by Maren Smith
“Oh God, oh God!” It was the only thought she could hold to and the only words she could say as she crashed into the matronly woman who just happened to be passing by at the same instant that Flora came spilling out of Miller’s Court. Flora latched onto her arms when they collided. The force of it spun them both around, though they did manage to keep their feet.
He was coming. Even now, over that woman’s shoulder Flora could see him striding up the alley, shrugging into his long coat as he came. Still holding the knife, still holding the heart.
“Oh God!” Flora screamed now, and the woman turned to follow the path of her terrified gaze.
“Oh!” In an instant, she knocked Flora back, slapping violently at her hands as she flattened herself to the nearest building. “Murder!”
The Ripper broke into a run. So too did Flora, and it didn’t take more than a glimpse back over her shoulder for her to see that (although he could have bolted up the other side of Dorset Street, he didn’t) the Ripper was right behind her. His longer legs pounding the cobblestones in a swifter cadence than her own shorter ones could manage. Though terror pushed her to the absolute brinks of how fast she could go, he was closing the distance.
He was going to catch her.
She screamed. She didn’t mean to. The raggedy high-pitched shriek just tore from her, the way he would tear her if he caught her.
When he caught her…
They weren’t even alone on the street. Flora passed three different men, all of whom simply sidestepped to get out of her way, and none of whom bothered to interfere. Perhaps if she’d screamed ‘the Ripper’ one or all might have, but for once she couldn’t make a sound. Every gasp she took went to giving her air enough to keep running… where?
Where was she? She didn’t know.
She dashed across the street, narrowly missing a wagon and causing the horses to rear. The Ripper dodged the shying horses, but stayed right behind her.
Ducking right, she tore up a huge, wide-open street, knocking into a man pissing on the steps of a pub, lights dim, door now closed. He swung an arm after her, slurring curses; the Ripper gave him a wide berth and never slowed his step.
He was so close now, so very close. What was he, five… maybe six steps behind her? She could hear the laboring of his breath above her own high-pitched gasps. She imagined she could feel the heat of each exhale burning into the back of her neck. Her chest hurt. Her heart was in full panic. An ominous itch spread up between her shoulders, under her ribs and across her throat where any minute now she knew she would feel the icy sharpness of his blade in a way no museum display case could have prepared her for.
She was going to die in Whitechapel at the hands of the world’s most infamous serial killer and she had no idea how she had come to be here or how, if possible, she could ever hope to get home. She got to savor all the subtle and spine-tingling nuances of that awful realization—she was the unknown sixth victim of Jack the Ripper—for the full split-second it took before his straining fingers snagged the back of her hair. His other hand clamped onto her shoulder, and suddenly she was yanked backward.
The Ripper spun her so forcefully, they both lost their balance, crashing sideways into a display of shelves and pole racks. Her knees hit the cobblestones. Her chin knocked the lip of a heavy wooden display table. She grabbed at it, scrambling to get up, but already the Ripper was adjusting his grip. He threw her down, climbing on top of her back as easily as a man who’d already had five victims to practice on.
The Ripper’s unknown sixth victim…
Never had tears been more useless and yet she cried them anyway, shrieking her helplessness as he fumbled to cover her mouth with a hand that already reeked of bile and blood, and she lost her grip on the locket. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t! But none of that mattered when, knotting his hand in her hair, the Ripper slammed her forehead against the cobblestone street.
The first blow made the swirling lights dance once more in front of her eyes.
The second cast all into blackness.
Chapter 3
Draven Grey had been up for hours already before he switched his butcher shop sign from closed to open and unlocked the main shop door. He never slept well at nights anymore, but in the last few years, that restlessness had only come to serve him well in his chosen trade. It meant he was never late to the stockyards when the livestock vendors drove their herds up through the streets, a tradition that harkened back to Roman times, long before the birth of this old street or any of the ramshackle shops that had come to stand on it. By dawn, when more of London was either stirring to rise or, alternately, falling exhausted into bed, his purchases for the day had already been made, his slaughtering done, and his choicest cuts skinned, dressed and hung for display. This was Butcher Row, where thirteen of the fifteen shops were butcheries, and yet no one felt the pinch of competition too keenly. London was a big place, after all. Capital of the British Empire and the largest city in the world. Nothing was greater than this city’s hunger for meat.
Well… almost nothing, Draven thought, as he stole a peek through the display window and caught sight of his nearest neighbor, George White, known by customers and competitors alike as the Fat Man. He was also now opening his shop for the day. Few things in the world were greater than that man, either.
‘Neighbor’ was a loose term. Draven’s butchery stood alone, with Harrow Alley on one side and a great yawning openness on the other. Although a number of family-owned shops had stood there only a few years before, all had been torn down by the city fathers who were less concerned with tradition than they were with progress or, although the suspicion could not be confirmed, the generous gratitude that the owner of more modernized and less bloody manufacturing companies funneled into their collective pockets.
Seven meat shops were wiped away before the inhabitants of Butcher Row even knew a war of progress had been declared on them. It abruptly ended before Draven’s shop (then known as Bosman’s Butchery) could be caught in the crossfire, and it had ended because the only thing bigger than the Fat Man’s massive stomach was his mouth.
The Fat Man hadn’t been able to get his great meaty hands far enough behind his back to tie his own apron in years, never mind the extensions his equally round wife had sewn onto each string. It was a wonder he was still capable of rolling out of his chair long enough to switch over the signs, but he did. At least twice each day, every morning and every night, if only long enough to both open and close his shop. The rest of the time, he was content to sit among the buzzing flies under the awning of his butchery, alternately throwing compliments or insults at those passing by, depending on whether they purchased from his or someone else’s shop.
That he hadn’t been shy about writing a whole letter full of similar insults and sending it on, first to the city fathers attempting to demolish this section of Commercial Street, and then to the newspapers that liked to stand in opposition to them, was the only reason Draven was in business now. And actually, whether the demolition had stopped because of the Fat Man’s letters or the public protest kicked up by the trade union that backed them, Draven didn’t know. Either way, he had his trade and he had his home, a modest living space on the floor above his shop.
Draven tied on his heavy leather apron, and then the belt of knives that symbolized his trade—two sets of each: heavy cleaver, butcher’s blade, and boning knife. All had seen their share of work this morning. His pre-dawn purchases—four sheep, two hogs, two cows and a variety of water and land fowl obtained from spinster One-Eyed Maggie—were even now hanging on hooks in the back shed, the drip-drip-ever-slowing-drip of their purpose-fulfilled lives painting the gutters of Harrow Alley red all the way back to the slaughterhouse just off the railroad yard and eventually bleeding out into the Thames. Before this day was out, they’d need sharpening many times over as his work continued on. Until sunset or even later, depending on customer demand, but such was the life of a butcher when one was good at what he did. And D
raven was. He checked his timepiece: 6 o’clock on the nose. Still mostly black outside although a line of grey had begun to lighten the cityscape. Time to get this busy day started.
He was just unlocking his heavy shop door, when he both felt and heard the reverberating bang and clatter as the racks of display poles and benches just outside his door were suddenly crashed into. He couldn’t see what had happened through the door window, it was too dark at street level and the commotion was too far to his right. Jerking back, however, through the shutter slats that protected his front display window, he glimpsed two shadowy figures falling to the ground right under his butcher’s awning.
Something hit the protective shutters and that was when his startled brain realized whatever had happened, this was no accidental fall. Shouldering the door open, he shoved outside.
Though dawn was coming, the warren of tall buildings around him shadowed his shop and none of the streetlamps were close enough to illuminate the struggle before him. And yet, it wasn’t so dark that he couldn’t make out two thrashing figures. The one in skirts was on the ground under the one in pants. She was fighting him as if for her very life, her booted feet kicking wildly at his store, the empty display racks, even the shutters of his very expensive window. Her slapping hands clawed—at the cobblestones, the bench legs, the shadow man’s head, shoulders, and especially the black-coated arm now hooked around her neck. She was gasping, sucking, unable to breathe.
And Draven was just standing here.
“Oi!” Across the gap of Harrow Alley, the Fat Man was standing in the yellow light of his open shop door. “Who are you, there? Sod off, you mingers!”
The man’s head snapped up, as if he hadn’t at all known he had an audience to this. He snapped around even further when Draven stepped down out of his doorway, letting the heavy door bump shut behind him.
For almost a full, perfect heartbeat, he and the shadow man stared at one another. He couldn’t see the man’s face. He couldn’t see the color or fabric of his clothes, beyond the silhouette of him. What he could see, was how fast the woman was weakening. It only took seconds before he switched his grip from her neck to the back of her head and with a savagery Draven hadn’t expected, not with him standing right there, the man slammed her face into the cobblestones. Not once, but twice.
Anger overwhelmed shock and surprise.
“Oi!” Managing only a single threatening step, Draven stopped when he caught the glint of lines of a fine-edged blade that appeared as if by magic in the shadow man’s hand.
“Yeah, ye ratbag, I’m talking to you!” the Fat Man bellowed, thumping his chest even as he squinted, trying to see the distance.
Draven didn’t have to yell to be heard. “I’m only one what kills here, mate.”
Front shop lights were coming on in the butcheries across the street and all down it. Drawn by the Fat Man’s commotion, people were peeking out windows and opening doors.
Though he barely moved, the man checked his surroundings. Draven couldn’t see his beneath the low rim of the shadow man’s cap, but he felt it when he once more was pinned in the other’s stare. The knife vanished as the shadow man tucked it to his side.
Spreading his arms, Draven loomed another step closer, letting the other look his fill of the butcher’s apron he wore and the heavy weight of the blades already dangling there. “Cut her,” he growled. “I fuckin’ dare you, mate. Ye ain’t nothing but hog to me. See how long it takes me to put you—”
The shadow man bolted.
Sparks of fire and ice jumping down his spine, Draven leapt after him
“Get ‘im!” the Fat Man bellowed, waving his cleaver as Draven chased the man straight between their shops into the mouth of Harrow Alley.
The alley was even darker with nothing but a single distant light beyond the corner at the very end. A turned ankle was the least of his worries, however. Lighter, shorter, and faster than Draven, the shadow man quickly pulled ahead of him. He only had one knife. Draven had on his heavy leather apron and a thick belt full of them weighting him down. With every step, his opponent gained distance between them before vanishing around the far corner where Harrow turned into Little Sommerset. By the time Draven reached that same corner, all he saw was a leisurely crowd of passers-by going about their business to and fro across the mouth of the alley. Draven stood rooted where he was, barely winded but torn between the incredible urge to follow and the equally desperate need to find out whether Skirts was even now lying dead in front of his shop.
Backing away, Draven watched a few seconds longer, making sure the shadow man was truly gone before jogging back home.
The woman was lying exactly as her attacker had left her. The only difference now was the sun. Having risen a little higher, the grey glow of pre-dawn lit the horizon, casting just enough of its growing light for him to make out a trickle of blackness travelling in the cracks between the cobblestones around her head. And the quantity. She was spilling more than mere drips. Had the shadow man cut her throat after all?
Shoving the jostled display shelves out of his way, he dropped to his knee beside her. “Hey, luv?”
He knew the difference between living flesh and dead, but damn, he didn’t want to feel that difference in her. She didn’t move when he touched her cheek, not even to roll her head or groan. The only thing that did move was the blood.
The sky was lightening the streets, turning the blood from black to red where it crossed the faint line of shadow his awning painted on the ground. He rolled her gently over to find the dull light turned the pale blonde of her hair deep red too, especially in the long strands that now stuck in a wet frame all around her face.
He tried to brush them back. The paleness of the surrounding strands hit him hard. Even in this light were so very pale, more white than blonde. He’d only ever known one other with hair like this.
This woman was not her.
Pulling his hand back, Draven quickly banished the thought. He had more important things than those sad memories to dwell on.
Was she even still breathing? He almost didn’t want to touch her to find out, but slipping two fingers along the cool side of her neck, he felt for proof of life and found a faint, fluttering pulse. The sudden weightlessness of his relief did not survive longer than the time it took for him to lean back, letting the early morning sunlight now spilling over the tops of the opposite rooftops to fall across her face.
Draven froze once more.
Jesus… her mouth, her nose. The pale white-gold of her hair shining in the sunlight like the fine spun filigrees of a rich man’s thread. This woman lying before him wasn’t his Elise, but damn him if she didn’t look a mirror image to her. They could have been sisters. Hell, they could have been twins. But no, his wife had died of fever eight months into her pregnancy with their first child. A boy, they had told him, because at the very last they had tried to save him from the sheltering womb that had become his deathtrap. They’d failed. Elise lay buried at the City of London Cemetery at Manor Park with the son she’d never held in life lying on her breast.
It was amazing how much this false Elise in this unconscious moment, with all her limbs splayed out about her and her halo of pale blonde curls soaking up her spilling blood, looked as his wife had just before they placed her in the polished elm box he’d spent all he’d had to afford. Bending over her now called back everything he’d felt as he’d stood over Elise, committing her face to memory one last time before the lid was sealed and she was buried.
“Hey, Grey? Grey!”
Draven glanced across the alley to where the Fat Man was standing at the corner of his shop’s stoop. Wider than his own doorway, he waved a beefy hand as if to make sure Draven saw him.
Cupping a hand around his mouth, the Fat Man called, “What ye got there? Leave a slab of beef out over night? Looks small, eh? Maybe you’re dressing out dogs now, yeah?” He laughed, smacking his side at his own joke.
Two other shop owners laughed too. Solomon De
Leeuw, who sold meat from the narrow shop immediately next to the Fat Man, so near in fact that they shared the same red and yellow cloth awning, and young William Knott, whose father, Thomas, co-owned the Attfield & Knott butchery four more doors down. Now that the shadow man was gone and the commotion died down, they were the only butchers still lingering on their stoops instead of readying for the busy day ahead. But all up and down the street, Draven could see his friends and competitors turning on lights, unshuttering their windows, setting up shop both in and outside their open doors.
The Fat Man’s sons were drifting in and out behind their wide father, carrying the morning’s cuts, hanging the roasts and hog and cattle heads up on hooks from the rafters. Moving slower than normal, they cast curious glances his way.
Four shops down, young William too had paused in his work, which brought his father out with a ready cuff and stern order to get back to it. Neither of which he delivered once he noticed the direction his twelve-year-old son—and seemingly everyone else—was staring. Concern furrowed his brow, something that could barely be seen between the brim of his tweed cap and bushy black eyebrows.
Draven had to do something. The woman’s fingers twitched, but it wasn’t until she rasped the faintest croak of a gasp that his shock snapped and he could once more move. Elise was so stark in his mind that he didn’t want to touch her, but he made himself do just that, cupping her chin when her mouth gaped and tipping up her head so she could breathe easier. That was when he saw the faint bruising left by the shadow man’s strangling arm and, even more enraging, an inch or so cut to the left of her jugular. He’d made an attempt to stab her before running. It was bleeding, but not heavily enough to be the source of all the red matting in her hair and congealing on the cobblestones. That dubious honor went to the gash that split from the top of her forehead back into her hairline. Another cut and bruise on her chin showed where she’d hit when first she’d been knocked down.