’ve got the power of the law at my backside. Ain’t nobody givin’ me no trouble over there.” Nack took a drink of his coffee and continued scanning the Pin. “Ah!” he exclaimed, so loudly that two patrons at the next table nearly jumped out from under their wigs. “Here’s somethin’ for you! Lemme read it: An Open Letter to the London Law, What There Is Of It.” He looked up and grinned again, while Lillehorne’s face was a study in stone.

  “Go ahead,” Lillehorne prompted, when Nack decided to play out the silence with mischievous glee.

  Nack read, haltingly again: “It has come to our atten…attention…that our so-called officers of the law in our great city…have turned a blind eye…to several local crimes of which…most would be…shock…ed. The latest being…the mass mur…murder…of—”

  “Give that to me!” Lillehorne nearly ripped the sheet out from under Nack’s paws. He positioned it to favorable lamplight and read aloud: “The mass murder in Whitechapel two weeks ago of the young men and women belonging to a group known as the ‘Black-Eyed Broodies’, a massacre upon which this publication has reported more thoroughly in our previous issues. While we certainly do not condone the activities of such groups, it is a crime upon itself that this particularly gruesome and demonically-inspired mass murder seems to be overlooked by our so-called officers of the law. Indeed, the murders among these groups are becoming common, no thanks to our fine officials who appear to be as equally frightened of these organizations as they are of the denizens of the shadows who use them for their evil purposes.” Lillehorne grimaced, but kept reading. “And yes, we dare to name names, among them Professor Fell, Colonel Phibes, and Maccabeus DeKay. Who can say what inhuman pestilence against society is being created even now, encouraged by the inattention—one might say the ineptitude—of our so-called officers of the law.”

  Nack chose that moment to make a rumbling in his throat that Lillehorne took as mocking humor, and when Lillehorne darted his own black eyes of brooding at Nack, the other man quickly pretended to be examining some small clean spot on his fingernails.

  “Mind yourself,” Lillehorne ordered, and then he returned to the last paragraph of this distasteful open letter: “Therefore this publication no longer aspires to encourage these absent lawmen to action, but instead aspires to encourage the average hardworking and lawful citizens of this great city to action, by storming the Old Bailey by force if need be to jolt these mindless sops from their paid sleep. We suggest that citizens band together to demand that justice be done, or else that our Parliament clean out every existing so-called officer of the law from their nooks, crannies, caves and hammocks and send them to the mattresses they may occupy in the quiet confines of their homes, where they will no longer be bothered by the demands of an occupation and no longer be rewarded with public funds for a job undone. Signed yours sincerely, Lord Puffery.”

  “How about that?” said a heavy-set gent at the next table, who had been leaning in Lillehorne’s direction to overhear and whose own copy of the Pin was spread out before him. “Strong words, eh? And it’s about time, I’d say! What’s your opinion?”

  Lillehorne’s face quivered as if he’d been slapped. His teeth were clenched. He felt Nack watching him like a dirty cat watching a writhing mouse.

  Lillehorne unclenched his teeth. “My opinion is…it’s about time,” he replied, and the man nodded, thumped a fist upon his Pin as if to drive the point even further home and returned to his coffee and the conversation he’d been having with his tablemate.

  “Don’t speak,” Lillehorne said to Nack, before the other could get that mouth working. Nack consented to draw at his coffee, making a noise like the dragging of a chain across a wet stone floor.

  “Well,” Lillehorne went on, with a carefully lowered voice, after a pause in which he squared his shoulders and jutted his chin toward the ceiling, “now I know why Master Constable Patterson was in such a black mood this afternoon. He must’ve gotten hold of a Pin earlier on and been pricked by it. But the constables can’t be everywhere! Anyway…they’re hated in Whitechapel! The last one assigned there was found beaten to death and stuffed in a rain barrel, so what do the people expect? There can be no law when the people of a district don’t wish it and actually fight against it! All right…yes, that gang massacre was a gruesome thing…those eyeballs gouged out, and put into a bottle…and the Devil’s Cross carved into the foreheads…yes, one might say it was demonically-inspired, but we as men of the law don’t fear grappling with these criminals! It is a matter of rooting them out of their holes! No, we don’t fear them…not a bit, and it is unfair of Lord Puffery to make that false assertion!” His next swallow of coffee drained the cup. “False!” he hissed at Nack across the table. “Do you hear? Utterly false!”

  “I hear,” Nack replied, in a small voice. “But I sure as hell ain’t gonna go ’round rootin’ nobody outta no holes.” And he added, for emphasis, “Me bein’ just a fledglin’.”

  “To Hell with this!” Lillehorne started to crumple the sheet between his hands but saw something else that snagged his eye. “Here’s the only item worth a damn in this paper! The weather prognosticator predicts we’re in for a season of storms! Ha! Would you expect summery sunshine here on the eve of winter? Who couldn’t make such a prediction? Lord Puffery must’ve taken that task upon himself as well as the job of stirring up Parliament against the High Constable…and against myself, who has to bear the weight of it! Oh, I also can be a prognosticator and see what the weather will be like tomorrow at that office!”

  “I’m needin’ ta’morra night off,” said Nack, as if nothing else had been discussed since he’d first mentioned it. “You done vowed. You won’t go back on your word, will you?”

  Lillehorne didn’t answer, but just sat glowering at Nack until the little red-faced bully picked up his club from the table, stood up and said, “I’m headin’ to home. I’ll walk my route tonight, good and proper.”

  “I’ll count on it,” came the terse reply.

  “By your leave, then,” said Nack, who turned the cur’s-fur collar of his coat up around his neck, gave
his master a quick and ungainly bow and headed for the door.

  On the street, flurries of snow blew through the evening’s gathering dark. As the dark had fallen, so had the temperature. The blue December eve was speckled with the lamps of passing coaches and carriages, and in the windows of shops that remained open late to catch the passing crowd, which had much dwindled since Nack had followed Lillehorne into Chomley’s parlor.

  Nack thrust his free left hand into a pocket, clenched his ever-present billyclub in his right, and began to trudge against the chill wind toward his cellar hovel a mile north on Errol Street. He kept his head down and his thoughts on how he was going to get through such a cold night on duty, even though his route took him only half a mile; all he had to do was walk a circle and swing his constable’s lantern in an area that was mostly parkland, so what of it? It was fortunate for him that his six hours of work took him past two taverns that stayed open until the wee morning, and tonight he meant to make use of their fireplaces and mugs of warm ale.

  Soon his mind drifted to the dice game tomorrow night at the Jackal, his favorite tavern and a place where everyone knew him and all were impressed by being in the presence of a constable, and so he failed to note the coal wagon that had been steadily following him since he had walked out Chomley’s door.

  When he turned down the lonely length of Falstaff Alley to take his usual shortcut, he also failed to note the man who came up behind him and with one blow of a leather-wrapped piece of lead to the skull knocked Dippen Nack sprawling upon the rough stones. Nack’s purple tricorn went spinning away and his ornate wig slid down upon one shoulder. He made a gurgling sound and tried to pull himself to his knees, but the assailant struck again and then most decisively Nack lay still.

  “Aw shit!” said a second man, who had gotten down off the wagon and was holding the reins of his two horses at the mouth of Falstaff Alley. “Didja kill him?”

  The first man knelt down to check for a heartbeat. “He ain’t dead,” was the verdict.

  “He better not be! We’re supposed to deliver two and God take us if we don’t!”

  “This one don’t look like a fuckin’ constable. You sure about him?”

  “I’m sure. Like I said already, his name’s Nack and he’s been braggin’ his ass off at the Jackal.”

  “All right, then. Let’s get him in, we wasted too much time waitin’ for him to come out of that damn coffee house. Somebody might come along here any minute.”

  “Somebody might,” said the wagon’s driver, “but what’re they gonna do about it? Call for a constable?”

  They both laughed at that one.

  “Lucky I seen him comin’ down the steps of the Bailey,” said the driver as the two men hauled Nack’s body up and carried him between them to the black pile of coal. “Figured I might see a constable I recognized. Anyhow, made our job one easier.” They threw Nack into the pile and the man who’d done the striking climbed up and used a shovel to quickly cover the body with coal, being careful at the finish to leave a space of air around the nostrils.

  When it was done he took his seat beside the driver and drew his coat collar up around his throat. He wore a gray woolen cap and had half of a nose. “Gettin’ colder,” he said, lifting his gaunt face toward the dark. “Snow’s comin’ down good and proper.”

  “The Pin says storms ahead,” said the driver.

  “Mark it, then,” the other answered. “All right. One down, one to go.”

  The driver flicked the reins, the horses snorted steam and started off, the coal wagon’s tired wheels creaked as they turned, and beside the white wig and the purple tricorn a black billyclub lay untended on the snow-dusted stones of Falstaff Alley.

  two.

  “Yes,” said Hudson Greathouse, “I do think I’d like another cup of tea, thank you.”

  “Surely, sir.” She poured it for him from a white teapot painted with green and yellow flowers. “This is my favorite blend,” she said. And then, with but an instant’s cloud of shadow across her face: “I mean…I’ve been told it is.”

  “Told?”

  “Yes sir. By my mother.”

  “Hm,” said Hudson as he supported the dainty cup between hands more accustomed to holding rough-hewn wooden tankards of ale. He lifted his thick charcoal-gray eyebrows, the left of which was sliced by the jagged scar of a teacup thrown by a tempestuous ex-wife, which was one reason he abhorred teacups and the weak liquid they carried to the lips of the insipid. “You don’t recall that it’s your favorite?”

  “Our daughter has always enjoyed that blend,” said the man who sat in the room with them. His voice was perhaps a spike sharper than he’d intended. He had gray hair brushed back from his forehead, was heavily jowled and wore a dark blue suit with four silver buttons decorating the jacket. Up at his hairline on the right side was a plaster bandage, the flesh around it puffed and ruddy. “And she enjoys a touch of extra lemon,” he added. “Don’t you, Mary Lynn?”

  The response was a few seconds in coming, and again Hudson saw that cloud cross her face though it quickly cleared. “Yes, Father,” she said, “I do.”

  “Ah.” Hudson gave her a smile; it was a tight smile, but he was doing the best he could. “Tell me what else you enjoy.”

  The man said, “Mary Lynn likes to—”

  “Pardon me, sir. I’d like to hear it from your charming daughter.” Hudson’s smile stayed fixed in place though the black tarpits of his eyes promised that violent destruction of this house could be achieved on a moment’s notice. He returned a softer gaze to the girl. “Go ahead,” he offered.

  “Well,” she began, and she smiled brightly, “I do so enjoy—” She stopped suddenly, her smile faltered, and in her freckled face her blue eyes seemed to haze over as if they had become as ponds of ice. She looked to her counterfeit father, then back to Hudson, and then into her teacup as if her fortune—and the sense that was steadily leaving her mind—could be found there.

  “Horseback riding,” Frederick Nash supplied. “You always enjoy that.”

  “A notable endeavor,” Hudson replied, still staring at the girl. “Tell me…when was the last time you went riding?”

  A silence followed. Berry Grigsby—now known in the Nash house and in this foul village of Professor Fell’s drug experiments as Mary Lynn Nash—took a sip of tea. Her hand trembled, just a fraction; her eyes, so usually sparkling with life, were now as dead as the doll’s face she had been painted and powdered to resemble. The sight of her like this—her body pushed into a pink gown too small for her, the brown wig of curly ringlets like a mudslide covering the coppery-red highlights of her own hair, her face whitened with powder and reddened with rouge and her eyes sunken down into purple hollows—made Hudson both saddened and enraged, and for a shilling and this pisspot of tea he would tear Nash limb from limb and then take this evil house apart at the joints. It had been explained to Hudson that Nash’s wife—Mary Lynn’s “mother”—was feeling poorly and had gone abed early, but Hudson thought it was a lie; he figured the woman simply didn’t want to see anyone who had known Berry in a previous life. Hudson had had to display several violent temper fits to get this far, and after smashing the furniture in his own cottage and throwing it into the street the word had come that he was allowed to see “the girl”, as his handler—a wiry and dangerous-looking man who called himself ‘Stalker’—referred to Berry.

  He wanted to beat them all to senseless pulps, including the woman in the other room. But there were so many questions he needed answers to, and up until now no one in this place—Y Beautiful Bedd, it was called—would give him satisfaction; therefore he needed to hold his seething anger and his fists until he could learn what exactly was going on, and where exactly was the young man he and Berry had crossed the Atlantic from New York to find.

  “The last time?” Berry asked, her eyes still vacant. “I think…I think it was—
”

  “I had a very reliable horse once named Matthew Corbett,” Hudson said. “I’m trying to locate where he might—”

  “You were warned,” Nash interrupted, and he put his hand on the pistol that lay atop the table to his right. “None of your nonsense, sir.”

  “And all this is sense? Fuck that,” Hudson said, with a snarl and a quick glance at the gun. “I would warn you that before you can level that little toy at me you’d go out through the front window, so take your hand away from it.”

  Nash didn’t hesitate very long before he obeyed. “It matters not a whit,” he said. “Our daughter is content as she is, with all the comforts we can give her. Isn’t that right, Mary Lynn?”

  Berry took another drink of tea as if none of this exchange had transpired. When she put her cup down into its saucer she frowned at her visitor. “That’s a strange name for a horse,” she said, with a faint and crooked smile upon her painted mouth.

  “More like an ass than a horse, but—” Hudson shrugged. He decided he could bear no more of this, and the situation was getting him nowhere except closer to another night without proper sleep. He stood up, noting that the motion made Nash flinch as if the man feared he might be attacked. “I thank you for your time…and for the tea,” he said to Berry. Could he keep his throat from constricting to choke off the words? It was a difficult battle. “I’m sure I’ll have the pleasure of your company again.”

  “My pleasure, sir.” She stood up as well and gave him a curtsey that made Hudson think some invisible demon was actually floating above her, manipulating the marionette’s strings.

  Nash swept an arm toward the door. “I believe you can find your way out.”

  “That’s exactly what I intend to find, and not just for myself.” Hudson wrenched his brown corduroy coat off its wallhook so hard the hook came with it and fell to the floor’s timbers with a ringing noise. He put it on over one of the flannel shirts that had been given to him, along with the coat and two pairs of breeches, since his own clothing had been removed during his first half hour in this damnable village and probably thrown into a fire; at least they’d returned his own boots to him, which was one positive thing. He braced himself for the chill outside, since Nash’s house was so warmed by its fireplace, and without another glance at fictive father and delirious daughter he went through the door onto Conger Street, where four men with torches, pistols and swords were waiting for him in the blue twilight of evening.